Lilith Saintcrow - Hunter's Prayer

The blow came out of nowhere, smashing across my cheek, my head rang and I saw stars again. Then her fingers were back on my breast, caressing, kneading my flesh. I felt a warm trickle of blood trace down my chin and rolled my head back to look at her. “Damaging the merchandise, bitch.” My voice was husky.

“You are merely required to be whole, not undamaged. Think of it. One of the Old Ones, the summa of negation, inside a body—a female body, a body capable of creation and destruction, a body strengthened with a hellbreed mark and possessing a soul gifted with murder and mayhem in the finest degree? You are a fit vessel, and once you are filled there will be enough blood, enough destruction, to remake this world as it once was. The Elder Gods will live through you, hunter.” Her smile was calm, beautiful, and so sane it was crazed, and I began to really get a bad feeling about this.

I heard the last breathless sigh of the drugged woman near the door. Oh, God. Please, God. No. Then a terribly final cessation, the act of slitting the throat down to the vertebrae. And the gurgle of life and blood leaving the body.

The golden marks on the ceiling writhed, a fresh humming charge flooding them. “Try again, you bitch,” I whispered. “I’m a hunter. Your Chaldean filth won’t stick to me.”

“A hunter who has just killed a dozen men.” Inez Germaine’s smile broadened. She stroked my breast once more, lovingly, and I jagged in a sharp breath. The gentle touch reminded me of Saul, something I couldn’t afford. “You slaughtered them like pigs, bebe. You heard the screams for mercy and you disregarded them. You were judge, jury, and executioner, you took your God’s place.”

It wasn’t like that. “I did not.”

“You killed them, didn’t you?”

“They were your accessories. Willing, in Jonte’s case. Unwitting in others. But they were—”

“We’re all aware of your feelings about pimps, Judith.”

That name again, the name of a dead girl. The air left me as if I’d been punched. Oh, Belisa had gotten her money’s worth when she’d rifled Mikhail’s private papers.

Stop it, the voice of reason said, desperately. Stop it. Of course she’s dug that up. You aren’t her anymore. That girl died and you came back from Hell. That’s not you.

But my voice was ragged. “Cogs in a wheel, bitch. One steps out, the next steps in. Try another sticky-finger attempt to get inside my head. You’ve failed.”

“Pas necessaire.” The smile that broke over her face now was a marvel of sincere serenity. I heard more velvet shushing and another slow, disoriented moan. Another victim. The second sequence.

The touch on my breast gentled. “The ritual will proceed, cherie belle. And when you look in the face of the Old One who will inhabit you, we will see how much your protests avail you.” A final gentle tweaking of my nipple and she was gone, shushing back in her long velvet robe. The sound of the candles hissed, and there was another soft gurgle as blood spilled, steaming, into the air. The copper reek thickened.

I looked up at the ceiling. Golden marks revolved in their stately dance, thick gold wire scoring new channels through the concrete, twisting and healing their former runnels without a sigh. And as soon as Inez Germaine cleared the square around the altar, the golden border of the square flushed with etheric force and began to move too.

By the end of the second sequence of sacrifices the pentacle would be revolving as well. Then the third sequence, but that one would be the harvested death Inez was carrying behind her black eyes, ready to release with a Word. A Word in Chaldean, which would charge the Nine Seals and the triple circle, containing the psychic force and enforcing the collective will of the Sorrows hive on the space inside.

After that, the final sequence, which would rip open a hole in the fabric of reality. And I was right at ground zero. A tasty little snack.

Her voice was soft and utterly merciless, dropping into my head like a bean into a furrow. Ready to germinate, the seed of doubt. You slaughtered them like pigs, bebe. You heard screams for mercy and you disregarded them. You were judge, jury, and executioner, you took your God’s place.

And what had I told Saul? Told him to go to the barrio, because I didn’t want him to see what I was capable of. What I could do, once I decided it was necessary.

My breath hissed in my throat. Hopeless. It was fucking hopeless. Nothing left to do but pray.

Cover me with Thy shield, and with my sword may Thy righteousness be brought to earth, to keep Thy children safe. Let me be the defense of the weak and the protector of the innocent—

I balked, sheer stubbornness rising up under the words, shunting the prayer aside. It would work when I was gearing up to face Perry, but not now. Not now. Oh God, not now, I didn’t want to die like this, stretched out like bad fantasy-novel art on a moldy old twenty-five-cent paperback.

I was going to die.

Fury rose in me. Shit on that, Jillian Kismet. Shit all over that. You’re a hunter, there’s work to do and your city to save. Think up a way to get out of this one, you stupid whore. You didn’t even tell Saul where her little bolthole is. How could you be so stupid? Assuming, of course, that Belisa left Saul alive.

Another breath, this one deeper and smoother.

You’re chained naked to an altar and they’re killing people over there, and there’s a Sorrows Grand Mother who is crazy as a bedbug with a thumb in your door. And all hell’s about to break loose.

It wasn’t working. Panic set in. I thrashed, once, twice, the chains jangled.

I heard it again, the gurgle of another life wasted. Women, probably, the reserve Inez had kept here in this place, a Sorrows House hidden so wonderfully well in my own city. Hidden so well I hadn’t had a clue—but I’d been busy since spring, hadn’t I? Dreadfully busy. A spike in violence and crime that was a clear sign of Sorrows moving in, with twenty-twenty hindsight I could solve every fucking problem, couldn’t I?

They were killing people. People from my city. My people.

But why should you care? You killed eleven of them last night. Not twelve, like that bitch said—unless you count Perry and he’s not a pimp, he’s a hellbreed. Just one step up from a pimp in my personal pantheon of evil, but still.

The voice was soft, seductive, stroking me. Why should you care, Jill? Why should you care how many they kill?

“Mine,” I whispered, and closed out the sound of the candles burning and the sudden hiss as someone threw a gout of incense into another brazier. “My city. My city.”

Santa Luz was my city; and whoever was in it—especially anyone a Sorrow would want to sacrifice—was under my protection. I kept the law in my city, goddammit, and if this jumped-up praying mantis thought she was going to kill pregnant hookers and Mob bosses in my town and without my say-so, she had another think coming.

But doesn’t that make you just like them, Jill? Doesn’t it? You decide who lives, who dies? Judge, jury, executioner?

The scar on my wrist turned excruciatingly hot. Pain rolled up my arm, a great golden glassy spike of pain. The scream burst from me, raw, wrecked, and agonized, like the dying scream of the wendigo. I’d killed it too, hadn’t I? No matter that Saul had held the spear, I had caused its death.

Who was I to decide that?

I am the law, goddammit! I protect them, the innocents. I am the sword of righteousness.