Lilith Saintcrow - Angel Town

I twitched outright this time, nervously, the gun tracking him. He paid no attention, heel-and-toeing it across the concrete as if we were on a dance floor. He only stopped when I took a restless step sideways, and that brought him up short. But he leaned forward, balanced on his toes, his entire body focusing on me.

“My lovely,” he whispered. “My own. Of course I know you. What have they done to you?”

They? Whoever it was left me in the desert. In a grave. I rotted, but I came back.

No. That wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t come back. I’d been sent .

“They sent me back. To…I don’t know.” It was work to whisper. My throat was suddenly dry. Queasy heat boiled through my stomach, and I was suddenly aware the entire crowd of them was too still to be human.

If they jump you now, a clear cold voice warned me, you’re not going to have an easy time of it. You’re not even really armed. Just this gun with useless ammunition. You need silver. And lots of it.

Well, it was a fine time to remember that. And what did this have to do with the thing on the rooftop and the flayed, opened-up body, its organs set neatly aside?

I backed up, even more nervously. One step, two. He kept leaning forward.

“Don’t.” His unwounded hand came forward. The body of the Trader behind him slumped, twitching and jerking as corruption raced through its tissues. “Don’t leave, dear one. Come inside. You look hungry.”

What a coincidence. I was suddenly starving , an empty blowtorch-hole in my guts. I examined his face. Whatever lived underneath that skin rippled.

It didn’t look good, and the business card in the wallet of a murderous thing was not an endorsement. But…he was familiar. Whoever he was, I knew him.

That doesn’t mean he’s any good.

Did I have any other option?

My gun lowered slightly. The night exhaled around me, dangerous sharp edges and the neon glaring, the hunger suddenly all through me. My right wrist twitched, a fishhook under the skin yanking restlessly.

“That’s it,” he crooned. “Come inside. There’s a bed, and sharp shiny things to make you feel safer. You want knives, don’t you.”

A guilty start almost made it to the surface. I stared at him.

His smile widened just a notch. “And a gun or two. And a long, long black coat. And shining chiming things to tie in your lovely hair.” His tongue flicked out and touched his bloodless lower lip. In the uncertain ruddy light it was a startling wet cherry-red, rasping against the skin. That quick little flicker made me nervous again, and I sidled another step. That brought him forward in a rush, fluidly, his bones moving in ways a human’s shouldn’t.

Even that was familiar. Half-disgust boiled under my breastbone. The other half was something I couldn’t name. “Perry.” I found his name. But nothing else. It was like thinking through mud. “You’re Perry.”

His irises glowed, sterile, cold blue. Thin threads of indigo slid through the whites of his eyes, a vein-map. His pupils dilated a little. “At your service. In every conceivable way, Kiss. That’s what I call you. A pretty name for a pretty girl. Come. There’s food. And drink. And a place to rest.” His head cocked slightly. “And answers. You would like answers, wouldn’t you? Your perennial plaint: Tell me why. ” A short, beckoning motion, his long, expressive fingers flicking. “You’ll be under my protection, darling one. Nothing to fear. Just come, and let me soothe you.”

It sounded good. Better than good. For a moment something else trembled under the surface of my memory, but it retreated again. Maddening, the feeling that I should know. That I should understand , instead of pushing myself blindly forward from place to place. The ring was warm, a forgiving touch against my flesh.

The gun twitched. My finger eased off the trigger. It lowered slightly. “First tell me something.”

“Oh, anything.” He eased toward me again, supple and weightless as if he was simply painted on the air. “Anything you like.”

I searched through every question I had. There were too many of them crowding me. His pupils swelled, and the roaring sound filtered into my head again. The wasps, eating and buzzing, little tiny insect feet prodding as they crawled over me again. A galvanic shudder racked me. The gun dropped even further.

“Who am I?” I whispered. “What the hell are you?”

The laugh was another rumble, as if a freight train was passing me by again. It came from him, a subvocal roar, plucking at the strings under the surface of the world, and his fingers closed around my arm. Everything in me cringed away from that touch, but his fingers were warm and exquisitely gentle.

“You are my Kiss.” Very gently, experimentally, he pulled on my arm. The ring sparked again, but it was unimportant. I followed, numb, the wasp-roar filling my skull like the cotton wool of illness. “And I, my darling? I am Legion. I am unconquerable fire.” His grin was absolutely cheerful, and oddly terrifying, but all the soothing in the world was in that voice. “But don’t worry. I am also your humble host this momentous evening. You’ve arrived just in time.”

He led me past the bouncers, the submachine gun dangling as they watched, slack faced. The crowd muttered, hissing, but he paid them no notice. The doors were open, a red velvet curtain hanging in tattered folds, and he drew me through it and into the pounding music. I could barely gasp in a breath before the noise folded over my head like wings, and his grip on my arm never faltered.

I had a confused impression of swirling bodies on a dance floor lit with migraine stabs of brittle light, a monstrosity of a bar with two slim male shapes handing out what could have been drinks in twisted sparkling glasses, the press of the crowd alternately feverish and cold. The whirling crowd snarled, pressing back against each other as stipples of light flashed around me. Those little sparkles weren’t from the disco ball—and who the hell has a disco ball nowadays? It was a slowly spinning planet, ponderous, a great silver fruit that pulsed with malevolence.

No, those little sparkles were half-unseen spikes surrounding me, their tips fluorescing up into the visible. An aura.

An exorcist’s aura. Be careful, Jill.

I wished that voice had spoken up before. I’d killed a thing on the rooftop, a thing like these things . Now here I was in the middle of them, nowhere near as terrified as I should be.

This was normal . And what did that say about me?

It had something to do with him. With his hand on my arm and the thrumming growl coming through him, the noise that carried us both through the press of the crowd.

There was an iron door behind a frayed red velvet rope, and as soon as he pulled me through and the door shut with a clang I found myself on a staircase, going up.

So far so good. I’d been here before, several times. The gun dangled in my nerveless hand. He drew me up the stairs, and under the bass-throb attack of the music played at jet-takeoff levels I swear I heard him humming. A happy little tune, wandering along like a drunken sailor past alleys full of cold, dark eyes.

Another door crouched at the top, and he pushed it open. White light flooded the stairwell, and I blinked.

The room was white, too. An expanse of white carpet, a mirrored bar to one side, a huge swan bed swathed in bleached mosquito netting, a bank of television screens flickering at odd intervals. Some of them were dark, some fuzzed with static; others showed the club’s interior and exterior, flicking rapidly through surveillance angles. Still more held news feeds, footage of explosions and disasters shuddered soundlessly. Once the door slid shut it was eerily quiet, a faint thumping through the floor all that remained of the noise below, a dozing animal’s heartbeat.