Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Gabe’s hand closed around my right shoulder. She squeezed just a little. “You already gave your statement, Danny. You don’t have to.”

  “I should have caught him.” Why did my voice, as hoarse and ruined as it was, sound so young? “I should have caught him.” I held up one golden hand. “All the strength Japhrimel gave me, I should have caught him.” My face crumpled again, soundlessly contorting into a mask. A tragedy mask, the darker half of laughter’s coin. The mask I’d seen on so many other faces when a loved one passed on.

  Gabe whispered something to Eddie.

  “Goddamn.” The dark circles under his eyes were almost gone. He looked better. “Look, Danny, I’m gonna take you to our house. We can clean you up, maybe get you something to eat.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said tonelessly, hoarse. “Got work to do. The others on the list—”

  “They’ve been taken to safehouses,” Gabe said. “The building security net included stillcams. We’ve got a few good shots of Lourdes. They’re all over the holovids, make the press work for us for once. Someone will call him in, and we’ll take him down.” Her mouth twisted slightly to one side. “Hard.”

  It was a promise of revenge, one that should have made me grateful. I felt nothing; the numbness of a razor drawn swiftly through flesh, the breathless moment before the pain starts, before the blood begins to flow.

  “Nobody will see him.” The ectoplasm had vanished, leaving only a faint shimmer on the bodies; the other victims had been found too late, no trace of ectoplasmic attack remaining. If we’d seen the slimy eggwhite of a ka taking shape in the physical world, we would have been more cautious. A lot more cautious. “Any more than anyone would see you if you really wanted to stay invisible. And he’s… I think… Gabe, he’s got Mirovitch… inside him.”

  “You saw Mirovitch? But I thought you said he…” She looked as confused as I felt.

  Focus! The sharp stinging slap of the deep voice of my conscience jerked my head up. I’d been staring at my boots. “Gabe. Look. Poly told me that the kids all took a piece of Mirovitch. What if Keller took the last piece? Or somehow… I don’t know. The first death was a decade after Mirovitch’s… disappearance. Maybe the Headmaster wasn’t as dead as everyone thought.”

  Gabe nodded. Her sleek hair dipped forward over her shoulders. “So he’s out for revenge?”

  “Revenge, maybe, who knows? But most certainly collecting.” I waited until Gabe absorbed this, then tossed the cup of coffee into the street. Steaming liquid spilled out. I watched as the steam twisted into angular shapes, dissipated. “I don’t know if safehouses are going to be any good. I don’t know how he’s tracking them.”

  “You think Mirovitch is inside Lourdes?” Gabe’s eyes were wide and dark. It was the stuff of nightmares, a psi carrying something like that around. A mule carrying a Feeder’s ka.

  A Feeder, hungry for Power. And instead of feeding from random victims, or having a mild case of being Feeder, Mirovitch was inside Keller, and taking back whatever the kids took from him years ago. Claiming his own. It made sense. The worst, absolutely worst type of Feeder. Hungry, hard to kill, and so very close now to collecting the leftover pieces of itself and becoming a fullblown ka, moving from mule to mule and draining each one as it went, turning them into soulless zombies—or worse, into Feeders too. A spreading contagion, replicating itself wherever it could.

  “I’m guessing it’s a ka, Gabe. Nothing else seems to fit.” My throat stung, my eyes watering from the sunlight. Yes, only the sunlight. “I have something I have to do.” Straining for politeness. It was a long reach.

  “Danny. Please. Go with Eddie. Get some food. Get cleaned up and come to the hospital. We’ll do this together.”

  I shook Gabe’s hand from my shoulder. She backed up half a step, and I saw the sudden flicker in Eddie’s aura. “You don’t have to worry,” I told them both, still in that little-girl voice I had no idea I still possessed. I heard the hurt clearly in my voice, too worn to camouflage or swallow it for once. “I’m not going to lash out at you. You could have a little more faith in me.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” Gabe said. “But you’ve got that look again, Danny. That scary look that says you’re about to go hunting, and gods help anyone in your way.”

  “That’s about right.” The ambulance hover rocked a little on its springs as my tone turned chill. Eddie shivered. The wind rose slightly, keening through the broken edges of the brownstone above. “I was too fucking young to kill Mirovitch all those years ago. I should have, I wished I could. I used to dream about it. This time, I’m old enough and armed enough to do it.” I looked up at the smoking hole torn in the building. “I need to find out about this Bryce Smith guy—if he was just a cover for Lourdes. What the connection is. We still don’t know that.”

  Gabe nodded. The purposeful milling around the scene continued behind her. Two coroner’s hovers lifted off, the whine of hovercells cutting through the sound of the gathered crowd behind the yellow plasilica tape marking off the borders of the investigation. I saw flashes pop, and guessed the holovid reporters were out in force. My eyes followed the hovers as they rose gracefully, then banked and flew away toward the station house and the morgue. Sunlight stung my eyes even more, making hot tears roll down my cheeks. “Hospital.” I winced at the childlike breathiness of my voice. “They’ve taken him to the hospital?”

  Gabe nodded. “Yeah. Come with us, Danny.”

  No. Please, no. “His sword. You don’t need that for evidence, do you?”

  Eddie made a brief restless movement. I was being rude again.

  I was too tired to care. Japhrimel had never told me about the weariness of demons, the weariness of a being that didn’t need sleep. A weariness that seemed to sink into every bone, every thought. Or was it a weariness peculiar to hedaira? I had nobody I could ask.

  I was adrift again, as if I was twelve years old and shipwrecked by the death of the only family I had ever known. Again.

  “You know it’s yours.” Gabe actually looked hurt. “I’m so sorry, Danny. I know you loved him.”

  My lips puckered as if I tasted something sour. Maybe it was only failure. I didn’t even know that myself, Gabe. “Thanks.” My voice sounded as if it was coming from someone else, someone whose harsh tone was flat and terribly loaded with Power. If the god hadn’t temporarily denied me the ability to use the demon Power I’d been granted, I might have leveled the building. Or even more.

  Probably more.

  Definitely more.

  “Don’t, Danny.” Eddie was uncharacteristically serious, examining me. His shoulders slumped as if under a heavy weight. The wind plucked at his coat, mouthed his untidy hair. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

  Don’t do this to myself? Don’t DO this to myself? “Who else should I do it to? I’m kind of out of victims, in case you hadn’t noticed. Everyone who gives a damn about me dies sooner or later. You should be getting as far away as—”

  I didn’t realize I was shouting until Gabe clapped her hand over my mouth, stepping close. Her dark eyes—human eyes—were bare inches from mine; she was much shorter than me, but I was sitting on the edge of the hover’s step, so her nose hovered next to mine, her mouth on the other side of her hand. Her breath brushed my face, and the smell of kyphii and her perfume mixed, driving through my nose. My demon-based scent flared, a wave of musk and spice, and her pupils dilated slightly. That was all.

  “Shut the fuck up, Dante,” she said softly, conversationally. “We’re using your hover. You’re coming to my house to get cleaned up, and we’re going to the hospital. We’ll catch this fucker, and when we do, what we do to him is going to make a werecain kill look sweet and clean. I dragged you into this, and if you want to blame someone, fine, blame me and we’ll do some sparring later to hash it out. But for right now, sunshine, you’re with us. You got it?”

  It was ridiculous. It was ri-fucking-diculous. I was part demon, stronger and faster than her, with e
nough power to level a building when a god wasn’t stopping me. Hunger began, a faint cramping under my ribs. But hunger wasn’t what was making my hands shake so that I had to clasp my sword, hard, to keep them still.

  I stared into Gabe’s eyes, her irises so dark her pupils seemed to blend into them. This close I could see the fine speckles of gold in her irises, and the faint freckles that dusted her perfect patrician nose. Her aura closed around me, the comfort of another Necromance, not seeking to minimize the pain. Her cedary perfume spilled through the shield of demon scent, and I was grateful for it.

  Her eyes looked directly into mine.

  I have only stared that intensely into one other pair of eyes, and those had been brilliantly green, glowing green. As it was, wordless communication passed through her into me, a zing like an electric current, stinging all the way down to the quick. It was a different kind of communion than the one that passed between me and Anubis, and still different than the alien ecstasy of Japhrimel’s hands on me while he stared unblinking through my humanity. No, this was purely female communication, something as deep and bloody as the depths of labor pangs.

  And for all I’d never had a child, I still knew. Every child knows. Every woman knows, too.

  “I’m with you, Danny,” she finally whispered. “You owe him being at the hospital. You know what we have to do.”

  My vision blurred. It wasn’t shock, it was hot tears. Gabe’s eyes were gentle and utterly pitiless, but still grieving.

  I nodded, slowly. Her hand fell away from my mouth, but she didn’t look away. She offered me her hand, and I took it gently, my fingers sliding through hers.

  Eddie hunched his shoulders. He said nothing as Gabe pulled me to my feet.

  Soft beeps and boops from the machines monitoring pulse and respiration filled the air, and a tide of human pain scraped at my skin. Hospitals aren’t comfortable for psions. All the advanced technology in the world can’t hide the fact that a hospital is where you go when you’re sick, and the terminus of getting sick is dying. Even the Necromance, whose entire professional life is bound up with death, doesn’t like being reminded that he or she is finite and will one day tread the same path as the clients.

  The room was small, but at least it was private. There was even a window, showing the thin sunlight outside and clouds massing in the north. We were up on the third floor, the curtains pulled back, smooth blue plasflooring under our feet… and Jace Monroe’s body, lying perfect and breathing like a clockwork toy on the tethered hoverbed with its white sheets and dun blanket. His hair glowed in the pale light; he finally looked relaxed and about ten years younger.

  The chair sat stolid and empty on the other side of the bed. Eddie stood at the foot, and I found myself next to Jace’s hand, looking down.

  Gabe exchanged low fierce whispers with someone at the door. She was a licensed Necromance and the investigating detective, and if she said he was dead her word held in a court of law. With two Necromances in the room and an EEG showing flatline, there wasn’t any doubt: Jason Monroe was dead, and this was a flagrant use of Hegemony medical facilities for no good reason. Still, Gabe made them go away so we could say goodbye to the soulless body on the bed, probably invoking the second clause of the Amberson Act.

  I didn’t care. Was past caring. I was scrubbed down and wearing Eddie’s shirt and a fresh pair of jeans—not Gabe’s, she was too small, and I didn’t want to ask why they had a pair of pants in my size at their house. My boots were still wet, but at least they’d been rinsed off. My hair lay wet and tightly braided in a rope against my back that bumped me whenever I shifted my weight.

  Gabe closed the door with a firm click. I felt the tingle of Power and glanced over to see her place a lockcharm on the handle. The rune sank in, barring the door with its spiked backward-leaning X; simple and elegant like all of Gabe’s magick.

  Silence fell. She turned away from the door, her long police-issue synthwool coat moving with her. I hadn’t taken my coat off either, and we both were fully armed. Add to that a Necromance’s reputation for being a little twitchy, and no wonder the hospital staff was nervous. And if it wasn’t that, the sudden appearance of holovid crews outside the hospital would have done it.

  Gabe blew out between her teeth, met Eddie’s eyes. Communication passed between them, like the look Jace would give me when he wanted to ask if I was all right but didn’t quite dare to.

  Jace. My throat was dry. “Gabe.” The word cracked on the air.

  “Take your time,” she said.

  I closed my eyes, tried not to sway. I needed all my courage for this. All of mine, and more. “You could do it.” I whispered, helpless to stop myself. “You could bring him back. He could—”

  Eddie made a brief, restless movement. Said nothing. But his aura tightened, the smell of fresh dirt and beer suddenly foaming through the room. He was a dirtwitch berserker, if he got angry enough he was well-nigh unstoppable. There was no reason for him to get angry at me, though.

  Not yet.

  Gabe sucked in a small breath. “You know I can’t.” Her voice hitched. “He’s gone, Danny. Let him go.”

  Wonder of wonders, calm precise Gabriele sounded choked. As if something was stuck in her throat. My rings sparked dully. I reached down, saw my own graceful, golden-skinned hand. It hovered above the human hand lying on the fuzzy dun coverlet, callused and scraped from hard combat, white scars from knifework reaching up his wrist. There was a time when I would have known every scar, would have kissed each one. “An apparition.” My throat was dry as sand. “Just this once. His body’s living, he just needs to come back.”

  “You know it doesn’t work like that.” Gentle, relentless, but there was a sob behind every word. “We have to let him go, Danny. We have to.”

  I never thought to hear my own voice raggedly pleading at a bedside, though I’d helped many a client over the border and safely into death, making sure their families could hear their last words and say their own final codas. My right hand cramped, but only a little, as I reached up to scrub the tears away from my cheeks. I had promised not to cry, hadn’t I?

  Anubis et’her ka. Anubis, my Lord, my God, please help me. Please, help me.

  Nothing happened. I took in a jagged breath freighted with the smell of human pain and Jace’s fading peppery scent. Without his soul in the body, the smell of his Power would leach away, just like the perfectly functioning clockwork of his body would begin to atrophy. He was, for all intents and purposes, gone. Pulling an apparition back from the dry land of Death and trying to force it back into the body wouldn’t work. If his soul had stayed, miracles could be worked, but Death had claimed him.

  The next prayer that rose was tinted blood-red in its intensity, sweeping over my entire body like a rain of tiny needles, clouding my vision.

  Japhrimel. That was all, every scrap of longing poured into one single word. I tipped my head back, jaw working, the murdered animal inside my chest scrambling for escape. The mark on my left shoulder began to tingle, prickle, and finally burn, sinking in through my skin as if the nerves there were slowly waking up after a long cramped sleep. Please, Japhrimel, if you can hear me, help me out here. Help me.

  Then the shame started as I tipped my head back down. Here I was at Jace’s bedside, and I couldn’t stop thinking about a dead demon. If Japhrimel could be resurrected, I would have resurrected him by now. I wasn’t worth either of them, goddammit.

  I snatched my hand back. “I can’t.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth. I lifted my left hand, weighted with my sword, let it drop heavily back down to my side. “Gabe, I c-can’t.”

  Silence. Was she looking at Eddie? Was he looking back, sharing her pain? Pain shared, pain halved. How many times had I leaned on Jace, letting him take my pain, blind to everything but my own selfishness? And yet he’d given up everything, including his life, thinking he could protect me from still more. I stumbled back a blind two steps, and Eddie’s arm closed over my shoulders. I flinched
, almost ready to drive an elbow into his ribs and duck away, but control clamped down on combat instinct just in time. The Skinlin’s arm tightened, and the heavy edge of his coat brushed mine. He was warm, very warm for a human, and smelled most of all like freshly-turned earth.

  He said nothing. It was a new world record, Eddie refraining from a snarky comment for longer than ten seconds. A bloody fucking miracle.

  Gabe stepped up to the bedside. She had unsheathed a knife, cold steel. It was, after all, traditional. She didn’t glance at me. Instead, her pretty face was set and white as she looked down at Jace’s still form, its chest rising and falling with macabre regularity. “Would you like to say anything, Danny?” The familiar question, only I was usually the one that asked it.

  “You think he can hear me?” I tried to sound brave. But my voice was too high-pitched and breathy, again lacking the terrible velvet weight of demon’s seduction or the ruined hoarseness of Lucifer’s final gift to me, when his fingers crackled in my throat.

  She smiled, still looking down at his face. He looked peaceful, the lines smoothed away and his hair combed back from his face. As if he was sleeping. “The dead can always hear us, Danny. You know that.”

  And gods help me, but I did. Only the knowledge held no comfort, even for me. My shoulders hunched. Eddie’s arm tightened. I swallowed ash, tasted bitterness. “I’m sor—” Gulped down air, tried again. “I’m sor—” And again, the sounds that were choked halfway. I couldn’t say it now, when it mattered most of all.

  “Gods,” Eddie whispered. “Gabe.” He was shaking, a fine tremor that leapt to me as if we were both drunk or sick. I think my knees may have buckled, because I leaned into him.

  She understood, and moved forward, one pale narrow hand resting on Jace’s forehead, the other holding the knife tucked back against her forearm. Her sleek dark hair gleamed in the light, and the sparkles of her aura began to pulse. “Jason Monroe,” she said quietly, her voice carrying ancient authority, “travel well. Be at peace.”