There was nobody on the streets. I wasn’t surprised—even numbskull civilians will stay inside when the sky looks like a ripening bruise and the air is full of scorching that feels like an ice bath. Now that we were going the way they wanted, the ’breed hung back, letting the hounds nip and harry us through the streets. I made a few attempts to shake them, just because I don’t like being chased. Mother Mary on a pogo stick, how I hate to be pursued.
But there was nothing left to do, and Gilberto did not look good. He clutched at the gun like it was a Grail, and his lips moved a little as if he was praying.
It was a good idea, but I had no time.
“You hear me?” I finished, as we hit International Way and the four lanes ribboned around us, every light turning green as we sped through, tires smoking and the hell-hounds pouring around us in a steaming wave. “No heroics, Gil. You get the fuck out of here and strike for Ridgefield. Leon’ll take you in.”
Gil’s chin set stubbornly.
“Gilberto. You’re a liability, not a help. You go, or I swear to God I’ll beat the shit out of you myself.” It was a good threat. I even sounded like I meant it.
“You goin’ in there to die.” Flatly, as if he was talking about the nice weather we were having lately. “Mi hermano, he look like this, like you. Right before he got shot.”
I almost winced. His brother was not a safe subject, the past reaching out its tentacles to strangle us all. “They can’t kill me, kid.” I sounded weary even to myself. “Perry needs me for this.” A Trader can steal a Talisman, but not wield it. Not for very long, anyway—but if he’s using it to power the hellmouth… Still, I’m the Judas for the Other Side. I have to make it a little longer, right?
It was so not a comforting thought.
Gilberto’s chin set itself, stubbornly. “So I go in. Watch your back.”
“No.”
“Profesora—”
“No, Gil. You have your orders, goddammit.”
“Profesora—”
“No.” I said it a lot more sharply than I meant to, and hit the brakes, slewing us sideways as International dove down to follow the river. The stadium was here, hulking like a giant animal over a bone, one of the places in the city where you can’t see the huge granite Jesus on top of Mercy General. Sometimes I’m pretty sure it’s an act of will that keeps that particular landmark from being visible in some pockets of urban real estate. “I’m counting on you, Gilberto. Don’t let me down.”
He mumbled something. I smashed the accelerator again, spun us into another turn, stood on the brake. “I can’t hear you, apprentice.” Snap of command.
“Sí,” he said, scowling. “Sí, profesora.” Just like a good soldier.
Just like me, when Mikhail would tell me what was what. Would I ever reach the point where I’d trade Gil for my own mark, sell him to Perry to buy a little more time? Or bargain him into it out of love, believing that he could do what I couldn’t and stop el rubio Diablo from spinning the wheel and landing a double zero?
I don’t want to find out. It ends here. “Good fucking deal.” We rocked to a stop, tire smoke rising in sharp-toothed shapes around us. The hellhounds flowed in a leaping circle, stormlight running wetly over their smoking hides as thunder rumbled again. “Gil…”
He stared out the window, sallow, pitted jaw working.
“You’re my apprentice,” I said, finally. “And you’re a good one. You won’t understand for a long, long time. But I love you, and I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
I hit the latch and was outside in a hot second, leaning down to glance through the back window. “Stay with Gil,” I said, sharply, and the dogsbody settled into the backseat, whining. Every hair on my body tried to stand straight up, I heard hellhound claws skritching and scratching, and the splatter of foam from their panting mouths. The circle tightened, pressing closer, and I glanced up at the sky.
The clouds lowered, sickly greenish-black. Lightning crawled through their billows, occasionally lancing with a crack like a belt hitting naked flesh. I slammed the door, Gilberto already shimmying over into the driver’s side. The Cadillac purred, a plastic rosary swinging from the rearview—maybe it was Father Gui’s, maybe Rosa’s—and Gilberto stared through the window, his dark eyes suddenly wet.
I told him what I wish Misha had told me, I realized, and swallowed hard. The hellhounds didn’t draw any closer.
I stepped back once, twice. The engine revved, the tires chirped…
… and the hellhounds flowed aside at the last moment, leaving a clear path for Gilberto as the wine-red Caddy shot up Martin Luther, its engine singing in mingled pain and relief.
The Santa Luz Stadium and Convention Center was a squat, graceless concrete dome, pathways cut up and down its sides like ribbons of frosting on a particularly nasty soot-gray cake. Normally, a gigantic American flag fluttered atop it, waving like a stripper’s pasty, but the three squat glass towers of the nearby convention center leered at an empty flagpole now, reflecting bright white flashes as the storm closed over Santa Luz. No rain, everything hot with that queer icy heat, the edges of my coat flirting as the wind teased them. My right hand touched a gun, and I felt very exposed standing here.
Almost naked.
I swallowed again, waited as the Cadillac’s roar was lost even to my jacked-up hearing. “Do svidanye,” I whispered. My left hand had already closed around the whip’s handle.
If they wanted me to go in there, they were going to have to work for it.
Unfortunately, the hellhounds took me up on the challenge. They moved in, heads down and snaking, a whole massed tide of them, and I gave ground. The whip flicked, breaking tough skin and loosing spatters of stinking ichor, but I didn’t draw the gun.
I had no bullets to waste, now.
They herded me past the ticket booths—all their glass shattered, glinting back little fractures of lightning—and the crowd-control turnstiles, the aluminum tubes twisted back in weird contorted flower-shapes. Someone had certainly been smoothing the path for me.
The primrose path, Jillybean. All the way down to Hell.
When the dogs got too close I flicked the whip at them, and one or two screamed in high, childlike voices. Thunder was a constant roar now, and I felt the sun touch the horizon, beginning its slow nightly drowning. The city shivered, concrete groaning, and the wind from the river howled through empty parking lots, tearing at the edges of the dome.
Darkness rose from the corners of the earth, and the hellhounds herded me into a long, low corridor. I heard a mutter, the bulk of the storm shut away. They’d stopped steaming under the lash of daylight, but the press of their bodies made the air quiver with unhealthy heat.
The corridor curved, and for a long time it seemed like I’d be in it forever, the hounds pressing forward to nip at and drive me along, my whip flicking with a jingle of blessed silver every few moments to hold them back. I skip-shuffled along, my back to one wall or the other, and ghastly fluorescent tubes fizzed and blinked overhead. Chipped paint on the concrete turned sickly as the hounds brushed against it, and the little dapples of my sea-urchin aura showed up, punctuating the etheric bruising with tiny crackles.
The corridor terminated in a set of double doors, pulsing as the air behind them pressed close with a crowd-murmur. The hounds stopped, some of them crouching on their haunches, tongues lolling and yellow foam dripping, wriggling into cracks in the floor with subtle hisses.
He must really be excited. I bit back a bitter little laugh. All this trouble, Perry, when you knew I’d show up anyway.
One of the hounds hiss-growled very softly, its lip curling back from glassine teeth. I jingled the whip and the beast cowered back into the mass.
Gonna see what’s behind Door Number One, Jillian? Oh yeah, you bet. Right now. I eased along the wall, keeping an eye on the hellhounds. Right fucking now. He’s been setting this up for decades.
Be a shame to keep him waiting.
I pushed against the crossbar. The door opened, sterile white light flooded through, and the sound of a crowd belched into the hall on a tide of dry candy corruption. The hounds pressed further back, and for a moment I considered taking them on until I ran out of ammo.
But that would be a waste. I had better things to use my bullets on.
I braced the door wide and stepped out into the glare.