a penny for your sins || gommorah

Zarachiel could feel the music a block away, stuttering up through her toes and into her teeth. It made her jaw ache, and her ears rang with sympathy pain. A rat skittered by her feet and she kicked it, new boots—“new” only in the sense that in the fifty years she’d owned them, they’d been worn only a handful of times—flashing hard leather in the neon lights. As far as cities went, this particular quadrant wasn’t entirely detestable, but oil and iron and mortal filth clogged her nostrils far too often for her liking. If she had her way, she’d level the world to its ground; it would certainly make finding her master easier, but there were more efficient, graceful ways of doing things. This, unfortunately, happened to be one.

Muttering a curse or seven in her native language, the Cŵn Annwn raked a hand through her hair and shook her head. The building she wanted was aesthetically pleasing, at the least, clean straight lines in black and red, radiating a warmth that smelled ever so faintly of brimstone. Black leather cutting clean curves down her body, she’d suit it just fine, and from what she’d heard, even her lupine eyes would be as conspicuous as the slip of a G-string in a place like this. Her lip curled. That had been just a lovely simile, and she’d given the man a lovely smile to match it.

After exchanging a few words (read: threats) with the bouncer at the door, Zarachiel ducked her head under his arm and prowled into Gomorrah with all the assurance of owning the place. Truth told, she’d rather have nothing to do with it. The atmosphere was fine, comforting, even, but the scent of people hung velvet thick in the air and they cloyed her senses with their claustrophobic presence. A shiver rolled through her and she popped her jaw, shouldering her way to the bar. Two taps.

“Crown Royal,” she said, “on the rocks, with a club owner on the side.”

With any luck, this “Gabriel” would follow the call of most preternatural creatures and follow the arrogance of this summoning like oxygen to a fire.​

Few things could hold up to the various elixirs classified as “ambrosia” from Annwn and other realms of Fey, but in the ages she’d been away, Zarachiel had found that a nice whiskey was adequate enough. A thirsty man would always appreciate water, and if nothing else, it smoothed the edges of her senses just enough to make places like this tolerable. It also tasted quite good with the mortal drink “soda”.

Downing the first shot before a single slip of ice could taint the unadulterated burn of alcohol, she tapped the glass mouth-down on the bar-napkin and motioned for another. Tongue thick with the taste of it, she licked her lips and shook her head, filtering out the water of useless conversations. In the dim light of the club’s interior, she could see bodies against bodies against bodies gyrating in time to a tantric hymn. It was almost like being home again. There might have even been the furry hind of a satyr slipping under some skirts, but before she could confirm, a slight prickle against her neck pulled her attention.

“Gabriel Baltimore.”

It wasn’t a question.

But, then again, that wasn’t his real name, nor even close. His energy rippled at the edges with the half-burnt heat signature the club itself carried, enough to tell her he was no mortal, nor even close. In her experience, those immortal creatures that knew better kept their names to themselves. Zarachiel smiled at him anyway, a white slash of sharpened canines between pretty pink lips.

“I don’t deal in pleasantries, Baltimore,” she said, taking up her second drink and sniffing the whiskey with a pensive stare. “But I realize that some dalliance in politics may be necessary. I have a business proposition for you. Will you talk?”​

“You can always pay for the two I just ordered,” she said, pushing off from the bar.

She crossed the boundaries of realms, what were the boundaries of niceties to her? Falling into step behind him was second nature, shoulders rolling to attention as she kept an appropriate distance, no more than five feet away, no closer than three. These were boundaries she knew better than to cross. Some part of her almost relished it, even, but no matter the outcome of this arrangement, no one would replace her Hunter. Never fully.

When Gabriel checked back for her, Zarachiel quirked an eyebrow at him, her face carefully even. Did he think he’d have lost her? The thought made her smile, just a slight slant at the corner of her lips. It used to be that no one doubted her, but of recent decades it had become enough of a common occurrence that it amused her. His “V.I.P. room” wrinkled the smile, however, clean but saturated with scents of sex and disappointment. She clicked her tongue quietly and stepped neatly over an abandoned scrap of lingerie, eyeing the bed and the rest with a vague sense of disgust and neutrality that amounted to a crawling itch under her skin.

“This wasn’t the particular business I meant,” she said, nudging a pillow with stuffing spilling from a few neat rips in its fabric, “though I can appreciate the efficient use of space in your club.” It was rather admirable, to some degree. “If this business is what you require before negotiations, so be it, but I seek a different breed of mutual benefits.” Zarachiel shook her head, standing back straight and arms gently interlocked behind her back. “I’ve heard you grant wishes. I’m well suited enough to granting my own, but I believe I can help you with collecting your payment. I ask only for the security of a mortal job and access to the information networks at your disposal. In return, you will have my loyalty and unfailing attention to the jobs you ask of me. Fair?”​

Though quite comfortable standing, Zarachiel took the seat when offered, recognizing that it hadn’t been so much an offer as a physical sit command. Head and spine cocked with pride, she watched the man as he poured them wine, every slip of his shoulders, every instance he should have left a fingerprint and didn’t. With just the slightest dip of the head, she confirmed his guess. Banished, Hunter-less, but Cŵn Annwn nonetheless, and an alpha to boot. She sniffed at his hesitation and clenched her hands in her lap.

“Tch…”

I don’t know.

“If I knew the answer to your question, I would not be here seeking your connections,” the Cŵn growled.

Her hackles bristling, she popped her jaw and shook herself, just a rolling shiver, to regain her composure. It caused her no end of irritation to admit that she did not know where her Hunter had gone. Decades of roaming realms mortal, Fey, and otherwise, and she hadn’t had so much as a scent of him. All she had were his rings, the memory burn of iron under her skin, and the knowledge that, wherever he was, he wasn’t dead. Not yet. She would know. She had to know.

“Suffice to say,” she said at last, slowly swallowing the growl in her tone and never breaking eye contact, “that my bond with my Hunter will cause you no grief. If he calls for me, I will leave. You are no replacement, nor will you ever be, but I will grant you the same fealty until I find him again. This I say and swear on my alpha breeding and Name.”

Inhaling quietly, Zarachiel breathed out a final breath of tension and rolled her neck until it cracked. Speaking of one’s true name, even in euphemisms, was never pleasant, the sensation much like passing a hand through the flame on a candle.​

A demonstration? Zarachiel cracked a grin and her knuckles, standing from the stool.

“With pleasure.”

Any other day, a mark like this wouldn’t have warranted more than the skin she wore now, but this was not “any” day. If her new employer wanted a demonstration, she would give him the full experience. Cracking her neck to the side, she unzipped the front of her vest and shrugged it off, nonplussed at the act of standing naked before a man she hardly knew. Nature may not have made her a human, but neither did Nature make these skin articles she used to feign human modesty. The one item she kept to her person was the chain around her neck bearing its interlocked rings; the chain shifted with her body size and was in no danger of breaking or harming her.

After folding up her clothes and setting them aside on the barstool, she picked up the glass with her fingertips, sniffing once just at the edge and trying not to curl her lip. The woman wore too much perfume, and it was as cheap as her lipstick. Zarachiel would try not to judge her new master too harshly for his dalliances.

An ordinary hunting dog would have followed the scent through the pillows and sheets, down the stairs, between the legs of dancers, into the bathroom where the woman had thrown up this morning, past the smear of mascara on the bouncer’s shirt, and down to the street, but ordinary hunting dogs were terribly inefficient. Zarachiel left the glass on the counter and took a step back, eyes flashing a feral gold. This was her favorite part.

A rolling crack rippled along her spine, and she dropped to her fingertips and toes, pressed lightly up from the floor. Her shoulders dislocated next, followed by her jaw, and her leg bones broke to form an extra joint at the heel. If her bones didn’t break, they expanded, filling new spaces inside her skin and forcing room for new ones as the human skin around her split to reveal white fur clean as the bones it broke.

By the time she was done, it had taken no more than a minute, and the hound before him was clean as the day it was born, save for the red tips on its ears and braided tail. Zarachiel mocked a bow and tossed her head in challenge, then sniffed the air. She eyed the window and the ladder beyond critically, snorting. Please. Like she needed a ladder. With a running start, the hound leapt through the window frame, bounded off the fire escape, and plummeted straight down into the alley below. She landed in a crouch, ears pinned but no worse for the wear, and shook herself off, shoulders high as the nearest dumpster.

Now let the Hunt begin.​