The bartender, a stolid heavy Freetowner with a long, drooping black moustache, closed his mouth and wiped his hands on his apron. I felt no gratitude or relief.
Lucas had his back to the wall. There was nothing I could do—I slid into the other side of the booth, my back prickling at the thought of the door behind me. It was an implicit gesture of trust. Lucas wouldn’t get many clients if he let them get shot in the bars he frequented. He was known for taking difficult, complex jobs most generally involving assassination; if you had enough cash to hire him, he would kill whoever you asked. He only had one rule—no kids. He wouldn’t kill anyone under eighteen.
At least, not unless they got in the way during a job. I’d heard unavoidable casualties didn’t bother him too much.
His eyes met mine. A river of scarring ran down the left side of his narrow face. I shivered. Word was—now, this is only pure rumor, I don’t know for sure—that he’d once been a Necromance, and committed some act so awful Death had denied him.
I couldn’t imagine. To be a Necromance, to be protected by Death, and to have that protection snatched away; to be able to see other psions but unable to touch, unable to perform in that space where a Necromance is most fiercely alive… that would be torture. I could have pitied him, if he wasn’t so dangerous.
He examined me, blinking slowly like a lizard. His almost-yellow eyes brightened a little, and his lipless mouth curled up slightly. “Well,” he said, lifting one finger and tapping his ruined cheek. “You come up in the world, chica.” He used the same whispery tone most professional Necromances adopt after a while. Or maybe it could have just been something wrong with his throat. Sometimes a whisper’s more effective than a shout for scaring the blue lights out of people.
I felt a prickle between my shoulderblades. Did not look back over my shoulder, did not dare even shift my weight. “I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.”
“I’d know that tat anywhere. You still move the same, too.” His hair lay lank against his skull. He smelled, as usual, of a dry stasis-cabinet, and I realized it wasn’t a human smell. Whatever he’d once been, he wasn’t strictly human now. “You owe me.”
I’d bargained with him in Nuevo Rio, while hunting Santino. “You turned down payment that time,” I reminded him. Shivered at the thought of paying him what he usually asked of a psion. There was a reason most of his clients were corporations and Mob Families. I heard he even did secret work for the Hegemony sometimes. “You thought I was dead.”
His face didn’t alter in the least, his expression was blank uninterested boredom. “Ain’t you? I don’t see much of what you once was in your face, Valentine.”
A hot plasburst of relief exploded in my stomach. So he did know who I was, he wasn’t just bluffing. Or if he was bluffing, he’d bluffed right. “Every day is a death,” I quoted, tapped my fingers on the table. “I’ve got a question and an offer for you, Lucas.”
He looked at me for a long time. There was a time when I would have raised my sword between me and his gaze, a time when the demon Japhrimel had been melded to my shadow while I faced down Lucas and I’d been damn glad of the backup. Now I held his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t see how desperate I was. I kept my thumb on my katana’s guard and my right hand near the hilt, just in case. I might be almost-demon, but Lucas was truly dangerous. They don’t call him the Deathless for nothing.
He finally scooped up the bottle, lifted it to his lips, took a swig. Set it down with a precise little click. “What you want, chica?”
Relief, sharp and acrid. I didn’t let it show. He wasn’t averse to bargaining, or being hired. Maybe I could pull this off. “Are you afraid of demons?”
That won a small whistling wheeze from him, Villalobos’s version of a laugh. I watched his face crinkle, scarred flesh pleating. “They die just like everythin’ else,” he finally whispered.
I’m not even going to ask you how you know that. “All right. How would you like to work for the Devil, Lucas Villalobos? The Prince of Hell?”
He measured me for a long moment. “You’re fucking serious?”
I held his eyes for longer than I would have thought possible. “I’m fucking serious. Pay’s negotiable; the boss is a bitch, but you get to kill things the like of which you’ve never seen before.” At least I hope you’ve never seen them before. Or maybe I hope you have, and you know what to do to keep me alive.
He thought about it. I hoped he was tempted, too.
Dante Valentine, alive despite demons for maybe a little while longer, tempting a man who couldn’t die. I thought temptation was a demon trick.
Maybe I’d learned it from the best.
“Pay’s negotiable?”
I set my jaw, stared into his eyes, and nodded. “Negotiable, Lucas. What do you want?”
The faint twitch at the corner of his eye warned me. I slapped his hand aside, locking his wrist, the knife buried itself into the table. I found myself sitting across from him, my slim golden fingers locked in a vise around his hand on the knife.
Lucas Villalobos smiled, the river of scarring down one side of his face wrinkling. He hadn’t meant to attack me, just see if I was on my toes. His other hand was loosely clasped around the bottle.
I’ve never seen anyone human move that fast. If I squeezed, I could probably break a bone or two in his hand, and my fingers would sink into plasteel if I extended my claws.
His pupils dilated, turning his almost-yellow eyes a darker shade. “What’s the job?” he whispered. His skin was dry and surprisingly fine, but I could feel the tense humming strength in his arm. No, he wasn’t human anymore.
If he ever was. It’s only rumor when it comes to him, Danny. Be careful.
I took a deep breath. “Keep me alive long enough to kill four Greater Flight demons, and be my eyes and ears.” I quelled the urge to look behind me. The mark on my shoulder was soft heat now, wrapping around me, each pulse of Power sliding through my veins and bones. Distracting—but I could use the Power. Was Japhrimel tracking me even now?
Oh, gods, I hope so.
Lucas made that whistling, wheezing sound again, as if he was being slowly strangled. “You’re never boring,” he said in a low, choked voice. “Let’s go out the back door.”
Relief made me feel a little weak, but I didn’t look away. “What do you want in return, Lucas?”
“The usual.” His mouth twitched. “Or I’ll think of somethin’ else.”
Oh, gods. Gods above. My skin seemed to chill. But here was an opportunity, and he was definitely the lesser of two evils. I was slightly nauseated at the thought of what I was about to agree to.
Slightly? More than slightly. But when it comes to a choice between nausea and dying in some hideous way, I’ll take a little bit of indigestion.
“Done.” My voice husked through the word, like sodden silk dipped in honey. “One thing.” I paused, my hand still clasped around his. The knife creaked in the tabletop, a muttering tide of whispers rising through the pivnice. The town would soon be buzzing with the news that Villalobos had found a new client. “What are you doing in New Prague?”
He rasped out a laugh. I wasn’t sure I liked being the butt of Lucas Villalobos’s humor. “Abracadabra.” He pulled a wad of rumpled New Credits from his pocket and tossed a few on the table. “I was in Saint City way; she told me to go to New Prague and you’d find me. Bad news always turns up. I owed her a favor.”
The Spider of Saint City wasn’t quite a friend, but she wasn’t an enemy either. We’d done each other some good turns in the past—and she had warned me about Santino and given me the direction to track him. So she’d used a favor to send Lucas to me, which meant I owed her now.
Oddly enough, I found myself not minding. And unsurprised that Abra knew I’d turn up in New Prague. I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but she wasn’t human either, and she always seemed to know far more than she should even with her thriving trade in information.
But there might be more to this. �
�What were you doing visiting Abra?” I loosened my fingers, and he worked the knife free of the tabletop and made it vanish back into his clothing. I watched, but he didn’t so much as twitch toward another weapon.
“I drop in every twenty years or so. Nice to have a client that doesn’t age.” He stood up, and I slid out of the booth as well. Now I could see he was only about three inches taller than me (instead of the five-inch edge he used to have), and bandoliers still crisscrossed his narrow chest. He wore a blousy cotton shirt, yellow with age, and old broken-in jeans. The heels of his boots were worn down. “Let’s go, Valentine. From now until the fourth demon’s dead, I’m your new best friend.”
I let out a sound that wasn’t quite a sigh. Lucas was a viper, deadly and unpredictable—but if he said he was my man, it was a bargain. Villalobos didn’t back down from his word. He still scared the hell out of me, but if you’re facing down a clutch of demons you could do worse than have the Deathless on your side.
Chapter 15
When you spend decades doing assassinations, it pays to have a bolthole in a major city or two. I was just glad Villalobos had one here.
I followed his shuffling feet and slumped shoulders through twisting narrow streets in the Old Town, marking each turn in a Magi-trained memory that has seen many cities; it’s amazing how much they start to look alike after a while.
We ducked down an alley and into the sewers through the basement of a crumbling building that now housed a colony of slicboard couriers, Neoneopunk music pounding through the air and the sharp smell of Czechi cooking filling my nose, sparking hunger. I already had a good basic grasp of the shadow side of the city after my six-bar odyssey. Now Lucas took me underneath.
Here under the Stare Mesto, water dripped in chilly rivulets down stone, twisting its dark way from the rounded ceilings of the old sewers. Lucas pressed the scanlock on the round door, after making sure we weren’t followed by doubling back a few times.
Claustrophobia filled my throat with acid and made my heart pound. I didn’t say a word. The door creaked open. I lose a lot of my sense of direction underground, but I was fairly sure I could make it to the surface and give anyone chasing me a good run. If I didn’t expire of hyperventilation when the walls started to close in on me. I do not do well with closed spaces; most psions don’t. I have memories that don’t help either, memories of the Faraday cage in the sensory-deprivation vault under Rigger Hall, where the darkness was like worms eating the foundations of my mind and the air itself turned to solid glass, choking and slick.
Better claustrophobic than dead. I can live with an awful lot when demons are trying to kill me.
Beyond the door, mellow full-spectrum light played over wood and tile. I stepped through the round hole and let out a soft breath of wonder.
Lucas’s lair in New Prague was in a long, vaulted chamber, well insulated from psychic or physical attack. If I knew Lucas, there would be a few little surprises hidden in the room, as well as quick ways to get out that didn’t involve the front door. But for a moment, I simply stopped to admire as he closed the door behind us.
I saw two beautifully restrained maplewood tables with the distinctive den Jonten curve to their legs. A restrained red Old Perasiano rug, a Silbery lamp. A near-priceless Mobian print—a naked man sitting on a wooden table, his legs pulled up and head resting on his knees, a tattoo of a scorpion on his bicep straining against the skin—hung on the wall over two low, graceful Havarack chairs.
I remembered a different Mobian print, the one hanging in Polyamour’s house in Saint City. A sudden, intense longing to see the noodle shop on Pole Street, or Gabe’s house on Trivisidiro, or even Abra’s pawnshop, stole the breath from my lungs. I’d lived in Saint City nearly all my life.
My human life, that was. Now that I had no chance of getting there, I found myself longing to go back.
Lucas paused behind me.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I like Mobian.”
“Valuable,” he returned dismissively. “Sit down. You hungry?”
I was starving. I was lucky to be able to fuel myself with human food instead of sex or blood, but I hadn’t had the chance to eat as much as I’d’ve liked. “Yeah.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat, Lucas.
“There’s a kitchen through there. Help yourself. I’m going to go bounce through town and see if anyone’s looking for you, pick up a few things.” I heard him moving behind me, my back prickled. Lucas Villalobos is behind me. I can’t see what he’s doing.
I nodded, turning slowly to face him, telling the ridiculous jolt of panic to go away. He wasn’t going to stab me in the back, or at least, I didn’t think he would. Instead, he was planning on doing what I would have done if our situations were reversed, checking to see if there was any static on the new client. “Is there another exit?” I asked. “In case the front door’s compromised?”
He studied me for a long few moments, his almost-yellow eyes empty of all expression. I suppressed a shiver. I was crazy, contracting Lucas to help me; still, a man who couldn’t be killed was far from the worst ally when it came to dealing with demons. I had no choice.
Dammit, Dante, quit being such a whiner. Until Japh finds you, you’re on your own.
He nodded. “Come over here.”
Behind a painted Cho-nyo screen he showed me a small depression in the tiles, just big enough for a hand. It triggered a slice of the wall to swing inward, and if you were quick, you could drop down into another tunnel that would take you to the surface. Push the door closed from the other side, and nobody would be the wiser. “But be careful, it’s slippery.” It hurt to hear him talk. He sounded like he had a lung infection, wheezing out the words.
“Good enough. Thank you, Lucas.”
He gave another whistling, snorting laugh. “Don’t thank me, Valentine. I’m only taking this because I’m fuckin’ curious.”
“About what?” I followed him out from behind the screen and almost to the door. Our footsteps echoed, and I was suddenly cold, thinking of when he shut that door and I was alone. Underground. In a windowless room. Oh, gods.
“Maybe the Devil can kill me,” Lucas Villalobos said, triggering the scanlock on the door. “The gods know I’ve waited long enough.”
Chapter 16
The kitchen was where he said it was, and down a short hall was a bathroom and—oh, Anubis—a tiny womblike bedroom. I looked longingly at the plain missionary-style bed, exhaustion weighing me down. It was the first time in my life I’d faced Lucas Villalobos without feeling almost too terrified to talk.
I suppose that possibly losing your ex-demon-soon-to-be-real-demon-again boyfriend and fighting off a three-balled imp behind a hovertrain—not to mention getting your house shattered and blown up—would make anyone a little too worn out to feel the proper fear when facing the man Death had denied. Besides, I was different now. Tougher than a human, capable of taking more damage.
For how much longer, though? If Japhrimel was a citizen of Hell again, was I going back to being a human? I wouldn’t have thought a genetic remodel like mine could be undone, but demons have been tinkering with genetics for so long I wouldn’t put much past them. Some people even say demons might have been responsible for humanity’s evolution, but nobody likes to think about that particular theory. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Japh had changed me in the first place, after all. Reversing the change might not be so big a deal to him. It might even happen just-because.
I sighed, rubbing at my temple with my right hand. This was getting ridiculous.
Ridiculous or not, you need to rest so you can think. So just settle down, sunshine. Relax. Wait for Lucas to come back.
My hunger was sharp, but Lucas’s taste ran to heatsealed meals. They taste like cardboard and sit in the stomach like bowling balls, not providing enough in the way of nutrition—especially for my metabolism. So I did the next best thing, dragged two blankets from the bed behind the Cho-nyo screen and propped myse
lf up against the wall, my right hand loose around my swordhilt. I closed my eyes, listening to the quiet. I rarely if ever heard complete silence, being a child of the urban age. Being underground meant the psychic noise of so many people was shut out. The only thing left was Power itself, filtering in through the ground like water, and the peculiar directionless static that meant “you’re underground.”
Maybe I’ll have to go to ground like an animal for the next seven years. The prospect was alternately comforting and horrifying, depending on whether my eyes were open or closed.
I dozed in Lucas Villalobos’s lair, feeling a little safer now. Time slid away as I tipped my head against the wall, the back of my neck curiously naked. I hadn’t had my hair this short since Rigger Hall. I shivered, thinking of that place again. Afterward, in the Academy, I’d started growing my hair out almost immediately. It was messy to dye to fit in with Necromance professional codes—codes dating back to the Parapsychic Act, to present a united front to the world and make us instantly recognizable—but when Japhrimel had changed me, my hair had turned the same inky black as his.
I was back to Japhrimel again.
Stay inside. Don’t open the door. Do not doubt me, no matter what.
I’d walked into that church and faced Lucifer with him. My mind kept pawing lightly at the memory—the speaking in their demonic language, the maneuvering me into the position of having to agree… and here I was, almost everything I owned in the world gone in a reaction fire and demons chasing me down. I was damn lucky that I’d only tangled with one imp so far—an imp Japhrimel hadn’t attacked and exhausted first, like he’d done with Santino. I was damn lucky to be alive on both counts.
Some demon somewhere knew what Lucifer had bargained me into doing and was looking to get the first shot in. It was predictable—after all, I was the weakest link in the chain leading to the Devil, especially if Japh was a full-fledged demon again. If they killed me messily enough, like a Mob turf hit, it might be a statement to other demons looking to rebel. If Lucifer couldn’t even keep one lousy human alive, his reputation would take a hit, and Hell might get even harder to control.
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