Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

The trouble is that it feels so goddamn good.

Perry screamed, an inarticulate howl of rage and pain. I bore down as he tried to heave up, and the scar turned into barbwire instead of velvet, sawing against the nerves in my arm.

It was a physical effort to stop hitting him. I could have turned his head into hamburger, I had the firepower, but then I would have had to burn him and scatter the parts and ashes as far apart as possible. And what would the scar do if I killed him?

I just didn’t know. But oh, God, I was getting so close to not caring.

It almost made me sweat. Threads of black ichor crawled through his hair. I settled the end of the gun barrel against his skull again and he went still.

Bingo, Jill. Even he isn’t sure what you’ll do.

It’s nice when a hellbreed considers you unpredictable.

“Now.” The sudden calm was a warning, just like the thunder of my pulse smoothing out, dropping into the steadiness of action. “Let me hear you say it, Pericles, so I know you understand. ”

“Dearest one.” It must have been hard to talk with his face in the floor, but he managed. He even managed to sound cheerful, if you could call a tone like a razor slipping under cold flesh cheerful. “I was pulling your chain, Kiss. Such a nice chain it is, too. Attached to the wall of that conscience of yours.”

I said nothing, but my hand tensed again. Such a little squeeze, and a .45 bullet would frag his head all to pieces. And then I’d find out what the scar would do without him behind it.

“I do not threaten your apprentice.” A singsong, over a deep well of roaring Helletöng. The speech of the damned rattled the walls, made the floor groan.

“English, motherfucker.” My throat had locked up, so it was a whisper. “You speak English only to me.”

“Bigot.” A soft, hurtful laugh. He had frozen under me, waiting. “Your maternal instincts are fetching, darling.”

“Give me a reason, Perry.” A certain amount of threatening theater is necessary to work this job. You stop the threats and the bitches start getting uppity.

But I meant it. I was begging him for a reason. To give me that opening. I could not just kill him out of hand.

That would make me just like him. Just like the things I hunted.

“Two gifts in one day? Woman, thy nature is greed.” He laughed, the sound bubbling in a pool of black ichor. “Look on the table, Kiss.”

I didn’t. I looked down at the seeping mess of his head. The urge to slam him down a few more times trembled in my bones. My heel flexed down on his stretched-out wrist, and he made a squirming, uncomfortable movement.

Like a worm on a hook.

“Say it again.” This time I sounded almost normal. A huge relief threatened to descend on me. If he mouthed off one more time, it was good enough provocation to shoot him. My conscience wouldn’t raise a peep, that was the important thing.

“I do not threaten your apprentice.” Level and bland. Like he’d gotten what he wanted.

Every muscle in my body tensed. I lunged aside, my heel grinding down sharply once more. I skipped back, and he rose in a black-spattered wave, shaking out his hands and turning to face me. His wrists crackled, and he made a queer sideways movement with his head, crunching noises inside his neck as he resettled himself inside his shell of normality.

Under the streaks and spatters of hellbreed gore, his face was… normal. No scrim of hurtful beauty, no sharp handsomeness. Even a hunter has to look closer than usual to see the twisting on him, the worm in the apple. I’ve given up wondering if the lack of beauty in his disguise makes him more scary, or less. It’s one of those questions that will keep you from sleeping, and I need my sleep more than ever these days.

My gun was level, my aim settling right between his eyebrows. The scar turned back to velvet. My arm was straight, though. It did not waver. The silver in my hair rattled, and the chain at my throat holding the carved ruby warmed. So did my apprentice-ring, snug against my third left finger. The heat prickled and teased at my skin.

My peripheral vision snagged on a flicker of silver and white. A plain white paper box, tied with silver ribbon. A pretty, professionally made bow.

A present from a hellbreed is never a pleasant thing. And the more attractive the package, the less likely you’re going to get something nice out of it.

My mouth was dry. “Take it away and go crawl back into your hole. I accept no gifts from you.”

Not when he was looking to get me back into our bad old cycle. The scar and its attendant power for a slice of my time each month, that was the original deal—until he welshed and I got the scar’s power for nothing.

Because I’d survived. And because I called his bluff. Yet another question that would keep me from sleeping—how deep had his tentacles been inside Inez Germaine’s little operation? How much had he lost, gambling for the chance that he could make me damn myself? Once I did that, once I stepped into the abyss, I had a sneaking suspicion that he would own me.

He had been gambling for nothing less than my soul. And he was still looking to hook me.

The warehouse creaked around us, its usual nightly song as the wind came up off the river, whistling through the trainyards and the industrial section. Not all the noise was from the pressure of air outside, though. Some of the groaning and creaking was the strings under the physical world being plucked, both by my will and by flabby-corrupting hellbreed fingers. I met Perry’s blue, blue stare and thought longingly of having him on the floor again and this time pulling the goddamn trigger.

“This gift you’ll accept. It’s more in the nature of recovered property.” He stepped to the side, easily and slowly, I tracked him with the gun’s snout. My left fingers dropped to my whip, and he grinned. White teeth flashed through the mask of thin viscous black dripping on his face. His suit would be ruined, a dark stain all the way down the front. His tie was steaming as polyester fibers reacted with hellbreed ichor. The rest of the fabric had to be natural—silk and cotton don’t react the same way. They get eaten away, but they don’t steam or smoke.

Just like a hellbreed to wear a polyester tie. A snorting sarcasm threatened to reach my lips. I killed it.

His gaze dropped to my left hand. “I’m not about to make trouble, my dear. I just want to see your face when you open my present. The boy’s no challenge. You’ll have your work cut out for you, making him into one of your kind.”

That’s none of your business, hellspawn. My blue eye was hot and dry, watching for a shiver of baneful intent. When I didn’t respond, he chuckled softly as if I had.

The ribbon unfolded under his clever fingers. I tensed. It fell aside, and he opened the box with a quick flick, pulling his hand back and inhaling, shaking his long, elegant fingers as if they’d been singed.

“There.” A sidelong glance at me. “Come and see, Kiss. And tell me what a good little hellspawn I am, bringing you what belongs to you. Scratch behind my ears, who’s a good boy.” A flicker between his lips—a wet, cherry-red tongue, scaled and supple. The flash of color was obscene against his bloodless pallor.

I ran through everything he could possibly mean with that statement, came up with nothing good. “Step back. Over there.” I indicated a spot on the hardwood floor with my chin. Waited while he minced a bare foot, then two. “Further, Perry.”

His mouth turned down, but he did mince back a few more steps. “Your mistrust wounds me. It really does. Here I’ve gone to all this trouble —”

“Shut up.” I glanced down into the box, my whole body expecting him to jump me. The longer this went on, the more I expected something like that from him.