Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 1

Burning Bridges.

Retrievers Series.

By Laura Anne Gilman.

One.

January 23rd 6:25pm.

Fresh snow could make even the dingiest, most urban part of Manhattan into a magical place. The colors and noises all faded away, the city's usual frenetic pace slowing to a more studied waltz of snow falling, white against the bare black limbs of trees and outlines of buildings. Drifts pushed up against mail drop boxes, covered fire hydrants, and shut down traffic except for the unstoppable city buses and madman-driven taxi cabs zipping through the night.

It might have been lovely, but Wren Valere wasn't paying attention to the scenery. She was a professional working her craft. Or trying to, anyway. Two new high-end locks had hit the market, supposedly proof against the "b.u.mp-and-enter" method, and she wanted to make sure she understood how they worked before she actually encountered one in the field, when time might be against her. In her particular profession, you didn't get many second chances, and Wren was pretty sure the past twelve months had used up all the ones she was going to get in a lifetime.

Sometimes, honestly, she didn't know what got into her. For a mind-her-own-business Retriever, she'd spent a h.e.l.l of a lot of time muddling around in things she should have left alone. Curses and politics and meetings, for G.o.d's sake.

Never mind that she'd done it to save her own skin, after the Mage Council tried to use her and her partner, Sergei; never mind that she'd done it to help out her friends among the fatae, the nonhuman members of the Cosa Nostradamus. All of that might have made what happened inevitable, but none of it made it smart.

"Hey, Valere." The voice came from the other side of the room, about three feet to the right and a foot down. And speaking of fatae....

Wren Valere didn't sigh, but she wanted to.

Retrieval wasn't easy. She had studied her craft, learned from masters, and kept up-to-date on all the most recent developments, not only in her own field, but anything that might come in handy. In addition to mastering the current-magic that flowed from within her, she had trained her body, as well; toning and strengthening her muscles, increasing her lung capacity, maintaining her flexibility. She had forced mind and body into partnership, more than once spending hours waiting in a cramped, close situation, antic.i.p.ating the perfect moment to move on a job. She knew all about patience. About focus. About dedication.

And that focus and dedication was being destroyed, not by a stubborn client, or impossible mark, or even the weight of the snow outside and what was happening in the city beyond, but by her companion.

She didn't bother looking in the direction of the voice, not wanting to encourage him.

"Valere, " the voice said again. "What does this do?"

She looked, then, briefly. "Opens locks."

The room's other occupant-and the subject of her irritation-put the tool back down on the small table next to him and picked up another. "And this?"

She reached for patience, found it. "Opens a different kind of lock."

"And this one?"

Patience threw up its hands in disgust and fled the room. "It gets the gunk out from between my teeth. d.a.m.n it, P.B., will you please leave my kit alone? Those extremely delicate tools you're paw-handling cost me a fortune, and half of them are custom-made." She reached up from her cross-legged position on the floor, and snagged the instrument in question out of P.B.'s paws. A thin ceramic shape with a non-reflective black coating, it actually did look like something that might be found in a very trendy Goth's toothbrush holder, except that the fibergla.s.s pick at the end was attuned to more delicate vibrations than enamel generally gave off.

"Sheesh. Someone's snappy." The short, white-furred demon settled on the padded bench under the room's single window and stared at her with his dark, dried-blood red eyes. He wandered over to the corkboard that hung above her desk and tapped one curved black claw on a color pencil sketch tacked there. "This the bansidhe-horsie you been chasing? How long you been working that case?"

"Five years." She refused to look up from her notes, hoping against hope he would finally take the hint and go elsewhere.

P.B. snorted, a wet, vaguely disgusting noise his flattened snout of a nose seemed designed to make. "That's dedication. You get paid for any of that time?"

"Five years ago, yeah, " It wasn't always about money. A lot of the time, it was about reputation. The Wren never gave up. Never left a job unfinished. No matter what.

Okay, maybe some of it was about money. Her mother had spent most of her life worrying about money: how much, never enough. Having money-savvy Sergei Didier become her manager when she was a teenager had given Wren the opportunity-and the education-she needed to change that. Over the years, her reputation-and her fees-had grown. If she was careful, and kept working, her savings would be enough to buy her apartment when it finally-inevitably-went co-op. More, Wren was now in the position of being able to have ego spur her to do things, rather than need.

Financial need, anyway.

The demon and the human were occupying the spare bedroom/library of Wren's East Village apartment, surrounded by three stacks of books, a scattering of papers, and the remains of two pizzas. The air was heavy with the scent of pepperoni, cheese, and a dry heat coming up through the building's ancient radiators, making her sinuses itch.

Ego had its own need in it, too. The bansidhe-Old Sally-was the one job Wren hadn't been able to close. Yet. Her clients-descendants of the original owner-had, she suspected, long since written off their initial deposit, but she couldn't let go.

No, the whereabouts of one taxidermied warhorse, no matter that it was a portent of doom, didn't really matter a d.a.m.n to her. But professional pride was involved. With her last dying breath, if need be, she was going to bring that d.a.m.n sawdust-stuffed equine doomsayer back in. Someday. When everything else got settled.

The thought made her laugh, bitterly. The Cosa was in the middle of a battle for survival against enemies it hadn't been able to identify, who were determined to wipe them out of the city. Her partner's former employers had screwed them over and left them to hang. The Mage Council was playing their usual we-know-nothing, did-nothing game with the rest of the Cosa . All in all, "settled" wasn't something Wren expected to see anytime soon.

Although these past few weeks of the new year had been oddly if pleasantly calm: n.o.body had set a psi-bomb off anywhere near her; n.o.body had tried to bribe, threaten, hijack or otherwise annoy her or any of her friends; Sergei was off on a legitimate business trip for his gallery; and she was actually catching up on her filing, bill-paying, and her exercise routine. The entire city seemed to have come to a pause.

h.e.l.l, the entire city had come to a pause, thanks to the weather.

"It's still snowing." P.B. had given up staring at her, now looking out the window, one white-furred, black-clawed paw pushing aside the dark green drape. His short muzzle, which-along with the plush white fur and rounded bear-like ears-had been the cause of his nickname of "Polar Bear, " pressed up against the gla.s.s, his breath causing the window to fog over.

"It's been snowing for the past seven hours, " Wren said as patiently as she could manage. "This isn't a news flash." After two months of winter, snow of any sort wasn't news.

The constant curtain of white was making her stir-crazy, too, but she could live with it. Without the snow, Wren had no confidence that the agreement she helped broker-that the Eastern Mage Council and tri-state lonejacks would sit down and shut up and play nice together, at least while they had murdering bigots out for their blood-would have held together longer than a week, much less the month-and-counting.

It helped that attacks by those bigots who had been trying to "cleanse" Manhattan of anything supernatural had all but stopped. She didn't think they were gone, though. The threat of the Cosa finally working together, in however limited a fashion, wasn't enough to work that miracle, no matter what some of her fellow members might want to believe. No, it was far more likely that frostbite was a h.e.l.l of a deterrent-as was the fact that their prospective victims were wisely staying inside, where it was warm.

No matter. She'd take whatever reason, if it gave them a breather.

P.B. turned away from the window and hopped down off the bench, kicking the pizza box with one clawed foot as he moved. "Hey. There's still a slice left."

"Yours."

"I'm full, " he said, by his voice, borderline perturbed by that admission.

"You're full?" That got her to look up. She stood, creaking unpleasantly in the knees, and went over to look out the window, as well. "The Stomach that Digested Manhattan is full? d.a.m.n. There's the fourth horseman, riding past."

"Oh, shut up, " he snarled, uncharacteristically. "I wanted kung pao chicken, remember? But you didn't want to order Chinese. For the first time ever, speaking of the end of the world."

Wren didn't snarl back at him, but only because she could feel current coil in her core, the power looking for an excuse to get funky. Control. She needed to maintain control. P.B. knew why she didn't want Chinese food. Or he should know, anyway. With Chinese food came Chinese fortune cookies. Fortune cookies, in this city, had an unpleasant tendency to be written by actual Seers. Sometimes, not knowing what was about to fall on your head was a blessing.

Wren counted backward from ten in English, then up again in Russian, the only thing she knew in that language except for a few useful swear words. Stay calm, Valere. He was cranky. She was cranky. Stir-crazy didn't look good on either one of them.

This was the third day of snow this week, snowing hard since dawn the day before, and P.B. had been bunking with her for two days of it. She would have told him to go home, but Sergei had been caught out of town when the airports shut down, and she had been glad enough for the company at that point to tell the demon that he could stay as long as he liked.

Apparently, he liked overnight.

Besides. She had no idea what P.B's home was actually like, much less if it was currently livable. The law said landlords had to provide heat when it dropped below a certain temperature, but the demon was unlikely to call the tenant complaint hotline, much less appeal to a disciplinary board.

"We need to get out, " she said. "Do something." Something other than eat and prod unruly paperwork, anyway. She wasn't able to focus properly on the lock schematics, so long as P.B. was restless.

"As you just pointed out, it's been snowing all day. There's, like, a foot of snow out there. This, in case you missed it, is a problem for me."

Wren turned and looked at the demon, all four feet of him standing upright and reaching. The vision of him lost in a snow bank, only the black tips of his claws and the black tip of his nose visible, made her laugh for the first time in days. She didn't think he would appreciate her sharing the image, though.

"Let's get out of here, " she said again. "Come on."

It only took a few minutes for Wren to lace up her boots, pull on a sweater, and grab her heaviest coat out of the closet. The cold air was like a slap against her face, after the dry heat of her apartment, and she stuck out her tongue to catch a snowflake, just because she could.

P.B. promptly went out and measured himself against the nearest plowed-in snow bank, coming out about six inches the victor.

Her street hadn't been plowed in hours, and the sidewalks were impa.s.sible. They trudged through ankle-deep snow in the middle of the street, watching their breath crystallize in the night air.

Most of the population was safe indoors, watching out windows, catching updates on the television, or determinedly pretending that this latest storm Wasn't Happening. But a few equally snow-loving souls were out and about: Wren saw a couple of teenagers building a scraggly looking snowman wearing a Yankees cap; a young gay couple walking slowly glove in glove; and at least three groups of kids, dashing about madly as though they had never seen snow before.

Maybe they hadn't, not on this scale. The Winter of Snows was a long time ago now, for all that she remembered it vividly, and the past few winters had been pretty dry.

Her brow furrowed under the wool watch cap as she thought about that. Was there anything potentially worrisome about that, other than from a drought perspective? No, after the heat wave of the summer past, it would make sense they'd be due for another extreme winter. No need to a.s.sume anything more sinister-or supernatural-than that.

Anyway, other than the occasional thunderstorming, lonejacks and Council both knew better than to mess with the weather. Mother Nature was a bigger bada.s.s than any ten Talents, and less predictable than your average blissed out, neurotic, brain-fried wizzart.

Spring would come. Eventually. In the meantime, she should just be thankful for the peace and quiet the storms were bringing to a city that badly needed it. Having to layer blankets at night was a decent trade, for that.

All right, the rest of the city, unaware of what was going on, might not know that they needed it, but she did. Wren had been starting to feel worn decidedly thin by all the new demands on her: the endless Negotiating and Line-walking and Behaving when all she wanted to do was kick everyone out and lock the door behind them.

She was not good at playing with others. Not at all. In fact- "Hey, Valere!" P.B. called.

Wren turned in the direction of his voice, and got a face full of cold white powder smack on the left side of her face.

"Argh!" Tears came to her eyes, but she was grinning, ear to ear. Wiping away the stinging cold snow, she shot back, "You're dead meat, you polar bear wannabe!"

Bending 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 snow bank almost as tall as he was, the soft shushing noise of falling snow was overridden by a deep, jagged scream.

"What the h.e.l.l?" 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 a.s.sociated 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, d.a.m.n." 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: "d.a.m.n."

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 blood red, reached for a towel to clean her face off, and went down to b.i.t.c.h 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 ha.s.sock 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 superst.i.tious 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 h.e.l.lhound 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 h.e.l.lhound 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 l.u.s.ting 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 b.i.t.c.h 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 ma.s.sive, nasty-tempered h.e.l.lhounds 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.