Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

“You have the worst luck, Vanner.” I tossed the words over my shoulder as the edges of my coat brushed his knee. “Seriously.”

He mumbled something. His entire face was crimson now, flags of color spilling down his neck.

Sullivan snorted. “I think Jughead’s got a crush on you. He keeps tripping over your kind of cases.”

Nobody can taunt like a Homicide detective. It’s like some sort of unwritten law. “Maybe that’s because he’s smart and perceptive. Ever think of that?”

“If he was, he wouldn’t be working this job.” Sullivan’s fingers twitched.

“Exactly.” I stepped into the hallway, my eyes roving. “And neither would you, right?”

“Bingo.” The Badger let out a soft laugh, pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. Dark circles scored under her eyes, and her shoulders were held stiffly, as if she expected a blow. “Now shut up, Sully. Leave the kid alone.”

Sullivan muttered something uncomplimentary. The smile felt tight and unnatural on my face. Because as soon as I passed the threshold, the gassy, ripe smell of violent death filled my nose. It was enough to drive you back on your heels.

Huh. I stopped.

The entry hall was tiled in brick-red, and chilly. If there was any sort of heater or air-conditioning, it had been turned off. The smell should have just about knocked me over halfway up the path from the gate. Instead, it was like stepping through a curtain. One second, nothing but dust and the wind off the river. The next, the reek was so powerful my eyes threatened to water.

Badger was watching my face. She nodded, slightly.

Every nerve suddenly tingling-alert, I stopped dead. “Outside. Get those two off the front porch. Everyone pull back to at least the fence. Don’t let anyone go just yet.”

She nodded and padded away, shooing the boys in front of her. For such a round little woman, she is amazingly light on her feet. I drew a gun, kept it low and to the side. Didn’t ask her where the bodies were.

No use in asking what you’re going to find out anyway.

Living room: faded brown couch, camp chairs, dinged-up yardsale coffee table, big but old TV. Kitchen tiled in red, too, large window over the sink looking onto the backyard, clean, dry dishes in a rack. A large stockpot sat in the left-hand sink, full of water and a scrim of pinkish soap bubbles. Looked like someone had been cleaning up after spaghetti. The dining room held a table with six chairs, two places at the end stacked with bills. A whiteboard on the dining-room wall held five columns in black marker, each labeled neatly.

Joan. Elena. Alice. Kendall. LOVE!

Under each woman’s name, chores and notes in different handwriting and colors. Things like Take out garbage and Electric bill. In the LOVE column, two notes.

E, Kenny called. Said to call him back. And A, picked up your dry cleaning, it’s in your room. K.

Two bathrooms, both clean and neat. One had a Post-it at eye level on the mirror over the antiquated sink— Have u taken ur pill 2day? And a smiley face. Three smallish bedrooms, one pin-neat and pink, the other two looking like bombs had hit them.

The master bedroom, at the end of the hall, was a soup of bruised etheric energy. I kept the gun ready as I tapped the door with my foot. Something was wrong with the hinges; the door opened only reluctantly and wanted to swing back closed. Either that, or the pulsating darkness inside the room wanted no witnesses.

Tiny crackles and sparkles of light preceded me, the sea-urchin spikes of my aura. I swept with the gun, my blue eye piercing and untangling a mess of threadlike tangles.

Oh, shit.

They lay on the king-sized bed, all four of them. Packed like sardines: one girl’s head on the pillows, the next with her feet at the top of the bed, and so on. All utterly still, when viewed through my dumb eye. Through my blue eye, however, little crackles and twitches tingled through them. Nerve-death, some of it, bits of electricity still trying to connect over synaptic gaps. In most circumstances the body doesn’t die all at once. Like living, death—even violent death—is most often a process.

But this cracking and twitching wasn’t just nerve-death. It was flat out unnatural.

Sweet-sick corruption filled my nose. Vanner and his partner probably hadn’t gone further than the door, and it was a damn good thing, too.

One of the bodies on the left, the one with its head pointing toward the foot of the bed, let out a gassy exhalation. The reek turned thick and clotted, like scabs pressing against the inside of my nostrils.

“ Sssssss …” one of the bodies hissed, as trapped air escaped. The knotted foulness in the ether pressed down , obscenely, and the bodies jerked, writhing together. The scar tingled, and I reached over with my left hand, unsnapped the buckles, and tore the cuff off.

What was going to come next was not going to be pleasant.

If you’ve never seen a hellbreed reach through a rotting corpse, forcing the decaying meat and violated nerve endings to do its bidding, you’re lucky. The body jerks in ways no human joints would, crackling like fat tossed in a fire as cellular reserves are depleted, and they make deep guttural sounds that are the closest frozen human vocal cords can get to Helletöng. It was a good thing Vanner’s curiosity was nonexistent, because if he’d stepped over the threshold the way I was stepping now, I would have been looking at dead cops on this scene as well.

And I just hate that.

The four bodies wrenched into motion, squealing eerily with one voice. Every inch of silver on me sparked. I scanned the room one more time to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Then the one on the far right leapt off the bed with the jerky, disconnected speed of the damned, and I had no more time for caution.

If they got out into the front yard we were going to have serious problems.

T he last one had probably been an athlete, she was strong and quick, as the hellbreed’s will cannibalized every scrap of flesh left on the skeleton’s frame. My breath came hard and fast, blood slipping down my forehead as I tracked, bullets spattering the wall. Glass shattered, and the unearthly chorus of four corpses singing in hellspeak was reduced to just one guttural chanting.

She jagged for the hall leading to the front door, skin peeling back from wasted muscle and the eyes cloudy with low reddish hellfire. Two of the four had been in sweats and T-shirts with ragged, gaping, bloody holes in the front, one was naked, and this one was in a babydoll nightie of cream-colored material, also torn in the front. The ragged holes in their rib cages and flayed holes in their bellies, splintered white ribs showing and tissue flapping free, spatters of blood and other fluids, told me things I didn’t want to know.

But first things first.

Since she was the last one up and moving around, I leapt on her halfway into the dining room. The impact knocked her down, bits of flesh splashing everywhere and the steady cadence of ’töng breaking for a thin half second before roaring back, like a radio coming in clear and strong through static.

The trick in putting down corpses hellbreed have taken control of is to either cause such massive damage the body can’t move anymore, or break the etheric connection between ’breed and body. If you’re dealing with more than one, you go for damage.

Which is always my favorite option, anyway. Call it a personality quirk.

Tangle of arms and legs. Splatter of stinking foulness, cold smoking fluid splashed in my face and I blew out through both nose and mouth, freeing the passages. I spend an awful lot of time wrestling around on the floor, getting leverage. Jujitsu is a godsend .