Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Danny, you’re not thinking straight. You’ve got to get some rest, you’re going to have a psych meltdown soon if you don’t give yourself some slack.

  But Asa Tanner was speaking. “It’s going to soak the streets anyway. I make sure the distributors don’t cut it with anything.” He said it like it mattered if the poison was uncut when it hit the streets.

  “How very generous of you.” Contempt edged my tone.

  His chin lifted half a millimeter, defiant. He was tense, his weight balanced between both feet; if he came for me I wondered if I could take him.

  A shudder worked its way through me. I’d faced down a hellhound.

  Again.

  And lived, again.

  I almost killed the wrong people. “There was a werecain. Said he was working for the Mob….” I wet my lips nervously. His eyes settled on my mouth, and his smile broadened. It was a show of dominance, I realized, exposing his teeth. He was one angry werecain. The reek of ’cain vanished as my nasal receptors shut down—a stunning relief.

  “I wouldn’t have sent a single ’cain to eye you, Valentine. I’d’ve sent a full pack with a Moontalker to bring you in.” He folded his arms across his broad, hair-covered chest. “Not every fucking ’cain in the city answers to me. Though they should.”

  Oh, I’ll bet you’ve tried. “Okay.” I tore my eyes away from him, looked at Lucas. A fine thin sheen of sweat made his pale forehead glisten, strands of his lank hair sticking to pasty skin. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Question Massadie,” Lucas answered grimly. He looked relieved, and for a moment I wondered about that. Lucas Villalobos wasn’t scared of me, was he? “Then you can tell me what you think.”

  Jovan Tadeo Massadie sat in the room’s single chair, staring out the window at the ripples of water on the bay. Rain lashed against the wall and the bulletproof plasglass. He was pale, and genespliced to within an inch of his life. No normal human could look that exquisitely buffed, every surface almost poreless, his face remodeled not along the lines of holovid beauty but with a strong-jawed aquiline perfection seen only in classical marbles. He wore a rumpled gray linen suit, and his pale hair was sleek and shining, a little long for a corporate clone. Almond-shaped hazel eyes completed the picture, cat’s eyes in a statue’s face. The eyes were an artist’s choice, maybe.

  He didn’t glance at the door as I stepped into the room. Instead, he sat, for all the world as if he was meditating. Faroff thunder muttered over the city.

  Silence crackled. This room was painted white too. I got the feeling this mansion was more of a stage set than a Family nerve center. Asa Tanner looked like he’d be more at home in a Tank bordello; I wondered where he really slept. Probably in a heap of other furry dozing beasts, ’cain are pack animals.

  I wondered what it was like to have a pack, to be sure of absolute loyalty from those who shared your blood and fur. Every single person whose loyalty I never doubted was dead: Lewis, Doreen, Gabe, Eddie. Jace I’d mistrusted, but he’d proved to be just as loyal as Gabe in his own way.

  Japhrimel? Loyal to me in his own way, too. And not dead yet. But still.

  I folded my arms, my clothing shifting and rustling. I was just glad it covered the decency bits—if this kept up I would soon be dressed in nothing but bloody rags like a zombi in the old Father Egyptos holovid.

  Massadie still said nothing. He probably wanted me to sweat a little—pure corpclone strategy.

  He was practicing hard-line corp psych crap on the wrong person.

  My thumb caressed the katana’s guard. I’d let out a little of the fury boiling under my breastbone, but there was plenty more. I could easily—oh, so easily—slip the blade free of the sheath. Press it against his throat, watch a bright line of blood well against pale human skin, hear a corporate monster begging for his life.

  It would feel good to kill him. It would be wonderful to smell his fear, even if he’s only human.

  I realized I was smiling. The smile cracked on my face, made a thin rill of fiery Power scream through the air, touching each wall and tearing along every surface. My thumb pressed against the guard.

  Such a small movement would click it free.

  Massadie bolted to his feet, his almond-shaped eyes wide as he scrambled, overturning the chair. He stared at me, blinking furiously, and I now saw he had been crying. Tear-tracks glittered on his planed cheeks, his mouth trembled but firmed as he faced me, drawing up his shoulders as if preparing for a fight.

  The fury leaked away. Mostly. It settled back into a granite egg of coldness in my chest. I shoved my sword into the loop on my belt, shook my hands out, and looked at him.

  “You’re her.” His voice was a pleasant baritone, now a little squeaky with fear. “Valentine.”

  I nodded. Found I was capable of speaking. “That’s what they call me.” It was a flip answer, but better than what I wanted to say. “You have—” I checked my datband, a little bit of theater to drive the point home. “Exactly two standard minutes to convince me not to kill you. Start talking.”

  “Eddie’s dead. I suspect his wife’s dead too, or you wouldn’t be here.” His throat worked as he swallowed dryly. “I know who killed him, and I can guess who killed her.”

  I folded my arms, sank my fingernails with their chipped black polish into my arms. Japhrimel’s mark was warm, pulsing Power down my skin. What if he’d escaped, if he was tracking me? What if he came into the room and found me facing down this human? What would he do?

  What would I do? “I’m waiting,” I reminded him, my voice full of sharp edges. I saw him wince and took another look at him.

  Anubis et’her ka. He’s a psion.

  Not enough for schooling or accreditation, but he had a little shine to his aura, and the clear edges of his personal Power field told me he meditated regularly. Whatever small psionic potential he had, he took good care of it. “That’s why Eddie would work with you,” I realized out loud. “You’re a psion.”

  “A little bit. Four point three on the Revised Matheson, not even worth teaching.”

  I nodded. He’d just missed being taken into the Hegemony schools for training; a five on the scale gets you into the program. It wasn’t quite legal to think maybe he’d been lucky. “Must be a real asset when dealing with us freakheads.” My tone was still sharp and cool. I didn’t sound human at all.

  His cheeks flushed, a faint blush high on the arc of the bones just like a girl. “Not really.”

  I guess not. Normals might not trust you if they knew, and we don’t trust you either since you’re not trained. You’re not in either world, are you?

  The chilling thought that I wasn’t in either world too—not a demon, not truly human, in-between, stuck—made the last few flickering vestiges of killing rage die back. They went hard, tearing at my throat and eyes, but finally left only a black aching hole in my chest. I leaned against the door and met his eyes, the tattoo on my cheek burning.

  “Dante Valentine.” He lingered over my last name. “Named for a saint whose day became a celebration of fertility and romantic love. Born in a Hegemony hospital, father unknown, mother’s name erased under the Falrile Privacy Act. Rated thirty-eight on the Revised Matheson scale, attended primary schooling at Rigger Hall. Attended the Amadeus Academy, graduated with honors and went straight into apparitions. Made your reputation while still in school by raising Saint Crowley the Magi from dust. Also made another type of reputation when you entered the mercenary field under the direction of a Mob Shaman turned freelancer—”

  “Stop it.” If he said Jace’s name I was going to draw my sword. Not because I was angry, but because I didn’t think I could stand to hear this polished little god of a man use his mouth on Jason Monroe’s name. “Stop.”

  He stared at me. We were even, I suppose. Maybe he wanted to kill me too, his almond-shaped eyes narrowing and burning with something too complex to be hatred and too frightened to be loathing.

  “I’ve done my research,” he
said. “Eddie mentioned your name when things started to get too deep. Then I found myself with a mystery in front of me, a dead fucking Skinlin, and my name on a hit list.”

  I folded my arms again, dug my fingernails in. “Eddie found a cure for Chill. And the shock troops chasing me with the cops were corporate crack-squadders.” I drew in a slow, soft breath, my hands squeezing. Warm blood trickled down my arms, dropped off my elbows, and plinked on the floor. “Pico-Phize troops.”

  “No.” He shook his head. His eyes locked with mine, maybe pleading with me to believe him. “Probably Herborne Corp. They work with alkaloids, they’re one of our biggest competitors in the painblocker field. We were infiltrated. I believe it was routine corporate espionage, but one of the agents happened to… find out. But there’s something else. The Pico lab security was taken out by a focused EMP pulse—”

  “So was Gabe,” I said, but he overrode me, shouting because my voice had risen too. The room groaned under the rough lash of Power in my tone, but his next words cut through mine.

  “It was Saint City Police Department tech!” he yelled, and I slumped back against the door. I don’t think I’ve ever been reduced to speechlessness from rage so quickly before.

  Say what? I replayed mental footage, decided that he had said what I thought I’d heard. Saint City Police Department tech. What the fucking hell?

  Massadie knew he had my attention now. “There is a fuck of a lot of Chill money that goes to the cops, Miss Valentine.” His tone was soft, reasonable, and utterly truthful. “Not just from routine payoffs but in other ways. Herborne found out what we had and leveraged every contact it had inside the police force, I’d guess. They’re scrambling to keep this quiet. You’re creating a lot of trouble for them, and they need to shut you up just like they needed to shut Eddie’s wife up. She made it goddamn hard for them, yapping at the heels of the IA division about where the Skinlin was getting all the trouble from. It wasn’t the first time they tried to kill him.”

  Not the first time? Oh, Gabe. Eddie. Gods forgive me. “How many?” I whispered. “How many times?”

  “Six or seven.” He shrugged. “He said it was no big deal. Then I came home to find my house tossed—”

  “All fun and games until you get your own fucking hands dirty, right?” The contempt in my tone could have drawn blood. The picture-window shivered, and thunder tore the clouds overhead like wet paper. Six or seven times and Gabe didn’t call me? The knowledge hit home. She hadn’t thought I would show up. She’d known Japhrimel was alive, had she thought I wasn’t interested in my human friends anymore?

  What had I done? I would have dropped everything and come running for her marriage, for the birth of their daughter, for the first attempt on Eddie’s life. Hadn’t she known that?

  Had she? Or had she not been sure I would show up, even when she sent me the datpilot message? Had she held off contacting me because she wasn’t sure? How could she have doubted me? Was I her last hope, because she wasn’t sure I’d respond?

  How could she have doubted even for a moment?

  I lied to her about Japhrimel. She probably felt betrayed. Guilt crawled into my stomach. I tasted bile.

  “That same night, Eddie’s wife was attacked. She had the kid with her. It was them getting attacked that did it, Valentine. Eddie told me they were safe, but…”

  “Did Eddie tell you where?” Tension spilled down my back, brought me back to myself. “Where he’d put the kid?”

  “He said you’d know. She’s safe.” He blinked at me. “You mean you—”

  You mean you didn’t know? If there was one phrase I was beginning to hate, that was it. This time, however, I just wanted to be sure this greasy genespliced son of a bitch didn’t know where Gabe’s daughter was. “Who?” I interrupted. “Who is it?”

  Who betrayed them?

  He folded his arms in a copy of my pose. He was sweating, his crumpled suit beginning to wilt. “Are you going to kill me, Valentine? Where’s the cure?”

  “In a safe place.” Three vials held by a demon in hock and the recipe and the murder file with Jado. A very nasty thought hit me after I finished the sentence—I’d given one vial to Horman.

  I’d been so sure he could be trusted. But right after that four police cruisers had descended on me. And one vial was gone—maybe stolen by whoever Gabe had trusted, whoever had gone in her house and searched it as she lay bleeding and dying in her own backyard, stunned with a focused EMP pulse maybe triggered by a member of her own police force.

  Sekhmet sa’es, I’m even suspecting Horman. He wouldn’t be mixed up in this; he doesn’t play like that. But the suspicion had taken root, and bloomed in my chest with a feeling uncomfortably close to panic.

  I was well on my way to being paranoid. Rain slapped the window with rattling spatters of ice. Blood dripped off my elbows, I felt the blades of my claws slide out of my flesh. My eyes dropped to Massadie’s chest. “Who?” My voice had dropped a whole octave, it worked its way free of my throat and I tasted the copper fruit-spice of demon blood. I am not in the mood to fuck around. Don’t push me. For the love of every god there ever was, don’t push me, you fucking little pile of corporate shit.

  He gasped in a short choppy breath. I twitched, and he yelled the name as he went backward, his shoulders pressed against bare white-painted wall as I found myself halfway across the room, my boots suddenly skidding on the plush blue carpet and my right hand raised, claws springing free. My hand no longer resembled anything human, graceful and golden-skinned, the black-tipped claws glassy and glinting dully as they extended. Black-tipped because I painted the ends just like they were fingernails—or I had, before. The molecule-drip polish was chipped and cracked now.

  I stopped. We stared at each other. I blinked. “But….” I trailed off.

  “It’s true,” he squealed, his face no longer the polished perfection of a statue but distorted into a tragedy-mask of fear. “I swear it, I swear on my mother’s grave it’s true!”

  I believed him. As fantastic as it was, I believed him. It made sense now. Everything about the puzzle clicked into place—everything except who in the Saint City PD had murdered Gabe.

  I’d find that out soon enough, though. I was sure of that.

  My hair fell in my eyes, but if I moved to swipe it back I wasn’t sure I could stop myself from drawing my sword. I swallowed, heard the click in my dry throat. The pattern completed itself, everything in its proper place. “You’re a loose end too. So you came running to find me.”

  “I knew Asa. His… he… Pico, we sell Chill through him.” Massadie shook like a junkie in withdrawal. The rich gassy scent of his fear filled the room, went to my head like wine. In that single moment I understood far more about demons than I ever wanted to. It would be so fucking easy to kill him, and nobody would blame me. The fear was good. It was power, it was warm and heady and I could have gorged myself on it.

  The cuff chilled against my wrist. Numbness spread up my left arm, but the heat pulsing from Japhrimel’s mark drove it back.

  You and your damn sense of honor, Gabe’s voice echoed. Had she been surprised that I still kept some shards and slices of that honor? Would she be proud of how I was refraining from killing this polished genespliced leech?

  Of course the pharm companies sold Chill. It was high-profit, easy for a fully equipped lab to make, and they could test other acid-based addictives and narcotics with it. So the pharm companies were in bed with the Mob, and the cops were in bed with the pharm companies, everyone got along well and made a tidy bundle. Until, of course, a Skinlin doing routine research came up with a cure and everyone started scrambling to own it and shut him up, not necessarily in that order.

  “Sekhmet sa’es.” Japhrimel’s mark grew steadily warmer, a lasecutter-spot of heat against my skin. I caught a glimmer of green, the cuff reacting. Why? I didn’t care just at the moment; I needed whatever this corpclone could tell me. “Who’s her contact on the police force, Massadie? You giv
e me that and you can walk away, I won’t kill you.”

  “M-my career’s r-r-ruined anyway,” he stammered, sweat rolling off his perfect skin. How much genesplicing had Pico paid for, to make sure it had a beautiful face to present to the world? A pretty face on top and a mountain of bodies of dead Chill junkies on the bottom—and all the other victims too. Like Lewis, the closest thing to a father I’d had, choking on his own blood because a junkie needed a fix.

  “Isn’t that a fucking shame.” I was having trouble caring. “Who?”

  His voice broke. “Some fucker named Pontside. Her stepbrother.”

  I nodded. Everything came together in a tidy little package. Her. The traitor.

  I turned on my heel and stalked for the door. The aroma of fear and shed demon blood turned the air velvet-soft, a red-painted scent like the inside of a sexwitch House.

  The thought hit me with almost physical force, I almost staggered with a sudden panicked burst of fear. But nobody knew where Gabe’s daughter was, nobody but me and maybe the Prime’s Consort.

  If anything happens to that kid not even a Nichtvren will be able to stop me from killing everyone who might have had a hand in this. Not even Japhrimel.

  And that was why, even though I loved him, I could not let him hurt Eve. The fierce feeling under my breastbone was instinctive. Even though I’d never even contemplated having children I still would not let either Doreen’s daughter or Gabe’s be harmed if I could stop it.

  Mine. Both of them are mine now.

  I halted near the door, my hand on the knob. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.” I didn’t bother looking back. He should be glad he’s still alive, I thought coldly. If he’d been less frightened of being found out as a psion, maybe Eddie would still be alive. Or if he’d just been a little more decent as a human being, he might have warned Eddie they’d been infiltrated instead of just trying to save his own miserable skin.

  Why hadn’t Gabe called me when the trouble started? I twisted the knob and stepped out into the hall.

  I knew why. She probably felt guilty, since she’d asked me to take the Lourdes case and I’d ended up mind-raped and unable to think about the Hall without shuddering like a Chill junkie. Jace had died; how my own grief must have tortured her. She’d probably felt accountable since she’d called me in. When I disappeared without saying anything about Japhrimel she probably thought I couldn’t stand to see her again; all the things we couldn’t say to each other on the phone convincing her that somehow she was culpable. That she was to be blamed, or that I blamed her in some way for the whole rotten, ugly fiasco. As honorable as I tried to be, Gabe was intrinsically. How it must have hurt her to think she’d been responsible for my pain.