Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “You can pilot this thing; we need a getaway driver.”

  “Quit fussing, Mom.” Gabe rolled her eyes, shoved a pin through her braided hair. “Why don’t you stay up here and cover us?”

  “That’s Jace’s job,” I returned. Then I looked down at the printouts. My finger rested over one of the yellow points of light, low down on the south side of the castle, in one of the most difficult-to-access parts. “Japhrimel, can you… umm, fly?”

  “I can get you into that window, Dante,” he replied. “I can’t carry more than one, though.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Gabe piped up. “We brought slicboards.”

  “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this.” I rolled my head back; Japhrimel’s lips met my temple. Jace glanced down at the printouts. I tore my finger away from the table with some difficulty, shook my hand out. My heartbeat took on the usual prejob pace—too quick to be resting, too slow to be pounding, adrenaline flooding my bloodstream.

  “Wait a minute,” Jace said. “I’m not staying here. You need backup.”

  “I’ve got Japhrimel,” I said, without thinking about it.

  There, it was out. Jace’s mouth twisted down at the corners. Japhrimel’s arms tightened slightly. The mark on my left shoulder flushed with velvet heat.

  “We’re too small a group to leave someone topside,” Eddie said. “We need everyone we’ve got down there making trouble.”

  I hunched my shoulders. “You’re all fucking crazy.” I put my hand out, palm-down, over the table. “All right. We all go in together.”

  Gabe placed her hand over mine. “All together, and the gods help us.”

  Eddie covered our hands with his hairy paw. “Fuck ’em all,” he growled.

  Jace, then. “I won’t be left behind,” he said. “Not on something like this.”

  Japhrimel paused, and then slid to the side. He laid his hand over ours. “May your gods and mine protect us,” he added judiciously.

  “I didn’t know demons had gods.” Gabe grinned. It was her combat grin, light and fierce.

  We broke as if at a prearranged signal, and I looked up at Japhrimel. “Be careful, okay?” I rubbed my katana’s hilt with my thumb.

  His face was as grim and murderous as I’d ever seen it. The eerie green glow from the instruments bathed him in a radioactive aura. “Do not worry over me, Dante. I have fought many battles in my time.”

  I looked down at the printouts, my mouth dry. The place was massive, and I had no clue where Santino would be hiding.

  Jace opened the side hatch as the hover drifted. “Datbands?” he yelled over the sudden roar of wind, water, and pressurized airseals. The commlinks in everyone’s ears crackled into life. I shook my head—I hated commlinks, but I couldn’t spare the concentration keeping a telepathic five-way link open would cost me.

  I held mine up, Gabe and Eddie copying me. We were all three keyed into the hover’s intranet, which meant we could track each other with our datbands. Gabe extracted a long NeoSho slicboard from a crate in the pile of supplies. I checked my plasgun for the fiftieth time. Eddie took the NeoSho and Jace pulled out his Chervoyg. The hum of powering-up antigrav filled the air.

  Gabe grinned. “See ya in the funny papers,” she yelled, and ran for the door. Eddie followed, coasting his slicboard out into the jetstream and leaping, the green-yellow glow of Skinlin sorcery limning him. He’s triggered the golem’ai to start the distraction, I thought, and shivered. The mudlike creatures gave me the willies. “Japhrimel,” I yelled over the noise, “just cause as much damage as you can once we’ve grabbed the kid. Level the whole place, if you can.”

  He nodded curtly, his coat beginning to stream and flap, separating in front. I swallowed hard. Jace dropped out the hatch, two plasguns already in his hands, his sword tucked through his belt. I took a deep breath. “Catch me?” I yelled, and Japhrimel nodded.

  I didn’t wait for more, simply ran for the hatch and launched myself into the night. Before I could lose my nerve.

  CHAPTER 49

  We certainly made an entrance.

  We were too-small targets for the antiaircraft battery, and by the time I found myself yanked up in Japhrimel’s hands, the first golem’ai had Manifested. It was seven feet tall, built out of what looked like sentient humanoid mud, with glowing yellow spotlight eyes. It landed on the battlements with a thud, and screams drifted up over the sound of the waves and the punishing icy wind.

  Cold. It was brutally cold. The wind sliced through me. Jace bobbed and wove underneath us, skating his slicboard fast through a collage of plasgun bolts—where are those coming from, I thought, and tossed a firestarter into the wind. A breath of Power made it arrow off toward the outcropping where human guards crouched, raking us with plasgun fire. The resultant explosion briefly turned the night a lurid orange, and I saw Gabe and Eddie had already reached the south side. Gabe wove among plasbolts with incredible grace, as if she was tagging slow hovers back in Saint City; I heard her voice raised sharply as Japhrimel glided, angling to keep us out of the way of the plasbolt crossfire. One gun emplacement exploded; I caught a whiff of Gabe’s Power. She’d used a firestarter.

  Picture this, then: the whole battle happening in seconds. Jace’s share of the firestarters crackled, he was sowing them in a criss-cross pattern, taking out a whole tower. Stone crumbled, I heard his whoop of bloodthirsty joy. Then he went streaking over the battlements, sword in one hand, plasgun in the other, almost losing his slic as a plascannon bolt clipped the edge of his shielding.

  We were on the north side, Japhrimel and I, about to make the sharp banking turn that would bring us back around and drop us into position to run for the spot in the castle where I’d felt Doreen’s kid. There was a bank of guns here, too, beginning to move on their gimbals to focus down on the other three. “Drop me!” I yelled, flicking a firestarter, and wonder of wonders, Japhrimel obeyed.

  I hit hard, rolling, and he was right behind me. I took the first two almost before I knew what was happening, my body moving with instinctive speed and precision. I leapt, catching the iron bar that the gunner was standing on, found his ankle, and yanked. He tumbled off into the wind, a human cry escaping him, lost in all the ruckus.

  “Heavy fire,” Eddie gasped.

  “I’m on it,” I snapped, shimmying up, hearing the clatter of gunfire while Japhrimel dealt with the other human guard. My conscience would prick me later—but they signed up with Santino, they took their chances. I swung the plascannon and yanked back on the triggerbolt, praying—

  Prayers answered. The bolts raked the other end of the wall, exploding cannon after cannon and crackling. I scrambled down, whirling as Japhrimel shouted something shapeless I understood anyway, and flicked another firestarter at the cannon as he grabbed me and flung us both out into empty air. “Now, isn’t that better?”

  Japhrimel coasted around, ducking under a stray bit of debris. “Let’s get this over with,” he yelled. I glanced down—we were losing altitude fast.

  “Direct me, Danny,” Gabe’s voice crackled over the commlink.

  I was happy I could. “Two windows up, straight in front of you, that’s where the kid is. Pull up and watch your left, there’s a bunch of plasgun coming your way.”

  “Got it,” Eddie snarled, and flame bloomed again. A concussive boom! raked the night, stone and glass shattering. I heard thin human cries; another klaxon started to blare. More lights started to blaze in the massive pile of rock. Holy fuck, I thought, we’re doing a full-scale frontal assault on a demon’s hideaway and getting away with it.

  Then things started to get interesting.

  I didn’t want to see how Japhrimel was flying—or gliding, actually, since we seemed to be falling pretty rapidly. He aimed for the kid’s window and I spent a few moments with my eyes closed, feeling for her, letting him take care of it. The flare of her presence was close, so close—

  “Dante?” Japhrimel’s voice in the commlink.

  “W
e’re in,” Gabe said. “What the—”

  “Danny!” Eddie yelled. “He’s here! He’s here!”

  “Burn the entire fucking place down, Japhrimel!” I screamed, and the entire world went soundless white as Japhrimel pulled on all the Power he could reach. A thin white-skinned shape blew out on the backwash of the explosion; my entire body screamed. It might have been Santino, my prey, falling through cold empty air.

  If it’s him, that won’t kill him, I thought. Not even a drop like that will kill him, he’s a demon even if he’s a weak one he’s too strong, too slow, we’re moving too slow—

  Jace nipped neatly inside the hole torn in the south side of the castle. Japhrimel let go of me and I tumbled through empty frozen air, faster-than-human reflexes saving me as I slammed into the stone wall. The boom! of another explosion rattled the wall; I jackknifed into the hole, my fingernails plowing stone and cold air plucking at my hair, landed on a wooden floor littered with shards of glass, broken stone, and wooden splinters.

  The room was a nursery, again, stone floors holding pastel hangings in a faint attempt to make it less grim. Toys scattered, burning, across the floor. A huge ornate mahogany bedstead crouched in one corner, and I saw a stray gleam of light from the emerald in the child’s forehead as it gave one amazing flash of light. My own emerald rang, answering it.

  “Oh, no—”

  Eddie screamed. The smell—ice and cold blood, maggots and wet rat fur—triggered my gorge. If I’d had anything in my stomach I would have spewed. I didn’t know demons could throw up. Santino. It was his smell, he’d been here, I knew he’d been here. So it had been him falling from the room.

  Gabe lay, broken and bloody, against the far wall. Of course—she’d been the first in, and Santino had been here, probably expecting us as soon as the commotion started. How badly was she hurt? I didn’t have time to think about it; Eddie would take care of her.

  Eddie gained his feet, shaking his shaggy head. It looked like he’d fetched up hard against the other side of the steel door to this room; his hair was singed and he was dirty from stone dust. He ran for Gabe. Don’t let her be hurt, I prayed. don’t let her be hurt—

  Jace grabbed my arm and hauled me up as Japhrimel landed inside the room, coat folding around him as he rolled. He gained his feet and whirled, seeing me, then nodded. He strode toward Gabe and I shook free of Jace, bolting for the bed.

  The little girl sat straight up, her dark eyes huge. The only uncertain light came from burning reflected in through the massive hole in the wall, glass from the lamp in the ceiling crunching under my boots. I reached the bed, stared down at the girl.

  This is no child, I thought. What am I doing?

  “Go,” Japhrimel said. “Go, take her back to the ship. She’ll live.”

  “He ripped her stomach out!” Eddie screamed, but Japhrimel caught his shoulders, his eyes sparking for a moment with the old green flame.

  “I have mended her, she will live, dirtwitch. As you value her life, go!” Then Japhrimel pushed him away.

  “What about Santino?” Jace yelled.

  I held out my hands.

  The girl looked at me. The cacophony—klaxons screaming, human cries, antiaircraft fire—they were filling the sky with bolts, trying to hit something—faded away.

  She has Doreen’s eyes, I thought, and the child nodded.

  It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, because she was. She looked as if Lucifer and Doreen had been melded into one small, perfect entity, the emerald in her forehead singing softly. It wasn’t that she put up her hands and smiled at me. It wasn’t even that she smelled familiar—some combination of fresh-baked bread and a unique smell that something in my subconscious recognized.

  It was the shadow of knowledge in her dark eyes, and the absolute lack of fear. I knew she had somehow been waiting for me. Had somehow known I was coming, and accepted it. The knowledge chilled me right down to my new bones.

  She’s not human, I thought. What if it’s best to leave her with Santino?

  I scooped her up and turned, ran for the others, her hot, chubby arms wrapped around my neck.

  Eddie had just finished triggering the third golem’ai. Screams. The heavy, ironbound door leading into the rest of the castle resounded with shouts and thuds. They were breaking in. Santino’s human army was on its way.

  Where did Santino go? How long will it take him to get back up here?

  I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  I shoved the girl into Jace’s arms. He took her before he realized what I was doing, and I pushed him out of the hole in the wall, his slicboard whining and taking the kinetic energy I supplied. Too much Power, sorry about that, Jace— “Get her to the ship, Jace! Move!” Japhrimel hauled Gabe up, Power thundering in the confined space and dyeing the air with diamond-dark, twisting flames. Gabe flopped in his arms, but Japhrimel had said she would live.

  Eddie took Gabe’s limp weight. Her slicboard lay twisted and useless against the far wall. “He went that way—” Eddie screamed, pointing at the hole in the wall, his face a mask of rage.

  I grabbed him by the collar and shook him. “Get Gabe out of here! Move it!”

  I didn’t have to tell him twice. He bolted for the hole in the wall, Gabe in his arms, blood dripping from her long dark braid. I hope she’s still alive, if she dies goddammit Santino I’ll kill you twice—

  “Danny, get out of there,” Jace yelled, the commlink crackling in my ear. “Hurry up!”

  Japhrimel started toward the hole in the wall.

  Oh no, I thought. I am not leaving. I have business to finish here.

  I turned toward the door, my katana sliding free. I dropped the borrowed scabbard, tore the commlink out of my ear, and fitted the plasgun into my left hand. Took a deep breath. Japhrimel twisted away from the hole in the wall, his boots skidding. Had he really thought I would leave without doing what I came to do?

  As long as Santino was alive, I would never be able to rest again.

  Japhrimel’s lips shaped my name as I took in a deep breath, my blade blazing with pitiless blue light that threw sharp reflections through the ruined room. I pointed the plasgun at the door, where a circle of white-hot glow told me they were using lasecutters to break in.

  “Santino!” I roared with all my newfound Power, and squeezed the plasgun’s trigger just as the demon Vardimal broke through the wall behind the bed, mahogany splinters flying like shrapnel, stone turning to dust and icicle shards. The shockwave caught me and threw me against the stone wall, and I almost lost my sword when I hit with a sickening thump that shivered yet more stone from the roof and wall.

  Japhrimel let out a sound so huge it was almost soundless and hurled himself at Santino.

  Who threw up one clawed hand that held something glittering, made a complicated twisting motion, and tossed the glitter straight at Japhrimel.

  The Egg! The thought seemed to move through syrup.

  I gained my feet in a shuffle, hearing groans from the ruins of the door. The plasgun bolt had smacked into the cutter’s field and caused a chain reaction, plasbolt reacting with the lase energy and freeing a whole hell of a lot of violent energy. It’s a basic law of dealing with plasguns: never shoot at reactive or lase fields. Nobody caught in that would want to fight anymore—not if they were human. If I’d been human the concussion might have killed me.

  I launched myself at Santino as the small glittering thing, no bigger than my fist, smacked Japhrimel in the chest—and blew him through the wall and out into the night with a sound that made a gush of blood drip down from my ears and nose. I shook my head, dazed for only a split second. The drilling pain flashed through me and was gone, the warmth of the blood freezing against my skin in milliseconds. My breath puffed out, turned to a tissue-thin cloud of ice crystals, fell straight down.

  Japhrimel! I skidded to a stop, facing Santino, whose claws cut the cold air. Our feet crunched in glass and tinkling stone shards as he moved, circling.

&n
bsp; He didn’t look happy to see me. “Fool!” he hissed. “The fool.”

  My katana circled. The rest of the world faded away. Here he was, right in front of me.

  My revenge.

  “Santino,” I hissed. The entire world seemed to hold its breath, the shape of my vengeance lying under the fabric of reality, rising to meet me. “Or Vardimal. Or whoever the hell you are.”

  “You can’t kill me,” he sneered. “Neither man nor demon can kill me. Lucifer assured me of that.”

  I showed my own teeth, boots shuffling lightly, quickly. “I am going to eat your fucking heart,” I informed him. I’m not a man or a demon, Santino. Your immunity doesn’t apply.

  “You could have been a queen,” he snarled at me, the black teardrops over his eyes swallowing the light. “You could have helped me kill Lucifer and take the rule of Hell! But no, you stupid, silly human—”

  “Not human,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  He bared his teeth again. “Who do you think helped me escape from Hell?” he screamed, my blade flashing up as we circled. “He’s Lucifer’s assassin! His Right Hand! He’s used you—”

  That answered the question that had been teasing the back of my mind since this whole thing started—of how exactly Santino had escaped Hell. I should have been enraged at Japhrimel for hiding that from me, I should have been wondering what else he’d hidden. What other secrets he might have kept. But with my revenge in front of me and Japhrimel’s blood filling my veins, I could have cared less.

  “I don’t fucking care,” I hissed, and my own voice tore more stone from the ceiling and sent it pattering down in a drift of dust. “I’ve come to kill you, you scavenger son of a bitch, for what you did to Doreen. And every other woman you murdered.”

  And then there was no more time for talk, because he moved in with that spooky invisible speed of demons.