Lilith Saintcrow - Night Shift

The smell of the thing was different It didn't reek of hellbreed, just purely of sickness and fur. The silver in my hair and against my throat didn't start to burn; Mikhail's apprentice-ring on my third left finger didn't prickle with heat.

No time for questions . The water was knee-high and I splashed through, automatically noting how deep I was—it'd been a hell of a fall. Christ It couldn't fall into a nice clean department store, it had to pick a goddamn storm drain. Smells like something's dead down here too. Lovely .

Running. Breath coming harsh and tearing, the knife held reversed along my forearm, my coat snapping and popping like a guitar riff, the liquid turning even soupier as tunnels began to branch off. I followed the worst smell, my gag reflex triggered—I didn't have time to throw up. Jesus. This is foul. Why doesn't it smell like hellbreed? My coat is never going to be the same .

Branching tunnels. A left, a right, a soft left in an intersection of four ways—did this thing know where it was going? Was it running blind or luring me into something?

I hate this sort of thing . The sludge started getting deeper, and the tunnel slanted downhill. I really hate this sort of thing .

Covered in guck, stinking to high heaven—there was something dead in the water—I reached a wide, deep chamber with a cleaner smell. A faint green glow bounced off the water's oily surface and dappled the walls. Above, pipes tangled, and several different round openings led off in different directions.

For the second time, maddeningly, the smell just quit between one step and the next. I skidded to a stop in thigh-high water, throwing up a sheet of it, and cast about frantically, trying to catch the thread again. A distant clang, like something sharply striking a pipe, tightened every nerve in my body.

To top it all off, the charms in my hair shifted, tinkling, and the silver chain at my throat began to burn. Mikhail's ring heated up, too. The knife blurred back into its sheath even as my blue eye scanned under the surface of the world and found nothing.

The smell was gone .

Goddammit, I REALLY HATE this sort of thing.

I backed up a step or two, and there it was again—but it was fading under the onslaught of fresh water lapping into the chamber, a cold current mouthing my thighs. Breaking a trail with running water, a trick so old even normal humans do it.

But the ability to mask a trail so thoroughly was pure hellbreed. I didn't know of anything else that could do that so cleanly, like a scalpel slicing off a scent.

And hellbreed meant possible nasty surprise lurking somewhere.

This would be a really good time to get out of the water, Jill . Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go but one of the pipe openings, and God alone knew what was in those.

My guns cleared leather in both hands, and I turned in a full circle, my eyes—smart and dumb—traveling over every nook and cranny. No use. Whoever it was, they were gone.

The heat drained from my silver. The scar on my wrist prickled, working in toward the bone, unhealthy heat spilling up my arm, jolting in my shoulder as I pulled force through it, worked into taut humming readiness.

"Goddammit." The word couldn't carry the weight of my frustration. I searched for others. " Shit . Shit fuck . Mother fucking cock sucking fuck on a cheese-coated stick !" My voice bounced and rippled off the water.

A slight sound, behind me.

I spun, water tearing up in a sleek wave as etheric force swirled with me, both guns trained on one particular pipe, big enough for something very nasty to fit in. My pulse smoothed out, quit its hammering, and I tasted copper on my tongue through the reek of sewer coating the back of my nose.

A glimmer, down low. Green-blue and flat, like an animal's eyes at night. My fingers tightened on the trigger even as I sensed another presence and half turned, one gun locking onto the first target, the other locking onto the second. Come out and play, shitheels, whoever you are .

The second one spoke. "Jill?" A female voice, low and husky with a touch of purr behind it. "Don't shoot. I'm coming out with my hands loose. Dominic's with me."

What the hell?

Memory placed the voice. One gun lowered slightly. "Harp?"

Harper Smith slid out of the second pipe. My pulse thundered in my ears as I twitched, amped on adrenaline and oh so close to pulling the trigger.

She's tall—Weres usually are, even females. She moved with the fluidity and precision of a cat Were, all slinking graze and laziness. Long dark hair pulled back in two thick braids, wide liquid dark eyes, and a mouth that always seemed just short of merriment below an aristocratic nose and wide high cheekbones, she was beautiful in the negligent way almost all Weres are. She hung for a moment full-length from a slimmer iron pipe, then curved to land on a larger one, her booted feet placed for maximum effect. Her battered canvas jacket flapped briefly, showing her sidearm, and the feathers braided into her hair fluttered as she cocked her head, examining me.

Her mate, Dominic, peered out of the same pipe she'd been in. "Hey, Kismet." His voice was lower, a bass purr, and his sandy-blond hair was as long as Harp's but pulled back and bound in a club with leather thongs. His eyes glittered briefly too, and I caught a flash of the straight line of his mouth before he withdrew a little, into shadow. "Put the iron away, willya?"

The Terrible Two of the Martindale Squad. What the hell is the FBI doing out here? And two Weres without a hunter … that means a Were problem . I promptly turned my back on them, both guns pointed at the first pipe. "Hey, Dom. What are you guys doing out here?" My fingers tightened on the triggers. "And is that your fucking friend? If it is, you'd better speak up now before I ventilate him."

"Easy, hunter." The third voice was male, low with an edge of vibrating bass like Dominic's. "Don't make me take that gun away from you."

Oh, you did not just say that to me . "Come and try it, cheesecake. Weres don't scare me. Who the fuck are you ?"

"Calm down, both of you!" Harp sounded annoyed. "Jill, he's one of ours. He's a tracker from out on the Brightwater Reservation. Saul, come out and introduce yourself. This is Mikhail's student."

I kept the guns trained as the Were moved cautiously forward. He was a long rangy man, his dark hair shoulder-length and left loose, dark eyes flicking down my body to where the water lapped at my thighs and coming back up again. He had the classic Were face—high cheekbones, red-brown skin, thick eyelashes, chiseled mouth.

He looked Native American, like most American Weres. Native American on the cover of a romance novel, that is, a really bodice-ripping one. Jeans and a hip-length leather jacket, a black T-shirt stretching over his chest. The healthy clean scent of Were mixed with the stink, and I was abruptly conscious of being dipped in fetid goo and wet almost clear through.

"Saul." He gave his name grudgingly. "Saul Dustcircle."

"Jill Kismet." I lowered my guns, holstered them both. Measured him for a long moment. I am not going to say it's a pleasure . Then I rounded back on Harp. "What the fuck is the Martindale Squad doing down in the sewers in my city, Harp? Without contacting me, I might add?"

"Left you a message yesterday." Dominic eased forward a little more, crouching with easy grace inside the pipe mouth. He reached up, scratched his cheek with blunt delicate fingertips. "You been busy?"

"That's the goddamn understatement of the year." I should have listened to messages this morning; I knew there was something I'd missed last night . I let out a long breath. "Five cops attacked out on the Drag last night. Montaigne called me in. Something that smells goddamn awful, and has a habit of cloaking itself. I repeat, why are you in my city ?"