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 highprofit, 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 give 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.
Oh, Gabe. Gabriele. I should have told you. I should have known.
I'd have taken the Lourdes case anyway. Some circles had to be closed; some debts had to be paid, willing or not. I had been chosen to close the murderous circle of Rigger Hall, whether by the gods or the ghosts of murdered and mind-battered children or by Fate itself. It had been my duty.
More than that, though, I would have done it because she'd needed me; she was my friend. My family. My kin, though we shared no blood. It had never occurred to me before that she could blame herself. That there was anything to blame her for.
Oh, Gabriele. I'm so sorry.
I paced down the hall and stopped, my nostrils flaring. Spice and heat filled my nose. The cuff squeezed, running with cold green light. I felt the bones in my wrist grind together.
Not another hellhound, please. Please, Anubis, not another hellhound.
Something didn't smell right. There was no sound other than the soft slap of rain and the rolling iron balls of thunder. I took the last step, around the bend in the hallway, and saw the room was empty. No Lucas; no Leander, and no Asa Tanner. The drapes moved near the window, wet wind pouring in through the broken window. I hadn't heard the glass shattering. My nostrils flared. The reek of demon was thick and overwhelming.
I heard faint sounds, as if there was a fight outside. Clashing steel, and the roar of a werecain in a rage; and Lucas rasping a crescendo of obscenities.
What the hell-Myhand closed around the swordhilt, too late.
The skinny, red-skinned demon slapped my blade aside and backhanded me, the force of the blow like worlds colliding. His eyes glowed yellow, cat-slit, and he exhaled foulness in my face as darker lines of red like tribal tattoos writhed over his skin. The thin, high, chilling giggle raised the hairs on my nape. It was oddly familiar, had I heard that voice before?
Then he was on me, knee in my back, and something that burned clapped around my wrists. A noxious cloth pressed against my face, a whispered word in my ear, and darkness took me struggling down into a whirlpool. The last thing I saw was the edge of the drapes, slapping wetly at the wall below the window, and the green glow painting the walls as the wristcuff flared with icy vicious light before guttering out.
Chapter 26
I remember only flashes. A face over mine, a face I'd seen in DMZ Sarajevo while a nightclub full of Nichtvren and other paranormals danced to the throbbing beat below and a hellhound dozed at his side. Round and heavy, square teeth that still looked sharp, cat-slit glowing eyes. The face wasn't human, for all that a human Magi's hand had once drawn it in
a charcoal sketch. The eyes were too big, the teeth too square, and the expression was… inhuman.
Yelokel? The Hunter. Allied to Eve. Anubis, help me. "She was not to be harmed." A harsh unlovely voice, but with its own compelling undertone. A voice that demanded obedience, burrowed along the nerve endings and hurt as It yanked at my bones, ran hot lead into my marrow. I moaned softly, half-swallowed the sound. I could barely even think the disorientation was so intense.
"She'll live." Someone else, clear and chill as a bell. I recognized it, didn't I? I'd heard it taunting Japhrimel, when my fingers were glued to the ropy scar of his name against my shoulder.
"Here is your payment." Clink of something light and metallic, a short chuffing inhale of breath. "Consider our alliance renewed."
Darkness took me again as I strained to open my eyes, to see, to fight.
The next flash-a candleflame. Red flame, crimson as blood. Standing up straight, then wavering in a nonphysical direction, not guttering but seeming to shudder anyway. I struck out with fists and feet, dimly aware I was in danger. I heard shouts, and someone caught my wrist, a touch that sent fire through me and made my left shoulder crunch with vivid pain.
"Be still," he said, the voice that demanded I obey. I struggled against it, against him, felt the python squeeze of another mind close around mine, Power crushing down until my strangled scream choked the air. He squeezed, almost as I would with a werecain, but harder, determined-this was no warning, this was a prelude to brutal mental rape.
No. The core of stubbornness in me rose, something hard and ugly as biting on magtape. It was the strengthless endurance that had kept me alive and conscious during some of the worst parts of my life.
What you cannot escape you must fight. What you cannot fight, you must endure.
Scars in the fabric of my mind tore open, bled afresh. Tearing, ripping, my defenses resisted, denying him entrance to my mind, to the innermost core of me. For a dizzying eternity I was back in the shattered cafeteria in Rigger Hall, choking on ectoplasm as a Feeder ripped and stabbed through my psyche-
— shoving against the back of my throat, against my nose and eyes and ears, fingering at the zipper of my jeans, another tide of slime as Mirovitch's ka tried to force its way in-
A breathless scream spiraled up out of me. No. I would fight, I would die before enduring another vicious mental assault. I could not be violated that way again and remain sane.
"Stop." Female, young, and edged with steel, a smell like baking bread and heavy musk, a smell I recognized. The smell of Androgyne.
Eve, Doreen's daughter. Lucifer's child. And maybe mine too.
"Stop I t. Didn't I tell you not to hurt her?" The sharp guncrack of a slap, and I fell into darkness again, the mental pressure falling away and my slight helpless moaning spiraling into silence.
Next came the gutwrench of hover transport, my stomach turning over in purely psychosomatic reaction to the rattling hum of antigrav. My cheek against freezing-cold metal, the Gauntlet on my left wrist propping my head up. I moaned, soundlessly, my mouth hung slack. Something was very wrong. I felt too weak, too fevered. What was happening to me?
Burning fingers stroked my forehead. "Hush," Eve said, gently. "It's all right, Dante. I'm here now."
I don't want you, I thought hazily. I want Japhrimel. It should be him saying those words to me. Where is he? Japh?
Power jolted down my spine, spread through nerve channels still screaming-raw with pain, detonated agony in my belly and my side, as if all the old wounds, from Lucifer's kick to the helihound tearing into me, were slashing back open. I screamed, more and more Power forced into me, with no regard for pain or humanity.
"There," she whispered, stroking my forehead again. "Better?"
It wasn't better. Japhrimel wouldn't have hurt me like that, he had never hurt me like that. Childish faith rose up in me, I was too exhausted to fight it. Darkness, since I couldn't open my eyes, the crackling breathlessness of a small space full of demons, a heavy spice in the air that closed around me and soothed even as my nervous system jolted with more electric pain, raw acid tracing through my bones.
"Japhrimel," I heard myself whisper, cracked lips shaping the word.
"Soon enough," she said, and I heard cloth moving. She walked away, but the aura of her scent lingered, sinking into my head, confusing me until I passed out again.
When I woke next, my fingers slid against my breastbone. I lay on my back, on something soft. I felt the arc of my collarbone, the calluses on my fingertips scraping as I reached instinctively for my left shoulder. Then, contact, Japhrimel's mark writhing and hot, bumps and ropes of scarring moving under my skin like the inked lines of my tat.
I don't care, I thought hazily. I need you. Please.
The vision swallowed me whole, I sank into seeing out through his eyes as if I had never stopped. Had I always resisted before?
— spine straight, sitting in the middle of the circle holding square holding pentacle, the diagram spinning lazily against the glassy floor Wrists braceleted with ignored agony, shoulders afire, staring straight ahead with dry burning eyes. The candleflame was low and guttering, now and then stretching. A few more hours, and he would be free.
The door opened, slowly, and she had come. As he had suspected, she could not ignore the chance to taunt him. Tall demon, the mark of the Androgyne on her forehead, a sleek cap of pale hair and a half-smile that tore at him, reminding. She was not the woman he wanted to see.
She wore simple blue, the marriage-color, a sweater and loose breeches hiding none of her slender grace. The aura of an Androgyne-spice, the potent smell of possible-breeding, the attraction of fertility-teased at him.
It was not the scent he wanted.
"A spider emerges." Forcing the words out between his teeth, no politeness, no petty games of silence. "The trap was baited well."
She shrugged, pushing her sweater-sleeves up. "Sometimes the clumsiest tools are the most effective. You could be free in a single moment, Eldest. All that is necessary is to say the word." Her voice stroked the air, the weapon of an Androgyne, meant to seduce, cajole, entice.
His right hand became a fist, and the flexing of muscle pushed at his wrist, a red tide of pain sweeping up his arm.
She laughed, a low sarcastic bark of merriment. Perhaps he truly did amuse her. "Then I will be forced to treat with your companion, Fallen. She, at least, will listen to reason."
Both wrists burned now as his fists knotted. The candle guttered, recovered itself slowly. "If she is harmed-"
"Why would I harm her? She is so amenable, so willing to please."
It was his turn to laugh, sweeping his eyes across the room at the windows. No sunlight. Another day gone while he worried at the walls of his prison, tearing apart the demonic magick that held him bit by bit, thread by thread. Inhuman patience, a single pointed will, spurred by the need burning in his veins. Need, like addiction. He wanted to see her again, he needed to see her again, to reassure himself she was alive, unharmed.
He needed to touch her.
"You have not found her so?" Eve continued, patent surprise in her tone. "But of course not. And now all her frustrated passion for you will fall upon me. I am, at least, willing to simply ask her. She does not trust you."
"She will know better in time." The words scraped his throat raw, he forced down rage. It would blind him, and he needed clear vision now.
"She escaped and killed a hellhound, Eldest. Even now she cries out your name as she dies wounded-no, not by my hand, I assure you. Such a thing has never been seen before, a Fallen's concubine overmatching a Hound."
He shrugged, the movement spilling pain into his shoulders. The heavy liquid of his armored wings slid against his skin. "You do not deceive me."
It was not an answer.
Her tone was gentle. Of course, she did not need to shout. "You are Fallen, yet with a demon's Power. She is hedaira, bound to you and sharing in your newfound status. Such a pair could
help me topple him, Eldest. Such a pair could name their price for support or service."
He closed his eyes. "You bore me."
"What side will you choose if she ties herself to me? Answer me that, Deathbringer. Should I add any of your other titles, Right Hand? Kinslayer?"
He said nothing.
"She had this," the Andmgyne continued, and he opened his eyes again. Saw, with no real surprise, the book. How had she found it? How had she had time to find it? Or was it another lie? "I think perhaps I should read it to her, I may even teach her the language it is written in. It will make a wonderful bedtime story."
His legs twitched, ready to bring him to his feet. But it was still not yet time. He closed his eyes again, did his best to close his ears.
The silvery laugh taunted him. "Pleasant thoughts, Eldest." The door scraped along the floor as she closed it, and the sound-not-sound of another hellhound appearing, its padded obsidian feet striking against the floor like fingers caressing a drumhead, scored his ears. His-
— fingertips fell away from the mark, and I blinked up at a ceiling made of blue. Deep dark blue velvet hung in waves, stitched with tiny little things that glittered in the low clear light pouring in through a gray, rain-speckled window.
The bed was fit for a princess, four-postered and choked in dark blue silk and velvet. I pushed myself up on my elbows, flinched as my tender head reminded me someone had been messing with my psychic shields. Silk sheets slid cold against my naked skin. There was a nivron fireplace spitting blue flame, and the decor ran to heavy faux-Renascence. A slice of white tiled bathroom gleamed through an open door. Two chairs, both of blue watered silk, and something incongruous-a steam-driven radiator, painted white, set under the window.
I thought there weren't any of those left. If I hadn't been so research-oriented, I might not have recognized it. As it was, I'd swallowed history books whole all my life. A printed page was a psion's best friend-books didn't point, or mock, or beat, or manipulate. They simply told the story.
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