I drove the knife into the sand next to me. Picked up the gun. Hefted it, and looked at him.

If his grin got any wider, the top of his head would flip open.

I pointed the gun at him, and smiled. The expression sat oddly on my face. He hissed, Helletong rumbling in the back of his throat.

I almost understood the words, too. A shiver raced down my spine.

"You can't escape me." The rock groaned as his voice lashed at it, little glassy bits flaking away. They plopped down on the sand with odd ringing sounds. "The fire won't last forever, my darling. Then I'll step over your line in the sand, and you'll find out what it means to be mine."

"Think again." I bent my left arm. Fitted the gun's barrel inside my mouth. My eyes were dry, my body tensing against the inevitable.

Comprehension hit. Perry snarled and lunged at the banefire. It roared up, a sheet of blue flame. Twisting faces writhed in its smokeless glow, their mouths open as they whisper-screamed.

I glanced down at the slice on my palm. Still bleeding. It was hard to tell if the black traceries were still there. For a moment, I wondered.

Then I brought myself back to the thing I had to do. Stupid body, getting all worked up. What the will demands, the body will do-but it also tries to wriggle, sometimes.

Not this time.

"Kiss!" he howled. "You're mine! MINE! You cannot escape me!"

I saw Saul's face, yellow and exhausted, against the white pillow. I smelled him, the musk and fur of a healthy cat Were. I saw Galina's wide green eyes and marcel waves, Hutch's shy smile, Gilberto's fierce glittering-dark gaze. I saw them all, saw my city hunched on the river's edge, its skyscrapers throwing back dusk's last light with a vengeance before the dark things crawled out of their holes. I saw Anya perched on Galina's roof with her green bottle, staring down at the street and wondering if I had the strength to do this. Wondering if she would have to hunt me down, if I failed here.

And I heard Mikhail. There, little snake. Honest silver, on vein to heart. You are apprentice. Now it begins.

I love you, I thought. I love you all.

"You cannot escape!" Perry screamed, throwing himself at the banefire again. It sizzled and roared, and the rocks around me begin to ring like a crystal wineglass stroked just right. If this kept up they might shatter.

Wouldn't that be a sight.

"Do you hear me, hunter? You cannot escape me!"

Watch me, I thought, and squeezed both eyes shut. The banefire roared as he tried again to get through, actually thrusting a hand through its wall, snatching it back with a shattering howl as the skin blackened and curled. It was now or never.

I squeezed the trig- -up from the concrete with a southpaw punch, bone shattering as my fist hit. My foot flicked out, heel striking sharply in the second man's midriff, and I was beginning to wake up. The alley tilted crazily, both sides leaning toward each other like old drinking buddies, and the rotting refuse in choke-deep drifts along its sides smelled about as horrible as I did. Faint grayish light seeped in through the crack of sky showing above. The sky was weeping a little, a diseased eye.

There were two more of them, one with a chain that rattled musically as he shook it. Cold fear and exhilaration spilled through me like wine.

Gutter trash, Jill. Not worth your time.

But my body wasn't listening. It knew better than I did, and I was suddenly across the distance separating me from Chain Boy, my knee coming up and sinking into his groin with a short meaty sound. He folded down, and I had the gun in my right hand, pointed at the last man. He fetched up like a dog at the end of his tether.

A chain's only good if you can use it. It's also only good for a very short distance, shorter than you'd think.

For a moment I wondered how I knew that.

The fourth man was actually a boy. A weedy little boy with greasy lank hair and a lean, sallow face, a leather jacket that creaked like the cow was still mooing and hadn't missed it yet, and pegged jeans that looked dipped in motor oil. The switchblade made a small clatter as it hit the concrete, dropping from his nerveless hand. My finger tightened on the trigger.

He's just a kid. Come on.

But that kid would've followed his buddies in raping and possibly killing me if I was what they'd thought I was.

Wait. What am I? It said something that even sleeping like the dead, I kept hold of a gun.

I didn't see the Mercury. Martin D. Pores, nice guy and granny driver, had left me in an alley. Nice of him. Why was I surprised? Of course he would, it was the way things were going.

Pay attention! A sharp phantom slap, my head snapping aside, and my right foot flicked out again, catching sneaky Guy # 2 in the knee. Crack like well-seasoned firewood when the axe split it, and he folded down with a rabbit-scream.

Must've hurt.

The boy in the motorcycle jacket just stood there and shivered. I don't know what he saw on my face, but it gave him some trouble. Maybe it was the mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, that I'd found staring at me in the diner's restroom mirror. Maybe it was the gunk smeared all over me.

Maybe it was even the gun.

"Go home," I rasped. My voice didn't want to work quite right. "Go to school. Get a job and stop hanging out in alleys."

His head bobbed, lank hair falling forward in strings. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn't say just who. Someone with a flat, dark stare, someone I knew because...

...it was gone. Just for a second, I had it. Then it retreated, maddeningly.

He turned tail and ran, his sneakers whispering over concrete and kicking aside random bits of trash.

I spun, slowly, in a complete circle, marking every fallen body. The gun swept like a searchlight, tracking by itself to cover possible hiding places before I even thought of it. An easy instinctive movement, just like breathing. Whoever I was, I'd spent a lot of time doing this.

Training, milaya. A gruff, harsh voice, the words freighted with a foreign accent and cut off short and sharp. It gets into bones. Run all the way deep.

Who was that? My right hand jerked a little, as if the gem set on the inside of my wrist was twitching, pulling me.

He'd trained me well. The guys were down and moaning, except for the first one-the one I'd punched, his cheekbone shattered and bits of white tooth flecking the wet hole of his twisted-open mouth. He lay utterly still, with his head at an odd angle.

Oh, Christ, did I kill someone?

The sudden certainty that it wasn't the first time poured down my back, ice cubes trickling. Nobody who handled a gun like this could be innocent.

I backed up two steps, bare feet on cold concrete. At least I wasn't bleeding anymore. Maybe I was toughening up.

You clawed your way up out of a grave. I'd say that's pretty damn tough. The question is, what do you do now?

I had a full belly. But I needed shelter, and some more clothes wouldn't be amiss.

A quick search of the two moaning men produced rolls of cash as thick as my forearm. Plus little plastic baggies full of illegal smokable stuff, switchblades, and two guns-a .38 and a 9mm. I tossed them down the alley so the boys didn't get any ideas, and considered the guy I'd punched. After a second or two of thought, I found another roll of cash as well as more baggies on him. He was still breathing, the air bubbling through the bloody mess of his mouth. I'd broken his cheekbone and quite a few of his teeth. My hand didn't hurt at all, and how had I blinked across space to take out Chain Boy?

The gem on my right wrist glittered, colorless, a hard dart of light as dawn strengthened and spilled more illumination through the crack serving as the alley's ceiling.

You don't know your own strength, girl.

"I guess not," I muttered. "Jesus."

I got the hell out of there.

4.

The crackling plastic bags on the tiny room's colorless bed gave up a black V-neck T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were a little too big, but I hadn't been able to try them on. It was bad enough waiting in the shadows for the gigantic Walmart a mile away to open. By 9 a.m. when the doors whooshed wide, I was a bundle of exposed, dirty, and vulnerable nerves.

I shouldn't have worried. Those employees don't bat an eye. I guess no matter what I looked like, they'd seen worse. After getting an eyeful of the crowd waiting to scramble on in and get their cheap shit even cheaper, I won't exactly say I was heartened-but I was feeling a little more anonymous.

I remembered my shoe size, at least, but the sneakers felt weird, too light and flexible. The holster for the .45-I'd stuck it in the waistband of my ruined leather pants while shopping, just like a good American-didn't quite do it, but a little duct tape fixed that right up. The .45 ammunition had been reasonably cheap, and as soon as I put it in my basket I'd felt soothed.

Whoever I was, I didn't like being unarmed. Or short of ammo. I was hoping the modifications on the gun hadn't made it unable to fire a basic clip, but there it was.

I found a place on the edge of the barrio. Some clear instinct warned me not to go any further into that tangle of streets, so I just picked a likely-looking hotel and paid for two nights. Cash up front, no ID requested or given. It was the kind of place usually rented by the hour, and after about 2 p.m. it started doing a brisk trade. Footsteps, soft cries, some screams, doors opening and closing. I didn't listen too close. It was bad enough that my hearing was jacked up into the red, and I could smell every single person who had ever used this tiny room.

Sirens. Jackhammers. Traffic.

At least the shower worked. It was tepid, but there was decent water pressure. The drain almost clogged, sand and gunk sliding off me in sheets. I didn't bother with the towels. Who knew what vermin they were carrying? Instead I wrung my hair out and air-dried. The wheezing air conditioner didn't help very much against an egg-on-the-sidewalk sort of day, a glare of heavy sunlight golden against the barred window. It was like being in prison, only with a door that locked on your side.

Which meant it wasn't very much like prison at all.

Once I was dressed and the gun was checked, cleaned with a just-bought kit, and set on the flimsy bolted-down nightstand, I lay down on top of the cheap chintz bedspread and let out a long sigh. The ruined, filthy clothes were in a plastic bag; I'd dump them elsewhere. Something told me it was best to leave no traces.

My hair was already drying, raveling up into dark curls. I was pale, and the face in the mirror was nothing special except for the mismatched eyes. Long, thin nose, mouth pulled tight and thin, bruise-colored shadows under said eyes almost reaching down to the prominent cheekbones. I looked half starved. I was hungry again.

Who the hell am I?

Evidence: one silver ring with Cyrillic script inside, one gun, one weird gemlike thing implanted in my right wrist. Speed and strength enough to take on four men without breaking a sweat. Of course, there was the little matter of Martin Pores and his vanishing Mercury, but if I had just dug my way up out of a shallow grave maybe I'd hallucinated that bit and just wandered around dreaming of diner food.

I couldn't rule that out.

The only other thing was the tattoo. A black tribal-looking scorpion, high up on the inside of my right thigh. It itched and tingled, but maybe that was only because I'd scrubbed at it, thinking it was dirt.

My hands were capable and callused. My battered feet were healed, too. No sign of the bloody mess they'd been after walking miles of highway. Even if I'd just been wandering around in a hallucination, I'd been shoeless and bleeding. But now you couldn't tell.

For some reason, I turned my head and looked at the window. My hair felt weird. Like there should have been something in it. Lots of little somethings digging into the back of my head. Tiny gleams, little hard things.

For just a moment I had it, but it slipped away again. Frustration rose hard and hot in my throat, I swallowed it.

I knew my first name. I knew I didn't have a problem killing someone, but I preferred not to.

At least, not when they're human. When they're something else...

Something else?

"Maybe I'm insane." My own voice caught me off guard, hit the flimsy walls and bounced back to me. "That's an option, too. Consider all the alternatives, Kismet."

Kismet?

Another light turned on inside my head. Jill Kismet.

That's who I am. But who is she?

I waited, but nothing else came up. It was daylight. Sleepytime, because daylight was...safe.

I tested that thought. It felt right. "Daylight's for sleeping," I whispered. "Night is when I work."

Well, that was comforting to know. Or not.

I closed my eyes, told the gnawing in my belly to go away, and waited for dusk.

It was as good a plan as any.

5.

I reached down with my left hand, slowly. Pushed my right sleeve up, heavy leather dried stiff with blood and other things. Unsnapped the buckle. Dropped the cuff on the floor, and turned my wrist so she could see.

The air left her all in a rush, as if she'd taken a good, hard sucker punch. "Jesus," she finally whispered, the sibilants lasting a long time. "Jill-"

"This stays between us." I was now back to sounding like myself, clear and brassy. All hail Jill Kismet, the great pretender. "I'm going to take care of it."

She didn't disbelieve me, not precisely. "How the hell are you going to do that?"

I shrugged.

She read it on my face, and another sharp exhale left her. "And if..."

I suppose I should have been grateful that she couldn't bring herself to ask the question. So I answered it anyway. "If it doesn't work, Anya, you will have to hunt me down. No pity, no mercy, no nothing. Kill me before I'm a danger to my city. Kill Perry, too. Burn him, scatter the ashes as far as you can. Clear?"

She grabbed the absinthe bottle. Tipped it up, took a good, long, healthy draft, her throat working. "Shit."

"Promise me, Anya Devi. Give me your word." Now I just sounded weary. My cheek twitched, a muscle in it committing rebellion. The scar cringed under the assault of sunlight, I kept it out. The pain was a balm.

She lowered the bottle. Wiped the back of her mouth with one hand. "You have my word." Quietly.

I dropped my right hand. With my left, I pulled the Talisman up. Freed the sharp links from my hair, gently. It was hard to do one-handed, but I managed. I took six steps, laid the Eye on the table. The sunsword quivered. "For Gilberto. Will you..."

"You don't even have to ask. I'll train him."