LITMIR.BIZ

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down to scoop the snow into her fist, she whispered a soft incantation she had memorized as a kid, to melt the snow just enough for it to pack easily. But before she could do more than sight on the spot right between the demon’s black-lashed eyes, his wide mouth grinning at her from over a snowbank almost as tall as he was, the soft shushing noise of falling snow was overridden by a deep, jagged scream.

      “What the hell?” P.B. yelled, clapping furry paws over his rounded ears as though that would do anything to stop the sound.

      Wren staggered and slipped in the snow, unable to mimic P.B.’s actions as the wave of current associated with that scream slapped into her like a windstorm, almost knocking her over. “Over there,” she managed, forcing herself back up and forward. “It came from over there!”

      They moved as quickly as they could through the snow, but by the time they got there, it was too late.

      “Oh, damn.” It was less a curse than a brimstone-fueled prayer, coming from her companion’s mouth. He rubbed his palms against his fur in a nervous reaction, wanting to look away but held by the gruesome display.

      Wren had seen an angeli die before, left to bleed out in a back alley after being beaten and abused by human bigots. It wasn’t a sight you forgot, one of the angeli brought low.

      This was ten, a hundred times worse.

      “Jesus wept for mercy,” she said softly, feeling a long-gone impulse to cross herself.

      “Much as I hate them, individually and as a tribe,” P.B. muttered, then said again: “Damn.”

      Angeli were the oldest of the winged fatae, the nonhumans. Despite being part of the Cosa Nostradamus for almost two decades, Wren had never seen one with its wings completely displayed. The great feathered muscles of this angeli stretched out almost seven feet tip to tip, near as she could estimate. It was difficult to tell for certain, though, since the angel was hung upside down, its feet tied together with rope and strung from a lamppost in front of a tall, nondescript office building. Its front had been cut open, messily, from groin to chest: only an empty cavity remained, slowly gathering snowfall.

      Blood dripped from a slash in the neck, falling to the snow-covered sidewalk, staining the white a deep crimson black.

      “It’s started again,” Wren said.

      So much for the storms keeping people safe.

      two

      December, one month earlier

      Wren Valere was spitting mad. Literally. She rinsed her mouth out again and spat into the sink, watching the red foam mix with the green of the mouthwash into a truly disgusting mess before being washed down the drain. The taste of mud and blood remained. Her arms ached, her leg muscles still burned, and she could feel the adrenaline still running in her body like a drug, despite having been home, safe, for twenty minutes and more.

      “I hate my job, some days.”

      She was speaking to her reflection only, and it didn’t even bother to look unimpressed.

      Her partner was down the hall in the office, actually one of the three tiny shoe-box bedrooms in her apartment, and so he didn’t hear her words. She rinsed again, and, this time, satisfied that there was more mouthwash-green than bloodred, reached for a towel to clean her face off, and went down to bitch to him in person.

      He was sitting at her desk, a white cardboard box the size of a small cake in front of him, his cell phone pressed to his ear. Sergei was taller than she was by almost a foot, and he looked oddly scrunched in her chair. His long legs were stretched in front of him, resting on an old, beat-up leather hassock under the desk. Middle age was starting to show in the strands of silver in his hair, and the lines on his face—not to mention the slight thickening of his waist—but he was, still and all, an impressively elegant figure, and a pleasure to watch.

      He saw her standing in the doorway and held up a hand to keep her from coming in. She stopped and waited, not at all put out to be barred from her own office. Being a Talent—witch, mage, magic-user, in more superstitious times—meant that electronic objects often had total meltdowns in her presence, especially when she wasn’t in complete control of herself.

      She was pretty well locked down right now, but that hadn’t been the case when she came home half an hour ago, dripping with the now-washed-off mud, blood, and hellhound feces. Wise, for her partner to be cautious. He’d already gone though half a dozen cell phones because of her, not to mention three PDAs, to the point where he claimed it would be cheaper to hire a scribe to follow him around everywhere with a quill and paper.

      “Yes. I understand,” he was saying into the phone. “Excellent. Much appreciated.”

      Wren snorted, but softly. Sergei had a way of sounding urbanely pleasant even when he was ripping someone a new one. When he turned the charm on, men and women both had been known to slide out of their pants before they knew what was going on. Only she could see the way his face was still a little gray, his hand still a little shaky. He hadn’t quite recovered from seeing her walk in the front door, that no-doubt lovely snapshot the instant before she dropped the white box in his hands and went into the bathroom to scrape the gunk off her skin and brush her teeth. It wasn’t a visual she had wanted, either.

      Her partner was getting slammed with, she suspected, a combination of fear—for her safety—and anger—at her, at the client for not warning them, at the universe in general—mixed with just a dash of envy. As he said as she came in, with only a little bit of irony, she always got to have all the fun.

      She would have gladly given him all the “fun” of this job, if he really wanted it. She’d stay home and work the clients—

      All right, no. She wouldn’t. They’d tried that and it hadn’t gone all bad but it hadn’t gone all right, either.

      “Yes, of course,” he continued, his voice smooth but his eyes hard. “And we will complete the transaction tomorrow morning, as planned. Pleasure doing business with you.”

      He had been talking to the client, then. Good. She waited until he had turned off the phone and put it away before coming completely into the room. “Is he gonna cough up more money to cover the cost of my slicks?” Her specially treated bodysuit, the most overpriced piece of gear she owned, had been torn into shreds by hellhound claws. While she had been able to seal up the cuts in her own flesh so that, although not healed, they already looked several days old, Talent weren’t very good at mending fabrics.

      And the way the cabbie had acted when she got in his car, she was pretty sure word had already spread never to pick up anyone matching her description, ever again. Not that anyone could remember what she looked like, from day to day—that was part of the innate talent that made her a natural Retriever.

      Her partner/business manager smiled the way that flashed dollar signs in the ether, and his almost-too-sharp nose practically quivered…okay, that last bit was her imagination. But if his nose did twitch, it would have been twitching now. The smell of money was in the water. “Enough to get you that fabric upgrade you were lusting after, even.”

      “Oh, good.” No wonder he sounded so pleased with himself. Still, it was no more than she deserved. “Easy job” her aunt ’Tunia. The Retrieval had been a bitch and a half, way beyond what they’d been promised, and she’d earned every penny of that bonus. “And, partner, before you throw something out, patting yourself on the back? That’s twice now I’ve run into targets with ’hounds. Unpleasant, and unfun. Let’s make that a standard check in the background file from now on, okay?”

      Sergei didn’t flush easily, but he did now. Background checks were, mostly, his responsibility, and her getting almost torn to bits by the massive, nasty-tempered hellhounds was not something either of them thought of with pleasure. At least this time there had only been one of the bruisers. Last time, she’d faced off against an entire pack, and she never ever wanted to even think about that again.

      “Right. Sorry.” His pale brown eyes looked honestly remorseful, but

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