Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

All a game, to get me to respond. Gathering up little bits of psychology, storing it up for the day I stepped over that hairline crack and into his world.

The day I was damned. The day he owned me.

It might end up being today, if you let it. Careful, Jill.

I picked up the largest flechette. The metal handle, scored for traction like a gun butt, was ice-cold. The scar chilled, too, a warning.

My face settled against itself. My pulse dropped, as if I was waiting on a rooftop for a target to show. I wasn’t as calm as I could be. For one thing, the skin of my right cheek was twitching as if a seamstress was plucking at it with a needle.

For another, the Talisman was rumbling too. Louder than the Helletöng, the subsonics striking the tiled walls and reverberating. The Eye’s song swallowed the unmusical nastiness of Helletöng, turning each limping broken hiss and groaning curse on its head, blending it into an even greater theme.

Something about that helped, though I don’t know why. I let out a sharp breath and was suddenly, mostly, back in control of myself.

Except for another worried little thought. Why would Perry give it back to me?

When I turned, I found Perry considering me. The indigo had bled out of his eyes, and they were bright, glowing blue around the too-dark pupil. The border between pupil and iris shifted, each an amorphous blob of darkness with a red spark buried in its depths.

He’d never done that before.

The tip of his tongue crept out, wet cherry-red, and touched the corner of his mouth. “You look lovely.”

I felt the smile pull up my mouth, baring my teeth. An animal’s grimace as I crossed the room. “Why, Perry. Thank you.” The tip of the flechette caressed his cheek. I considered it, drew it up his smoke-tarnished skin to the corner of his left eye. “How would you like to be blind?”

Not a twitch of uneasiness, but he was so very still. “You can’t.”

“I can put silver in the holes once I’ve dug your baby blues out.” I cocked my head. “Wouldn’t that be interesting.”

His expression—interested, avid—didn’t change. “Then I could no longer see your beauty, Kiss. I would miss that.”

The tip dug in a little. There was nothing human under that shell, but I was fairly sure if I twisted my wrist and scooped, the eye would pop out. I knew the blade was sharp enough to cut him, whatever metal it was. No silver, because it didn’t fire with blue sparks when it got near him.

“Last chance, Pericles.” The calm descended on me. “Saul. Who has him?”

He grinned. Like a skull.

And then he told me. I didn’t even have to cut him once.

I gunned the engine. Beside me in the passenger seat, buckled in like an unresisting doll, Melisande Belisa swayed. I wanted to keep an eye on her. And leaving her with Perry seemed… wrong.

For all I knew, Perry was still strapped in that rack. God alone knew how he got unstrapped at the end of our long-ago monthly sessions, but then he’d had flunkies. There was nobody in the building to come get him out.

I hoped he’d stay there for a while. Long enough for me to get this done and figure out a way to deal with him.

The tires squealed as the car spun, a roostertail of golden dust rising. The car leapt forward obediently. The day was well underway, noon past and the sun sinking from its apex. The chain hanging from Belisa’s collar clanked as I hit the corner coming out of the Monde’s parking lot and stepped on the gas. There wouldn’t be many people on the street, but—

My pager buzzed. I dug it out, one hand on the wheel and the pedal to the floor. Intuition tingled along my nerves. I hit the brakes and narrowly avoided a pickup truck running a stop sign on Soledad Street. The driver was obviously drunk, careening away in a flash with ranchero music blaring.

One look at the number on my pager convinced me to pull over. There was a phone booth at Soledad and 168th. I cut the wheel hard and Belisa slumped in the seat. The chain jingled musically, a queerly wrong clashing, and I wondered where Riverson had got himself to. If, that is, Belisa had left him alive.

One more of those questions I had no time to answer. I pulled over, hit the parking brake, and took the keys with me.

Galina’s phone rang twice before Hutch picked up. “Jill?”

“It’s me. Is Gilberto there?”

“I thought he was with you. Anya Devi came through, she’s looking for you. But there’s something else. Listen, Jill—”

I cursed. Considered putting my fist through the plastic shell of the booth. Stared at the car. Belisa was deathly still, slumped against the window, and the Chaldean running through the chain flickered gold.

Yes, I parked where I could keep an eye on her. Just because she hadn’t been any trouble so far was no indication.

“Shut up.” Hutch actually snapped at me. I shut my mouth. “Listen, Jill. This Julius, the hellbreed? Likes virgins, looks like a manlier version of Buster Keaton, according to the description—”

“Cute,” I muttered. “What about him?”

“He’s already out. He surfaced two and a half weeks ago. In Louisiana.”

There was a glimmer inside my car, a foxfire glow fighting with the sunlight. It was the golden glyphs, brightening. Was she struggling against the chain?

I should kill her. It would be so easy. Just a moment’s worth of work and I could be done with the whole thing.

Then what Hutch had said hit home. “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

“Yeah. I called Benny Cross again, on a hunch. He’s madder than a wet hen, there’s a full-scale war between the Sorrows and Julius’s henchmen spilling over onto civilians. Julius is nowhere to be found. Benny says to be fucking careful.”

“Hutch.” I struggled to breathe. “What kind of chain binds a Sorrow? What does it look like?”

He was silent for a full five seconds. “Meteorite iron, I guess. It has to be bloodworked and runed; they use them for the Pas’zhuruk , where they eat their own. Expensive, it’d cost you an arm and a leg to get one, assuming you could pry it out of a House. Regular pin and lock on the collar, and once the collar’s on the Sorrow’s a slave, but has some agency. Add a chain of the same stuff and they’re catatonic.”

Pas’zhuruk. “Isn’t that where they sacrifice a Grand Mother to one of the Elders?”

“Yeah. Um, listen. Gilberto’s not here. Thought he was with you.”

Fuck. “Any Weres showed up yet?”

“No, none of them either. What the fuck is—no, scratch that. I don’t want to know. What do you want me to do?”

Wise man. “Call my house, see if you can raise Anya. Or get her pager. If all else fails, she’ll check in with you.” I shuffled priorities. Evocation altars meant they were planning on bringing someone through. It was too expensive a ploy to waste just to keep me chasing my tail… or maybe not. Still, I couldn’t take that chance. “Tell her to evacuate my house pronto, and that Gil’s been snatched, unless he shows up with the Weres. Tell her not to send any more Weres to Galina’s or after me, that I have a line on Saul, and that Julius is out and making trouble. Tell her to find and burn those evocation sites as fast as she can. I don’t have locations.”

He was scratching furiously on a pad of paper again. “Anything else?”

“Call the Badger. Have her check every John Doe homicide in the last three weeks for anything funky. And do not step foot outside . I don’t want to rescue you, too.”

“Oh, for fuck’s—come on, Jill. I don’t go outside when you tell me to stay in. I just don’t .”