Ramshackle frame houses slumped in a jam-packed neighborhood deep in the barrio’s seethe. The street here was maybe paved once, but patches of dirt rose up through the ancient concrete-like mange. Chain-link fences enclosed haphazard, yellow-grassed, postage-stamp yards, and patches of sidewalk here and there were linked together with dusty boardwalks that looked ancient as the Mayflower. Everything looked deserted, but I would have bet my roll of stolen cash and my gun that there were eyes on us.
I leaned against Theron, my stomach empty and a hot weight of bile rising in my throat. “Fuuuuck,” I whispered, drawing the single syllable out, and Anya Devi laughed, a sarcastic bark. Her coat was flayed by hellbreed claws, her hair was scorched, and her eyes were alight. Dried blood crusted her hair and her cheek, and thin blue lines of healing sorcery sank into her skin, pulsing through her aura.
I’d wanted to help apply the sorcery, since God knew I had enough etheric force humming through my right hand. But she’d shied away. Just like I’d twitched away from Perry.
I didn’t know if I liked that.
She was braced against a graffiti-scarred storefront, leaning forward, elbows on her bent knees while her sides heaved. Her breathing evened out, and she shook her head, silver chiming. “They want you bad, sweetheart. That’s a good sign.” She checked the street. “We’re clear. Theron?”
He ran his free hand back through wildly mussed dark hair. The bruises were getting better, but the circles under his eyes were so dark they looked painted on. His shirt flapped low on his right side, crusted with blood, but he was moving all right. “I could use a burrito. And a good stiff drink wouldn’t go amiss either.”
“In a few minutes. Jill?”
I wiggled my left toes. I’d somehow lost a sneaker, and my sock was torn up and filthy. I wasn’t bleeding very badly. Everything on me ached, but the wounds just closed up on their own each time the gem sent another hard, high burst of singing rattles through me. It felt like a jet plane just before takeoff. “Food sounds good.” Booze sounds better. And a chance to sit down and think about some shit wouldn’t be bad either.
“Good fucking deal.” Devi hauled herself up. “Wait a second, though.”
Her hand came down and gripped my right wrist. I almost flinched, the motion controlling itself as she turned my hand palm up, the gun pointed off to the side. Theron had my other arm, and I was effectively trapped.
But I suffered it. For a bare half second I wanted to twitch away, but my control reasserted itself. She was a hunter.
I could trust her.
She studied the gem in the streetlamp glow, blue eyes unblinking. “Huh. Where’d you get that?”
“It was on me when I woke up.” I weighed it as she glanced up at me, decided to drop the other shoe. “In… in a grave.”
“Yeah?”
“Shallow. Out in the desert. Just off a railroad line. I caught a ride into town last night.” I shuddered. There was a diner, and a blue-eyed man who gave me my gun back. And Martin Pores, nice guy who pulled a vanishing act. “Almost got mugged. Then I went to Walmart.”
Theron made a small sound. We both looked at him. His mouth was twitching. Another snorting half laugh escaped him, and one corner of Anya’s mouth twisted up.
She sobered almost immediately. She eyed the trickle of hot blood easing down from my scalp. Head wounds are messy; this one had been caused by a bit of shrapnel, and it was still weeping a little. I’d probably have lost most of the pints I was carrying if not for the healing.
Superhuman healing. As if I was still hellbreed-tainted. But the gem didn’t feel like Perry’s mark on me—the scarred lip-print, a hard little nugget of corruption working in toward the bone.
This was something different. And I didn’t like the idea that she might be checking me for… what?
Which just brought up the question of what the hell had happened, what had ended up with me in a shallow grave and a hole in my memory the size of the breathing city itself.
Her free hand came up, and she smeared a little of the blood on my forehead. Rubbed it between her fingers, considering, and actually sniffed it. Examined her fingers in the warm electric glow from the bodega’s porch light. Racks of novenas in the window behind her rippled, and I blinked, swaying.
“Devi?” Theron, carefully.
“She’s clear. I don’t know how or why, but she’s clean.” Anya blew out between her lips, her bindi winking at me. This close, I could see that it was, indeed, a subdermal piercing. You’d think the prospect of getting hit in the face would’ve made her refrain, but I so wasn’t one to throw sartorial stones. “I suppose if you knew what’d happened to you, Kismet, you’d let me in on it?”
“I have some memories,” I repeated. My eyebrows drew together as the hornet buzz returned, threading under the surface of my brain. “Fragments. I remember… I was on my way to the Monde to question Perry. Because… Saul. They had Saul.” And now I had a question of my own. “What are you checking me for, Devi?”
“Great.” She said it like a curse, and let go of my wrist, wiping her bloody fingers on her leather pants.
I seriously wanted a pair myself. My jeans were torn and flapping. Some of the pints I’d lost were a result of roadrash—you get to going faster than the average human, and you can erase a metric fuckton of skin.
“Devi?” Very carefully, each word calm and neutral. “What are you checking me for?”
She shook her head, silver beads chiming. “Later. All right, Theron. You’re right. Let’s go. But then I’m taking her to Galina’s.”
He nodded. “Come on, Jill. Someone wants to see you.”
I took hold of my fraying temper. If Devi wanted to clue me in later, fine. I could trust her that far. “Great.” I didn’t have to work to sound sarcastic. “Is it someone else who wants to kill me?”
“Oh, no.” He paused. “At least, I’m almost sure he doesn’t.” He seemed to find this hilarious, and snickered at his own joke as he drew me away from the bodega and out into the street. Anya drifted behind us, rearguarding. Dust rose on the faint night breeze, Santa Luz taking a deep breath in the long dark shoal before dawn.
“Wonderful.” I let out a short, choppy, frustrated sigh. “But I would like to know what the fuck happened to me.” Boy, would I ever. And I want weapons. And some more silver.
And while I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony, too.
“Later, Jill.” My fellow hunter didn’t sound happy. “When we get to Sanctuary, I’ll tell you everything I know. We’ve pieced together some of it. But the only person who knows everything is you.” She paused. “Was you.”
Fantastic. That’s just great. This is getting better and better.
Still, things were looking up.