Uptown. I climbed carefully, fingers driving into the spaces between bricks where putty crumbled. The street below was deserted, and in any case, who would expect to see a woman in a dress going directly up a brick wall? Human beings do not see what they do not wish to see.
Each floor held a comfortable ledge right under the windows, as if the building were a lunatic belted tightly against himself. Or as if it were a worm, each segment caked with exhaust grime, rising above the ground before it dove.
Zhen held that the ancient world smelled better. I disagreed. Even with the reek of smog, there is no contest between my city and, say, Rome or Paris in their ancient, fouler days. Mortals have at least grown cleaner.
In some ways.
The fourth floor. My boot-toe gripped the ledge, I pulled myself up. Eased along it, weight balanced, velvet scraping brick. There was a smear of dried blood on the back of my left hand, other crackling bits on my face and neck. I would not wash until vengeance was complete.
It wasn’t hard to find the window. It was half open, and the reek of adrenaline and bloodshed billowed out like red dye in water.
Nine-man teams, he had told me, choking as my fingers tightened on his throat. Three Burners, three Fighters, a Sensitive, and the captain and his lieutenant . That’s all, I swear.
After I had cut off three of his fingers and he still swore, I believed him.
At the very edge of the window, I held my skirts back. Leaned forward and peered in.
The room was dark. A table stacked with odd shapes, a chair, a television blindly spewing colored light. On the bed, a stabbing motion, buttocks rising and plunging down.
The Burner had company.
A slightly acrid scent—the reek of a slightly dominant male. Cheap perfume mixing with aftershave and sweat, the musk of sex. The window did not creak as I eased it wider, wider. My shadow moved on the floor, I hopped down light as a leaf while the rhythm of creaking bedsprings became frantic. Softly I stepped across the thin carpet, avoiding a pile of clothing. Smoke-scent rose in simmering waves.
He had not even washed the stink of murder away. Loathing choked me. I glided to the bedside and looked down just as the man stiffened, his head thrown back. The woman’s eyes were closed, her long pale hair spread on the pillow and her painted face garish even in the dark.
My claws sank into flesh and I ripped him up and away, viselike fingers clamped at the base of his neck. Just like a mother cat chastising a kitten—or a Preserver teaching a new charge to control the Thirst.
He flew across the room, hit the television on its low dresser. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and the woman inhaled to scream.
“Shhh.” I laid my finger against my lips. She swallowed her cry, staring. My eyes would be glowing yellow by now. “Gather your clothes, child, and flee.”
Her raddled face crumpled, but she did not make a sound. I turned my back on her and found the man crawling for the table and his weapons—I saw hilts and ugly penile gun-shapes. I caught him halfway there with a kick that threw him into a flimsy chair he’d set in the corner, the sweet sound of ribs snapping echoing off every wall. The tank settled in the chair toppled, liquid splashing, and the cap on its top bounced away. I smelled petrol and that same odd cloying additive.
The Burner lay moaning. Short dark hair, a hefty build. He was probably light on his feet, though, he would have to be. If they hunted anything other than a Preserver’s helpless charges, they needed speed and ruthlessness.
Not that it would help him.
I was on him in a moment. Naked flesh, veined and crawling with the incipient death every mortal was heir to. One arm cracked with a greenstick snap. He howled. The tank glugged out a small lake of cold liquid. Soaking the carpet, splashing. I grabbed his short hair and ground his face down. That cut off the howling, and I do not deny a savage satisfaction. His hands flapped, long white fish.