Hunting in Hell (7 page)

It was her first memory, of being dumped in the desert.
 
She watched as the Angel choked her and bestowed her
akras
upon her.
 
And then, in her mind, as he had in life, he placed
Bluot
in her hand, and a grey box appeared in her mind.

The lamprey screamed.
 
No matter how powerful its
kevra,
it would never be able to unlock something that had been sealed by an Angel.
 
It hammered all five of its heads against the box in blind fury.

The demon's hold upon her mind shattered like a pane of glass.
 
Her head reeling, she looked down.
 
She squinted hard, trying to make out the shape below her, sensing that something significant had happened.

It was Alsvior.
 
Somehow, he had risen from his impact with the wall.
 
Tears sprang to her eyes as she saw his leg.
 
It hung at an awkward angle, with pieces of bone sticking through the flesh.
 
Dark blood traced rivulets across its surface.
 

And what was the black sludge on his mouth—

The answer drifted to her through the fog in her mind.
 
Oh, God, he bit the lamprey!

He had been her only friend and constant companion for three hundred years.
 
Three centuries,
fifteen generations
of humankind, and he had been the only one to share her campfire.
 
He had seen her kill countless times and escaped death with her almost as many.
 

Her breath caught in her throat.

Two of the demon's heads, working in unison, swept down toward Alsvior and paused inches from his body.
 
He stared back, his gaze proud and his nostrils flaring and snorting fire.
 
The lamprey laughed in response, a coughing whoop that blew currents of air through the room.
 
Springing like a whip, a third head cracked out and then slowed to touch him delicately on his broken leg.

Alsvior screamed.
 

No!
  
De la Roca felt his suffering with every cell of her body.
 
I can't . . . I have to—

The lamprey's hold broken over her mind, she held up the gun of many names.
 
In a swift motion, she spun the cylinder and the bullets fell to the ground, clinking like tiny bells.
 
She reloaded it with a single bullet from her belt and spun the chamber shut.
 
Although the ritual was of her own devising, she could feel the blessing of luck upon her.

"
Bluot,
I call you."
 
The gun hummed in response as the red mist descended over her vision.
 

It was the Death-Bringer, the Death-Seeker.
 
It was Kali and the Morrigan.
 

It was
Bluot
.
 

She looked through the sight, an unnecessary step that she couldn’t let go of, and fired the bullet.

It spiraled toward the lamprey.
 

Come on, come on.
  

Bluot
had a mind of its own.
 
When called, it took out targets in the order of its own choosing, one for every bullet fired.
 
In this room, there was only the demon, her horse, and herself.

Not me.
 
Not Alsvior.
 
Not this time.

Why not?
 
It's only a matter of time.
 
Eventually, the gun is going to choose you as the best target in sight, and you know it never misses.

After all, how else would the gun change hands?

Not this time.
 
Just not this time.
 

To De la Roca's demon eyes, the bullet's spirals grew tighter, slower.
 
Distracted by torturing Alsvior, there wasn't time for the lamprey to notice that something was amiss.
 
Still, as if psychic, two of its heads rose in the air to check the surroundings the moment before the bullet hit.
 

Too late.

Demon flesh was as tough as stone, but to
Bluot
, it mattered not.
 
The bullet bored in, swift and true, straight to the center of the lamprey.
 
Its screams crashed against her mind, and she shivered with their force.
 

The heads fell as one and bounced on the concrete as they hit the floor.
 
The mouths spasmed and went still.

De la Roca didn't move.
 
She was waiting for what she knew came next.

The creature burst into green flames.
 
On her first kill, she had rushed the body to find the stone, almost burning herself to death in the process.
 
How stupid that was.

Alsvior hobbled to her side, and she rubbed his leg carefully.
 

"This is going to hurt."

He snorted once and nodded, his giant head bouncing up and down.

Lightning fast, she snapped the bones back into place.
 
He screamed and shuddered, until she stroked his head and spoke to him in soothing tones.
 
"It's alright, my darling.
 
Good as new."
 
Not exactly true, but it will heal fast enough.
 
While she couldn't ride him tomorrow, he would be able to walk.

The flames were subsiding, and she could see that the body was mostly ash.
 
She waited still, until the last flicker had died down, and then with a look at Alsvior, she walked over to the ashes.
 
She sifted through with her fingers.
 
The pile was insurmountably large, and it took her almost an hour to find what she was looking for.
 
Finally, she located it—a perfect stone the size and shape of a marble.

It was the demon's
kevra
stone, and as she no longer had a
kevra
, she could use it.
 

Not like the lamprey had, of course.
 
It would take her years to develop the power to a point where she could manipulate it that well, and she wasn't interested in making mental zombies.
 
Still, she lost her last stone when Tengu escaped.
 
As such, she had an empty spot, and any
kevra
was better than no
kevra
.
 

Plus, she never knew what the stone would do until she actually tried it.

She placed it in her mouth and swallowed.

Instantly, she was caught in a stream of thoughts.
 
She turned her head as if sniffing the air, and followed it back to the source.

It was Alsvior.

She had never once doubted the intelligence of her mount, but this?
 
His mind is so elegant, so complex!

She felt through the web of his thoughts, until she came to an image that was both flattering and humbling, familiar and strange.

It was her, but through his eyes.
 
Her skin crawled.
 
Somehow, she knew she was violating his privacy.
 
Quickly, she looked away and pushed the thought-stream out of her mind.
 
Some things are better left unknown.

Stranger still was the way the stone affected her own mind.
 
It was filled with doors she had never seen before, and she threw them open with the abandon of a child.
 
She sprinted through the rooms, overturning boxes in her haste.
 
The lamprey had rummaged through her thoughts, filling her with terror and anger at her mental captivity.
 
Now that she was in control, she could feel her own power.

It was then that she noticed the gossamer thread in front of her.
 
"Al, do you see that?"

The horse whickered and shook his head.
 
She reached out and tentatively touched two fingers to the thread.
 
It shivered as a spider web might.
 
Suddenly emboldened, she grabbed it.

She could feel the mind at each end, the emotions bubbling like colored rivers.
 
With shock, she realized the strand was some kind of connection between two individuals.
 
She paused and listened to the traffic between them.
 
As the strand dissolved in her hand the link faded away like static, until it was silent again.

Squinting, she spotted several more threads.
 
Some of them she did not see in time, and they broke and clung to her clothes as she walked through them.
 
She felt each of the ones she could in turn, and was rewarded with streams of thoughts.
 
Pets, dates, sex, drugs—it's all of the trivial and mundane preoccupations of humankind.

When she was passing by the dead-center of the room, she stopped short.
 
Her gaze fell on a single strand, glowing in the flickers of Alsvior's fire.
 
This one was blue instead of white, and she could feel her new
kevra
stone humming within her stomach, responding to its influence.

She grabbed it, and the information flooded into her mind, startling her with its velocity.

"De La Roca
." The voice roared through the thought wire, filling her with shock.
 
This creature, whoever it was,
knew
she was listening.
 
"
Are you ready for your next assignment?"

It was the Angel.

She listened carefully, and when the Angel was done, the strand melted in her hand like cotton candy.
 
She checked her holsters and grabbed her hat.
 
"Here."
 
She sat it upon her horse's head, and he whickered indignantly.

"Come on Alsvior, it's time to get some rest."
 
He followed her without complaint.
 
It would take them some time to get outside of the city, but she knew he would be more comfortable there.

He looked at her and cocked his head to one side, and she marveled again that she had never truly recognized the intelligence in his eyes.
 
He never needs a lead or bridle . . . He follows every command perfectly—is there more here than I realize?

Uncomfortable with the path her thoughts were taking, she shook her head.
 
"There are four more targets." She pointed the way out, and they began to walk.

Six

L
aufeyson flicked out the cigarette and flipped open the gun to check his bullets.

He could barely remember the first time he smoked tobacco, left with only a vague impression of an ancient Indian tribe that called it "stinkweed."
 
He had taken advantage of their hallucinatory sweat-lodge rituals and appeared to them during an information gathering mission.
 
Fringed buckskin leathers, the head of a giant wolf as a helmet over my own—how I miss that outfit.
 
As the Indian peoples either died off or modernized, the clothes had become less useful, although he still occasionally wore them for fun.
 
Like when I scared that old drunk.

He had not originally planned on partaking of the ritual pipe, but they had been insistent, and he had needed them to trust him enough to confide their secrets.