Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

Keep your pulse down, milaya. Mikhail’s voice. A fresh jab of pain, spurring me toward action. Quiet and quick, little snake under rock. But not with thunder following you around.

My heart hurt. But when the slice of door appeared in the back of the club and the hellbreed stepped out, silver twinkling around her seashell hips and a black umbrella opening like a poisonous flower over her carefully-mussed curls, I moved without hesitation. I hung in midair for a bare moment, etheric energy burning in a sphere and rain flashing crystalline all around me, before the drop swallowed me and there was no more time for brooding.

Even if your heart is breaking, you’ve got to get the job done.

I didn’t feel too good about dragging the hellbreed into Slade’s house by her curling black hair, but I didn’t have any other place that would serve. She splashed black ichor and rainwater over the worn blue carpet in his front hall. By the time I had her tied in a high chair from the breakfast bar separating the dining room from the kitchen, my left arm was aching high-up from where the humerus had snapped and there was a trail of guck from the battered-in front door to the dining room.

Slade apparently practiced in here, it was hardwood and weapons hung on the wall, not a table in sight. But then, I didn’t have a dining-room table either. Cooking was a low priority. I poured down takeout and liquid courage when I remembered to. Or when my body insisted point-blank.

I tested the silver-coated handcuffs again. Secure. I had extra handcuffs, around her matchstick ankles. Slade had some blessed silver-threaded rope hanging up in neat loops near his AK-47 and a rapier on the wall, and I’d hooked it down while I dragged the bitch in. I took my time tying her up — elbows, knees, everything. She was trying to chew through the gag.

It’s not every day you kidnap a ‘breed. I wanted no mistakes.

I stepped back, looked at my work. More blood on my face, drying on my torn T-shirt, one leg of my leather pants shredded and flopping and soaked with more blood.

Killing her would have been cleaner than what I was about to do. Disgust bit in under my breastbone, hot and acid. I swallowed it.

Once in New Orleans I’d been up against a mass of Traders, working the disappearance of a teenage girl. Dropped right into a snake’s nest. The scar on my arm was still fresh, I was new to the jacked-up sensory acuity and power it provided, and I’d had my doubts about the whole damn thing, including my survival. Then Slade kicked the door in and from there it was nothing but work. The same kind of work it is every night, for every hunter in the world.

I’d thanked him, but he shrugged it off. For Slade, not looking for me just wasn’t an option. Not diving into the fight, where we were outnumbered twelve to one, wasn’t an option.

I will hold you the line, milaya. Mikhail’s voice, again. The first time I ever went between , the decent into Hell that makes a hunter what he or she is. The thing that strips away the shell so we can see the twisting. I stay right here, and I hold you the line.

I pushed the thought away. Pulled out my second-biggest knife, and the hellbreed stilled. Her eyes were black. No iris, no white, just black from lid to lid. Like tar, swallowing a struggling animal whole.

I lifted the knife a little, and those black eyes widened. But behind the fear — it was just a screen, really — was the calculation. The cold ratlike look. How can I make this work for me? What do I do to get out of this?

“Slade,” I said. “Hunter. Taller than me, black hair, silver charms.” I let my eyes drop to her waist, where the black dress hadn’t torn and the charms glinted. One flour-pale breast sagged out of the tight top, and sequins dripped when she heaved against the ropes. Her pale leg tensed, slipping out from under the torn skirt like a waxen maggot. “You have one chance.” I sounded flat, tired. Almost bored. My blue eye was hot, watching the space around her for any shimmer of bad intent. “After that, I start cutting.”

The last thing I did was cut the silver charms away and stuff them, jangling and spitting with blue sparks, into one of my pockets. The hellbreed’s body, what was left of it, slumped, held up only by the ropes, corruption racing through its tissues.

They rot fast, when they go. Bile fought for release in the back of my throat. What I’d just done was in no way clean combat. I swallowed hard, telling myself that at least I’d granted her a quick death once I knew she had no more to tell me.

Her victims hadn’t gotten the same deal. Oh no. They never do.

It was faint comfort. The kind that wasn’t really comfort at all. I looked around at Slade’s weaponry and took what I needed. That’s one thing about a hunter’s house — the weaponry is always logically arranged.

Outside, the rain had turned into a persistent curtain of sleet. How did people live here? Jesus. But it did wash the stink of fear and hellbreed ichor off me.

By the time I reached the Dutch again, faint pearly light was staining the eastern horizon. Dawn would come reluctantly, peering through a thick veil of gray cloud. Urgency beat behind my breastbone, but I had no car and no way to get one. No time to stop to call for Were backup — and Weres don’t go up against hellbreed, anyway. They aren’t built for it.

No time even to meet up with Slade’s police liaison. What could they do, the cops? Other than get killed going in where I was about to.

Near dawn, and the line at the door hadn’t gone down. It would have been depressing, if I hadn’t been moving too fast for it to matter.

I streaked across the street like a missile, using every erg of inhuman speed I possessed. Took the first bouncer with a short upward strike, bone breaking and the nasal promontory driven into the brain. Even though most Traders go for bizarre body mods married to a scrim of hellish beauty, the underlying anatomy is basically the same as the rest of us.

Underneath, we can’t get away from what we are.

I had the second one down and shot twice before the screaming started and the Trader who had minced out to open Narcisa’s limo door burst through the doorway. He looked surprised, didn’t even have time to snarl before the whip cracked across his face and I filled him with silverjacket lead. He dropped like a poleaxed steer; I stretched out in a leap across his body and darted through the open doors.

Each hellbreed hole is slightly different. The breed-only ones are mostly underground, the maggots hiding from the sun. The mixed Trader-and-breed ones are usually run by a mover and shaker in the local breed community, and decorated according to that breed’s particular obsessions. I don’t know if “obsessions” is the right word. There’s a ‘breed in my city who has her place filled with stuffed cats of every size and description — actual taxidermist-stuffed corpses of felines.

This particular hole was painted, velvet-swathed, and curlicued like a baroque French bordello. Crimson and glaring yellow, the dance floor white and black squares like a chessboard. The bar was a huge twisted thing of metal and old dark-stained oak, bottles ranked glowing behind it against a mirrored wall.

And it was crawling with Traders. Not too many full ‘breed. The beautiful damned were startled, gem-bright eyes opening wide and dark velvet mouths opening. Moving fast, boots thudding the floor, I shot a Trader between the eyes as he snarled at me, and cut a path straight for the iron door set near the back.

There’s always a door, and it’s always made of that dark, dark iron. There’s always a red velvet rope in front of it, like it’s some sort of VIP lounge, but there’s never a line. Two guards, dumb slabs of muscle with submachine guns. I was on them before the one on the right could even raise his, killed him first, took the one on the left with a leaping dropkick, knocking the barrel aside so he sprayed the oncoming Traders with hot lead. That worked so nicely I put him down hard and grabbed the submachine gun, recoil jolting all the way up my arms as I fired controlled, two-shot bursts into the crowd of Traders. Kicked the door, the scar chuckling on my wrist as barbwire heat poured up my arm, swept down my chest. The iron made a hollow boom and sagged, I kicked it again and I slid in crabwise, still shooting until the gun ran out of ammo. I chucked it at one of the Traders, it clocked him right on the forehead with a sound that would have been funny if it had been in another situation.