Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  My nostrils flared. I smelled fear and blood, and death. And the sharp stink of human vomit.

  It must be bad. I stuffed the yearbook in my bag and curled my left hand around my sword, then struck out for the front door, my boots crunching on the rocks. A strand of long black hair fell into my face. I blew it back, irritably. “Yo, Spooky!” I called, as soon as I got to the bottom of the stairs. “I should be home in bed.”

  “So should I.” Her shields flushed purple-red. My own shielding reverberated, answering hers; she stopped and looked down at me as the emerald on her cheek sparked a greeting. “You look different, Danny.”

  “Must be exhaustion and digging up old bodies.” I paced up the stairs, aware that Jace was right behind me. His staff tapped on the granite. My cheek burned, the twisted-caduceus tat shifting its inked lines against my flesh. “What do we have here?”

  “Ceremonial.” She ushered me past the blues, who both recoiled slightly. I guess my reputation preceded me. It was one time I was glad of it—at least if they were recoiling they weren’t staring at me.

  The emerald on my cheek burned as I stepped over the threshold, a deep drilling warning. “The shielding’s torn.” I looked up. “From inside.”

  Gabe nodded. “Just like the other three. It’s Aran Helm.”

  I remembered him. He’d gone to Rigger Hall too, in my class. He’d been a tall blond babyfaced Ceremonial, with blue eyes and a habit of sucking on his lower lip; I’d had him in a Philosophy of Religion class and a few other electives.

  Jace swore. “This is Helm’s place?” He smacked the butt end of his staff against the marble flooring, one sharp crack echoing through the foyer. “Godsdammit.”

  “You know him?” I asked, looking up. Apparently Helm’s taste had gone for high ceilings, a coat of antiquated mail on a stand, and a tall grandfather clock that chimed as we walked in. A long, overdone staircase went up to the right. I followed Gabe, my fingers trailing the balustrade. The feel of defenses wedded to every stair crackled against my skin, humming uneasily. I smelled beeswax, and a frowsty scent that told me only one human lived here. Apparently Aran Helm lived alone; in a huge house full of silence and loneliness.

  “Ran with him for a while, when I was dating you,” Jace replied easily enough. “Worked with him on a couple jobs—did some wetwork together. Never met at his house though. Dodgy.”

  “Wetwork.” Assassination. A long time ago I would have been willing to swear there was nothing I didn’t know about Jace, but here I was finding out something new. I had balked at doing assassinations, though he’d said it was good money. I hadn’t asked what his own jobs entailed; I’d trusted him blindly. “How was he?”

  “Good,” Jace said. “Cold. Not overly troubled with hesitation.” His aura touched mine. I shivered.

  Not like me; the only time you mentioned assassination to me I almost bit your head off. How many wetwork jobs did you come home from and climb into bed with me? Did you ever want to tell me, Jace, or did you think I’d never find out? I swallowed the anger. It was ancient history. I didn’t have to think about it, did I? Not right now with a killer to catch and the Prince of Hell calling me again.

  It was a relief to find something unpleasant I didn’t have to think about.

  “He’s up in the bedroom.” Gabe’s shoulders were tense under her long dark synthwool coat. “It’s… well, you’ll see. Have you got anything so far, Danny? Anything at all?”

  It wasn’t like her to sound desperate. “I’m going to see Polyamour as soon as possible. It seems Steve Sebastiano was part of the conspiracy that got Mirovitch.” I laid it out in a few clipped sentences, including the marks in the yearbook, which were probably nothing but the closest we had to a link. At the top of the stairs Gabe led us down a hall past another two blues standing guard, and I didn’t need her to tell me which room Aran was in. The hacked-open door and thick cloying smell of blood spoke for itself. After you’ve smelled death for a while, the smell of blood stops bothering you much… at least, consciously.

  The lingering traces of other smells in the air were more interesting. I inhaled deeply—protections, even more protections, laid thick and tight over every inch of wall and floor. A marble bust of Adrien Ferriman, legislative creator of the Parapsychic Act, stood on a blackstone plinth, his familiar jowled scowl apparently directed down the hall.

  Laid over that was the raw, new smell of human from the blues, Gabe, and Jace. I sniffed deeply, closing my eyes. Human blood, human sweat, protection magick, and…

  I filled my lungs. There it is. I smelled offal, magick, and the reek of aftershave. I filled my lungs, closing everything else out, even the throbbing burn in my shoulder.

  I knew that smell. Dust, offal, magick, aftershave, chalk, and leather.

  The smell of the Office. The Headmaster’s Office.

  I shivered, the shudder going from my heels all the way up to the crown of my scalp. Nerve-strings tight and taut, singing their siren song of bloodlust and the path of the hunt laid in front of my feet. But laid over that shudder was fear, nose-stinging and skin-chilling fear. The fear of a child locked in a room without light.

  Be careful, Japhrimel’s voice whispered at the very back of my brain. He cannot hurt you now, hedaira. You are beyond his reach. I felt a warm hand touch my face, an intimate trailing down my cheek, pausing at the pulse in my throat, then sliding down to the curve of my breast.

  I came back to myself with a jolt. What the hell? I didn’t smell this at Christabel’s. That damn lilac perfume of hers, maybe. Or maybe the scent had faded. “I can smell it.”

  “Danny?” Gabe paused before the doorway. “You okay?”

  No, I wasn’t. I was hallucinating my dead demon lover’s voice. But it didn’t matter. Getting the smell of the quarry is important in any hunt. And if imagining Japhrimel’s voice helped me get through this, I was all for it no matter what price I would have to pay afterward, when the hunt was over and I had to face the fact that he was truly gone.

  “I’m fine,” I rasped. A pattern was starting to appear under the shape of events. “Let’s take a look at Mr. Helm.” I stepped past Gabe and looked into the room. “He certainly did believe in protection, didn’t he?”

  “Either that or he was afraid of something,” Jace said grimly. “Chango…” It was a long breath of wondering disgust.

  I agreed. Past the hacked and battered door was an orgy of blood and bits of what had once been a human body. The chalk marks on the floor were familiar but hurried, scrawled instead of done neatly. The circle was sloppily and hastily finished. Had the killer been interrupted? “Who found the body?” My nose wrinkled. The only thing worse than the effluvia of dying cells around living humans was the stench of rotting ones.

  You think that as if you’re not human, Danny. I shivered again.

  “Housekeeper,” Gabe said. “Apparently was paid a good deal to come in and work ten hours a day cleaning this pile. And to keep her mouth shut. The body’s a few days old, she wasn’t supposed to come into this part of the house very often. Once she found the body, she didn’t know whether she should call the police. She brought the question to one of her cousins, who’s a low-level retainer for the Owens Family and a stooge for the Saint City PD. He brought it to us. If the shields hadn’t already been cracked we would have called you in to crack them.”

  “Gods.” Jace looked definitely green, yet another new and amazing thing. I felt a little green myself. “There’s only pieces.”

  Check that. I wasn’t just feeling a little green. I felt green as a new crop of chemalgae. Nausea rose, twisted hot under my breastbone. I forced it down. I’d seen a lot of murder and mayhem in my time, but this… the smell of blood wasn’t bothering me, but the visuals were beginning to become nightmare-worthy.

  I should know, I’ve had my share of wonderful nightmares.

  I looked into the bedroom. This was evidently where Aran Helm truly lived. Scattered papers and dirty clothes strewn about, a h
uge four-poster bed with wildly mussed covers now spattered with blood and other fluids, and burned-out candles in many holders. Between this and Christabel’s careful obsessive order, I wasn’t sure which I preferred.

  I stepped delicately inside the room, wishing once again that I could shut my nostrils down, and saw something.

  A human hand, severed at the wrist, clutching a bit of consecrated chalk.

  A few more bits of the pattern fell together. “Sekhmet sa’es, Gabe. We’ve got it all wrong. The marks weren’t made by the killer.”

  “What?” Gabe stopped at the door. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look.” I pointed at the hand. “The victims made the marks. I need a laseprint of these. If I can figure out what they were trying to defend against—”

  “You don’t think it’s human?” Hope and dawning comprehension lit her face.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I answered slowly. “I can’t tell. But if the marks are defensive, I’ve been going about this all wrong.” I whirled. “If Jace gives you a list, can you find out who on the list is still in Saint City? And who’s still alive?”

  “All things should be so easy.” Gabe’s eyes lit up. She looked a few years younger. “You’re sure, Danny?”

  “Not sure.” I gave the room one last look. “But it’s better than any other theory I had. There’s something else, too.”

  “What?” She almost twitched with impatience, and I suppressed the desire to giggle nervously. Couldn’t she see? Why did she need me to tell her?

  “This door’s hacked in.” I looked back at them, saw Jace was watching me, his blue eyes bright against the shadow of the hall. A deeper shadow slid over his face, and I would have recoiled if my feet weren’t nailed in place. When I looked again, the shadow was gone, and I had to chalk it up to nerves.

  I was chalking a lot up to my nerves lately. It was a bad habit to get into.

  “What?” Gabe’s tone wasn’t overly patient. I had drifted into silence, staring at Jace, my forehead furrowed.

  I shook myself and met her dark worried eyes. “I don’t think the attack started here.”

  CHAPTER 23

  I was right. We found his sancta in the basement, a hexagonal stone room with nudiegirl holoposters gummed to the rough walls. A pentacle was etched into the discolored granite floor—Aran had done well for himself, if he could spend time and Power etching stone. I was uncomfortable looking into the room—after all, a Ceremonial’s sancta is like a Necromance’s psychopomp, the deep place they trust to work their greatest magicks. Apparently, Aran Helm had derived a great deal of his power from sex; it didn’t look like he had many partners, however. He must have done a lot of Power-raising with his right hand.

  A drawer in a low armoire was pulled all the way out, showing shiny sharp implements. Bloodletters and weights. I sucked in a breath, delicately touching the wood of the drawer with a fingertip. The shiver that went through me wasn’t entirely unpleasant—blood and sex, and pain. Good fuel for magick.

  And very tempting for demons. Even part-demons like me.

  Interestingly enough, there was only one door to the sancta, and it was hacked open—but from the inside. I cast my gaze over the hexagonal room.

  Jace leaned in the door. Gabe’s voice raised in the corridor beyond, giving orders. Jace’s staff glowed golden, a faint light edging it and the bones tied with raffia clicking together. Here in another sorcerer’s sancta, any Shaman would be uncomfortable. And the lingering trail of terror and bloodlust on the air would only add to that discomfort.

  Cigars lay fanned under a twisted statue of The Unspeakable. So he was a Left-hander, I thought. That was valuable information—no wonder he’d been in the business of assassination. Left-handers wouldn’t sacrifice humans to gain magickal energy, but they would sacrifice other things. Dogs, cats… monkeys, sometimes. Insects. There was a whole branch of Left-handers that dealt with the power released by killing snakes as slowly as possible, since snakes were living conduits of magickal energy. Cats were popular too, and goats. About the only animal a Left-hander wouldn’t touch was a horse, since plenty of Skinlins worshipped Epona and their goddess took a very dim view of sacrificing equines. Of course, there was the question of what to do with the body afterward. The old joke was that a vaudun and a Left-hander would both kill a chicken—but the vaudun would eat the chicken afterward.

  Most of the time, after a Left-hander was finished, there wasn’t much of the sacrifice left to eat.

  A half-bottle of very good brandy sat on the altar too. His ceremonial sword, its blade twisted into an unrecognizable shape, was a two-handed broadsword, pretty but cheap metal. If he did wetwork it was with knife or projectile gun, not honest steel. Aran Helm had used the human deaths to pay for his house, and animal death to fuel his magick.

  I wondered if either had troubled him.

  “Here,” I murmured. “Here was where it started. How could it come from inside?” I turned to the door. Gabe had already repaired Christabel’s shielding by the time I got there, but the bits from the door had all been on the outside, in the hall. “Christabel’s shields breached from the inside? And the other two, the sexwitch and the normal?”

  Jace shrugged. “Moorcock yes, sexwitch yes, normal no. That’s what Gabe said. I’ll ask again if you want.” But he stayed there, looking at me, his eyes oddly shadowed and burning at the same time. “Danny, what are you thinking? You look…”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Why are we so sure the normal’s part of this? But I am sure, sure as I can be. It started with our mysterious normal and hasn’t ended yet. Something I’m missing, something critical. And Christabel, making marks and shouting “Remember.”

  I blinked, knelt down. Caught in the pentacle’s deep-carved lines was a glimmer of something. My fingertips brushed stone, and I caught a glimpse of a man who had to be Aran—blue-eyed, his greasy blond hair cut in a flattop, stumbling back as Power whipped like a serpent from the statue of The Unspeakable. “Was he a very good sorcerer, this Aran Helm?”

  I felt more than saw Jace’s shrug. “Good enough. Better as an assassin, I think. Otherwise, how would he pay for this?”

  “True.” It was a fine silver chain, a necklace. The clasp was broken. Attached to it was a charm the size of my thumb from distal joint to fingertip—a silver spade, like on an antique playing card. “Ace of spades.” I held it up delicately between index finger and thumb. “I think you’re onto something, Jace. Good work.” Stupid to put a mark in a yearbook, Christabel. Why would you do something like that? It’s a pity I can’t bring you out of Death and ask you. Shivers rilled up my spine.

  One corner of his mouth lifted into a half-grin. “Good to hear it. Can Gabe’s team start up in the bedroom?”

  “I think so.” I made it to my feet, holding the necklace. “We need to go through this yearbook and make a list.”

  “You got it.”

  A new thought struck me as I rose from the floor. I paused, holding up the necklace. “I wonder if Christabel had one of these.”

  Jace turned and murmured to Gabe. She said something, then looked over his shoulder at me. “Danny?”

  “Did Christabel have one of these?” I held the necklace up so she could see it.

  “She did. So did the sexwitch. I chalked it up to junk jewelry.” Gabe’s tone was uncharacteristically harsh. No cop liked to miss a piece of evidence.

  “The normal didn’t have one?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “Not that I remember. I’ll go through the evidence manifest again, if you want.”

  “Do that.” I stared at the nudiegirl posters on the wall. They fluttered as my attention brushed them. Nothing behind any of them. No way into the room but the door, and the door hacked open from inside.

  I tore the yearbook out of my bag and stalked for the door. “Gabe. Get me the list. Everyone in here who has that mark next to their names. I need to know who’s still living and where, especially in Saint City. Send it t
o my datpilot, will you?”

  She nodded. “What’s up?” At least she knew enough not to bother me with questions that needed long explanations.

  “One of Polyamour’s girls was the second body,” I said, and watched Gabe’s eyes light with comprehension. She was looking more relieved by the second. At least we had a connection, however tenuous; a direction to go in was good news to any cop. “I’m going to drop in on Poly now. If one of her girls was downed and she has more bits of the puzzle, she’s going to be very nervous, very guilty—or the next goddamn victim.”

  Gabe nodded. “Go. Go on.”

  I gave her a quick smile and pushed the yearbook into her hands. “I need this back.” So I can bury it again. Maybe deeper this time.

  “Understood. Now go.” Her tone wasn’t just a thank you— it was relief and gratitude all rolled up together and lit with birthday candles.

  Jace followed me, his staff tapping on the marble. The spade necklace dangled from my fist, and I stuffed it in a pocket without thinking. My fingers tightened around the katana’s scabbard. I should have gotten a sword long before this so I could have a blade I could depend on. A chill finger touched my spine. My rings flashed, demon-fed, and the atmosphere of Aran Helm’s palatial house shivered. I reached out without thinking, calming the runaway energy like a restive horse. Helm had put so many layers of protection on his home that the air itself would have been dead and stifling if not for the giant rent whoever—or whatever—had torn in the shielding.

  From the inside. I wonder if he invited his killer in. Why, if he was so obsessive about protection?

  It was a relief to have this puzzle, so I didn’t have to think about Lucifer’s soft voice burrowing in through the phone line. I must speak with your lover, and I am unable to contact him in the usual manner.