Lilith Saintcrow - Redemption Alley

A general rule of sorcery is that more haste equals less speed—but the rope fell loose, and I eased my shoulders out of its coils. My hands were numb and tingling, but they worked. I just couldn’t pull a trigger for a little while. Pins and needles raced up my legs, and I almost blacked out when I bent over to take care of the rope messily looped and pulled tight around my ankles.

Rule one of tying up a hunter: you’d better be damn sure she can’t wriggle out. Nylon’s useless. Hemp’s better, but it stretches too. Orichalc-tainted chains are the best, but even those are workable if the hunter’s left alone and conscious long enough.

I’ve only been chained up so bad I couldn’t get out once. That was enough for me.

They’d taken my guns. But my knives were still all present and accounted for, along with my whip and everything else, even all the ammo in my pockets.

Jesus. People this stupid shouldn’t be playing with hellbreed. The air sharpened, the swelling in my fingers going down too slowly, way too fucking slowly, and I heard them arrive.

The air was suddenly full of hissing like laughter, the subliminal reverberation of Helletöng rubbing painfully against my ears. I eased myself off the chair, quiet, quiet, stopping when my right thigh cramped viciously. I kept my breathing soft and even. Raised my hands over my head to help my fingers drain. I would need them soon.

My hands turned into fists. Rivers of sparkling pain ran down my arms. I eased them open, and made a fist again. It would help the edema drain. Come on. No time, Jill.

On the other side of the wall, there was a wet crunching sound. A sudden impact, like a side of beef dropped three stories onto simmering pavement.

Funtime’s over, kids. Everyone out of the pool.

Irene let out a shapeless, garbled yell.

In the ringing silence afterward, Shen An Dua spoke. “Oh, I am sorry. I was supposed to negotiate, wasn’t I.”

There was a slobbering wet noise, and another crunch. “Dear me.” Shen giggled, a little-girl sound. “So sorry. I just keep making mistakes.”

“You idiot. ” Irene’s voice trembled. “Now you’ve killed the only person who has the formula!”

Another chill giggle, edged with broken, freezing glass. “Oh, I haven’t killed him. He’ll heal, with the proper care—care I can provide, as your liege. Besides, now I know what is possible, and it is easy enough to find more scientists.” The hellbreed’s tone darkened. “Where is the hunter?”

I dropped my hands. So glad I’m not tied up right now. My fingers curled around knifehilts, clumsy and aching. More copper adrenaline dumped into my blood, enough to sharpen me, not enough to blur. I’d pay for it later, when my body’s reserves finally gave out.

I let out the soft breath, took another, my lungs crying for oxygen I couldn’t take in. No use in gasping and advertising my position and status as awake and reasonably ready to kick ass.

“Fax?” Sounds of material moving, probably her long sequined dress. The hardness had left Irene’s voice. “Fax, hold on— Fax! Fairfax don’t you leave me! ”

She sounded like a victim. Maybe like one of her own victims. I doubted she’d see the irony if someone else pointed it out, though.

“Oh, shut up. ” Another impact, and the wall in front of me quivered imperceptibly as something human-sized was thrown up against it hard enough to crack bones. Shen let out a little satisfied sound. “Whining. Always whining. ”

I tensed all over. The scar thrummed against my wrist, a high-voltage wire.

Shen suddenly turned all business. “Spread out. Search for the hunter. She’s close, I can smell the bitch’s shampoo.”

Lunatic laughter bubbled up in my throat. I swallowed it. What’s wrong with my goddamn shampoo?

“That’s the last order you’ll ever give,” Irene snarled, and I crouched reflexively as gunfire rang through the small space, echoes tearing and re-tearing at my sensitive eardrums.

Maybe I could stay right here and let them sort it out. But something hit the other side of the wall again, bone-crunchingly hard, and I was out of my little hole and in the light of a swinging, naked electric bulb before I even noticed moving. The flap of my abused coat followed me like the smell of burning, clinging to me in tatters.

Four of them, and all you’ve got is knives.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. My left hand had been smarter than me, curling around the whip handle and jerking it free. I guess Irene and Fax had thought I was tied up too tight to use a whip.

Fucking morons. They shouldn’t have been playing with hellbreed.

Confined space, a concrete cube, the smell of blood cooking on an incandescent bulb as it swayed crazily, making the shadows dance. A slight hiss of steam echoed the longer hiss of hellbreed.

Shen An Dua stood, incongruous in a pale-pink kimono patterned with plum blossoms, her narrow golden hands folded and her eyes running with yolk-yellow flame. Her hair was piled atop her head in a complex patterned knot, held in place by lacquered shine and chopsticks with dangling things reflecting hard darts of light. And here was my first piece of good luck. In her monumental arrogance, Shen hadn’t brought full ’breed to the party.

No, she’d brought four Traders, all male, and the whip smacked across flesh and dropped one, screaming, to the floor, clutching at his face and howling loud enough to shake the entire concrete cube.

Shen screeched, but the knife left my hand, flickering through the dance of shadow and blood-dappled light, and I had a second piece of good luck. It buried itself up to the hilt in her right eye as the whip crackled again, catching the next Trader at the top of his leap. I moved aside, spinning on feet gone numb and scraping-slow, and my hand flicked again, coming up full of steel.

Move move move! The screaming inside my head was no match for the noise bouncing off the walls until I tuned it out, focusing instead on the Trader closest to me, a cute little number who might have been Puerto Rican while he was human. Now he was small, brown, and unholy quick; the mirrored surfaces coming up from his cheekbones and inserting into his eyebrows gave him permanent sunglasses. He was right next to me before I realized it, but instinct saved me again—my fist, full of knifehilt, blurred forward and his trachea collapsed with a crunch.

Guys always expect you to go for the nut-shot. They never expect a rabbit-punch to the throat. And no matter how good you are, if you can’t breathe, your fighting effectiveness is numbered in bare seconds.

Just to be safe, I slid the knife between his ribs, high in the left side of his chest, punching with a generous share of hellbreed strength to get through the pericardium—if I was that lucky.

Shen hit the floor, wailing, and I got a glance up her kimono skirt. If I’d eaten anything recently I would have thrown it all up, again, but the animal in me was concerned with survival first, snapping me aside with a half-skip and a clatter of steelshod bootheels to free my footing from the Trader’s spasming legs.

Gunfire echoed again, and the third Trader—a stocky motherfucker in motorcycle leathers, his ears coming to high bristling points—collapsed, a neat hole appearing in his forehead and the back of his head vaporizing. Irene was picking her shots.

Let’s just hope I’m not her next target, eh?

I hit the ground, rolled, and kicked the knees of the last Trader, he went down in a heap and I fed him a few knives to keep him quiet.

I lay there for just a second and a half too long, my sides heaving and my body suddenly failing to obey me. Wait just a minute, bitch, my muscles informed me. We’re declaring mutiny. You’ve fucked with us for too long.