Selene

It was a beautiful day, mostly sunny, seventy-one degrees according to the bank thermometer. She waited for a good half-hour across Cliff Street from her apartment building, safe in the shadow of a doorway. People walked the streets. She watched them carefully but none of them seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. There was no sign of the press, a police presence, or of any paranormals watching her building.

Thank God for small favors. She closed her eyes, sending her senses through the familiar halls and corridors of her building. Nothing except the glow of her own wards on the fourth floor.

She crossed the street, watching for cars, and ducked into the alley on the left side of the building. The dumpsters hulked here, a strong simmering smell rising from their open maws. Her boots slipped greasily against crud on the cracked pavement. No sunlight here—the buildings blocked it. Cold kissed Selene’s face, a slight breeze. There was rain on the way, the tang of it rolling in from the bay.

She wasn’t tall enough to reach the fire-escape ladder, so she had to spend a little Power to unlock it. Physics took over, it slid down and banged on the concrete. The noise was incredible, but in the end of the day with everybody at work, her chances of being noticed were slim to none. A few schoolkids might see her, but precious few people would ask them.

Her building was mostly refugees or kids of refugees, living in rent-controlled havens. Selene’s kind of people didn’t talk to the cops much. The word for someone who did wasn’t a nice word, and it meant you weren’t trustworthy enough for anything. You could run with a bad crowd, sign up with a gang in self-defense, murder and loot, even. But talking to the authorities would put you in a scarlet robe all its own, dressed up like a Gilead heretic ready for the burning or the Tangle.

She climbed the ladder, the chill of the rusting metal making her palms ache. Her arms shook a little, and her legs hurt slightly. Marina was right—she would be weak for a while. Power couldn’t heal everything, couldn’t replace physical reserves.

If I use too much Power, I wonder if the bullet hole will open back up? Selene shivered. She knew it was impossible. . .but still. Getting shot in the back kind of makes you wonder about all sorts of things. Her lips pulled back from her teeth. Fourth floor—and her own window.

She touched the glass, crouching on the metal platform. Her monthly drills—an escape route was always a good idea, but useless if you didn’t practice it—had only included going out through the window, not getting back in.

She ran her fingers along splintery wood. The window came up just enough for her to fit her fingers under, Power tingling and sparking along her hand. She heaved up, and in a trice was shimmying through, the blue canvas bag knocking against her hip.

Her feet crunched as they landed on the floor. Selene straightened, looked around.

Oh, no. No.

Someone had been in her apartment, and they’d trashed it. Her collection of cheap post-War porcelain geisha figurines lay scattered and broken on the floor—that was the crunching under her borrowed boots. Her bed had been torn apart, her dresser drawers yanked out and emptied, her desk disemboweled. Her computer monitor was smashed, the hard drive tossed over on its side. Goddammit, all those grades gone. Her closet was open, everything yanked off the hangers.

Her nostrils flared. A powerful zoolike smell assaulted them. Werecain. Well, that’s how they got through my wards. Good too, not to leave any marks. Her eyes smarted, filling with tears.

No. I’m not going to cry, she told herself, sternly. No more crying. No more. I’m done with crying. She wiped at her eyes, hot salt water greasing her fingers. Goddammit. This was my place, my safe place. Everything’s gone.

Well, the voice of practicality replied, you were only here to pack a suitcase and pick up your cash-stash. You were going to be leaving this all behind anyway. Don’t bitch so much.

Selene’s heart leapt against her ribs. She heard a low, grinding growl.

From her living room.

She reached down blindly, digging for Rigel’s gun. Her fingers curled around it and she tugged it out of her pocket. It got caught in the material; she yanked, tearing the dark fabric.

There was a crash—kitchen, she catalogued it automatically. Sounds like it’s in the kitchen. Lucky me having hardwood floors, easier to break shit—what is a werecain doing in my house? She swallowed dryly. How much noise did I make coming in here? Why isn’t it on top of me by now? It hasn’t heard me?

I can’t be that lucky.

But she was due for a little luck. Jesu knew it had been a fucking disaster for a long time now. She was owed a break.

She edged toward the bedroom door. Broken porcelain ground under her borrowed boots. It hears me, it has to hear me, its senses are much better than a human’s.

There was a roar, a growl, a crash—coffee table, she thought, raising the gun through a dreamlike syrupy haze. Must have been the coffee table. Goddammit, I carried that up the stairs myself. Selene heard her own breathing, harsh and light and quick, something blurred through the door, a slice of darkness.

Selene squeezed the trigger. There was an incredible coughing roar and the smell of cordite, a jet of blue smoke. Rigel likes automatics. Is it the gun of choice for werecain hunting?

The first shot went wide, splinters scattering through the air from the door-jamb, the door hit the wall and started to bounce back. She kept squeezing, tracking in front of the target’s head, like Jack had taught her. With paranormals it was always safer to hit the head if you could.

The second shot took it in the shoulder, and the third in the head. A hairy shape with a long snout and awful claws, a tattered pair of jeans hugging its hips—must have Changed in helluva hurry, Selene’s brain howled with a sort of lunatic glee.

It thudded into the floor. Half its head was vaporized. Hollowpoints—you had to use a special kind of ammo to cause enough damage to kill ‘cain or really anything paranormal, they healed so quickly. The smell was awful, Power and blood and animal and the copper-tainted stink of death. Selene heard a faint breathy sound and realized she was trying to scream, couldn’t find the air. She gulped it back, her heart hammering. Her entire body was tingling. The curse was awake with a vengeance, making her hand shake slightly and her throat dry out.

Nikolai. She shoved the thought away. It would only make the burning between her legs, the swimming weakness, worse.

She skipped nervously over the werecain’s body, hoping it was dead. Its fur was dark and matted, blood sprayed against the framed print of Vermeer’s The Letter hanging next to the door. Danny had bought it over the Intranet and had it delivered last Christmas, a splurge to celebrate a particularly successful job. She peeked out past the shattered door into her apartment.

Are there more? Please, God, throw me a bone, let this one be the only one. Her shields thinned. The wards on her apartment resounded, vibrating with her nearness. Get it, throw me a bone for no more werecains? Ha ha.

Nothing else in her apartment. Nothing living. How had she missed a werecain, for Christos’s sake? The smell alone should have hit her before she came into the apartment.

I’m not dealing with this very well, she thought dimly. I think I’m in shock.

Whoever the werecain was, he’d been in her home for a while. Everything was smashed. It was an orgy of destruction, all right. Even the couch had been chopped up. Everything bigger than a breadbox had been destroyed.

They were looking for something. He, it—he was looking for something, no wonder it didn’t hear me. It was too busy tearing my entire apartment to shreds, making enough noise to cover me breaking into my own house. Dear God. What was it looking for?

Selene crunched over broken glass. All her dishes were smashed. That wasn’t looking for something—that was pure terrorization. If she’d come in her front door. . .

Don’t think about that.

Nobody in the kitchen, nobody in the bathroom, though her medicine cabinet was cleaned out, bottles lying on the floor, the mirror spiderwebbed. Even the shower curtain had been torn down.

First things first. She closed the door and flicked the light on, set the gun on the counter next to a shattered bottle of Vickle’s VaporRub, then unbuttoned her jeans and plopped down on the toilet. I live my life by the dictates of my bladder. A strained giggle bounced off the tiled walls. The pretty little pink ceramic dish for her talcum powder was shattered on the floor, powder scattered everywhere, the marks of her borrowed boots and the werecain’s tough furry pads scraping aside the delicate white drifts. The smell of powder, Vickle’s, baby shampoo, and werecain mixed together uneasily, overlaid with the perfume of Selene’s skin. She was emitting.

The medallion was still chilly against her skin.

I’ve got to get out of here. Where can I go? I could call Nikolai’s nest and. . .

“Goddammmit!” she yelled, flinching as the sound bounced off the tiled walls. Here she was calmly sitting and pissing when she’d just killed a werecain in her bedroom.

Is it really dead? She chided herself as she stood up and flushed, buttoned her jeans. It was ridiculous—half the werecain’s head was gone. Rigel had loaded the gun with good ammo. Had he guessed? Or was it just business as usual for a thrall to load up with paranormal-killing bullets?

There were werecain at the Nichtvren haunt. So the werecain had it in for Nikolai. Why? And what the hell did it have to do with this Grigori? Her brain skipped between questions, trying to find the right one to frame the situation. Of course the werecain’s dead. Even a Nichtvren would have a hard time surviving a shot like that to the head.

But what if it’s not dead? What if it’s waiting for me outside the door?

Stop it. Nikolai’s voice infiltrated her head, quiet and cool and logical. Do not freeze. You are safe enough, this is your Place of Power. Open the bathroom door and check the werecain’s body again. You would have heard him by now if he had awakened.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat. Why was it that the voice of cold logic inside her head sounded like his? Irritation boiled under her ribs.

Her left fingers curled around the doorknob. She ripped the door open, the gun held level in her right hand.

Nothing. Her shattered apartment was empty, except for a corpse.

She paced through the wreckage again, a lump in her throat. Her figurines, all gone, her books dumped over the floor, the cedar chest that served as her altar hacked apart and magickal implements scattered.

Looking for something. Her left hand reached up to touch the strap of the bag. What do you want to bet the Seal of Sitirris is what he was looking for? And what do you want to bet Danny put it with his little black book? There had been something with the book, something heavy and hard, but she hadn’t had a moment to herself since—

You idiot, Selene. You’ve probably been carrying the Talisman all this time.

The thought made her entire body go cold again. She shivered, her teeth chattering, and lunatic laughter pressed against her throat. I’ve got a dead fucking werecain in my bedroom and a whole host of problems and once dusk hits Nikolai will rise and I’ll be in even more trouble. Jesu Christos.

She lifted her left hand to her mouth, set her teeth against the soft flesh below her thumb, and bit down hard.

Red pain jolted her nervous system, swilled through a sharp flare of desire, and subsided. First things first, she heard Danny’s voice, from the very center of her skull. The All-Dead Hit Parade was playing inside Selene Thompson’s head, come on and get your tickets now.

She let out a shrill, barking sob. Then she lifted the gun again and sidled over broken wood and porcelain and glass. I need a pair of my own shoes, she thought as the boots pinched her toes unmercifully. Some clothes, see if they found my stash. Then I’ll drain the wards and the altar and leave everything here like I planned to anyway. That’s safest.

Safest. Yeah.

The werecain’s body still lay slumped against her bedroom floor, mostly headless. It’s just as well I have to leave, I’d never be able to sleep here again. A lake of blood spread out from the body, vivid red. It looks like fake blood. Christos, I wish it was.

She found some of her own clothes—a pair of jeans, a sweater, a white dress shirt—and changed hurriedly, stealing glances at the dead werecain every few moments. She found her boots tossed—one under the bed, another on her chair by the closet. The chair was miraculously still upright and not reduced to a pile of matchsticks.

She thought about it, left Rigel’s coat there too. Her camel coat was in the front closet, she’d pick it up on the way out. Its pockets were deep enough to hold a gun.

The cash she’d stashed—no refugee child trusted banks much—behind the headboard was luckily still there when she slid aside the flimsy panel. She kept glancing at the werecain’s body, imagining she saw it twitch every time she made a noise.

Then she left her bedroom, carrying the blue canvas bag, with only one last nervous glance down at the werecain.

It took her only a few moments to transfer everything in her purse into her black canvas bag, which was dumped unceremoniously out across the shattered couch. She repacked it quickly—her athame, a small glass container of salt, the vial of consecrated water, her tarot cards.

Then she stuffed everything from Danny’s blue bag into her own black bag, making sure her wallet was on top. The file folder fit in there too, just barely. I need a quiet place to sit and go over this. She closed the bag’s flap, tested it gingerly. Not too heavy.

How many years of my life am I leaving behind again? She breathed in the violated smell of her shattered sanctuary. What did I do to deserve this?

There was no answer. There never was.

She took one last long look, then she stood up and closed her eyes. Spread her arms a little. Come to mama. She dropped below the surface of conscious thought.

These were her own wards and defenses and she was standing in the middle of them, so they didn’t cost her to pull back and disassemble, Power flooding her, replacing what she’d used. The chalk marks on the floor would be writhing madly, and they would fade as soon as she was done. She scanned them quickly—he had a key, and he jacked in through my wards there. I didn’t even know there was a loophole. Going to have to fix that next time. . .if there is a next time. Hours. He was here for hours, tearing everything apart and probably waiting for me. Stupid and sloppy, just like a dog.

She came back to herself, coughing, her eyes watering. The tang of werecain was overwhelming. Now, naked, without the defenses on the apartment, the echoes of what she’d done and the magick she’d worked sent up flares all over the spectrum. It would be a miracle if nobody noticed.

With that happy and comfortable thought keeping her company, she stamped through her apartment, grinding porcelain shards underfoot. She kept her right hand curled around the gun in her pocket, unlocking and opening her front door with her left. The hallway was deserted.

Selene took one last look over her shoulder at her ruined life, stepped out into the hall, and slammed the door shut.