Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  As soon as he led me past the empty secretary’s desk and into the office lobby, I ducked out from under his arm. “Thanks,” I said, quietly. My knees were still a little shaky, but my strength would return quickly. “That was a little draining. I had no idea they wanted a full hour from a bunch of ashes.”

  “You appear to be most exceptional.” Japhrimel’s arm fell back to his side. His eyes were half-lidded, glowing so fiercely that the skin around them seemed to take on a greenish cast. Again, there were runic shapes glittering in their infinite depths.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just a girl looking to pay off her mortgage.”

  “I am sorry I doubted your ability,” he continued, falling in step beside me as I headed for the stairs. The elevator dinged, nearly sending me through my skin; Japhrimel’s hand closed around my upper arm. Steel fingers sank into my flesh. “Easy, Dante. There is nobody there.”

  “Not… the elevator.” I forced the words out. If I had to be closed in a small space—

  At least he had his own shields, and could keep his thoughts to himself. Raw as I was, if he’d been human I might have torn my arm out of his grasp to escape the onslaught of someone else’s emotion. As it was, I let him steer me through the door and into the echoing, gray-painted stairwell. “So you’ve decided I’m not so bad?” I asked, trying for a light tone. The ghost’s voice echoed in my head, just outside my mental range, shivering, a deep husky sound. I would hear him for another few hours, until my psyche recovered from the shock of holding someone else so closely. Training helped lessen the shock, but could not deaden it completely.

  “I have decided that you need a familiar,” he said flatly. “You seem foolhardy.”

  “I’m careful,” I protested. “I’ve survived this long.”

  “It seems like luck instead of care,” he remarked. I stumbled, my feet feeling like huge blocks of cold concrete—he steadied me, and we began down the stairs, my footsteps echoing, his silent.

  “I don’t like you very much.”

  “I supposed as much.”

  By the time we reached the bottom floor, my boots were beginning to feel less like concrete and more like they belonged to me. The awful cold retreated slowly, the mark on my left shoulder a steady flame that dispelled the ice. My energy was returning, the Power-well of Saint City flooding me with what I’d expended on the apparition. The ground-floor lobby was plush and quiet, water dripping down a tasteful Marnick wall fountain. I kept my fingers curled around my sword, my bag bumping my hip. As soon as I could walk by myself I shook his arm away. It was a good thing the weakness never lasted long. “Thanks.”

  “No thanks necessary.” He opened the security-lock door, sodium-arc light shining against glass. The parking lot was mostly empty, the pavement drying in large splotches. Night air touched my face, a cool breeze sliding through pulled-loose strands of my hair. I tucked one behind my ear and checked the sky. Clearing up from the usual evening shower. That was good.

  “Hey.” I stopped, looking up at him. “I need to do something. Okay?”

  “Why ask me?” His face was absolutely blank.

  “Because you’ll have to wait for me,” I replied. “Unless you can ride a slicboard.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Hey, deadhead,” Konnie said, stripping green-dyed hair back from his narrow pasty face. “Whatchoo want?”

  The Heaven’s Arms resounded with New Reggae music around me, the sweet smell of synth hash from the back room filtering out between racks of leathers in garish colors, shinguards, elbow pads, helmets. “Hi, Konnie,” I said, ducking out of my bag. The demon accepted the strap—I felt a thin thread of unease when I handed my sword over. “I need a board and an hour.”

  Konnie leaned back, his dead flat eyes regarding me over the counter. “You got credit?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I sounded disgusted even to myself. “Give me a board, Konnie. The black one.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t suppose you’re gonna wear any pads.”

  “You’ve got my waiver on file.” I ran my fingertip over the dusty counter, tracing a glyph against the glass. Underneath, blown-glass hash pipes glowed. There were even some wood and metal hash pipes, and a collection of incense burners. Graffiti tags tangled over the walls, sk8 signs and gang marks. “Come on, Konnie. I’ve got a job to do.”

  “I know.” He waved a ringed hand. His nails were painted black and clipped short—he played for a Neoneopunk band, and had to see his hand on the bass strings in pulsing nightclub light. “You got that look again. Who you hunting down this time, baby?”

  “Give me the goddamn board,” I snarled, lips pulling back from my teeth. My emerald sparked, my rings shifting crazily. The demon tensed behind me. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Konnie bent briefly, scooped up a slicboard from its spot under the counter. He slid the chamois sheath free, revealing a sleek black Valkyrie. “I just tuned it up. Had a Magi in here not too long ago told me to ’spect a deadhead; I hate that precog shit. You’re the only deadhead crazy ’nough to come to the Arms. Why dontcha keep this thing at home?”

  I snatched the board. My hands were trembling. The ambient Power of the city helped, soaking into me, replacing what I’d spent in bringing Douglas Shantern back from the dry land of death. But I still wasn’t convinced I was still living… “Fine. Thanks.”

  “Hey, what to do with the stray here?” Konnie called after me as I headed for the front door.

  “Try not to piss him off,” I tossed over my shoulder, then hit the door. I was running by the time cool night wind touched my hair, my fingers pressing the powercell. I dropped the board just as the cell kicked in, and the sound of a well-tuned slic hummed under my bones.

  My boots thudded onto the Valkyrie’s topside, the board giving resiliently underneath me. My weight pitched forward, and the board hummed, following the street.

  No, I don’t want streetside, I thought. I want to fly. Tonight I need to fly.

  I pitched back, the slic’s local antigrav whining. Riding a slicboard is like sliding both feet down a stair rail, weight balanced, knees loose and relaxed, arms spread. It’s the closest to flight, to the weightlessness of astral travel plus the gravity of the real world, that a human body can ever attain.

  Hovercells thrummed. Up in the traffic lanes, hovers were zipping back and forth. The thing about hover traffic is that it’s like old-time surfing waves—catch the right pattern, and you can ride forever, just like jacking into a city’s dark twisted soul and pouring Power into a spell.

  But if you miscalculate, hesitate, or just get unlucky, you end up splashed all over the pavement. Hovers and freights have AI pilot decks that take care of keeping them from colliding, making driving mostly a question of following the line on your display with the joystick or signing the control over to the pilot deck, but slics are just too small to register. The intricate pattern of mapped-out lanes for hover traffic was updated and broadcast from Central City Hall in realtime to avoid traffic jams, but the slics couldn’t tune in to that channel. There wasn’t room on a slic for an AI deck, sk8ers and slic couriers disdained them anyway.

  I stamped down on my left heel, my weight spinning the slicboard as it rocketed up, and I streaked between two heavy hover transports and into the passenger lane, missing a blue hover by at least half an inch, plenty of room. Adrenaline hammered my bloodstream, pounded in my brain, the Valkyrie screamed as I whipped between hovers, not even thinking, it was pure reaction time, spin lean down kick of wind to the throat like fast wine, I dove up out of the passenger traffic pattern and into the freight lanes.

  Riding freight is different, the freight hovers are much bigger and their backwash mixes with more hovercells and reactive to make the air go all funny. It requires a whole different set of cold-blooded calculations—freight won’t kill you like a passenger foul-up will. Slicboard fatalities in the passenger lanes are called “quiksmaks.” Freight fatals are “whoredish.” They’re tricky,
and a mistake might not kill you instantly. It might kill you three feet ahead, or six behind. You never know when a freight’s backwash will smack you off your board or tear your slic out from under your feet.

  —watch that big rig there, catch, fingernails screeching on plasteel, hovercells whining under the load, board’s got a wobble, watch it, lean back stamp down hard going up, ducking under a whipping freight hover, my hair kissing plasteel, rings showering golden sparks, coat flying, weaving in and out of the hovers like a mosquito among albatrosses, this is what it feels like to be alive, alive, alive…

  Heart pounding, copper laid against my tongue, Valkyrie screaming, lips peeled back from teeth and breath coming in long gasps, legs balancing the slic, the friction of my boot soles the only thing between me and a long fall to the hard pavement below.

  I fell in behind a police cruiser that was whipping between freights, going siren-silent. They’d already scanned me—an unhelmeted head on a slic isn’t a crime, but they like to know who’s riding suicidal—and I played with their backwash, riding the swells of turbulence until they dropped out of the traffic patterns. I rode a little while after that, almost lazily, darting down into traffic and swooping back, tagging hovers.

  When I finally dropped back to streetside, hips swaying, body singing, I brought the Valkyrie to a stop right outside the Arms and hopped down. My hair fell in my face, my shoulders were loose and easy for the first time since a booming knock on my door had sounded in the rain.

  Japhrimel leaned against the window of the Arms, neon light spilling through the glass and glowing against his wetblack hair. He held my bag and my sword, and his knuckles stood out white against the scabbard.

  I tapped the board up, flipping off the powercell, and let out a gusty sigh. “Hey,” I said. “Anything cool happen while I was gone?”

  He simply stared at me, his jaw set and stone-hard.

  I carried the board back inside and gave it to Konnie, used my datband to transfer the rent fee to him, and came out into the night feeling much more like myself, humming an old PhenFighters song. After every Necromance job, I ride a slicboard. I fell into the habit years ago, finding that the adrenaline wash from riding the antigrav worked almost as quickly as sex; the fight-or-flight chemical cascade wiping the cold leaden weight of dead flesh away and bringing me back to full screaming life. Other Necromances used caff patches or Tantra, took a round in a sparring cage, visited a certified House like Polyamour’s or any cheap bordello—I rode slics.

  Japhrimel handed my bag over, and my sword. His silence was immense, and it wasn’t until I looked closer that I noticed a vertical line between his coal-black eyebrows. “What?” I asked him, slightly aggrieved. Rain-washed air blew through the canyon streets, brushing my tangled hair and making his long coat lift a little, brushing his legs.

  This is a demon, I thought, and you’re not screaming or running, Danny, you’re treating him just like anyone else. Are you insane?

  “I would rather,” he said quietly, “not do that again.”

  “Do what again?”

  “That was foolish and dangerous, Dante.” He wasn’t looking at me; he studied the pavement with much apparent interest.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t explain to a demon that a slicboard was the only way to prove I was still alive, after lying cheek-by-jowl with death and tasting bitter ash on my tongue. Neither could I explain to him that it was either the slic or the sparring cage, and I didn’t like cages of any kind. Besides, it didn’t matter to the demon that I needed to prove I was alive after bringing a soul over the bridge and feeling the cold stiffness of rotting death in my own limbs. “Come on. We’ve got to visit Abra.”

  “I would like your word that you will not leave me behind again,” he said quietly. “If you please, Mistress.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I turned away from him, slinging my bag against my hip, and was about to stalk away when he caught my arm.

  “Please, Dante. I do not want to lose my only chance at freedom for a human’s foolishness. Please.”

  I was about to tear my arm out of his hand when I realized he was asking me politely, and saying please as well. I stared at him, biting my lower lip, thinking this over. A muscle flicked in his smooth golden jaw.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “You have my word.”

  He blinked. This was the second time in my life I’d ever seen a demon nonplussed.

  We stood like that, the demon holding my arm and staring at my face, for about twenty of the longest seconds of my life so far. Then I moved, tugging my arm away from him, glancing up to check the weather. Still mostly clear, some high scudding clouds and the relentless orange wash of citylight. “We’ve got to get moving,” I said, not unkindly. “Abra gets mean later on in the night.”

  He nodded. Did I imagine the vertical crease between his eyebrows getting deeper? He looked puzzled.

  “What?” I asked.

  He said nothing, just shrugged and spread his hands to indicate helplessness. When I set off down the sidewalk he walked beside me, his hands clasped behind his back, his head down, and a look of such profound thoughtfulness on his face I half-expected him to start floating a few feet off the pavement.

  “Japhrimel?” I said finally.

  “Hm?” He didn’t look up, avoiding a broken bottle on the pavement with uncanny grace. I readjusted my bag so the strap didn’t cut into my shoulder. I’d left both my sword and my bag with him, and he hadn’t tampered with either.

  “You’re not bad, you know. For a demon. You’re not bad at all.”

  He seemed to smile very faintly at that. And oddly enough, that smile was nice to see.

  CHAPTER 17

  Abra’s shop was out on Klondel Avenue, a really ugly part of town even for the Tank District. Abracadabra Pawnshop We Make Miracles Happen! was scratched on the window with faded gilt lettering. An exceptionally observant onlooker would notice that there were no graffiti tags on Abra’s storefront, and that the pavement outside her glass door with its iron bars was suspiciously clean.

  Inside, the smell of dust and human desperation vied with the spicy smell of beef stew with chili peppers. The indifferent hardwood flooring creaked underfoot, and Abra sat behind the counter in her usual spot, on a three-legged stool. She had long dark curly hair and liquid dark eyes, a nondescript face. She wore a blue and silver caftan and large golden hoops in her ears. I had once asked if she was a gypsy. Abra had laughed, and replied, Aren’t we all?

  I had to give her that one.

  Racks of merchandise stood neatly on the wood floor, slicboards and guitars hung up behind the glassed-in counter that sparkled dustily with jewelry. Her stock did seem to rotate fairly frequently, but I’d never seen anyone come into Abra’s to buy anything physical.

  No, Abra was the Spider, and her web covered the city. What she sold was information.

  Jace had introduced me to Abra, a long time ago. Since then we’d been friends—of a sort. I did her a good turn or two when I could, she didn’t sell too much information about my private life, and we edged along in a sort of mutual détente. I’ll also admit that she puzzled me. She was obviously nonhuman, but she wasn’t registered with any of the Paranormal voting classes—Nichtvren, Kine, swanhilds, you name it—that had come out when the Parapsychic Act was signed into law, giving them Hegemony citizenship. Then again, I knew a clutch of nonhumans that weren’t registered but managed to make their voices heard the old-fashioned way, by bribe or by hook.

  The bell over the door jingled as I stepped in, wooden floor creaking. The demon crowded right behind me.

  “Hey, Abra,” I began, and heard a whining click.

  The demon’s hand bit my shoulder. A complicated flurry of motion ended up with me staring at the demon’s back as he held two silvery guns on Abra, who pointed a plasrifle at him.

  Well, this is exotic, I thought.

  “Put the gun down, s’darok,” the demon rumbled. “Or your webweaving days are over.”

/>   “What the hell did you bring in here, Danny?” Abra snapped. “Goddamn psychic women and their goddamn pets!”

  “Japh—” I stopped myself from saying more of his name. “What are you doing?”

  “She has a weapon pointed at you, Dante,” he said, and the entire shop rattled. “I will burn your nest, s’darok. Put the gun down.”

  “Fuck…” Abra slowly, slowly, laid the plasrifle down and raised her hands. “Psychic women and their goddamn pets. More trouble than anything else in this town—”

  “I need information, Abra,” I said, pitching my voice low and calm. “Jaf, she’s not going to hurt you—”

  “Oh, I know that.” His voice had dropped to its lowest registers. “It’s you she’ll harm, if she can.”

  “Isn’t that sweet.” Abra’s face crinkled, her dark eyes lighting with scarlet pinpricks. The shop’s glass windows bowed slightly under the pressure of her voice. Dust stirred, settled into complicated angular patterns, stirred again. The warding on Abra’s shop was complex and unique; I’d never seen anything like it. “Dante, make him go away or no dice.”

  “Oh, for the love of—” I was about to lose my temper. “Japhrimel, she’s put the gun down. Put yours away.”

  There was an eye-popping moment of tension that ended with Japhrimel slowly lowering his guns. His hands flicked, and they disappeared. “As you like,” he said harshly, the smell of amber musk and burning cinnamon suddenly filling the shop. I had quickly grown used to the way he smelled. “But if she moves to harm you, she’ll regret it.”

  “I think I’m capable of having a conversation with Abra that doesn’t lead to anyone killing anyone else,” I said dryly. “We’ve been doing it for years now.” My skin burned with the tension and Power in the air. The smell of beef and chilis reminded me I hadn’t eaten yet.