Lilith Saintcrow: Night Shift

I saw him, and my heart stopped, sanity struggling with the flash of revealed evil before my brain mercifully shut it away, unable to remember the full horror. My breath stoppered itself in my chest, heart struggling to function.

A clotting, cloying reek of spoiled honey and rotting sweetness boiled over me before the rain flashed through where he had been standing, and I heard retreating footsteps. Perry ran in the direction of the Monde Nuit, and I lay on the cold street as the slashing fat needles of water soaked through leather, cloth, and my scorched hair.

My breath came back, spilling into flaccid lungs. My heartbeat kept going, the stubborn muscle not knowing when to quit.

Thank God. Thank you, God.

If I lay there with my face upturned to the rain, the shaking juddering sobs wouldn't matter. I had very little time to cry, because the sirens were getting closer, and I had to find a phone.

It took an hour for me to clear the scene, mostly waiting for Montaigne to get there so I could tell him to start the paperwork for a major paranormal incident. The shattered hulk of the limousine, full of the water falling from the sky, was hauled away, and I used Monty's cell phone to reach Harp as I stood in a doorway, looking at the yellow tape and flashing red and blue lights. Monty palmed a handful of Turns while Harp's cell phone number rang.

" What? " she snarled, and I cleared my throat. I felt like I'd tried to swallow tacks instead of Monty's antacids.

"Harp. It's me." I coughed, each breath a broken husk. I was soaked to the bone, and would have been shivering if I'd had the energy.

"Jesus fucking Christ! Where the fuck have you been ?" She was coming unglued.

That meant the job was done. Billy Ironwater was dead, the hunt had been successful. "Arkady's dead," I husked. "Where's the pyre?"

"The barrio. Barazada Park. Jill—"

"I'm on my way. Don't start until I get there."

"It's raining , Jill. Where the fuck have you been?"

"I will explain. Later." It hurt to talk. I tasted blood. "Hold the fucking pyre for me, Harp. It's necessary."

Silence, crackling. Thunder spilled through the clouds again, reminding us little mortals below of angels bowling and lightning striking.

I'd been so close to falling into Perry's trap. The idea that he'd used this to set up a snare just to catch me made me feel weak and sick.

The idea that I'd been so close made me feel even sicker.

What had stopped me?

"All right. Get here soon." Then she hung up, and I thought privately that her cell phone had probably been flung at a tree. Harp always got a little nervy after a successful hunt. She was coldly lethal during, but all the tension snapped like a rubber band afterward.

We know someone else who functions like that, don't we, Jill? Someone else who needs just a little push to go over the edge. Someone who almost fell right into a hellbreed's trap.

I ignored that voice in my head. The sunsword was a cold weight against my back, spent and icy. Working it free of the shattered metal and the pavement underneath had been hard for even my hellbreed-strong right arm.

Monty's bald spot glowed under the glaring lights. "Is it over?" He hunched his shoulders miserably under the assault of the rain.

"It's over." I would have sounded relieved, if it hadn't been for the broken glass scraping in my throat. "No more bodies, unless there's a site we haven't found yet. It's done."

"I don't even wanta know." He was pale. Fishbelly pale, and the water on his skin wasn't all from the rain. "You okay, Jill?"

The question was so absurd I almost laughed. I didn't only because it would have hurt too goddamn much. My ribs were tender, and I was so tired of being flung around and breaking them. The blood was washing off my face, and I was tired of losing it.

My throat was on fire, and I was tired of talking. I was just plain tired ,

"Right as the fucking rain," I croaked. "I need a ride to Barazada Park, on the double. Can you?"

His tired, mournful eyes met mine. Lightning flashed, another tattoo of brightness. The bright yellow slickers of the emergency personnel wavered like fish at the bottom of a pond.

"I can do that," he said. Someone yelled his name and he waved fretfully over his shoulder. "Anything else you need?"

Another laughable question. There was so much I needed, so much I would never have.

But look at what you've got, Jill. A big fat pile of nothing. Isn't that grand?

At least I still had my soul. That, I now knew beyond a doubt. I had not fallen into a hellbreed's trap. I might be tainted, but I wasn't gone.

I was not damned. And if I wasn't now, had I ever been?

It was enough. For now.

"Not a thing, Monty. Thanks." Then I shut up and let him make the arrangements for a black-and-white to break a few traffic laws getting me down into the barrio.

There's a corner of Barazada Park that butts up against a graveyard, the Church of Santa Esperanza sitting gloomily off to one side. Weres don't have much use for Catholicism—and they have their reasons, the Inquisition in the New World being a big one—but they understand the symbol of the sacred as well as anyone.

Bile and slick copper lay foul in my mouth. My throat still throbbed. My hellbreed-enhanced healing capability had other things to worry about, like replacing the few gallons of blood I'd lost lately. Little things like a sore, bruised throat were last on the list.

I sent the black-and-white with its nervous rookie driver away, hunched my shoulders against the driving curtain of cold downpour, and plunged into the park's pines, aiming for the back corner. I crashed through the brush without trying to move quietly—after all, they were Were. They'd hear me coming.

I tumbled out finally on the top of a low rise, looking down into the shallow depression where a stack of brushwood lay slick and dark, a long male shape arranged atop it. Lightning flashed somewhere else, spilling light and silver shadows onto the wet grass.

I felt them watching, from the trees. Lambent eyes and glitters of teeth. But none of them came out. Had they guessed, or was it just a courtesy they paid me? Where was Saul?

Just as I thought it, another shape resolved out of the trees beside me, avoiding each wet clinging branch easily. Tall and broad-shouldered, two bits of silver glittering in his hair, Saul Dustcircle stopped short, staring at me.

I heard more branches crackle and whirled, held up my hands. " Leave her alone !" My harsh crackle of a voice was a crow's unlovely scarring on the sweet silver sound of rain and the clean roll of thunder. " Leave her alone! She's not here for you !"

Thank God, they retreated. A pale glimmer showed between the trees. The bone-splintering growl of threatened Weres rose under the collage of storm sounds.

Saul moved restlessly. "Jill?"

The growls died down. It took a while.

"Let her be," I managed through my swollen throat, struggling to pitch it loud enough to be heard. "I promised her."

He stepped away, twice. Both quick graceful movements. According to Were custom, it was his right to light the fire, since his kin had died at the hands of the rogue.

Water dripped icy down the back of my neck. I stared at the pale glimmer in the trees, willing it closer. Finally, Cenci stepped out.

She looked different, without the insanity of crimson glowing in her eyes. She had been washed clean, all the black ichor and scorching sluiced off. Her rags fluttered as she walked past, head held high with a hellbreed's pride, and stopped, staring down at the pyre.

Her face crumpled, once. That was all. She darted me a glance, and her eyes were dark without the shine of 'breed. Her throat swelled as she swallowed. She was taller than me by a good head, and so thin I saw the shadows of her bones.