“Had to ditch it.” Damnit.
His fishy lips stretched in a ghastly smile. “Guess I’ll have to search you to find out for sure. Thoroughly—”
Katya punched him in the throat. Her jagged silver rings bit into his flesh, and he gagged and reeled backward, eyes wide. Before he could recover, she turned and ran. Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest. Dear gods. Lucky that idiot had been high and stupid. He’d be after her soon enough, though.
Autos rattled past, then a horse-drawn carriage. A few homunculi stalked the shadows, blackened things in the shapes of men. A great steam-man stomped by, vapor squirting from his upper reaches, but those were relics from another age and there was only the one, dented and rusty though it was.
Bombs dropped during the war (still ongoing in other parts of the world) had cratered some of the roads and collapsed a few of the buildings, largely unrepaired. This was the Uppers, after all. Support the Brotherhood, one scuffed poster read. Good luck, she thought.
Wet and exhausted, she found Aggie at the corner of Navvers and Trilston.
“Thank Magnar!” Katya panted. “I was afraid you’d be out on a date.”
“Damn, look at you, hon.”
Aggie pulled her under the overhang, where several other prostitutes lounged, stinking of cheap perfume. One was blatantly infected, and she resembled a living anemone, orange tendrils waving in defiance of gravity.
The corner they’d picked was one of the busiest in the Fifth Ward, but at this time of day and in this weather only a trickle of traffic rumbled by. Two homunculi listed against the wall, seemingly lifeless. Only their eyes moved, rolling in their black sockets. Their eyes were the only things human on them, and they creeped Kat out. Still, she knew the creatures provided protection for the girls. And me, hopefully. They were one of the reasons she’d come here.
“H-have a cigarette?” she asked, teeth chattering.
Aggie unslung her tiny purse with the red frills and dug out a pack of smokes. Menthols, but Katya didn’t complain as Aggie put one to her lips and sparked it for her.
“What happened?” Aggie said. “Don’t tell me you got the law after you.”
“Worse. Sedic.”
“The loan shark? He’s bad news. Hear he crippled Cinda last week.”
“Paralyzed her. Thought I’d get him back. Use the loot to pay her bills. Didn’t work out so well, though. He got sick at dinner—bad clams or something—and doubled back. Caught me right in the act of finding his stash.”
“Rotten luck, girl.”
“Now I’ve got him and his pack on my trail.”
“He’s killed, like, nine people this year that I know of. And what he does to girls like me ...” Aggie shook her head. “How can I help?”
“Just give me cover till I can think my way out of this.”
The other prostitutes glared at Katya. Likely they didn’t appreciate the thought of more competition. As if.
“More bad news,” Aggie said. “Mala saw a haunt earlier.”
“Not another one,” Katya said.
“She was goin’ down an alley after a job and saw this--well, shadow, I guess--fly up into the sky. She heard a scream and went ahead. Found an old lady kneeling over some bodies. Mala said their skulls were smoking.”
“Shit.”
The haunts had been terrorizing Lavorgna for months, and no one even had a guess at what they were.
“Just be careful out there,” Aggie said.
Katya sucked in a hit and shivered as the nicotine fired her bloodstream. The menthol tasted terrible, but it was worth it. She blew out the smoke and stared up into the storm-tossed night. Here and there between the clouds scudded two of the three moons, one pale and white, one greenish and misshapen.
“Hey, look what crawled in,” Aggie said.
A long black limo squealed up to the corner, sloughing water. A dirty spray splashed Katya’s legs.
“Watch it!” Aggie called, approaching the vehicle. “Look where you’re goin’. Can’t you see it’s rainin’ out here?”
Sudden fear for Aggie made Katya call out, but the redhead ignored her. Four homunculi stood on the limo’s running boards, two on each side, chains linked to spiked collars around their necks. The creatures’ gangly black frames glistened in the rain. Like guard dogs, Katya thought. Except that they looked like blackened human corpses, only their eyes undamaged.
The limo’s chrome grill shone like silver teeth, and its bulbous headlights stabbed into the darkness like swords. A Boss’s car, or one of his lieutenant’s.
As Aggie sashayed toward the limo like she was the Empress of Qar, Kat felt a swell of admiration for her. She should’ve been a thief like me, not a whore.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” Aggie asked whoever was in the limo. “Sprayin’ water all over my girls? We ain’t made of sugar but that don’t mean we like gettin’ gutter water hosed all over us.”
The back window rolled down. Darkness gaped.
Aggie ducked her head into the interior, and Katya half expected black hands to grab her and haul her inside, for the auto to roar off and vanish into the night, Aggie’s screams on the air. Instead Aggie laughed and fingered her wet clothes.
“Naw, it’s slower than a Returner’s come,” she said, and continued talking to the occupant of the limo’s cabin in low tones. Her pimp?
Sudden movement down the street. Katya snapped her head to see the low, curving lines of Sedic’s auto, prowling like a tiger in the shadows. One of his goons drove, and she thought she saw Sedic himself in the passenger seat, a terrifying waste of a man whose addiction to alchemical substances had turned his veins yellow and caused most of his hair to fall out. A chill swept her. She looked back to the limo.
This is my chance. She moved toward the vehicle.
