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The Elders have their hungers, and our cousins have their Pattern. We have the bargain. We may take, we may exchange--but we may also impart. Even to the righteous. All it requires is agreement.
His chest was paler than the rest of him; a hunter's work, like ours, is done at night. Wiry golden hair, pressed flat in places by the straps and buckles of the ingenious harnesses hunters use to carry their weapons. Straps and sheaths of muscle underneath, crisscrossed with a map of scars denser than any subway's spiderweb this world could dream up, an atlas of suffering. The claws of my kind had no doubt scored his hide in many places, and the sharp edges of others who share the night and a hunger for fleshly little miseries as well.
Your world is full of things your kind never suspects. The ignorance you pursue would be charming if you did not also avidly pursue your own destruction by every means ingenious, common, or possible.
Contrary to popular belief, most of my kind would like to see you persevere. Certainly I would. Where else, in all the planes, worlds, niches, or kulhalt, would we find such marvelous diversion?
"Jesus," Jack Karma said finally. "Get it over with."
"No savoring the moment?" My tongue flicked, and I exhaled against his skin. His right hand leapt, and I let him clasp my nape, digging his blunt-bitten fingernails in. He was strong, as hunters are, but if he thought he could deter me at this range, he was sorely mistaken.
Still . . . the nasty gleam clinging to his fingers prickled uncomfortably. I leaned into it, restrained the chattering of my teeth since I didn't think he'd get the joke.
When his hand fractionally eased, I pressed my lips to his flesh. High on the right side, since the left would be over his heart, and I sensed he would definitely object.
It was graceless, I admit. Perhaps I was a little excited. He screamed, his body stiffening and his right hand clamping down, and the marking burned as it left my tongue and lips and eyes and will.
Just like that, in a dusty cellar, I was born. To stay in your world, I needed an anchor, one durable enough to handle some strain.
I did not mind sharing my un-father's strength to gain it.
PROMISE
February 14, 1945
The Gothic roof pitched steeply, and it took some doing to anchor the heavy, man-sized iron frame to it. The Sophienkirche crouched below, quivering in distress as the burning city convulsed. The planes were returning, and I had to hope Karma would remember his part of our bargain.
Is this what your kind feels? An unsteadiness in what passes for vital organs, a thrill along the back of your carapace? I do not know, for all I may sip and sup upon your sadness.
Or your anticipation.
There, that is the precise word. The thrill, the catch in the throat of whatever form I wear. Oh, it is delicious. There is nothing like it for a pale shadow, a placeholder for the masters of my plane, a mere marker left on a table.
For that little catch, that tiny thrill, I had set this game in motion.
The screaming had receded, but the fires were still smoldering. There would be more, of course. So much subtle maneuvering, such careful twitching of the threads, to lead the Allies--and, more important, Jack Karma, the second so named of his hunter lineage, the scourge of the nightside in Saxony--to this very place.
And he was late.
I heard them well before any of your kind would. A faint metallic blurring, a buzzing in the distance. This was the last major city to escape the Allies' full attention, with their cargoes of death from silver-bellied birds. Last night had merely been a prelude, but the shock and pain and fire were so theatrical. Not to mention delicious.
I stroked the iron framework with one hand, baring my teeth. When Karma arrived . . .
I heard his pulse, then, on the other side of Postplatz's cobbled expanse. The Felder were too busy to ship the rest of their hated, helpless enemies away; some of the chain-gorgeted military police even had to work for once, instead of terrifying those they suspected. You are wonderful, you busy little ants, swarming in the wreckage, organizing and swabbing away while the full horror bears down on you. One of your more admirable and tragic qualities, I think.
He drew closer, and I felt the lash of sensation again. A nail stuck in the clotted fabric of your plane, holding me fast. My fellows would sneer if they suspected my ambition. Your flesh, the very thing you surrender so easily, its dense-packed, cringing fragility--
"What the fuck is that?" Karma landed easily on the roof beam, just where I expected him to appear. It gave him a clear field of fire down the Sophienkirche's roof. Its high holy spines had rotted and been removed, but their stumps still remained next to faded red-purple shingle-scales.
"Bait needs a hook to cling to." I patted the iron frame again. "The straps will hold me. Until they burn."
Under the irritating layers of cloth on his chest, my mark throbbed, an aching-empty tooth socket. Budapest had fallen, and my quasi-father was in an orgy of gluttony there. He had noticed no change in me. It was easy enough to feign my former blankness. The perplexing question of just when I had decided to take this risk had to be shaken away as a distraction best left for contemplation some other time.
"You're going to strap yourself into that?" He didn't sound horrified, just thoughtful. The mark on his chest gave him greater durability. He drew through it, and each time he did, I was seated a little more firmly in your world. The process was slow, but it was steady.
Inexorable.
Metallic buzzing drew closer. Soon the screams would rise afresh--high mechanical ones from above, and the full-throated, bloody wailing from below, while the fires made a noise of their own.
