Hellbent

[sawyl]

Despite a busy week, I found time time cram Hellbent, the second of Cherie Priest's novels featuring vampire and master thief Raylene Pendle. A few months have passed since the events of Bloodshot and Raylene, living under yet another false ID, has bought a converted warehouse and brought in a couple of friends to live with her. Along with her fellow vampire Ian Stott, her client in the first novel, she has also arranged rooms for Pepper and her brother Domino, the two street orphans who lived in her old factory and acted as an early warning system until it was raided by the feds. She hasn't managed to persuade Adrian de Jesus, AKA Sister Rose, to join their little family, but he is close at hand, working as a drag queen at a nearby bar.

The story is composed of two main strands with Raylene and Adrian cutting and changing between as circumstances demand. The first plot thread comes via Raylene's dubious contact Horace Bishop, who blows into town with a new job for his favourite thief. While working on something a bit like the Antiques Roadshow, Horace has run across a hick with a box full of priceless supernatural bacula — penis bones to the uninitiated — which has tried to scam out of the owner for a song. Unwilling to accept defeat, Horace proposes that Raylene should go to Portland Oregon and correct the situation. Unable to pass up either the money or the possibilities of such a rich seam of potential dick jokes, Raylene accepts.

The second thread of story triggers when Ian discovers that his spiritual father William Renner, the head of Los Angeles vampire House, has died under mysterious circumstances. Having opted out of the House following the events of Project Bloodshot, Ian's brother Maximilian is the obvious successor but the position is muddied by Ian's continued existence. In order to keep Ian from rushing down to California for a fatal confrontation, Raylene offers to act as a go-between with the idea of wringing a concession out of Max without risking Ian's life in the process.

After the heist in Portland goes wrong — Horace having neglected to mention that the bones can be used for ritual magic — Raylene returns to Seattle with nothing but a rescued kitten to show for her actions. She and Adrian then travel to LA where they put on a show of being vampire and ghoul in order to persuade Max to tell them more about William's death. The trick works and when Max tells them that William died while a guest of the Barringtons, the ruling family of the Atlanta House, Raylene spots an opportunity and offers to travel to Atlanta under the protection of the LA House ostensibly in order to investigate William's death but with the secondary intention of investigating the links between the Barringtons and Project Bloodshot and the eventual fate of Adrian's missing sister. In the middle of planning the Atlanta expedition, Ray receives a tip from Horace about the whereabouts of the bones: he has tracked them to the possession of an ex-NASA scientists called Elizabeth Creed, currently holed up in San Juan Bautista Park, the very place where Hitchcock shot parts of Vertigo.

Although the lack of a single over-arching plot makes the book feel less focused than Bloodshot, it makes up for this with character development and engaging humour. Ray and Adrian spend a lot of their time worrying about whether they're actually at risk of becoming vampire and ghoul — they are forced into a blood-swapping ceremony by Max, which may or may not have helped to link them together — with Ray strongly insisting that she dislikes the whole institution and Adrian trying to make light of it, while trying to decide whether his solicitousness is just that or whether it's a features of their new bond.

The other characters, most of whom are part of Ray's growing collection of misfits back in Seattle, are treated sympathetically. There's a nice moment when Ray unthinkingly remarks that she only saved the kitten from Portland because it was cute, causing Pepper to flinch — allowing the reader to draw the conclusion that Ray has missed: that Pepper is worried that the only reason Ray is looking after her is because she's cute as a button; not most sensitive to say to a child who is totally dependent on you. Even Elizabeth Creed, whose schizophrenia could have been used as shorthand for evil — as is so often the case — is treated a human being who, yes, has problems, but who actually may have a good point for doing what she does and, when she's not having an episode and her medication is working, is actually a thoroughly decent person.

Sadly it's not clear whether the series is likely to continue — Priest mentions on her blog that it was a two book deal — but that doesn't mean that Hellbent and its predecessor aren't worth reading if you're after a fun, not entirely serious taken on urban fantasy...