Sekhmet sa’es. I was even disgusting myself. If he wanted to break up with me, there were better ways of doing it. He’d given me presents because he wanted to. You know him, Danny. He’ll come back.
But what then? I hadn’t the faintest.
“Gods,” I whispered. “Anubis. Anubis et’her ka. Se ta’uk’fhet sa te vapu kuraph.” The prayer rose out of me with the ease of long repetition. Anubis et’her ka. Anubis, Lord of the Dead, Faithful Companion, protect me, for I am Your child. Protect me, Anubis, weigh my heart upon the scale; watch over me, Lord, for I am Your child. Do not let evil distress me, but turn Your fierceness upon my enemies. Cover me with Your gaze, let Your hand be upon me, now and all the days of my life, until You take me into Your embrace.
I crumpled the paper in my fist and tossed it across the hover, a passionlessly accurate throw. Sparks popped from my rings again.
Japhrimel gone back into Hell, to return as gods-only-knew-what, gods-only-knew-when. And me, sent home to wait for further orders, and working for the Devil again.
To hell with tempting Fate. “It can’t get any worse,” I said out loud, and curled up, bracing my heels against the edge of the soft cushioned seat. My bag shifted and clinked against my side. I wrapped my arms around my legs, buried my face in my knees, and struggled to stop hyperventilating.
It took a while.
Chapter 11
The house was still, dark, and silent. The hoverlimo let me off on the landing pad; clearly it was on autopilot. As soon as I jumped down from the side hatch, my boots thudding on concrete treated to look like flat white marble, the whine of hovercells crested and the sleek black gleaming vehicle rose, circled the house once, and drifted away very slowly, far more slowly than it had carried me home.
I stood, and shut my eyes. A Toscano summer night folded around me, warm and soft, the kind of night I could spend in the library, my eyes glued to the page. Or a night I could spend curled against Japhrimel’s side in the comfort of our bed, listening to his quiet voice as he told me stories of demons and history, sometimes true, sometimes only rumors. My own voice would answer his, a lighter counterpoint, and sometimes a soft laugh would break the silence.
No more. Lucifer had stopped all that.
I set my shoulders, walked down the steps between the masses of fragrant rosemary growing on either side. The flagstone path to the front door was there, dark and inviting. Stay inside, don’t answer the door, wait for me. But for how long?
I was grateful none of the servants were there, especially Emilio. Japhrimel must have quietly and efficiently taken care of sending them away, maybe guessing he wouldn’t be back tonight.
Did he want to go home? What the hell does Lucifer need me for, if Japh’s going back to Hell? I shook the thought away, it was useless. What the Devil wanted, the Devil got, and he wanted both of us for some reason.
I pushed open the front door. The security net recognized my datband and genescan; the shields—Japhrimel’s careful demon-laid work and my own trademark Necromance shields, layers of energy rippling over the place we called home—parted to let me through.
The mark on my shoulder was quiescent, not throbbing in time to Japh’s heartbeat or burning with his attention to me. I did not reach up to touch it. If he was in Hell, I didn’t want to see through his eyes. I just hoped the awful empty feeling in my chest would go away sometime soon.
I made my way through silent halls and death-quiet rooms, my bootheels clicking against marble or sinking into rugs. I tried not to look at any room Japhrimel might have walked through. Gods, Danny, can’t you just calm down? Just wait for him. He’ll be back. You know he will.
Most of me knew he would. A small, critical, half-buried part of me still wasn’t so sure. The part of me that trusted no one, believed no one; the hard, cold streak of stubborn doubt I hated myself for. I was always waiting for someone to hurt me, maybe because most of the people I’d loved or trusted—or who had power over me, especially when I was a child—had either died or misused my trust. Betrayed me. Hurt me.
Abandoned me.
I finally reached the double doors. Pushed them open, gently. They whispered across the floor.
The long room, dappled with low light, looked just the same. I paced down the middle of the floor, put my palms together, and bowed slightly to Jace’s sword. Why the hell am I in here? What am I doing?
The sword rang softly, a slow low song of distress from the death of its owner still reverberating in the steel. I wondered sometimes if the shards of my old katana, rusting in frigid ocean depths with rotting bits of Santino, sang with the same aching agony. Only I hadn’t died, just been crippled—and lost Japhrimel as well as my own humanity.
I reached up with my free hand, touching the slim, hard shapes of silver-dipped raccoon baculum. The protections wedded to the necklace hummed and shifted, a gentle touch closing around me. Between the necklace, the cuff, and my rings, I was beginning to feel quite the fashion holoplate.
I have been here, asking the ghost of a human man for forgiveness. And wondering why he has more of your heart than I do.
Did he really think that? Had he really thought I was that petty or disloyal? I had loved Jace. Loved him and been unable to touch him, unable to return his own affection for me. He had been one of the last links to the person I was before Rio, before I’d ended up half-demon and tied to Lucifer’s assassin.
I’d loved him. But I needed Japhrimel, the way I’d never needed Jace.
“I’m doing okay with this,” I said out loud to the dim dappled half-light and the twisted, blackened sword’s moan of agony. My voice startled me, I almost jumped. My heart settled into a fast high pounding. Japhrimel. Japh. Where are you now, what are you doing? How long am I going to wait here?
“As long as it takes.” My voice startled me again. I shook my head, the thick braided rope of my hair bumping against my back. My fingers gentled on the scabbard, losing a bit of white-knuckled panic. I took a deep breath, turned on my heel, and stopped dead.
A shadow melded with the gloom at the other end of the room. My heart hammered, leaping wildly. I tasted copper.
Blue eyes glittered. A shock of golden hair—gone. The dust in the air swirled, coalesced into a thorn-twisted Shaman tattoo before a stray breath of air smashed through the delicate pattern. I knew that tat as well as I knew my own, as well as I knew Gabe’s.
“Gods,” I whispered. A breath of warm night wind blew through the room.
Stop it. You’re imagining things. You’re in shock. You’ve just had a nasty experience and you’re wishing someone, anyone was here. Quit imagining. That’s deadly, for a Necromance to start hallucinating.
But the air was full of the scent of tamales, and blood—and the smell of midnight ice and wet ratfur.
Chills rilled up my spine. My right hand blurred to my swordhilt, and I drew the blade free in one fluid motion. Blue fire began to flow along the metal’s edge, dappling the floor with reflections as the sword slanted slightly up in first guard, the position so habitual and natural I barely realized I’d drawn steel.
The smell of tamales and blood and Power was Nuevo Rio, Jace’s hometown. But the other smell gagged me, made my hackles rise and a thin gleam of light jet from the emerald set in my cheek. The tattoo shifted under my skin, my cheek burning. My rings boiled with sparks for a moment, gold spangles drifting down to touch the floor and wink out.
Ice and wet ratfur was the scent of a demon I’d indisputably killed, with a huge helping of luck and a lot of berserker rage. I’d torn through his throat, plunged the shards of my blade through his heart, and shredded what muck remained of him into the ocean, that great cleanser. Japhrimel had assured me Vardimal was completely dead.
Of all the times to be haunted by a dead demon, it just has to happen when Japh’s not here to help.
Rage rose up inside me, a red sheet of fury crackling along my skin, popping sparks off the edge of my blade. I lifted the scabbard in my left hand,
held along my forearm with about three inches protruding from my fist for striking at an enemy’s vulnerable point. I lowered myself slightly, almost crouching, my back to the wall behind the ebony table. I slid along the wall, backed into the corner, and waited.
The most nerve-racking part of any attack is the waiting—for both attacker and defender. Once Jado and I had held our positions across the tatami mats of his sparring room for a good half an hour, neither of us moving except to blink. I am never the most patient of fighters, preferring to attack and turn the enemy’s incipent force back on itself—but that didn’t mean I had to attack.
Quite frankly, right now I didn’t feel in my best fighting shape. I felt like my heart had been ripped out and stabbed—my eyes blurring with tears and my chest aching with swallowed sobs. I missed him, a horrible sinking feeling of missing him boiling up inside my chest.
I heard the whine of hovercells too. Was someone coming to visit me?
Take a number, I’m busy with another enemy. Japh told me to stay inside, am I going to have to fight a guerilla action inside my own house?
Cold fury dilated inside me, blue light sliding over the walls, lighting the long room clearly. I inhaled again, filled my lungs. The smell had disappeared—both the smell of Nuevo Rio and the smell of Santino/Vardimal.
It isn’t Santino. I killed Santino. It’s something like Santino maybe, or something playing a trick on me.
The outer edges of my shielding thinned. Nothing could get in here, could it? Not through Japhrimel’s shields. Not through mine.
Right?
Japh told you to come here. He insisted on it. He wouldn’t have done that unless it was safe. Right?
Of all the times to have a thought like that, now was the worst.
Settle down, Danny, a soft male voice I never thought I’d hear again said inside my head. Don’t second-guess yourself. You smelled it, and your body knows what’s up. Just stay put a minute, just wait.
It was good advice, even if it came from a dead man. Fine time to think of Jace Monroe now, wasn’t it?
I waited, my heartbeats thudding off time. Premonition itched under my skin. I wasn’t at all sure the house was a safe place to be right now. After all, someone had to know we were living here. Being where your enemy expects you is not good tactics.
Why would he tell me to wait here, then? He was very clear about it.
I saw it as the whine of hovercells returned more loudly; a shadow flitting along the window—outside. Too quick to track even for my demon-acute eyes, but I was already moving, even as the shields shivered under an assault that threatened to throw me to my knees with the backlash. I let out a short cry, pumping available Power from the reserves below the house and a generous portion of demon Power into a flare that knocked whatever-it-was off. Had to be physical, no magickal assault would feel quite so thumpingly real.
Japhrimel had told me to stay inside, but if someone crashed a hover into the house I didn’t want to stick around to see it.
No route like the short route. I gathered myself and leapt. The crash and tinkle of breaking plasglass filled the air, I landed cat-silent, cat-quick, and streaked along the wall of the house, making for the corner. It was a relief to have something to fight at last.
I rounded the corner and saw it, a low black vaguely humanoid shape moving with blurring speed. I let out a short, sharp curse just as it twisted away from the wall of the house, which was resonating like a struck bell, stone singing with the stress of the Power wedded to it stretching. Another magickal attack, and I’d gotten out of the house just in time. The shields sang a low feedback squeal I didn’t like at all, the night suddenly alive with half-heard chittering and shrieking. I heard a terrible glassy growl float from the front of the house just as the shields shuddered from that direction, taking another massive impact and going hard and crystalline, locking down.
The thing I was chasing bolted across the field on the west side of the house. I jabbed my left hand forward as I ran, making a complicated nonphysical gesture. The bloodstone ring on my left third finger shot a single bolt of thin red light. I’d sunk four or five trackers into this ring, little runespells meant to latch onto a bounty, an unshakeable magickal bloodhound. I was secondarily talented as a runewitch, able to use the runes of the Nine Canons with more accuracy and ease than most; I could make my own trackers rather than buying them from a Shaman or a Skinlin dirtwitch.
I gathered myself and hurtled forward, following the thin smear of red light, using every iota of demon speed. Heard the whining sound as the tracker slammed home. Then, something shifted.
POW!
There was a massive sound like every bell in the world struck at once. I dropped to my knees, all speed gone. Reflex took over, earthed the Power, red crackling along my skin in rippled lines. The Power meridians along my skin burned, subsided as I shook my head, my hair slipping forward over my shoulders. My braid had come loose. I sat there on my knees, blinking, my sword gone dark since I no longer needed it.
The thing, whatever it was, had done something… strange. Just popped out of existence and thrown the tracker back at me.
Nothing human could do that. The trackers were meant to hang on to even a combat-trained human psion. I should have been able to follow that thing to the ends of the earth.
We’re not dealing with earthly things here, Danny. Get with the program, will you?
I levered myself to my feet, reflexively. If I’d still been human, the backlash would have knocked me out, possibly even burned me physically along my Power meridians. As it was, I shook the stunning sound out of my head, gained my feet, and took a deep breath, my almost-demon body taking a split second to deal with the burning from the snapped tracker. I cocked my head. “What the bloody blue fuck?” I barely even realized I was whispering aloud.
The whine of hovercells crested with an abused squeal of antigrav, and a massive shattering sound slammed into me. I was tied to the shields on the house, so I felt a sharp pain, like a tooth yanked from its socket, as the layers of energy, both mine and Japhrimel’s, imploded. It would take unimaginable force to break those shields, even with both Japhrimel and me away. Only one thing could supply that kind of force.
Well, two, actually. A god, which was unlikely—gods just don’t attack people like that. They have other ways to make their displeasure known.
Or a demon. If presented with a choice like that I wouldn’t even lay odds on it; there wasn’t any point.
This just keeps getting better.
I sheathed my sword again, and turned to look back at the house just as fire lanced the sky.
For the second time in as many minutes, my legs spilled out from under me. A white-hot column of flame boiled up from the house.
Holy shit. I laid on my side as the shockwave rolled over me. That’s reactive and plas! Blood slid from my nose in a painless gush, my body trying to cope with this new demand. I waited for the aftershock, half my face tingling where it was exposed to the scorching air. The smell of cooking grass simmered in my nose, I felt another wave of fruitless rage rise up.
Jace’s sword. My altar. My books. Goddammit. Heat boiled over me, then aid hovers began to wail in the distance.
My brain started to work again.
Someone had just seriously tried to kill me.
Lucifer, or one of the demons he said he wanted me to hunt? Which would mean they already know the Devil’s hired me—which means I’m not going to survive for long without Japhrimel around.
Four of the Greater Flight of Hell, and I’m Lucifer’s new little errand girl. All on my own, without Japhrimel. Who told me to stay in the fucking house and get killed. Goddammit. I spared myself one grim smile and shook my head, rolling onto my stomach and bringing myself up to hands and knees, my sheathed sword braced against the earth in my left hand.
I made it to my feet in two tries. There’s a limit to what even my body can handle. If Japhrimel’s return to Hell and reclaiming his place as a demo
n undid my change and made me human again, I was looking at a very short, exceedingly uncomfortable lifespan.
The mark on my left shoulder tingled faintly. I closed my eyes against a wave of dizziness. Then I patted myself down.
Bag, knives, gun, plasgun, sword. Everything there. Including all my fingers. Hallelujah.
I looked at the inferno my home had become, suddenly glad none of the servants had been there. The stone itself was warping and twisting, the structure of the marble weakened by the interaction of reactive and plas fields, the very molecular bonds broken down. This was why you never discharge a plasgun near reactive, why shooting a plasgun at a hover isn’t used even as an assassination technique. The interaction of reactive paint and a plasfield creates a chain reaction that propagates at roughly half the speed of light, burning and warping molecular bonds, leaving giant scars on the earth unless contained and decontaminated. Even after that, the effects linger in living things, trees grow brittle and other plants wither and die. It’s a hugely messy way to kill someone, but pretty effective if you don’t care about being fined for contamination and ecological irresponsibility.
And if you were pretty sure you could outrun the shockwave.
“Anubis,” I breathed. My statue of the god, the obsidian statue of Sekhmet Japhrimel had given me, Jace’s sword—probably gone. Had the vision of a dead Shaman been a warning, one my god knew I would heed? “Thank you, Lord Death,” I whispered. “For saving my life.”
The first of the aid hovers from Arrieto crested the rise, lights flashing. I looked around for cover. They would dump plurifreeze on the flames to keep them from spreading and damp the reaction field, then stamp out any grass fires. I didn’t think any of the attackers would stick around after this, they would think they’d trapped me when the house shields went into lockdown. Gods alone knew what had been loosed inside the house when the shields broke, the reaction fire consuming all evidence and mopping me up if I’d survived.
Wait in the house, don’t answer the door. As advice goes, Japh, that was terrible.
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