Dead Man Rising

by Lilith Saintcrow

  "Well, everyone has to—" The sound clicked off. I heard something, moving material, and then another voice.

  Female, dark and smooth, and raising the hair on the back of my neck.

  "Ms. Valentine. Lady Polyamour thought you'd call. Just a moment."

  "Lady" Polyamour? I was too tired to even find that funny.

  Another click. No hold-music, just staticky silence. I looked out over the abandoned lot and felt terribly exposed. The skin on my back roughened. The dawning gold of sunrise edged even the weeds in the empty lot with gold, touched the sky with blush. Thin cirrus clouds trailed across the sky—the night's rain was pushing eastward, inland, leaving a fresh-washed pale blue and pink in its wake.

  Then another click. "—punishment. I told you to tell me if she called." Polyamour's voice. I smiled slightly, my skin feeling as if it was going to crack. I needed food, lots of it, and soon. "Ms. Valentine. I thought you would call again."

  "I hate to be predictable. Look, Poly, I need to know something. The necklaces. The spade necklaces, the reminders. Where did you get those from?"

  "Keller got them from a jeweler…" She was silent for a moment, probably trailing the name through memory. It didn't take long—a Magi-trained memory is a well-trained memory. "Smith. Bryce Smith. His uncle."

  I let out a long, satisfied breath. The normal living in a house with excellent shields—what else does a psionic kid do for his loving uncle? I'd bet the shields were Keller's work, after the kid left school.

  After he'd left school—and before Mirovitch had broken free of whatever deep psychic vault Kellerman Lourdes had locked him in, maybe believing him dead. "That's what I needed, Poly. Thanks. Lock your fucking doors and stay under cover, okay?"

  "Thank you for your concern, but I'm quite well-protected. Dante?"

  "What?" I leaned my forehead against the metal again. The clear plasilica windows were starting to steam up.

  For once, she didn't sound disdainful or controlled. Instead, her voice was tinged with something foreign—respect. And not the fawning respect of a courtesan for her callers—genuine respect. "Thank you. You're welcome here anytime you choose to come."

  Oh, gods above, don't tempt me. "Thanks." I hung up. Food. I need food.

  In the Tank District there were eateries that still served real meat instead of protein substitute. I stopped at a taqueria, bought and wolfed two huge steak burritos; then went to the burger stand next door and took down three triple-cheeseburgers in ten minutes. Next was another burger stand and three more cheeseburgers, this time with soy bacon. Then, with the edge of the blowtorch hole in my gut slightly taken off, I walked into a Novo Italiano cafe and ordered spaghetti and garlic bread, with bruschetta to start off with, stuffed mushrooms, and a double order of calamari. I barely even tasted it. I would have ordered more, but they took too long to bring it to the table.

  When I finished there, I stopped in a convenience store and bought a twelve-pack of plascanned weightlifter shakes, meant to help those with black-market augments keep their muscle mass. Ten minutes later, in an alley, I dropped the last can and wiped my mouth.

  The hunger was only blunted, but I'd told Gabe I'd be at the station in an hour and had only fifteen minutes left. Made it just in time, bolting up the stairs and reaching the third floor, whirling in through the door and finding Gabe's office empty. On her desk were four silver necklaces, their chains tangled together.

  The entire third floor was eerily silent and empty. Of course, with a Feeder killing psionics—both cop and civilian—and the suspected trigger to his tracking on Gabe's desk, she would have little need for persuasion to clear the place out. They were probably watching, waiting to come back after I left the building.

  I didn't blame them.

  I scooped the necklaces up, looking around. Finding a blank piece of paper proved to be a little tricky. In the end I wrote on the backside of a laseprinted burglary report.

  The first victim—the normal was Lourdes's uncle. He made the necklaces. I know where Lourdes is. I'm going to make him fucking pay. Do NOT send anyone after me!

  I paused, then wrote, THANK YOU. Underlined and circled twice. It didn't seem enough, so I laid my hand on the paper and let a tingle of Power down, shaping stray ink into a glyph—Mainuthsz, a Greater Glyph of the Canons, shaped like the suggestion of a rider on a horse twisted into an inky line sketch. It meant unconditional love, a partnership—something she and Eddie had, something I had always wanted.

  The swift dark stream of guilt roared under the surface of my mind for a few moments before I wrestled it down. I was going to expiate the guilt in the oldest of ways—with blood. But to do that, I needed to think clearly.

  Revenge is best served subzero, because revenge is no fucking good if you don't think clearly. I was perfectly prepared to die, yes—but I was not prepared to waste myself. Before I was through, Keller or Mirovitch—or both—were going to be sent to Hell, with all the ferocity and cunning I could muster, and all the clinical coldness I was capable of.

  I picked up the pen. There was nothing else that could have expressed what I felt for her, or what I had to do. I hesitated, scrawled one more word.

  Goodbye.

  I ducked out of her office. The place was deserted. I made it down the stairs and out of the station, the spade necklaces dangling in my hand before I remembered what and who I was, and stuffed them in my pocket.

  Come and get me now, Mirovitch, I thought, waiting for the lash of pain down my back, waiting for the phantom wounds to reopen.

  They didn't. Instead, an ice-cold wall of fury closed around me, impenetrable, shutting me away. My quarry was in front of me, the track clear, my revenge assured. I was going to make him pay, no matter who he was. Lourdes, Mirovitch, the fucking King of the Rats—I was going to kill him.

  Now it was personal.

  Chapter Thirty

  I still needed food. Seven restaurants later, the late-afternoon sun glittered in my eyes as I ended up in a pub in the eastern fringe of Saint City, sandwiched between the city and the lake. I was working my way toward the Bridge going east on instinct, from one meal to the next. The necklaces were a weight in my pocket. I hadn't precisely lied—I didn't know exactly where Lourdes was, but I could feel a little tingle in my subconscious. I'd hunted down too many psychopaths and criminals not to know that little tingle. It meant that I was close and on the right track. The bounty hunter in me was satisfied, and that was good enough for now.

  I set down the pint of beer, wiping my lips with the back of my hand, and studied the demolished large-size pizza in front of me. I hate the taste of beer, but it provides a lot of carbs in a very short time, and I needed fuel. I felt like a goddamn glutton, but I was hungry.

  I sighed. From a back booth, my eyes tracked through the dark pub. The holovid feeds were showing an advert for the newest series about a group of Ceremonials in East Los Dangeles-Frisco. For hating psions so much they certainly love to watch us on the holovids, I thought, as I always did.

  Then the feed switched and it showed my house, the familiar grainy images of the column of flame rising. I watched, my fingernails tapping the table. Gabe had thought Lourdes and Mirovitch had gotten to me in my own house, or trailed me away from the burning wreckage. She must have been worried, worried sick. A better friend than I deserved; Gabe had never let me down.

  I watched, my eyes nailed to the display. Inside the column of flame, something twisted.

  Something dark and swirling like obsidian smoke.

  A vaguely human shape stretched in the middle of the fire, spreading its slender black wings, hands upraised. Then the column of fire was sucked back toward the figure, a Shockwave rattling the camera.

  I watched, my jaw dropping. What the fucking hell?

  The flames didn't stop, but they were pulled back in, wreathing around the dark figure, which lifted its head as if searching. Then, maddeningly, the picture stopped, dissolving in a burst of static. My face flashed on the ho
lovid, a thumbnail up to the right of an announcer. I saw with a slight twitch of aggravation that it was my new face. Someone had managed to take a stillcam holo of me. My hair was pulled back, tendrils falling softly and beautifully in my face, so I would bet it was taken at the House of Pain.

  The announcer was of me type always chosen for holovids—slightly androgynous, high cheekbones, sculpted mouth. This one had sleek blond hair and a pair of bright green eyes that made my stomach turn over. I paid and got out of there in a hurry, my boots barely touching the stairs that took me streetside. The pub's antique wooden door swung shut behind me.

  What was in my house? Was it Lourdes? Had he somehow been there, stalking me while I was blind with grief, and my torching the house had taken him by surprise? My throat went dry, my right hand clenching into a fist.

  But I hadn't sensed Mirovitch or Keller. And even crazed with grief I was sure I would have noticed the cloying psychic stench of the Headmaster.

  It couldn't be. It couldn't be.

  Can it be that you have not resurrected him?

  "Impossible." My voice startled me. I glanced around, catching a few frightened looks from the normals who were giving me a wide berth. "Im-fucking-possible."

  Figment of the imagination. Or, if not… Santino had used the Egg against Japhrimel, and Lucifer had finished the job by beating him to death once he was already wounded. Would fire and Power do what I'd thought blood might do, and bring a demon back to life? Rebuild a demon's shattered body from ash? Even a Fallen demon?

  Don't get distracted, Danny. Every moment you delay is another moment he has to kill someone else.

  But I had the necklaces, didn't I? I was the target now.

  I walked down the street, my hands clasped around the scabbard. My sword hummed inside the sheath, a subliminal song of Power. After a while I noticed that people were spilling out of my way while I walked. When I passed into a belt of residential buildings and the sidewalks were empty under old trees turning red and orange and white for winter, it was a relief. I crunched through wet-smelling fallen leaves and kept moving.

  The sun was setting by the time I made it to the Bridge.

  With hovertraffic being what it was, the huge Bridge was in a state of disrepair. But slicboarders can't go over water, and foot or wheelbike traffic needed the Bridge. A thriving traffic rumbled over the lake, and there was a rail line to take land supplies that for one reason or another couldn't go by hover transport.

  I needed to go east, and I wanted to walk, so it was the Bridge or nothing.

  On the west side, the old main roads zigzagged down the hill. I cut through the bands of shrubbery and wished I'd thought to keep my slicboard, or rent one. The edge of the river curled away under the beginning of the Bridge, I smelled cold iron and the dead, chemical-laden water. There were colonies of homeless people living on the banks, renegade psionics, all sorts of human driftwood. It made the Tank District look like a sedayeen commune. I kept walking.

  The Bridge lay on the surface of the glass-calm lake, an architectural triumph when it was made five hundred years ago, revamped every few decades. The original concrete was crumbling, but haphazard repairs are done every year, and plasilica and new steel had been hammered in a few years ago during a grand reconstruction funded by Hegemony grants and City Hall. Algae drifted thick on the lake, harvested and distilled by the biotechs or anyone with a chem degree and a few thousand credits' worth of equipment. The last wave of additive-laced Clormen-13 had come from here; tainted and cut with some thyoline-based substance to make it more harsh and addictive. Not like Chill needed any help.

  I could have been over the Bridge in a short time if I'd gotten a slic or used some of my demon speed, but I shivered, continued walking. The pond that the boathouse on the Hall grounds stood near fed into the river, I was sure of it. Even being this close to water that had touched the grounds of that cursed place was enough to make my blood turn cool and loose in my veins.

  The more I thought about it, the more miraculous it was that the Black Room had managed to meet anywhere on the grounds, especially in the same place more than once, even if Keller only took the members there one at a time. Mirovitch had been uncanny, sniffing out hidden stashes of contraband, seemingly always one step ahead of every upswell of rebellion in the student population, as well as any student conspiracies. No matter where you turned, someone was reporting to the stooges, or being punished, or simply withdrawing into their own little shell, just trying to survive.

  What other secrets had Rigger Hall kept?

  After an hour's steady walk I reached midspan, pausing to look over the dark algae-choked surface of the lake. I had no warning.

  My left shoulder came alive with pain, as if a clawed hand had curled around and dug in. I went to my knees in the middle of the road, steel creaking under me. I found my claw-cramping right hand under my shirt, my fingertips touching the writhing ropes of scar that was Japhrimel's mark. The slight pressure—fingertips against scar—made the world swim as if a pane of wavering glass hung in front of me.

  Saint City seen upside down, the lights shimmering on the TransBank Tower, hovertraffic zipping by. Need burning hot in the veins, dropping, wings furled, breaking the fall at the last moment, booted feet slamming into pavement. Following a scent that was not a scent, a sound that was a touch, afire of need in veins old and strong, drawing... eastward.

  I came back to myself, ripping my fingers away from the scar. My knees dug into the Bridge, which swayed like a plucked string. I heard yells from both ends, used my scabbarded blade to lever myself up.

  Can it be you have not resurrected him?

  Lucifer's voice, taunting me. And the dark winged figure in the middle of the flames… Fire, enough fire to perhaps feed a demon?

  Enough Power to perhaps bring one back, rebuild a demon's body from ash?

  Ridiculous. Insane. If Japh—

  If he had been alive, even just barely clinging to life, I would have known when I clasped his burning body to my chest. I would have known every time I touched the glassy lacquered urn. I would have known. I was a Necromance, death was my trade, and I was as exquisitely sensitive to the spark of life and soul as a sexwitch was to Power.

  But what about the soul? A demon's soul… or a Fallen demon's soul, the soul of an A'nankhimel…

  I wished again that I'd been able to study more about demons. Or, more precisely, about A'nankhimel, Fallen demons, and the hedaira, their human brides. But none of the books had anything other than old legends garbled to the point of uselessness. The demons didn't like to talk about the A 'nankhimel, for whatever reason; and the Magi for all their fooling around with demons, didn't know about anything the demons didn't care to talk about. The Magi's natural jealousy and obfuscation surrounding each practitioner's research and results didn't help. I couldn't even question a Magi about demons, they wouldn't talk unless it was to members of their own circle, and even inside circles each Magi had his or her own secrets.

  What if I turned back now? I could find out. I could touch my scar and go wherever it led me. I could leave this horrible circle of murder and death and foulness behind and look for my dead demon lover instead of revenging myself and every other soul who had suffered at Rigger Hall. And if my sanity snapped, I could look anywhere in the world for him, anywhere at all. I could spend my life uselessly hunting down something that didn't exist, fooling myself into believing he was still alive, around the next corner, just out of reach.

  No. If he had not come back before now, he wasn't going to. All the longing in the world couldn't fool me into knowing otherwise.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hot tears dripping down to the Bridge deck. I was just hallucinating, trying to hoodwink myself. Japhrimel was dead, Jace was dead, and I was hunting a Headmaster who refused to die.

  Where did Kellerman Lourdes fit in? Was he carrying Mirovitch like a poisonous seed in his own thoughts? Was he a mule for the Headmaster's twisted psyche and soul, his slime-drench
ed Feeder ha? Or had Mirovitch taken over completely, grown inside Lourdes's body, driven out of his own middle-aged body by the assaults of the other kids?

  None of it made much sense. It was ridiculous anyway. I'd shattered his urn to remove the hope of Japhrimel coming back. It was my penance, and by every god that ever was, I was going to pay my penance and have my revenge.

  I swayed on the middle of the Bridge. Another thought chilled me—maybe the Power I carried, like a plasgun over a barrel of reactive, was going to eat me up. Maybe the only reason I'd survived so long was because I hadn't used the full extent of my capabilities, wasting myself on grief, bounties, and torturing Jace. Maybe it was rising, and it would burn me to ash—just like Japhrimel.

  Just like my house.

  I'm going to take him with me. Mirovitch, Keller, whoever he is, I'm taking him with me when I go. If I go.

  What if I managed to kill Mirovitch? What then?

  I was so tired, weary with a weariness that went all the way down to my bones and even further. I had read about despair of the soul, and never thought it possible until now. Even the part of me that had fought all my life, the stubborn refusal to give in that had colored my entire existence, was dully muted, hanging its head. There comes a time when even simple endurance can't carry you through.

  I knew what it would be like, laying my head on Death's black chest, feeling the weight of living rise away from me. The clear light would break out from the horizon of What Comes Next, and I would go gratefully into that foreign land.

  But not before Mirovitch. Or Keller. Or whoever the hell he was.

  I looked out over the algae-choked, glassy surface of the lake, reflecting the orange glow of the city on every shore. I lifted one foot, uncertain, and then put it back down. Remained standing where I was.

  The last few dregs of light squeezed their way out of the sky. Night folded over Saint City and the Bridge—and me—with all the softness of black wings.