Redemption Alley

One thing is for sure, there is no sacredness left in those walls.

The heat of the day had run out like the heat of the Beam in my belly. I crouched, and considered.

If I went in my usual way, guns blazing, there would go my advantage in being thought dead. On the other hand, if Carp was in there he needed all the help he could get. And hellbreed would know better than to think a burning car would do me in.

The thought that any hellbreed would know that one punk scarecrow wouldn’t be enough to do me in, either, was not particularly comforting. Something about this was stinking even worse than the mess left on my floor. That was going to be a pain in the ass to remove.

Why are you dilly-dallying, Jill? If Carp steps inside that place, you’ll have to do more than bleed to get him out.

I weighed every possible alternative. Cold hard logic said to just keep watch, see what happened, and return once I’d developed some other leads—with the benefit of whatever cops involved in this thinking I was dead, so I didn’t have to worry about more bullets flying my way from that quarter, at least. It was the way I was trained to think, a straightforward totting up of averages and percentages, the greater good balanced against personal cost.

Screw that. Carper’s in there.

You don’t get to be a hunter without knowing when to buck the odds.

I rose to my feet slowly, breathing. Just like burning a hellbreed hole, Jill. Go fast and deadly, you don’t have Saul with you this time. You did it on your own before he showed up. My fingers crept to the leather cuff over the scar; I undid the buckles and peeled it away.

Cold air mouthed my skin with hundreds of vicious little wet lips. I let out a soft breath, every muscle tightening as the welter of sensation spilled through nerve endings already pulled taut with worry and stress.

It’s gotten stronger. Hasn’t it? Oh, God.

The cold machine inside my head jotting down percentages replied that if it had, that was good; it would give me an edge I sorely needed. I would worry about the cost later. Story of my life. I was mortgaging myself by inches—the most dangerous way to do it.

Well, I never did like doing things by halves. Go for the quick tear, Jill.

The rooftop quivered slightly, the world flexing around me. I was pulling on etheric force, the scar moaning and thundering against my wrist. Too much power for me to really control, it wasn’t obeying my will. A piece of my own flesh, turning traitor. My aura sparkled in the ether, a sea-urchin of light.

I leapt out into free air, physics bending and the pavement smoking under a sudden application of strain. I hit the street like a ton of bricks, bleeding off some of the etheric force boiling through me and leaving behind a star-shaped pattern of cracks; streaked through a gap in late-night traffic toward the door—a massive, iron-bound oaken monstrosity, guarded by two bouncers just this side of gorilla with flat-shining Trader eyes behind smoked sunglasses and the taint of Hell swirling in their once-human auras.

A waitress named Irene. But first, we get Carper, and we make a statement.

The only question was whether or not to shoot the bouncers. I was already going too fast; I hit the door with megaton force, sharp-spiked edges of my aura fluorescing into the visible as blue sparks crackled off every piece of silver jewelry I carried. Oak splintered, iron buckled, and my boots thudded home, I rode the door down like a surfboard, my knees bent when it hit the parquet inside; I was already leaping, a compact ball of bloodlust and action, my coat snapping like a flag in a high breeze.

The restaurant was down a short hall behind swinging soundproofed doors. A ski

Glass eyes regarded me, shining in the soft light. There were at least a hundred stuffed cats, maybe more, draped in the greenery, their fur brushed and glossy and their fangs exposed. From little calico housecats to sleek stuffed panthers, even four or five (I shivered to see them) cougars arranged artistically on branches with bark too rough and shiny to be real.

The place was stuffed with hellbreed and Traders. Linen-draped tables in nooks shrouded by false plants clustered around a wide glassy dance floor, currently hosting a set of contortionists in spangled costumes—three unbreasted girls and two stick-thin boys, tall and stretched-out, all with blank dusted eyes and empty loose mouths—writhing around each other. They didn’t even pause when I shot the maître d’.

Murmured conversation stopped. The maître d’ collapsed, half his head blown away and the sudden sharp stink of hellbreed death exploding with the oatmeal of his brain.

I eyed them all, they watched me. The scar thundered and prickled, ru

Forks hung, paused in midair. The fountain plashed, sequins on the contortionists’ costumes scratched, and the sounds of clinking and cooking came from the open kitchen, set along the back wall. Later on in the night it would convert to a bar, and ranked bottles of liquor glowed mellow behind a counter where hellbreed bellied up, the old-fashioned equipment of a soda fountain gleaming as it dispensed booze—and other liquids and powders.

I sca

Great. “A waitress.” I kept my tone conversational. “Named Irene.” One thumb clicked back the hammer on a gun, the snick very loud. “Now.”

A clattering crash, my eyes flicked toward the sound. A black-haired Trader, as thin and beautiful as the rest of them, had dropped her tray. The short black skirt on her French-maid uniform made a starched sound as she backed up under my gaze, blundering into a knot of hellbreed and Traders who scattered in a flash of uniforms—harlequins, maids, one female in a super-retro Batgirl costume—what the hell, I thought, and promptly dismissed it.

I took two steps forward before a table full of Traders erupted into motion and things got seriously interesting—but not before I got a flash of hellbreed and Traders parting to show a slumped body on a table, blood bright red and human decorating the linen, and Carp’s blue eyes wide open with terror and glazed with either death or unconsciousness.

Four shots, whip cracking across a Trader’s face and snapping back, I kicked; my steel-toed boot caught the snarling hellbreed just under the chin with a sound like thin glass wrapped in bread dough when you drop a hammer on it. Clearing a hellbreed hole is messy, even with heavy-duty sorcery and silverjacket lead. Thin black ichor coated the floor, not yet ankle-deep but we were going to get there.

I landed on the table, heels slamming down bare inches from Carp’s head on either side. Stood over him, gun in one hand, whip in the other. Spared a quick glance down—his eyes had half-closed, and his mouth wet-flickered, closing, opened again.

He’s alive. Thank God. Now to get him out of here.

The world froze between one moment and the next, every hellbreed and Trader in the place dropping to the ground like they’d all been caught with cyanide Kool-Aid. The doors from the kitchen swung open, a wave of coldness pouring through the room, and the tinkling of the fountain began to seriously get on my fucking nerves.