Night Shift

Wasn't she?

I waited. Patience, milaya. It is soft and quiet that catches mouse.

Only this mouse had the drop on me, and a gun to boot.

"You've killed to find me. To flush me out of safety." Cenci's voice was calm and pleasant, with only the tinkling wrongness of it to tell me hellbreed. I could sense it now, the contamination in the air around her. Silver shifted in my hair, heating up, blue light ru

"The Were's being chased," I said to the street. "He'll be killed mercifully. You, however, are a whole different ball of wax." Two children. And Jimmy Cheung, you bitch. Cleaning up? What kind of game are you playing?

The silence behind me took on a predatory cast, the pause of a shark in the moment just after blood hits the water and right before frenzy. Galina's building thrummed underneath me, quivering with unease. Slowly waking up, catching the current of bloodlust passing between my unprotected back and the hellbreed behind me.

"I should kill you," Navoshtay Siv Cenci whispered. "We don't want trouble. I just wanted to be left alone to do what I have to do. Is that so much to ask?"

Left alone? "When your father's Navoshtay Niv Arkady? Alone doesn't happen, sweetcheeks. You're 'breed. You know that."

"So you're going to do his dirty work." Did her voice actually break? Amazing. I gathered myself. My right hand curled loosely around the whip-handle.

Keep talking, bitch. I'm a few seconds away from changing your whole religion for good. "I don't do dirty work. I avenge my people. Like the rookie cop you put in the hospital." He'll never be right again, even with therapy and the best of care. You ruined a life, and you did it so easily. I eased my weight forward onto the balls of my feet, a millimeter at a time.

"They shot at him." She dismissed it, I could almost envision her shrugging. "I was quick, I was merciful as I could be. But you, you're doing my father's dirty work." Yes, a definite break in her sweet, corrupt voice. Did she use it to hook her prey, like Arkady used his black, black eyes?

I rose fully to my feet, the flesh on my back crawling with the knowledge that a bullet might be coming any moment. If she was aiming for my head, this might all be over very quickly. I would find out if hunters really went to Hell when they finally got unlucky. "I'm doing what I should, to protect the citizens of my city. I'm a hunter, hellspawn. It's what I do."

Another thought slid through my head. She's not shooting me. Why? She's not acting like a hellbreed.

Fat sizzling drops began to patter down dispiritedly. They made stinging quarter-size dollops on the dusty, hot rooftop. Sweat pricked under my arms and at the small of my back, dried blood crackling as my clothes moved on the breeze. My fingers shifted slightly, ever so slightly, on the whip handle.

"I told you not to move." Cool, now. She'd made up her mind what she was going to do. Maybe I'd been premature in thinking she wasn't acting like a hellspawn. Maybe she was just playing with me, cat with mouse.

In other words, bad luck for you, Jill. But if you're a mouse, you're a mouse with claws. I polished my very best fuck you tone and flung it at her. "What are you going to do? If you shoot me, other hunters will take my place. Your daddy's in town, and he's pissed off because you stole his Were toy. There's a major incident shaping up over him even having a Were toy—"

"He isn't my father's!" she screamed. "He's mine."

I spun, diving, the whip flashing free and my left-hand gun clearing leather. The whip's ribbon curled through the air, screaming, and struck across her face as she hung in midair, claws outstretched, her own gun falling unheeded to the rooftop as mine spoke. Time turned to gelatin, closing around me as I moved. Black hellbreed ichor flew in a flattening arc before she smashed into me, catching me in midair and throwing us both over the edge.

Wind whistled, and we hung in freefall, the silver in my hair spitting and crackling. She struck me across the cheekbone, a good punch if she'd had all or even some of her weight behind it, a hot gush of pain as her claws buried themselves in my chest, tangling in my ribs before she could jerk her wrist down and spill my guts. Back arching, scream bursting through my blood-slick lips, we fell in a thrashing tangle of tortured air and a sudden booming as the protections on Galina's house woke in a sheet of blinding crimson and orange flame.

She sure doesn't act like a pregnant woman. Maybe it's hormones. The thought was tinged with deep screaming hilarity over a well of panic that training shoved aside.

Cenci thrashed, but I had one hand fisted in her long platinum hair and I brought the gun up, pistol-whipping her across the face.

Falling and Fighting 101: brace someone's head when you're bouncing a gun off them. It hurts more.

More black ichor flew, spattering my skin in stinging drops. I got in another two shots on the way down before we hit pavement, a snapping in the structures of my skeleton—again—and her claws were torn free, a hot gush of blood following them. No wonder I need steak. Another flash of a thought, there and gone in a moment that paradoxically seemed to last forever. I'm losing iron left and right.

Cenci rolled free, dazed and shaking her head. The smell of scorching rose, and Galina's protections flamed again, dilating like a camera shutter. A scream of toasted air boiled away from the shop, the plate-glass window in front bowing and making a wobbling noise.

The sky opened its floodgates on us both.

I rolled, get away get away, shaking my right arm out as the scar boiled with acid, desire-laced pain and shot a jolt of power up my arm, sinking into veins and jacking through my system like a needle-load of something deadly. A sharp clarity bolted through me, I made it to my knees with both guns out, the whip slithering along the pavement with its metal bits tinkling as it landed, dropped like a bad habit.

My first two bullets caught her, but she collided with me again. There was no technique, it was sheer blind rage and overwhelming strength—which is a hellbreed's downfall.

They get so used to bullying humans around, they don't use their strength effectively. Hunters are trained to never stop thinking about how to most efficiently fuck up the nightsider giving us trouble right now.

Reflex had loosened my knees and let go of my right-hand gun. I socked my hip into her midriff, bootsoles squealing on pavement and a long trail of sparks hanging in midair behind her, and I didn't need to do much, just grab a fistful of her and shove to deflect a critical millimeter or two, her blind rush providing all the impetus necessary to throw her directly into Galina's plate-glass window.

BOOM.

A wall of concussive force slammed outward, tossing me like a rag doll across the street and into the brick facing opposite. Heat bloomed, and superheated air broke the sound barrier, thunder rolling down the street. I slid down to the pavement, coughing and retching, and heard stumbling footsteps as the hellbreed fled.

Galina's defenses settled, rumbling through the pavement like a subway. Sanctuary rule numero uno: do not throw yourself at the Sanctuary's walls. The protections respond without any conscious effort, and the response is… energetic, to say the least.

Other footsteps, softer ones, approaching me at what seemed a very slow rate next to the rapid pitter-patter of little hellbreed feet. Noise returned through the white buzzing of my dazed ears. Rain pounded my skin.

"— ogodjillareyou—"

I am getting really tired of being flung around. I shook my head. Warm trickles of blood slid down my neck from my ears, dripped from my nose. I blinked more warm wetness out of my eyes. The pain came then, a great rolling breaker of it as my body coped with the damage.