Angel Town (Jill Kismet #6) by Lilith Saintcrow

Author:Lilith Saintcrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

22

Hip popped up, heel stamping down, massive lung-tearing effort and the doglike thing spun to the side as I wrenched its head and flung it. Shove at the head and the body will follow; it’s a basic law of anatomy. My whip reeled free, flechettes spilling out with a jingle, and I was up in a hot heartbeat, whip end snaking out and me right behind it. Throwing myself across space to crash into the hellhound at the apex of its leap, whip looping and turned taut, straining. Gunfire popped, bullets splattering behind us, and I wasn’t quite sure why I’d done this.

Then I remembered. Saul.

We hit the shipwrecked desk, and my right hand was full of knife hilt. The blade slid in, twisted, the silver laid along its flat flaring with sudden blue radiance, and the warmth on my chin was blood as the thing snarled in my face. It couldn’t get any purchase; the whip was now wrapped around it and pulled tight, my legs clamped around it too and the tearing in my side was ribs broken, again, dammit, can I just go five seconds without another bone snapping please God thank you—

I bent back as the head snaked forward, teeth snapping near my throat, rank hot breath touching my chin and Henderson Hill shuddering again on its foundations. The knife punctured its gluey hide, cut deep, drag on the blade as unholy muscle gripped it, silver hissing and sparking as it grated hard against ribs. Tearing it free, rolling, splinters shredding against my coat’s surface, the cubbyholes behind the desk exhaling dust as a current of bloodlust foamed up their surface, and I cut the thing’s throat in one sweep.

Arterial gush sprayed, thin black-brackish and stinking. I blinked it away, knee coming up, and realized I’d almost taken the hound’s head off. The neck broke with a glassy snap as I heaved it aside, dusty corruption racing through its tissues; it slumped off the desk and fell.

The voices in the air around me sighed, a hundred little sharp-toothed children all exhaling in wonder. For a moment the Hill pressed down, the psychic ferment shoving against my aura like it wanted to get in.

I pushed air out past my lips, hard, blowing through a thin scrim of hellbreed ichor. The shit was all over me, dammit. But there was that second thing to worry about too, and I was already rolling, dropping off the desk with a jolt, legs and ribs protesting as etheric force hummed through me and I shook the whip, the knife spun and held with the flat of the blade back along my arm. Anya could shoot the fuckers all she wanted, but my forte was knifework, and it was looking like I could take a hell of a lot more damage than she could.

You know what we are, he whispered inside my head.

Mike. What kind of a name was that for what I suspected he might be?

Anya was covering the door. Saul stood, brushing his shoulders gingerly, as if he’d been showered with dust.

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