Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Draw that blade,” I said, my voice slurring a little but still steady, “and you’ll have more goddamn trouble than you can handle, wingboy.”

  The voice of self-preservation made its appearance, as usual, a good two seconds too late. Danny, what are you doing? This thing is goddamn fucking dangerous and you’re as drugged as a New Vietkai whore! Let Japh take care of this goddamn thing if it draws down on you!

  Japhrimel’s hand was suddenly not clasped in mine, it was closed around my right shoulder. “Easy, hedaira.” Did he sound, of all things, amused? Damn him. “There is no danger.”

  The creature’s face shifted, from one moment to the next. Instead of sexless, transparent beauty, the jaw jutted forward and the nose turned to slits, the pale incandescent eyes bulging. It was only a flicker, there and gone so quickly I gasped, stumbling backward. Japhrimel dug his fingers in, holding me up.

  The entire interior of the church rattled with a slow even hiss, the creature’s supple body melting bonelessly into a serpent’s fluid curve before it snapped back into a recognizably humanoid form. The wings ruffled, more white feathers boiling free, the smell of baking bread and sweet perfume turned cloying-thick.

  A hedaira seeking to protect the Kinslayer. The thing’s voice burrowed into my head, the bell-like tone suddenly gone brittle. Surely the time of reckoning is upon us now.

  I wasn’t trying to protect him. I was going to kill you if you drew, goddammit. I couldn’t make my mouth shape the words.

  “It makes no difference.” As Japhrimel drew me back, I didn’t look away from the creature. Its hand dropped from the swordhilt, wings smoothing as we retreated, step by careful step. The mark on my shoulder pulsed with soft, oiled Power. “If others of my kind come, you may tell them what you like. Only be sure to add this: as long as the Prince endures, my hedaira enjoys his protection. That means I am disposed to consider his… requests… most kindly.”

  My knees almost gave out on me again as I realized what I’d just done. The candle flames hissed. Japh dragged me out the door, the night air sparkling clean after the cloying interior of the temple. He somehow bent to retrieve the scabbard on the way out, too, though his hand never left my shoulder. He handed it to me as we stood on the top of the steps, the wooden door closing behind us. I heard another hissing, chuckling sound from inside as a wave of thick sweet clotted perfume belched out through the rapidly narrowing crack between the door and the jamb.

  The Prince will not allow a hedaira to live, Kinslayer. Especially not your hedaira. You would do well to remember the White-Walled City and the screams of the Fallen—

  The door clicked shut. The garden rustled, leaves rubbing against each other with the sibilant sound of feathers rasping. I coughed, the smell of dry feathers and bread coating the back of my throat. My eyes watered, but I could still resheathe my blade; the action was habitual enough not to need sight.

  Japhrimel pushed me down the steps. I stumbled and he held me up. His arm came over my shoulders, but I didn’t care. I simply wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible. My boots echoed on the flagstone path, Japh’s were silent.

  What was the White-Walled City? The roof of the world? This thing was holding a stash of something and now it’s gone. What’s Japh looking for? Goddammit. Frustration rose, fighting with the way my arms and legs tingled numbly, clumsy. “Gods.” I coughed again, wanted to spit to clear my throat, didn’t. “What the…” I couldn’t get enough breath to finish the sentence. Little bits of plant life touched me—leaves, branches; they all felt like tiny grasping fingers.

  “Anhelikos.” Japhrimel’s tone was even and thoughtful. “They feed on anger. And hatred. You are perhaps the first human to have seen one in almost five hundred years.” He pushed open the narrow wooden gate, the heat of him cleaner than the thick clotted scent left behind us. I shivered galvanically as we passed through the diaphanous shielding laid over the high wall. His arm tightened, drawing me into his side, and my sword bumped my leg as it dangled in my nerveless left hand. “You are perhaps the only living creature to survive drawing steel inside one’s nest. That was ill-advised.”

  “Sorry.” I didn’t sound sorry, wanted to shake his arm away, couldn’t. My legs felt like I’d just run a thousand-mile marathon, and my head throbbed unevenly. “I feel sick.”

  “It is a thing inimical to you. The feeling will pass.” He glanced at the wall, where McKinley suddenly reappeared.

  “Any news?” The Hellesvront agent’s black eyes flicked over me, I hoped I wasn’t shaking visibly.

  It feeds on anger, that’s why I felt so drained. Gods. What is that thing? I don’t care, I never want to see it again. Gods above.

  “Some,” Japh replied. “It has been moved, I expected as much. Someone came to fetch it, failed, and triggered the game.” He stopped, glanced back over his shoulder at the high, smooth concrete wall. Then he looked down at me. “Did you think to protect me, Dante?”

  No. I wanted to kill it before it drew. “It was about to draw, Japh.”

  “Unlikely.” He paused. “I told you there was no danger.”

  I don’t care what you fucking told me. “I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.” I don’t even know why I did that. I hate you. I can’t hate you. I wish I’d never met you.

  No, I don’t. Gods. I was too confused and shaken to think straight. Stepping in front of him had just happened. I’d tried to protect Doreen, I’d tried like hell to protect Jace—but they’d been human. Like me.

  Japhrimel probably didn’t need me at all.

  That thought hurt more than anything else.

  “So it seems.” He studied me for a few moments.

  Sekhmet sa’es. I gave up. Leaned into his side, blinking as I stared at the pavement at my feet. My boot-toes seemed strangely far away. “Fine.” My quads and hamstrings were starting to tremble, something I hadn’t felt since before Rio. I felt about three seconds away from collapsing. “Whatever. Can I sit down somewhere?”

  The silence stretched on for a good thirty seconds. I couldn’t tell if they were looking at me or each other, didn’t care. Finally, Japhrimel spoke. “The weakness will pass. Come.”

  He set off down the cracked and uneven pavement, I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Once again, I don’t see how things could get any worse. I winced as I thought it. You’d think I would have learned by now not to say that, even to myself.

  This being a nonhuman Freetown, the hotel was run by swanhild.

  Swanhild, with their ruffs of white feathers and delicate long-fingered hands, are weak when compared to Nichtvren or werecain or even kobolding. But their flesh is extremely poisonous to most carnivorous paranormal species, and a variant of touch-telepathy means that a ’cain or a Nichtvren that kills a swanhild suffers a kind of psychic death in return. It’s unpleasant to say the least, and as a result the ’hilds are the paranormal equivalent of Free Territorie Suisse. They function as message carriers and bankers, as well as several other kinds of service providers, for paranormal communities.

  Swanhild don’t like humans. Something about a pre-Merican Era prince who had trapped one, tried to marry her, and ended up killing her and committing suicide, I think. There used to be a very old ballai about it, but the swanhild campaigned so effectively it’s hard to even get bootleg holos of old performances. Modern ballai companies won’t perform it for audiences, either.

  The hotel was a kobolding-restored building, with the characteristic fluid stone decorations carved into its facade. Inside, the lighting was dim, the windows UV-screened, and a collage of paranormals hung out in the hotel bar while McKinley checked us in. I saw—for the first time outside a textbook—a batlike Fumadrin, its snout buried in a bowl of what looked like whiskey but was probably paint thinner. I saw a red gaki with a long black drooping mustache talking to a blond man in a long black coat with a sword strapped to his back. The man looked human enough, but he had a crimson-black stain of an a
ura, which told me he was probably a host for something. A gaggle of swanhild gathered at one end of the bar, clicking and chirping back and forth; a single Nichtvren yawned as she paid her tab with a fistful of New Credit notes, wiping a red stain away from her exquisite lips. Two kobolding slumped in a corner, their table almost groaning under the weight of empty beer tankards; the bartender was a husky golden werecain whose yellow eyes flicked over the hotel lobby every now and again.

  Japhrimel kept his arm over my shoulders, his thumb stroking my upper arm every so often. I kept looking down at the floor, though I was feeling a lot better. The languid, drained feeling had faded within a couple blocks of the Anhelikos’s temple. I wasn’t feeling a hundred watts, but I was all right. Except for the way my chest hurt, especially the rubbed-raw little spot under the diagonal leather strap of my rig.

  Thankfully, we didn’t have to use an elevator to get to the third floor. McKinley led us up a long, sweeping red-carpeted flight of stairs lifting from the marble-floored lobby. A sharp right-hand turn past a glowering werecain guard, and I was ushered into a room that was dim and soft and luxurious, with antique blue velvet chairs and a silky cream-colored carpet I immediately wanted to foul in some way. A wet bar gleamed. There was even a canister of cloned blood in a stasis cabinet under the shelves of liquor. A plasma holovid player perched on a wide cherrywood dresser, and the beds were huge and looked soft enough to sink into.

  There were, unfortunately, no windows. The walls were smooth and blank. A Nichtvren room, safe from daylight. Airless.

  As soon as I realized this I looked up at Japhrimel, already feeling the air grow thick. “No. Please, no.” My voice cracked, my throat closing with claustrophobic weight. If McKinley hadn’t been right behind us I would have tried to backpedal. As it was, I tried fruitlessly to tear myself out from under Japh’s arm, failed. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll be a good little prisoner and stay.”

  He shrugged, his fingers gentling but still iron-hard. I couldn’t break his grip. “I am sorry.”

  “There’s no goddamn windows. You know how I feel about—” I was about to start hyperventilating, I could feel it.

  “This is necessary, Dante.” His arm loosened, but I could feel his readiness. Even if I could bowl over McKinley, Japh would catch me before I got to the hallway. The fight went out of me. I could feel it leave, like a splinter drawn out of torn flesh.

  “Fine.” My voice cracked, making a picture-frame rattle against the wall. “Whatever.” I tore away from him, stalked past the beds into the furthest corner of the room, and pushed the chair occupying it away. I put my back to the corner and slid down until I sat on the floor, my knees up, my katana across my lap, right hand clamped over the hilt, left around the scabbard. I leaned my head into the corner, closed my eyes, and struggled to breathe.

  Japhrimel murmured to McKinley, I heard the room door open and close again. Peeked out from under my lashes to see Japhrimel walking softly around the end of a bed, approaching me. The familiar breathless feeling of demon magick rose as he warded the walls, demon defenses springing into being under the humming of the hotel’s security net and magickal shielding. Cracking a kobold-constructed building run by swanhilds was a tall order indeed. We were probably safe, even if my heart hammered and my throat felt savagely constricted.

  I took the only refuge I had left, shutting my eyes and breathing, reaching into the still quiet part of myself that had never failed me. “Anubis et’her ka,” I whispered. “Se ta’uk’fhet sa te vapu kuraph.” My mouth was dry, the whisper was cracked and imperfect. “Anubis, Lord of the Dead, Faithful Companion, protect me, for I am Your child. Protect me, Anubis; weigh my heart upon the scale; watch over me, Lord, for I am Your child. Do not let evil distress me, but turn Your fierceness upon my enemies. Cover me with Your gaze, let Your hand be upon me, now and all the days of my life, until You take me into Your embrace.” I breathed in again, tried it again. “Anubis et’her ka. Se ta’uk’fhet sa te vapu kuraph. Anubis, Lord of the Dead…”

  The blue flame rose up before my inner eyes. I didn’t see the hall of infinity, or the bridge, or the well of souls—but the blue light closed around me, and that was good enough. With a grateful sobbing breath, I gave myself up to the comfort of my god.

  CHAPTER 35

  The room was twenty-four steps long from the blank wallpapered wall to the door that led into a short entry hall, with a huge bathroom off to one side. I know because I counted the steps as McKinley paced it over and over again. Japhrimel was silent, folded down cross-legged on the carpeting a few feet away from me, his eyes closed. Waiting. His coat spread behind him on the floor, a deep, lacquered darkness.

  Hours ticked away. I had plenty of time to think through that long weary day, slipping in and out of a hazy blue-flamed trance as I sought the comfort of my god over and over again. My chest hurt. I could barely breathe, and I was hungry, but I shook my head when McKinley asked me if I wanted breakfast. Shook it again when he asked about lunch. A third time when he asked about dinner.

  Japhrimel sat, his spine straight, his face closed like the room itself. Tears rose in my throat, pricked at my eyes, I denied them. I would have liked to take a hot shower and cry, but I was damned if I’d give them the satisfaction. Instead, I studied Japhrimel’s face, my fingers aching around my swordhilt. I looked at the wallpaper, patterned with gold fleur-de-lis. I examined the edge of the blue velvet bedspread. I looked at the nap of the carpet, found myself looking back at Japhrimel’s face. How many times had I run my fingertips over his cheekbones, let him kiss my fingers, lain beside him and told him things I’d never told another living person?

  What kind of inhuman patience had it taken to live with me for so long, keeping the fact of the Devil’s asking for me to himself? All the presents, the sparring matches, his fingers gentle against my ribs, his mouth against my neck as he shuddered in my arms.

  It couldn’t all have been a game to him. It couldn’t have.

  I knew the Devil meant me no good. I knew other demons would want to kill me because of Lucifer’s meddling in my life. But I’d never questioned Japh since his resurrection. After all, he’d Fallen, hadn’t he?

  Hadn’t he? Even Lucifer had said so. But neither the Devil nor Japh had told me very much about what Fallen really meant.

  I didn’t like the way my thoughts were tending. What did Fallen really mean? What had Japhrimel wanted to collect from the Anhelikos? Who was trying to kill me now, and why, and what was Lucifer’s endgame in all this? I knew better than to think it was what he had originally presented to me—a straight, simple hunting-down of four demons, badda-bing, time served, Danny Valentine free of demonic manipulation.

  Another thought rose, even worse than the first.

  Let’s just suppose Japhrimel has been ducking out to talk to the Devil while I sleep. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say. What do they have planned? Was it all an act?

  But Japhrimel had protected me, hadn’t he? Tracked me down, found me, asked me to trust him, rescued me from the hellhounds.

  That only means Lucifer has some use for you. Ten to one says you’re bait too, Danny. It was a puzzle. I’d hunted down Santino for Lucifer, could that have made me an enemy or two? Santino had bred an Androgyne—the type of demon Lucifer was, the most rare and precious because Androgynes could breed. Santino—or Vardimal, as Japh called him—had thought he could create a puppet Androgyne to replace Lucifer on the throne of Hell, effectively crowning Santino as king too, if the Androgyne was malleable enough.

  Maybe there were other demons who’d wanted a crack at Santino’s patented process of creating an Androgyne, the shining path of genes even Lucifer with all his tinkering couldn’t find. So, conceivably, they could want a little revenge for my interference, no matter that I’d been given no choice in the matter. So far this theory was holding up uncomfortably well.

  If this was the truth, I was bait for any demons involved with Santino’s rebellion. Lucifer had
let Santino free to see what he could do, confident in his ability to recapture the Lesser Flight demon anytime he wanted to. Only Santino hadn’t played along, had disappeared—and the Devil had started to scramble.

  Which led me to another logical extension, chilling in its exactitude.

  Try this on for size, Danny. Lucifer leaves Japh’s ashes with me, thinking he can pick him up like a dropped toy whenever he wants to—whenever the demons allied to Santino show themselves. When they do, he calls me and plants the idea of resurrecting Japh in my head. I don’t listen, because I’m in the middle of hunting down Lourdes. Japh wakes up and starts looking for me—and Lucifer meets him, tells him to keep me alive and take care of me, because I’m bait. Japhrimel does, I fall in with the plan, and when the time is right and I’m ready for my part, I’m called onstage. Only Japh slips in a mickey at the last moment. After all, you can’t trust a demon, and he’s got Lucifer by the short hairs. Which leaves me with one question.

  How far does Japhrimel’s protection extend? How expendable am I?

  That was a distinctly uncomfortable thought. If Lucifer gave the word, would Japh cut me loose? After all, he had a demon’s Power now. Maybe I couldn’t be changed back into a human, but maybe Japh could get his freedom and his place in Hell back by bounty hunting these other four demons and finishing it up by tying off the last loose end.

  Me.

  That’s ridiculous, Dante. He’s your Fallen. He’s kept you alive this far.

  Was that just because Lucifer had further plans for me? I knew Lucifer was my enemy, was fairly sure any other demon I’d come across at this point was an enemy. Could my Fallen become an enemy too? Especially since he wouldn’t tell me what Fallen meant? He’d held back during sparring, had kept things hidden from me—had he also only pretended some kind of emotional link to me? Or had he been amusing himself, as demons were wont to do in stories?