Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Must have? Well, I was grinning like a fool. Any minute all hell might break loose, between Lucifer, Japhrimel, and whatever was going down in Saint City; but for right now I was actually—was I happy?

  I guess so. Gabe must be right about credit therapy. “Shopping is the perfect antidote, Danny. Just remember that.”

  Thinking of Gabe, I sobered. But I still felt my cheeks swell with the smile.

  “Like it?” Leander asked.

  “It’s something.” Was I being idiotic? The mark on my left shoulder burned, sending waves of Power through me like heatshimmer above pavement. I tried not to feel it, tried to forget the way my shoulder still twinged every now and again with Japhrimel’s attention. “It’s really something.”

  “Nothing like it on earth,” was his easy reply.

  “Ever been to Moscow?” I tried again to banish the smile from my face, failed.

  “Yep. Did some work there for the Putchkin Politburov, and some less-legal stuff for the Tzarchov Family. You been to Freetown Emsterdamme?” He swiped at his forehead with the limonada bottle, condensation gleaming on his skin.

  “Took down a bounty there once. Great light, they still have the tulip fields instead of clonetanks. What about Free Territorie Suisse?”

  “Oh, yeah. On vacation though, no work. The Islands?”

  “Which ones?” A cool breeze brushed my naked wrist without the weight of the bracelet, I wondered why I felt so vulnerable without it. The sense of being watched had faded, but still prickled at the corners of my awareness.

  “Let’s say Freetown Domenihaiti. I spent a year at the Shaman college out there, they’ve got this amazing vaudun festival.”

  “Been there. What about the Great Wall? I had a bounty run all that way.” The memory didn’t hurt that much now, oddly enough. That job had almost killed me.

  “You hunted down Siddie Gregors out that way. Even the steppe couldn’t hide that motherfucker.” He sounded complacent and awed at once.

  I laughed. So he knew about the Gregors bounty. “I used to have a scar.” I lifted up my left wrist. “From here—” Touched my inner elbow. “To here.” Indicated my wrist. “A plasilica knife. Had to get patched up by an Asiano Yangtze doctor. Foulest-smelling herb paste I ever had smeared on me, but it healed up like a dream and even the scar went away after a couple of years. Gregors was a real bastard, I didn’t sleep the whole time I was bringing her in.”

  “I did this bounty in Shanghai once—”

  The conversation went on like this for a while, swapping stories as we moved down Jeweler’s Alley. We stopped for quite some time at a booth with rings, I looked over their glitter spread over scruffy black velvet. I’d bought my rings one at a time from ethnic shops in Saint City’s Tank District, but I’d dearly love to have a memento of this. Something for Gabe would be nice too.

  I took my time, sipping at limonada and exchanging yet more stories with Leander. Finally, I selected a dainty cascading silver fire-opal bracelet for Gabe, but didn’t see anything for myself. I paid for the bracelet with no haggling—it was a gift—and spotted something else.

  I hadn’t seen it before, which was odd in and of itself. The piece was even odder, a short delicate spun-platinum chain holding a star sapphire the size of my thumb from distal joint to tip, glittering mellowly in the afternoon light. It was plain, restrained, and cried out to me with its own tongueless voice.

  I pointed. “There. That one.”

  Again, I paid without haggling, explaining to the woman running the stall that it was a gift and I couldn’t bargain for gifts. She dropped the price by twenty credits when I told her that, and I paid with my datband—she had an old-fashioned creditswipe. The necklace and bracelet went carefully wrapped into my bag as well, and I looked up to find Leander examining me again. “I’m done,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” he replied, and we plunged into the crowd again. I had almost forgotten Japhrimel, he was so silent behind me. I looked over my shoulder a few times to find him thoughtfully looking at something else each time. Was he bored as well as angry? What the hell did he have to be angry about? I was the one he manhandled.

  I wondered if he was enjoying himself. It didn’t seem likely.

  That’s a real shame, I thought, but then Leander started telling me about the Souk’s history, and I listened, fascinated, as we drifted with the crowd until dusk started to paint the sky.

  CHAPTER 5

  I dropped down to sit on the bed, laying my sword aside and wriggling my toes with relief. It was nice to be out of my boots; I wasn’t footsore from wandering through the stone-floored bazaar, but it was close. Japhrimel closed the door, his golden hand spread against it for a moment and his head bowed.

  “Japh?” I dug in my bag. “Hey.”

  He didn’t move. Stood with his head down, his eyes closed, leaning his entire weight against his hand on the door. His shoulders slumped, as if he was tired.

  “Japhrimel?” I saw no complex twisting of Power that would tell me he was performing a work of magick. Saw nothing but the same black-diamond glitter of his aura, hard and impenetrable, shouting his essential difference. He was demon, he wasn’t human.

  I’d almost forgotten that, before. Never again, I promised myself. Still… I couldn’t help trying to get through to him. I was an idiot.

  For him, I seemed to be nothing but.

  He looked back over his shoulder, his face arranged in its usual ironic mask and his shoulders coming back up to their accustomed straight line. “You should rest, Dante.”

  “Come on over.” I patted the bed next to me. Plasilica whispered as I lowered the bag with my most important purchase in it to the floor. I’d bought another small statue of Anubis to replace the one I’d lost, this one easily able to fit in my palm and carved out of a single chunk of black marble veined with gold. The other thing that mattered—the statue of Sekhmet, repaired with infinite care—sat on the bedstand, glassy obsidian glowing mellow. “Please?”

  He crossed the room slowly, lowered himself down. The bed creaked. I finished digging in my messenger bag, easing the strap over my head and settling the bag itself on my other side with a sigh. Carrying the damn thing never got any easier.

  “Close your eyes.” The remains of my good mood and the excitement of the Souk made me smile. I’ll just try this one more time.

  He studied my face for a long few moments before complying.

  I undid the clasp and leaned close, my bag clinking as it slid against the bed. Then I settled the sapphire against his coat and fiddled with the clasp, my fingers suddenly clumsy. It took a little while, and when I retreated I found he’d opened his eyes. He looked at me like I’d just done something extraordinary.

  “There.” I felt very pleased with myself. “I think it suits you.”

  He said nothing.

  A little bit of the good mood slipped away. Then a little more. He examined my face, his eyes moving from my forehead to my mouth to my cheeks to my chin to my eyes and then repeating the process again.

  Great. He doesn’t like it. He probably doesn’t like me very much either right now. If he’d just listen to me.

  Shame rose inside me. Rebuffed by a demon, a new low even in my dating life. “If you don’t like it, I—”

  “No.” He set his jaw. “It’s beautiful, Dante. Thank you.”

  He didn’t sound thankful. He sounded flat, and a little amused, and terribly furious. I wondered if he was going to hurt me again, and kept his hands in view. He could move with eerie blurring demon speed, but I might still have a little warning if he decided to get nasty with me again.

  It didn’t take much sometimes to tell what he was feeling—you only had to look closely enough to see the tiny changes, a millimeter’s quirk to the eyebrow, a fractional lift of a corner of his mouth, a slight flaring of one elegant nostril. The ever-so-tiny lift of one shoulder. I used to think he wasn’t as beautiful as Lucifer, used to think he just looked blandly norm
al.

  Well, Dante, you were wrong on that one.

  My chest was on fire, a pain that wasn’t from any physical wound lying against my heart. Why does this hurt so much? “You don’t sound happy.” I was too tired to keep the hurt out of my voice. “Did I just violate some arcane demon protocol by giving you a present?”

  He shook his head. I waited, got nothing else.

  “Fine.” I turned away, grabbed my bag’s strap and my sword, and slid off the bed. Padded around to the other side, then dropped down and stretched out, wiggling my bare toes and almost groaning as comfort closed around me. My bag settled against my stomach, I clasped my sword in my hands. “Take it off and burn it if you don’t like it. I don’t care.” After all, you held me up against a wall and lied to me. You’re a bastard.

  Why can’t I hate you?

  Long pause. Silence ticked through the room, only slightly marred by hovertraffic and desert wind outside, the call of a candyseller on the corner, the humming of the containment field over the window. Mosquito netting on the bed, pulled aside, swayed on the breeze. I saw a corner of a chair and a slice of plaster wall before tears blurred my vision and I closed my eyes.

  “What would you have me do?” Japhrimel’s voice, surprisingly, was raw and hoarse. Probably with fury.

  It took a few swallows before I could reply through the stone in my throat. “Give a little,” I managed. “Tell me what’s going on. Don’t lie to me. Quit manhandling me when I don’t do what you want. And for the sake of every god that ever was, quit being so… so—”

  “Inhuman? Is that the word?” Terrible sadness weighted his tone. “How many times must I tell you that I will act to protect you; I will not bother you with trifles? You need only obey my requests, Dante, and this will be easier.”

  Obey? Are you going to start beating me like a pimp beats his favorite hooker? “Don’t hunt Eve.” My voice was muffled, I pressed my left hand against my mouth. “Please. If you ever cared about me at all, don’t do it.” I’ll do anything you want, Japh, just leave Doreen’s little girl alone. Hurt me if you have to, but leave her alone.

  “I will not risk you in a rebellion doomed to failure. The Androgyne is young, untested. She cannot win, Dante. I will not lose you to her foolishness. Why will you not understand?”

  The injustice rose to choke me. I swallowed it, tried again. “You don’t have to declare yourself on her side. We can look anywhere in the world for her, Japh. We just don’t look too hard. In seven years the contract’s over, we’re free, and you—”

  His voice drained all the warmth from the room, made the air stir uneasily. “How free do you think the Prince will leave us if these four are not caught and brought to his justice? It is a choice between them and us. They will die, or we will. And if she has clouded your head with some appeal or treachery, it becomes my task to save you from yourself.”

  Silence. Soughing of the wind as it rose at dusk, the sun sinking below the arc of the horizon and night reaching up to fold ageless desert and ancient city in its embrace.

  “You want to save me from myself, and you’ll hurt me if I don’t do what you want. Is that it?” I swallowed dryly. Tensed myself, waited for him to explode.

  “I am sorry. I am a fool.” Well, chalk it up to a miracle, he sounded sorry for once. “I do not mean to hurt you. You do not understand, and it frustrates me past all reason when you will not listen—will not see. When the escaped are brought to Lucifer’s justice, you may extract whatever penance you desire from me. Until then, we are at war. It is us or it is them, and I will not have it be us.”

  “It’s not a choice between them and us, Tierce Japhrimel.” It was my turn to sound sad. “It’s your choice between me and Lucifer.” A bitter laugh rose up in me, was savagely repressed, escaped anyway. “Guess I know where your real loyalty lies.”

  “If it pleases you, continue to think so.” He rose, the bed creaking slightly as his weight moved. “When this is finished, I will ask an apology for that accusation.”

  You might get one, if we can hash this out between now and then. If we have time, between whatever’s going down with Gabe and whatever Lucifer’s cooking up next. I would have cursed, but he closed the door to the bedroom before I could. I clamped my left hand around my katana’s scabbard, the right around the hilt, and settled down to brood before we had to catch the transport. The tears dried up, leaving my eyes dry and hot, scoured by a whole desert’s worth of sand.

  CHAPTER 6

  I hate traveling transport, and my recent experiences with hovers falling on me hadn’t cured me of it. It was with profound relief that I stepped onto the concrete dock under a familiar plasilica dome and filled my lungs with soupy chemical-laden tang, the familiar cold radioactive glow of Saint City’s power well rising to greet me.

  Goddamn, it’s good to be home. The thought surprised me; I’d never considered the place home before. Never thought about what home would feel like.

  Lucas jostled me from behind, Leander sighing as he worked the kinks out of his neck. “Damn transports,” the Necromance said, and I felt sneakingly glad my own claustrophobia was shared by at least one member of our little troupe.

  I looked over my shoulder. To the side, Japhrimel murmured to McKinley, who had showed up on the transport dock at midnight in Cairo, along with Tiens. The Nichtvren left to help Vann with whatever errand Japhrimel had sent him on, and the black-clad Hellesvront agent had boarded the transport with us. I didn’t like that. The man—if you could call either Vann or McKinley a “man”—made me nervous. The oddly silver metallic coating on his left hand puzzled me too. I still didn’t have the faintest idea what the Hellesvront agents were, precisely, but they were part of the net of financial and other assets the demons had in place on earth. Vann had said something about “vassals.” Maybe they were organized into a feudal system, like some federated Freetowns.

  Which meant that Vann and McKinley were loyal to Japhrimel—if they weren’t exclusively loyal to Lucifer. Either way, neither of them was likely to be any help to me, or to give me any information. The Nichtvren didn’t seem very likely to help me either.

  Which left me with Lucas, Leander, and my own wits. Put that way, I seemed damn near rich. The Deathless and another Necromance were far from the worst backup I could have.

  Don’t say that, Danny. You’re dealing with demons. All the backup in the world might not be enough.

  As I watched, McKinley nodded and set off for the other end of the dock, apparently given his marching orders. Japhrimel watched him for a moment, but the mark on my shoulder was alive with heat. No matter that he was looking the other way, Japh’s attention was all on me.

  I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that. “Lucas?”

  “Huh?” His whispering, painful voice barely reached through the sound of people disembarking. The North New York–Saint City transport run was a full one since both cities were hubs. That hadn’t stopped us from having a whole first-class compartment to ourselves all the way from Cairo. Maybe Japhrimel had arranged for that, I didn’t know.

  Didn’t care, either.

  “Two things,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “Find out what Japhrimel’s business in Saint City is, and tell Abra I’ll be coming by to see her. Good?”

  “You got it.” He detached himself from us and melted into the crowd. It was a relief to have a professional in my corner. Whatever Japh was up to, Lucas was my best bet of finding out sooner rather than later.

  Leander raised an eyebrow as Japhrimel approached us, threading through a string of disembarking normals who didn’t even look at him twice but cut a wide swath around the human Necromance and me.

  I thought I’d grown past being hurt by that sort of thing. My mouth tipped up into the same faint half-smile I’d worn as a shield through so many bounties and apparitions as a Necromance. My cheek burned, the tat shifting under golden flesh, I wondered suddenly why my tat hadn’t vanished like my other scars when I’d become hedai
ra. “I’ll have a job for you too,” I told Leander. “Just wait.”

  “Take your time.” Amused and confident, his smile widened.

  I grimaced, good-naturedly. He sounded like Jace.

  The thought of Jace pinched hard deep in my chest, in a place I’d thought was numb.

  Guess it isn’t so numb, after all. If I took a slicboard and rose up into the traffic patterns, I would eventually see the huge soaring plasteel-and-stone pile that was St. Ignatius Hospital, where Gabriele had done what I could not and freed the empty clockwork mechanism of Jace’s body from the illusion of life.

  Leander’s low laugh combined with the surfroar of crowd noise—different from the Souk’s genial roar and tainted with fatigue from the long transport haul. I’d slept between Paradisse and North New York, my head propped on Japhrimel’s shoulder; the black dreamless nothingness I needed every two or three days. How odd was it that I could only sleep when he lulled me into it, when he was close?

  I brought myself back into the present with a jolt. Stop wandering, Danny. Why are you getting so distracted? It’s not like you. “First things first, though. Can you get us a cab?”

  “All things should be so easy.”

  “You are truly a master,” I called after him as he loped away to find and reserve us a hovercab in the queue that would be waiting outside along Beaumartin Street.

  It was regular bounty-hunter banter meant to ease our nerves. When Japhrimel reached me, his fingers braceleted my left wrist. I controlled the nervous twitch—that was the hand holding my katana, as usual.

  Did he think I was going to run now? Especially when he knew I would only go to Gabe’s, a place he’d been before? “McKinley will search for information and find us accommodation.” His voice cut through the crowd noise like a golden knife. “I thought that would please you.”

  There was no sign of the necklace I’d given him, and I had too much pride to ask what he’d done with it. Instead, I tried to pull my wrist out of his hand and got exactly nowhere, though his fingers were gentle. “There’s no need for this. We should get going.”