As if I was what I had been before Mikhail plucked me out of that snowbank.

A knife handle smacked into my left palm. I jerked it free and cut, the blade going in with little resistance. Silver in my hair and at my throat rattled and crackled, spitting blue sparks showering his marred, ichor-streaked face. He was grinning madly, and I didn’t dare blink while I sheared through whatever served him as stomach muscle, finishing with a twist, and brought my knee up.

He recoiled, I heaved him away. The gun came down, but he knocked the barrel aside as I squeezed the trigger again. The bullet whined, dug a furrow out of the floor, and buried itself in the wall between living room and my bedroom. The scar shrieked with pain, napalm rubbed burning into skin.

My leg came up. I kicked, the blow unreeling, boot smashing solidly into his belly. A gush of black ichor pattered free. He folded over, arms wrapped over his stomach, and hissed, baring his teeth. The mask of bland normality slipped for a moment, and troubled air swirled in two points behind him, above his shoulders. The buzz of flies rattled everything in my living room, and the etheric protections laid in the walls tolled once like a bell.

It was a shame I couldn’t consecrate the warehouse’s grounds and keep him out of here permanently. I’d give up my monthly municipal check for that. But no—I’m a hunter, not a priest.

He fled, and I tracked him with the gun. My aim wasn’t off—I plugged him twice in the back before he nipped smartly down the hall, footsteps too light to be human, hitting the ground oddly.

It was only after the front door banged closed and the sound of him running—northward, toward the meat-packing district and the Monde Nuit—faded too much even for my hellbreed-jacked hearing that I slumped against the hole in the wall. I tore my gaze away from the hall and stared at the box on the table.