Angel Town Read Online Free PDF Page B

flat, shine-dusted eyes glazed. He twitched, teeth grinding in the ruin of my shoulder, and I let out a sound that probably would’ve haunted a nightmare or two if there was anyone around to hear. It took working the gun barrel into his mouth and cracking the jaw to get the teeth to loosen up as his body twitched and jerked. I jammed it further back—he was still twitching—and squeezed the trigger again, the roar way too close for comfort.
    The back of its head evaporated.
    Corruption raced through its tissues, little veins of dust spilling from a crackglaze like fine porcelain glued back together and unceremoniously busted again.
    Would’ve been easier with my knives. Where are my fucking knives? It didn’t matter. I scrambled out of his slackening embrace, my sneakers squishing and sliding in a tide of brackish fluid. It was blood. But the edges of the red fluid held a taint of black, hungrily threading through and turning it to dust as the body twitched and jerked, heels drumming in a weird dance against the rooftop, the mangled head spilling brainmeal as the neck twisted. My ribs flickered; heaving breaths shaking me like wet laundry. I hit one of the listing iron struts reaching up like fingers—it was bent crazily where he’d gone right through it.
    Yes, I could see now it was a he. He’d been naked, and his genitals were altered, too. Barbed and spiked, like…I don’t even know what like.
    They always go for body mods. Part of the personality of someone who’ll trade their soul away. I know that. It was a relief to find something I did know for sure. Even if this was weird as fuck.
    I was making a whistling sound. Hyperventilating. Something inside me clamped down, made my pulse and respiration calmer, my eyes locked on the twitching, disintegrating body.
    You must watch death you make, a man whispered from my soupy, darkened memory. Is only way, milaya .
    Mikhail. I remembered his name, now, with a lurching mental effort. Sweat stood out, cold and slick, all over me. The gun was steady, pointed at the swiftly rotting corpse as if it might take a mind to get up for round two.
    You never know. You just never know.
    My shoulder burned, but I ignored it. The gun didn’t waver. So this was what I did. I leapt off multistory buildings like I was stepping off a patio. I found weird smells. I got into fights on rooftops.
    I killed things that shouldn’t exist.
    The gem on my wrist glowed softly.
    When you’re ready.
    Is that what he’d meant, my blue-eyed breakfast-buying hallucination? Was I having another hallucination now?
    That’s the trouble with waking up in your own grave. A whole lot of weird shit suddenly seems pretty reasonable.
    Maybe that wasn’t your grave. Maybe your name isn’t Jill. Maybe Mikhail is something else. Can’t assume. That’s what he said, all the time. “Do not ever assume. Is quickest way to get ass blown sideways.”
    I stared at the bubbling mass until it was clear it wasn’t going to get up and come after me again. The night air was full of traffic sounds, faraway sirens, whispered secrets. My shoulder had stopped bleeding. When I looked down, craning my neck, the bubbling pink froth squeezing out of the flesh as it knit itself back together sizzled a little, eating at the T-shirt. Bile whipped the back of my throat, I forced it down by swallowing. Bad idea, because then it hit my stomach and revolved. I was kind of glad I hadn’t eaten anything, because I heaved once before I got myself back together and used the spar behind me to muscle my way back to standing. My knees definitely felt gooshy.
    The next step was examining the victim and looking for evidence. Like a cop.
    Not a cop. A hunter. You do what the cops can’t.
    My own voice, hard and clear, addressing a class of bright-faced boys and girls in blue dress uniforms.
    I will be blunt, rookies. You’ll all be required to memorize the number for my answering service, which will page me. Pray you never have to use