Redemption Alley

“I don’t see anyone moving, but that’s no assurance.” Headache pounded behind my eyes, and I slipped my shades back up my nose. The world took on a better contrast, but I’d have to take them off for the last few miles of approach. “This baby’s heavy metal, like my Impala. Should be good as long as nobody hits a gas tank. After blowing up one car already on this case, I don’t think I want to blow up another.”

“Amen, darlin’.” He sighed, copper clinking as he settled himself in his seat. The look on his face told me he was wishing for another beer.

I waited for him to add more, but he didn’t. So I dropped the car into “drive” and hit the gas, glad to have him with me.

Dust rose in a choking swathe as I worked the steering, swinging the rear end out and standing on the brake. I bailed out as Leon did, and we both scrambled for the defensible angle between the back of the car and the farthest hangar. From here we had a straight shot down the runway or a good chance of cover while bobbing and weaving to the new buildings.

When no shots rang out and nothing happened, it was absurdly anticlimactic.

I crouched, my coat hanging behind me. The copper in Leon’s hair chimed. “Go,” he whispered, Rosita socked to his shoulder, his keen eyes alert down the alley for any muzzle flash.

I moved, etheric force pulled through the humming scar on my wrist, almost faster than I could control. It’s acting up. Dammit, Perry. The thought was gone in a flash. I reached cover, pointed my guns down the way, and found no breath of anything stirring. It was as quiet as a grave.

Get it, Jill? Quiet as the grave? Arf arf.

I whistled, and Leon tore down the same path I’d taken. We covered each other, leapfrogging, because it was goddamn evident there was nobody here. I couldn’t even hear a heartbeat. Just the rasp of sand sliding over the desert, carried on the back of an oven-hot wind.

Just like scales moving in a dark hole.

“This is creepy,” I muttered. Then I shut up, brain working overtime. It had to be a trap. Had to be.

The largest of the new buildings crouched under a shiny tin roof, and Leon and I both stopped, considering it for a moment. There was a door, a nice double-reinforced number, on the side of the prefabricated trailer. A brand-spanking-new set of wooden steps and a ramp large enough to wheel a forklift up led to the door, its latch and padlock glimmering like fool’s gold.

“Are you—” he began.

I noticed it too. “No windows.” I answered. “And locked on the outside.” Just like the Winchell murder site. Gooseflesh rose cold and hard under my skin, and I made another one of those wrenching mental efforts to stay clear. Leon was depending on me, dammit. So were my Weres and my city.

But what’s behind that door, Jill? Hm? You’re so smart, what’s behind that door?

“Yeah,” he breathed. “You go first.”

“Sure you don’t want to take this one?” Black humor at its finest, I glanced at him and Rosita. The spark was back in Leon’s eyes, and high hard color stood out on his cheeks. Otherwise he was dead white. A sheen of sweat not from the incidental heat of the day—because as a hunter you learn to regulate your body temperature pretty thoroughly—touched his forehead.

“Aw hell, darlin’, ladies first.” His attention never wavered from the padlocked door.

I gri

“Pearls before swi—”

But I was already moving, bolting out of cover. The sun lay in a white glare like a hot sterile blanket over a corpse, and I hit the door like it had personally offended me. It gave, buckling, built to withstand more than ordinary pressure, but the extra force I pulled through the scar blazed through my arm and it crumpled like paper. I landed hard, weight on the balls of my feet, and swept with my guns.

The Trader hit me just as hard, knocking me ass over teakettle down the three wooden stairs I’d just bolted up. I landed on my back, already firing, and heard Rosita roar.

At the apex of his leap, the dirty-blond Trader, wearing an eerily gleaming long white coat, was tumbled sideways by a load of silver ammo punching into his side, curling up like a spider dropped into a candleflame. His screech tore the simmering air, and I was on my feet again in a moment—pull the knees in, kick, use the momentum to jackknife and get your feet under you, then leap sideways as well, get on him Jill, take him down are there more Leon cover me goddammit—

“Mercy!” the Trader yelled, and I landed with one gun trained on him and the other on the door of the trailer. “Mercy don’t kill me Kismet don’t kill me please!”

Whafuck? I replayed it in my head and decided that yes, he had really said it. “How many more?” I shouted. “Who else is in there?” I felt naked, horribly exposed, no cover, if they wanted to open fire on me like they did at Galina’s I was right in the crosshairs.

No heartbeats. There’s nobody here but this Trader. But you didn’t hear him, you might have missed someone else, dear God—

The Trader moaned. Bright blood welled between his fingers, clamped to his side. The white was a lab coat, now grinding into the dirt and fouled with blood. Lots of blood, only faintly tinged with black corruption. “Mercy…” The sibilant at the end of the word trailed between a ridge of triangular teeth sharp as a shark’s. “Irene… Irene—”

What the hell? I eyed him. Nothing happened for a long taffy-stretching moment. Hellbreed crawling all over my house and now this Trader moaning a Trader waitress’s name.

Hang on a second. Hold the phone for just one goddamn minute here.

“Fairfax?” I hazarded, not lowering my guns. Every hair on my body stood on end, quivering, scouring the air currents for the next weird happenstance. Wait a minute. I thought I killed you. But I just said blond, and Irene…

Caught assuming. Again. Goddammit. And Irene had looked relieved when I insisted the blond was hellbreed—I hadn’t said Trader.

The Trader froze. His eyes, blue under the flat shine of the dusted, half-opened. “Nobody… here,” he gasped, and took in a huge sucking breath. “Just the… the subjects. And me.”

“Jill?” Leon was getting nervous.

That made two of us.

“Subjects?” The hammer on the gun pointing at the Trader clicked up. “And how the fuck do you know Irene?”

“The subjects!” He whisper-screamed it, losing air. “She’s my wife, goddammit!”

I holstered a gun and hauled him up from the crumbling dirt by his lapels, dragged him toward the blown-out door, his body in front of mine like a shield. “Move.” I prodded him, both guns back out. “Inside. And if there’s someone in there, you die first.”

“They say you help—” He stumbled. He was losing a lot of claret through that hole in his side. When Rosita talks, she’s not to be taken lightly. “Help… people.”

They certainly say that. What they don’t say is that I’m a right bitch. “Sometimes.” I stepped in front of the open door, prodded him again. He stumbled, took two steps inside, and dropped down in a heap, his eyes rolling up inside his head.

The smell boiled out and hit me. Candied, foul, rotting sweetness. My hackles rose, adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream like pollution into a river.

“Jill?” Leon, getting even more nervous.

I sca

And I plunged into the smell, stepping over the unconscious Trader. I didn’t even cuff him. He was losing blood too fast to need it.