Redemption Alley

Yeah, you were trying to fix it, and blackmail a few people in the process. A nice little nest egg, there for the taking, but Bernie had plans of his own. Enough double-crosses to make everyone dizzy, all of you little fucking rats scurrying once the lights turned on.

It might have been fu

She kept talking. Maybe she thought that if she kept going, she’d find a way out of the hole. Or maybe it didn’t matter to her now. “Just Shen. She wanted to ingratiate herself with the big guy, he wanted a way through, into this city. She thought the owner of the Monde knew and sent you to blackmail her so he could get in first.”

Perry? Evoking Argoth? I don’t know, he likes being the biggest fish in town too much. I cleared my aching throat. “Was there a backup for the evocation?”

“I don’t think so. Shen was always going out to the airfield, every dark moon for six months. It was the only time I was allowed to see Fax.” Her voice broke again. But the calculation was back in it, the slightest hesitation masquerading as sorrow.

When you’ve spent a lifetime listening for that hesitation, it blares like a bullhorn.

“You realize I have to kill you.” It didn’t hurt to say it. Cold clarity had settled over me again, the part of me that didn’t count the cost or hesitate when something had to be done.

It wasn’t the same as the cold calculation or the ratty little gleam. It wasn’t.

At least, I hoped it wasn’t. What else was I doing this for, if it was?

“Just do it,” she whispered. “Do it fast.”

My hand tensed. I struggled to think clearly. This wasn’t like taking a life in combat. This was something else.

“Did you hurt Galina? Or Carp?” I pushed against her skull with the gun, just a little. Her head bowed, pliant. “Tell me the truth, Irene.”

“What the fuck does it matter?” Cold weariness, now.

“Oh, it matters.” It’s the difference between me killing you mercifully… or otherwise. The scar plucked at my arm, humming to itself. It wanted me to kick the Glock near her hand away and beat the living shit out of her personally. It’s a small step from knowing how to fight to knowing how to stretch out hurting someone.

It’s an even smaller step between knowing how to do it and finding a reason to do it.

She sighed. “I dumped the detective at the end of the block and ran. He was okay enough to squeeze off a few shots at me.”

Thank you, God. I don’t have to hurt her. “You’re going to Hell.” I couldn’t sound comforting.

“Fine.” She shrugged, pale greenish shoulders smeared with blood and other matter. An exhausted rat in a cage. “Like it’s so different from here. Just get it over with, Kismet.”

I wanted to tell her Hell was different. That’s why they call it Hell, for Christ’s sake.

But in the end, I didn’t.

Let her find out for herself.

Chapter Thirty

When I surfaced on the street, I knew exactly where I was. Irene and Fairfax’s little hidey-hole turned out to be the half-basement of a shabby little deserted office building on Rosales, less than two blocks from Winchell’s murder site. Everything tying together into a neat little package. Bumbling incompetents getting themselves killed. Avarice, arrogance, and envy are the hunter’s friends; if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have found so many loose ends to tie up. And if not for monumental fucking arrogance, Shen would have brought hellbreed.

And that would have been a goddamn clusterfuck.

I stood in the shadows in the lee of the building, night wind rising off the desert brushing the street and curling down the alcove. Did it smell like burning, or did I? I swayed, my fingers catching at the wall and leaving smeared prints behind. Blood and stinking hellbreed ichor, and more blood. Forensics would have a field day with that little room, if anything was left after a night’s worth of decay. I hadn’t been able to muster up the strength to force banefire off my fingers.

Think, Jill. Think.

What was my next move?

The Charger was easy enough to find, tucked into an alley across the street. One of them had topped off the tank with gas and done a passable hotwire job on it. Irene’s work, I was betting—Fax hadn’t seemed like he could tie his shoelaces, much less hotwire a car.

But he’d been enough of a genius to engineer a weapon likely to completely bash my city out of recognition, loosing a tide of darkness and corruption that would feed a huge hellbreed. And turn people into blood-hungry fiends or… those things. And he’d done it all without asking where his “subjects” came from. Probably talked himself into thinking it was real bang-up science he was doing, too.

I shouldn’t have felt sorry for either of them. But a few more minutes of questioning Irene before I sent her on her way meant I’d found the link between Shen and Fairfax. An intent-to-distribute conviction for mixing up designer drugs to make some cash, and the concurrent threat to a promising career, had brought Fax into Harvill’s—and Shen’s—reach. And with him, Irene, who had taken to being a Trader like a duck to water. But then, when you’re dating a mad chemist, I suppose you can get used to bargaining with Hell one slice of flesh at a time.

Just like I was mortgaging myself an inch at a time. I didn’t have the energy to argue with myself over whether or not I was different.

The only loose end was the district attorney, the nodepoint of corruption. How had he gotten involved with Shen? Had she gone looking for someone amenable or had he committed some indiscretion that brought him to her attention? Did it matter?

It was probably the latter. The happy little organ-theft ring that had intersected with Melisande Belisa’s plans last time had intersected with Shen’s this time, and I had a chance to pull it up by the roots.

I rested my head on the steering wheel and breathed in, breathed out. The crusted blood in my eyes irritated me, I blinked it away.

It wasn’t just the crusties. It was hot water filling up my eyes and trickling down my cheeks.

Jesus. I’m in bad shape.

The wind rattled and rolled down the street, deserted because it was after dark. So much of a hunter’s life is played out on an empty street, or in places where no light shines. Places nobody can share with you, or wants to share. Not if they’re right in the head at all.

Saul. He would be worried. I wondered if his mother was sliding over the dark edge into finality.

Theron would be climbing the walls too. Leon, if he knew Irene had slipped the leash, would have gotten the situation at Galina’s under control and would be coordinating the Weres in my absence. Faithfully keeping the city under wraps. I wondered how long I’d been unconscious. My bet was on not very long, since Shen would have been anxious to get the formula and her pet chemist back.

And kill me, of course, both for interfering and for making her look bad while I did it. And probably to make points with this Argoth guy.

I lifted my head, peered blearily out the windshield. The old moon hung, a nail-paring, low in the sky. It was approaching midnight.

I knew Harvill lived in Riverhurst, the tony part of town, north and a few minutes out of the downtown sector. Keeping tabs on high-level law-enforcement perso