Redemption Alley

“Why the scurf, though?” Leon shuddered. “There has to be more. Has to be.”

“Getting rid of evidence? And it’s a good way to keep me occupied and off their back. Not to mention if someone has a grudge against me.”

“And the cops trying to kill you?”

“Probably without the hellbreed’s knowledge, whoever it is. If the ’breed knew they’d have ’em use silver bullets and I’d’ve been in much worse shape.” My own shudder ran below the surface of my skin. “Let’s finish checking and get the hell out of here.”

“You got it, darlin’.”

Checking the other fridges was a matter of minutes and nausea. Leon was definitely green by the time we finished, and I wasn’t far behind.

I stepped out of the last fridge, my eyes on the pen opposite, its gaping door. The padlock was busted—probably Weres. If anyone survived this mess, the Weres would test them for scurf, and probably try to get them home.

Not that it mattered much. Whoever was locked in these cages would have nightmares the rest of their lives, survivor’s guilt, and probably be back over the border within a month working at a low-paying dead-end job because their family had to eat.

Jesus.

“I’ve heard of some goddamn stupid things in my life, but this takes the cake and the whole fuckin’ picnic too. What sort of shortsighted idiot would ship scurf into a clean territory? Even hellbreed ain’t that stupid.” Leon touched a busted padlock, watched as the whole chain-link cage shivered.

I closed the fridge door. The sound of it clicking shut was loud in the stillness. Something still isn’t right here. Something—

I’d opened my mouth, but Leon and I both froze, our eyes meeting. I didn’t have to ask if he’d heard it.

A footstep, sliding and soft, and definitely not human. Instinct placed it—around the corner of the L, someone had come in the main door and was picking their way, quietly, over the rubble.

I slid a gun easily from its holster. Drew silence over myself like a veil, and started considering my options just as other sliding sounds told me our guest, whoever and whatever it was, had brought company.

Chapter Twenty-two

Down!” I yelled, and Leon dropped as I opened fire, silver-laden bullets punching through the shell of the third hellbreed. Two down, six to go, and things weren’t looking good even before the whip crackled; Leon rolled and I already knew he was going to be too slow, too slow as the ’breed snarled, thin black ichor splattering in a high arc as I brought the whip around, the strike uncoiling from my hip as chain-link rattled under my boots. Not the best footing in the world, but the chance bounce propelled Leon on his way as I leapt, my focus narrowing to keeping them off him.

It was a mistake, one I realized even as I was in the air, committed to the movement and turning to present as small a target as possible, my boot solidly cracking against the ’breed’s already-lacerated face. Kinetic force transferred, I stopped dead and dropped down to land splay-footed. The brunet ’breed went flying back, crashing into two of his fellows with a sound like sides of beef flung together hard enough to crack steel-reinforced bones.

I caught my balance and heard Leon scrambling to his feet behind me. My lips peeled away from my teeth, a silent snarl that shook the whole building, light fixtures swaying and making the shadows do a knife-edged dance.

No. It wasn’t my snarl. It was someone else’s, thrumming subsonic like tectonic plates grinding together.

“Hold!” The command spilled darkness like wine through the air, and the ’breed all dropped, cringing, flattened under a wave of Hell-tainted power. “Stay your hand, avenging one. We are not your enemies.”

Of all the things you could say, that’s probably the biggest, fattest lie. I froze. I knew that voice.

“Shit,” Leon whispered, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

The whip coiled, stowed safely in a half-second. I had both guns out and trained on the corner when he stepped into view, his cream-pale hair catching the light. It wasn’t the hip super-short cut he’d sported last time I saw him but slightly longer, just as expensively trimmed, and it still did nothing for his expressively bland face.

Most of the damned are beautiful. The owner of the Monde Nuit is merely average, and that dries up the spit in your mouth like desert sun dries up a single lone drop of water.

Especially when his eyes are eaten alive by an indigo stain swallowing the whites, leaving the irises burning gasflame-blue. Eyes should not look like that.

He held his hands up, a classic hey man I’m harmless stance that didn’t fool me for a second. His suit was pristine, gray wool instead of his usual white linen, sharply creased in all the right places. His shoulders were a touch broader than I remembered, and something new glimmered at his throat—a metal chain, with a small gem set in iron filigree flashing under the swinging, dancing light. It was a red-tinted diamond, and I would have bet everything I owned that it held a flaw like a screaming face in its blood-gleaming depths.

I swallowed dryness, settled my guns—one covering him, the other one covering the group of hellbreed, spilled or standing, he’d brought with him. “What the fuck are you doing here, Pericles?”

His hands dropped a fraction, the indigo swirling through his eyes like ink through water. “Why, my darling Kiss, helping you. What else would I be doing?”

“There’s hellbreed stain upstairs, and this is right up your alley. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t ventilate you now. Didn’t you learn anything from last time?” Calm down, Jill. You’re sounding like a fishwife instead of a goddamn hunter. Chill out.

He didn’t shift his weight, but all the bloodless shark’s attention was on me. “Oh, I learned, my sweet. It was a truly regrettable series of events, but so far in the past. I think we have other problems now, don’t you?” A slight, expressive movement, indicating the shambles all around us, and the indigo stain retreated from the whites of his eyes, like the tide along a wreckage-filled beach. “You have not been keeping a clean house.”

“You have ten seconds to tell me what the fuck you’re doing here, Perry. And even less than that to convince me you don’t have anything to do with this.” My guns clicked, a nice piece of theater. Leon’s breathing evened out, and I knew without looking that he was covering the other ’breed. The one I’d shot lay moaning on the floor, and Perry didn’t spare him a single glance.

“This place is mine; it belongs to me. Why would I invite such filth in?” A shadow of distaste crossed his blandness. “They foul the carpet and stain the very air. Give me some credit for business sense, as well. There is no profit in having such things contaminating my territory—as I would have told you, had you bothered to speak to me.”

Don’t, Jill. He’s just trying to get inside your head. The scar chuckled wetly, my pulse hammering as a wave of heat jolted up my arm. He liked doing that, fiddling with my internal thermostat when he was in the same room.

Another of those physical efforts to regain control and get my priorities straight made stress-sweat prickle along the curve of my lower back. The guns, however, did not waver. “You’re just as much an infection as scurf, hellbreed. Start talking.”

He opened his mouth—probably to taunt me—and visibly reconsidered, calculations crossing his face like the shadows of airplanes over baking sand. “I have been engaged in finding the source of this… corruption… for some time. No hellbreed claims to know about it, and each small marker I sent to be my eyes vanished. Three promising young ones gone without a trace, and I have decided to take personal interest in the matter. I have traced the corruption this far, and arrive to find you here and the work of Weres all over the walls—and the smell of my last protégé’s untimely death upstairs.” He folded his arms, still not sparing the hapless, bleeding ’breed on the floor a single glance.