“Got enough metal on him for me to smell, and he’s hunting,” Saul murmured in my ear. I barely nodded, letting him know I’d heard him.

Mercenary? Or something else?

I thought this over, examining our new player. Was he looking for Robbie or just for trouble? He didn’t seem to have the nervous witness in his sights, but he was certainly up to no good. And if Saul could smell gunplay and violence on him, he was probably someone I should have a nice little chat with.

You can call me paranoid, but I rarely believe in pure coincidence. Usually coincidence gets a little help in a situation like this.

“Get our witness. Question him if you feel like it.” I slid a slim, black-finished blade out of its sheath and reversed it along my arm. “I’ll see what’s up with our little friend over there.”

“You got it. Where should I take the jitterboy?”

I did a rapid mental calculation of location and distance. “Take him to Woo Song’s and buy him dinner, but don’t let him drink any more. I’ll meet you as soon as I can. Get every scrap of information you can from him. And play nice.”

“I will.” He looked, again, like he wanted to say be careful. But he didn’t. He merely bent down, kissed my temple, and slid away, leaving me without a Were’s camouflage.

I set off across the street at an angle calculated to bring me into our mysterious visitor’s blind spot.

Unfortunately, I realized as I was halfway across Broadway, our friend wasn’t alone. His backup was on the roof, and as bullets chewed into the pavement behind me and the screaming started, I realized that this wasn’t normal at all. Nothing about this was usual. And that usually added up to one very fucked Jill Kismet.

I rolled, taking cover behind a parked car. Glass shattered; whoever it was had a fucking assault rifle and was spraying the car. The knife vanished, and I spared a brief prayer for the civilians on the street. Let’s have no casualties, Jill.

That is, except for the ones you want to inflict.

A running gunfight is not like you see in the movies. Most gun battles are over in just under seven seconds, and most end with nobody getting hurt. Or at least, among the normal dayside population, that’s what it’s like.

A nightside gunfight is a different beast. We don’t engage in them often, mostly because a lot of hellbreed and other things hunters deal with are tough enough not to need guns most of the time. A hunter is armed with heavy firepower merely to even the score.

These boys, however, were not nightsiders. They were human, and professional troublemakers unless I missed my guess. The one on the ground vanished as the one on the roof peppered the car I’d taken cover behind; I tore the cuff off my right wrist and stuffed it in my pocket, gasping as air hit the scar and a flush of chill heat slammed through my nervous system. I could have dealt with these jokers with the cuff on, but I was feeling a little unsettled. Besides, why not use near-invulnerability if you have it?

It used to be I wouldn’t use it unless I had to. God, Jill, you’ve changed.

My own guns spun out, and I gathered my legs underneath me. Sighed, blew out between my teeth, and whirled, skipping back two or three steps before pitching forward, legs burning as I pulled on all the etheric force the scar could provide. My boots smashed into the car’s hood, using the mass of the engine underneath to push against.

Wind screamed as I flew, gravity loosing its constraints for one brief glorious second.

The only trouble with doing this is a simple law of physics: the landing, once you’re going that fast, is a lot harder than you think.

Impact.

I smashed into the man on the roof, heard human ribs snap like green wood, the rifle went flying. Skidded, my boots dragging and heating up with friction, hitting the roof hard as I lost my balance, teeth clicking together. The man let out a choked burble, I bounced up to my feet.

This is why I wear leather pants. Less goddamn road-rash when you hit a rooftop going faster than you should. Jeans would be shredded. It’s not just a fashion statement—though they do make my ass look cute, as Saul so often reminds me.

I grabbed the man. He was in night-camo and streaky facepaint, and there was a whistling sound that told me one of his broken ribs had punctured a lung.

Shit.

“Who sent you?” I’m going to take you to a hospital and have them patch you up so I can break every bone in your body for shooting down at one of my streets like that. You could have killed a bunch of innocents, you asshole. My innocents. “Who? Tell me and you’ll live.” I held him up one-handed, my fingers tangled in straps that were some kind of harness to keep his weapons on, he was armed to the teeth. He even had a couple of grenades. Just the thing for urban combat. “Who, goddammit?”

He would have screamed if he could have gotten enough air in.

Then it smashed through his chest, spraying me with blood and chips of bone, I yelled and hit the ground for cover, hearing the clack of pulleys as well as the meaty thud of the body hitting the ground. What the bloody blue fuck?

Silence. Sirens in the distance, screams and shrieks from the street below. Goddammit. What the fuck was that? I extended my senses, felt nothing.

The man in camo lay slumped on the rooftop, something protruding from his chest. I took a closer look.

It was an arrow. The head was heavy-duty, a nasty piece of work; the sound of pulleys suddenly made sense. Probably a compound hunting bow.

It took some doing to yank the arrow free of the meat. I traced its path, both from sound and from instinct; came up with a rooftop due east, higher up—a perfect place to lie in wait and shoot. The bowman was gone now.

Who used arrows anymore? This was getting weirder by the second.

The scar on my wrist pulsed, ripe and obscenely warm. Silken warmth slid against my skin, under the dampness of fear-sweat and sudden chilled adrenaline gooseflesh. My breath came harsh, torturous, echoing in my ear.

What the fuck was going on?

The scar twinged. I let out a long frustrated breath. Laid the cuff back against my wrist. It was hard to cover the puckered, seamed mark back up. What if there was someone else out there with a bow trained on me? It might not kill me, but it would be a mite uncomfortable.

Well, there are Sorrows in town. A bow is just their speed, the filthy little Luddites. But why? Don’t assume this is connected—but neither can you assume it’s not. Great.

I stuffed the cuff back into my pocket. Hefted the arrow. Thought about it for a moment.

A sudden bite of bloodlust swam across the current of darkness. More of them, moving in. Ah. More fun and games. I should have known an arrow wouldn’t be the end of it.

I stepped to the edge of the building and leapt out into space. Just as I did, the secondary team moved in, and bullets smashed into my chest. Blood tore across the night sky as I landed, and if I’d been human it would have killed me.

The knives slid into my hands. It was knives instead of guns this time because I wanted some of them left alive.

I hit hard, rolling, wet splotch of blood on the pavement as my bleeding back pressed down briefly, made it to my feet. A hunting cat’s scream tore from my throat as I saw them, moving down the street in standard mercenary formation, with high-powered rifles and body armor.

I took the first one with a knee to the midriff, snapping a few ribs. The street behind me roiled with screams. Get down and stay down, everyone, I’m on the job. Jill Kismet’s going to work.