I landed hard, ribs snapping and a wash of red agony pouring through me. High t.i.ttering laughter from the h.e.l.lbreed with the primrose-colored eyes, screams of approval from the cl.u.s.tered Traders. Five against one, and here I was on the floor.

This is not going well.

"Oh, Kismet." The t.i.ttering h.e.l.lbreed actually had the gall to play to his Trader gallery. "Did you fall down?"

Hot salt blood dribbled on my chin. The scar - the mark of a h.e.l.lbreed"s lips - chuckled wetly on my wrist, a burst of razor-wire power jolting up the bones and cresting over my shoulder, my ribs popping out and hastily fusing back together. My left hand closed around a gun b.u.t.t, and I found out that the primrose-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d had thrown me over near my whip.

Well. Better late than never. My right hand shot out, grabbed the bullwhip"s handle, and the sonofab.i.t.c.h was still laughing when I rolled up off the floor and the leather flashed out, a high hard crack that was the jingling silver flechettes at the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier. The hip leads in whip-work, a slight advantage women have. When added to speed and cussedness and the etheric force humming through the scar and jacking me up into superhuman, it was all I was going to get.

It was going to have to be enough.

Naked light bulbs swung at the end of cords, crazy-dappling shadows over the warehouse"s interior. The whip lashed, and flayed the primrose-eyed h.e.l.lbreed"s face. It cut him off mid-chuckle, and if I wanted him dead now would have been the time to shoot him.

But I didn"t. Instead, I shot the Trader springing at me in midair, and to my right, the one who had somehow cottoned on that I wasn"t down and out yet. He"d swapped some of his humanity for superstrength and superspeed, but my aim was true and half his h.e.l.l-trading head evaporated. That took the pep out of him, bigtime.

Lucky shot. I was just lucky all over tonight.

The screaming started, and from there it was straightforward. My next shot took out one of the h.e.l.lbreed ringmaster"s bending-backward little knees. He had folded down and was screaming, the black ichor that pa.s.ses for their blood bubbling out past the thin fingers clasping his face. Said face was now a mess of hamburger and there were three more Traders to deal with.

I hadn"t thought they"d be stupid enough to stay at their last known hangout. Not when they knew I was after them. I hadn"t precisely made a mistake - I"d just thought about questioning them before I started killing.

Mikhail would have told me not to bother. But he wasn"t here. Twenty-nine days since the Weres lit his pyre and his soul rode the smoke to Valhalla.

I was on my own.

Four minutes later the last Trader died gibbering at the end of a long smear of black-tinted blood, the corruption eating up his tissues and making the body do a St. Vitus"s dance. The pacts Traders make claim more than the soul, and maybe they would think twice about mortgaging themselves if they could see what happens when one of them bites it.

I don"t know. All I see are the ones who chance it.

I turned back to the h.e.l.lbreed. He wasn"t so pretty now, and I hoped I"d gotten one of his eyes, popped it like a bubble. The whip coiled neatly and stowed itself, habitual movements while I kept the blubbering h.e.l.lbreed covered. I ached all over and my ribs twitched, bone resetting itself. The scar pulse-burned on my right wrist, sawing against the nerves of my arm.

Slow and easy here, Jill.

My smart eye was hot and dry, watching the plucking under the fabric of the surface of the world. He could really be that hurt, burbling and moaning into his hands. But the tension in his shoulders - clad in once-elegant navy Brooks Brothers, now spattered with blood and other fluids - told me otherwise. His suit coat flopped around a little, low on his right side where the first bullet had taken a chunk out of him. Black ichor dripped and the noises he was making were straight out of a nightmare.

"Cut it out." My voice sliced through his. The silver charms tied in my hair rattled and buzzed, blessed metal reacting against the contamination in the air. "You"re not that hurt."

"b.i.t.c.h," he blubbered into his hands. "Oh you b.i.t.c.h."

You"d think they"d find something more original to call a female hunter. I kept the gun on him, every muscle quivering-alert. The scar burned, working into my flesh. "You can guess what I"m after." Each word very carefully weighted. "Slade. A hunter. Taller than me. Black hair, silver charms. Disappeared about twelve hours ago."

"b.i.t.c.h," he moaned again.

I didn"t have time. So I blew away his other knee. The report boomed and caromed through the warehouse"s interior, and he crawfished on the floor, whisper-screaming because he"d run out of air.

"You have arms, too," I reminded him. "Shoulders. Ribs. Genitalia. Start talking."

In the end it took one of his elbows, too. By then the Traders were smears of bubbling black, corruption eating at their tissues, and the primrose-eyed *breed screamed until I put him out of his misery. Silence descended through the foul reek.

I swallowed hard, set my jaw, and took just enough time to clean the contamination of h.e.l.lbreed away with whispering blue banefire, shaken off my fingers like oil, before I got going. I didn"t even stop to wash the blood off my face.

When another hunter calls, you go. It"s that simple. We who hold back the tide of h.e.l.l don"t ask for help lightly. I had irons in the fire back home, but Slade had called. A short message- Trouble brewing. Something big. Need backup. And I was on a plane and out of my town before the sun rose, ending up in his territory over a thousand miles away. Where the skies were always gray and there was a coffee shop on every single corner. The whole city smelled like concrete and old, moldy java.

I didn"t have a chance to ask why he"d called me, since he"d disappeared before I could get here.

We"d done hunter residencies together in New Orleans with Katja Lefevre, and that had been one sliptilting screamfest after another. I still had scars twitching from those six months. But you don"t ask questions. A hunter won"t call another away from her territory without a d.a.m.n good reason.

His house on its quiet tree-lined street was empty, the front door smashed to flinders and Slade himself gone. The local Weres, Slade"s backup, knew nothing. The h.e.l.lbreed weren"t opening their mouths much. All I had was a name - Narcisa. And another one: the Dutch.

I didn"t know what Narcisa meant. But the Dutch was a h.e.l.lbreed club downtown, near the open air market where they threw fish around during the day.

I was glad to miss that. I mean, come on. Flinging fish?

The skyline here was alien territory. Santa Luz is desert, but Slade"s city lives under a perpetual gray drizzle. You wouldn"t think it would make much difference to a nocturnal creature. Dark is dark, and it gets cold in the desert too.

I crouched on the rooftop, dripping hair, dripping from my nose and fingertips, my leather trench shedding water thanks to the waterproofing. Weather means very little to a full-fledged hunter, but the chill in this place reached right into my bones.

It wasn"t physical.

Across the street, the neon sign for the Dutch - a flying ship, of all things, with both oars and sail, lovingly rendered in glowing tubes - cast sickly green and red glow down into the wet street. Music pulsed in ba.s.s-thumping ribbons inside, the double doors flung wide in invitation. There was a line going down the block, but n.o.body seemed to have umbrellas. Just standing there in the wet.

No Traders in the line - they walked right in past the Trader bouncers. No visible h.e.l.lbreed, but they would be inside.

They usually are. Ready and waiting, like spiders in a web.

Back in Santa Luz it was an hour ahead but a world away. Dark falls quickly out in the desert, like a guillotine blade. I would have hit the streets as dusk did, and probably already been in one or two short sharp fights. Since Mikhail was dead, plenty of them thought I"d be easy to get past or roll over.

Don"t think about that, Jill. Focus.

I eased my weight back and forth, watching. A hunter learns early to draw a cloak of silence over the waiting, an uncanny stillness. Within that circle of quiet, though, you have to move a little bit. Shifting and adjusting to keep the muscles primed for action.

And as usual while I was waiting, the memories came back. My teacher"s final gurgle as the scarlet gush of his life left him, his body stiffening then slumping in my arms, becoming deadweight. The b.i.t.c.h who killed him was gone, good luck finding her now. And here I was a thousand miles from my city on a wild goose chase, and G.o.d only knew what was going on at home - Stop. Intuition tingled. Look, Jill. Something"s there.

Indeed, something was. A long glossy-black limousine pulled up to the curb, and the bouncers tensed. A Trader - blond, male, long legs, in a sharp dark suit - strolled out of the club"s wide-flung mahogany doors.

The scar puckered, a hurtful throb. The mark of a h.e.l.lbreed"s lips against the tender inner flesh of my right wrist tasted the predatory glee on the air.

I was harder to kill now. Much harder.

Was it worth the price I"d paid? Especially since I hadn"t been fast enough or strong enough when it counted.

Stop it. Look at what"s happening.

Premonition tingled along every inch of me. A hunter becomes a full-blown psychic before long. Sorcery will do that for you.

And when you spend your life dealing with the nightside it"s more of a survival mechanism than a perk.

So I kept still, blinking the rain out of my eyes. Watched the Trader open the limo"s door, watched the long lean white leg slide out of the interior and the black stiletto heel touch wet cement. She rose out of the back of the car like a bad dream, dead-white curves poured into something slinky-black and sequined, slit up the sides. A ma.s.s of tumbled jet-black curls, and even at this distance the set of the slim shoulders was wrong.

A hunter can see below the carapace of beauty they wear. We can see the twisting in them.

This was a full h.e.l.lbreed, waltzing in the front door. And if the Trader bowed and sc.r.a.ped any more, he would be licking the sidewalk.

It had to be the mysterious Narcisa.

A glitter caught my eye. There, around her wasp-waist, a belt of threads and jingling silver, the surface of the metal flowing with blue light, not quite popping free as sparks. I let out a soundless sigh. It"s just like an arrogant f.u.c.k of a h.e.l.lbreed to flout and taunt with a substance they"re deadly-allergic to. If the silver rubbed her skin it would leave a bubbling, blistering burn.

They were charms. The same kind of charms as those tied into my hair with red thread. They didn"t jingle as I moved again, my tented fingers against the lip-roof, bootsoles gripping. Steel-toed and steel-heeled, but flexible enough to grab under the ball of the foot, and silent as I touched the wet roughness of rooftop and cursed inwardly.

Now why would you be wearing those, b.i.t.c.h?

I had an idea, and it wasn"t a nice one. So I reached for the copper cuff covering the scar. As soon as I stripped it off, my sensory acuity jacked up into the red and the flashing diamonds of small raindrops. .h.i.t like an army"s feet drumming.

My legs straightened. If any of those charms were Slade"s, another hunter showing up might spook her. And if I went in guns blazin", the way I prefer to, she had a better chance at getting away in the resultant chaos.

So, I would have to be sneaky.

Moments later, the rooftop was empty.

The Trader sat in the driver"s seat, window open and a cigarette fuming in the chill air. The alley enclosed the limo, wet trash drifted in the corners. The Dutch"s back entrance - or one of them, I would bet there were more - didn"t look like anything special. Just an alley.

Except for the rain, it could have been a corner of my city. They don"t all look the same. But they"re a crowd. You have to cut them out, take them one by one, before you can tell them apart.

I weighed my options. I could wait all night, but if she was wearing Slade"s charms, I might not have that long.

He could be dead already, Jill.

The machine in my head, the one trained into me from the very beginning, clicked away. For me the machine"s birth was in the instant Mikhail plucked me from that s...o...b..nk, the .22 vanishing into his pocket. Not tonight, little one, he"d said. I"d decided that very moment, calculating my chances of being good enough for him.

Except at the end, I hadn"t been.

I tensed. But the Trader below just flicked his ash. That"s how I could tell it was a he - the shape of the hand, the blunt fingers. He wasn"t smoking much, just lighting cigarette after cigarette and letting it burn. If it was a superst.i.tion, it was an odd one. If, however, it was a nervous tic, then he had reason to be nervous. Squiring around a h.e.l.lbreed who had hunter charms jingling on her belt.

The machine inside my head was still jotting up percentages. What were the chances that Slade was still alive? They got smaller every minute I sat here and waited. If the *breed thought she was being followed, this stop could be a decoy, but my intuition was tingling so hard I was almost jittery. Like too much coffee from the stands on every corner, jolts going through me. Training clamped down on my nervous system, damping the flood of adrenaline and the nervousness.

It might be too late to save Slade. But it wouldn"t be too late to avenge him.

Avenging isn"t good enough. You know that.

I leaned forward a little, cold water threading its fingers through my hair and kissing the metal of the charms. Kept still and silent, waiting. Just a few minutes more.

You don"t stay - or even become - a hunter without knowing when to buck those percentages. Something told me Slade was still alive. And maybe hoping I"d come get him. If there was enough of him left to hope.

The limo"s engine roused, softly. I tensed, muscle by muscle, heartrate picking up just a little.

Keep your pulse down, milaya. Mikhail"s voice. A fresh jab of pain, spurring me toward action. Quiet and quick, little snake under rock. But not with thunder following you around.

My heart hurt. But when the slice of door appeared in the back of the club and the h.e.l.lbreed stepped out, silver twinkling around her seash.e.l.l hips and a black umbrella opening like a poisonous flower over her carefully-mussed curls, I moved without hesitation. I hung in midair for a bare moment, etheric energy burning in a sphere and rain flashing crystalline all around me, before the drop swallowed me and there was no more time for brooding.

Even if your heart is breaking, you"ve got to get the job done.

I didn"t feel too good about dragging the h.e.l.lbreed into Slade"s house by her curling black hair, but I didn"t have any other place that would serve. She splashed black ichor and rainwater over the worn blue carpet in his front hall. By the time I had her tied in a high chair from the breakfast bar separating the dining room from the kitchen, my left arm was aching high-up from where the humerus had snapped and there was a trail of guck from the battered-in front door to the dining room.

Slade apparently practiced in here, it was hardwood and weapons hung on the wall, not a table in sight. But then, I didn"t have a dining-room table either. Cooking was a low priority. I poured down takeout and liquid courage when I remembered to. Or when my body insisted point-blank.

I tested the silver-coated handcuffs again. Secure. I had extra handcuffs, around her matchstick ankles. Slade had some blessed silver-threaded rope hanging up in neat loops near his AK-47 and a rapier on the wall, and I"d hooked it down while I dragged the b.i.t.c.h in. I took my time tying her up - elbows, knees, everything. She was trying to chew through the gag.

It"s not every day you kidnap a *breed. I wanted no mistakes.

I stepped back, looked at my work. More blood on my face, drying on my torn T-shirt, one leg of my leather pants shredded and flopping and soaked with more blood.

Killing her would have been cleaner than what I was about to do. Disgust bit in under my breastbone, hot and acid. I swallowed it.

Once in New Orleans I"d been up against a ma.s.s of Traders, working the disappearance of a teenage girl. Dropped right into a snake"s nest. The scar on my arm was still fresh, I was new to the jacked-up sensory acuity and power it provided, and I"d had my doubts about the whole d.a.m.n thing, including my survival. Then Slade kicked the door in and from there it was nothing but work. The same kind of work it is every night, for every hunter in the world.

I"d thanked him, but he shrugged it off. For Slade, not looking for me just wasn"t an option. Not diving into the fight, where we were outnumbered twelve to one, wasn"t an option.

I will hold you the line, milaya. Mikhail"s voice, again. The first time I ever went between, the decent into h.e.l.l that makes a hunter what he or she is. The thing that strips away the sh.e.l.l so we can see the twisting. I stay right here, and I hold you the line.

I pushed the thought away. Pulled out my second-biggest knife, and the h.e.l.lbreed stilled. Her eyes were black. No iris, no white, just black from lid to lid. Like tar, swallowing a struggling animal whole.

I lifted the knife a little, and those black eyes widened. But behind the fear - it was just a screen, really - was the calculation. The cold ratlike look. How can I make this work for me? What do I do to get out of this?

"Slade," I said. "Hunter. Taller than me, black hair, silver charms." I let my eyes drop to her waist, where the black dress hadn"t torn and the charms glinted. One flour-pale breast sagged out of the tight top, and sequins dripped when she heaved against the ropes. Her pale leg tensed, slipping out from under the torn skirt like a waxen maggot. "You have one chance." I sounded flat, tired. Almost bored. My blue eye was hot, watching the s.p.a.ce around her for any shimmer of bad intent. "After that, I start cutting."

The last thing I did was cut the silver charms away and stuff them, jangling and spitting with blue sparks, into one of my pockets. The h.e.l.lbreed"s body, what was left of it, slumped, held up only by the ropes, corruption racing through its tissues.

They rot fast, when they go. Bile fought for release in the back of my throat. What I"d just done was in no way clean combat. I swallowed hard, telling myself that at least I"d granted her a quick death once I knew she had no more to tell me.

Her victims hadn"t gotten the same deal. Oh no. They never do.

It was faint comfort. The kind that wasn"t really comfort at all. I looked around at Slade"s weaponry and took what I needed. That"s one thing about a hunter"s house - the weaponry is always logically arranged.

Outside, the rain had turned into a persistent curtain of sleet. How did people live here? Jesus. But it did wash the stink of fear and h.e.l.lbreed ichor off me.

By the time I reached the Dutch again, faint pearly light was staining the eastern horizon. Dawn would come reluctantly, peering through a thick veil of gray cloud. Urgency beat behind my breastbone, but I had no car and no way to get one. No time to stop to call for Were backup - and Weres don"t go up against h.e.l.lbreed, anyway. They aren"t built for it.

No time even to meet up with Slade"s police liaison. What could they do, the cops? Other than get killed going in where I was about to.

Near dawn, and the line at the door hadn"t gone down. It would have been depressing, if I hadn"t been moving too fast for it to matter.

I streaked across the street like a missile, using every erg of inhuman speed I possessed. Took the first bouncer with a short upward strike, bone breaking and the nasal promontory driven into the brain. Even though most Traders go for bizarre body mods married to a scrim of h.e.l.lish beauty, the underlying anatomy is basically the same as the rest of us.

Underneath, we can"t get away from what we are.

I had the second one down and shot twice before the screaming started and the Trader who had minced out to open Narcisa"s limo door burst through the doorway. He looked surprised, didn"t even have time to snarl before the whip cracked across his face and I filled him with silverjacket lead. He dropped like a poleaxed steer; I stretched out in a leap across his body and darted through the open doors.

Each h.e.l.lbreed hole is slightly different. The breed-only ones are mostly underground, the maggots hiding from the sun. The mixed Trader-and-breed ones are usually run by a mover and shaker in the local breed community, and decorated according to that breed"s particular obsessions. I don"t know if "obsessions" is the right word. There"s a *breed in my city who has her place filled with stuffed cats of every size and description - actual taxidermist-stuffed corpses of felines.