Valentine

[warcode]

It took Valentine less than forty-eight hours to decide that he hated California. It wasn't the sun or the palm trees or the beautiful girls with their beautiful tans and their tiny ass string bikinis (because everything about that was awesome), it was the fact that here he was, surrounded by awesome, first time in Los Angeles and perfectly willing to be impressed like a regular tourist, and his own brain wouldn't let him enjoy a second of it because he was here on business. The Job breathed down his neck like a curl of winter wind, reminding him why he'd been forced to drop his other, easier cases and make highly implausible excuses to his boss and floor Lady's gas pedal cross country to get here. The weather was gorgeous and the highway was a shimmering asphalt line cutting all the way to the impossible blue of the horizon, but there was no pretending he was on vacation. The clock was ticking away seconds like a countdown and he needed to get in, get his man, and get out as fast as possible.

Time constraints weren't new, not for his line of work. Bounty hunters-- technically "freelance contractors," but Valentine had never liked the word 'contract' in conjunction with his name -- got their cases because there were just too many perps and too few Liaison Office peacekeepers out there in the field to handle them. The Department of Outsider Affairs was nominally in charge of everything supernatural that walked, crawled, flew or lurched across the border between worlds, and the Liaison Office was their innocuously named peacekeeping/border patrol branch, but there were always more crimes and criminals than there were mooks in cheap suits and bespelled kevlar vests. Outsiders tended not to have the same respect for law enforcement that kept most of the general human population in line. They bowed to power and strength because that was how things worked Over There, back in the world across the Veil, and to most of them ordinary humans were either marks or meals unless someone or something convinced them otherwise. On Earth it was silver bullets and cold iron and shotguns loaded with rocksalt to keep the less law-abiding varieties of Outsider in check, and it was much easier (read: cheaper) for the Liaison Office to hand out provisional badges to some qualified civilians than it was to try and triple the number of peacekeepers to match Outsider numbers.

So it was always somebody's 'sider emergency somewhere, which meant someone got on the phone with men like the Liaison Office's Tiberius 'Don't Fucking Call Me Tiberius, It's Tom' Harper, who got on the phone with men like Valentine and his daddy, Jonathan Browning, and bitched or cajoled or bribed one or both of them into taking the case because there were no peacekeepers around, or none with any relevant experience, or just because Harper was a suspicious bastard cleverly disguising his true nature as a mother hen and liked to keep tabs on the Brownings. Valentine's family had something of a reputation around the proverbial Department water cooler, which was entirely unfair because Jon Browning was hardly the first peacekeeper to turn freelance for a personal vendetta and hardly the first to drag his family down with him into the business of revenge. Everybody in this shitshow had a tragedy or some kind of horrifying naive ideal simmering behind their eyes. No one got into dealing with 'siders for a living because it was fun.

Either way, Harper or one of his cronies would call and then that somebody's 'sider emergency would become Val's 'sider emergency, catch this guy before he crosses state lines, you got two days to smoke this one out of his hidey hole, kiddo, and all you get to go on is his alias and a general description that includes 'quasi-white' and 'probably male.' Val had been doing this shit officially since sixteen and unofficially since he was fourteen years old and still riding shotgun with his dad driving Lady and little Danny sulking in the backseat. He was good at what he did, and that included digging fugitives out of major cities. If this had been an ordinary case he wouldn't even be breaking a sweat, much less risking Lady's paint job on downtown traffic and downtown parking spaces.

But there was nothing ordinary about this particular job.

He rolled into town late, Lady's engine rumbling quieter than normal out of deference to his black mood. She was thundercloud gray today, no stripes, just pure sleek intimidation like she was trying to make him feel better, and he rubbed his thumb soothingly over the wheel just to hear the pitch of her engine change in response. She growled at a sedan that tried to cut her off and swung smoothly into the lot of a cheap little motel, coasting into a parking spot of her own choosing when Val took his hands off the wheel to press the heels of his palms into his eyes. Driving twelve hours straight was no picnic, even with Lady making sure he wasn't about to drift into oncoming traffic. He let her take care of locking the doors after him and cloaking herself into something a little less memorable than a 1970 Mach 1 Mustang. Lady ate car thieves and saboteurs for breakfast (literally, on occasion), but Val wasn't looking to attract more unnecessary attention than he had to while he was here. His usual beat was the Midwest, familiar as his favorite shotgun and necessarily centered around the greatest concentration of cases that lined up with his particular skillset. Major cities tended to develop their own specific 'sider underworld politics that could and did devour unwary newcomers, so if Valentine could get this job done without making any waves with the locals, all the better.

The night clerk glanced up reflexively when he banged in the door and Val could instantly hear himself being categorized for a police report: white male early twenties 5'9" leather jacket blond-brown hair green eyes, packing, and Val smiled his best slow James Dean smile just to complete the image. Cheap but effective utilitarian wards flared when he stepped over the threshold, symbols lighting up for 'armed and dangerous' and also 'criminal record,' which didn't actually change the clerk's professionally resigned expression until Val obligingly flashed his hunter's badge by way of explanation. Then the clerk rolled his eyes, because nobody fucking appreciated Val's life, made him sign three different waivers (which Valentine spitefully signed with three different names) and didn't bat an eyelash when Val forked over gold for the room instead of plastic like a 'sider yokel fresh from his first Crossing. L.A. was used to weird 'sider ways and weird 'sider business.

"In town long?" the clerk asked, bored with Val already and busy inspecting the gold. Temporary transmutation spells and glamors were favorites of scam artists.

"Nope. Just here to pick someone up." Val re-shouldered his faded green army surplus duffel and pretended he wasn't falling down exhausted, waiting for the guy to decide his money was legit and hand over the keycard. Cheap places like this usually didn't discriminate against 'siders and those who dealt with them if there was good money involved, but that there was always going to be that one asshole on duty who felt that 'siders, hunters, and peacekeepers were all the same kind of trouble and equally unwelcome. It hadn't been all that long since business owners were putting up NO SIDERS ALLOWED signs in their windows, protesting respectability like the 60s and 70s had never happened.

The clerk bit one of the gold pieces, probably because he'd seen someone do that in a movie once. "I'm sure someone's gonna be very happy to be picked up," he lied smoothly, clearly believing Val was talking about an impending arrest or prostitution or both, and finally pushed the keycard across the depressing fake wood counter in a just-don't-do-it-on-my-shift-now-please-get-out-of-my-sight sort of way.

Val palmed it and smiled, all teeth. "They always are."

Motel hallways always looked the same, no matter where or when he was. Cheap lighting, cheap carpet, small brown cracks at the bottom of white painted doors, little bronze numbers and the utter silence behind most of the doors after midnight. The way that people confronting each other unexpectedly in the hallways led to head ducking and guilty little smiles, like this was somebody else's house and they were all sneaking around past curfew. He rounded a corner and discovered the ice machine, and also a stunningly gorgeous brunette in purple heels and ripped fishnets glaring at him suspiciously from underneath the arm of her intoxicated john. Val's badge, genuine silver and pentacle shaped, was still visible where it was clipped to his belt and he knew, the second before her eyes slipped down to it and he felt one of his own personal proximity wards ping with muted recognition, that she had to be a 'sider.

They stared at each other. There were violet tattoos spiraling up the delicate column of her neck and flowering across one cheekbone, designs he'd seen out of textbooks on 'sider gang identifiers back at headquarters. It looked like a succubus or nymph identifier. With the weak response from his wards she couldn't have been more than a quarter or half blood, probably second or third generation born and raised Earthside. A demi. Valentine's favorite thing in the world, right up there with speeding tickets, civilians that made assumptions, and early morning mandatory staff meetings.

Demis with abilities weren't as powerful as fullblooded 'siders of the same breed, but they made up for it by causing twice as much trouble. Their feistier members, aka the only kind Val had ever met, were adept at passing for human when it pleased them and then turning around to commit atrocities in the name of 'living up to their heritage,' whatever that happened to mean at any given moment to any given demi. Real deal old world 'sider clans living Earthside had a lot of traditional rules to abide by, like respecting the rights and claims of stronger clans or the local warlords, masters of the 'sider underworld in any given territory, and they were at the least nominally wary of peacekeepers and hunters. By contrast, demi gangs with racial chips on their shoulders went out of their way to break the rules. They deliberately preyed on the wrong sorts of victims, intruded into the wrong territories, and left high profile messes behind them. They picked fights with the Department, with the Liaison Office, with 'sider clans and ordinary human street gangs, and it was a running joke at HQ that the easiest way to spot a demi was to yell 'peaceful coexistence!' and see who broke out in hives.

The demi lifted her chin, sin red lips curling up to reveal a hint of fang, and began to unpeel herself from her john, and Valentine realized with a start that she was about to either throw down (in preemptive self-defense, of course) or make a move on him, which... was actually a very nice mental image. The john was too drunk to notice her shift in attention, still busy groping her admittedly flawless ass. In heels, she was nearly Val's height, black hair and curves under leather like an old-school pin up model. She looked like she could eat him alive. Possibly literally.

Val wasted a moment regretting his own stern moral fiber and made a face to match hers, because prostitution was illegal and 'sider prostitution was really illegal and also like playing Russian roulette with your dick given the number of things that used sex to feed or kill, but he was tired and still kind of pissed at California and also tired, and arresting random people in the middle of the night was so not on the schedule right now. He flipped the edge of his jacket over the badge to cover it and pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at her in the most obnoxious 'you win this time, girlie' warning he could think of, and kept right on walking down the hallway. A glance back confirmed her outraged expression, satisfyingly unattractive even on a quarter succubus or whatever she was, and he had to smirk.

At least until a door opened right in front of him and he collided with someone's back.

"Jesus," he sputtered, wards pinging hard over another 'sider presence, much stronger, fullblood and way too damn close, and Val's automatic attempt to go for both knife and gun at the same time like the highly trained supernatural killing machine he was only ended in a clumsy fumble to save his duffel. "Are you assholes having a convention or something?" he demanded, clutching his bag in a way that he knew looked ridiculous. Not that he cared what 'sider hookers or people who fucked 'sider hookers thought.

The man he'd run into arched a brow, dark hair mussed into a definite post-coital look and white dress shirt yawning open. There were two chicks with rainbow streaked hair in glitter and honest to god fake strap-on fairy wings (pixies, maybe, pixies loved pretending to be humans pretending to be fairies) and absolutely nothing else in the doorway behind him, giggling behind their hands. He was holding an ice bucket.

"Yeah, there's a line," Val said, clearly the only person in this entire building not getting laid tonight, and stomped off to find his room.

It honestly never ceased to amaze him how people could be so willfully stupid sometimes, and by people he meant civilians, the kind that pretended not to believe in Outsiders and then freaked out when confronted by painful reality. Or fell all over themselves to be part of something magical and unknown, like risking arrest and also potential grievous bodily injury by fucking a 'sider prostitute was somehow going to rub off on their otherwise boring lives. Val had run into both attitudes and found both equally grating. 'Siders weren't even anything new in the grand scheme of human existence, since creatures like skinwalkers and vampires had apparently been around as long as people had, Crossing over in handfuls from the realm they called Mir into the mortal world like tourists. Most of them were short-timers, unable or unwilling to stay in a world that didn't have Mir's naturally high concentration of magic.

But two hundred years ago the Dragon's Gate had been discovered in Middle Of Nowhere, Wyoming, a permanent and mostly stable rift in the Veil that separated realities, and ever since there had been a slow but steady trickle of immigrants braving passage through the Veil. Humans, weres, vampires, witches, elves, even creatures like sphinxes and the higher tier animal spirits, looking for new lives in a new world. Seventy years ago that trickle had turned into a flood, desperate refugees seeking asylum anywhere they could after yet another of Mir's catastrophic civil wars. They'd fled their homeland for 1950s America, not having the faintest idea what they were walking into, and were immediately swept into the arms of the newly and hastily established Department of Outsider Affairs, who had no idea what the fuck they were supposed to be doing except 'managing the situation.' Now it was 2020 and the Department had dozens of sub-branches dealing with travel and citizen visas and adoption, and there were laws about what breeds of 'sider were allowed to Cross, how many, how often, and extradition laws, and trade agreements and neutrality pacts with the Iron Kingdom, the so-called human empire of the South Quarter that lay directly on the other side of the Gate and governed most of the immigration traffic from that end.

Not that 'siders or anyone else necessarily required the Dragon's Gate and the Iron Kingdom's blessing to move between worlds. Valentine could perform the Crossing ritual right here in the hallway if he felt like it (and felt like getting arrested), and plenty of powerful 'siders on both sides of the Veil had small, semi-permanent gates for their personal use. But travel through the endless gray nothingness of the Veil was a dangerous business. The things that lived between were nameless, formless horrors, older than both worlds and deadlier than any predators found in either, and they were always, always hungry. Using the Dragon's Gate was to walk a careful path along the sea floor where the waters had been parted; any other kind of Crossing was swimming with sharks in the dead of night and blood in the water. Amateurs and desperate border jumpers took their lives into their own hands when they tried to Cross without the use of a gate and, worse, sometimes didn't close the small tears they'd made in the Veil behind them. Sometimes, things came through after them. Or inside of them, in a few particularly horrifying instances. Valentine could have lived a long productive life without knowing exactly what it smelled like when a person exploded inside a warded interrogation cell.

But that was what the Liaison Office and their peacekeepers and their contracted hunters were for, to try and keep that kind of shit out of the general population. In that context Valentine couldn't blame civilians for wanting to remain ignorant, although he could still resent them because their unrelenting stupid made Val's job of protecting them that much harder. He had absolutely no doubt that if he went right now and knocked on the doors for that brunette or the dude with the pixies and suggested that maybe everyone should stick to same-species and non-hooker fucking for a nice, safe, legal change, he'd get punched or screamed at for being a racist. Or both. Val had given that speech plenty of times before, telling civvies slow and patient how they were playing with fire and that maybe, maybe, for the sake of their loved ones or whoever, they should knock it the fuck off before someone got immolated, but he'd yet to have it actually convince anyone.

He made it to his room without further incident or further hookers, although the simple act of navigating a keycard through the reader had suddenly become an Olympic sport. The sound of the lock clicking was almost lost underneath his steady stream of muttered profanity in half a dozen languages, elvish and the troll dialects and some spiteful badly conjugated Latin. He let the weight of his duffel pull the handle down and shoved the door open gracelessly with his boot.

The room was just a room, empty and bland and safely anonymous, exactly the way he liked it while on a job. Val dropped his bag by the door and shucked his leather jacket and boots. He'd forgotten himself again and booked a double on auto pilot, still used to hunting with a partner. Back in the day it had been his dad, teacher and taskmaster while Valentine had been doing his apprenticeship, and then Danny for two golden, nearly perfect years, when Val had finally (stupidly, stupidly) let himself hope that the memories of Jericho were fading, that Danny was getting better at hiding the abilities he could barely control, that it was still within Val's power to keep him safe, keep him secret. Keep him, period.