Those Who Fight Monsters (14 page)

“Jesus,” he whispered when he finished hacking. “I got to quit smoking.”

I snorted. He didn’t smoke, but the bravado was necessary. When you get torn down and carried out of a hellbreed hole during a firefight, completely naked and yelling, the humor becomes a need instead of a luxury.

“Narcisa.” His face screwed up under its mask of bruising. Two of the lioness Weres had helped me sponge-bathe him, rumbling the deep throbbing noise they use when one of their own is badly hurt. It’s their own peculiar kind of healing sorcery, and he’d needed all he could get. “Female, hellbreed, black hair—”

“I got her.”
In your dining room, as a matter of fact.
“She’s not going to hunt any hunters again.”

“Good deal.” He thought for a couple of seconds. “Moroc, too? Head hellspawn … brown and green, likes to … wear velvet … like fucking Lord Fauntleroy? Was by the door … when you busted in…”

I considered telling him to take it easy. Knew he wouldn’t anyway. “I don’t know. I think the door landed on him. Grenade might’ve got him.”

“Grenade.” A shadow of a smile on his tired, bruised face. “Knew you’d…” Trailed off.

“Of course you did.” My face felt like stone.
I’m a hunter, Slade. Of course I came when you called. And if you’d been dead, I would have cleaned out that hole and done my best before I had to go back to my city.
“I’m holding the line, Slade. Rest.”

“They were going … going to … with
my
city—”

With him out of the way, the hellbreed could do what they liked. Hunters are stretched thin, for all the Church and the authorities do their best to help. It’s not everyone who can do this sort of thing. It’s not the kind of job you can apply for or put on a business card.

Because really, there’s such a thin line between them and us. We have to be like what we hunt in some ways.

But we hold that thin fine line. I don’t know if it makes us truly better. I do think it makes us different.

At least, I hope it does. If it doesn’t, it means every hunter commits murder every night for nothing. I refuse to believe that. For every one we kill, a victim lives. Maybe even more than one.

Does one balance out the other?

It has to. I have to believe it does. We all have to believe it does.

“Your city’s safe.” It had been a long time since I even tried to sound soothing. “You’re back on the job. The Weres will stay here. You should be ready to get ornery tomorrow night at the latest.”

On the outside, helped with sorcery, yes. I didn’t want to ask what he’d suffered after Narcisa got hold of him. To be stripped of your weapons and at the mercy of the hellbreed we hunt, to know your city and the innocents that depend on you are vulnerable and unprotected … Jesus.

He nodded. Sagged back into the pillows. I smoothed the coverlet down over his chest. The scar was flushed and full under its copper carapace.

“You look good, Kiss.”

I made a face.
Don’t call me that
. “Mayhem suits me.”

His face changed a little, and I thought he was going to thank me. To stop him, I dug in one of my pockets. “Oh, hey.” I tried to sound casual. “These are yours. Some of them, probably.”

The charms dripped from my fingers onto his nightstand, chiming sweetly. They didn’t run with blue light or sparks — there was no contamination in the air for their blessings to react to. The scar was covered, but I was still careful when I dug the second handful of them out. I didn’t know what blessed silver would do to a hellbreed mark.

“Yeah.” He coughed again, a little, but it was an embarrassed noise instead of a hacking. “Can’t believe I got trapped. Won’t happen again.”

I shrugged. There was nothing I could say. “You have a line on who…”
Who betrayed you?
I didn’t need to finish the question.

“Yeah. Ebersole. One of my contacts. Goddamn hellbreed. Seduced a good cop.”

This time I didn’t need to shrug. Not such a good cop, if it ended up with a hunter hanging like a side of beef. The ‘breed hadn’t killed him right away because they wanted to
play
.

“You need me to hang around?” I fished out the last lone charm — a silver wheel, red thread and a strand of blond hair clinging to it. I wondered what other hunter had been betrayed into Narcisa’s clutches, and if he or she knew that they were avenged.

It probably wasn’t any comfort.

“Nah. From here … it’s all mop-up.” He closed his eyes. His throat worked as he swallowed. “You probably got stuff boiling … at home.”

“As always.” But I lingered for a few more moments. “Slade…”

Are you really going to be all right?

But that was a fool’s question. None of us were all right. If we were, we wouldn’t be working this job.

“Huh?” He was struggling to stay awake. Which meant the crisis was over. He’d wrap up the leftovers tomorrow night. I would have to wash the blood off me before I got back on a plane, though my coat and pants would flop around, torn. And at home in Santa Luz there were things to attend to.

Who knew? I might be the one calling, next time.

“Nothing.” I waited until his breathing evened out and he fell into unconsciousness. The bruising was shrinking visibly, healing sorcery humming to itself as it worked. I don’t use it much myself nowadays, the scar takes care of most of that.

Mikhail told me striking a bargain with that hellbreed was a good idea. I hoped like hell it was true. I hoped there was a difference between me and a Trader. Even if I’d just done … what I’d done, looking for Slade.

We all have to believe we’re different.

Hunters don’t say goodbye. Superstition, maybe, but when you live on the nightside it’s foolish to disregard it. Besides, it hurts too much if the farewell ends up being final. Best to leave things unsaid, as insurance. A talisman.

My pager buzzed in its padded pocket. My city, calling me back. I’d probably get a late-morning flight if I put my hustle on now, or had one of the Weres call to book me one.

I smoothed the pale-blue down coverlet one more time. The day was well and truly up, and Slade’s bedroom window filled with gold.

It had stopped raining. Blue sky peeped through shredding white clouds. Go figure.

“I’m holding the line, Slade,” I said. The words were quiet in the dimness.

I picked up the wheel charm with its strand of blond hair. Looked at Slade’s face, felt the ache of loneliness rise in my chest.

I missed my teacher. God, how I missed him.

I had red thread in another pocket, and while I was in the cab to the airport, the wheels shushing on wet pavement and the cabbie carrying on a one-way conversation with some AM talk radio, I tied the silver wheel into my own dark curls. The other charms chimed as I shook my head a little, settling them together.

Then I settled down to wait for the next stage of the journey home.

Lilith Saintcrow is the author of several paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and young adult series, including the “Jill Kismet” and “Strange Angels” series. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her children, several cats, and other strays. Her website may be found at www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal

Jill Kismet is the resident hunter of Santa Luz, a city somewhere in the American Southwest. She likes bullwhips, .45s, and breakfast burritos. Oh, and holding back the tides of Hell. She’s a big fan of that.

Defining Shadows: A Detective Jessi Hardin Story

by Carrie Vaughn

The windowless outbuilding near the property’s back fence wasn’t big enough to be a garage or even a shed. Painted the same pale green as the house twenty feet away, the mere closet was a place for garden tools and snow shovels, one of a thousand just like it in a neighborhood north of downtown Denver. But among the rakes and pruning shears, this one had a body.

Half a body, rather. Detective Jessi Hardin stood at the open door, regarding the macabre remains. The victim had been cut off at the waist, and the legs were propped up vertically, as if she’d been standing there when she’d been sliced in half and forgotten to fall down. Even stranger, there didn’t seem to be any blood. The gaping wound in the trunk — vertebrae and a few stray organs were visible in a hollow body cavity from which the intestines had been scooped out — seemed almost cauterized, scorched, the edges of the flesh burned and bubbled. The thing stank of rotting meat, and flies buzzed everywhere. She could imagine the swarm that must have poured out when the closet door was first opened. By the tailored trousers and black pumps still in place, Hardin guessed the victim was female. No identification had been found. They were still checking ownership of the house.

“Told you you’ve never seen anything like it,” Detective Patton said. He seemed downright giddy at stumping her.

Well, she had seen something like it, once. A transient had fallen asleep on some train tracks, and the train came by and cut the poor bastard in half. But he hadn’t been propped up in a closet later. No one had seen anything like
this
, and that was why Patton called her. She got the weird ones these days. Frankly, if it meant she wasn’t on call for cases where the body was an infant with a dozen broken bones, with lowlife parents insisting they never laid a hand on the kid, she was fine with that.

“Those aren’t supported, are they?” she said. “They’re just standing upright.” She took a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of her suit jacket and pulled them on. Pressing on the body’s right hip, she gave a little push — the legs swayed, but didn’t fall over.

“That’s creepy,” Patton said, all humor gone. He’d turned a little green.

“We have a time of death?” Hardin said.

“We don’t have shit,” Patton answered. “A patrol officer found the body when a neighbor called in about the smell. It’s probably been here for days.”

A pair of CSI techs were crawling all over the lawn, snapping photos and placing numbered yellow markers where they found evidence around the shed. There weren’t many of the markers, unfortunately. The coroner would be here soon to haul away the body. Maybe the ME would be able to figure out who the victim was and how she ended up like this.

“Was there a padlock on the door?” Hardin said. “Did you have to cut it off to get inside?”

“No, it’s kind of weird,” Patton said. “It had already been cut off, we found it right next to the door.” He pointed to one of the evidence markers and the generic padlock lying next to it.

“So someone had to cut off the lock in order to stow the body in here?”

“Looks like it. We’re looking for the bolt cutters. Not to mention the top half of the body.”

“Any sign of it at all?” Hardin asked.

“None. It’s not in the house. We’ve got people checking dumpsters around the neighborhood.”

Hardin stepped away from the closet, caught her breath, and tried to set the scene for herself. She couldn’t assume right away that the victim lived in the house. But maybe she had. She was almost certain the murder had happened somewhere else, and the body moved to the utility closet later. The closet didn’t have enough room for someone to cut a body through the middle, did it? The murderer would have needed a saw. Maybe even a sword.

Unless it had been done by magic.

Her rational self shied away from that explanation. It was too easy. She had to remain skeptical or she’d start attributing everything to magic and miss the real evidence. This wasn’t necessarily magical, it was just odd and gruesome. She needed the ME to take a crack at the body. Once they figured out exactly what had killed the victim — and found the rest of the body — they’d be able to start looking for a murder weapon, a murder location, and a murderer.

The half body looked slightly ridiculous laid out on a table at the morgue. The legs had been stripped, and a sheet laid over them. But that meant the whole body was under the sheet, leaving only the waist and wound visible. Half the stainless steel table remained empty and gleaming. The whole thing seemed way too clean. The morgue had a chill to it, and Hardin repressed a shiver.

“I don’t know what made the cut,” Alice Dominguez, the ME on the case, said. “Even with the burning and corrosion on the wound, I should find some evidence of slicing, cutting movements, or even metal shards. But there’s nothing. The wound is symmetrical and even. I’d have said it was done by a guillotine, but there aren’t any metal traces. Maybe it was a laser?” She shrugged, to signal that she was reaching.

“A laser — would that have cauterized the wound like that?” Hardin said.

“Maybe. Except that it wasn’t cauterized. Those aren’t heat burns.”

Now Hardin was really confused. “This isn’t helping me at all.”

“Sorry. It gets worse. You want to sit down?”

“No. What is it?”

“It looks like acid burns,” Dominguez said. “But the analysis says salt. Plain old table salt.”

“Salt can’t do that to an open wound, can it?”