Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I shrugged, remembered she couldn’t see the motion. Slid out of my coat, hung it up on the peg by the door, and undid my rig with the clumsy fingers of my right hand. “My back, whatever else. Like usual. Just work your magic, that’s all.”

  Sierra cocked her pale pixie head, listening as I hung my bag and my rig up. “Cordite,” she noted mildly. “And I can smell that sweet stuff. You got clipped?”

  I found myself smiling again. I could remember going months without smiling, before Rio. “You’re amazing. Yeah, I’m a little dirty. Sorry.” I leaned down, working my boots off with my right hand, then padded to the table in my sock feet. “Do you mind?”

  If I had still been fully human, I would have had to chemwash to get the blood off. As it was, only my clothes were bloody; my skin had absorbed the thick black ichor. She, like all psions, could see the staining of black-diamond fire in my aura, marking me as something close to demon; she never asked me to chemwash, figuring whatever communicable nasties I had weren’t dangerous to her. It was open wounds she had to watch out for, and I didn’t have any of those.

  Not on the outside, anyway.

  “Of course not. Your back, you said. What about that left shoulder of yours?”

  I reached up with my right hand, touched my shirt over the mark. “Leave that alone for right now.” It was the standard answer, and as usual, she accepted it gracefully.

  I stripped down, left my clothes on the straight-backed chair set to the side, and eased myself onto the thigh-high table, squirming onto my belly while Sierra pulled the sheet up over me. I’d told her she didn’t have to leave while I disrobed, most psions are pretty comfortable with nakedness. I wasn’t precisely uncomfortable, but taking her up on her offer to give me privacy while I undressed seemed weak. I fitted my face into the facecradle, seeing the carpet below me in the flickering wash of candlelight and my braid swinging to the side, and let out an involuntary sigh.

  “I live for that sound.” She folded the sheet down low on my hips. The bolster went underneath my ankles to take the stress off my lower back, and I sighed again. “Ooh, twice. Must have been a hard month.”

  “Yeah. Couple of bounties.” I closed my eyes as she rubbed her hands together, heating them up, the warm good smell of almond oil blooming. She didn’t scent the oil, for which I was grateful.

  “Always working.” She laid her hands flat on my back, one right between my shoulder blades, the other at the base of my spine. A few moments of pressure, then she rocked me back and forth a little, gauging the way my body mass responded. “Too tense, Danny. When are you going to learn to loosen up?”

  “Perfectly flexible,” I muttered. “Got to work to pay you, sweets.”

  It wasn’t true, I had enough money now. I had all the money I could ever want. I didn’t need the bounty fees. But oh, gods, I did need the bounties.

  She moved to the head of the table. Then what I’d been waiting for… she leaned in and smoothed both her hands down on either side of my spine, digging into my muscles under the tough, perfect golden skin. I let out another sigh. Her hands were cool and forgiving, my skin warmer than hers because of the hiked metabolism. I shivered with delight as she started the usual routine, kneading at me. My right hand relaxed and dangled off the table as I let go, fraction by fraction, Sierra’s hands seeking out knots and nodes of tension.

  Gabe had bought me my initial consultation with Sierra, and I’d thought it a frivolous gift even after she bullied and dragged me to the red-painted door at the appointed time. The first two-hour massage had ended with me in a languid puddle, more relaxed than I could ever remember. I’d gone home whistling, arrived at my door in the closest thing to a good mood I’d had since before Rio, and promptly burst into tears on my way upstairs. Thank the gods Jace had been out shopping for groceries. I’d locked myself in the bathroom and had a completely uncharacteristic fit of sobbing, then took a long hot shower. As dawn had risen through my bedroom window, I had fallen asleep for the first time in weeks, a thin restless troubled sleep but sleep nonetheless.

  That did it, I was hooked. I came back once a month unless I was on a bounty, and each time it was the same: her delicate iron fingers digging into me, smoothing me out. Hers was a touch I didn’t have to fend off or worry about what it cost me. I paid her, she touched me, it was that simple. Even and uncomplicated.

  Why couldn’t everything be like that?

  “Are you staying in town long?” Her voice was soft, if I chose not to talk she would be silent.

  “A while. Don’t know when the next bounty’s coming up.” I felt the involuntary quiver go through me. She must have, too, because her touch gentled.

  “Too much pressure?”

  You couldn’t hurt me if you tried, Shaman. At least, not without steel or a plasgun and a whole lot of luck. “No. Not too much.” I wish I knew exactly what I was. I wish Japhrimel would have had time to tell me.

  There I was again, thinking about him. I let out a long soft breath, keeping my eyes closed. “Just thinking,” I explained, grudgingly.

  “About?” Again, the soft tone; if I parried the question she’d let it drop.

  About a demon. About a Fallen demon, a dead demon, that I only knew for a short time but I can’t stop thinking about. He won’t leave me alone. And neither will the only other man I ever loved, the one that betrayed me so honorably. A ghost I can’t have and a man I can’t touch, and skipping from bounty to bounty isn’t helping any. “About the past.”

  A soft laugh. She kept working at my back, smoothing down the muscles, moving to one side or the other and using her elbow or the flat of her forearm, her entire weight pressing down through tough skin. “Never a comfortable subject.”

  That’s the understatement of the year, sunshine. “No.” I shifted in the facecradle a little, the emerald grafted into my cheek digging into my flesh. She moved to my legs, flipping the sheet aside, and I swallowed dryly.

  “You have great skin.” Tactful of her to change the subject. The spicy smell of kyphii was stronger now, reminding me of Gabe’s house. Gabe loved burning that stuff. “Lucky girl.”

  “Mh.” A noncommittal sound in reply. She took the hint and the rest of the massage was spent in blissful silence on her side and increasingly ill-tempered brooding on mine.

  It was the bounties that were bothering me, I tried to tell myself. Jace was beginning to look a little ragged. Ten bounties in under six months, none of them cakewalks, and he hadn’t uttered a word of protest. Not only that, but he’d insisted on coming along, and I’d caved each time. Allowing it, expecting it, treating him as if it was the old days when he had taught me how to track, how to let my intuition do the work for me, how to find a mark and stick on him, how to scent the prey and become the thing you hunted, how to find clients that would pay for things other than a legitimate tag but short of actual murder.

  Admit it, Danny. You don’t want to let him out of your sight. You’re afraid he’ll vanish and never come back, or that you’ll come back to an empty house.

  It was uncomfortably close to the truth. The fact that Jace never asked about Japhrimel only made it easier to pretend nothing was happening, that we were just living together. Just roommates with a good thing going, a lucrative bounty-hunting partnership and a carefully charted dance where he moved forward and I retreated, but never fast or far enough.

  Was he waiting for me to forget Japhrimel?

  It was only a few days, Danny. And he was a demon. He lied to you about Doreen’s daughter, about Santino, about Lucifer’s plans. What is it with the men I fall for and their aversion to truth?

  “Time to turn over,” Sierra said softly, and I did while she held the sheet; then she slipped the bolster under my knees and started working on the front of my legs. The sound of water from the fountain in the corner soothed me, just like the smell of kyphii and Sierra’s strong fingers. She knew just where the aches were. What I would have given to know about this when I was human. But when I was hu
man I never would have let anyone do this to me, even if I was paying them and thus absolving myself of obligation.

  She even massaged my abdomen but left my shoulder alone, and I didn’t glance down to see the fluid glyph in its pretty scarred lines, looking more like a decoration than a brand, the mark of a demon. Is it his Name? I wondered, not for the first time. Or is it “best opened by this date”? Lucifer put it on me, like Nichtvren mark their thralls. Maybe it’s like a brand. A swift spill of feeling roiled through my stomach, revulsion and heat all mixed into one pretty package. Japhrimel’s mouth on mine, his skin against mine, the semaphore of desire that needed no translation… My rings flashed, went back to swirling lazily; my aura rang with the twisted black-diamond flames of demon and the sparkles that meant Necromance. I looked like nothing else in the landscape of Power now.

  The massage ended with Sierra taking my hair out of its braid and rubbing my scalp. I had never known what kind of tension lurked in the thin tendons and flat muscles over the cranium. It was unreal. By far my most favorite moment of the massage was when she undid my braid; it was like having Doreen play with my hair again.

  Doreen. It was turning out to be a day of unpleasant memories all around. I wished Trina at the agency would call in with the news that she’d scouted me another bounty. There had to be a job out there that would keep me going so fast I didn’t have time to slow down and brood.

  And remember. Memory, rage, guilt. The holy trinity, as far as I was concerned. Good fuel, channeled into bounties and justice. Hadn’t I ever felt something softer?

  Well, we could add shame to the list, couldn’t we? My shame, that I was still grieving for a dead demon I hadn’t known more than a few days, who had augmented me into something even my best friends had a hard time looking at.

  I sighed as Sierra’s fingers trailed through my hair, regretfully. “Better?” she asked.

  “Much.” I made a mental note to tip her 40 percent this time. I opened my eyes, my left hand curling as if seeking a slim sheathed shape. It was a reflex, as if I hadn’t just spent almost a year without a sword. My right hand wasn’t cramping either. It had straightened out, the fingers relaxed. The mark lay cold and quiescent against the hollow of my shoulder. “Thanks, Sierra.”

  “No problem. Want some tea, or would you like to let yourself out?”

  So tactful. “I’d better let myself out. Thanks.”

  “You’re very welcome, Danny. See you next month.” She retreated, trailing the spiky spicy smell of Shaman and the decaying smell of human with her. I took another deep lungful of kyphii and exhaled into the dark air, staring at the white-painted ceiling. The door closed softly behind her, and I rested there against the table for a moment.

  See if Trina can find another quick job. Just one more, I told myself. Then it might be time for a vacation. Close up and magseal the house, go to the islands or something. Start chasing down more Magi shadowjournals and break their codes, see if any of them know what you are. Maybe even see if there’s a Magi circle that will apprentice you, even if you are too old. Your initial training’s sound, you’re not rusty, and who knows how long you’ll live now? Demons are virtually immortal unless killed by violence or suicide. Who knows how long I’ll be around?

  I hated that thought. It usually waited until the middle of the day while I was trying to sleep, to show up.

  All right, Valentine. Get your ass in gear, you need to go home and change. I surged up off the table, taking the sheet with me, was dressed in five minutes and fully-armed in another five. I would let myself out the back door and through the back gate, up to Ninth, cut through the University District to stretch my legs while I did some thinking. I thought best while moving, and that would get me home in time to get some serious trash holovid-viewing in. I tapped my datband, paying Sierra’s fee and tacking 40 percent on for a tip; I’d have Trina schedule me another appointment next month.

  Outside, the afternoon was wet and fragrant, the smells of Sierra’s garden temporarily overwhelming the drowsing stink of Saint City air. I glanced up at the sky, scanned my surroundings out of habit, and felt my shoulders come up under the habitual burden of tension as I stepped back into my life.

  CHAPTER 3

  Two days later, the buzzing sound jolted me out of an uneasy thready half-trance. Jace muttered something next to me, blowing out between pursed lips. I rolled over, checked the clock, and sighed. The cotton sheets tangled around my legs, I’d been tossing again.

  Three PM. Another drunken night of watching old Indiana Jones, Magi and Father Egyptos holovids shot to hell. There had been a letter in the afternoon mail, an unaddressed vellum envelope with a heavy bloodred wax seal. Even as I picked it up, I’d caught a whiff of heavy, spicy scent. Demon. My hands had moved despite myself, trembling, and torn the heavy beautiful envelope open.

  Careful scripted calligraphy marched across thick linen paper. Dante. I would speak to you. And signed, simply, L. As if I wouldn’t know who it was from.

  The Prince of Hell. Lucifer himself, sending me a little note. I’d tried to tell myself I didn’t care, tossed it in the garbage compacter, and matched Jace drink for drink.

  Not like it helped. I couldn’t even get drunk.

  Jace muttered again and turned away, presenting me with his broad, muscled back. The scorpion tattoo on his left shoulder blade shifted uneasily, its black-edged stinger flexing. Thin lines of pale scarring traced across muscle hard as tile, marring skin that had never lost its Nuevo Rio tan. He’d collapsed on my bed for once because the room down the hall was too far away when he was that inebriated. Besides, it was almost soothing to hear him breathing next to me while I lay and tried to sleep, achieving at most a half-trance that tried to rest the mind and left me feeling almost as tired as when I started.

  Something’s up. Instinct raced along my spine, my rings flashed. A golden spark popped from the amber cabochon on my left middle finger. Of course something was up, nobody would call me in the late afternoon unless something was up. And no holomarketer would call a registered psion’s number, we tended to be a bad return on that advertising dollar. Even though it was illegal to hex a normal out of spite, some of us had a nasty habit of disregarding possible legal action when it came to bloody holomarketing jackals. It was also expensive for corporations to keep the required coverage that would bring a psion out to remove the hex.

  My left shoulder ached, a sudden fresh bite of coldness burning all the way down to the bone. If I touched it, I might almost feel the ropes of scar moving under my fingers. I refrained from touching it, as usual, and shifted position, rolling the shoulder in its socket as I shook the almost-dream away. The phone shrilled again, the most annoying buzz I’d heard in a long time.

  I scooped up the receiver, cursing at whoever had thought it was a good idea to plug in a phone up here. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Which meant I was muttering imprecations at myself. “Sekhmet sa’es. What?”

  All things considered, it was as polite as I could get. I never use the vid capability on modern phones if I can help it, the thought of someone seeing me inside my own private house without having to get in a goddamn hover and come out just rubbed me the wrong way.

  Plus, if I want to answer the phone naked, it’s nobody’s business but mine.

  “Danny.” Gabe’s voice. Of all the people I could identify with one word, she was at the top of the list. She sounded strained and urgent. “Get your ass up. I need you.”

  I sat bolt upright, dragging the sheet away from Jace, who made a low, sleepy sound of protest and curled into a tighter ball. “Where?”

  Click of a lighter, inhaled breath. She was smoking again. Bad news. “I’m at the station. How soon can you be here?”

  I reached over, shook Jace’s shoulder. His skin was cool under mine, my lacquered fingernails scraping slightly. He woke up a little more gracefully than I did, sitting up, sheathing the knife he kept under his pillow as soon as he realized I was on the phone inste
ad of under attack. We were both jumpy; going from bounty to bounty will do that to you.

  “I’m on my way,” I told her. “Hang loose.”

  She hung up. I dropped the phone back into its cradle and stretched, the ligaments in my right hand cracking as I tried to spread the fingers all the way. I hadn’t been dreaming, but it had been the closest I’d gotten to real sleep for a good three weeks, and I didn’t like having it interrupted. Bounties weren’t good for resting; sleep usually meant your prey was getting away.

  Then again, I’ve always had bad dreams; the only stretch of good sleep I’ve ever had was when Doreen lived with me. A sedayeen could tranquilize even the unruliest Necromance, and that was one more thing I missed about her: the gentleness in the middle of the night when she calmed me down from a nightmare and sent me back into grateful blackness.

  I could count the time I’d spent with Japhrimel, but we hadn’t done a whole lot of sleeping.

  “What’s up now?” Jace sounded sleepy, but he slid his legs out of the bed and grabbed his jeans. I was already across the room, pulling a fresh shirt off the hanger with no memory of the intervening space. I’d blinked through the room again, using inhuman speed. Got to stop doing that.

  Ten months and counting, and I still wasn’t used to it. I remembered just how eerily, spookily quick Japhrimel could move, and wondered if I looked the same way when my body blinked through space and my mind tried to catch up. A piece of my power, he’d said. To make you stronger, less easy to damage.

  If it wasn’t for that gift I might be dead now. Lucky Danny Valentine, tougher than your average psion.

  “Gabe. At the station. Wants us there now.” I didn’t need to yawn, but I did take a deep breath, wondering where the weariness came from. If I didn’t need to sleep, why should I be tired?

  Did part-demons need sleep? None of the Magi shadowjournals or demonology books could tell me, and hunting down bounties was cutting into my research time in a big way. But research just gave me too goddamn much time to fret.