Lilith Saintcrow: Heaven's Spite

The bartender, down at the other end of the curlicued monstrosity, cowered. He didn’t have a gun, but I couldn’t bet on it staying that way. On the other hand, here I had the high ground.

And every eye was on me. The seaweed scarves dribbled, streaming away from me as the silver in my hair, at my throat and fingers and weapons, hissed and sparked. Each spark died quickly as it left my aura.

Up on the stage, there was a pool of waxen white striped with sluggish black, the slim body broken like a flower. The Trader in vinyl crouched, her hand on her cat-o’-nine, in a pool of garish spotlight that turned her eyes into blank holes. Some of the ’breed had half-risen from their seats, the waitstaff all stood, tense and ready. Some of them had hands inside their white jackets.

“Ah-ah-ah.” Hard and bright, my voice rang out. Like a teacher admonishing a room full of third graders. “Now, now. Let’s not be hasty. That’s the penalty of lying a single time to a hunter in Santa Luz. Want to go for more?”

Rutger surged up from the floor. The gun settled on him. At my chest, the Talisman throbbed a little, a sore tooth. A thin curl of smoke rose from my T-shirt. I wasn’t imagining it, but there were other things to worry about.

I’d broken the hellbreed’s nose. Thin rivulets of black ichor threaded down, glittering against the odder darkness of his skin. His teeth champed. “ Bitch, ” he hissed.

Like I hadn’t heard that one before. “I repeat. Trevor Watling.”

“The Trade was legitimate,” he hissed. Ichor bubbled down his chin.

He’d admitted it. Now we got to the fun part. “He stepped outside the rules. You’re liable.”

A ratlike little gleam surfaced from the center of his pupils. I know that gleam.

The how can I make this work for me look. The one my mother had whenever one of her boyfriends got out the belt or the fist. The one in the eyes of the man who put me on a street corner to shiver. The one in the eyes of every single john on that corner, in a car, in an alley or a cheap hotel room.

I hate that fucking look.

“Stay still.” I didn’t have to look at the second bodyguard to feel the way he was tensing up, getting ready. “Now, Rutger. Let’s just say I don’t want to have to train your replacement not to piddle on the floor.” I stared at the bridge of his nose, knowing it would make my mismatched gaze piercing. And that the focus would warn me before he decided to move.

“You want something.” It’s hard for a hellbreed to look shocked. He managed it. A caricature of a human emotion, like every expression on a hellbreed’s face. Except greed and sadistic pleasure, I guess.

I made a little beeping noise. Every nerve under my skin dilated, alert and quivering. “Wrong. You want something. You want to stay alive and continue your games in this tacky little nest. Now, I’m willing to think that your Trader didn’t check in with you before committing his murderous little rampage. The only thing left for you to do is to prove your good faith. Give me a reason to decide your successor would be a bigger problem than you are.”

Instinct alerted me. I dropped to one knee and fired in one smooth motion. Recoil jolted up my arm, almost too much for even a measure of superhuman strength. The bartender, a sawed-off shotgun in his stealthy little clawed hands, dropped like a stone. Half his head had evaporated.

Why I didn’t switch to the bigger custom guns sooner was so beyond me.

Rutger had taken a half step forward. I trained the gun on him again. “See? You’re just jumping at the chance to help, aren’t you.”

Another thin curl of smoke drifted up from my torn T-shirt. Rutger’s pupils flared with diseased red-purple light, a bruise on the air. “What guarantee will you give?”

Please, you think I’m new at this game? “I don’t give guarantees to hellspawn. You tell me about Perry’s new houseguest, and I may decide to be charitable and overlook your Trader’s stepping outside the bounds.”

As soon as I said it, I knew I’d guessed right. Rutger stiffened, and the ratty gleam intensified. He telegraphed like a four-year-old reaching for candy. As soon as he twitched he knew he’d made a mistake, too, and I lowered the gun. The silver in my hair shifted, rattling. A blue spark popped from my apprentice-ring, and the hellbreed actually flinched. The scarves tied to the bar in front of me lay dead and dark now, bleeding clear fluid across the mirror-polished surface. A ripple ran through the assembled ’breed, and the Traders moved back in one clockwork motion.

“Oh, hit a nerve there, did I? Thank you.” I sounded completely insincere. “Pleasant dreams, hellspawn.”

When I hopped down from the bar, I expected him to jump me. Instead, he stepped mincingly aside. His shoes clicked like a woman’s heels, but oddly. Hellbreed footsteps do not sound the same as human movement. They’re too light, or too heavy, different musculature producing something that shivers the skin with its wrongness.

“He said you’d be here.” A ripple ran through the assembled ’breed and Traders at the words. Rutger tried out a smile, light dancing oddly over his skin. The black bulged and rippled oddly, trying to contain whatever lived under the shell of human seeming. “And he said to tell you this: he cannot hold back the tide forever. ”

The gun spoke again. I dropped, rolled, came up and the whip flashed out. The second bodyguard fell like a stalled ox between one step and the next, and Rutger let out a long rumble-roar of Helletöng, glasses chattering on the iron shelves behind the bar. The seaweed scarves, dripping with corruption, flattened and swayed. The ones that had cringed away from me shriveled, blackening afresh. The curse missed, flashing by like a freight train at midnight, and the whip spoke again. I didn’t dive away , like he was obviously expecting. No, instead I pitched myself straight at the hellbreed and cracked him a good one with the gun butt after the flechettes finished tearing a chunk out of his chest. Blessed silver spat and crackled. Rutger howled, glass shattered from the sound, and while he was on the floor I kicked him twice, both good solid blows.

He curled like a worm on a hook, still screaming. The gun swept the massed ranks of hellbreed and they drew back, eyes shining, lips pulled up in snarls, and the scrim of beauty they wear faltering for a heart-stopping second.

“That makes it three times I’ve visited here and had to shoot an uppity ’breed or two. I wonder if maybe this place needs to be cleansed .” I had to raise my voice to be heard over Rutger’s yelling. But you learn pretty quick to aim for a tone that slices through noise without seeming like you’re yelling. I kicked Rutger again. “Shut up .”

“Pay.” He bubbled and blurbled through ichor. “You’ll pay for this, Kismet.”

I swept the massed ranks of hellbreed one more time. They made no move. “You are so not in the position to be threatening, Rutger. Ta-ta, boys and girls. I’ll be back.”

When you’ve just put down the owner of a hellbreed nightclub, the right kind of exit is a sort of insouciant amble that is much faster than it looks. You don’t want to give them time to think. But it is imperative not to look weak.

Or they will be on you in a moment.

“ Kismet! ” Helletöng rumbling under my name. “ I will kill you for this! ”

The Talisman on my chest gave a thud like a sledgehammer hitting the side of a refrigerator, and I turned on my heel. Retraced my steps, and the smoke coming up from my chest wasn’t an illusion. It stung my eyes, and I had the sudden lunatic vision of my T-shirt burning off me in the middle of the Folly.