Hunter's Prayer (6 page)

Saul looked troubled. I twisted the key and the Impala purred into life. Good old American heavy metal. “Jill.”

“What?”

“Do you like visiting
him?
”

What?
Saul had never directly referred to my bargain with Perry since coming back from the Rez after the rogue Were case two years ago. “What the hell are you talking about? One of these days, when I’ve figured out a lesser evil, I am going to kill him. He’s useful, Saul. Don’t start.”

“I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

You’re not the only one.
I put the car in gear, released the parking brake, and pulled out. “Neither do I, baby. Neither do I.”

9

I
was on a hell of a run of bad luck, and more came in the form of information, as usual. The still-unconscious Oscar hadn’t had any visitors, but he
had
been in the room when another seminary student’s aunt had visited. The aunt had been tall, dark-haired, and nobody could describe her face; not even the priest who had signed her in and watched the visit—who just happened to be the heart-attack victim, Father Rosas. The kid who’d been visited was a transfer student from out of state, a thin ratlike teenage boy whose narrow eyes widened when I shoved the gun in his face and told him to strip.

Red-nosed Father Rourke choked, but Saul had him by the collar. Father Guillermo stood up so fast his chair scraped against the linoleum floor. “Jillian?” He sounded like the air had been punched out of him.

“Sorry, Father.” And I was. “But this kid might be dangerous. It’s insurance.”

“You …
you
—” Father Rourke was having a little trouble with this. “You
witch!
Gui, you won’t let her—”

“Paul.” Gui’s voice was firm. He backed up two steps from the teenager I had at gunpoint. “Remember your oath.”

“The Church—”

“The archbishop
and
the cardinal have given me provisional powers once there is proved to be supernatural cause,” I quoted, chapter and verse. “Keep yourself under control, Father, or Saul will drag you outside. Don’t make him cranky, I don’t recommend it.” I nodded at the kid. “Strip. Slowly. The cassock first.”

The boy trembled. The whites of his eyes were yellow, acne pocked his cheeks, and I was nine-tenths sure there would be a mark on him. Maybe not on his back, but somewhere on his body.

A Sorrow doesn’t leave the House, living or dead, without a mark. One way or another, they claim their own, from a Queen Mother down to the lowliest male drone.

The question of just what a young Sorrow would be doing here in a seminary was the bigger concern, though.

And just as I was sure the kid wasn’t going to strip, he slowly lifted his hands, palms out.

Uh-oh. This doesn’t look go—

The spell hit me,
hard,
in the solar plexus, I choked and heard Saul yell. The cry shaded into a Were’s roar, wood shattering, and I shook my head, blood flying from my lip. Found myself on my feet, instinctively crouching as the ratfaced Sorrow leapt for me; I caught his wrist, locked it, whirled, and had him on the ground. He was muttering in Chaldean.

Saul growled. I spared a look at him; his tail lashed and his teeth were bared. In full cougar form, but his eyes were incandescent—and he was larger than the usual mountain cat. Weres tend to run slightly big even in their animal forms. He made a deep hissing coughing sound, the tawny fur on the back of his neck standing straight up and his tail puffing up just like a housecat’s. “Shift back,” I snarled. “I need this bastard held down.”

“What is she—what is she—” Father Rourke was having a little more trouble with the program. Gui had his arm, holding him back; Rourke’s face was even more florid than usual. He was actually spluttering, and I felt a well of not-very-nice satisfaction.

I leaned down, the boy’s wiry body struggling under me. “I can help you,” I whispered in his ear. “I can help you, free you of the Sorrows, and give you your soul back. You know I can. Cooperate.”

His struggles didn’t cease; if anything, they grew more intense. He heaved back and forth, rattling in Old Chaldean like a snake.

It was always a fool’s chance, to try to free a Sorrow. Hunters always offer, but they almost never take us up on it. The Mothers and sorceress-bitches have things just the way they want them, all the power and none of the accountability—and the boys are drones, born into Houses and trained to be nothing but mindless meat.

The Sorrows worship the Elder Gods, after all. And those gods—like all gods—demand blood. The difference is, the Elder Gods like their claret literally, with ceremony, and in bucketfuls.

Saul’s hands came down; tensed, driving in. Immediately, it became
much
easier to keep the kid down. Working together, we got him flipped over; I held down the boy’s hips while Saul took care of his upper torso. The Were’s eyes were aflame with orange light, he was
furious.
He slid a long cord of braided leather into the kid’s mouth, holding down one skinny wrist with his knee. “No poison tooth for you,” he muttered. “Jill?”

“I’m fine.” I spat blood, he’d socked me a good one in the mouth. Thank God my teeth don’t come out easily. Sorcery is
occasionally
useful. “Hold him.”
Where’s the mark, got to find the mark, got to find it; what’s a Sorrow doing in here?

The boy’s spine crackled as his eyes rolled into his head. He mumbled, and I wondered what he was cooking up next.
Goddammit, and he’s gagged. Christ.
I tore the front of his shirt, ran my hand over his narrow hairless chest. No tingle. Where was the mark?

“Jillian?” Father Guillermo, by the door. He sounded choked.

“You
witch,
that’s one of our
kids!
” Rourke was still having trouble with this one.

I snapped a glance back over my shoulder, checking. “Transferred from out of state? Your kid’s in a ditch somewhere, Father. This is a
Sorrow.
Probably just a little baby viper instead of a full-grown one, though.”
Or he’d have tried to crush my larynx instead of socking me in the gut.
I got his pants off with one swift jerk, breaking the button and jamming the zipper. “I suggest you wait outside in case he chews through the gag.” Blood dripped into my right eye, I blinked it away, irritably. “The question is why the Sorrows are so interested in this seminary. And when I find the mark we’ll find out.”

I got lucky. It was on his right thigh, the three interlocked circles in blue with the sigil of the Black Flame where they overlapped. He was a young soldier, not a man-drone only fit for sacrifice or a pleasure-slave. Of all the ranks a male could hold in a House, the soldiers had maybe the shortest life—but at least they weren’t tied down and slaughtered to feed the Eldest Ones. “Bingo,” I muttered, and held out my hand. The bone handle of Saul’s Bowie landed solidly in my palm.

The Sorrow hissed and gurgled behind the gag. Saul reached down, cupped his chin, and yanked back, exposing the boy’s throat and making sure he couldn’t thrash his shoulders around.

I laid the flat of the knife against the mark and the kid screamed, audible even behind the gag. Steel against Chaldean sorcery, one of the oldest enmities known to magic.

The Elder Gods would have us all back in the Bronze Age if they could. They would have us killing each other to feed their hungry mouths as well. Still, there are some Elders the Sorrows don’t invoke, because their very natures are inimical to the worship of darkness. Belief is a double-edged blade, and a hunter can use it as well as any other weapon.

“Thou shalt be released,” I murmured in Old Chaldean. “Thou unclean, thou whom the gods have turned their face from, thou
shalt
be released, in the name of Vul the Magnificent, the lighter of fires—”

He screamed again. I paused. Next came sliding the knife up and flaying the skin to get the mark off. I could add it to my collection. Each little bit of skin, drying and stretching and marked with their hellish brand, was another brick in the wall between me and the guilt of my teacher’s death. Each time I killed a Sorrow, I felt
good.

Cleansed.

I am not a very nice person.

“Last chance,” I said. “Before you go to your Hell.”
And believe me when I say that’s one place you don’t want to visit even for a moment.

The kid went limp.

There, that’s more like it.
I looked up at Saul, whose eyes still glowed. No, he was not in the least bit happy. But he nodded, a quick dip of his chin, and released the pressure on the gag just a little.

The rat-faced kid’s eyes met mine. A spark flared in their tainted depths, swirling now he had revealed himself. His skin began to look gray too, the Chaldean twisting his tongue and staining his body.

Wait a second. He isn’t even an Acolyte. What’s he doing out of a House?
“Ungag him.”

Saul hesitated.

“Christ, Saul, ungag him.”

The boy jerked. Leather slipped free. But Saul was tense, and I saw his right hand relax from a fist into a loose claw, nails sliding free and lengthening, turning razor-sharp. If the Sorrow made a move, my Were would open his throat.

“What are you out here for, Neophym? Who’s holding your leash?”

He had apparently decided to talk. “Sister,” he choked, gurgling. “My … sister …
please
…”

I bit my lip, weighing it. On the one hand, the Sorrows were trained to lie to outsiders.

And on the other, no Sorrow would ever use the word
sister.
The only word permitted for female within the House was
mistress.
Or occasionally,
bitch.

Just like the only word for man was
slave.

I considered this, staring into the Sorrow’s eyes. “What’s a Sorrow doing in my town, huh? You’ve been warned.”

“Fleeing …
chutsharak.
” His breath rattled in his throat.

Chutsharak? I’ve never heard of that.
“The what?”

It was too late. He crunched down hard with his teeth, bone cracking in his jaw; I whipped my head back and Saul did the same, scrambling away from the body in a flurry of Were-fast motion. I found myself between the body and the priests, watching as bones creaked, the neurotoxin forcing muscles to contract until only the crown of the head and the back of the heels touched the floor. A fine mist of blood burst out of the capillaries of his right eye.

Poison tooth. He’d committed suicide, cracking the false tooth embedded in his jaw.

Just as his heels slammed back, smashing into the back of his head, his sphincters released. Then the body slumped over on its side.

“Dammit.” I rubbed at the cuff over my right wrist, reflectively. “
Damn
it.”

“What’s a
chutsharak?
” Saul’s voice was hushed. Behind us, Father Rourke took in a deep endless breath.

I shook my head, the charms in my hair shifting and tinkling uneasily. “I don’t know.” My throat was full. “Gods above. Why are they sending children? I
hate
the Sorrows.”

“It’s probably mutual.” Saul approached the body carefully, then began to mutter under his breath, the Were’s prayer in the face of needless death. I left it alone. The poison was virulent, but it lost its potency on contact with a roomful of oxygen. He was in no danger.

“Jillian?” Father Guillermo sounded pale. He
was
pale, when I checked him. Two bright spots of color stood out on his cheeks. “What do we do next?”

“Any other transfers in the last year? Priest, worker, student, anyone?”

“N-no.” He shook his head. “J-just K-Kit. Him.” His eyes flickered past me to the body on the floor. The stink was incredible.

Father Rourke kept crossing himself. He was praying too. His rubbery lips moved slightly, wet with saliva. Probably an Our Father.

Sometimes I wished I was still wholly Catholic. The guilt sucks, but the comfort of rote prayer is nothing to sneeze at. There’s nothing like prepackaged answers to make a human psyche feel nice and secure. “I’ll need to go over the transfer records. Why would a Sorrow want to infiltrate a seminary? Are you holding anything?”

His face drained of color like wine spilling out of a cup.

“Gui? You’re not holding anything I should know about, are you?” I watched him, he said nothing. “Guillermo?” My tone sharpened.

He flinched, almost guiltily. “It is … Jillian, I …”

“Oh, for
God’s
sake. I can’t
protect
you if you don’t tell me what I need to know!”

“Sister Jillian—”

“What are you holding?”

“Jillian—”

I snapped. I grabbed the priest by the front of his cassock, lifted him up, and shook him before his shoulders hit the wall. “Guillermo.” My mouth was dry, fine tremors of rage sliding through my hands. The scar on my wrist turned to molten lead. Behind me there was a whisper of cloth, and Rourke let out a blasphemy I never thought to hear from a priest.

“Take one more step and I hit you,” Saul said, quietly, but with an edge.

“I could have died.” I said each word clearly, enunciating each consonant. “
Saul
could have died. If I’d known you were holding something I could have questioned him far more effectively. You
cannot
keep information from me and
expect me to protect you!
”

“He’s a Jesuit. He can’t tell you anything.” Rourke spat the words as if they’d personally offended him. “He took a vow.”

I dropped Guillermo.
Fuck. I’m about to beat up a priest. Man, this is getting ridiculous.
“If you don’t start talking in fifteen seconds, Gui, I’m going to start searching. I’m going to tear this place apart from altar to graveyard until I find whatever you’re holding. You might as well tell me now. What is it? What are the Sorrows looking for?”

“It’s nothing of any use to them.” Gui rubbed at his throat. He was still pale, and the smell swirling in the air was beginning to be thick and choking. I was used to smelling death, but he wasn’t. “Merely an artifact—”

“What. Are. You. Holding?” The scar pulsed in time to each word, and I was close to doing something unforgivable, like hauling off and slugging a
priest.
Dammit. This disturbed me more than I wanted to admit.

“The Spear of—” Rourke almost yelled.

”
No!
” Gui all but screamed.

“—
Saint Anthony!
” Rourke bellowed, his face turning crimson. Gui sagged.

I turned on my heel, eyed Rourke.
Come on, I used to be Catholic. Don’t pull this shit on me.
“Saint Anthony didn’t
have
a spear. He gave his staff to Saint Macarius.”