Redemption Alley

I’m still not sure why people do it.

Monty stared at his desk. “Her bedroom was torn apart. Looks like someone was looking for something, or maybe the attack started there. Carp and Rosie are betting on both. The screen in the master bathroom window was torn loose, but it’s too small for anyone but a five-year-old to shimmy through.”

That was odd, too. I replayed the scene in my head. Something about that bathroom nagged at me. “Who sleeps with their window open in that neighborhood? Even with bars on the window.” And why not tear up the rest of the house if they were looking for something?

“The neighbors aren’t worth jackshit.” Monty smoothed the fresh manila folder on his desk, the one with Jacinta Kutchner’s name on the tab. “Nobody can remember anything out of the usual.”

I exhaled sharply. “Monty. This isn’t my type of case. There’s no inhuman agency at work here. I’ve got those disappearances to look into and—”

“Jill.” He dropped down into his chair and glared at me. “I never asked you for anything like this before. Marv was my partner.”

I looked down at the file. Lots of people don’t understand that about cops. The partner isn’t quite a spouse, but they’re the person whose head you think inside of, whose judgment and reactions you trust your life to, the person you spend so much time with you might as well be twins.

It may not be love, but it’s close.

It wasn’t Monty’s tender feelings that made me reach across the desk and tug the file out from under his hand. It was the vision of Jacinta Kutchner’s body, gently swinging just the tiniest bit as her empty house breathed around her.

Hyoid crushed. Vaginal bruising. Bedroom ripped to shreds.

“I’ll look into it. Can’t promise anything.” Even though I already had.

Monty almost visibly sagged. His chair creaked, and he dropped his gaze to the top of his desk, drifted with paper. Silence bloomed between us, a new and uncomfortable quiet.

Finally, he shifted and his chair creaked sharply. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” What are friends for, Monty? And if you’ve got one, you might as well use her. “I’ll check in.”

“Yeah. Try not to destroy any property, will you?”

For Christ’s sake. I was already at the door. “I can’t promise anything, Monty. See you.”

His curse was like a goodbye.

The plastic of the bus shelter’s window-walls was scarred and starred with breakage. I examined it minutely. Cigarette butts, an overflowing trashcan, the smell of despair.

Just like waiting for the bus anywhere, really. Dawn was coming up fast, the sky full of scarves dyed indigo, rose, streaks of gold and soft threads of orange over the furnace in the east. There was a blank brick wall behind the bus shelter, and a drift of paper trash in an alley to the side. Across the street, Percoa Park simmered under a pall of early morning half-vapor, trees breathing in relief as the sun rose.

Michael Spilham. Thirty-four, college dropout, living with his mother and working in a shipping warehouse four blocks away from here. He’d be tired at the end of his shift, overtime wearing down his feet and shoulders. So, he’d probably stand here, leaning against the shelter’s support post. A nonsmoker, the file said, so he didn’t light up while waiting. He probably just stared down the street, thinking a normal man’s thoughts.

I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Smelled exhaust, the odor of poverty and footsore wandering, trash and concrete.

A sudden cessation of subaudible buzzing made my eyes fly open. The streetlamp to my left had switched off. I glanced down the street to my right. Edges of broken glass glittered like diamonds as the star we all roll around lifted itself higher over the horizon.

I left the shelter, cautiously. Intuition tingled and prickled down my spine, raised the fine hairs on my nape under the weight of silver-laden hair. My trenchcoat, still damp from hosing, whispered and fluttered. Time for a new coat; hellbreed claws are death on leather.

This lamp was busted, broken glass on the pavement. A star-shape of expended force glittered, bits and pieces arranged along rays of reaction. Intuition turned chilly, raising prickles along the backs of my arms. A faint distinct perfume evaporated as soon as I got a whiff. Corruption, and sweetness like burned candy.

Huh.

I crouched easily, my bootheels digging into the pavement and my leather pants making just the faintest noise as dead cowskin rubbed against itself. My smart eye saw the strings under the surface of the world resonating to a powerful burst of bloodlust and fear.

My dumb eye wasn’t so dumb. Streaks and smears along the base of the streetlamp gleamed. Blood dries fairly quick out in the desert, but this close to the misty park it wasn’t completely flaking off yet.

Huh again. These were transfer prints. Someone with bloody hands had clasped the bottom of the streetlamp. Now that I was crouched down I could see smears on the filthy sidewalk too, oddly pale—pink instead of red.

Blood shouldn’t look like that. Another chill touched my nape, tickling little fingers. “Shit,” I breathed, reaching down to touch the smears on the post’s concrete base. “Shit.”

My fingers came away with powdery pink clinging to them. As I lifted my hand, I turned a little so the sunlight hit my skin.

The powder vanished, little puffs of steam rising from my fingertips. “Goddamn shitsucking son of a bitch,” I whispered. “Motherfucking hell.”

There’s only one thing that dries blood to powder evaporating in the sun. And as much as hunters hate, hunt, and loathe hellbreed, there’s only one thing that a hunter fears enough to cross herself and shiver, one thing that sends us looking for backup and polishing whatever weapons make us feel a little safer.

I settled on my haunches, my right hand dropping to the butt of a gun. “Shit,” I breathed one final time, before rising slowly to my feet and looking down at the long jagged wet-looking marks on the sidewalk. They pointed toward the mouth of an alley, yawning and shadowed even with the clear light of dawn coming up.

No time like the present, eh Jill?

I headed for the alley as traffic ran like water in the distance. The next bus wasn’t due for about ten minutes and the street was deserted. A ruffle of paper twisted in the intersection two blocks away, and I eased a gun out with my right hand and a knife in my left. Wish I had a flamethrower. Dammit.

The alley swallowed me with shadows you only get in the morning—knife-edged and clear, like stiff black paper cut into animal shapes. A dumpster loomed in the alley’s throat, and I sniffed cautiously, seeking that perfume of burnt sugar and weirdness. Should have recognized that first-off. Goddammit. My heart kicked up, high and wild in my throat, a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. Training clamped down on my hindbrain, regulating the cascade of adrenaline through my system. Too much and I’d be a jittery mess, and if this turned ugly…

I eased into the dark maw, clicking the hammer back. They’re not going to be in the alley, not with day coming on. But they dragged him back here, you might find something. Pray you don’t find something.

One step. Two. Easing down the side that held a little more light, though the entire alley was shaded. The dumpster was full of garbage, and as a stray breath of breeze touched my cold cheeks, the smell strengthened.

Oh God. Please. I quelled the tremor in my hands by the simple expedient of putting it out of my mind. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. Nothing to be done about it now.

I stepped toward the dumpster. It was a big green number, half its heavy plastic lid closed and the other half open, resting against the wall of the alley. At the end of the alley’s confined space was a huge rolling door, probably for whoever took out the trash. I sca