The scar helps too. The hard knot of corruption on the soft inside of my wrist ran with heavy prickling iron as I moved faster than a human being had any right to, meeting the Trader with a bonesnapping crunch.

The idiot wasn’t thinking. If he had been, he might have done something other than a stupid kamikaze stunt, throwing himself at a hunter who was armed and ready. As smart and slippery as Traders are, they never think they’re going to be held to account.

The knife went in with little resistance, silver laid along the flat part of the blade hissing as it parted flesh tainted by a hellbreed’s touch.

The Trader screamed, a high gurgling note of panic. My wrist turned, twisting the blade as the force of his hit threw us both, my right leg threatening to buckle under the momentum. I stamped my left heel, the transfer of force striking sparks between metal-reinforced bootheel and aggregate stones in the concrete.

My other hand came up full of knife, blurred forward like a striking snake as the blade buried itself in his chest, and I pushed him down, pinning him as the shine flared in his eyes and roasted stink-sweet filled my mouth and nose.

I wrenched the first knife free and cut his throat. Blood steamed, arterial spray bubbling and frothing as the flat light drained from his eyes. I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to question him and find out what hellbreed he’d made a bargain with.

But you can’t have everything. Besides, I could still hear the girl sobbing, the supsucking sound of a child in a nightmare that doesn’t go away when she opens her eyes. The thought of what he must have done to her—and what he’d probably planned on doing, based on his other victims—drove my hand just as surely as the instinct of combat.