To Hell and Back dv-5

by Lilith Saintcrow

  "I was almost dead but I'd put up a hell of a fight. He was impressed, and offered me either a quick passing or service." McKinley shrugged. "I wasn't ready to die yet."

  I peeled a precut slice out of the golden wheel. Blew across the piece to cool it. "You know, you could give a demon lessons in not really answering the goddamn question."

  "My former lord wanted to kill the Eldest. We tried like hell, but we were only human, even with… modifications." He lifted his left hand slightly, laid it back to rest on the tabletop.

  I held the pizza, my mouth hanging open, for what seemed an eternity. Then I took a bite. Huh. "We meaning you and Vann?"

  "And a few others." His face changed, and he laid down the hunk of cheese. "They should be looking for you too. That's another reason why I'm worried."

  "Looking for me?"

  "Just like guardian angels, Valentine." He took a long pull of mineral water, washing some taste out of his mouth. "We had a perimeter set up in Toscano, keeping you under wraps."

  I was getting tired of my mouth hanging open in astonishment, so I took another bite. Hot tomato sauce, melted cheese, a little heavy on the oregano. The food helped, made me feel more solid. "I never knew."

  "'That was the idea," he replied in a stunningly good you are an idiot tone.

  I'd suspected something, of course. But I'd never had a whisper of anyone watching Japhrimel and me while I did my best to settle into a boring regular life, shopping for shadowjournals and antique furnishings, going for walks in the afternoon sun… and waking up screaming with Mirovitch's ka whispering inside my head, ripping and tearing as fingers of burning ectoplasm tried to claw down my throat and rape my mind.

  I shivered, dropped my pizza back down to its nest of plaswrap. The black hole in my head widened, echoes spilling through my skull.

  The scar in the hollow of my left shoulder twinged, warningly.

  "You okay?" McKinley eyed me.

  My shoulder twinged again, like a fishhook in flesh, plucking as it twitched. "Fine." I scooped up the pizza again and began wolfing without tasting it. I'd need fuel, no matter what happened next. "You know," I said between bites, wiping tomato sauce away from my lips, "I don't think I should stay up here like a princess in a pea, or whatever. I think we should wander around this place and peek at what the demons are doing."

  McKinley choked on a bite of baguette. His black eyes got very wide. "Why not just get the hell out of here?"

  I settled down to the rest of my pizza. "Because without Japhrimel, you and I are both dead out there. This isn't just a papercut to Lucifer. I threw down a challenge big-time. I'm sure the Hegemony would love to get their hands on me too. I'm too hot to handle now — but I don't trust demons either, even if they have good reasons to protect me. I'm getting to where I don't trust anyone, not even myself. So I want to look around where I've landed." Besides, I can't take being cooped up in this tower.

  I felt horribly naked, even with all the demon shielding on the walls. I also felt filthy, messy, ugly, and the slightest bit shaky. I itched for some kind of action — sparring, or a hard clean fight. Something to get rid of the bright red ribbon of rage under the surface of my thoughts, growing in increments, pressing against the confines of my temper.

  A shadow fell over the kitchen door, and I knew who it was even before she appeared. I smelled her, a smell that was quickly growing unique, impressing itself on my sensitive nose.

  McKinley's chair scraped as he bolted to his feet, the color draining from his cheeks and turning him wheypale as the scorch of a demon filled the air. I finished the last two bites of crust, and Eve folded her arms, smiling that imperturbable smile. Her clotted-ice hair touched her shoulders, almost writhing with life, and her gasflame eyes passed over me in a long arc.

  "I see you found your provisions. I thought it best not to ask you to dinner with our other guests."

  I licked my fingers. "Charmed. I could probably eat my way through here in an hour or so. But I was thinking of looking around, seeing what your setup is here."

  A slim shoulder lifted, dropped. She wore blue, again, an indigo cable-knit sweater and slacks that had to be designer, the same pair of low Verano heels. Nothing but the best for this demon.

  I found myself searching her face again for any echo of Doreen, comparing her to what she had looked like, the glamour that had fooled me into… what? Going up against the Devil? I'd've done it anyway. It wasn't like Lucifer was going to leave me alone.

  "If there is time," she finally answered.

  I deliberately didn't reach for Fudoshin's hilt. The Knife hummed against my hip. "What's going on? Where's Kgembe?" The scar twined again, and began to tingle — not the numb prickle of Japhrimel elsewhere, but a waking-up feeling.

  I hoped it was what I thought it was.

  "The Magi has disappeared — wise of him, I think. We have planned a council of war, and I thought to request your presence. Several of my allies have found themselves recently freed from Hell." A slight tilt of her head, like a servomotor on jeweled bearings, a graceful oiled inhuman movement.

  "Fancy that. War, huh?" Well, what else would you call this, Danny? "When?"

  "Tonight. At dusk. It's traditional. May I count on your presence?"

  I nodded, my hair moving uneasily on my scalp. I was suddenly aware of how I must look — dirty, bled on and air-dried, and probably just two short steps away from crazed. "You can."

  "Very well." She turned on her heel, sharply, without even deigning to look in McKinley's direction.

  "Eve." If that's even your name. She halted, her narrow back to me.

  "You can put that face back on. If you want. The one that looks like Doreen." I might even find it easier.

  She paused for just the barest of seconds. "Why? This is what I am, Dante."

  I might find it a little easier to look at you. Or then again, I might not. "You were human. At least partly." Not just human. She'd been a little girl.

  A child I had been unable to save.

  "Nothing of humanity survives Hell's fires." No shrug, just a simple statement of fact. Fresh dawning light ran along the snakes of her hair, touched the supple curve of her hip under the sweater's hem, and cringed away from something that didn't belong in this world.

  I let her kiss my cheek, once. I got so close to her I could smell her, feel her heat. The thought sent a shiver through me. Had it just been that she looked like Doreen? Was there any truth to her claim that I was part of the genetic mix used to make her?

  How else had she found me? "What about what you got from me? Doesn't that count?"

  "It matters as little or as much as you want to make it matter. You're still the only mother I have."

  McKinley made a restless movement. Maybe he wanted to argue.

  "I can't hold a gun to your head and make you human." I can't even do that to myself.

  "If you could, would you?" She still didn't turn around, and her tone was excessively gentle.

  "No." It came out immediately, without thought. "I wouldn't."

  "Why?"

  Because that's not the way I play, goddammit. "Just because. It wouldn't change anything."

  She turned back, slowly, letting the light play over each feature, each hill and valley geometrically just a little off, altered. "I cannot afford to be too human. Not with him to slay, and all of us to save — and your lover, ally or not, to reckon with." As usual, her face twisted slightly when she referred to Lucifer, her lip lifting and nose wrinkling. I watched, fascinated. It was a curiously immature movement, like a teen sucking on bitter algae candy.

  My right hand fell limp at my side, no longer aching for the feel of a hilt and a blade cutting flesh. The ribbon of rage shrank, just a little bit.

  "But as human as I can be, I will be in your honor, my mother." A slight little bow, her icy hair falling forward over slim shoulders, and then she was gone, the sunlight falling through where she'd stood as the sound of her footsteps — too light and quick to
be human, and faintly wrong in the gait as well — retreated down the hall.

  The scar began to burn, faintly at first, heat working through its numbness. A candleflame moving closer and closer to the flesh, a spot of warmth.

  I found my right hand hovering over my dirty shoulder, fingertips aching for the feel of the ropy scar twisting and bumping under my touch.

  "Valentine — " McKinley began.

  "Shut up." I sounded strained and unnatural even to myself. "Just eat. I'm going to get cleaned up."

  Chapter 31

  Dying sunlight turned bloody in the west, and the room was long and wide, windowless, and full of movement that stopped the moment I stepped over the threshold. Plain white walls vibrated with demon warding, and the long, slim, highly polished table running down the center was full of demons.

  I froze.

  At the head of the table Eve straightened, pushing back her pale ropes of hair. The plunging inside my stomach turned into a full-fledged barrel roll with dynos straining.

  The room full of demons turned still and trembling as a pool of quicksilver on a level surface, twitching with Power as each of them turned their lambent eyes on me.

  Tall or short, most slender and golden-skinned, but each with that aura of difference demons carry. They are not beautiful or ugly, though some of them are bizarre in the extreme. It's that breath of alienness that makes the human mind shiver when looking at them.

  They were all of the Greater Flight. There was no mistaking it. To my left, dozing in a corner, two hellhounds slumped together, sleeping, their obsidian limbs splayed in a caricature of relaxation. From under one eyelid, a sliver of orange peeked — not sleeping, then.

  A prickling shiver ran through my entire body, and I was suddenly very sure that I wanted to see Japhrimel again.

  Right fucking now.

  "Dante." Eve's voice stroked each exposed edge, from the table to the ceiling, and a breath of baking bread and fresh musk reached me. The smell of an Androgyne. Like Lucifer.

  My stomach heaved, the black hole in my head pulsing and straining until I could push it down, lock it away. I swallowed with difficulty and met her eyes again.

  I found myself relieved she hadn't taken on Doreen's face again after all. There was no denying the demon in her. Even the way she held herself, completely still, as if liquid grace had frozen itself at one particular point in a dance.

  "Gentlemen," she continued, "I present to you Dante Valentine, the Eldest's hedaira, and the Key to the throne of Hell."

  I wondered if I should take a bow.

  "What nonsense are you speaking?" This voice, from a demon with dappled, mottled skin like the side of a painted pony, was a knife against the skin after the soft restfulness of Eve's. "This is the Eldest's whore, and our hostage."

  A ripple ran through the assembled demons. One at my end of the table, a tall sharp-faced male with a shock of black thistledown hair, tensed as if to rise to his feet. He wore white, rags fluttering as his fingers curled around the edge of the table, and my awareness centered on him, my hand itching for the swordhilt again.

  When Eve spoke I almost twitched.

  "Zaj." The single word was loaded with gunpowder threading through the softness of her tone. The shortening of a demon's name sounded like a weapon in her mouth. "Our plan requires the Key. Without the Key, we could not retrieve the Knife. Without the Knife, there is no challenge we can make to Lucifer that will not end in our death or capture. With Dante's help, we can rob Lucifer of the greatest support of his regime — the Eldest's loyalty. And with the Knife, there is hope for us to topple Lucifer, or simply reach a treaty with him that he dares not break."

  "You are a fool. No demon can wield the Knife. ' The mottled demon's chair grated along parquet as he rose slowly to his feet, his bright blue burning eyes fixed on me. My skin chilled, my throat going dry, and I was vaguely aware of McKinley moving closer to me, his peculiar null aura contracting.

  "She is not demon. What does the riddle say? The hand that can hold the Knife has faced fire and not been consumed, has walked in death and returned, a hand given strength beyond its ken. So spoke IIvarimel's hedaira, in the Temple of the White-Walled City, before she died at the hands of the Kinslayer." Eve turned away from the table, passing the high-backed chair, pacing to the wall and staring at its smooth white gleam. The warding sunk into the walls trembled under her attention, my knees echoing that tremor.

  Well, that's bad poetry. Why didn't anyone ever tell me about this before?

  "Who fits this description, Zaj?" Eve's voice was soft. "Who has escaped fire, walked in Death, and been given strength beyond a mortal's ken by the first Fallen in millennia? If you have another candidate who fits the bill, feel free to produce them for our study and illumination."

  Zaj dropped back into his chair, still staring at me. I didn't like the look on his broad face. Neither did I like the increasing sense of motion threading through the other demons present. Their faces ran like ink on wet paper, because I couldn't make my eyes focus on one of them — too busy trying to watch them all.

  You'd think this sort of thing would seem almost normal to me by now. Dark hilarity welled up in my throat, was shoved down with hysterical strength.

  "You think she can wield the Knife." This demon, halfway down the table, was dressed all in fluttering red, long sleeves and a minstrel's dreamy face marred by the thin crimson lines of what looked like tribal tattoos swirling across his cheeks. His eyes were scarlet drops with black teardrops painted over them, I stared at the sharpness of his white teeth against golden skin and scarlet markings. He looked oddly familiar.

  I am not thinking clearly. I am not even close to thinking clearly.

  Increasing heat mounted through the lines of the scar on my left shoulder. I touched the Knife, buzzing in its hilt strapped to my rig, and the demons went still, each pair of lambent eyes fixed on me.

  Maybe taking it out of my bag hadn't been such a great idea, after all. On the other hand, if any of them came at me -

  Another demon, with a veil of gold tissue over its head and the shadow of something under it I had no desire to see, let out a slow hiss, like an adder swelling with poison. "I applaud our leader for her show of strength." Its voice loaded the sibilants with toxic strength. "What precisely are we discussing?"

  "Rebellion, and the death of the Prince of Hell." This, from the crimson-painted demon. Its voice was strangely sexless, a high clear tone like glass under moonlight. "That is what we are speaking of, is it not?"

  With a whole bunch of you guys for backup, it might even be possible. Myentire body was a block of numb ice. My stomach filled with uneasy, unsteady loathing.

  I hoped my eyes weren't the size of plates. "Sounds great." I spoke before Eve could, my mouth bolting the way it always does. "I'm all for it. When do we start?"

  "You see?" Eve whirled away from the wall, her hair swinging in a heavy pale wave of ropes. "A hedaira does not fear him. Why should we of the Greater Flight fear him, when we have the means to make the Eldest behave — or at least remain neutral? If we are allied with the holder of the Knife of Sorrow, we have the upper hand."

  "None have ever successfully challenged the Prince." A demon with fat yellow tentacled dreadlocks leaned slightly aside in his chair, his fingertips drumming the tabletop in one smooth arc. He had eight fingers on his right hand, and I stared at the muscle working in his slim forearm. "Still, we have come this far. It is logical for us to pursue our course." He paused, his fingers drumming down again, eight beats marking off time. "After all, he will not forgive us. Are we resigned to death?"

  "He will suspect our intentions, and send someone to collect the Knife." This from a tall, thin demon whose face was hidden under the hood of a gray cloak, the material shifting oddly as it twitched.

  Eve's eyes met mine. "He did. But we had our own viper in the heart of that mission. Any other demon he sends will meet a harsh fate."

  "Our own viper?" Zaj's eyebrow did
n't lift, but he sounded skeptical. "This little thing?"

  I could not look away from Eve's face. My heart thudded thinly, and I was suddenly aware of sweat prickling under my arms and at the small of my back. It took a lot of effort to make me sweat, a half-hour of hard sparring at least — or a room full of demons.

  Go figure.

  "She has been far more successful than any of you, has she not? And as long as we hold the allegiance of this Necromance, we hold the allegiance of her Fallen. If you do not respect her might, I should hope you are not stupid enough to disregard his." Eve's voice was very soft. "We do have your allegiance, do we not, Dante?"

  Silence. Every eye in the place on me. McKinley shuffled slightly, near the door. I wondered if the coppery smell of fear riding the air was from him — or from me.

  It came from that black place in me, the thing I didn't want to remember. The rush and crackle of flame filled my veins, a lioness's head lifting behind my eyes, Her face full of bloody light.

  The world turned over, ramming me back into myself with a concussive internal blast. I almost staggered, caught myself. Air scorched my lungs as I let out the breath I'd been holding, returning to my skin with a rush of certainty. "You told me you wanted me to set myself up against the Prince of Hell. Here I am. That son of a bitch has messed with me for the last time."

  "And your Fallen?" Eve persisted, but she looked pleased. A slight cruel smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and my face felt so numb I couldn't tell if I was copying the expression — or if she'd stolen it from my face.

  "He's with me." My throat was dry; but the words were soft, husky, laden with promise.

  "You are certain?"

  Don't ask me that. I'm pretty certain, but he's pulled fast ones on me before. I searched her face, finding only the taint of demon overlaying her skin with a high gloss, covered with the dark hood of my own guilt at not being able to save her from Lucifer in the first place. There were so many I had failed to save — Lewis, Doreen, Jace, Eddie, Gabe… the list stretched on. My arms and legs were frozen, my face a stiff mask.