Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

The assassin slumped atop me, corruption racing through his tissues. His fingers flexed, and I half-swallowed a scream. His claws grated between my ribs, and I was losing yet more blood. The scarring on his coppery face cracked apart, fine noxious dust bleeding out.

That meant he was dying. Thank God. I’d worry about the next ’breed to step up and start committing assassinations when I survived this.

If I survived this.

Get up, Jill.

But there was a problem with that. My body would not obey me. I blinked warm wetness out of my eyes, every muscle tensing and the scar a cicatrice of fierce heat on my wrist. There was a horrible draining sensation, worse than any blood loss I’d ever felt. A warm lassitude spread up my ankles.

I stared up at the pale egg. It was spinning now, filaments of it reaching out and snagging the flying bits of curse as they got too close. Each little bat-flapping thing went into the hungry maw. That was where most of the nasty psychic force of the Hill had gone, too. A nice snack for whoever was waiting under Hell’s dry screaming skies, probably impatiently tapping a clawed and twisted foot.

He would have to step through to claim that snack, though.

And he can’t do that if you get up and stop him. So DO it!

Swearing at myself didn’t work. But my body twitched. Something hit the floor next to me—a hellbreed claw, ripped free of its owner’s body and smoking with corruption. It twisted and flexed, wet, rancid dust pouring out of it in veined streams.

Will and life roared back into me. There was an odd ringing in my ears. My body suddenly obeyed, jerking up off the floor. A split second later, something huge barreled for me and I leapt aside instinctively, knife in one hand and my whip flashing out. It hit the bleeding mass of Julius squarely, and his resultant roar was a wall of warm air pushing me back. My boots slipped in greasy crud—bits of hellbreed rained down, plopping obscenely and still twitching as they hit.

A blue blur streaked by. Belisa, her battered feet slapping the stone and her mouth a rictus of effort, leapt with fluid effortless authority onto Julius. She clawed at him, screaming in the heavy consonant-laden mess of Chaldean, the bruising of the parasite on her aura turned as dark and sonorous as mountain thunder. Perry, just as battered and wearing a mad death’s-head grin, was right behind her. They descended on the hapless ’breed, and I snapped a glance up.

The room that had been full of Hell’s citizens was now an abattoir. Rotting bits of ’breed were everywhere . My breath came in short, hard sobs; the scar went back to chuckling as it tasted the death and misery riding the air. It sent a jolt up my arm, and the terrible draining sensation swirled away.

Julius howled. Both of them were ripping at him, like a pair of wolves at a carcass. His head smashed against the altar, right where mine had been a few seconds ago. Bile burned the back of my throat, I retched silently and pointlessly. Belisa made a guttural noise, the chanting in Chaldean hitting a vicious peak and the collar flashing with deep gold, and she finally grabbed Julius’s head in her strong slender hands.

I was expecting a quick movement and the green-stick crack of a breaking neck. But no. Her flexible thumbs dug and gripped, and she popped his eyes like two overripe grapes. The ’breed’s spine arced up into a hoop, his heels drumming the concrete, and corruption raced through his tissues.

If I’d eaten lately, it would have come up in a tasteless rush. As it was, I retched again and stumbled back, slipping and sliding. The floor was awash.

Perry was suddenly there, resolving out of thin air with a sound like nasty laughter trailing him. “Enjoying the show, my dear?” His ribs heaved, but he didn’t sound at all out of breath. “What a pleasant little interlude. I’ve waited to do that for so long .”

“P-P-P—” My lips refused to shape his name. I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking past him, at the spinning egg. A hairline crack had appeared in its center, a thin line of darkness.

Melisande Belisa threw back her head and howled. It was an animal’s cry, except for the all-too-human rage tinting it.

The hairline crack widened. My right hand swept down, sheathed my largest knife, and was heading for my gun when Perry grabbed my wrist and squeezed, grinding the small bones together. “Oh, no you don’t. She’s expendable, my darling. I still have plans for—”

My left fist, braced with the whip handle, got him in the belly. It was a good solid punch, and that did make him lose all his air. My other fist crashed into his face and his head snapped back. I kicked him, too, and the Talisman made a rustling, roaring sound.

I hadn’t used it, had I? No, if I’d used it this whole place would be a crater and the door to Hell would be busted wide open. And yet…

Perry went down. He slid back along the floor, fetching up against concrete with another stunning sound.

And the pale, spinning oval over the altar…

Cracked.

B elisa howled, a guttural, abused scream. A hairline crack, darker than the pit of a black hole, zigzagged through the spinning egg of light. It widened, just a little, and something white showed.

The Sorrow rose. She cast a glance back over her shoulder, her face slack and terribly graven. Bruises crawled over her skin, the shadows of Chaldean sorcery doing what they could to ameliorate the damage. But she was in bad shape, bleeding all over, her tangled hair smoking at each knot.

Each inch of silver on me ran with blue flame. My head was full of screaming noise.

“ Kill ,” Perry hissed, from where I’d kicked him. “ Kill it now! ”

I lifted my gun slowly. It was a terrible dream, fighting through syrup, my muscles full of lead.

Belisa’s chin dipped wearily. She pitched forward just as the egg stopped spinning.

The thing that slid its malformed hand through the barrier between this world and Hell twitched. I heard myself screaming, sanity shuddering aside from the sight. They do not dress when they are at home, and when they come through and take on a semblance of flesh it’s enough to drive any ordinary person mad. Wet salt trickles slid down from my eyes, slid from my nose and ears.

They were not tears.

There was a rushing, the physical fabric of our world terribly assaulted, ripping and stretching. My screams, terrible enough to make the Hill shudder all the way down to its misery-soaked foundations. Perry, hissing in squealgroan Helletöng, and under it all, so quiet and so final, Mikhail’s voice from across a gulf of years. Long nights spent turning over everything about his death, remembering him, all folding aside and compressing into what he would say if he was here. Or maybe just the only defense my psyche had against the thing struggling to birth itself completely.

Now, Mikhail said. Kill now, milaya. Do not hesitate.

My teacher’s killer was in the way.

The scar crunched on my wrist. I squeezed the trigger. Both triggers, and I saw the booming trail of shock waves as the bullets cut air. Belisa’s fingers had turned to claws, Chaldean spiking the soup of noise, and she tore at the not-quite-substantial flesh of the thing. Blue light crawled over her as if she wore silver, the same blue that the caretaker’s eyes had flashed. The shadows of the Chaldean parasite flinched aside, for some incomprehensible reason.

I was still screaming as the bullets tore through her and the egg as well. The collar made a zinging, popping noise, the golden runes shutterclicks of racing, diseased light. Her body shook and juddered as she forced the thing behind the rip in the world back , and the physical fabric of the place humans call home snapped shut with a sound like a heavy iron door slamming. The bristling, misshapen appendage thumped down to the floor.