Lilith Saintcrow: Night Shift

" Sometimes we like being on the side of the angels." The hellbreed's voice dropped to a whisper that would have been intimate if the rumbling of Hell hadn't been scraping along underneath. "It makes the ending sweeter. Besides, peace is good for profit. Do we have a deal, little hunter? "

Christ. Mikhail, I hope you're right. I didn't agree to it because of the hellbreed or even because the thought of that much power was tempting .

I agreed because Mikhail told me I should, even though it was my decision. It wasn't really a Trader's bargain if I was doing it for my teacher, was it?

Was it?

"We have a deal." Four little words. They came out naturally, smoothly, without a hitch.

Hot iron-hard fingers clamped over my right wrist. "Oh , good." A slight wet smacking sound, like a hungry toddler at the breakfast table, and he wrenched my hand off the arm of the chair, the pale tender underside of my wrist turned up to face cold fluorescent light. My heart jackhammered away, adrenaline soaking copper into the dry roof of my mouth, and I bit back a cry .

It was too late. Four tiny words, and I'd just signed a contract.

Now we'd see if Mikhail was right, and I still had my soul.

Every city has a pulse. It's just a matter of knowing where to rest your finger to find it, throbbing away as the sun bleeds out of the sky and night rises to cloak every sin.

I crouched on the edge of a rooftop, the counterweight of my heavy leather coat hanging behind me. Settled into absolute stillness, waiting. The baking wind off the cooling desert mouthed the edges of my body. The scar on my right wrist was hot and hard under a wide hinged copper bracelet molded to my skin.

The copper was corroding, blooming green and wearing thin.

I was going to have to find a different way to cover the scar up soon. Trouble is, I suck at making jewelry, and Galina was out of blessed copper cuffs until her next shipment from Nepal.

Below me the alley wandered, thick and rank. Here at the edge of the barrio there were plenty of hiding places for the dark things that crawl once dusk falls. The Weres don't patrol out this far, having plenty to keep them occupied inside their own crazy-quilt of streets and alleys around the Plaza Centro and its spreading tenements. Here on the fringes, between a new hunter's territory and the streets the Weres kept from boiling over, a few hellbreed thought they could break the rules.

Not in my town, buckos. If you think Kismet's a pushover because she's only been on her own for six months, you've got another think coming.

My right leg cramped, a sudden vicious swipe of pain. I ignored it. My electrolyte balance was all messed up from going for three days without rest, from one deadly night-battle to the next with the fun of exorcisms in between. I wondered if Mikhail had ever felt this exhaustion, this ache so deep even bones felt tired.

It hurt to think of Mikhail. My hand tightened on the bullwhip's handle, leather creaking under my fingers. The scar tingled again, a knot of corruption on the inside of my wrist.

Easy , milaya. No use in making noise, eh? It is soft and quiet that catches mouse . As if he was right next to me, barely mouthing the words, his gray eyes glittering winter-sharp under a shock of white hair. Hunters don't live to get too old, but Mikhail Ilych Tolstoi had been an exception in so many ways. I could almost see his ghost crouching silent next to me, peering at the alley over the bridge of his patrician nose.

Of course he wasn't there. He'd been cremated, just like he wanted. I'd held the torch myself, and the Weres had let me touch it to the wood before singing their own fire into being. A warrior's spirit rose in smoke, and wherever my teacher was, it wasn't here.

Which I found more comforting than you'd think, since if he'd come back I'd have to kill him. Just part of the job.

My fingers eased. I waited.

The smell of hellbreed and the brackish contamination of an arkeus lay over this alley. Some nasty things had been sidling out of this section of the city lately, nasty enough to give even a Hell-tainted hunter a run for her money. We have firepower and sorcery, we who police the nightside, but Traders and hellbreed are spooky-quick and capable of taking a hell of a lot of damage.

Get it? A Hell of a lot of damage? Arf arf.

Not to mention the scurf with their contagion, the adepts of the Middle Way with their goddamn Chaos, and the Sorrows worshipping the Elder Gods.

The thought of the Sorrows made rage rise under my breastbone, fresh and wine-dark. I inhaled smoothly, dispelling it. Clear, calm, and cold was the way to go about this.

Movement below. Quick and scuttling, like a rat skittering from one pile of garbage to the next. I didn't move, I didn't blink, I barely even breathed .

The arkeus took shape, rising like a fume from dry-scorched pavement, trash riffling as the wind of its coalescing touched ragged edges and putrid rotting things. Tall, hooded, translucent where moonlight struck it and smoky-solid elsewhere, one of Hell's roaming corruptors stretched its long clawed arms and slid fully into the world. It drew in a deep satisfied sigh, and I heard something else.

Footsteps.

Someone was coming to keep an appointment.

Isn't that a coincidence. So am I.

My heartbeat didn't quicken; it stayed soft, even, as almost-nonexistent as my breathing. It had taken me a long time to get my pulse mostly under control.

The next few moments were critical. You can't jump too soon on something like this. Arkeus aren't like your garden-variety hellbreed. You have to wait until they solidify enough to talk to their victims—otherwise you'll be fighting empty air with sorcery, and that's no fun—and you have to know what a Trader is bargaining for before you go barging in to distribute justice or whupass. Usually both, liberally.

The carved chunk of ruby on its silver chain warmed, my tiger's-eye rosary warming too, the blessing on both items reacting with contamination rising from the arkeus and its lair.

A man edged down the alley, clutching something to his chest. The arkeus made a thin greedy sound, and my smart left eye—the blue one, the one can look below the surface of the world—saw a sudden tensing of the strings of brackish contamination following it. It was a hunched, thin figure that would have been taller than me except for the hump on its back; its spectral robes brushing dirt and refuse, taking strength from filth.

Bingo. The arkeus was now solid enough to hit.

The man halted. I couldn't see much beyond the fact that he was obviously human, his aura slightly tainted from his traffic with an escaped denizen of Hell.

It was official. The man was a Trader, bargaining with Hell. Whatever he was bargaining for , it wasn't going to do him any good.

Not with me around.

The arkeus spoke. " You have brought it ?" A lipless cold voice, eager and thin, like a dying cricket. A razor-blade pressed against the wrist, a thin line of red on pale skin, the frozen-blue face of a suicide.

I moved. Boots silent against the parapet, the carved chunk of ruby resting against the hollow of my throat, even my coat silent. The silver charms braided into my long dark hair didn't tinkle. The first thing a hunter's apprentice learns is to move quietly, to draw silence in tight like a cloak.

That is, if the apprentice wants to survive.

"I b-brought it." The man's speech was the slow slur of a dreamer who senses a cold-current nightmare. He was in deep, having already given the arkeus a foothold by making some agreement or another with it. "You'd better not—"