Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

The nurse at the desk just gave me a nod and pushed the phone over, then went back to questioning a blank-eyed man in Spanish through the sheet of bulletproof glass as she filled out a sheet of paperwork with neat precise scratches. The patient swayed and cradled his swollen, messily bandaged hand; he was pale under his coloring and smelled of burnt metal and cocaine. I kept half an eye on him while I punched 9 and my own number.

He picked up on the first ring. Slightly nasal boy’s voice. “Bruja?”

“Gilberto. This better be good.” I regretted it as soon as I said it. He wasn’t the type to call me for nothing.

As usual, he didn’t take it personally. A slight, wheezing laugh. “Package for you, mi profesora . Wrapped up with a pretty bow.”

What? “A package?” My mouth went dry. “Gilberto—”

“Man who delivered it still here. Uno rubio , in a suit. Says he’ll wait for you.”

A blond, in a suit? The dryness poured down, invaded my throat. “Gilberto, listen to me very carefully—”

A slight sound as the phone was taken from my apprentice. I knew, from the very first breath, who was waiting for me at home.

“My darling Kiss.” Perry’s voice was smooth as silk, and full of nasty amusement. “He’s quite a winning elf, your new houseboy. And so polite.”

Think fast, Jill. My heart leapt nastily. The scar on my wrist turned hot and hard, swollen with corruption. As if he had just pressed his lips against my flesh again. “Pericles.”

Saul went stiff next to me, his dark eyes flashing orange for a moment.

The hellbreed on the other end of the line laughed. “I have a gift for you, my darling. Come home and see it. I will be content with the boy until then.”

He dropped the phone down into the cradle. The sound of the connection breaking was like the click of a bullet into the chamber.

I slammed my receiver down, pulling it at the last moment so I wouldn’t break the rest of the phone. The man on the other side of the glass jumped, and the nurse twisted in her chair to look at me. I didn’t bother to give a glance of apology, just looked at my Were.

Saul’s eyes met mine, and I didn’t have to explain a single thing. He turned so fast the fringe on his jacket flared, and he headed with long strides for the door that would take us out toward the exit. I was right behind him. The scar twitched under the flayed cuff of my trench coat. Saul’s stride lengthened into a run.

So did mine.

S arvedo Street was dark and deserted this time of night. I didn’t pull into the garage. I bailed out in front of my warehouse, barked a “Stay in the car!” at Saul, and hauled ass for the door. Steel-clad boot heels struck sparks from the concrete, the front door was open a crack, and I barreled through, rolling and coming up to sweep the front hall and wide-open space of the living room. The charms tied in my hair buzzed, a warning.

Gilberto was on the couch, dark eyes wide and thin sallow face almost bleached. His knees poked through the holes in his jeans and his red T-shirt glared against the couch’s slipcover. He looked cheesy-sick, and I didn’t blame him. Because on the other side of the coffee table, looking down at my apprentice like he was choosing bonbons out of a box, was a bland-faced, pale-haired hellbreed in a white linen suit.

My apprentice had Jack Karma’s Bowie knife out, the silver loaded along the blade’s flat running with blue light. He held the knife up, a tiny bar between him and the slender shape of the hellbreed, who was leaning forward, weight on his toes. Highly polished wingtips placed just so on the hardwood floor, his expensively cut platinum hair ruffled on a breeze that came from nowhere, Perry smiled a shark’s smile. His chin jerked to the side and he almost moved before I was on him.

The shock grated through me, my aura fluorescing into the visible. Hard little sparks of blue crackled off sea-urchin spikes, an exorcist’s aura hard and disciplined—and reacting to the soup of baneful intent in the air.

Gilberto let out a harsh yell, his voice breaking. Perry didn’t speak, but that could have been because I had him on the floor, arm twisted up so far behind his back that whatever he had serving him for bones crackled, the gun pressed to the back of his shiny blond head. One of my boots was on his other wrist, flexing down until something else made a creaking, almost-snapping sound.

He gave a token heave or two and went still, the scar turning to soft velvet fire, sliding up my arm.

I would have preferred pain. Either way, the gun didn’t waver. All of a sudden I understood why Mikhail had almost drawn on him the first time he’d shown up at the bar, sniffing around me. A million years ago, back when I was the apprentice and Mikhail was the hunter.

The longer I live, the more things just seem to repeat themselves.

Perry chuckled. “Kisssssss.” Subvocal rumbling slid under the surface of the word, trailing away on a long hiss like a freight train’s brakes failing on a long sharp hill. “ Darling. So rough.”

“Shut. Up.” My knee dug into his back. I made sure I was braced, watched him. “Gil?”

A long, tense-ticking two seconds. My apprentice gulped. “ Si, señora? ” No trace of sarcasm or machismo. That was either good… or very bad.

“Go out the front door. Saul’s in the car. You two are going to have some lunch. I’ll catch up with you.” A nice even tone, but I did not relax. Perry didn’t move, his body loose and unjointed against the floor. As if I was kneeling on a sack of loosely threaded bones in a bag of noisome fluid.

“ Si, señora. ” He got up, slowly, like an old man. The Bowie knife boiled with blue light, and my finger tensed on the trigger.

It was time to make it very clear to a certain hellbreed that my apprentice was off-fucking-limits. If you give ’breed an inch, they will take twenty miles. Your only hope is to make it clear the first time.

And God help me, I liked making things violently clear to this particular ’breed. “Let’s start at the beginning, Perry. You do not threaten my apprentice. ”

He said nothing, just hissed. Which meant I wasn’t getting through.

So I pistol-whipped him twice, bouncing his head off the floor. He hissed again and surged up, I shoved him back down and snapped a glance at Gilberto, who was stumbling in slow motion, a sleepwalker in a nightmare. But he was heading the right way, toward the front door. Saul would take care of him.

“Sweet nothings.” The sibilants dragged out over the rumble of Helletöng. “Oh, my darling. I’ve missed you.”

I stuck with the safest response possible. “You do not threaten my apprentice.” And I was so close to blowing his head all over my living room floor. So, so close.

Not only because of the scar, rubbing against itself and moaning on my wrist. Not only because of Gilberto’s cheese-sick cheeks or the fact that Perry was here, inside the house I slept in.

No. Because it would feel good. Too good. I hadn’t seen Perry since the circus came to town, and that wasn’t as long ago as I liked.

It would never be long enough.

“Of course not.” Now he sounded irritated. “I came to bring you a gift. He was entertainment. Thoughtfully provided by—”

I hit him again. One more time, because it felt necessary. And another for luck. Once more because by then, I wanted to so bad I couldn’t stop myself.

Hunters live on the ragged edge of adrenaline and violence. When all your problems are hellbreed, all your solutions start to look like murder. The trouble isn’t that you’re tempted to do it.