Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Now it was personal.

  CHAPTER 30

  I still needed food. Seven restaurants later, the late-afternoon sun glittered in my eyes as I ended up in a pub in the eastern fringe of Saint City, sandwiched between the city and the lake. I was working my way toward the Bridge going east on instinct, from one meal to the next. The necklaces were a weight in my pocket. I hadn’t precisely lied—I didn’t know exactly where Lourdes was, but I could feel a little tingle in my subconscious. I’d hunted down too many psychopaths and criminals not to know that little tingle. It meant that I was close and on the right track. The bounty hunter in me was satisfied, and that was good enough for now.

  I set down the pint of beer, wiping my lips with the back of my hand, and studied the demolished large-size pizza in front of me. I hate the taste of beer, but it provides a lot of carbs in a very short time, and I needed fuel. I felt like a goddamn glutton, but I was hungry.

  I sighed. From a back booth, my eyes tracked through the dark pub. The holovid feeds were showing an advert for the newest series about a group of Ceremonials in East Los Dangeles-Frisco. For hating psions so much they certainly love to watch us on the holovids, I thought, as I always did.

  Then the feed switched and it showed my house, the familiar grainy images of the column of flame rising. I watched, my fingernails tapping the table. Gabe had thought Lourdes and Mirovitch had gotten to me in my own house, or trailed me away from the burning wreckage. She must have been worried, worried sick. A better friend than I deserved; Gabe had never let me down.

  I watched, my eyes nailed to the display. Inside the column of flame, something twisted.

  Something dark and swirling like obsidian smoke.

  A vaguely human shape stretched in the middle of the fire, spreading its slender black wings, hands upraised. Then the column of fire was sucked back toward the figure, a shockwave rattling the camera.

  I watched, my jaw dropping. What the fucking hell?

  The flames didn’t stop, but they were pulled back in, wreathing around the dark figure, which lifted its head as if searching. Then, maddeningly, the picture stopped, dissolving in a burst of static. My face flashed on the holovid, a thumbnail up to the right of an announcer. I saw with a slight twitch of aggravation that it was my new face. Someone had managed to take a stillcam holo of me. My hair was pulled back, tendrils falling softly and beautifully in my face, so I would bet it was taken at the House of Pain.

  The announcer was of the type always chosen for holovids—slightly androgynous, high cheekbones, sculpted mouth. This one had sleek blond hair and a pair of bright green eyes that made my stomach turn over. I paid and got out of there in a hurry, my boots barely touching the stairs that took me streetside. The pub’s antique wooden door swung shut behind me.

  What was in my house? Was it Lourdes? Had he somehow been there, stalking me while I was blind with grief, and my torching the house had taken him by surprise? My throat went dry, my right hand clenching into a fist.

  But I hadn’t sensed Mirovitch or Keller. And even crazed with grief I was sure I would have noticed the cloying psychic stench of the Headmaster.

  It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

  Can it be that you have not resurrected him?

  “Impossible.” My voice startled me. I glanced around, catching a few frightened looks from the normals who were giving me a wide berth. “Im-fucking-possible.”

  Figment of the imagination. Or, if not… Santino had used the Egg against Japhrimel, and Lucifer had finished the job by beating him to death once he was already wounded. Would fire and Power do what I’d thought blood might do, and bring a demon back to life? Rebuild a demon’s shattered body from ash? Even a Fallen demon?

  Don’t get distracted, Danny. Every moment you delay is another moment he has to kill someone else.

  But I had the necklaces, didn’t I? I was the target now.

  I walked down the street, my hands clasped around the scabbard. My sword hummed inside the sheath, a subliminal song of Power. After a while I noticed that people were spilling out of my way while I walked. When I passed into a belt of residential buildings and the sidewalks were empty under old trees turning red and orange and white for winter, it was a relief. I crunched through wet-smelling fallen leaves and kept moving.

  The sun was setting by the time I made it to the Bridge.

  With hovertraffic being what it was, the huge Bridge was in a state of disrepair. But slicboarders can’t go over water, and foot or wheelbike traffic needed the Bridge. A thriving traffic rumbled over the lake, and there was a rail line to take land supplies that for one reason or another couldn’t go by hover transport.

  I needed to go east, and I wanted to walk, so it was the Bridge or nothing.

  On the west side, the old main roads zigzagged down the hill. I cut through the bands of shrubbery and wished I’d thought to keep my slicboard, or rent one. The edge of the river curled away under the beginning of the Bridge, I smelled cold iron and the dead, chemical-laden water. There were colonies of homeless people living on the banks, renegade psionics, all sorts of human driftwood. It made the Tank District look like a sedayeen commune. I kept walking.

  The Bridge lay on the surface of the glass-calm lake, an architectural triumph when it was made five hundred years ago, revamped every few decades. The original concrete was crumbling, but haphazard repairs are done every year, and plasilica and new steel had been hammered in a few years ago during a grand reconstruction funded by Hegemony grants and City Hall. Algae drifted thick on the lake, harvested and distilled by the biotechs or anyone with a chem degree and a few thousand credits’ worth of equipment. The last wave of additive-laced Clormen-13 had come from here; tainted and cut with some thyoline-based substance to make it more harsh and addictive. Not like Chill needed any help.

  I could have been over the Bridge in a short time if I’d gotten a slic or used some of my demon speed, but I shivered, continued walking. The pond that the boathouse on the Hall grounds stood near fed into the river, I was sure of it. Even being this close to water that had touched the grounds of that cursed place was enough to make my blood turn cool and loose in my veins.

  The more I thought about it, the more miraculous it was that the Black Room had managed to meet anywhere on the grounds, especially in the same place more than once, even if Keller only took the members there one at a time. Mirovitch had been uncanny, sniffing out hidden stashes of contraband, seemingly always one step ahead of every upswell of rebellion in the student population, as well as any student conspiracies. No matter where you turned, someone was reporting to the stooges, or being punished, or simply withdrawing into their own little shell, just trying to survive.

  What other secrets had Rigger Hall kept?

  After an hour’s steady walk I reached midspan, pausing to look over the dark algae-choked surface of the lake. I had no warning.

  My left shoulder came alive with pain, as if a clawed hand had curled around and dug in. I went to my knees in the middle of the road, steel creaking under me. I found my claw-cramping right hand under my shirt, my fingertips touching the writhing ropes of scar that was Japhrimel’s mark. The slight pressure—fingertips against scar—made the world swim as if a pane of wavering glass hung in front of me.

  Saint City seen upside down, the lights shimmering on the TransBank Tower, hovertraffic zipping by. Need burning hot in the veins, dropping, wings furled, breaking the fall at the last moment, booted feet slamming into pavement. Following a scent that was not a scent, a sound that was a touch, a fire of need in veins old and strong, drawing… eastward.

  I came back to myself, ripping my fingers away from the scar. My knees dug into the Bridge, which swayed like a plucked string. I heard yells from both ends, used my scabbarded blade to lever myself up.

  Can it be you have not resurrected him?

  Lucifer’s voice, taunting me. And the dark winged figure in the middle of the flames… Fire, enough fire to perhaps feed a demon?<
br />
  Enough Power to perhaps bring one back, rebuild a demon’s body from ash?

  Ridiculous. Insane. If Japh—

  If he had been alive, even just barely clinging to life, I would have known when I clasped his burning body to my chest. I would have known every time I touched the glassy lacquered urn. I would have known. I was a Necromance, death was my trade, and I was as exquisitely sensitive to the spark of life and soul as a sexwitch was to Power.

  But what about the soul? A demon’s soul… or a Fallen demon’s soul, the soul of an A’nankhimel…

  I wished again that I’d been able to study more about demons. Or, more precisely, about A’nankhimel, Fallen demons, and the hedaira, their human brides. But none of the books had anything other than old legends garbled to the point of uselessness. The demons didn’t like to talk about the A’nankhimel, for whatever reason; and the Magi for all their fooling around with demons, didn’t know about anything the demons didn’t care to talk about. The Magi’s natural jealousy and obfuscation surrounding each practitioner’s research and results didn’t help. I couldn’t even question a Magi about demons, they wouldn’t talk unless it was to members of their own circle, and even inside circles each Magi had his or her own secrets.

  What if I turned back now? I could find out. I could touch my scar and go wherever it led me. I could leave this horrible circle of murder and death and foulness behind and look for my dead demon lover instead of revenging myself and every other soul who had suffered at Rigger Hall. And if my sanity snapped, I could look anywhere in the world for him, anywhere at all. I could spend my life uselessly hunting down something that didn’t exist, fooling myself into believing he was still alive, around the next corner, just out of reach.

  No. If he had not come back before now, he wasn’t going to. All the longing in the world couldn’t fool me into knowing otherwise.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hot tears dripping down to the Bridge deck. I was just hallucinating, trying to hoodwink myself. Japhrimel was dead, Jace was dead, and I was hunting a Headmaster who refused to die.

  Where did Kellerman Lourdes fit in? Was he carrying Mirovitch like a poisonous seed in his own thoughts? Was he a mule for the Headmaster’s twisted psyche and soul, his slime-drenched Feeder ka? Or had Mirovitch taken over completely, grown inside Lourdes’s body, driven out of his own middle-aged body by the assaults of the other kids?

  None of it made much sense. It was ridiculous anyway. I’d shattered his urn to remove the hope of Japhrimel coming back. It was my penance, and by every god that ever was, I was going to pay my penance and have my revenge.

  I swayed on the middle of the Bridge. Another thought chilled me—maybe the Power I carried, like a plasgun over a barrel of reactive, was going to eat me up. Maybe the only reason I’d survived so long was because I hadn’t used the full extent of my capabilities, wasting myself on grief, bounties, and torturing Jace. Maybe it was rising, and it would burn me to ash—just like Japhrimel.

  Just like my house.

  I’m going to take him with me. Mirovitch, Keller, whoever he is, I’m taking him with me when I go. If I go.

  What if I managed to kill Mirovitch? What then?

  I was so tired, weary with a weariness that went all the way down to my bones and even further. I had read about despair of the soul, and never thought it possible until now. Even the part of me that had fought all my life, the stubborn refusal to give in that had colored my entire existence, was dully muted, hanging its head. There comes a time when even simple endurance can’t carry you through.

  I knew what it would be like, laying my head on Death’s black chest, feeling the weight of living rise away from me. The clear light would break out from the horizon of What Comes Next, and I would go gratefully into that foreign land.

  But not before Mirovitch. Or Keller. Or whoever the hell he was.

  I looked out over the algae-choked, glassy surface of the lake, reflecting the orange glow of the city on every shore. I lifted one foot, uncertain, and then put it back down. Remained standing where I was.

  The last few dregs of light squeezed their way out of the sky. Night folded over Saint City and the Bridge—and me—with all the softness of black wings.

  I shook my hair back, ash falling free of the black silky strands, and continued on.

  CHAPTER 31

  Walking up Sommersby Street Hill at night was a strange experience. The last time I’d seen this place had been in broad daylight decades ago, when I’d walked to East Transport Station to board the transport that would take me north to the regional Academy for my specialized Necromance training. While at the Hall I had rarely seen the street at night; students weren’t allowed off the school grounds after dark, and I’d never come east of the Bridge in all my after-Academy years of living in Santiago City. I’d been all over the world hunting bounties, but this place so close to home I’d avoided like the plague.

  Given my druthers, I would have continued doing so.

  Fog was rolling in off the bay and the lake, a thick soupy fog that glowed green near the pavement and orange between the streetlights. With the fog came the smell of the sea—thick brine—and the smell of fire, burned candle wax, and ash. Or maybe the smell of a burned, smashed life was only mine, rising from my clothes.

  I paced up Sommersby Hill, my bootheels clicking, and saw with a weary jolt of surprise that the Sommersby Store was still open.

  While I was at the Hall, the Store was where all the kids went in our infrequent free time. We bought cheap novels and fashion mags about holovid stars, candy bars to supplement the bland Hall food, and synth-hash cigarettes to be smuggled on campus. The Store used to have a counter that sold tofu dogs and ice cream and other cheap fare, but I saw that part of the building was boarded up now. With Rigger Hall gone, most of the Store’s customers would be gone too. It was a miracle that even the main part was still there.

  For a few minutes I stood, my hands in the pockets of Jace’s coat, the sword thrust through the loop on the belt of my weapons rig. I watched the front of the Store, its red neon blurring on the dirty glass. The newspaper hutch standing to one side of the door was gone, a paler square of the paint of the storefront marking where it had stood; but the slicboard rack was still there. The boarded-up half of the storefront was festooned with graffiti, a broken window on the second story blindly glared at me. I stared at the glass door with its old-fashioned infrared detector, the plasticine sign proclaiming Shoplifting Will Be Prosecuted still set above the door’s midbar, dingy and curling at its corners.

  I finally slid my sword out of the loop on my belt. Holding it in my left hand, I crossed the street.

  I’m about to be swallowed by my own past. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. After all, my past had teeth. And what would I become when it finished digesting me?

  Will you stop with the disgusting thoughts? Please, Danny. You’re even irritating yourself.

  The motion detector beeped as I stepped into the warm gloom. It looked dingier and even more rundown, but there was the same ice machine and rack of holovid mags, shelves of crisp packets and junk food in bright wrappers, and a plasilica cabinet holding cheap jackknives and datband add-ons, gleaming like fool’s gold. The floor was still white and black squares of linoleum, dirt and dust drifting in the corners. Memory roiled under my skin. I expected to look down and see my scabbed knees under a plaid skirt, feel the stinging weight of the collar against my vulnerable throat and scratchy wool socks against my calves.

  “Help ya?”

  The voice was a rude shock. Even more of a shock was the man—fat, almost-bearded, dressed in a stained white T-shirt, oily red suspenders, and a pair of baggy khaki pants. I let out a breath. My left hand, holding the sword, dropped. “Hi.” My eyes adapted to the gloom. Red neon cigarette-brand signs buzzed in the windows. Tamovar. Marlboro X. Gitanes. Copperhead. “I’m here for a pack of Gitanes. Make that two. And that silver Zijaan, in the case.” I picked up a handful of Reese Mars Bars�
��my favorite during school years. I rarely had any money left over from my state stipend after it was applied to tuition and my uniforms. Even though Rigger Hall was for the orphans and the poor, the kids with families usually had a little more pocket change.

  A psion was state property, their upbringing supposed to be overseen by trained professionals, the family just an afterthought—nice if it was there, but not terribly necessary. Had I missed my family? I’d had beaky, spectacled, infinitely gentle Lewis, and my books. The pain of that first loss seemed strangely sweet and clean to me now, compared to the sick, twisting litany of grief and guilt caroling under the rest of my thoughts. I’d had Roanna, my first sedayeen friend, the gentle ballast to the harshness of my nature even then. And my connection with my god had sustained me; I had always known, from the moment I read my first book on Egyptianica, that Anubis was my psychopomp. Some Necromances reached their accreditation Trial without knowing what face Death would take, I was lucky.

  The library, the hall where we were taught fencing, a few of the teachers that weren’t so bad… there had been good things too, at the Hall. Things that had sustained me. I hadn’t missed the mother and father who had given me up at birth. I hadn’t known enough to miss them, and still didn’t.

  I shook myself out of memory. Couldn’t afford to be distracted now.

  What else? I cast around.

  There, on the rack, was a holovid mag that showed a picture of Jasper Dex leaning against a brick wall, his bowl-cut hair artistically mussed. It was a retrospective issue; memory rose like a flood again. I pushed nausea and memory down, trying not to gag at the smell of unwashed human male.

  Mrs. DelaRocha had been behind the counter in my younger years, balefully eying the collared kids from the Hall, suspiciously peering at you, following you down the two aisles of the store, breathing her halitosis in your face when you asked for cigarettes. I squashed the guilty idea that if I turned around I would see her right behind me, her skirt askew and her cardigan buttoned up wrong, lipstick staining her yellowed teeth, her hook nose lifting proudly between her faded watery hazel eyes.