Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I should have had incense, and divination to pick the proper time, and a ritual robe. I should have had a consecrated cup, expensive wine instead of cheap liquor, and a week or so to pattern and prepare myself. I should have meditated for an hour or so to clear my head.

  Instead, I finished the circle and stood inside it, then dropped the chalk back into my bag with a faint uneasy click. Ever since the climax of the hunt for Kellerman Lourdes, the thought of consecrated chalk raises my hackles just a little.

  The leather straps of my rig creaked. I’d fastened my sword to the backcarry, hilt standing up over my shoulder; I’d need both hands for this and possibly for piloting the airbike in a hurry if this worked the way I wanted it to. I settled my bag against my side, breathing deeply, cinnamon musk rising to combat the odor of garbage and the sour sharp smell of stagnant Power.

  Danny, what are you doing?

  I pushed the voice of reason away one more time. I was trying to stay alive, same as usual. The game was rigged, sure—but I was going to make it a little more difficult to rig. Hopefully.

  The hollow place under my ribs, pulsing with my heartbeat, whittled itself deeper as I stood in the middle of the circle, checking its confines. The salt, the rum, the cigarettes… all present and accounted for.

  If I pull this off it’s going to be one of the finest Greater Works I’ve ever seen performed. And I’m not even a Magi.

  Most Magi would kill to have a demon tell them even half of what Eve had told me. Kgembe had handed over his shadowjournal, something Magi never did, with the steps to break open the walls of the world clearly delineated. I wondered what kind of hold she had over him, or if he was one of Japh’s people, playing along with her for an unspecified reason. Games within games, plot and counterplot, and me with the benefit of a successful Magi’s magickal diagrams and explanations. “Yeah,” I muttered, my right hand caressing a knifehilt. “Lucky me.”

  I was still stalling.

  I sank to my knees, facing the north. Shut my eyes and tried to breathe calmly.

  Rage bubbled and boiled under my breastbone. It was never far from the surface these days, and it was good fuel.

  I uncapped the rum, took a swallow, and let it burn the velvet cavern of my mouth. I tore the package open and arranged the synth-hash cigarettes in a wheel, all pointing outward. The salt made a fine thin noise as I tossed it straight up, letting it sift down, kissing my hair and face.

  I let Power bleed out, fueled by my rage. It slid free with a slight subliminal hiss, filling the chalk marks and turning them silvery. Power soaked into the runes marked between the rings, each one named as I drew it, a sudden subsonic note beginning to thrum as I chanted silently, my lips moving, burning with rum. Alcohol has no effect on me anymore, but the fume of it still brought back memories. Bounties, drinking sessions, celebrations, the ceremonial sharing before a fast dirty suicide run or a slicboard duel…

  Jace. Was he watching me? Were all my dead watching?

  Enjoy the show, everyone. I’m about to make my mark.

  McKinley shifted nervously behind me, his aura a drawing-in, a point of tension in the sea of Power. Notra Dama shivered again, like a sleeper rolling over in bed, struggling toward waking.

  If this doesn’t work right a whole hell of a lot of people in Paradisse are going to have a very bad day. For a moment my conscience pricked at me. What was I doing?

  But needs must when the Devil drives, and the Devil was driving this engine. Besides, the damage would be contained—I hoped.

  You’re playing roulette with other people’s lives, Danny.

  I knew it. But if Lucifer caught Japhrimel or Eve, how many other people would suffer? All of Japh’s agents, however many he had salted away. All of Eve’s rebellion—demons, sure, but still. Was the enemy of my enemy worth what I was about to do?

  If Lucifer keeps playing these games, more people are going to suffer. Here’s your chance to end it, Danny.

  I shut all the arguments away. I needed all my concentration now.

  The last rune shimmered. Uruthusz, the Piercer of Veils, with its two downward-spiking teeth. I let the Power slip through my mental fingers, filling the rune like a cup. The circle clicked into completeness, a sound felt more in the solar plexus and teeth than heard.

  Moving air mouthed my tangled hair, pushing it back. The ghostflits rode closer, drawn to the circle’s humming tautness. None of them approached me yet, but they shimmered, taking on false substance. Eyes glittered, hands of tinted smoke reaching out and curling away, their mouths opening. If I listened, I could hear them chittering, pleading, squealing.

  Touch me. Feed me. Give me life.

  Not tonight.

  Heat bloomed in the center of the circle, in a space behind the physical. It was a good sign, the walls of reality thinning here under an onslaught of centuries of Power. The point of heat became a flame, wavered, and held.

  The cigarettes trembled like spokes of a wheel about to roll into motion. All it needed was a little push.

  “Valentine…” McKinley didn’t sound too happy. Maybe he was having second thoughts.

  Too late. I centered myself, the pattern of what I was about to attempt rising through the surface of the world.

  Then I jacked into Notra Dama’s ambient Power and sent everything I could reach pouring into that small, nonphysical flame.

  The cigarettes lit, fuming, synth-hash smoke rising in angular shapes. The runes froze, sparking with blue and crimson light, then settled into a golden glow and began writhing against the floor, running between the two circles in a smeared streak. The temperature rose. My voice was suddenly audible even to me, chanting.

  It wasn’t a Necromance’s power-chant, to bring a soul over the bridge and allow it a voice in the world of the living.

  This was something else, a harsh sliding tongue that bloodied my lips even as I spoke it. It roiled the air and tore into the circle, the words taking weight and form, streaming into a vortex of absence blooming like a camera lens away from the flame, now visible as a pale colorless twisting.

  I had no idea where the words came from but I went with it. Once you start a Greater Work like this, the magick takes its own shape. It rides you, for good or for ill, and you are a passenger on its tidal wave. If the Work miscarries you can get backlash sickness, or drained down dangerously far as it tries to complete itself even through its flaws. Which is why preparation, planning, divination, and good old-fashioned luck are key to surviving your own Greater Works.

  Ghostflits began to peel away, their smoky forms shredding. Their mouths opened in silent crystal screams and the Power rode me, a riverbed in its channel. I was actually draining Notra Dama, the floodtide of energy directed at weakening the walls of the world, already tissue-thin but made of strong, resilient stuff.

  The Knife vibrated in my bag, harmonic resonance aching in my teeth and bones. Fudoshin answered with his own scabbarded hum, echoing the runes in the circle, now moving so fast they were a golden ring, a hoop of fire, a thin thread of crimson running through the warp and weft of the spell, drawing it tight, tighter, tightest.

  McKinley shouted something, but I didn’t care. I was too far gone in the spell. There was more and more Power, forcing itself through my shredded shielding, tender scarred patches in my psyche smoking under the strain. I was a glove too small for the hand forcing its way in, the magick uncaring of my human limits, the fabric of my mind bending and ripping under the strain—

  —just as the cloth of reality tore, a vertical slit opening with the sound of parachute silk tearing under too much stress.

  McKinley yelled again, a shapeless noise. The second half of the spell locked down, anchors driven deep into the temple’s floor, stone groaning and the entire city ramming through my unprotected skull for one endless, horrific moment. The anchors held, reality warping and skewing at the edges of the hole I’d just torn in the world.

  Through that long tunnel, a weird directionless red-orange gl
ow bloomed. The icy heat of Hell boiled through, cracking the floor and straining against mortal chill. But it held, the circle shuddering and pulling Power through the temple—and from the city’s deep, sonorous heart with its acres of pain, fear, and the psychic sludge of a whole population jammed together, living cheek-by-jowl and boiling for centuries.

  The door was open.

  I’m not even a Magi, I thought in stunned wonder. Any Magi worth their salt would pay to have me do this; I’ve done what it takes them years to do.

  Damn. I’m good.

  I fell backward as they boiled through, the temple groaning in distress, and McKinley grabbed me. Consciousness narrowed to a thread as the rushing tide of darkness took on lambent eyes and horns, feathers and long arms, chuckling and chittering in their unlovely language as the denizens of Hell grabbed their opportunity and escaped. Chaos smashed against the temple’s walls, and Notra Dama woke in a blinding sheet of Power and thundered against the violation.

  McKinley dragged me. Psychic darkness washed against the temple’s walls, coated its refuse-strewn floor, and no few of the demons paused in their headlong rush to eye me as my bootheels scraped against the floor. The Hellesvront agent swore, pulling me behind a pile of garbage, cutting off my view of the circle and the escaping Lesser Flight demons. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he screamed in my ear, just as the temple shivered again. The snap of connection breaking between me and the circle was blessed relief, my mind contracting behind the borrowed weight of Japhrimel’s shielding.

  Yet another time my brain should have turned to oatmeal. Lucky lucky me.

  The door would stay open as long as the taplines feeding it Power could handle the strain before slamming shut, the fabric of reality reasserting its structure. Demons would flood through, and since Lucifer’s big thing was controlling which demon went where, he’d have his hands full.

  I’d just altered the playing field and hopefully created enough chaos to cover McKinley and me for a little bit, until Japh could get back—he would also, hopefully, find it a little easier to sneak around Hell now that I’d thrown the dice again. I’d given Eve the time she asked for.

  For my first toss of the dice in the game, it was a doozy.

  I’d also just unleashed who-knew-how-many demons on the world. Gods forgive me.

  The Hegemony would also have its hands full dealing with this eruption, and that meant they wouldn’t be sending any more field agents after me.

  Welcome to the game, Danny.

  The temple’s side door yawed, and McKinley hauled me through, greasy crud scraping against our boots. He swore, filthily, in every language I had the blue words in and quite a few I didn’t.

  We made it to the airbike, Notra Dama tolling in distress. Little scrabbling sounds behind us didn’t sound human or animal, and McKinley thumbed the starter. Antigrav whined. I threw my leg over the bike’s saddle and looked back to see imps boiling over the trashheap, their bald heads gleaming and their naked limbs moving in ways nothing of this world should move. Nausea rose, I almost pitched off the bike and retched—but McKinley bent over the handlebars and kicked the maglock off. I grabbed at his waist, the antigrav woke with a rattling whine, and we rocketed away even as the imps ignored us and scattered like quicksilver.

  Notra Dama surged behind us, psychic stress becoming physical, masonry creaking and squealing as the first surfroar of crowd noise began. I clutched at both McKinley and consciousness, hanging onto each by the thinnest of threads. My cheek ached, the tattoo shifting madly under the skin. We raced for the surface of Paradisse on the expanding edge of a circle of chaos I had just unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

  CHAPTER 30

  The rooms were beautiful, singing arches pierced with shafts of golden light that wasn’t daylight but well-placed full-spectrum bulbs. It was a nice touch, even if the air swirled and trembled with the tang of spice and musk that said demon.

  Priceless antiques, mostly vases, sat on fluted plasglass tables, each one humming with magickal force. Demon warding was anchored to the walls, but straining bits of demon magick were also set in each knickknack and curio, sending up waves of interference into the atmosphere. Someone was taking a great deal of trouble to make this place invisible, protections woven over every inch of wallspace, triplines and protective wards showered over the flooring and furniture.

  It was uncomfortably close to the way things looked in Hell, and the shivers juddering just under my skin didn’t help. I kept expecting to glance in a corner and see a pair of level burning-green eyes in a lean golden face, a straight mouth and the long black Chinese-collared coat of my Fallen. Or a pair of green eyes and a shock of golden hair, burning like an aureole.

  I sat in Eve’s hideout, the air buzzing and blurring with demon musk, McKinley by the door to the suite she’d shown us to. This tower rose among hundreds of others, a forest of glowing spires watching as dawn rose over the world.

  The city trembled. Up here on the Brightside it wasn’t too bad, but the ambient Power tasted like burning cinnamon. The holonews was full of weird occurrences—a street on one of the Darkside’s lowest levels turned to a sheet of glass, a wave of fights breaking out in taverns, a “paranormal incident” at Notra Dama calling Hegemony containment teams from around the globe. People were uneasy. Even the normals feel it when the ambient Power of a city is drained or altered.

  I was hungry.

  McKinley sighed, leaning his head back against the wall. “You okay?”

  He kept asking me, about once an hour. Normally it would have dragged irritation against my bare nerves, my shoulder still prickle-numb, my eyes sandy and aching.

  But right now I was glad of the company. “Peachy.” I shifted, and the chair squeaked. Little sounds came through the walls—footsteps and faroff voices too strange to be human.

  “Tell me again why we’re trusting her. Jaf won’t like this.”

  “He said himself that she has a reason to keep me alive and him happy. We need more backup, McKinley. This is safer than being on our own.” In any case, it’s too late now.

  “It’s not like Vann. He’s never been late before.”

  And he has Lucas with him. “I’m not happy about it either. I bought us some breathing room, at least.” The hollowness of my belly taunted me. I needed food. What I wouldn’t give to be able to walk down the street to a noodle shop, or even grab a heatseal packet of protein mush.

  Too bad, Danny. You’ve worked hungry before.

  “Guess so.” The electric light ran over his hair, glittered in his black eyes. The windows were polarized; we would be invisible from outside—if anything but empty air was this high up, sandwiched between hoverlanes. Nobody would think to look for me in a tower in the poshest slice of Paradisse.

  I found myself rubbing at my left shoulder, pushing cloth over the twisted, numb scar. How long is this going to take, Japh? I’ve about run out of delaying tactics. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  The agent shrugged. “Jaf will come back. He always does, sooner or later.”

  Now there was an opening. “How long have you been… working… for him?”

  “Long enough to trust him.” He shifted his weight, peeled himself away from the wall. “You don’t have to like me, Valentine. I just do my job.”

  Sekhmet sa’es. “I was just asking.” I pushed myself up to my booted feet. My hair felt filthy, tangled with dust and dirt, reeking of Notra Dama, spent magick, and demons. At least I hadn’t had my clothes blown off me this time. “He never tells me anything.”

  “Not known for explaining himself.”

  Could you sound any more dismissive? “What is he known for? Or is that classified information, too?”

  McKinley sighed. “He’s a demon. He’s the Prince’s Eldest and the assassin.”

  The city glowed, fingers of gold reaching through the streets as the sun lifted itself up over the rim of the world. The Senne glittered in the distance, a river of molten stuff com
ing up from underground amid the sprawl of the suburbs, and I could just see the column of light that was the plasglow beam atop the Toure Effel fading as the sky flushed with rose instead of gray. I could feel the plucked string of the Toure vibrating as it channeled the city’s distress. “Fine. I get it.”

  “What can I tell you that you don’t already know?” McKinley moved behind me, not quite silently, and my back prickled. “Jesu Christos. He’s risked everything for you.”

  I didn’t ask McKinley what he thought I’d risked for Japh.

  It would take a few days for Paradisse to get back to itself, its population feeding back into the ambient well of Power. The psions around here were probably having headaches and nausea, their bodies getting accustomed to a lower level in the energy flux.

  Congratulations, Danny. Making friends everywhere you go, aren’t you?

  My psychic fingerprints were all over the work at Notra Dama. That was the trouble with the use of Power, it was so highly personal. I was going to be very famous once everyone figured out what had happened.

  If, of course, word got out. The Hegemony had a reason to keep this under wraps, if they were Lucifer’s toy. Plot and counterplot; nobody was what they seemed.

  Not even Japhrimel. Not even me, playing the Devil’s game now. My breath fogged the glass, a circle of condensation. “You know, I’m getting a little tired of everyone assuming I made Japh Fall.”

  “What exactly did you do?”

  What did I do? “I was just trying to stay alive. All of a sudden the Devil wanted me to kill someone, and I had a reason to do it. Then things just got out of hand, and before I knew it I had a demon all over me and a serious case of genesplicing. Then he up and dies on me and…” The circle of breath-fog spread. I rested my forehead on the cold, reinforced plasglass. It was thick enough to be projectile-proof, humming slightly with the shielding applied to it and the everpresent sound of a river of high-altitude air shifting around the tower’s walls. The words curdled in my throat. Why was I trying to explain myself to him, of all people? “It wasn’t my fault.” There’s enough that is my fault. “Forget it. I was just trying to find a few things out.”