Free Angel Town by Lilith Saintcrow Page B

hurt.
    I hoped Theron was running.
     * * *
    Hit hard , spilling to the side in a tangling roll to shed momentum, bones snapping, and the Trader’s cry cut off midway. Made enough noise. My right leg crunched with agony, my tender shoulder gave a high, sustained soprano note of overstress, my head hit concrete with a stunning crack, and I yanked on all the etheric force I could reach.
    It jolted up my arm, hot and pure, a completely different sensation from the hot twisted flood of Perry’s mark. Add that to the list of things I didn’t have any goddamn time to figure out—I jackrabbited to my feet, the shattered edges of my right femur grating together, and the pain was a spur as the gem on my wrist lit up like a Christmas ornament and etheric force tied the bone back together. The sea-urchin spines of my aura, hardened by countless exorcisms, lit up, too. The points of light swirled around me in a perfect sphere, and brakes squealed. Tires shredded as the ’breed closed in, traffic snarling around me.
    I’d landed right in the middle of the goddamn road. An ungodly screech, and the first hellbreed jagged toward me from the right, leaving the ground in a leap that violated physics and sanity all at once. It was a female, long golden hair in dreadlock snarls and her too-white teeth bared as they lengthened, her eyes full of low red hellfire dripping, riding the updraft of her rage and crackling out of existence. She wore fluttering orange silk, a loose shirt and pajama pants. Her claws were bony scythes.
    Think fast, Jill. I threw myself aside, a nail of red pain in my thigh, my feet thudding onto the hood of a big red SUV oddly slewed in the road. A teenage boy in the driver’s seat gawped at me, and I leapt again, straining, the gem on my wrist feeding a burst of controlled fire through me. Blue light flashed—another spark from the ring—and I was still gawdawful fast , almost hellbreed-fast, especially when I wasn’t weighed down by weapons and a long black coat.
    Though I’d like my coat now. And some ammo. And for my birthday I’d really like a pony. Ignored the thought, my foot flicked out, and I kicked the dreadlocked ’breed in the face. The impact jolted up to my hip, taking a break in my still-healing femur, and I screamed as she did, two cries of female effort.
    No, three. I couldn’t worry about the third one. I dropped back down onto the SUV’s roof, and the ’breed twisted. For one eternal moment she hung in the air over me, time slowing down and I braced myself because her claws were still out and this was going to hurt when she landed. I had nothing but the gun and it was rising but the ammo wouldn’t help.
    The third voice was a stream of obscenities cutting across the ’breed’s desperate howl and my own. Gunfire crackled and the dreadlocked ’breed tumbled aside, half her head evaporating in a mess of black ichor and zombie oatmeal.
    What the fuck? That wasn’t me!
    The newcomer uncoiled over me with a bound that was pure poetry, long leather duster flapping once like wet laundry shaken with an authoritative crack ! Silver sparked and popped in her hair, beads tied to tiny braids in the straight shoulder-length mass, and her blue eyes were alight with hard joy. The ruby above and between her eyebrows was a point of living flame, and she turned in midair, firing at another hellbreed streaking out of the shadows.
    Holy shit, I know her!
    But I could not for the life of me come up with her name. An angry swarm of buzzing scraped the inside of my temples as I strained, frozen for a few critical moments.
    The Trader who landed on the hood of a small black sports car, legs swelling with muscle and his entire body lengthening as he exploded out of the crouch and for her back probably didn’t know her name either. He’d never learn it, either, because I shot him four times in midflight, the recoil jolting up my arm controlled almost as an afterthought. The hollow points tore up his head and