Angel Town (19 page)

“Blue Buick. Four-door. License plate?”

She reeled off a string of numbers and letters.

It matched up. One more question, then, to keep me warm. “When did he get rid of it?”

“A couple months before you disappeared. You need the date and the buyer?”

“No.” I shut my eyes briefly, leaning against the phone booth’s shell. My memory was cruel now, showing connections in a pitiless white glare, like the sun beating down or the wide white carpet in Perry’s bedroom. “Jesus,” I whispered. That tied up
that
loose end. Vanner hadn’t been nervous around me all the time because he had a habit of walking in on the weird.

He’d been nervous because he’d tried to kill me once, during the case that lost me one of my cops and almost,
almost
turned my city into a wasteland. Only the ’breed pulling the strings hadn’t warned him to use silverjacket ammo on a helltainted hunter. And doubly nervous afterward because he hadn’t killed me, and he was in deep to that same hellbreed. I hadn’t smelled any corruption on him, but it wasn’t out of the question. Most likely he’d been full human and angling for a Trade…

…and that was a question mark, too, wasn’t it? Perry’s enemies were likely dead by now, if his treatment of Halis was any indication. Shen An Dua—the ’breed who I would’ve pointed the finger at—was dead, and so were Rutger and that pajama-masked psycho who’d been trying to kill me last time. There was nobody left to send a poisonous hellhound after one crooked cop.

Except Perry. Who would have wanted me down but not out, since my agreement with him kept him at the top of the hellbreed food chain in Santa Luz. He very well might not have warned a stupid human slave to use silverjacket. And Perry could
always
use a pair of eyes on the police force, couldn’t he.

Or maybe Vanner had just been a crooked cop, tried to kill me, found out he couldn’t, and went looking for something on the nightside that would keep him safe in the event that I kept digging and found out who’d been driving that blue Buick. Especially since Harvill, the DA who had been the prime node of corruption on that case, had ended up dead, too. Just how Vanner connected to Harvill I didn’t know, but someone could probably tell me if I cared to find out. Now that I knew where to look.

I glanced out into the street, where the dogsbody padded back and forth, sunlight drenching its blond hide, its colorless jewel-eyes glittering. I tasted bile, and the gem on my wrist twinged sharply.

Why was a hellhound chasing him? Unless Perry wanted him back. Or maybe…

Devi’s tone crackled with thinly controlled impatience. “Jill? Throw me a bone here. Give me something, anything, come on.”

I’m having hallucinations about Henderson Hill’s blue-eyed caretaker. Only they’re not hallucinations, because he bought me breakfast and gave me a gun.
“If I could, I would. Just get everyone you can, Devi, and watch your ass. Put Saul on the line.”

“I’m not your fucking secretary.” But she laid the phone down, and I heard Galina’s murmured questions, Devi’s sharp reply. “She wants to talk to him. If it’ll stop him doing this crazy shit, I’m all for it.” Bootheels coming down hard as Devi stamped away. “
Hutch!
Get your skinny ass up here!”

I waited, breathing deep. Fed another eight quarters into the phone. Devi had probably tucked a phone card into my coat, but it didn’t matter. The coins dropped in, pieces of silver to pay the ferryman.

Cells are expensive and finicky, and the more advanced they get the more sorcery messes them up; once pay phones were a thing of the past I was going to have to figure something else out. Right now, breaking and entering to use someone’s phone sounded like the most satisfying option. As well as the most educational and entertaining.

Always assuming I survived long enough.

Static burst over the phone line. Then a listening silence. I could hear him breathing, deep even swells, a sound of effort temporarily checked.

“Saul?” I always sounded breathy and silly over the phone with him. “Saul, please. You’ve got to calm down.”

“Where. Are. You?” The words vibrated over the lines and carried all the fury in the world into my ear, and gooseflesh spilled down my back.

“Galina’s going to keep you there, Saul. I can’t afford to lose you.”

“I
told
you—” he began, and it wasn’t like every other fight we’d ever had. Usually I was the one losing my shit while he tried to stay rational. This time it was him losing his shit, and if he lost it enough, it wasn’t going to be easy to slow him down.

I had to get it all out at once, before he got his head up. “Saul.
Perry will kill you.
If he does, I’m damned and he will have no trouble getting me to do anything he wants. You are the only goddamn thing that matters to me, all right? The
only
thing.
I don’t even care about my fucking city, Saul.
” I let that sink in, and wonder of wonders, he was quiet. I swallowed, expecting the world to rock out from underneath me from the blasphemy.

What did that say about me? Santa Luz could get wiped off the map, and as long as Saul was alive I’d count it chump change. That was
wrong
, because I was a hunter…but that was the way it was. And if it stopped him long enough for me to get a word of sanity in edgewise, I didn’t care. “Just stay put and when I’m done with this, you can yell at me all you want. But I need you to rest, I need you to eat, and I need you to be strong so that when this is done you can load me in a car and get me the hell out of this godforsaken town.
Please.
”

Silence. The rage crackling over the line didn’t abate.

“Please.” It was a little girl’s whisper. “Saul,
please
. I came back from Hell for you.”

And here I was, racking up the lies. I didn’t remember where I’d come back from. I had a suspicion that I didn’t want to, and another sneaking suspicion that it hadn’t been Poughkeepsie.

Hell was as good a guess as any.

Besides, I know Hell exists. The evidence is all around, every day, rubbed in your face. And the descent into hellbreed territory is the final step that makes a hunter—no, wait. The final step is the
return
, with your teacher holding the line and the souls of the damned screaming in your ears.

Heaven? Never been there. Unless being in Saul’s arms on a sunny afternoon counts. Which it probably does, if I’m lucky.

If I deserved it. If I pulled this off and saved the weary world for him one more time.

A clatter. Footsteps stamping away. A low, rumbling growl dying out.

“Jill?” Galina, softly. “He’s calmer. Theron and I are taking turns cooking; now he might even eat. I won’t let him out. Are you all right? Is Gilberto okay?”

She was such a gentle soul. My stomach turned over hard. The dogsbody lifted its head, crystalline eyes fixed on the middle distance down Sarvedo Street.

“Gil was fine when I gave him his marching orders. Galina,
keep Saul there
. I don’t care what you have to do, just keep him safe.”

“I already promised.” Solemn now. “What’s going on? It’s Perry, isn’t it. What’s he doing?”

Taking me apart one piece at a time. And repeating the worst part of modern history, thank you very much.
“Something big. Look, I need you to do something for me.”

“Of course.”

The dogsbody slunk closer, still staring down the street. Under the golden wires of its hair, sharply defined muscles moved under black skin. “Start making silverjacket bullets. Get the Sanctuary ready for all the hunters who can reach Santa Luz in the next twenty-four hours. And Galina?”

“What?”

“Do you pray?”

She sounded surprised. “Well, the Order’s quite catholic, in the old sense—”

“Good. Start praying. Maybe it will help.”

T
he warehouse was full of ghosts.

It stood on the wrong side of the tracks, and from the outside it was just another dusty, decaying bit of urban infrastructure. Inside, though, it was space and light and the stamp of Saul’s presence everywhere. It looked just the same as it had the last time I’d been here.

When I’d been preparing to go die.

I’d left the bed tangled and some cupboards open; the huge orange Naugahyde couch with the pretty slipcover Saul had made was dirty; I’d been covered in filth, as usual. Thin blue lines of etheric protection hummed in the walls, fading until I stepped inside, gathering strength from my presence. Dust lay thick over everything, and even though Gilberto or Anya had been out to lock up and keep everything tidy, it still smelled like an abandoned house. Places start to rot very quickly, etherically and physically, once they’re uninhabited. It smelled sour and stale, and that would just about drive Saul nuts. He’d start scrubbing everything he could reach.

My eyes blurred, hot water brimming. I blinked it away. The dogsbody padded behind me, whining softly to itself, and ignoring it wasn’t making it vanish.

Not that I thought it would, but I didn’t have the heart to shoot the damn thing.

Yet.

I strode through the empty rooms of our life together and stepped into the wide, wood-floored sparring room. Mirrored tiles along one side, a ballet barre firmly bolted to them; weapons hanging on the other three. There was one empty spot—a fall of amber silk crushed on the floor, and I don’t know why I was surprised. Of course someone had taken the hunk of pre-Atlantean meteorite iron, with its dragon heads and scythelike blades.

I had a moment’s worth of unease, wondering…but no, the weapon Mikhail had handed down to me couldn’t possibly be called
la Lanza de Destino
. For one thing, it was too old, and it wasn’t wooden. Anya would have taken it to store in Galina’s vaults.

No windows, but skylights drenching everything with late-afternoon honey, dust motes dancing as the gem gave a hard piercing note, like a crystal wineglass right before it shatters.

My guns leapt free, trained on a column of sunlight. Dust coalesced, a single spark flared white, and he was suddenly
there
.

I didn’t shoot him. But it was close.

Call-Me-Mike the caretaker regarded me mildly, his blue eyes glowing. The sun picked out fine threads of gold in his no-longer-dishwater hair, and instead of the jumpsuit he wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt. All he needed was a duck’s-ass pompadour and a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in his sleeve.

The dogsbody whined and slumped next to me, shivering.

“What the fuck
are
you?” I’ll admit it, I yelled. The words cracked, bounced back from the mirrors, set the dust swirling in tiny tornados.

Mike shrugged, a loose easy movement. “It’s not important.”

“It is to me.” I didn’t lower the guns. The idea that I could just start shooting every nonhuman or non-Were involved in this whole scenario was wonderfully comforting. I wondered if I had enough ammo. “Perry says hello,
brother Michael
. He’s planning something for tomorrow night to send the world down the drain. But you know that, don’t you. What was the point of sending me there?”

Mike shrugged, spreading his hands. The light made him insubstantial, just another ghost here with all the dust and the memories. “It was…necessary.”

You son of a bitch.
“Was shooting myself in the head necessary too? You’re the
Other Side
, Perry says. We’re bleeding and dying down here, where the fuck are
you
? Why are you just showing up now?” My ribs heaved. I didn’t realize I was shouting until the echoes came back, the entire warehouse creaking like a tree in a high breeze. The triggers eased down a millimeter, another. Squeezing off a few rounds would just about start this conversation off right.

Sorrow, then, darkening those blue, blue eyes. Not sterile like Perry’s, a warm summer color. But so terribly sad. “It’s not that simple. I’m bending the rules enough as it is. So much depends on you, and of course…” Another slight movement, hands spread. “Of course I wish I could do more. It…it’s painful, to see such suffering.”

Well, isn’t that big of you.
“Wind me up and set me loose, right? Just throw me at the enemy. I’ve been fighting this war for years, and it never gets any better. I’ve been down in the streets trying to hold back the tide. There’s no goddamn hope at all. And you’ve been sitting up at Henderson Hill the entire
fucking
time, doing
fucking
nothing, just waiting for…for what? For Perry? Is that it? You’re in cahoots?”

“I wouldn’t say that. He’s part of the Pattern, as you are. As I am. But…there are disturbing signs. He’s…” Another helpless shrug. “Even if I had the words, you wouldn’t understand. I can’t even offer you a dispensation. If you do this—stop Hyperion, save your fellows, and recover the Lance—you will not be rewarded. There is no glory, no recompense.”

A harsh cawing laugh shook its way free of my chest.
Well, shit, that’s par for the course.
“So why should I bother, huh? Because you brought me back? Is that it?”

“It’s part of the Pattern, but I can’t explain that either.
Kismet.
Did you really expect to name yourself that and not be called upon?”

It was like talking to Mikhail in one of his vodka-soaked philosophical moods. Baffling, opaque, and frustratingly-familiar enough to drive me to the heavy bag. I searched for something that would wring an answer out of him. I’m used to dealing with hellbreed, where you question them, then you hurt them, then you question them some more.

Something told me that would be a bad idea with this guy, whatever he was. “Perry called you his brother. You’re related?”

Another gentle, rueful smile. “Is a mirror related to the image it holds?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Disgusted, I lowered the guns. I was shaking again, and all I wanted was to lie down and sleep. Next to Saul, if possible. Let the world end, it had been lurching along before I came along to be a hunter just fine.

Focus, Jill!
I blinked. A puzzle piece snapped down inside my head. “He needs me for something.
La Lanza de Destino
, Melendez called it; the only trouble is, there’s several of
those
floating around. I at least know it’s not the chunk of meteorite Mikhail left me. The important thing is, Perry can’t use it. What does he want it used
on
?”

Mike nodded, the patient teacher beaming at a recalcitrant but gifted student. “
Very
good. But your task is simply to strike him down when he has achieved the first half of his purpose. It’s very important, Kismet.”

“So he wants me to do something for him, and you want me to murder him but you won’t tell me exactly why.” The guns lowered slightly. “I’d do it for free, you know. That bastard has gone too far.”
And so have you.

The caretaker crouched, suddenly, a fluid movement. I twitched, stopped myself at the last moment.

The dogsbody whined and leaned forward. It glanced up at me, colorless eyes suddenly pleading, and the sickness revolving behind my breastbone rose another notch. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered, suddenly very sure. “The hellhound was chasing him to shut him up. Perry was just cleaning up a loose end.”

“This one has paid for what he’s done.” Michael held out a hand, just touching the edge of the sunlight. Stroking it, the finely drawn border where light met air. “And it’s fitting that he should protect you now, isn’t it?”

God, there’s not much difference between you and a hellbreed, is there. Maybe I should start killing you both.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere. What the fuck are you, and why are you here?”

“I came to give you comfort, Kismet.” He cocked his head, glancing up at me. The dogsbody didn’t move, but its shaking slid up my leg. The gem groaned, etheric force thrumming up my arm. “And to explain, as far as I am able, what Hyperion wishes to do.”

“It’s about fucking time.” I lowered the guns, nice and slow. “I’m waiting.”

So he told me, in plain words. And I listened. By the end of it his voice was a brass bell, stroked softly in a forgotten chapel, and I was cold all over. The dogsbody whined even louder, crouching next to me and shivering. The sunlight dimmed, and by the time he finished I was on my knees too, hugging myself, staring at him.

“Saul,” I whispered.

The caretaker was glowing now, his skin burnished and his eyes burning feverishly. My own blue eye ached, piercing the veil of the visible—his outline rippled, eddies and currents passing through the snarled fabric of reality. “Do it for him. Do it for love. Please, Kismet. You are the only one who can.”

“I…”
But Saul. I promised him.
“I promised.”

“If you will not do this, we are lost.” He shrugged. “The Pattern will right itself in some other way, I suppose. But there will be terrible suffering, not just among those you love. I can only ask, Kismet, Jill, whatever you want to name yourself. You are free to refuse.”

Oh, fuck.
“You know I can’t.” Hopeless, pale little words. “You have to know I can’t. That’s not a way out, you know I was
made
this way. So I can’t turn you down.
God
made me this way, and don’t you dare fucking tell me He didn’t.”

“Do you believe in such a cruelty?” Michael sighed. “You’re so willing to hurt yourself.” The rippling through him was more pronounced now, bits of him wavering as if under clear, heavy water. Sunlight dimmed further, a cloud drifting between us and heaven’s eye. “Goodbye, beloved.”

Metal clattered somewhere, but my eyes were full of light. Just like that, he was gone. The dogsbody shuddered, pressing against me, and unhealthy heat boiled from its hide. I swallowed several times, and the world spun. When I came back to myself I was hunched over, my forehead against cool hardwood and awful knowledge beating inside my brain.

I was probably going insane. Coming back from the dead will do that to you, I guess. Or maybe this was a different version of Hell, one I’d been extra-special nominated to.

One that felt just like my life.

Get up, little snake.
Mikhail, in my memory. Why hadn’t he ever told me about his bargain with Perry? Could he just not find the words? Did he not care enough to…but no.

No.

Mikhail was my teacher. He’d held the line when I made my first trip to the hellbreeds’ home, the one that turned me into a full-fledged hunter and gave me my smart eye. He’d loved me the way only a hunter can love another hunter, right down to the bones and back.

He must have had a reason.

I had my marching orders. Ol’ Blue Eyes had been a busy, busy boy. He was just so helpful, feeding me and giving me weapons, showing up to push me in another direction, poking and prodding.

I made my legs straighten by the simple expedient of cursing at them, levered myself up from the floor.

“They want a sacrificial lamb.” My voice sounded odd. The dogsbody stopped whining and made an inquisitive
rrowr
sound that might have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic. “Boy, are they going to get a surprise.”