Lilith Saintcrow - Redemption Alley

I made it to the laboratory. Leon barely glanced at me, did a double take. “Jill?” For once, all Texas bluster and drawl was erased from his voice.

I had to try twice to speak. “Get him in the car. Take him to Galina’s and chain him the fuck up. ” I wiped at my cheeks. “I’m going to stay here and rip this fucking place apart.”

“We been havin’ a little chat in here.” Leon’s eyes were watering from the stink too, and he looked none-too-happy. “It’s worse than you think. Some guy named Harvill—”

My brain shuddered with what I had seen inside the south building. Dear God, their eyes… their arms, and the smell—

I lunged into the present. Harvill. The District Attorney. Big fat redhaired good ol’ boy. Ran last year on a tough-love, three-strikes ticket. You voted for the guy, remember? “The DA is in on this?” The H. in the file. A big-time cop, one of the witnesses said. But I didn’t think of the DA’s office. Jesus. It makes sense. It makes too much goddamn sense.

That’s the trouble with hellbreed. Sooner or later they find someone high-up to seduce. It never fails.

“I don’t know who he is,” the Trader whined. “Just that he was a bigshot, he came in with—”

I found myself at the side of the table, the Glock out of its holster and pressed to his forehead. “Shut. Up.” He did this. Willing or not, he did this. He made those… things. Dear God. “I should kill you now, for what you did to those people.”

The weak blue eyes shimmered with tears. But under the gleam there was that hardness, the animal calculating how to survive. I’ve seen it too many times in Trader eyes—the little gleam that says everything is disposable to them, as long as they get what they want.

I’ve seen that gleam in ordinary people too. I grew up with that avid little light shining at me from the faces of people who should have loved and protected me. I hit the street to get away from it and found out it only got deeper. I hate that queer ratlike little shine in people’s eyes.

And sometimes I wonder if my own eyes hold that little gleam. When I’m considering murdering someone, Trader or criminal or hellbreed. When I’ve got my toes on the cliff edge and am staring down into the abyss.

Get a hold on yourself, Jill.

Tremors ran through my arms and legs. Don’t kill him. The voice of reason in my head was Saul’s, and I was grateful for it.

If it had been any other voice, I’d’ve spread his brain and bone all over that fucking table.

“Hellbreed,” I rasped. “Who came with Harvill? Which one of the motherfuckers is behind it? Who did you Trade with?” I think I already know. And if you lie to me, so help me God, I will send you to Hell right now.

Cringing and sobbing, he told me, and quite a few things fell into place. Don’t kill him, kitten, Saul’s voice repeated. You know what you have to do.

“Jill?” Leon asked again.

Daylight’s wasting. I had too much to do, not enough time to do it in. Story of my life.

“Those things in the east building. Are they vulnerable to UV light like—” I tipped my head back a little, indicating the scurf floating peacefully in their green tubes.

Oh Jesus. Jesus and Mother Mary. The urge to vomit rose hard and sharp under my breastbone again. I shoved it down.

“Y-yes—” He looked ready to plead for his life again, but something in the geography of my face changed. I felt it, skin moving on bones, from somewhere outside myself.

The Trader shut up. Wise of him.

“And this stuff, Dream, fire destroys it? It doesn’t become toxic in midair?” It better not. If it does, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

He nodded, a quick little jerk of his head. The movement ended with a flinch, because the gun’s blind mouth was still pressed against his forehead so hard I felt the trembling running through him.

“One more question.” Every muscle in my body protested when I took the gun away from his head. They know it’s possible now. Some hellbreed somewhere is going to do something like this, unless I can cut it off at the root. “Is this all of it? All the weapon, the drug, whatever it is? Everything you’ve got onsite here? Is there a backup to your research?”

“Everything’s here—my work, all the computers. No backup, nothing. The first shipment is in planes in the hangars—”

That was all I needed to know. I dismissed him, looked up at Leon, who stood cradling Rosita. The bright spots of color still stood out on his cheeks, and his aura sparkled through my smart eye, the same sea-urchin shape as mine. A flicker of disgust crossed his face, and I was terribly, sadly grateful that it wasn’t me he was disgusted with.

My voice didn’t want to work properly. “Get him the fuck out of here. Now.”

He didn’t think much of the idea. “Jill—”

I was not in the mood. “If you don’t get him out of here, Leon, I am going to lose my temper.” Flat, quiet, just as if I was telling him what was for dinner. “Stay in touch with the Weres and keep my city together. If I’m not in town by dawn tomorrow—”

“What the fuck are you thinking of doing?” But Leon was already moving, racking Rosita, sweeping the Trader off the table and onto his feet with a gun pressed to his side. “Give me a vowel here, darlin’.”

“First, I’m burning down this building.” I have to erase every trace of this, or it’ll be used somewhere else. I holstered my gun with another one of those physical efforts that left me shaking, shook out my right hand, and drew on the scar. A hissing whisper filled my palm, and pale-orange, misshapen flame burst into being between my fingers.

I barely felt the burn against my skin, I was so cold under my leather and weight of weapons. It was the absolute chilling freeze beyond rage, beyond pain, and beyond fear.

I could wish it didn’t feel so familiar. “Then I’m burning down every fucking stick of this place, and consigning every soul in that east building to God.” I paused. “If He will take them.”

Leon had the Trader, was dragging him toward the door. Their shadows moved in the ragged rectangle of clean sunshine, and the flames dripped from my fingers, scorching the floor. The sorcerous flame hunters are trained to call on—banefire—devours all trace of hellbreed and leaves a blessing in its wake, but for this, I needed something more.

I needed pure destruction.

The hellfire made a sound like strangled children whispering. Like dead souls filling up a room with angry cricket-voices. Like the click of a bullet loaded into a magazine, over and over again, with a feedback squeal as my fury escaped my control for a single moment, a breath between thoughts.

The bookshelves burst into oddly pale orange flame. The hellfire laughed, wreathing my fingers, and I flung it in a wide arc, smashing against the beakers and shelves on the back wall like napalm. Glass screeched and exploded, and I backed toward the door, fire scouring wetly in a trail from my right hand.

The frightening thing wasn’t how easy it was to pull that sort of power through the scar, or even the agonizing plucking against every nerve running up my right arm and into my shoulder, branching channels full of magma played like dissonant violin strings.

The frightening thing was that the hellfire turned yellow, a clear pure yellow like sunlight, and I jerked my hand away from me, toward the green columns of floating dead scurf. Glass shattered and slime flooded the floor, bodies falling with wet thumps as the backdraft pushed me out the door, just in time too. I landed sprawled on the wooden ramp, hearing the Charger’s engine rouse itself just as the first explosion—of course, there were stocks of chemicals in the building, I was basically torching an ammo dump of viral weaponry—rocked the desert air and the fire took a deep, vast, hot breath. A belch of greasy black smoke rounded itself like bread dough rising and flared for the sky.