Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

I didn’t know what Narcisa meant. But the Dutch was a hellbreed club downtown, near the open air market where they threw fish around during the day.

I was glad to miss that. I mean, come on. Flinging fish?

The skyline here was alien territory. Santa Luz is desert, but Slade’s city lives under a perpetual gray drizzle. You wouldn’t think it would make much difference to a nocturnal creature. Dark is dark, and it gets cold in the desert too.

I crouched on the rooftop, dripping hair, dripping from my nose and fingertips, my leather trench shedding water thanks to the waterproofing. Weather means very little to a full-fledged hunter, but the chill in this place reached right into my bones.

It wasn’t physical.

Across the street, the neon sign for the Dutch — a flying ship, of all things, with both oars and sail, lovingly rendered in glowing tubes — cast sickly green and red glow down into the wet street. Music pulsed in bass-thumping ribbons inside, the double doors flung wide in invitation. There was a line going down the block, but nobody seemed to have umbrellas. Just standing there in the wet.

No Traders in the line — they walked right in past the Trader bouncers. No visible hellbreed, but they would be inside.

They usually are. Ready and waiting, like spiders in a web.

Back in Santa Luz it was an hour ahead but a world away. Dark falls quickly out in the desert, like a guillotine blade. I would have hit the streets as dusk did, and probably already been in one or two short sharp fights. Since Mikhail was dead, plenty of them thought I’d be easy to get past or roll over.

Don’t think about that, Jill. Focus.

I eased my weight back and forth, watching. A hunter learns early to draw a cloak of silence over the waiting, an uncanny stillness. Within that circle of quiet, though, you have to move a little bit. Shifting and adjusting to keep the muscles primed for action.

And as usual while I was waiting, the memories came back. My teacher’s final gurgle as the scarlet gush of his life left him, his body stiffening then slumping in my arms, becoming deadweight. The bitch who killed him was gone, good luck finding her now. And here I was a thousand miles from my city on a wild goose chase, and God only knew what was going on at home —

Stop. Intuition tingled. Look, Jill. Something’s there.

Indeed, something was. A long glossy-black limousine pulled up to the curb, and the bouncers tensed. A Trader — blond, male, long legs, in a sharp dark suit — strolled out of the club’s wide-flung mahogany doors.

The scar puckered, a hurtful throb. The mark of a hellbreed’s lips against the tender inner flesh of my right wrist tasted the predatory glee on the air.

I was harder to kill now. Much harder.

Was it worth the price I’d paid? Especially since I hadn’t been fast enough or strong enough when it counted.

Stop it. Look at what’s happening.

Premonition tingled along every inch of me. A hunter becomes a full-blown psychic before long. Sorcery will do that for you.

And when you spend your life dealing with the nightside it’s more of a survival mechanism than a perk.

So I kept still, blinking the rain out of my eyes. Watched the Trader open the limo’s door, watched the long lean white leg slide out of the interior and the black stiletto heel touch wet cement. She rose out of the back of the car like a bad dream, dead-white curves poured into something slinky-black and sequined, slit up the sides. A mass of tumbled jet-black curls, and even at this distance the set of the slim shoulders was wrong.

A hunter can see below the carapace of beauty they wear. We can see the twisting in them.

This was a full hellbreed, waltzing in the front door. And if the Trader bowed and scraped any more, he would be licking the sidewalk.

It had to be the mysterious Narcisa.

A glitter caught my eye. There, around her wasp-waist, a belt of threads and jingling silver, the surface of the metal flowing with blue light, not quite popping free as sparks. I let out a soundless sigh. It’s just like an arrogant fuck of a hellbreed to flout and taunt with a substance they’re deadly-allergic to. If the silver rubbed her skin it would leave a bubbling, blistering burn.

They were charms. The same kind of charms as those tied into my hair with red thread. They didn’t jingle as I moved again, my tented fingers against the lip-roof, bootsoles gripping. Steel-toed and steel-heeled, but flexible enough to grab under the ball of the foot, and silent as I touched the wet roughness of rooftop and cursed inwardly.

Now why would you be wearing those, bitch?

I had an idea, and it wasn’t a nice one. So I reached for the copper cuff covering the scar. As soon as I stripped it off, my sensory acuity jacked up into the red and the flashing diamonds of small raindrops hit like an army’s feet drumming.

My legs straightened. If any of those charms were Slade’s, another hunter showing up might spook her. And if I went in guns blazin’, the way I prefer to, she had a better chance at getting away in the resultant chaos.

So, I would have to be sneaky.

Moments later, the rooftop was empty.

The Trader sat in the driver’s seat, window open and a cigarette fuming in the chill air. The alley enclosed the limo, wet trash drifted in the corners. The Dutch’s back entrance — or one of them, I would bet there were more — didn’t look like anything special. Just an alley.

Except for the rain, it could have been a corner of my city. They don’t all look the same. But they’re a crowd. You have to cut them out, take them one by one, before you can tell them apart.

I weighed my options. I could wait all night, but if she was wearing Slade’s charms, I might not have that long.

He could be dead already, Jill.

The machine in my head, the one trained into me from the very beginning, clicked away. For me the machine’s birth was in the instant Mikhail plucked me from that snowbank, the .22 vanishing into his pocket. Not tonight, little one, he’d said. I’d decided that very moment, calculating my chances of being good enough for him.

Except at the end, I hadn’t been.

I tensed. But the Trader below just flicked his ash. That’s how I could tell it was a he — the shape of the hand, the blunt fingers. He wasn’t smoking much, just lighting cigarette after cigarette and letting it burn. If it was a superstition, it was an odd one. If, however, it was a nervous tic, then he had reason to be nervous. Squiring around a hellbreed who had hunter charms jingling on her belt.

The machine inside my head was still jotting up percentages. What were the chances that Slade was still alive? They got smaller every minute I sat here and waited. If the ‘breed thought she was being followed, this stop could be a decoy, but my intuition was tingling so hard I was almost jittery. Like too much coffee from the stands on every corner, jolts going through me. Training clamped down on my nervous system, damping the flood of adrenaline and the nervousness.

It might be too late to save Slade. But it wouldn’t be too late to avenge him.

Avenging isn’t good enough. You know that.

I leaned forward a little, cold water threading its fingers through my hair and kissing the metal of the charms. Kept still and silent, waiting. Just a few minutes more.

You don’t stay — or even become — a hunter without knowing when to buck those percentages. Something told me Slade was still alive. And maybe hoping I’d come get him. If there was enough of him left to hope.

The limo’s engine roused, softly. I tensed, muscle by muscle, heartrate picking up just a little.