Night Shift

I'd just paid Perry, I was going to use it.

The whip uncoiled, each individual flechette burning itself into my retinas as metal flashed, the small sonic booms of the crack like a tattoo against my hellbreed-sharp ears.

Improbable became flat-out impossible, gravel shifted under my boots, and I missed.

It was a woman with the full-lipped beauty of the damned, wide liquid dark eyes and a cloud of platinum hair. Her eyes were rimmed in red and her skin flushed from the anathema of the sun, and she wore long sleeves and jeans, the sunglasses she'd been peering through knocked off her face as she scrabbled away.

She skittered back, showing white teeth in a snarl, and spun, her heels digging in as Harp rocketed past me, driving her shoulder into the other woman's midriff. I heard the coughing roar of a panther behind me, and Dominic thundered past me too, engaging with the hellbreed. He had shifted, the sunlight gilding his dark hide as he leapt, with all the grace and authority of a Were. They are a little bigger than humans in human form, and a little bigger than normal in their animal forms, and when a Were shifts quickly like that he means business.

"No!" I yelled over the noise, yanking the whip back. "She's hellbreed goddammit stop it!"

It was too late. Blood exploded and a high cat-whine screeched across my senses. I was still moving forward, dropping the whip, my fingers closing around knife-hilts, metal singing free of the sheath as I uncoiled in a kick, my boot thudding solidly into Dominic's side. The panther curled away, snarling, and I promptly forgot about him, twisting in midair to collide with the spitting growling mass that was Harp and the hellbreed.

Who was out here in full sunlight, in the middle of the day, at the site of a rogue Were kill.

Or something that had been made to look like a rogue Were kill. Something that had been altered.

I took a hit low on the side, pain spiking up my ribs like oil against the skin, and heard something snap. Harp was flung away, and I drove the knife in my left hand forward, a flickering slash meant to come under the ribs and open up the hellbreed's abdominal cavity.

She twisted, snarling, and the world turned over, the side of my head ringing with pain. Gravel boiled up and I made it to my knees, panting, scooped up my left-hand knife. No blood or ichor on it. Warm wetness spilled into my eyes, ran down my neck. I blinked it away, irritably.

I'd missed again. The sun beat mercilessly down, and I heard the retreating drumbeat of the hellbreed's footsteps. Filled my lungs with the spoiled, delicious, unique smell of a hellbreed, let the smell sink below the conscious level. Without the other reek of death and Were, it was easier.

I could track her now, if I could get close enough to break through whatever masking-sorcery she was using to cover her scent. My head felt light, strange, stuffed with cotton.

A low whining sound of pain intruded. I gained my feet, shaking gravel out of my hair, heard shouts and scrabbling below. Harp was bleeding badly, and Dominic had shifted back, rumbling the low throbbing distressed note of a cat Were whose mate was injured.

Goddamit. Fucking around with a hellbreed can get a Were killed. I decided now was not the time to tell him so.

They were scrabbling up the slope behind us. Dominic glanced up, the lambent glow in his gaze warning me. I could either pursue the hellbreed, who was too far away and probably had enough breath to cloak herself now, or I could defuse Dominic and keep the humans away from him. He might not hurt anyone, but he'd make them awful uncomfortable, and forensic techs don't deal well with that kind of discomfort. They like more conventional uncertainties, probabilities, percentages.

Not the crazy logic of the nightside when it erupts in daytime. Most human brains stall when presented with something like that.

I blinked away more wetness, heard liquid pattering on dry dusty ground, and ignored it. The copper reek of blood boiled up.

I swore viciously, shook more gravel out of my coat, and edged past him, not turning my back. Harp would be all right, she'd already stopped bleeding but lay pale and gasping-still. Weres don't often come away breathing from tangling with hellbreed.

Especially hellbreed who don't need night's cover to come out and cause havoc. That meant she was high up the chain of Hell's citizens, capable of doing a lot of damage and possibly unfettered by feudal obligation. Was a hellbreed looking to horn in on Perry's territory?

You know, I almost wouldn't mind that. Even if he is the devil I know.

I almost didn't see it. A thin glint caught my eye, and I bent down, picking out a long platinum strand. It twisted around a red-gold curling hair, twined tight, and curled in on itself even as I watched, the hairs tangling together.

More wetness fell in my eyes, and I couldn't seem to take a deep breath.

Curiouser and curiouser. Nothing about this is making sense.

Blood sliding out from the ragged claw gashes along my ribs pattered on dry dusty ground in an almost-painless gout. The world turned over, and I pitched headfirst off the drop and into the converging cops.

Chapter Twelve

Mikhail's hand spread against my belly, calluses scraping. The carved chunk of ruby at his throat glimmered with its own secret life, and sweat dried on his forehead. "What is best way to kill utt'huruk, you think?" He hadn't smoked a cigarette yet, so the day's lessons weren't over.

I lay on my back, looking up at the skylight full of afternoon gold. A hard nugget of silver pressed into the back of my head; I shifted so the charm wasn't digging in. Mikhail had started giving me the charms one by one, mostly when I'd performed well, and I'd taken to tying them in my hair with red thread, just like he did.

Hey, anything helps.

"Holy water? After you've punctured the shell?" I thought about it some more as his fingers tapped my belly idly, obviously unsatisfied with my answer. Of course. I'd been caught assuming again; assuming Assyrian bird-demons had a shell, like hellbreed. You can't ever assume, so I asked the question I should have asked straight-up. "What's the weakness in their anatomy?"

He shifted a little under the covers. The air conditioning was on, but even so sweat cooled on my skin and my body sparked pleasantly. Four years ago I'd've called Mikhail an easy dime—street lingo for a John who wants vanilla, straight-up, and doesn't get nasty with you. They're also called milks—as in, you milk them and go home.

He was my teacher, not a John, and falling into bed with him felt more than natural. Here was no sparring and no hurt. Here, in this queen-sized, hip-high monstrosity covered in threadbare red velvet, with the iron lamps standing guard on either side, was the place where I became more and more thoroughly what Mikhail made me.

To hear Mikhail talk, it was normal for two reasonably heterosexual people so close in such extreme circumstances to end up in bed. It was even to be encouraged, the sex made the bond between teacher and student stronger and balanced out the harshness of training.

I didn't care. I just liked that… well…

Me. Of all people. He'd chosen me.

"There is seam that runs through their heads." His fingers left off my belly, touched my forehead and ran down my nose. "Like so. Hit them there, and head explodes. Very dramatic."

I laughed, pushed my hair back with my right hand. Mikhail caught my wrist and turned it, looking at the bracelet of pale skin. I'd taken to wearing a copper cuff over the mark.