Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

The charms dripped from my fingers onto his nightstand, chiming sweetly. They didn’t run with blue light or sparks — there was no contamination in the air for their blessings to react to. The scar was covered, but I was still careful when I dug the second handful of them out. I didn’t know what blessed silver would do to a hellbreed mark.

“Yeah.” He coughed again, a little, but it was an embarrassed noise instead of a hacking. “Can’t believe I got trapped. Won’t happen again.”

I shrugged. There was nothing I could say. “You have a line on who…” Who betrayed you? I didn’t need to finish the question.

“Yeah. Ebersole. One of my contacts. Goddamn hellbreed. Seduced a good cop.”

This time I didn’t need to shrug. Not such a good cop, if it ended up with a hunter hanging like a side of beef. The ‘breed hadn’t killed him right away because they wanted to play .

“You need me to hang around?” I fished out the last lone charm — a silver wheel, red thread and a strand of blond hair clinging to it. I wondered what other hunter had been betrayed into Narcisa’s clutches, and if he or she knew that they were avenged.

It probably wasn’t any comfort.

“Nah. From here … it’s all mop-up.” He closed his eyes. His throat worked as he swallowed. “You probably got stuff boiling … at home.”

“As always.” But I lingered for a few more moments. “Slade…”

Are you really going to be all right?

But that was a fool’s question. None of us were all right. If we were, we wouldn’t be working this job.

“Huh?” He was struggling to stay awake. Which meant the crisis was over. He’d wrap up the leftovers tomorrow night. I would have to wash the blood off me before I got back on a plane, though my coat and pants would flop around, torn. And at home in Santa Luz there were things to attend to.

Who knew? I might be the one calling, next time.

“Nothing.” I waited until his breathing evened out and he fell into unconsciousness. The bruising was shrinking visibly, healing sorcery humming to itself as it worked. I don’t use it much myself nowadays, the scar takes care of most of that.

Mikhail told me striking a bargain with that hellbreed was a good idea. I hoped like hell it was true. I hoped there was a difference between me and a Trader. Even if I’d just done … what I’d done, looking for Slade.

We all have to believe we’re different.

Hunters don’t say goodbye. Superstition, maybe, but when you live on the nightside it’s foolish to disregard it. Besides, it hurts too much if the farewell ends up being final. Best to leave things unsaid, as insurance. A talisman.

My pager buzzed in its padded pocket. My city, calling me back. I’d probably get a late-morning flight if I put my hustle on now, or had one of the Weres call to book me one.

I smoothed the pale-blue down coverlet one more time. The day was well and truly up, and Slade’s bedroom window filled with gold.

It had stopped raining. Blue sky peeped through shredding white clouds. Go figure.

“I’m holding the line, Slade,” I said. The words were quiet in the dimness.

I picked up the wheel charm with its strand of blond hair. Looked at Slade’s face, felt the ache of loneliness rise in my chest.

I missed my teacher. God, how I missed him.

I had red thread in another pocket, and while I was in the cab to the airport, the wheels shushing on wet pavement and the cabbie carrying on a one-way conversation with some AM talk radio, I tied the silver wheel into my own dark curls. The other charms chimed as I shook my head a little, settling them together.

Then I settled down to wait for the next stage of the journey home.

Lilith Saintcrow is the author of several paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and young adult series, including the “Jill Kismet” and “Strange Angels” series. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her children, several cats, and other strays. Her website may be found at www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal

Jill Kismet is the resident hunter of Santa Luz, a city somewhere in the American Southwest. She likes bullwhips, .45s, and breakfast burritos. Oh, and holding back the tides of Hell. She’s a big fan of that.

The windowless outbuilding near the property’s back fence wasn’t big enough to be a garage or even a shed. Painted the same pale green as the house twenty feet away, the mere closet was a place for garden tools and snow shovels, one of a thousand just like it in a neighborhood north of downtown Denver. But among the rakes and pruning shears, this one had a body.

Half a body, rather. Detective Jessi Hardin stood at the open door, regarding the macabre remains. The victim had been cut off at the waist, and the legs were propped up vertically, as if she’d been standing there when she’d been sliced in half and forgotten to fall down. Even stranger, there didn’t seem to be any blood. The gaping wound in the trunk — vertebrae and a few stray organs were visible in a hollow body cavity from which the intestines had been scooped out — seemed almost cauterized, scorched, the edges of the flesh burned and bubbled. The thing stank of rotting meat, and flies buzzed everywhere. She could imagine the swarm that must have poured out when the closet door was first opened. By the tailored trousers and black pumps still in place, Hardin guessed the victim was female. No identification had been found. They were still checking ownership of the house.

“Told you you’ve never seen anything like it,” Detective Patton said. He seemed downright giddy at stumping her.

Well, she had seen something like it, once. A transient had fallen asleep on some train tracks, and the train came by and cut the poor bastard in half. But he hadn’t been propped up in a closet later. No one had seen anything like this , and that was why Patton called her. She got the weird ones these days. Frankly, if it meant she wasn’t on call for cases where the body was an infant with a dozen broken bones, with lowlife parents insisting they never laid a hand on the kid, she was fine with that.

“Those aren’t supported, are they?” she said. “They’re just standing upright.” She took a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of her suit jacket and pulled them on. Pressing on the body’s right hip, she gave a little push — the legs swayed, but didn’t fall over.

“That’s creepy,” Patton said, all humor gone. He’d turned a little green.

“We have a time of death?” Hardin said.

“We don’t have shit,” Patton answered. “A patrol officer found the body when a neighbor called in about the smell. It’s probably been here for days.”

A pair of CSI techs were crawling all over the lawn, snapping photos and placing numbered yellow markers where they found evidence around the shed. There weren’t many of the markers, unfortunately. The coroner would be here soon to haul away the body. Maybe the ME would be able to figure out who the victim was and how she ended up like this.

“Was there a padlock on the door?” Hardin said. “Did you have to cut it off to get inside?”

“No, it’s kind of weird,” Patton said. “It had already been cut off, we found it right next to the door.” He pointed to one of the evidence markers and the generic padlock lying next to it.

“So someone had to cut off the lock in order to stow the body in here?”

“Looks like it. We’re looking for the bolt cutters. Not to mention the top half of the body.”

“Any sign of it at all?” Hardin asked.

“None. It’s not in the house. We’ve got people checking dumpsters around the neighborhood.”