Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Fine,” he finally said. “If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way we’ll play it.”

  “Good.” I looked up at Japhrimel, who was wearing a faintly startled expression. “Japhrimel?”

  He shrugged again, one of those faint, evocative movements. Nothing to add or subtract, and he wouldn’t talk to me in front of them. Fine.

  “Okay,” I said. “That about covers it. Let’s get moving.”

  Jace hitched himself up to his feet with a single measuring glance at Eddie. The Skinlin sat absolutely still, his eyes slitted, his hair tangling over his forehead. “I’ll start working on passports and supplies,” Jace said. “The staff will bring you breakfast, and whatever else you need.”

  I nodded.

  He strode from the room without giving me a second glance.

  Gabe whistled, shaking her head. “Are you crazy?” she said. “What if he’s still working for Santino?”

  “He’s not. If he was, we’d all be dead.” I sighed.

  “You’re letting him off easy,” Eddie snarled.

  I knew it. Ten years ago I might have gone after Jace just on principle. But I was just too tired. And the vision of all those canisters behind that glass shield, Santino’s claws skritching against the glass, wouldn’t go away. So much death, who was I to add to it? I was a Necromance. It was my job to bring people back. I was so tired of killing.

  “Danny?” Eddie snapped his fingers to get my attention. “You’re lettin’ him off easy. You should fuck him up at the least, break a few bones. He—”

  “Relax, Eddie,” Gabe broke in, reaching out with her bare toes to rub his knee. “She knows what she’s doing. The munitions aren’t for a frontal assault on Santino, are they, sweets?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “They’re for erasing whatever’s left of the Corvins from the face of the earth. And Jace is going to do it himself. If he fails, we don’t get any blowback, because Jace will be dead and his Family just another failed attempt at cutting out turf. If he succeeds, Santino doesn’t have a Mob Family to do his dirty work, I’m free of the Corvin Family for good—and Jace will owe me a big-ass favor, since he’ll be free too. Really free, not just street-war free.”

  “The golem’ai and the firestarters?” Eddie asked, comprehension dawning over his hairy face.

  I suppressed a shudder. The golem’ai— semisentient mud creatures a Skinlin could create from organic matter and pure magick—made my skin crawl. “Those,” I said, “are for Santino.”

  CHAPTER 40

  We had a nice, if hurried, breakfast; the thick Nuevo Rio coffee-with-chicory did a good deal to dispel the cobwebs and ease my pounding head. Japhrimel was oddly silent, watching me eat, occasionally walking to the window and gazing out, his hands clasped behind his back. I didn’t want to know. His silence seemed to infect all of us. Maybe there was just nothing left to say. The maids who came to clear away breakfast were both pale, their hands trembling, stealing little glances at me out of the corners of their eyes.

  I couldn’t even work up enough steam to care. You’d think they’d be used to psions, working for a Shaman.

  I finally sent Gabe and Eddie to do their work and yawned, looking down at my katana. Oddly enough, the blade didn’t seem to be reacting to Japhrimel’s presence—it should have been spitting glowing blue as it had every other time he’d touched it.

  Then again, after dealing with Santino and almost dying there was precious little Power left in the steel. I’d have to recharge before I could make my blade burn again. It was a kind of torture—the longer we waited, the more prepared we were to kick Santino’s ass, but the more time he had to dig himself into a bolthole it would cost us blood to crack.

  The door shut behind Eddie, and Japhrimel turned on his heel, sunlight falling into the bottomless dark of his coat.

  “Okay.” I slid my feet off the bed and stood up, the katana whirling in an ellipse that ended up with the blade safely tucked behind my arm, the hilt loosely clasped in my hand and pointed downward. “You’ve been acting weird, even for a demon. What’s up?”

  He shook his head, light moving over the planes of his face. I took a closer look.

  I’d thought he was plain, his face saturnine and almost ugly. I’d never noticed the exact arch of his eyebrows, his thin mouth half-quirked into a smile, or the high impossible arcs of his cheekbones. It was nothing to compare to Lucifer’s beauty, of course… but he was actually kind of easy on the eyes. “Spit it out,” I persisted. “You said you had something to discuss with me?” My bare feet curled against the hardwood floor, and I shivered. I was so used to the blanket of Nuevo Rio heat by now that the climate control was a little chilly.

  Japhrimel took one step toward me. Then another. His eyes burned, seeming to make the sunlight on his face slightly green.

  He approached slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, and finally ended up looming over me, less than a foot away. The musk smell of demon drenched me, his aura sliding over mine. I tilted my head back to look up into his face. “Well?”

  He shook his head again. Then he unclasped his hands. His left hand came up, cupped my right shoulder, heat scorching through the material of my shirt. His eyes caught mine.

  My heart gave a huge thudding leap. “Japhrimel?” I asked.

  He slid his left hand down my right arm, and his fingers curled over mine. He took the katana’s hilt from my hand, the sword chimed against the floor. I would have lunged for it, but his eyes held mine in a cage of emerald light. “Dante,” he answered.

  His voice was no longer the robotic, uninflected flatline it had been before. Instead, he sounded… husky, as if he had something caught in his throat. I blinked.

  “Are you—” I began to ask him if he was all right, but his eyes flared and the words died in my throat. He didn’t sound okay.

  Then, the crowning absurdity—he slowly, so slowly, dropped down to his knees, his hand still holding mine. He wrapped his other arm around me and buried his face in my belly.

  Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for this.

  I stood rigid, uncertain. Then I lifted my free hand, and smoothed the rough inky silk of his hair. “Japhrimel.” I said, again. “What—”

  “I failed,” he said, his breath blurring hot through my shirt to touch my skin. I barely understood him, his voice was so muffled; he pressed against me like a cat or a child. “I failed you.”

  “What are you talking about?” My own voice refused to work properly. Instead, I sounded like I had something lodged in my windpipe, strangling my words, making me breathless.

  He looked up, his arm still pressing me forward. “I knew you were not dead,” he said, his eyes blazing so brightly I almost expected to smell scorching in the air. “For I was not returned to Hell. Yet I did not know what Vardimal would do to you—keep you alive to torture you, or wait until I reached you before he killed you. I did not know, Dante. I failed to protect you, and you were taken.”

  “It’s all right,” I whispered. “Look, you couldn’t know they’d paste me with a plasgun bolt. Even you can’t outrun one of those. It’s not your fault, Japhrimel.”

  “I found myself faced with a vision of an existence without you, Dante. It was… unpleasant.” His lips peeled back from his teeth in a pained snarl that tried to be a smile.

  You will not leave me to wander the earth alone. His voice traced a rough line through my memory.

  I smoothed his hair. The inky darkness was silky, slightly coarse, slipping through my fingers. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s all right now.”

  I sounded awkward even to myself. He’s a demon, Danny. What is he doing?

  “You will hate me, Dante. It cannot be avoided.”

  A jagged laugh snapped out of me. “I don’t hate you,” I admitted. Great, Danny. He’s too old for you. He’s not even human.

  But he came for me, I protested.

  Only because he’s got a stake in this. He’s playing with y
ou, Danny. He’s playing. Nobody could ever—

  I don’t care, I thought. He doesn’t look like he’s playing. I don’t care. “But you’re a—”

  “You must know,” he said. “I am no longer demon.”

  What? I stared at him, my fingers stopping, curling into his hair. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I am no longer demon,” he repeated, slowly, looking up at me. He was queerly pale under the even golden tone of his skin. “I am Fallen. I am A’nankimel. I have set you as a seal upon my heart; I will not return to Hell.” His arm tensed, and so did his fingers holding my right hand.

  My mouth went dry. “Um,” was my utterly profound response.

  He waited, patient and expectant, staring up at my face.

  I regained the power of speech in a spluttering rush. “You mean… what do you… I mean, I… um, why do you… ah. What?”

  “I am yours,” he said, slowly, as if spelling it out for an idiot.

  “Why?” I could have kicked myself. How do I get in these situations? I’m chasing one demon and I have another kneeling at my feet and oh my dear gods, what am I going to do?

  “Because you are the only being in eternity who has treated me as an equal,” he said, his arm tightening a little more. My knees buckled slightly. “You have trusted me; you have even defended me to your precious friends. I have watched you, Dante, in daylight and in shadow, and I have found you fair.”

  “Um,” I said again. “Japhrimel—”

  “My price for silence to Lucifer is this: Do not send me from your side,” he whispered, still watching my face. “When you have killed Santino, allow me to remain with you.”

  “Um,” My brain seemed to be working through syrup. “Ah, well, you know, I can’t have a demon hanging around.”

  “Why not?” he asked, logically enough. “You court Death, Dante. You have found nothing to live for; you walk alone. I have seen your loneliness, and it gives me pain. Besides, it seems you are foolhardy enough to need me.”

  It occurred to me that I should protest about this, but it was hard to find an objection in the soup my brain had become. Common sense warned me to be cautious—after all, he was a demon, and demons lied. That was the first rule in Magi and Ceremonial training—beings that weren’t human had nonhuman ideas about the strict truth of any situation. What was in it for him?

  And yet… He had stood behind me when I faced Lucas Villalobos. He’d tried to follow me into Death. And he’d burned down damn near a third of Nuevo Rio looking for me.

  But Lucifer has him by the balls, too, I thought.

  “What about your freedom?” I finally asked him.

  “When we win my freedom, it is mine to do with as I will,” he said. “I will stay with you, Dante. As long as you allow it, and perhaps after.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking about it. I had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth. “Why now? Why tell me this now?”

  “I told you there was a way,” he said. “I wish to give you a part of my Power, Dante, and I must do it quickly, before I become more A’nankimel than I already am. It will bind me to your side and your world will become my domain. There is only a short time for me to bond with you before I fall into darkness and a mortal death.” His arm loosened a little, but I couldn’t have gotten away if I tried, because he rose to his feet, my right hand still trapped in his left. I had to tip my head back to look at him. My heart pounded and my palms slipped with sweat, and I had the lunatic idea that maybe I would start screaming, once I got my breath back. Something about his eyes was making it difficult to breathe.

  “Oh,” I said, and wished I hadn’t, because he smiled. It was a gentle smile, and my entire body seemed to recognize it.

  His free hand came up, cupped the side of my face. “Courage, hedaira,” he said, softly, his breath touching my cheek. Then he leaned down, and his mouth met mine.

  It’s said by the Magi that demons invented the arts of love, and I was tempted to believe it. The kiss tore through me, lightning filling my veins, the smell of him invading me, making me drunk. Blood-warm, his darkness folded around me, and I shuddered, my hands coming up and clasping behind his neck. My entire body arched toward his, he tipped me over onto the bed. I didn’t care.

  He bit his lip, and the smoke and spice of demon blood filled my mouth. I gasped for air, swallowing, choking on the scorching-hot fluid, his Power wrapped around us both. I was too far gone to think, nothing but a welter of sensation, my throat burning, eyes closed, his hands tearing at my clothes, finding bare skin and burning me all the way down to the bone. I cried out twice, shaking and shuddering, wet with sweat, my heart exploding inside my chest. And when he drove his body into mine I nearly lost consciousness, screaming, thrashing away from pleasure so intense it was like the chill-sweet darkness of Death. It was like dying, being held in his arms while the Power tore through me, remade me, and finally drove me down deep into twilight. Again.

  CHAPTER 41

  The soupy half-conscious daze lasted for a long time. I would surface for long enough to remember where I was—completely naked, in a demon’s arms, lying in one of Jace Monroe’s beds—and then my mind would shiver back into a kind of halfsleep. My entire body burned, changing. He held me when my bones crackled, shifting into new shapes; things moved under my skin, internal organs changing and moving, my heart pulsing lethargically. He murmured into my hair, his voice taking away the pain and bathing me in narcotic drowsiness.

  It ended with a final flush of Power that coated my skin, sealing me away. I came back to myself with a rush.

  Japhrimel lay next to me, my hair tangled over his face, my head pillowed on his shoulder. His fingers, no longer scorching-hot but merely warm, trailed up my back and I shuddered. “It’s done,” he whispered. For the first time, he sounded tired. Exhausted.

  “It hurt,” I said, childishly. That was the first shock—my voice wasn’t my own anymore. Instead, it was deeper, full of a casual power that gave me gooseflesh. Or would have given me gooseflesh, if my skin hadn’t been so—

  I looked at my hand. Instead of my usual paleness—a Necromance almost never went out in daylight unless forced to it—I found my hand covered with golden, poreless skin. My nails were still crimson and lacquered with molecule drip, I still wore my glittering rings, but that just made my hand look even more graceful and wicked. “Anubis,” I breathed. “What did you—”

  “I have shared my Power with you,” he said. “There was pain, but it’s over now. You share a demon’s gifts, Dante, though you are not demon yourself. You will never be a demon.”

  A kind of dark screaming panic welled up from behind my breastbone. But I was too tired—or not precisely tired. I was numb. Too much had happened, one shock after another. I was too emotionally drained to react to anything right now—and that was dangerous. Numb meant not thinking straight, and thinking straight was the only thing that was going to keep me alive. “You did what?”

  “You are still everything you were,” he pointed out. “Now you are simply more. And Vardimal will not be able to kill you so easily.”

  “Sekhmet sa’es—” I pushed myself up, trying to untangle my body from his. A few moments of confusion ended up with me sitting, the sheet clutched to my chest, staring at him. Bare, hairless, golden chest, his collarbones standing out, and behind him, glaucous darkness lay on the bed. So that’s why he never takes it off, I thought, and had to put my head down on my knees. They’re wings. Oh, my gods, they are wings— I hyperventilated for what seemed like ages, Japhrimel’s hand on my back, spread against my ribs. The heat from his touch comforted me, kept the gray fuzz of shock from blurring over my vision.

  Finally the panic retreated. But it was a long time before I looked up and found that the room was going dark. “How long has it been?” I asked.

  “Ten hours or so,” he replied. “It takes a short while for the changes to—”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” I said. “I wi
sh you’d warned me.”

  “You would not have allowed it if I had,” he pointed out. “And now you are safer, Dante.”

  “How safe?” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with a naked demon. Then another more terrible thought struck me. “Am I still a Necromance?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Or at least, I presume so.”

  “You presume so?” Okay, so maybe I wasn’t numb, just stunned. I stared at him, my breath coming fast and short. My heart pounded.

  No, not numb. Stunned, and numb, and terrified.

  “I presume so,” he said. Dark circles ringed his green eyes. “I have never done this before.”

  “Oh, great,” I mumbled, and looked down at the side of the bed. My clothes lay in a shredded heap. “Japhrimel—”

  “You could thank me,” he said, his eyebrows drawing together. “If you were a Magi—”

  “I’m not a Magi,” I interrupted. “I’m a Necromance. And I’m human.”

  “Not anymore,” he said shortly, and levered himself up from the bed. “I told you, I will not allow you to be harmed. I swore on the waters of Lethe.”

  “Shut up.” I bolted up from the bed, yanking the sheet with me. It tore right down the middle. I stood there, looking at the long scrap of green cotton clenched in my hand. “Gods,” I breathed, and then looked wildly around.

  I found myself across the room, with no real idea of how I’d gotten there. As a matter of fact, I collided with the wall, and plaster puffed out in a cloud. Faster than human, one part of me thought with chilling calm. I’m faster than human now. That will come in handy when I go after Santino.

  I untangled myself from the wall, shivering. Stared at my hands. My golden, perfect hands.

  “Why?” I whispered. “Gods above, why?”

  “I swore to protect you,” he answered. “And I will not let you leave me behind, Dante. No one, demon or human, has treated me with any kindness—except you. And even your kindness has thorns. Still—”