Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

Theron didn’t move. The front of Mickey’s is a narrow tiled foyer, a half wall holding back the tables to your left and the kitchen directly in front of you, with all its steam and heat. One of the cooks, a slim dark bird Were, was tossing a spatula, plucking it out of the air with graceful dexterity while he stared back at the freezer, tossing it again.

I finally looked up, met Theron’s steady gaze. “What? Am I not allowed to come in?”

“I’d tell you to be gentle.” Theron folded his arms. “But that’s so not you.”

I had washed my face, smearing my eyeliner and putting fresh on. But I hadn’t bothered to change. I could spare the time to rinse my face, and I like to do it. The rest of me doesn’t matter so much.

The Talisman hummed low on my breastbone, beneath the ruin of my black T-shirt. The shirt still covered all my bits, but I wished suddenly that I’d stopped to grab a new one. I used to wear shirts with witty sayings, but now I bought them—black, V-neck, three-quarter sleeve, slightly fitted—in job lots. Saul sometimes found nice ones at Goodwill, especially old concert shirts, but I bleed all over them so often I feel kind of bad about it. There’s only so much he can do with a sewing machine and a T-shirt.

“Theron.” I tried very hard for what could be considered a gentle tone. It sounded like I had something dry stuck in my throat, or like I’d been smoking a pack a day. “Why are you standing in my way?”

He leaned forward a little, on the balls of his feet. “You smell like burn—” Then his eyes dropped to my chest.

If I’d had any breasts to speak of after the workout I get all night, I might’ve been insulted. As it is, I’m scrawny in that department. Sometimes I wished I was a little more feminine, a little curvier, for Saul’s sake. But no, a B cup is about all I get. The rest of me is packed tight with muscle and crisscrossed with scars.

Saul doesn’t seem to mind. He traces some of the scars with his fingertips, gently. I usually let him.

Sometimes he even kisses them.

“Ah.” Theron actually backed up, palms out as if he wanted to tell me to take it easy. “Sorry. My mistake.”

I stalked past him. He actually skipped back out of my way as I hopped up the stairs to the tables. We were a regular dance team.

“Jill.”

I didn’t turn around. But I stopped, one hand light on the half wall. My nerves were twitching raw, and taking it out on a Were wasn’t a good idea. He didn’t deserve it.

“You smell like Mikhail,” he said quietly. “I’ll bring you a beer.”

In other words, a peace offering. Not like he needed to. But goddamn Weres, they notice the damndest things. I did not raise a hand to the Talisman’s lump under the ragged T-shirt.

Instead, I just braced myself and headed for the table, the flayed edges of my leather trench flapping a bit around my ankles.

Gilberto’s color was better, but he would never be a prize. Sallow even on the best of days, with lank dark hair and a nose that belonged on an Aztec codex, acne scars pitting his cheeks, dead eyes. His long fingers played with the beer bottle, and as I approached he slid down further in the bench and took a long, throat-working draft.

I did not blame him at all.

I stopped and checked him, smart and dumb eye working together. Having an apprentice is like that—you add up everything you see, no matter how small. Constantly weighing. Not judging , because that implies they won’t make it. Weighing in order to give them the best chance to make it.

After they show up on your doorstep and refuse to go home, that distinction is the least you can give them.

Gilberto’s hands looked too big for his wrists, like a puppy’s paws. He hadn’t even finished growing yet, and you could tell it from the way he ate—hunched over the plate, as if someone or something would snatch it from him, shoveling the food down in great gulps.

That’s the way kids in juvie eat, too. And prisoners.

He wasn’t old enough to drink or vote. But those flat dark eyes belonged in a killer’s face. Even in the ferment of the barrio, that kind of gaze makes people step back and reconsider, some without knowing quite why. He’d just graduated to being able to hold his own for thirty seconds in the sparring room against Saul. I watched, and weighed, while they went at it.

Gilberto did not give up. He kept getting up long past the moment when any rational person would have decided it wasn’t worth it.

He had potential.

Right now he was still shaking a little. The fume of emotion on him was complex fear and shame, as well as defiance. Still just right. Of all the people I’d run across in my city, he was the only one who had even an inkling of what it takes to be a hunter. There had been a girl—Hope—not too long ago… but she hadn’t lasted two weeks.

Sometimes they don’t.

We’re rare. It’s probably a good thing. Without training we could end up worse than the things we hunt. Even with training, we’re no picnic.

Saul glanced at me. His dark eyes widened a little, but he said nothing as I finished my once-over and strode up to the table.

I slid in next to my apprentice, bumping him with my hip as he scrambled to crowd up onto the wall. “Thought I’d find you here.”

“ Bruja. ” Gilberto, getting the first shot in. He was actually sweating, and his pulse thudded along like he’d just run a marathon. “He was just there. One minute I’m sittin’ on the couch, the next, chingada , there he is. He’s el Diablo , right?”

Not quite. “Or so close it makes no difference. But he’s just hellbreed, Gilberto. Relax, you did okay. Take a deep breath and get your pulse down; it’s loud.”

He gulped down a breath and concentrated. I waited as if we had all the time in the world. Saul studied me, a line between his dark eyebrows. The paint on his cheeks was still fresh, two bars of vivid red. I never asked why he did that. It just seemed fitting. And, well, I don’t need to offer a comment on any Were’s sartorial choices.

Not when I walk around in leather, silver, and increasingly heavy eyeliner. The leather is so my skin doesn’t get erased when I land on concrete. The silver is a mark of what I am, a bulwark against Hell’s legions.

The eyeliner? Well… Saul isn’t the only one who needs war paint.

Finally, Gilberto’s pulse smoothed out. His eyelids fluttered, and I could almost feel him making that subconscious little click , shifting over into the place of calm. It was getting easier for him.

Saul was still watching me. I pulled the neck of my T-shirt down so he could see the barbaric, sharp-looking silver links. The top edge of the Talisman peeked out.

“Smells like a forest fire.” His eyebrows came up slightly. “What is it?”

“The Eye of Sekhmet.” It was hard work to keep my tone level. “What Belisa stole. When she…”

The unreality of it hit me sideways. I put my hands on the table, flat, and had to inhale deeply as well. The scar was dissatisfied, puckering against itself; I’d taken a spare leather cuff from the dish on the counter and buckled it on before I left. The relief from hellbreed-jacked sensory acuity was as intense as the new feeling now squirming around inside my uneasy belly.

That feeling was something suspiciously like fear.

“Oh.” Saul absorbed this. Then, as usual, he gave me the right question. “How the hell did he get hold of it?”

I watched my left hand make a gun of thumb and index finger, cocked it, and shot at him. “Bang. Dead on, squire.”

And then the next question: “What are you going to do?” His expression didn’t change. Thoughtful, and worried.