Lilith Saintcrow: Angel Town

What the hell’s that? Half-rising from the crouch, keeping to cover, I almost swayed because I didn’t have a counterweight hanging behind me to keep me steady. A cloak of stillness folded over me, my pulse dropping, my entire body chilling. Gooseflesh rose hard like little rubbery fists under my skin, I ignored it.

Follow that. It’s not supposed to be here.

I was moving before I knew it, bolting across the rooftop, the world around me blurring. Hit the edge going full speed, a moment of weightlessness, and smacked the pavement stories below with a crack like a shotgun and a breathless feeling of holy shit did I just do that?

I would’ve been laughing with crazy joy, if not for the gun unholstering itself and the sudden fierce buzzing in my right arm, like a band of metallic flies was breaking for the surface of an infection. Right at my wrist, too. It pulled me along on a reel of silk, I flashed through a deserted alley and straight up a brick wall, barely touching the rough surface, my left hand catching at the top and heaving me over with little effort.

It was like flying. And I might’ve liked some time to enjoy it before I collided with a long tall thin thing out of a nightmare, its flesh glowing waxen-pale as it snarled, flying backward with its legs and arms drawn in, spiderlike. Its eyes glowed with a powdery sheen, and the thing it had been crouching over was a rag of bloody bone and meat that had once been a human being.

Trader. Put him down quick, Jill. But not so quick you can’t question him.

Well, at least now I had a goal.

He smashed through two struts, snapping them like matchsticks, and the strength flooding my veins was definitely bolting up my right arm from the…thing, the gem, whatever it was. I was on him in a hot heartbeat, punching him twice and something cracking in his torso; we skidded and a lick of hot pain went up my arm. Skin erased by concrete, the smell of blood, and the Trader’s chin jutted forward. His teeth were sharklike points, steaming saliva dripping and foaming, and we hit a retaining wall with a sound like a good hard break on a pool table. Something snapped in my side just like the struts, the pain was a spur. His teeth buried themselves in my shoulder, grating on bone, I screamed. Not with the pain.

No. I screamed in pure frustration. I knew what to do, but I didn’t have the tools to do it. I didn’t have my knives, or my coat, or—

The gun bucked in my hand, its roar oddly muffled. A hole opened in his back, the exit wound blossoming obscenely. The Trader howled through his mouthful of my flesh, blood squirting and whatever venom he had on those sharp triangular teeth burning as it sizzled, spattering my neck.

He didn’t quit.

I shot him again, twisting, and the thought— thank God for judo, Jillybean, get him good —seemed completely normal. Another hole opened in his back. Why was he still moving? Squeezed the trigger again, and his torso was mangled now. Another hole opened in his back, this one spattering and spraying wider than the first two. A mist of copper droplets hung in the air.

I got lucky.

The flat, shine-dusted eyes glazed. He twitched, teeth grinding in the ruin of my shoulder, and I let out a sound that probably would’ve haunted a nightmare or two if there was anyone around to hear. It took working the gun barrel into his mouth and cracking the jaw to get the teeth to loosen up as his body twitched and jerked. I jammed it further back—he was still twitching—and squeezed the trigger again, the roar way too close for comfort.

The back of its head evaporated.

Corruption raced through its tissues, little veins of dust spilling from a crackglaze like fine porcelain glued back together and unceremoniously busted again.

Would’ve been easier with my knives. Where are my fucking knives? It didn’t matter. I scrambled out of his slackening embrace, my sneakers squishing and sliding in a tide of brackish fluid. It was blood. But the edges of the red fluid held a taint of black, hungrily threading through and turning it to dust as the body twitched and jerked, heels drumming in a weird dance against the rooftop, the mangled head spilling brainmeal as the neck twisted. My ribs flickered; heaving breaths shaking me like wet laundry. I hit one of the listing iron struts reaching up like fingers—it was bent crazily where he’d gone right through it.

Yes, I could see now it was a he. He’d been naked, and his genitals were altered, too. Barbed and spiked, like…I don’t even know what like.

They always go for body mods. Part of the personality of someone who’ll trade their soul away. I know that. It was a relief to find something I did know for sure. Even if this was weird as fuck.

I was making a whistling sound. Hyperventilating. Something inside me clamped down, made my pulse and respiration calmer, my eyes locked on the twitching, disintegrating body.

You must watch death you make, a man whispered from my soupy, darkened memory. Is only way, milaya .

Mikhail. I remembered his name, now, with a lurching mental effort. Sweat stood out, cold and slick, all over me. The gun was steady, pointed at the swiftly rotting corpse as if it might take a mind to get up for round two.

You never know. You just never know.

My shoulder burned, but I ignored it. The gun didn’t waver. So this was what I did. I leapt off multistory buildings like I was stepping off a patio. I found weird smells. I got into fights on rooftops.

I killed things that shouldn’t exist.

The gem on my wrist glowed softly.

When you’re ready.

Is that what he’d meant, my blue-eyed breakfast-buying hallucination? Was I having another hallucination now?

That’s the trouble with waking up in your own grave. A whole lot of weird shit suddenly seems pretty reasonable.

Maybe that wasn’t your grave. Maybe your name isn’t Jill. Maybe Mikhail is something else. Can’t assume. That’s what he said, all the time. “Do not ever assume. Is quickest way to get ass blown sideways.”

I stared at the bubbling mass until it was clear it wasn’t going to get up and come after me again. The night air was full of traffic sounds, faraway sirens, whispered secrets. My shoulder had stopped bleeding. When I looked down, craning my neck, the bubbling pink froth squeezing out of the flesh as it knit itself back together sizzled a little, eating at the T-shirt. Bile whipped the back of my throat, I forced it down by swallowing. Bad idea, because then it hit my stomach and revolved. I was kind of glad I hadn’t eaten anything, because I heaved once before I got myself back together and used the spar behind me to muscle my way back to standing. My knees definitely felt gooshy.

The next step was examining the victim and looking for evidence. Like a cop.

Not a cop. A hunter. You do what the cops can’t.

My own voice, hard and clear, addressing a class of bright-faced boys and girls in blue dress uniforms.

I will be blunt, rookies. You’ll all be required to memorize the number for my answering service, which will page me. Pray you never have to use that number. Three or four of you will have to. A few of you won’t have time to, but you can rest assured that when you come up against the nightside and get slaughtered, I’ll find your killer and serve justice on him, her, or it. And I will also lay your soul to rest if killing you is just the beginning.

“Holy fuck,” I whispered. The city whispered and chuckled.

I shuffled like an old woman, back to the victim. There was a pile of clothing—workman’s boots, overalls, a red plaid shirt, a billfold in one of the pockets. A nice wad of fifties and hundreds that I took without compunction, ID showing a sullen, lean face—it was dark up here, but I had no trouble picking out the features of the thing I’d just killed. Back when it had been human, its name had been Eric Allen Dodge, and he lived in the Cruzada district. Staring at the address gave me a map of the city, different routes I could take to get out to his house if I needed to give it a looksee. There was one more thing, and I held it while I crouched to look at the rag of meat and bone he’d been hunched over when I hit him.