Redemption Alley

“Mom…” He shivered, mumbling. The nurse—Concepcion, I remembered her name with another one of those wrenching mental efforts—merely glanced at me. They see a lot of me at Mercy, and they’ve long since stopped caring what I do or look like as long as I don’t shoot anyone.

Sometimes they get disappointed, but they’re used to that in the ER.

“Kismet?” His tone was too dreamy, and I glanced at Co

She shrugged, brushing me aside with one soft shoulder as she handed his wallet and badge over. Her shoes squeaked on the linoleum. “Shock. Head wounds are messy. And this thing. Looks clean, but the edges are ragged. Madre, you bring in some interesting things, no?”

“No other wounds?” Raw disbelief married to unwilling hope inside my chest. I hate those pairings. They usually end up badly. The edges of the leg wound weren’t discolored, and held no trademark candy-sweet corruption. He wasn’t poisoned, thank God.

“They only wanted to play with him before Shen came down.” Irene tilted her head, a tendril of that fantastical hair brushing her flour-pale cheek. “I tried to—”

Leon made a restless movement, as if he couldn’t believe she was stupid enough to open her mouth. “Speak when you’re spoken to, Trader.”

“How soon can I get him out of here?” I gave Co

She paled, but gamely rolled her eyes. “Señora, this needs stitching. And he’s in shock—”

“We can fix that. Get some sutures.”

“I am no doctor—”

“Now, Co

“Galina’s?” Leon made another restless twitch, and I glanced at him.

“Of course.” There’s no place else in the city I can be sure he’s safe, not after tangling with Shen like that. Jesus. I shot her hair. She’ll really be after me now, and I have to question this Trader.

Hard.

The nagging sense of something not-quite-right returned, but I didn’t have the leisure to ferret it out.

The Trader chose that moment to pipe up again. “I brought him here, I was worried—”

I barely saw Leon clear leather, his Smith & Wesson suddenly pointed at her forehead. The knife in his other hand pressed its flat, silver-loaded blade against one milky shoulder, and the Trader shuddered. A slight sizzle; the silver ran with blue sparks. Under the smell of Lysol and human pain endemic in emergency rooms, the sweet-pork foulness of burning Hell-tainted flesh cut sharp, a serrated edge.

Concepcion gasped.

“Shut the fuck up,” Leon said, conversationally. “You one small step from being sent to face Judgment, Trader. Got that?”

No flush crept up through Irene’s sick pallor, but a greenish tinge bloomed along her cheeks. Her jaw worked, her gaze shivering back and forth between Leon and me, but otherwise not a muscle flickered. She nodded, and my fingers eased off the gun butt. My gun remained in its holster.

Why would a Trader help Carp? There must be an advantage in it for her. Of course, not having me kill her is an advantage. Am I really that scary?

When he peeled the knife away, an angry line of blisters boiled through her skin. They weren’t reddened either, but tainted with green like the pale underside of a poison-bearing frog.

I wondered if she would bleed green, and didn’t want to find out. What had she bargained for, to end up like this?

Not your problem, Jill.

I could sense no sorcery hanging on her, and she didn’t appear to have much in the way of invulnerability or superstrength. Of course, I hadn’t tried to kill her yet, so that didn’t mean much. “Sutures, Co

“Si, señora.” Concepcion didn’t waste further time arguing, just brushed past me and pushed the curtain aside.

“Jill?” Carp sounded even more dreamy and disco

“Right here.” I did something that surprised me—I picked up his hand where it lay discarded against the remains of his slacks. Whatever had made the hole in his leg had chewed right through his clothes; thank God it hadn’t hit the femoral artery.

His fingers were limp, cold and clammy. I squeezed them. “What were you doing there, Carper?”

“Waitress. The waitress.” His eyes rolled up into his head and he shivered. “Teeth. They all had teeth.”

No shit, Carp. They all do. My pager went off, the slight soundless buzz against my hip a reminder of how vulnerable I was. I fished it out of its padded pocket with my free hand and glanced at the number.

It was familiar. Someone paging me from my own house, most probably Theron. He was likely to be climbing the walls by now.

Concepcion reappeared with handfuls of medical supplies. “I should not do this, señora. He needs to be admitted.”

“He’ll be admitted all right, Co

“There are more policia here,” she whispered, shoving the crackling plastic into my hands. Sterile packaging, each tool in its own little pouch. “They are asking if any of their kind has been admitted. Go.”

“Oh, Christ.” Would this ever end? “All right. We’ll go out the back. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let your patient die.”

She shrugged. “Tonight I have many patients, not just one.”

“And you can’t remember this particular one, right?” I handed over a fifty-dollar bill—hey, she had kids to feed, I knew that much—and nodded to Leon, shoving the packets in assorted pockets of my trenchcoat. “Help him. I’ll watch the Trader.” A few moments’ work had a tourniquet above the hole in Carp’s leg. He wasn’t bleeding badly but moving wasn’t going to be a fun experience for him. Leon got him up off the bed, and I heard raised voices toward the Admissions section of the ER.

The Trader stared at me, her lips parted. All of her had a matte finish except her lips and the dark holes of her eyes. In dim light, or nightclub shine and flicker, she was probably a sight to behold. Here under the fluorescent wash, she just looked tubercular, but with a green undertone instead of consumptive flush.

“Get moving.” I pointed. “You’re still alive because you brought him here. Don’t make me reconsider.”

Chapter Twenty

Where have you been?” Galina got that much out before she saw Carp, who was pale as death and hanging onto Leon like a shipwrecked man clinging to drifting wood. His injured leg wouldn’t work quite right. She moved forward to help him without missing a beat. “Goddammit, Jill, you just missed Theron.”

Dammit. I made another one of those gut-wrenching physical efforts, trying to prioritize. There were too many things to do. “Is he okay?”

“He said something about your house infected with hellbreed—oh, my goodness. Hello, Leon. Get him in here, lay him on the table. Open up that cupboard on the left—”

I started unpacking medical supplies from my pockets. “Infected with hellbreed?”

“He barely got out in time. Says there’s at least six there. And they’ve found more scurf—” Galina’s eyes widened as she took in the Trader, but she didn’t mention it, just helped Leon get Carp onto a table in the small room off the main showroom of her store. The table, an old butcher-block number matching the one upstairs in her kitchen, had legs carved with the winged serpent of the Sancs and a system of straps that could hold down a pain-maddened hunter or a dangerous, untreated victim of a Possessor. The old thick leather straps also sheathed thin flexible silver wires, blessed and knotted specifically to constrain harm and evil. Coupled with a Sanc’s traditional protections in the house walls, this was an excellent place for stopgap exorcisms, interrogating reticent Traders, or engaging in a little trauma surgery when a hunter’s life gets interesting.