Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I’m fine, I wanted to say, get off me. But my mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Get over here.” Lucas’s throat-cut rasp was as hoarse as ever. “He’s bleeding, bad.”

  “Leave me be.” Japhrimel sounded as dangerous as I’d ever heard him, the edge of his voice sharp enough to cut steel. “I am well enough. Dante?”

  Vann’s grip on me fell away. McKinley settled back on his heels, his dark eyes not leaving my face. “She looks okay.” Every line of his body screamed weariness. His hair was wet with sweat, hung dripping in his eyes. “Valentine? Are you all right?”

  “Get the fuck away from me.” I erupted to my feet, or tried to. My limbs failed me, heavy and leaden, and I spilled back onto Vann, driving my elbow into his ribs. He let out a curse and Japhrimel appeared, leaning on Lucas.

  That bothered me.

  What bothered me more was the terrific bruising blotching Japh’s face. He slumped wearily, black demon blood dripping from his right arm, which hung useless and limp at his side, his long elegant golden fingers clasped gingerly around the Knife’s hilt, almost flinching away from its touch. His hair was wildly mussed, and his eyes burned almost wholly green, spitting and snapping with laser intensity.

  Lucas looked like hell too, shirt torn and bandoliers missing, his pants ripped and bloody, garish streaks of gore painting his face and torso. He was wet to both knees with fluids I decided I didn’t want to think about. McKinley was oddly pristine, but his fishbelly paleness was marked by dark bruised circles under his aching eyes.

  I stared. I didn’t like McKinley, I had never liked him, but the unguarded pain on his face was enough to make me pause.

  He wore the same expression Sephrimel had, only diluted by his essential humanity. His silvery hand twitched, falling back down to his side, and the Hellesvront agent and I shared a moment of profound communication.

  You don’t know what I’ve lost, his eyes said, and I knew it was true.

  Japhrimel went down heavily to one knee, with little of his usual economical grace. “Dante. Are you hurt?”

  Am I hurt? Look at you! I struggled to hold back a rusty scream. What ended up coming out was a mangled sob as I reached up. His left hand came down, and he pulled me up, hugging me as best he could one-armed. I shuddered into his shoulder, burying my face in the warmth of him.

  “Are you hurt?” He moved, probably trying to get a better look at me, but I clung to him.

  Am I hurt? Sekhmet sa’es. Let’s see. I was dragged through Hell, betrayed by my god, left in Jersey, and finished up nearly being drowned by a demon with a bad haircut and a hobby that makes freight-jumping seem sane. A high squeaking sound quickly melted into muffled giggles. I laughed as if I’d been told the world’s funniest joke.

  Laughed, in fact, fit to die, while the steady pounding of rage inside my veins retreated under Japhrimel’s touch.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hades.” Leander was pale, his shirt soaked dark with sweat and various types of blood. He slumped against the hover’s hull, the dusky glow of Konstans-Stamboul falling under night’s wing receding over his shoulder through the porthole. “Hades. I never want to do that again.”

  We’d just managed to escape the temple before the aid hovers arrived, drawn by the noise and ready to dump plurifreeze to put out the fire.

  Our hover was still at its landing pad under a carapace of demon shielding, and as soon as we approached it a tall shape with a mop of dirty-blond hair had melded out of the shadows, greeting me with a wink and a grin that exposed the tips of his long canines.

  Tiens, the Nichtvren Hellesvront agent with the face of a holovid angel, was in the control booth, piloting us like a vast silent fish. “We do not appear to have been followed.” His calm flat tone was shaped by the song of an ancient accent. I wondered where he came from and how old he was, but not nearly enough to ask him.

  Go figure, I’m getting almost used to demons, but a suckhead scares me silly. Everything seemed hilarious right now, in a darkly morbid sort of way. I had my sword and my new creaking rig back, Fudoshin shoved through a stiff loop on the rig’s side. I couldn’t settle enough to sit down, so I stood restlessly near the hatch, turning the heavy wooden weight of the Knife over and over in my hands. It hummed happily to itself, a low moan sending steady pulses of unhealthy warmth up my arm.

  If using the thing makes me feel like this, I’m not sure I want to. I considered this, staring at the gleam of oil against its carved grain, too close and fine to be of any tree growing in the real world.

  What kind of trees grew in Hell? Or was it from somewhere else?

  “God’s wounds.” McKinley finished bandaging Leander’s arm, rattling an empty disposable hypo of glucose into a wastebasket bolted to the floor. “Winged hounds out of Hell. And one of the Greater Flight. Christos. We would have been toast, if you hadn’t been there.”

  “Then it is well I was.” Japh sounded tightly amused. His eyes glowed fiercely.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to die just yet. Vann owes me for our last round of vidpoker.” McKinley’s gaze skittered across the room toward me before he looked back at Leander’s arm. “But what does it mean? Is it him?”

  “I do not know if we can blame the Prince for this event.” Japhrimel’s hand was still clamped over his bleeding shoulder. I had tried to bandage it, but he’d simply, gently pushed my hands away and pointed me toward the largest cabin for fresh clothes.

  I was hard on laundry nowadays.

  “Who else?” Vann lay flung on a plasteel-and-canvas couch, one arm over his eyes. He seemed none the worse for wear, even if he wasn’t nearly as neat and unmarked as McKinley.

  “He is not our only concern. The Prince has lost his hold on egress from Hell, and the Greater Flight are settling scores. The one now dead had a grievance with me, and rather a large one.” Japhrimel peeled his fingers away from the bloody mess of his shoulder and peered at it. His coat was shredded, and the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

  Why won’t it stop? My hands ached, clenched so tightly claw-points prickled into my palms.

  “So which one was that?” McKinley fished another hypo out of the aid kit. “Immuno,” he told Leander, who nodded, his jaw tight and his eyes dark with pain.

  Japhrimel’s eyes half-lidded. It looked like his shoulder hurt. “He is dead and it matters little. Suffice to say I spoiled one of his toys some time ago, and he sought to return the favor. Our task now is to reach the Roof of the World.”

  “Why won’t the bleeding stop?” My voice dropped like a stone into a placid pond.

  McKinley pressed the hypo against Leander’s arm, and the human Necromance sucked in a breath as the airpac discharged, forcing happy immunity-bolsters and a jolt of plasma into his veins. Vann shifted restlessly, a plasgun’s butt clicking against a knifehilt. Lucas had settled himself on the floor, weaponry spread on a ratty blanket in front of him as he cleaned, oiled, and checked his gear. It was the closest to a nervous tic I’d ever seen in him.

  Japhrimel merely considered his shoulder, his sensitive fingers probing at the shredded material of his coat. To see the bloody mess made me feel unsteady in a whole new way. He had always seemed so invulnerable, before. “It will stop soon enough.” He visibly caught himself, glanced up at me again. “Some of us have poison teeth as well as claws, and I had those more fragile than myself to defend.”

  I choked back my irritation. After complaining so often that he didn’t tell me anything, it was nice to see him trying.

  The Knife’s humming slid into a lower register. I lifted it up and stared at it. The finials were still writhing like a live thing, frozen in time. It was heavier than it had been, too. “I need a sheath for this,” I muttered, and my eyes stuttered back to Japhrimel’s face. “Are you all right?” I should have asked before, shouldn’t I. Sekhmet sa’es, Dante, you selfish bitch.

  Yep. Feeling more and more like myself all the time. Whoever “myself” was.

  “I will be well enough. See
?” The seeping had finally stopped, thick black blood sealing away the wound. But so slowly, far more slowly than usual. “There is no need for concern.”

  What if I’m concerned anyway? I looked back down at the Knife. My belly twinged, the mass of thread-thin scarring on the surface of my skin responding to the plucked-string hum of the wooden weapon.

  I hardly recognized my own voice. “He tore that thing out of me, didn’t he.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Silence turned thick and dangerous. The hover rattled a bit, wallowed, and began to climb, probably to avoid traffic streams. I didn’t want to know how we were avoiding the notice of federal patrols. Traffic to this sector was probably under heavy watch, since Sofya’s interior now looked like something thermonuclear had hit it.

  I raised my head again. Japhrimel looked at the floor of the hover as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen in his life. His hair shielded his eyes, falling forward in soft ragged darkness. It looked like bits of it had been charred away.

  “It is customary for a Fallen to care for any hedaira in distress.” His fingers tightened on his shoulder, digging in, tendons standing out on their back. If it hurt, his voice gave no sign. “Especially in… such distress as yours.”

  I realized my left hand was rubbing at my fresh shirt over the scarred tenderness of my belly. Revulsion swept through me, followed by a swift bite of nausea that faded as I took a deep breath. The rage running through my bones rose, flushing my cheeks with heat, and the inside of the hover rattled.

  “Just what distress would that be? I’m only curious, Japh. What did… what was in me?” I tried hard to sound disinterested, failed miserably. The burning in my throat turned the words even hoarser than usual.

  “Something to bind you—and your Fallen—to Lucifer’s will.” Each word delivered with care and finicky precision. “Sephrimel was adept at treating hedaira who suffered from…”

  I shut my eyes, opened them again. Well, everyone here saw it except Tiens. I suppose it can’t hurt to say it out loud. Get it out in the open. “You can say it,” I whispered.

  He did, the word cutting off the end of my sentence like a slamming door shutting away the sound of an argument. “Miscarriage. Only in this case, it was somewhat different. It was a’zharak. The word means worm.”

  Worms. I’ve been dewormed. The black, yawning hole in my memory expanded, ran up against the wall of my will. Retreated, snarling, back down into its hole.

  What did I have matched against that void? Just my sorcerous Will, holding up fine despite my betrayal of my sworn word. My Fallen, who seemed to be holding up fine as well, despite my betrayal of him. And the fire in my blood, the song of destruction that was a goddess answering my prayers—but not my god.

  My god had asked me to betray myself, and I had acceded. I’d had no choice. Yet His gem on my cheek had lit me out of darkness.

  Had He abandoned me, or could I just simply not bring myself to go to Him?

  I stared at the fall of hair curtaining Japh’s eyes from mine. He studied the floor, his shoulders down but tense, waiting. The inside of the hover was as quiet as the rare texts room in a federal library.

  A’zharak. The word means worm, but he treated me for miscarriage. I shivered.

  I was an adult. I was tough. Right? One of the top ten deadliest bounty hunters in the Hegemony, a combat-trained Necromance, an all-around ass-kicking wonder.

  So why were my knees shaking?

  Japhrimel continued, each word deliberately placed. “Had your body not rejected the… rejected it, Lucifer would have a means of controlling you. You would become a vessel for his will as well as one of his… least-attractive progeny. The separation, when it bursts free of incubation, is… energetic.”

  Nausea slammed hard and fast against my breastbone, burrowed in and finished with acid at the back of my throat. I forced it down, swallowing sourness. “So that’s why he did it.” The queer flatness of my tone was surprising. I sounded like I was discussing the latest Saint City Matchheads gravball game. “To control me, use me for bait. Use me against Eve, and probably against you.”

  I heard the faintest of sounds, like feathers ruffling in the wind.

  “Yes.” The hem of Japhrimel’s coat moved restlessly. Under the whine of hover transport, it was the only sound. Was everyone holding their breath?

  If I turned just a little, I had a clear shot to the bedroom door. My boots moved independently of me, squeaking ridiculously as I tacked out across industrial flooring for that harbor.

  “Dante.” Japhrimel’s voice was raw, the bleeding edge of something smoking and terrible.

  “I’m all right,” I lied, still in that colorless flat voice. “I just want to be alone for a little bit. Call me when we get where we’re going.”

  He said nothing more, but I could feel his eyes plucking at me. My shoulder ached with velvet flame, his name on my skin crying out to him.

  My sword’s scabbard creaked slightly as my fingers clenched around its safe, slim sanity. I didn’t want the goddamn Knife. Just thinking of that satiny wood touching my palm again was enough to make the nausea triple.

  I made it to the bedroom door. Pushed at it blindly. The sound of it shutting away the rest of them was not as satisfying as it could have been.

  Lucifer wanted to use me as bait. I hadn’t been fulfilling my purpose fast enough—in Sarajevo, Eve had left before the Devil showed up, and he hadn’t really wanted me to kill any of the escaped demons. I was just a pawn, dangled out in shark-filled waters to see who bit, and if the bait isn’t drawing your prey fast enough, you reel it in, readjust it, and throw it back out there.

  He had put something in me. A worm in my body. In my body.

  Eve.

  My brain shivered, turning aside from what had been done to me and fastening on Doreen’s daughter, like a shipwreck survivor latching onto a piece of driftwood. She’d been taken to Hell as a little girl. What had Lucifer done to her, to make her so determined to rebel?

  Had it hurt? Had it scraped her insides out and made a black hole inside her head?

  It bothered me. It bothered me a lot.

  If I thought about what he had probably done to Eve—the closest thing to a child I might ever have—then maybe, just maybe, I could get away with not thinking about the violation of my own body.

  My body.

  Kill him. For Eve. For yourself. It whispered in my ears, tapped at the walls of my mind. Sweet hot flame, the undoing of the world.

  “Make him pay,” I whispered to the empty bedroom, as the hover ascended sharply. My stomach flipped one more time, and I slid down with my back to the door, my legs sprawled out in front of me, repeating it to myself. I could, if Japh was on my side. I could do this.

  There was no way out now. The funny thing was, when I thought about it, there didn’t seem like there had ever been any way out.

  CHAPTER 13

  There’s an old psion joke taken from a Zenmo koan. It goes like this: Before they discovered Chomo Lungma, what was the highest mountain in the world?

  The answer, of course, is another Zenmo joke. The one inside your head still is.

  Normals don’t get it. But pretty much every psion who hears it cracks up. The laughter is bright and unaffected if you’re a child, somewhat cynical and world-weary by the time you hit eighteen, and turns knowing when you’re older. When you get to the combat-trained psions, the bounty hunters, cops, and government agents—we don’t just laugh. We laugh as if our mouths are full of too much bitterness to be contained, because we know it’s true. There aren’t any geographical features that can stop you. It’s the faults, fissures, and peaks inside your own skull that bring you up hard and short.

  Chomo Lungma is the mountain’s name—Great Mother Mountain. She rises in pleats and tooth-shapes from the rest of the Himalayas, a low thundering bass-note of Power throbbing from her rock and ice. She is more than a mountain. Generations of belief and thought have mad
e her a symbol of endurance and the unconquerable, no matter how many climbers have climbed to her top unaided by hover technology. It’s still an act of faith to scale her.

  Our hover drifted through a night sky starred with hard points of brilliance, unwashed by any cityglow. The mountains around the Mother are a historical zone in the Freetown Tibet territory, no cities allowed, precious few hovers, the infrequent temples lit by torchlight, oil lamp, and candleflame.

  I stared out the porthole, resting my forehead on chill slick plasglass. Hoverwhine boiled through my skull, rattled my back teeth, slid into my bones. Pleated gaps and gullies of stacked stone vibrated like plucked strings under the hover’s metal belly. Starlight danced on snow and knife-edged crags. The air was so thin up here it sparkled.

  A slim slice of waning moon drifted in the cold uncaring sky, shedding no light.

  Japhrimel stepped into the room. I hadn’t moved for a long time, watching the shapes of mountains as we circled the Mother of them all.

  He shut the door and said nothing, but the mark on my shoulder hadn’t stopped its distress-beacon pulsing. I searched the edged gullies and piles of rock below, my eyes not fooled by thin starshine. The mountains were hooded with snow, but it didn’t soften their contours. Instead, it laid bare every grasping, razor edge.

  My voice surprised me again. “I’m all right.”

  Another lie. They were coming fast and thick these days. I had always been so proud of keeping my word; I wondered if that pride was about to turn on me, cutting my hands as I tried to use my sorcerous Will. A Necromance uses her voice to bring back the dead; it’s why we whisper most of the time.

  We know what the spoken word can do.

  He was silent for so long I closed my eyes, the darkness behind my lids comfortless. When he finally spoke, it was a bare thread of sound. “I do not think so, my curious.”

  The bitterness of my reply surprised even me. “I should think up a cute little nickname for you, too, you know.”