Night Shift

It was oddly comforting to hear him say it.

"It's not the falling I'm worried about. It's the climbing back up out of between." I eyed the coffee cup longingly, heat from the mug burrowing into my fingers. Handed it back to him. "Let's do it before I lose my nerve."

"I can't imagine that happening," he muttered as he turned away.

Ridiculously, I was hard-pressed not to smile.

I rarely used this narrow room, as the padlock and the chain on the door proved. It was little more than a closet set to the side of my practice-room, the empty wall opposite that had held Mikhail's sword lying under a rectangle of thin sunlight. I made a mental note to pick up the sunsword from Galina's and led tire Were through the door. Darkness swallowed us, broken only by a faint silver glow.

The altar was at the other end of the room, and the walls were covered with an intaglio of spray paint, blue and black, protection-symbols from almost every religion since the dawn of time. Fat lines of paint shifted like tentacles, responding to my presence, and the air hummed as my eyes adapted, pupils flaring wide.

Cut into the hardwood floor was a double circle, spiky symbols carved between the i

"Huh." Saul peered over my shoulder, his heat burning through his T-shirt and mine. "Nice."

If you think so. My fingers tightened on the knife I carried, the only weapon I had on me. I felt damn near naked. "Mikhail did it. As a present." And also so I don't have to use a church to go between, since most churches are tactical nightmares when it comes to defense and I'm vulnerable while I do this.

It was the last present he'd ever given me. The warehouse, and this little room, hours of work and love I hadn't thanked him properly for. Three days later, he'd been dead, bleeding out through slashed jugulars in a cheap hotel room as the Sorrows bitch he'd fallen in love with fled with his amulet and I kicked in the door just a quarter-minute too late, unable to save him.

Oh, Mikhail. The familiar bite of shame turned bitter in my throat.

"He must have spent some time on it." Saul pushed past me, lingering for a little longer than absolutely necessary as he touched me, and stepped away to examine the circle, giving it his full attention. There was barely enough room for it, but it was complete, the carved lines deep and still fresh.

A swift pain lanced through my heart. I could remember Mikhail with his arm over my shoulders. Is for you, milaya. Use wisely. Some day old Mischa might not be here to protect his little snake under rock, eh?

I missed him. I missed him so much, even the slaps and the kicks as he trained me. Even the fear in the middle of the night. You must love your teacher as deeply as you hate him; the love will bring you back from Hell while your teacher holds the line. That love will also save you if you lose your way in the shifting forests of suicide and screaming that are the border between Hell and our world of flesh and light. The love is necessary.

The hate is to make you strong. Out in the wilds of the nightside, there is no second chance, and your teacher has to make sure you can survive on your own. It's bad to lose a fellow hunter, there are few enough of us as it is. Losing an apprentice is much, much worse.

So it's love, and hate, and need. All twisted together and made into a rope, a bond, a chain. A fetter each hunter wears with pride, and the reason why we don't lie to each other. You can't lie to someone else who's been loved like that.

No matter what secret your teacher keeps from you. No matter how deep the betrayal.

"He did," I whispered. He spent weeks on this. Did he know he wouldn't be here forever? Sure he did. He was already old, and he had to know…

Had he known the Sorrows bitch would turn on him? He had to have known, Mikhail taught me everything I knew about the Sorrows and their worship of the Elder Gods, their Houses where incense hung heavy in the air and women became hive-queens, their collective energies focused on bringing back the Elders through the veils that kept them from the «real» world. I had to go to Hutch only because I hadn't smelled one before.

Mikhail had to have known. So why had he trusted her? Why hadn't he told me?

Deal with what you have in front of you now, Jill. Quit stalling.

Saul stepped into the bare space in the middle of the pentacle. I inhaled, deeply. Then I reached up and unclasped the ruby from my throat. Its sharp edges dug into my sweating palm as I slid past the Were. I stepped delicately over the double circle and turned to face him, my back to the altar. His face was shadowed, only the glitter of eyes and the glint of silver in his hair reflecting the spent light from the pentacle below.

I held up the chain. The ruby dangled, bloody sparks drifting in its depths as it sensed the event looming toward me. "This is my line back." My voice sounded normal, except for the pain riding each word. "It'll get slippery, and it'll fight you. Don't let go. If you let go, I'm lost."

He nodded, solemn. Silver winked in one of his braids, his fingers brushed mine as he took the gem, its chain dipping and swaying. "I won't."

Jill. Time's wasting. I turned my back on him, walked the four steps to the altar. It was bluestone, quarried in Britain somewhere and shipped here on the hush-hush by one of Mikhail's friends in "exports." A simple thigh-high rectangle of stone, it resonated as I laid my hand on it, cold burning my fingertips. "O my Lord God," I whispered. "Do not forsake me when I face Hell's legions. In your name…"

That's the trouble. I'm not doing this in God's name. I'm doing this for me.

I hopped up on the altar and spent a few moments arranging myself. The chill of stone reached even through the leather pants, and my T-shirt was no barrier to it at all. I didn't wear my weapons, except the one small knife with a leather-wrapped handle. I lay on my back, arranged my booted feet carefully, and wriggled my head a little until the silver charms didn't dig so hard into my skull.

My left hand was pale, my apprentice-ring glittering as I lifted it. The knife-hilt was in my right hand. I swallowed dryly.

Don't do it, Jill. Don't You know what this is like. Don't do it. Find some other way.

There was no other way. If there was, I wouldn't be here.

Determination took shape under my skin. A spark crackled from the ring, a point of lightning-white in the gloom. The spray-painted sigils ran wetly on the walls, whispering like bruised fingers rubbing each other. By now the door of the room would be invisible from the outside, sealed shut. Inside, womblike dark was broken only by the eerie glow of the silver pounded into the pentacle's lines.

Go for the quick tear, Jill.

My breath whooshed out past my teeth. I set the knife-edge against my palm and cut.

The smell of blood exploded in my nose. Bile scorched the back of my throat. I dropped the knife to the side, heard it clatter behind the altar, and whipped my left hand out as the scar tightened on my wrist, rumbling a low dissatisfied note.

An arrow of etheric force from my palm smashed into the ruby, an attraction older than time. Blood calling to a bloody, blood-sensitized gem. My back arched, and the rope of force tautened.

Saul had caught the other end. It strained, and I sensed him going down to one knee inside the pentacle, his fist tight around the ruby and blood—my blood, transferred through space—welling slick and hot between his fingers. He leaned back against the pull, and I dropped—