Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

“No.” I don’t think you’d call it a gift. Black unhealthy humor rose in my throat, I pushed it down and away. Don’t think about that, Danny. You’ll go mad.

  “Are you certain?”

  I nodded, my jaw set so hard I could feel my teeth groaning. If they hadn’t been demon-strong, those teeth, would I have shattered my own jaw?

  It was an unpleasant thought.

  “You accepted nothing from the Prince or his minions?”

  There wasn’t any accepting involved. “Nothing.” My jaw eased up a little. I could speak, now. The darkness behind my lids was more comforting. “He dragged me through a door and into Hell.”

  “What happened?”

  A delicate touch—the brush of his callused fingers against my cheekbone. Gently brushing the line of my jaw, turning and sliding down the hollow of my throat.

  Back when I was fully human my neck was bigger, a slope running down to my shoulders, the cord of the sternocleidomastoid muscle well-developed. Now, the cervical curve was better designed, demon bones capable of taking a greater hit and the muscles running just slightly differently to provide more leverage and flexibility.

  Japhrimel’s palm met my throat. His warm fingers curled, his thumb stroking just where the tension had settled. When I swallowed, harshly, my skin moved against his.

  My eyes flew open, his face filling my vision, familiar and oddly, terrifyingly different for a split second before I recognized him.

  What could I tell him? How could I possibly put it into words?

  “He hurt me,” I whispered. “Then I fell out of Hell and Lucas found me.”

  “He hurt you?” Calm and quiet, as if I couldn’t feel the fine explosive quiver running through his bones. His eyes burned green, lightening two awful shades until they looked…

  Like his. Like Lucifer’s. Like they could strip me down to bone and burn until not even ash remained. I tensed, muscle by muscle, staring into his eyes. My breath drew itself in, held against the back of my throat. My chin jerked down in a facsimile of a nod.

  Very softly, the most human of his voices turned into the brush of cat’s fur. “Tell me, beloved. Tell me what was done to you.”

  The words refused to come. They sat in my chest like a stone egg, like the heaviness in my belly, like the betraying weakness of my treacherous body. I smelled cinnamon, and musk—the darker smell of Japhrimel’s pheromones, the lighter overlay of mine, blending together to make a bubble of safety and climate control. The walls creaked and groaned sharply as Japhrimel’s aura cycled up into the visible, streaks of blackness painting the air like colored oil on water.

  I held his gaze, only capable of doing so because at the back of the green light, at the very center of the hot darkness that was his pupils—not round like a human’s or slit like a cat’s, but somewhere between the two—a different darkness moved.

  Before he’d bargained with Lucifer to regain a demon’s Power, his eyes had been humanly dark, and it was that I saw in them now. The darkness hadn’t been eaten by the green light spilled over his irises.

  It was there, under the light. How had I never seen it before?

  “He hurt me.” The little-girl whisper wasn’t me. It couldn’t be me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  His hand fell away from my throat, leaving cold bareness behind. His eyes held mine. “Then you do not have to.” Japhrimel’s tone was still killing-soft, but its edge was not directed at me. “When you wish to, I will listen. But first, answer me this. Did you accept anything from the Prince or his minions, anything at all?”

  Of course not. Nobody in their right mind takes a gift from a demon. Except me, of course. I’d taken gifts from Japhrimel too many times to count.

  “No,” I whispered. “There was no accepting involved, Japhrimel.” And if you ask me that one more time, I’m going to scream.

  “He merely… hurt you?” His voice scraped and burned along the edges of my numbness.

  “He hurt me enough. I said I don’t want to talk about it.” I turned on my heel and took two steps away toward the bathroom door again, stopped restlessly. Despite the shower, I suddenly felt filthy.

  “We are not finished.”

  I stopped. My hair brushed my shoulders, the mark pulsing with soft velvet heat. My rings swirled with light, my aura settling down under the healing weight of Japhrimel’s.

  He was holding me together, the cloak of a demon’s Power easing around me like a caress. Each successive wave from the scar on my shoulder worked in a little deeper, thin filaments spinning across the ragged gaps in my shielding, patching them. My wrists and knees felt naked and vulnerable, but the slim heavy length of my sword in my left hand more than made up for it.

  My skin crawled. I wanted to scrub myself again, with a wire brush if I had to. Shock had kept me numb before, but I wasn’t numb now.

  Not even close.

  “What else?” My brittle tone would have been a warning to anyone else.

  His footfalls were silent, but I felt each one against my back, my skin roughening instinctively under its tough golden perfection. Warm hands touched my shoulders, and he turned me to face him, with gentle inexorable pressure.

  His skin used to be so hot, before. When I was human, and my flesh was humanly cold.

  What am I now?

  I didn’t know.

  He held my shoulders and examined my face, his gaze a physical pressure over my cheekbones, my mouth, my forehead. His eyes didn’t frighten me now, despite their green glow.

  His mouth was a thin line, his hair falling over and shading his burning eyes. The air in the room jolted once, as if hit by a projectile cannon. I flinched, but Japhrimel held me still and deathly silence fell again, wrapping around both of us.

  When he spoke, it was quiet and level, each word evenly spaced. “I will repay the Prince tenfold for any harm done to you.” His inhaled breath was a slow hiss as his eyes locked with mine.

  I wonder if that’s supposed to make me feel better. Shame rose, hot and vicious, and I tasted copper. He held me for a few more moments, and whatever he saw on my face must have satisfied him, because he let go of me. “We have little time, and must leave now.”

  “Where are we going?” I suppose I sounded normal—if by normal you mean like a ten-credit-per-minute vidphone sex queen. Something in my throat was permanently broken, thanks to the Prince of Hell’s habit of strangling me.

  It was a favor I longed to return, and with Japhrimel firmly on my side it might just be possible.

  Maybe.

  If Japh really was on my side.

  Oh, gods above, Danny, don’t start doubting him again.

  “We have an appointment to keep.” His shoulders straightened as he stepped away from me. “Come.”

  I shivered, a reflexive movement. Any other time, I would have flinched under the plasgun charge of Power and cold fury in Japhrimel’s voice. “Japhrimel.”

  He paused, his coat coming to rest with a slight betraying flutter.

  “Where are we going?” Don’t just order me around, dammit. I’ve had all I can take of being ordered around.

  Five seconds of absolute silence ticked by before he replied. “Konstans-Stamboul.”

  My shoulders dropped. Great. Wonderful. Making progress. Why are we going there?

  He strode out of the room as if he expected me to follow.

  So I did. What else could I do?

  CHAPTER 5

  Ten hours later, on a hover bristling with demonic shielding, we were in Konstans-Stamboul. I spent most of the journey on a narrow shelf of a bed in one of the hover’s three cabins, grateful for a chance to simply rest. There were sounds under the well-tuned hum of hover transport—Lucas, other voices. I didn’t care; Japh had brought me on through the cargo bay so I didn’t have to see anyone.

  I was grateful for that. I didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to be alone.

  I’d like to get a good few hours of meditation in. Even praying wouldn’t hurt if we’re going
near a temple. It was a reflexive internal movement, a reaching for the faith that had always sustained me. The space where that faith had been was an ocean of bitterness, and I shivered like a child with a mouthful of sour candy as I buckled the rig on. It was new and custom-made, oiled leather holding two 9 mm projectile guns in low holsters, a 40-watt and a 20-watt plasgun (60-watts have a habit of blowing up in the hand), and a collection of knives, from two main-gauches long as my forearms from wrist to elbow to a thin flexible stiletto on the inside of one strap. The steel had faint dappled marks in the metal, as had all the knives Japhrimel had produced for me.

  He understood good gear, the Devil’s assassin. At least we always agreed about that.

  The rig was going to chafe. The leather hadn’t been broken in yet, despite its oiled softness. My other rig was gone.

  Don’t think about that.

  I rolled my shoulders back in their sockets, breathed in, and felt the familiar weight of weaponry settle into shoulders and hips. My hand tightened around the scabbard, and I let the breath out in a soft hiss.

  Armed and dangerous again, Danny. I dropped, with a jolt, fully into my skin, and opened my eyes.

  Japhrimel stood just inside the door, watching me arm myself. “Are they acceptable?”

  “I’ve never had a problem with any of the gear you get me.” My voice was flat and weary, my face frozen into a mask. “You have a good eye for steel.”

  If I hadn’t glanced up at him, I might have missed the faint smile touching his thin lips. “A compliment indeed, coming from you.”

  I checked the guns. They cleared easily, the projectiles clicking as I spun them, reholstering. The plasguns whined as I drew them, and I finished by testing the knives. The smallest stiletto was a bit sticky in its glove-tight sheath, but that was only to be expected, and if I had to draw it I probably wouldn’t need it quickly anyhow. No, it would be a quiet draw, quiet as slipping the blade between ribs, as quiet as a prison cell with a lock that needs picking.

  Japhrimel had even remembered the type of projectiles I usually carried ammo for, Smithwesson 9 mms with interchangeable cartridges. I had ammo in my bag, but I wasn’t sure if my bag could take much more abuse.

  Just as I thought it, Japhrimel raised his arm. I heard faint voices outside—Lucas’s painful whisper, mostly; the others were just murmurs.

  My bag, its strap no longer knotted, dangled from Japh’s hand. He held it like it weighed nothing. “I repaired some small damage to this. I thought you would want it.” He paused. “Even though it does still smell of Hell. I could not mend that.”

  A lump rose in my throat. I crossed the room, the new boots stiff and making each step oddly clumsy. I took the bag, ducked my head, and settled the strap diagonally across my body. When I looked up, Japhrimel was still staring down at me.

  We stood like that, my head tilted back, his shoulders no longer ruler-straight but slightly slumped. His eyes were fixed on my mouth, their green glare hooded and alert.

  I searched for something to say that would lead me on to the next thing that had to be done. Roll with it, Danny. Get with the holovid. “Thank you.” I would have licked my dry lips, but the way he was staring at them stopped me. A flush of heat went down my body, followed by a wave of panic nailing me in place. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  His eyes swung up to meet mine. Tension sparked in the air between us, a circuit closed or broken. Either way, it snapped once, then twice, as his hands came up to touch my shoulders. Leather creaked; the rig wasn’t anywhere close to broken-in.

  Great. If I have to sneak around it’s not going to be very quietly. I swallowed several times. The funny coppery taste in my mouth didn’t need an introduction.

  It was fear. I was afraid of my own Fallen.

  How was I going to work around that?

  Work all you want, I told myself. But there’s someone who needs killing first. Then you can take your sweet time and figure out everything you’ve ever wanted to know.

  My voice surprised me. “I have to kill him.” I searched Japhrimel’s face, looking for the hidden human darkness in his glowing eyes. It was there, if I could just look deep enough. “I have to kill him. You have to help me.”

  He nodded, a short sharp movement. His coat ruffled along its edges, a rustling sound.

  He did not ask who I meant.

  “No more tricks. No more lies or plans I don’t know about. No more hiding.”

  Another short nod. He looked as if he would say something, stopped.

  “Promise me, Tierce Japhrimel.” I could not sound any more deadly serious. My belly twitched, the skin flinching as if I expected a suckerpunch. “Promise me.”

  “What could I promise you that I have not already? I am in rebellion for your sake, is that not enough?” His quick motion arrested my protest, he laid one finger against my lips. “Come with me.”

  I flinched, covered it well enough. “Where now?” As if it mattered.

  “We have an appointment. One I never thought I would keep.” His mouth twisted bitterly at one corner, a swift snarl. It should have chilled my blood.

  It didn’t. For some reason, I felt a jagged burst of relief inside my chest. He’d promised.

  It would have to be enough.

  CHAPTER 6

  Konstans-Stamboul is an amazingly low-built city. Zoning laws are tight and archaic here, and the traffic is mostly wheel or airbikes, with a generous helping of slicboards. There aren’t many hovers, and the freight lanes over the city are full of slow silvery beetles marching against a sky often starving-deep blue, old pollution and new citybreath laying a bowl of refraction over dreaming blocks of stone buildings mixed with concrete and weathered plasteel.

  In the midst of this, the white walls and piercing towers of Hajia Sofya rise like a flawless tooth in otherwise-shattered gums. Graceful and pristine, the temple thrums with agonized centuries of worship and belief—Old Christer, Islum, Gilead Evangelical, and finally the multicolored, multilayered hum of Power collected consciously by psions coming to pray to their personal gods and normals coming to propitiate those same gods. Belief like sweat dews the white, white walls, and everywhere in the city you can feel the temple looming, a heart pumping slowly but surely.

  There are other temples in Konstans-Stamboul, but none of them feel like Sofya. That’s how psions refer to her—Sofya. And even more familiarly, as She. There are only two temples referred to in the feminine singular—Hajia Sofya, and Notra Dama in Paradisse.

  Vann crouched easily on the grated plasteel floor of the hover, tossing what looked like brown knucklebones onto a square of dark leather painted with three concentric rings. He didn’t look like a psion, but I supposed a Hellesvront agent working for Japhrimel might pick up a little divination here and there.

  McKinley slumped in a chair, his head tipped back and a pale slice of throat showing. He wore all black, as usual, and his left hand lay cupped on his knee, more metallic than ever, glowing in mellow Stamboul light falling through the portholes. He looked tired, dark bruised circles graven under his closed eyes.

  Lucas leaned against the hull, peering out a porthole, his yellow eyes slitted and the river of scarring down his face red and angry-looking. He rested one hand on the butt of a 60-watt plasgun, stroking it meditatively. Leander Beaudry, his cheeks scruffy with stubble over his accreditation tat, very pointedly didn’t look at Japhrimel. He sat in another chair bolted to the floor, his knees drawn up and his sword across them. His emerald glowed, a spark popping from it as I stared at his familiar, suddenly-strange face. He looked so… human. He even smelled human, the odor of mortality a spice against the scent of other everyone else in the hover carried.

  Even me. My thumb rested against the katana’s guard.

  “We’re exposed here.” Lucas didn’t acknowledge my presence with anything else. “How long we staying?”

  “We shall be leaving shortly.” Japhrimel’s heat against my back was comforting. He stood close, shadow
ing me in a way he never had before. “As soon as we have collected what we require.”

  McKinley’s eyes showed a faint gleam under the heavy lids. They rested on me, those little gleams. I didn’t like it. The sandpaper-on-skin distaste I always felt for him rasped at me. The little clicks as Vann threw the bones irritated me too.

  I wondered if I could kill either or both of them before Japhrimel intervened. I actually even started planning how to do it, a thin unhealthy joy rising behind my heartbeat when I imagined slipping my katana free of its sheath and letting the rage take me.

  The first few steps would be forward, gathering momentum and leaping, committing myself while McKinley was still in the chair. The sword would clear sheath with a musical ring, and the strike would be an upward diagonal, so that even if he tried to leap to his feet he would walk into it. He wouldn’t take the easiest way out, kicking the chair over backward, because it was bolted to the floor. The second stroke would be a reverse, wrist twisting and hilt floating as the blade sped back down, and it would finish him and position me for a crouch to launch myself at Vann—

  McKinley’s dark eyes unlidded themselves halfway, his lashes rising with agonizing slowness. He looked at me like he could read my mind.

  I’m sure my face reflected what I was thinking. I could feel it, a chilling little smile pulling the corners of my lips back, showing strong white demon-altered teeth.

  McKinley didn’t move. His Adam’s-apple bobbed as he swallowed, but there was no stink of fear from him. Instead, he examined me from under half-closed eyelids, wearing the same set expression he might use to watch a poisonous but not terribly bright animal, one to be cautious of despite its inherent stupidity.

  The friction on my nerves got worse. Vann said something I didn’t quite catch, his stance changing just a fraction as he crouched fluidly over whatever he was doing.

  Japhrimel’s hand descended on my left shoulder, his fingers curling around and tightening over his mark in the sensitive hollow under the wing of my collarbone. “There is no cause for alarm,” he said quietly. I had no trouble hearing his voice through the sudden rushing noise in my ears. “It is, after all, natural.”