Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  My city. It did indeed feel like home.

  My datband got me in through the building’s public-access net; Christabel’s magsealed apartment was on the top floor. Since Gabe had keyed me into the Saint City police net with access to the scenes, the magsealing parted for me.

  The air was stale, tinted with the chemical wash of Carbonel, used to get blood out of fibers. The cleaners had come in to get rid of the blood and matter once the forensic techs had gone through the place; I caught a lingering trace of jasmine perfume and the tingle of a powerful awareness. A Reader had been here to capture every aspect of the scene; it had probably been Beulah McKinley. She did good work, and whatever scene she had processed always held a breath of jasmine.

  I wondered if she, like Handy Mandy, had caught sight of whatever had driven Christabel’s ghost mad.

  The front door had been shattered, splinters peppering the wall opposite and the carpeted hall. Christabel’s shields were slowly fading, the giant rents torn in them patched with Gabe’s trademark deftness. A shuntline hummed into the street outside to carefully and safely drain away the ambient energy and fold Christabel’s shields up so no trace of murder and agony remained to create psychic sludge for other inhabitants of this quiet building. The temporary magseal door shut behind me with a click.

  I was inside Christabel Moorcock’s house.

  The carpet was wine-red. The hall was dark, but I caught geometric patterns painted over the walls; protection charms. I glanced into the dining room and into a bathroom with an amber-glowing fleur-de-lis nightlight. In both rooms the painted walls were covered with an intaglio of protection runes, each knot of safety carefully daubed. They resonated uneasily, the ones near the door spent and broken; long waving fronds of Power flowed toward the front door.

  Huh. That’s odd.

  The entry hall, the dining room, and the two bedrooms were carpeted. The bathroom was tiled, the kitchen and the living room in mellow hardwood. The second bedroom was a meditation room, a round blue and silver rug in the middle and the ceiling painted with a wheeling Milky Way.

  Quite an artist, Christabel. I did not turn the lights on yet.

  I inhaled deeply. I smelled traces of Gabriele’s kyphii-tainted scent, the Reader’s jasmine, other faint human scents overlaying a more complex well. Closing my eyes, I shut away all the more recent smells, including the sweet, decaying fruit of the blood drying on my ruined dress.

  That left me with a powerful brew of female psion, a healthy astringent scent. Christabel had smelled like molecular-drip polish on long nails, slightly-oily hair, and strong, sweet resin incense. Resin was cheap and high quality, readily available in metaphysical supply stores, and it brought back a swirl of memories from my school days.

  So you used schoolgirl incense. A little surprising, but I suppose it isn’t any stranger than Gabe and her kyphii. The furniture was overstuffed, no hard edges. Her bookshelves weren’t dusty, but there were no houseplants. No pets either, not even cloned koi.

  The altar in her meditation room held a bank of white candles in varying heights, and a statue of Angerboda Gulveig Teutonica, glittering gold leaf on Her robe worked with flames and the Teutonica heart symbol. There was another statue set off to one side, a black dancing Kali of the old school, graphic and bloody.

  There was a fresh offering in front of Kali, a shallow dish of something sticky that smelled of wine and faint traces of human blood. Also interesting.

  Christabel’s bed was neatly made. A copy of Adrienne Spocarelli’s Gods and Magi stood on the bedstand, a ritual knife laid across its cover. The clothes hamper was full of dirty clothes that smelled of lilac powder. A sleek, gleaming Pentath computer deck stood in the corner at a precise angle to her mauve bed. Her bathrooms were spotless.

  To go from this order to the chaos of the living room was a shock. Great gouges had been torn into the wooden flooring, and the waning chalk marks on the hardwood were barely visible under a dark stain no amount of cleaning could scrub away. The couch was destroyed, the table reduced to matchsticks. Little drawstring bags of herbs, protective amulets all, hung from the dark ceiling fixture. Splashes of blood had baked onto the full-spectrum bulbs; I was glad I could see in the dimness. There had been a hell of a fight in here.

  I let out a long, slow breath. Both Gabe and a Reader had been here. There was nothing for me to see. Wherever Christabel had allowed herself to truly live, it wasn’t here. This place was more like a stage set than anything else.

  Paper lay scattered across the gouged floor, the same parchment she had written her last message on. A spilled bottle of dragonsblood ink lay near the entrance to the kitchen. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the pen among the drift of chaos.

  My own voice startled me. “I’m here.” It was a whisper, like a child’s in a haunted house. “If you want to talk, Christabel, I’m listening.”

  Silence gathered in the corners. I felt like a thief, here in the middle of this carefully constructed world. I didn’t want to resurrect her mad raving ghost; I wanted some breath of the living Necromance.

  None came. Even the flowering stain of thick-smelling violence in the air was smooth and blank, nothing for my intuition to grab onto.

  The other scenes won’t tell you anything either, the deep voice of certainty suddenly spoke inside my head. I paused, velvet and silk rustling as I turned in a slow circle, my eyes passing over the chiaroscuro of protection runes painted on each wall. The answer to this puzzle doesn’t lie here. You know where it lies.

  I did. The only clue I had likely to unravel this tangled skein was encapsulated in three words scrawled on parchment by a terrified dying Necromance.

  Remember Rigger Hall.

  “I would much rather not,” I muttered, and the air swirled uneasily just like my skirt. I suddenly felt ridiculous, overdressed, and very, very young for the first time in years.

  But if remembering the Hall would keep someone else from dying, I would do it. I’d survived that place once. How hard could remembering it be?

  The three stripes of phantom fire down my back twinged in answer. So did the vanished scar along the crease of my lower-left buttock. The scar on my shoulder burned, burned.

  My hand tightened around Fudoshin’s scabbard. I was no longer weak or defenseless.

  “All right, Christabel.” My voice bounced off the walls. “You’re my best clue. For right now, you lead the dance.”

  I had the not-so-comforting feeling that the air inside her wrecked living room had changed, becoming still and charged with expectation. As if it was… listening.

  My knuckles were white on the scabbard. My mouth had gone dry, and when I slipped out again through the temporary magseal door I should have felt relieved to leave the scene of the carnage behind.

  I wasn’t. All I could think of were three little words, chanted over and over again by a shrieking, insane ghost who had once been a woman inhabiting a neat, orderly, soulless little apartment.

  Remember. Remember Rigger Hall.

  I knew what I had to do next.

  CHAPTER 16

  The night was getting deep when the hoverlimo dropped me off on the concrete landing-pad in my front yard, and I tipped the driver well. He muttered his thanks and lifted off before I reached my front door. The garden rustled uneasily, dappled with darkness and the orange glow of citylight.

  My hands were shaking. Not much, but enough that I could see the fine vibration when I held them out in front of me. Even my right hand, that twisted claw that had so gracefully held a sword and defended me tonight, was shaking, the fingers jittering as if I was typing a Section 713 Bounty Report.

  I made it inside, shut the door, and leaned against it, scabbard digging into my back. The dress was stiff and crusty with blood along my left side that I noticed for the first time. “Anubis et’her ka.” The god’s name made the air stir uneasily. “That was unpleasant.”

  Jace wasn’t home. He was probably off digging through public records. Becaus
e psions so often worked at night, public buildings rarely closed before two in the morning.

  It was a pity. I could have used some easy banter.

  I lifted my left hand because my right was shaking too badly, examined the black molecule-drip polish and the graceful wicked arches of my fingers. The fingers flexed, released.

  The smell of lilacs still clung to my dress. Lilacs, and terror. The quiet dark inside my house suddenly made the flesh hang traitorously heavy on my bones—slender, arching frames, architecturally different than human bones but not agreeing with demon physiology in any of the books I read. Stuck in between, trapped like a butterfly halfway out of a glass chrysalis and frozen, popped into a kerri jar stasis. I didn’t belong here in my old life, had nothing and nowhere to move into despite all my frantic thrashing on bounties. Stopped, frozen between one step and the next like a holovid still.

  What butterfly wants to go back into the chrysalis? Or revisit being a caterpillar?

  Remember. Remember Rigger Hall.

  Bile rose, I forced it down. A rattling tremor slid from my scalp to my booted toes. I could feel it circling, the panic attack deep and needle-toothed, combat and the shock of memory both catching up to me.

  Hey, Danny, the lipless mouths of my nightmares said. Thought you shook us loose, huh? No way. Let’s get out the old fears and rattle them around, let’s dance in Danny’s head and shake her left and right, what do you say?

  “Why am I shaking?” I asked the still darkness of my refuge. Took a deep breath and realized how musty the place smelled. I rarely cleaned anymore, and there was only so much Jace would do. Besides, we were gone all the time, tracking down criminals.

  Compassion is not your strong suit. Jado’s voice careened inside my skull, echoed, stopped as if dropped down a well.

  My left shoulder crunched again. I bent over, retching, my hair coming loose and the stiletto chiming on the hardwood floor. Almost a year of hiding behind the image of a big, tough bounty hunter hadn’t changed a goddamn thing.

  It never would.

  Japhrimel was gone.

  The floor grated against my knees and palms, cold and hard. The world went gray. I’m going into shock. And nothing around to bring me out. The layers of shielding energy over my home shivered, singing a thin crystalline note of distress, like a thin plasglass curve-edge stroked just right.

  “You will not leave me.” A voice like old, dark whiskey. Familiar.

  My entire body leapt to hear that voice.

  I looked up. Saw nothing but my front hall, iron coatrack, the mirror, a slice of warm gold from the kitchen. Jace had left the light on.

  “You will not leave me to wander the earth alone.” The voice slapped at me, yanked me up off the floor, and shoved me back against the door, pressure like a wave-front of Power against my entire body, squeezing around me, forcing away the gray shocky cloudiness.

  I’m being smacked around by a ghost. A ripping unsteady laugh tore out of me. I opened my eyes, saw the empty hall again. Fragrant, sweet black blood was hot on my chin—I’d bitten my lip almost clean through. It stung before it healed over, as instantly as any other wound. “Lucky me,” I half-sang. “What a lucky girl, lucky girl, I’m a lucky girl, Necromance to the stars.”

  “Dante.” Merely a whisper, but I felt it all the way down to my bones.

  “It’s not fair. I want you back.” Then I clapped my hand over my mouth, and my entire body tensed, listening.

  Listening.

  A long silence greeted this. I made my hands into fists. Careful. I always had to be so stinking careful. Had to hold back, so as not to damage the less resilient. The humans.

  A long sigh, and the voice—more familiar to me than my own, by now—brushed my cheek. “Feed me…”

  I scanned the hall. Empty. The entire house was empty.

  No human. No demon. No nothing. Nothing in my house but me, dead air, my possessions, and the lingering smell of Jace. Dust, and the smell of stale grief. That was all.

  Great. The dead will talk to me, but never the way I want them to. Never the useful way. Oh, no. The dark screaming hilarity in the thought was troubling, but it was like a slap of cold water across the face of a dreaming woman.

  I am an adult, I told myself. I grew up, goddammit. I am all grown up now.

  I peeled myself away from the door, silk rustling around my legs as I strode for the stairs. Halfway up, I stopped so quickly I almost overbalanced and fell on my ass all the way back down.

  The niche stood as it always had. No dust on the scorching black urn.

  Anubis dipped his slender beautiful head, examining me. The wine was gone.

  The god had accepted the offering.

  The rose petals were withered too. Dry. Sucked dry.

  “This is crazy.” My shoulder throbbed. “I’ve got a killer to hunt down. A killer that uses Feeder glyphs in some kind of elaborate Ceremonial circle. And I can’t afford to be haunted by…”

  But being haunted by Japhrimel was better than missing him, was better than grieving for him. “Are you talking to me?” The urn’s gleaming curves mocked me. “Please tell me you’re talking to me.”

  Of course, no reply. Nothing but the still hot air teasing at my face, the statue of Anubis shifting, as if demanding my attention.

  I met the statue’s eyes. Was it a hallucination, or did the god appear to be smiling slightly?

  “I’ve missed you.” This time, I was talking to the god. My voice sounded thin, breathless. It was true. I’d missed the sense of being always held, protected—the god of Death was the biggest, baddest thing around. Even Nichtvren feared Death.

  Even demons did.

  I always wondered if that was why I was a Necromance. A helpless, collared girl pushed into the Hegemony psi program because of her Matheson scores, an orphan sent into Rigger Hall like all the rest—and in the Hall, you either found a protector or you didn’t last long.

  Death was the best protector. At least I didn’t have much to fear; when I finally died it would be like going into a lover’s embrace.

  There were whole months of my schooling when I merely endured through the day, going from one task to the next, one foot in front of the other. I would wait for every visit with Lewis, but I was getting older and couldn’t see him as often. I had only the books.

  At night, I would read by the light of a filched flashlight under my covers, every book Lewis had left me. When I could read no longer, when I finally closed my eyes, I would slip into the blue-fire trance of Death.

  That kept me going. I was special, both because Lewis had given me his books and because Death had chosen me. I withdrew mostly into myself after Roanna’s death, learning to live self-contained, a smooth hard shell. But I always had the books and the blue glow, twin lines going down into the heart of me, feeding me strength. Telling me I could endure.

  I aced every single Theory of Magick class, every single Modern Classics test. I was academically perfect no matter how bad it got, having absorbed Lewis’s love of study.

  More importantly, I never doubted that I would survive. Lew had given me a primary gift: a child’s knowledge that she is loved completely. And though the punishments were bad, some of the teachers had been dedicated, true masters of their craft. There were good things about the Hall—learning to control my abilities, learning who could be trusted and who couldn’t, learning just how strong I really was.

  And always, always, there was Death.

  I was too young to tread the blue crystal hall or approach the Bridge, but I would feel the god’s attention, a warm communion that gave me the strength to become self-reliant instead of withdrawing into catatonia or developing a nervous tic like some of the other kids. Sometimes, even during the worst punishments, I would close my eyes and still see that blue glow, geometric traceries of blue fire and the god’s attention, my god’s attention, and I had made up my mind to be strong.

  I had endured.

  And when Mirovitch was dead, the
inquest finished, and the school shut down, I went on through the Academy and my schooling up to my Trial, that harrowing ordeal every Necromance must pass to be accredited, the stripping away of the psyche in an initiation as different as it is terrifying for every individual. You can’t handle walking in Death until you’ve actually died yourself, and what is any initiation but a little death? I’d had an edge over every other initiate: I never doubted I would survive my Trial. And afterward, with a few white hairs I dyed to make them the standard black of a Necromance, I’d gone on and never looked back. Never stopped in my steady march, moving on.

  But all the time, I hadn’t had a goddamn idea what I was marching toward. I still didn’t, but I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to go back.

  And yet that was what Christabel was asking me to do.

  “Rigger Hall.” My eyes locked with the statue’s. “I swore I’d never go back.”

  You must. The eyes were blank and pitiless, but so deep. Death did not play favorites—He loved all equally. What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure. The god’s voice—not quite words, just a thread of meaning laid in my receptive mind—made me shudder, my knees bumping the wall. That had been my first lesson when they clipped the collar on me at the Hall. Endurance. The primal lesson, repeated over and over again. Even later, when I seriously doubted I would get out of some new horrible situation alive, a thin thread of me down at the very core of my being had merely replied, You will. And that was that.

  I’ve been called suicidal, and crazy, and fey; I’ve even been called glory-hungry and snobbish. I don’t think that’s accurate; I simply always knew I would survive, a core of something hard and nasty in me refusing to give in even at the worst of times. Better to face what frightens you than to live cowering in fear; and if Death frightened me I need only go further into the blue glow of His embrace until even fear was lost and the weight lifted from me.