Free Angel Town by Lilith Saintcrow Page A

world skating close to the edge of apocalypse with distressing regularity, and the Traders and ’breed working, busy as beavers, to send it careening over that edge.
    I couldn’t kill them all. For one thing, more would replace the ones I put down, just like pimps and dealers moving into suddenly vacated territory. Always more where those come from, and hungry, too.
    But I managed to kill enough to keep them slinking in the shadows, instead of swaggering. No wonder they’d all snarled at me.
    And Perry, what had he been planning to do with me?
    Don’t worry about that right now. Keep your attention on the roof.
    To give the Were credit, he didn’t look very surprised. “Saul’s…alive. Last I saw.”
    Relief exploded inside my chest, so hard I almost sagged. “Oh. Okay. Good.” But something bothered me. “Last you saw?”
    “He’s in the barrio.”
    Well, that wasn’t bad. Weres ran herd on the barrio’s seethe, since a girl with my skin tone could catch too much flak there. “And?”
    “It’s complex, hunter. Listen—”
    “Hold that thought.” I tensed, prickling silence closing over me. The first thing any apprentice learns, I heard Mikhail murmur, way back in the soup my head was threatening to become. To be quiet little snake under rock.
    Apprentice. Gilberto. Lank hair, acne-pitted skin, dead eyes. My apprentice. The chain of memory pulled taut, the curtain in my head rippling, but I had no time to follow that chain into the cold deep and see what it dredged up.
    Because there, at the edge of the rooftop, a shadow slunk. Lifted its wax-bald head, sweat gleaming over its naked hairless chest.
    It crouched. The snuffling sounds carried clearly, and Theron had become a statue next to me, the way a cat will pause with a paw in the air when something catches its attention.
    Are there more? My eyes moved, silently, the blue one hot and dry as it looked beneath the visible. The strings under the surface of the world resonated, each quivering individually as the tension in its neighbors communicated itself. Can’t see them. Doesn’t mean they’re not there.
    The Trader hunched, and sniffed again. It was on all fours, its haunches higher than its head and encased in a ripped pair of faded jeans. Its face was damn near buried in the floor of the roof, and those snuffling sounds were wetly suggestive.
    I couldn’t even tell if it had originally been male or female, and at this distance only a suggestion of the body modifications it had Traded for could be picked out, even with my vision on overdrive and my left eye suddenly feeding way more information than I needed directly into my brain.
    “Theron,” I whispered, barely mouthing the words. “When I move, run for the barrio. Don’t argue.”
    He said nothing. My right wrist hummed, a subaudible warning.
    The thing snaked its head, muscle rippling oddly up its bare back. A flat shine reflected from its eyeballs, like a drift of pollen on stagnant water under a strong light. Dusted. Trader, not ’breed.
    Hellbreed eyes actually glow . If you can call that diseased shine a form of “light.” There aren’t proper words for it.
    Thank God.
    I was barely aware of moving, streaking across the rooftop, sneakered feet slapping. The Trader’s malformed head flung up, and I saw the dustshine runneling over eyeballs dried and useless as raisins. The nose was a ruined cavity, double sinus-dishes like sinkholes, the mouth wet and open to take in more air. That mouth was slit on either side, cheeks gashed so it could open even wider. A spiked collar strapped around its skinny throat, leather and brassy metal both glowing with unholy foxfire.
    That’s so it doesn’t swallow the prey, like a cormorant. I had enough time to think that before I hit with a crunch, tumbling it off the roof. It shrieked, a high panicked cry, and I shot it four times while we were still in midair. Bleed it out, rip its throat out if you can, brace yourself, Jillybean, this is gonna