Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I managed to raise my head. Shadows gathered between the swords of dying sunlight, and the house of the gods rustled with currents of uneasy Power.

  Japhrimel’s sure steady grip on me didn’t change. “Sephrimel. I greet you.”

  “You greet me. How courteous. How dare you enter here?” The insect feet turned to pinpricks of fire, and Sofya’s entire interior shuddered. It was a demon’s voice, but somehow wrong. It was a voice of casual power, full of a demon’s terrible alienness. There was something else in that voice, something that twisted hard against my bones. It was as if a murderous forgotten artifact, old and blind in a corner, had suddenly risen up to demand attention—and blood.

  Japhrimel sounded just as he usually did. Calm, quiet as a knife slipped between ribs. “I have come for what you stole. It is time.”

  The owner of the skittering voice stepped out of shadows that shouldn’t have held him as casually as a human might step from one room into another.

  He was tall and gaunt, as starved-looking as I’ve ever seen a demon. Golden skin drew tight over bones as architecturally beautiful as Sofya’s own grace. His hair was an amazing shock of clotted ice, twisted into dreadlocks pulled back and looped several times with hanks of red silk. The hair looked like it had drained the life from him, and his baggy black robe, belted with a length of frayed rope, didn’t help. Narrow golden feet, callused and battered into claws, rutched against the mosaic floor. His hands were skeletal, the claw structure built into fingertips and wrist musculature clearly visible with no extraneous flesh to disguise it.

  His eyes. Dear gods, his eyes.

  They were dark, not incandescent with awful power. Black from lid to lid, but not empty. No, his eyes were grieving holes in a face that had drawn itself tight around a sorrow like a burning stone in the throat.

  Like the burning stone in my belly.

  I met his gaze, and the gripping pain in my belly coalesced around a hot hard fist buried in my flesh. I knew that grief.

  I’d lost people too. Their names were a litany of pain, each one a different scar on my still-beating heart. My social worker Lewis, killed by a Chill junkie. Doreen, slaughtered by a demon intent on breaking Lucifer’s hold on Hell. Jace, throwing himself past me to take on a Feeder’s ka. Eddie, dead in his lab, betrayed by his sedayeen research partner. And Gabe, my best friend, lying tangled in her garden, dead protecting a traitor my god had asked me to spare.

  Each anguish rose up to choke me as I stared into those black, black eyes. Whoever this demon was, he had lost something.

  No. Not something. Someone.

  Another cramp unzipped me. I spilled against Japhrimel, the agony drawing a curtain of redblack over my vision. I lost sight of the white-haired demon. Japh murmured something to me as I inhaled sharply, wondering who was making that soft mewling sound of pain.

  It was me.

  “You have lost whatever wit you once possessed.” The demon’s voice was now a bath of terrible icy numbness. “So it is true. You have Fallen, committed the sin you punished others for.”

  “What talk is this of sin, between us? You have spent too long with humans.” Japhrimel braced me, the scar on my shoulder spilling warmth into my racked body, fighting with the hideous clawing in my belly.

  It hurts it hurts oh Anubis— I dragged in another breath. “Anubis et’her ka; oh my Lord my god, please—”

  Again the pain retreated. It left no relief in its wake. How could I call on Him? Why would He answer me? I was a traitor to myself, and this was my punishment.

  But it hurt.

  “I have spent my penance with mortals. You still reek of Hell and murder, Kinslayer.” His voice was rising, and the entire temple throbbed. I had a sudden uneasy vision, between flashes of pain so immense it was like drowning, of Sofya’s white walls weeping blood like an injured tooth.

  Breathe, Danny. Breathe.

  But I couldn’t. Not until the swell retreated and I found myself sweating and shaking, wrung out, hanging in Japhrimel’s hands. Fine time to have an attack of nerves, sunshine. What the hell? I was feeling fine.

  But I hadn’t been feeling fine for a long while, had I? Stumbling from one terror to the next, staggering from one suckerpunch in the gut to the next, spilling from horror into agony and ending up at numb grief each time.

  My eyes cleared. I didn’t look up at the demon’s face again. “I think I should wait outside,” I whispered. The urge to retch rose and passed through me, so immense it felt like all my insides were trying to crawl out the hard way.

  Nobody paid any damn attention. Lucas had gone silent and still as an adder under a rock. Leander’s pulse thrummed audibly, the only human heartbeat I’d heard for a while. Vann and McKinley had their laserifles trained on the dreadlocked demon.

  That hair’s amazing. I wonder if he smokes synth hash and rides a slic in his spare time. He looks like a sk8 in Domenhaiti. All he needs is permaspray stains on his fingers and a few circuit wires in his hair.

  The thought sparked a jagged laugh. Why was I always laughing at times like this?

  “I do not dispute that,” Japhrimel said, still calmly. A steady bath of Power flushed from his aura to mine, working in to meet thin wires of flame running through the core of my bones. “I have merely come to claim a certain article from you. It should please you to hear that I am ready to use it for its intended purpose. McKinley.”

  I snapped a glance at the black-haired Hellesvront agent, who slung his laserifle’s strap over his shoulder and stepped forward. Japhrimel, without so much as a glance down, transferred my weight to the agent by the simple expedient of pushing me. I spilled against McKinley like a newborn kitten, my legs useless and the rest of me not far behind.

  What the hell? Another cramp was gathering, my belly quivering with anticipated pain, something trying to climb up through the space caged in my ribs, twisting and clawing.

  “Japh? Japhrimel?” I’ll admit it. There was no room for pride. My voice was the thin piping squeak of a child caught in a nightmare.

  Maybe he can make it stop. Oh please, please make it stop.

  No wonder my god didn’t want me. I was praying to a demon, the only intercession I had left.

  “It’s all right.” McKinley closed his right hand over my arm, bracing me so I didn’t go straight down to the floor. “Just relax, Valentine. It’s okay.”

  This is not anywhere near okay.

  A new quality crept into the stillness. It was the unsettled boiling of air about to erupt with violence, and Japhrimel moved out in front of us as Vann stepped in, laserifle socked to his shoulder. Even Leander had a plasgun out, though he was chalk-white and visibly shaking, his eyes flicking between me and the pair of demons who faced each other on Sofya’s pebbled floor.

  Seen so close, the difference was startling. The white-haired demon was more than human, true. It screamed from every pore and angle of his frame.

  But Japhrimel was more, too. If the other demon was a candle compared to the weak shimmer of a human’s aura, Japh was a halogen lasebulb, burning hot enough to scorch plasteel.

  He hadn’t looked like that compared to Lucifer, had he?

  My brain shivered away from the idea. Eve. What is she doing now? Where is she?

  The thought enraged the tearing thing living in my vitals. Pain swelled, blackness bulged under the surface of my mind, and whatever Japh and the other one said was lost in the fact that I was pretty sure I was dying here in Hajia Sofya.

  The blackness swelled, pulsing obscenely as something alien fought for control of my brain and agony-wracked body. Out. I had to get out of the temple and away from whatever divine anger was punishing me.

  Unfortunately, McKinley thought otherwise. My sword dropped to the floor with a clatter as I feebly tried to fight his hands off me. Then the most amazing cramp-bolt lanced my belly and I went down to the floor, scrabbling for my sword to cut out whatever monstrous thing was growing in me.

  I convulsed.

&
nbsp; Sudden coolness ran from the crown of my head down through my flesh, a river of balm. I gasped, mouth working like a fish’s, and was aware of a slick pattering sound and Leander’s muffled curse. The pain in my belly turned back into inert heaviness, as if I’d swallowed something indigestible, lodged in the bowl of my pelvis.

  My hands searched fruitlessly for my sword. Warm bony fingers caught my wrist. “Avayin, hedaira.” Weary kindness in each syllable. “Peace, beautiful one. Be at peace. You will not die of this.”

  Are you sure? Because I really think I might. I collapsed against the unforgiving floor, pebbles of mosaic digging into hip and cheek. They felt cool and good against my fevered skin, as the darkness struggled to birth itself inside my head and the thing in my belly twisted. I heard my own breath, a panicked whistling I wasn’t sure I liked.

  The kind voice wasn’t familiar, and it turned unkind again. “She carries a’zharak.” Each word laden with disgust and some other, less definable emotion. “This is how you treasure your prize?”

  “I made no claim to be the best of my kind. I make no claim to be the best of yours either. The Prince seeks to control my link to her world. She has suffered for it—and suffers now.” Japhrimel sounded just as tired, and just as sharp. “I did not come here for my sake, but for hers.”

  “Then it is her I will help, Kinslayer. Draw your minions away.”

  The heavy spiked agony in my belly crested again, and the bony hands of a starving demon clamped down with inhuman strength. A hissing breath of effort filled my ears, and I screamed as the weight was suddenly torn from me in a rush of blood and battered viscera.

  Leander yelled. Lucas let out a shout of surprise, and the sounds smashed the calm of the temple’s interior. I curled around myself, endlessly grateful for the cessation of pain, and passed out for one brief starry moment as chaos erupted around me.

  CHAPTER 8

  The water was full of knives, and as I thrashed it drained away, liquid weightlessness replaced by the agony of cutting.

  No. You can’t go yet. A familiar voice, the words laid directly inside my consciousness, as I struggled to escape, flesh a prison and my soul the struggling captive, digging her way out with broken fingernails as sharp edges pressed into numb flesh, invading.

  Blue flame rose, the entrance to the land of Death, and not even the fact that my god might well deny me the comfort and rational clear light of What Comes Next could deter me. I strained toward that blue glow.

  There are times when Death is not an adventure, but an escape from a life descended too far into Hell. Any hell.

  Not yet. Maddeningly, the voice barred my way. The knives retreated, my skin still numb. I couldn’t tell if I was bleeding or just cold, if I was standing or lying down, if I was alive or something else.

  Then the light came, a sharp living light, not the glow of What Comes Next that lifts the soul up and away on a streak of brilliance. This was a human light, and as I blinked I heard the sound of dragging footsteps on wet stone and felt arms around me, stick-thin but very strong.

  I blinked again. A dizzying moment of vertigo, and the world came into focus, into clear heartstopping detail. The light was coming through the window.

  Along the edge of each window ran a thin line of gold. It poured through each pane of glass, a curtain of sunshine dancing with infinite dust-motes.

  It should not have surprised me to see sunshine when I dreamed of Jason Monroe.

  He sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up with mild interest, blue eyes catching fire under the flood of light. It glowed in his hair, a human furnace of gold, and he was again the young Jace of the first violent flush of our affair. The Bolgari chronograph glittered on his wrist, and he wore a white T-shirt, muscle flickering underneath as he lifted the sword a little, balancing it on his palms.

  The room was a surprise. It was Jado’s room, the room at the top of the stairs where my sensei gave out his prized swords, one at a time, to his most trusted students. Only here, the wooden racks along the wall were empty, and the mellow hardwood floor was scratched and scarred, white paint on the walls chipped. The window was bare, and the hall beyond the open doorway stood empty as a soymalt 40 can rolling down the street.

  “Nice.” Jace was barefoot, in jeans, and the fine golden hairs on his forearms glistened in the light. “I like this venue, too.”

  He actually spoke, instead of the words being laid in my head like a gift. And no wonder the voice that called me away from Death was familiar, for it was his.

  Breath left me in a walloping rush. I sank down to the floor, finding myself in a tattered blue sweater, ripped jeans showing pale human skin underneath. In these dreams, I was human again. My nails were painted red with molecule-drip, and my hair was tangled, dull with black dye, and full of split ends. “I’m not dead.” Three words, through the lump of misery in my throat, forced out despite myself.

  It dawned on me, through the fog of light and the good smell of dust and paint and fresh air, as if the room breathed summer wind through every crack. “And I don’t think I’m really dreaming,” I whispered.

  His grin widened, the smile that had brought no shortage of female attention his way. “Got it in one, sunshine. We have a little time, here. A little space.”

  “I miss you.” The simple truth of it frightened me, took shape in the air, looming invisibly behind thick syrupy golden light. “Why are you doing this? Why didn’t you let me die?”

  “You’re being dense. What else would I do for you?” A shrug, his face turning solemn. The sword eased back down, into his lap, across his knees.

  It was his dotanuki, the sword broken by the shock of his death. Not precisely broken, just twisted into a corkscrew and leaking agony into the air, the agony of a soul ripped from its moorings by a Feeder’s ka. My eyes traced the familiar scabbard, and every question I had never asked him rose in my throat and stung my eyes.

  “Gabe,” I whispered. “Eddie.”

  “You did the right thing.” His hand twitched, as if he would reach forward to touch me. Then it relaxed, and his fingers trailed over the familiar wrapped hilt. “It isn’t like you to kill a defenseless woman, Danny. You would have hated yourself for it. Later, that is. When you calmed down.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant.” And he still hadn’t answered me. Why would he call me back, of all people? He was dead too.

  I’d failed him just as surely as I’d failed everyone else.

  “You wanted to ask if I see them. I can’t tell you that, you know that. Go into Death and ask for yourself, that’s your question.” He sighed. “You’re always asking the wrong fucking questions, baby.”

  “When did you get so goddamn shallow?” I flung back at him. It was easy, the reflex of a fight. Always better to fight him—I have always been more afraid of the damage a soft word could do.

  I suppose he might have even understood that he was the only person I had ever fought so hard.

  The question was, had he understood it while he was alive?

  “You’re a lousy Shaman. Loa work better when they’re cajoled.”

  “You’re not a loa.” I was fairly certain of that, at least. Had he been one of the spirits the vaudun Shamans of the world traffic with, he wouldn’t have bothered to wear someone else’s face. I’ve only caught glimpses of them, since they have little use for Necromances. But no loa would appear in another skin here, in whatever dream-space this was.

  They do not dress, while they are at home.

  “Other people get loa. You get me.”

  It dawned on me in slow stages. I stared at him, at the bump on his nose, where a break from a bounty he’d run with me as apprentice and backup had gone horribly wrong in Freetown Hongkong. We had just barely made it out of there alive, and he had never bothered to get the break in his nose bonescrubbed. No, I’d set it with a healcharm, and he’d left the tiny imperfection there, saying it would teach him to be more careful when facing a bounty with a laserifle
in close quarters.

  “Like a familiar?” I hazarded, prickles spilling down my back. Lucifer had given me Japhrimel as a familiar, long ago. I knew most of the rules where a demon familiar was involved, except for maybe the one about letting the demon fall in love with you.

  But what are the rules when your dead boyfriend shows up as a meddling spirit?

  “Like, and unlike.” He nodded approvingly, his fingers smoothing the hilt. It was a familiar movement. Whenever he rode transport or discussed the finer points of hunting bounties, his fingers would move, slightly. On a swordhilt, on the butt of a gun… or on my hip, gently, as we shared a bed late at night.

  Long, long ago. Before Japhrimel. Before everything.

  I couldn’t help myself. I had to. “Japhrimel.”

  Jace’s eyes flicked down to his lap, rested on the sword. “I can’t see a lot about demons from here, Danny.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “It’s the only answer I’m giving. I’m not going to stop watching your back because of him, Danny girl. You’re heading into deep waters, and you’ll need all the help you can get.”

  Sekhmet sa’es, can the water get any deeper? The thought must have shown on my face, because he laughed. It was the short, bitter bark he used while hunting, a sound that brought back memory upon memory until they crowded in the sunlight, shadows passing the windows like giant silent fish.

  “I’m here if you need me, Danny. But you know what to do.”

  Why didn’t you let me die, Jace? I opened my mouth to ask again, but a soft sound cut me off. It was the whispering drag of oiled metal leaving the sheath, and I jolted up to my feet, realizing in one horrified second that I was unarmed, I wore only rags, and I was human again, my pulse pounding thinly in my throat and wrists. The sunlight dimmed, clouds drifting over the sun—or something huge settling over the house, perhaps.

  Jace cocked his head. His sword was still in his lap, but I heard a soft creak. A footstep, bare flesh against wooden floor. Was it in the hall, or was I hallucinating?

  “You’re not finished yet. Better go, Danny girl.”