Lilith Saintcrow: Angel Town

“Do you hear me, hunter? You cannot escape me!”

Watch me, I thought, and squeezed both eyes shut. The banefire roared as he tried again to get through, actually thrusting a hand through its wall, snatching it back with a shattering howl as the skin blackened and curled. It was now or never.

I squeezed the trig—

—up from the concrete with a southpaw punch, bone shattering as my fist hit. My foot flicked out, heel striking sharply in the second man’s midriff, and I was beginning to wake up. The alley tilted crazily, both sides leaning toward each other like old drinking buddies, and the rotting refuse in choke-deep drifts along its sides smelled about as horrible as I did. Faint grayish light seeped in through the crack of sky showing above. The sky was weeping a little, a diseased eye.

There were two more of them, one with a chain that rattled musically as he shook it. Cold fear and exhilaration spilled through me like wine.

Gutter trash, Jill. Not worth your time.

But my body wasn’t listening. It knew better than I did, and I was suddenly across the distance separating me from Chain Boy, my knee coming up and sinking into his groin with a short meaty sound. He folded down, and I had the gun in my right hand, pointed at the last man. He fetched up like a dog at the end of his tether.

A chain’s only good if you can use it. It’s also only good for a very short distance, shorter than you’d think.

For a moment I wondered how I knew that.

The fourth man was actually a boy. A weedy little boy with greasy lank hair and a lean, sallow face, a leather jacket that creaked like the cow was still mooing and hadn’t missed it yet, and pegged jeans that looked dipped in motor oil. The switchblade made a small clatter as it hit the concrete, dropping from his nerveless hand. My finger tightened on the trigger.

He’s just a kid. Come on.

But that kid would’ve followed his buddies in raping and possibly killing me if I was what they’d thought I was.

Wait. What am I? It said something that even sleeping like the dead, I kept hold of a gun.

I didn’t see the Mercury. Martin D. Pores, nice guy and granny driver, had left me in an alley. Nice of him. Why was I surprised? Of course he would, it was the way things were going.

Pay attention! A sharp phantom slap, my head snapping aside, and my right foot flicked out again, catching sneaky Guy # 2 in the knee. Crack like well-seasoned firewood when the axe split it, and he folded down with a rabbit-scream.

Must’ve hurt.

The boy in the motorcycle jacket just stood there and shivered. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but it gave him some trouble. Maybe it was the mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, that I’d found staring at me in the diner’s restroom mirror. Maybe it was the gunk smeared all over me.

Maybe it was even the gun.

“Go home,” I rasped. My voice didn’t want to work quite right. “Go to school. Get a job and stop hanging out in alleys.”

His head bobbed, lank hair falling forward in strings. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t say just who . Someone with a flat, dark stare, someone I knew because…

…it was gone. Just for a second, I had it. Then it retreated, maddeningly.

He turned tail and ran, his sneakers whispering over concrete and kicking aside random bits of trash.

I spun, slowly, in a complete circle, marking every fallen body. The gun swept like a searchlight, tracking by itself to cover possible hiding places before I even thought of it. An easy instinctive movement, just like breathing. Whoever I was, I’d spent a lot of time doing this.

Training, milaya . A gruff, harsh voice, the words freighted with a foreign accent and cut off short and sharp. It gets into bones. Run all the way deep.

Who was that? My right hand jerked a little, as if the gem set on the inside of my wrist was twitching, pulling me.

He’d trained me well. The guys were down and moaning, except for the first one—the one I’d punched, his cheekbone shattered and bits of white tooth flecking the wet hole of his twisted-open mouth. He lay utterly still, with his head at an odd angle.

Oh, Christ, did I kill someone?

The sudden certainty that it wasn’t the first time poured down my back, ice cubes trickling. Nobody who handled a gun like this could be innocent.

I backed up two steps, bare feet on cold concrete. At least I wasn’t bleeding anymore. Maybe I was toughening up.

You clawed your way up out of a grave. I’d say that’s pretty damn tough. The question is, what do you do now?

I had a full belly. But I needed shelter, and some more clothes wouldn’t be amiss.

A quick search of the two moaning men produced rolls of cash as thick as my forearm. Plus little plastic baggies full of illegal smokable stuff, switchblades, and two guns—a .38 and a 9mm. I tossed them down the alley so the boys didn’t get any ideas, and considered the guy I’d punched. After a second or two of thought, I found another roll of cash as well as more baggies on him. He was still breathing, the air bubbling through the bloody mess of his mouth. I’d broken his cheekbone and quite a few of his teeth. My hand didn’t hurt at all, and how had I blinked across space to take out Chain Boy?

The gem on my right wrist glittered, colorless, a hard dart of light as dawn strengthened and spilled more illumination through the crack serving as the alley’s ceiling.

You don’t know your own strength, girl.

“I guess not,” I muttered. “Jesus.”

I got the hell out of there.

T he crackling plastic bags on the tiny room’s colorless bed gave up a black V-neck T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were a little too big, but I hadn’t been able to try them on. It was bad enough waiting in the shadows for the gigantic Walmart a mile away to open. By 9 a.m. when the doors whooshed wide, I was a bundle of exposed, dirty, and vulnerable nerves.

I shouldn’t have worried. Those employees don’t bat an eye. I guess no matter what I looked like, they’d seen worse. After getting an eyeful of the crowd waiting to scramble on in and get their cheap shit even cheaper, I won’t exactly say I was heartened—but I was feeling a little more anonymous.

I remembered my shoe size, at least, but the sneakers felt weird, too light and flexible. The holster for the .45—I’d stuck it in the waistband of my ruined leather pants while shopping, just like a good American—didn’t quite do it, but a little duct tape fixed that right up. The .45 ammunition had been reasonably cheap, and as soon as I put it in my basket I’d felt soothed.

Whoever I was, I didn’t like being unarmed. Or short of ammo. I was hoping the modifications on the gun hadn’t made it unable to fire a basic clip, but there it was.

I found a place on the edge of the barrio. Some clear instinct warned me not to go any further into that tangle of streets, so I just picked a likely-looking hotel and paid for two nights. Cash up front, no ID requested or given. It was the kind of place usually rented by the hour, and after about 2 p.m. it started doing a brisk trade. Footsteps, soft cries, some screams, doors opening and closing. I didn’t listen too close. It was bad enough that my hearing was jacked up into the red, and I could smell every single person who had ever used this tiny room.

Sirens. Jackhammers. Traffic.

At least the shower worked. It was tepid, but there was decent water pressure. The drain almost clogged, sand and gunk sliding off me in sheets. I didn’t bother with the towels. Who knew what vermin they were carrying? Instead I wrung my hair out and air-dried. The wheezing air conditioner didn’t help very much against an egg-on-the-sidewalk sort of day, a glare of heavy sunlight golden against the barred window. It was like being in prison, only with a door that locked on your side.