Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “I don’t know, Gabe.” Why is my voice shaking? My voice never shakes. “I haven’t gone… there… for a while.”

  And I missed it. I missed communing with my god, feeling ever-so-briefly the weight of living taken from me. I made my offerings and kept my worship, and every once in a while when I meditated the blue light of Death would weave subtle traceries through the darkness behind my eyes, a comfort familiar from my childhood.

  But still, if I went into Death, what would I meet on the bridge between this world and the next? Would I see a tall slim man in a long dark coat, his golden hands clasped behind his back as he considered me, his eyes flaring first green, then going dark? Would he tell me he’d been waiting for me?

  You will not leave me to wander the earth alone. But he’d left me, burned to death, crumbled in my arms. Seeing him in Death’s country would make it final. Too final. Too unbearably final.

  “You’re the best, Danny. You can even hold an apparition out of a box of cremains, you’ve always been the best. Please.” Gabe never begged, but her tone was dangerously close. She didn’t even shift in her chair, leaning forward, her elbows on her desk. She’s ready for action, I realized, and wondered just how tense and staring I looked. I was bleeding heat into the air, a demon’s trick.

  It wasn’t just that Gabe was asking me. I closed Christabel’s file and met her eyes squarely. At least she didn’t flinch. Gabe was perhaps the only person that could look me in the eyes without flinching.

  She still saw me. For Gabe, I hadn’t changed. I was still Danny Valentine, under the carapace of golden skin and demonic beauty. She wasn’t afraid of me—treated me no differently than she had ever since we’d become friends. For Gabe, I would always be the same person; the person she had dropped everything, leveraged her personal contacts, and hared off to Rio for. She had never even considered letting me face Santino by myself.

  I would go into Death just for that reason alone.

  I looked away. “What else is going on, Gabe? Come clean.”

  “Can’t fool you, can I?” She shrugged, reaching again for her crumpled pack of cigarettes. She couldn’t smoke in here, but she tapped the pack twice, a habitual gesture both soothing and oddly disturbing. I had never seen her this distracted. “It’s not much, Danny. If I had anything more to work with…”

  “Give it up.” I sounded harsh, my voice throbbing at the lower registers of “human.” The brandy bottles chattered against the desktop, my right hand ached. I wished the alcohol would do me some good. If it would have, I would have reached for it.

  “Moorcock was found in her apartment. I searched the place, of course, and found exactly nothing. Except this.” She held out a folded piece of pale-pink linen paper.

  I took it, the black molecule-drip polish on my nails reflecting stripes of fluorescent light. Actually, they looked like nails, but they were claw-tips, just another mark of how far away from human I’d been dragged. My rings shimmered. They were always awake now, not just when the atmosphere was charged—though the air in here was heavy enough with Power and tension to qualify. I was radiating, and so was she. The line of force between us was almost palpable. Jace, of course, lounged like a big blond cat, smelling hungover and human with a soupçon of musk and male thrown in; spiky, spicy Power contained and deadly within a Shaman’s thorny aura.

  I caught a fleeting impression from the paper—a wash of terror perfumed like cloying lilacs, an impression of a woman. Necromances are an insular community, for all that we’re loners and neurotic prima donnas. We have to be a community. Even among psions, the juncture of talent and genetics that makes a Necromance is unusual. I had known Christabel peripherally for most of my life.

  The paper was torn on one corner. I gingerly opened it, as if it held a snake.

  It pays to be careful.

  I looked at it. All the breath slammed out of me again. “Fuck,” I let out a strangled yelp.

  Her handwriting was ragged, as if she’d been in a hell of a hurry. Great looping, spiky letters, done in dragonsblood ink; the pen had dug deep furrows in the paper. Like claw marks.

  Black Room, it said. And below, in huge thick capitals, REMEMBER REMEMBER RIGGER HALL REMEMBER RIGGER HALL REMEMBER REMEMBER—

  There was a long trailing slash at the end of the last letter, daggering downward as if she’d been dragged away while still trying to write.

  I gasped for breath. The lunatic mental image of my body flopping on the floor like a landed fish receded; I forced my lungs to work. The world had gone gray and dim, wavering through a sheet of frosted glass. My back hurt, three lines of fire; another throbbing pain right in the crease of my left buttock. No. No, I don’t have those scars anymore. I don’t. I DON’T.

  It took me a few moments, but I finally managed to breathe again. I looked up at Gabe, who sat still and solemn behind her desk, her dark eyes full of terrible guilt. “Fuck.” This time I sounded more like myself, only savagely tired.

  Only like I’d been hit and lost half my air.

  Gabe nodded. “I know you went there. Before they had the big court case and the Hegemony closed it down. Moorcock was a few years older than you, she actually testified at the inquiry.”

  My mouth was dry as desert sand. “I know,” I said colorlessly. “Sekhmet sa’es, Gabe. This is…”

  “Blast from the past?” For once her humor didn’t make me feel better.

  Nothing would make this feel better.

  I realized I was rubbing at my left shoulder with my wounded right hand, fiercely, as if trying to scrub away the persistent ache. I stopped, dropping my hand into my lap as I examined the paper again. There was a tiny ward-glyph at the top of the page, sketched hastily. It held no Power—it hadn’t been charged.

  Maybe she’d been interrupted by whatever had torn her body apart. Whatever. Whoever.

  Could a person do this? I’d seen some horrible things done to the human body, but this was…

  “When did she write this?” I actually sound like myself again, maybe because I can’t breathe enough to talk. Hallelujah. All I have to do is get the wind knocked out of me, and I’ll sound normal. Simple.

  “We can’t tell,” Gabe said. “We had Handy Mandy try it, but she just passed out. When she came to, she said it was too thick and headed straight for a date with the bottle, hasn’t sobered up since. It was on Moorcock’s desk in her bedroom; she was in the living room when she was… killed. There was no sign of forced entry—her shields were still in place, fading but still in place, and ripped from the inside.”

  From the inside? “So it was someone she knew?” I wanted to rub at my shoulder again, stopped myself with an effort that made my aching fingers twitch. I smelled something new on the air.

  Fear. A sharp, sweaty stink, as if I were tracking a bounty.

  Except it was my own.

  Gabe’s eyes were darker than usual, the line between her eyebrows deepening. “We don’t know, Danny.”

  “What about the other two victims?”

  “They’re… interesting, too. The first one—Bryce Smith—was registered as normal. Except he lived in a house with some mighty fine shielding, but he had none of those damn chalk marks around his body. And the second, Yasrule—she was one of Polyamour’s girls.” Gabe’s mouth twisted down briefly.

  Mine did the same. Polyamour, the transvestite queen of the sex trade in Santiago City. It wasn’t her fault, sexwitches were born sexwitches, and the psionic community was too hated as a whole by normals for us to consider shunning our own. Still… I was glad I hadn’t been born as one of them.

  “A normal, a sexwitch, and a Necromance.” I shook my head. A stray strand of silken ink-black hair fell in my face, I pushed it back impatiently. “Gods.”

  “We can’t get anything else from the scenes,” Gabe said. “That’s when your name came up.”

  Lovely. The cops call me in when all else fails. Am I supposed to feel honored? The sarcasm didn’t help. I swallowed sourness again, loo
ked down at the pale-pink paper. Gabe had made no move to take it back.

  REMEMBER RIGGER HALL. The writing glared up at me, accusing. I didn’t want to remember that place. I’d done everything I could to forget it, to go on with my life.

  I wish I could tell her I’d do this just because she asked me. I tossed the paper back onto her desk, as if it had burned my fingers. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had.

  The phone shrilled just as I opened my mouth to tell her I couldn’t take the fucking case. I couldn’t. Nothing could induce me to even think about Rigger Hall for longer than absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, I was eyeing the brandy, wondering how much more than two bottles it would take before the liquor would have some effect. I’d lost interest at about six last time. I suspected I couldn’t drink fast enough to cloud my Magi-trained, demon-enhanced memory. Not with my fucking metabolism.

  “Spocarelli,” she snarled into the receiver. A long pause. “Fuck me… You’re sure?” Her eyes drifted up and met mine, and for an instant I saw through her calm.

  There were dark circles under her eyes, and her pale skin had a pasty tone she’d never had before. Her collarbones jutted out, and so did the cords in her neck. She was too thin—and there was something torn and frightened in her dark eyes.

  Something terrified. And furious. She was a psionic cop, and something had killed two psions on her watch. A normal, maybe one of the Ludders, gone mad and deciding to murder instead of simply protest the existence of psions? But what normal human could do this and tear psionic shields from the inside?

  Was it a vendetta springing up rank and foul from the deep filth of the place where I’d learned just how powerless a child could be? What revenge would wait this long and be this brutal? A group, working together? Or one person?

  “Keep them off as long as you can,” she said finally. “I’ve got Valentine in here right now. We’re heading to the morgue.” Another long pause. “Okay. See ya.”

  She dropped the phone back into its cradle with excessive care. “That was the Captain. The holovids have gotten wind of this.”

  I winced. Then I opened my mouth to say, No. I can’t do it. Find someone else.

  Instead, what came out was, “You weren’t at Rigger Hall, Gabe.” I knew her career like I knew my own, like I knew John Fairlane’s. Necromances were rare among psions, we listened for news about one another. If Christabel Moorcock was dead, there were only three left in the city, two of them in this very office.

  Of course Gabe hadn’t gone to Rigger Hall, she hadn’t been poor or orphaned.

  “No.” A flush rose to her cheeks. “I went to Stryker. My mom’s trust fund, you know. But… Eddie went to Rigger.”

  Eddie. Her boyfriend. The Skinlin.

  He’d gone with us to Nuevo Rio, had almost lost Gabe to my quest for revenge, and been knocked around a good bit himself. And Eddie had been to Rigger—which meant he would have his own nightmares. The net of obligation closed tight around me.

  Oh, fuck. “I guess we’re going to the morgue.”

  I was rewarded with a look of relief so profound that I was sure Gabe didn’t know how loudly her face was speaking.

  Jace made no sound, but he hitched himself up to his feet, scratching at his forehead under a shelf of tawny hair. He stretched slightly, his aura touching mine, thorn-spiked Power offered in case I needed it. I pushed the touch away—but gently. He didn’t sway on his feet, but he did scoop his staff up and twirl it, the small bones clicking and clacking together. The familiar sound did nothing to comfort me.

  “Hades,” Gabe said, “I was afraid you’d—”

  “I won’t promise anything. It’s been a while. I might not be able to do it, might need to practice before I can get back into the swing.”

  But I felt the tattoo shift on my face, its inked lines running under my skin, and knew I was lying.

  CHAPTER 6

  The morgue was across the street, in the basement of a county administration building that looked as if it predated the Seventy Days War, graceless crumbling concrete and some oddly-shaped old glass windows instead of plasilica. Fine, thin clouds were beginning to blow in from the bay, and the sunlight had taken on a hazy quality. I could almost taste the barometric pressure dropping. Sudden shifts like that used to give me a headache.

  I breathed in the stink of Saint City and once again felt the city press against my shields like a huge animal waiting to be stroked. The security net on the morgue building let us in, the armed guard in the foyer lowering his plascannon. Legal augments rippled and twitched under his black-mirror body armor. He had a chest the size of a small barrel of reactive and a pair of old optical augments set into his cheekbones, mirrored lenses that looked like sunglasses until their polarized magscan capability gave them away. The guard’s lip curled behind Gabe’s back as he saw us. I toyed with the idea of giving him a grin, decided against it. Gabe wouldn’t like it if I got into a scuffle. Not to mention Jace was hungover—why make him fight? Besides, one normal with legal augments wasn’t even a challenge, not anymore. Even if I didn’t have a sword.

  Gabe signed us in at the counter, staffed only by an AI receptionist deck in a gleaming steel humanoid casing. We were given plasilica one-liners to smooth over our datbands, and in we went.

  Necromances don’t like morgues, but they’re bearable. At least inside a morgue there is cold steel and the clinical light of medical science. The aura of dispassionate research helps. Not like graveyards and funeral homes, where grief and confusion and agony and generations of pain dye the air a razor-grieving red. The holovids make it look like Necromances spend all their time illegally digging up bones in graveyards, but truth be told that’s the last place you’d look for one of us. You’d have a better chance in a hospital or a lawyer’s office.

  Though hospitals aren’t easy either. Any place soaked with pain and suffering isn’t easy.

  Jace’s hand curled around my elbow when we got to the bottom of the staircase, a warm hard human touch. Gabe pushed though the swinging door and we followed her, boots clicking in uneven time over the same blue glittery linoleum as the police station. I didn’t shake my arm free of Jace’s touch all the way down the hall. The man was stubborn, following me on bounties and picking up after me. I didn’t know what debt he thought he was paying.

  I didn’t even know what debt I was paying on now, I had so many due.

  I pulled away from his hand as Gabe flashed her badge at the admin-assist behind a sheet of bulletproof. The girl’s throat swelled as she nodded, her pink-streaked hair sticking up in the new Gypsy Roen fashion—she had a subvocal implant. Her fingers blurred as she tapped on a datapad. I wondered who she was talking to while she was taking dictation, followed Gabe through the fireproof security door, and swallowed against the sudden chemical stench. I wish I could figure out how to quit smelling that.

  “Hey, Spooky,” a thin geek in a labcoat, carrying a stack of paperwork, called out. “You here for the deadhead?” Then his eyes flicked past her to me, and he stopped cold, unshaven face turning the color of old cottage cheese.

  It wasn’t as satisfying as it might have been. His stringy hair was cut in the bowl shape Jasper Dex had made popular. It didn’t suit him. Neither did the color of his face. His eyes came suspiciously close to bugging out. I wondered why—working in the morgue, he probably saw his fair share of Necromances, between Gabe and John Fairlane.

  Then I remembered I was golden-skinned, with a face like a holovid model’s and a share of a demon’s beauty without the persistent alienness of a demon; my hair was ink-black, longer than it had been and silky, refusing to stay back unless braided tightly, sometimes not even then. I looked like a particularly good gene-splice to most normals, like I’d paid a bundle to look like a holovid wet dream.

  The emerald in my cheek would just give normals a reason to fear me; an atavistic fear of psions in general and Necromances in particular. Silly normals sometimes mistake Necromances for Death Himself
, loading another layer of fear onto the trepidation they feel about all psions.

  If they knew how unconditionally Death loved His children, maybe they would fear Him less. Or more. But psions were feared by normals all over the world, just because we had been born different.

  “Yeah, Hoffman, I’m here for the pile of meat that used to be a deadhead.” Gabe’s voice was a slap bouncing off the hall walls. “This is the big gun. Dante Valentine, meet Nix Hoffman.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure.” The dry tone I used was anything but. My voice echoed, not as hard as Gabe’s, but casually powerful; I had to remember to keep toning it down especially around normals. The effect my voice had on unsuspecting civilians was thought-provoking, to say the least.

  “Likewise,” he stammered. “Ah, um, Ms. Valentine—”

  “Which bay is the body in, Hoff? Caine’s?” Gabe barely even broke stride.

  “Yeah, Caine’s got it, he’s in his office. He was doing toxicology.” The young man’s eyes flittered over me. I knew what he was seeing—a particularly desirable genespliced woman—and wished I didn’t. His pupils swelled. If I flooded the air with my scent I could have him on his knees, begging without knowing why. Yet another side effect of whatever I was now.

  Hedaira, a flat ironic voice whispered in the lowest reaches of my mind. I shut that voice away—it hurt too much to hear it. Why was Japhrimel’s the voice I used to hurt myself?

  “Thanks, jerkwad.” Gabe sailed past him, and I did the same, letting out a deep breath between my teeth. I did not sneer. It took some effort.

  “You’ve got yourself a reputation,” Jace murmured in my ear. I snorted something indelicate. “Oh, come on, Danny. You’re too cute. Maybe we should get you one of them Oak Vegas Raidon outfits.”

  “I can’t raise the dead in a black-leather bikini,” I muttered back, grateful once again because the damnable urge to smile rose again. Gabe’s boots clicked on the linoleum.

  “A studded black-leather bikini,” Jace corrected.