Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Still I tried to get up, to make my body respond. Beating darkness closed over my vision—whether my eyes were shut or I was just blind with effort was anyone’s guess. A great glass bell of silence closed over me as my body twitched, little moans escaping my mouth between sips of air.

  “Be still.” The voice was hoarse but utterly familiar. “Shavarak’itzan beliak, woman, be still. Calm yourself. Stop. Stop.”

  Hands on me, familiar hands. I lay limp as clingfilm as he pulled me into his arms, my ribs still crackling as flexible demon bones tried to heal themselves. Yet more Power roared into me through the scar, coating my skin and working in, filling the hollow channels of my nerves and skeleton, I coughed one last time and convulsed, my heels slapping the rooftop.

  I collapsed.

  Something against my forehead—I realized it was his mouth just as he began kissing my cheeks, my temple, my hair, anywhere he could reach. He almost crushed me, his arms like steel bars, holding me to earth as my dislocated shoulder howled with pain.

  I didn’t care.

  They had to be obscenities, whatever he was saying in his native tongue. Curls of steam threaded away from us both, heat bleeding off through his aura as his shielding closed over me, a touch almost as intimate as his wings pulled close, enfolding me in a double layer of protection.

  Sobs came fast and hard, breaking me open. I wept against his chest, his skin against mine again, as he kissed every part of me he could and cracked his voice saying, over and over again in a language that I for once needed no translation for, that I was safe. That he had plucked me from the sky, because not even Death would take me from him.

  CHAPTER 33

  I lay on my side, in a bath of delicious heat and softness. It was like sleeping on clouds, and the heat burrowed into me, all the way out through my fingers and toes. Flushing away the last remaining traces of pain and injury. Soothing.

  The entire world was a gray smear. I wanted it to stay that way.

  Along with the warmth and the softness was Japhrimel’s hoarse voice, another constant. He spoke, sometimes calmly, sometimes not, but I didn’t listen to the words. Other voices intruded, but I paid no attention. I simply curled in on myself, shutting them away as best I could. My mind shivered, psychic wounds raw and smoking, all careful work to heal them undone. Quivering on the edge of insanity, not even the blue crystalline glow of Death’s country to break the darkness.

  I came back in bits and pieces, drifting for a while. Then I lunged into consciousness, jolting off the table, my hands around a hilt and the blade making a low whooshing sound as air split.

  Warm irresistible fingers closed around my wrist. Hoverwhine drilled through my back teeth. I opened my eyes, and Japhrimel twisted my wrist—not hard, but enough to lock it and keep the blade down and to the side.

  I still had my boots on. They scraped grated metal flooring as I shifted my weight, left hand coming up in a flat strike, meaning to break the nasal promontory and drive it up into the brain. It was a reflex action, snake-quick, and Japhrimel avoided it gracefully, his streaked hair ruffling as he ducked aside and caught my left wrist. The room was narrow, very small, and smelled of hoverwash and oil.

  He drove me back, pinned me to the wall, I brought my knee up and he avoided that too. My breath caught in my throat, my shoulders suddenly against the hull. It was a hover, we were traveling, and the entire ship shuddered as I struggled with flesh and Power both. His aura clamped down over mine, the pressure excruciating for a long infinite moment.

  “Calm,” he said, softly. “I am here. Calm, my curious.”

  He looked just the same, except for the streaks in his hair and the shadows under his burning eyes. His face had hollowed out, but it was still essentially his, and the same essentially human darkness lay under the green fire of his irises.

  “Let go.” I didn’t recognize my own voice, low and flat, with the terrible weight of fury behind it. “Let go now.”

  “No.” He didn’t even bother to dress up the refusal, his fingers clamping home. Leather creaked, the rig responding to pressure. I tried shifting and sliding away, struggled until sweat broke out along the curve of my lower back, pressed into the metal hull. My hair fell in my eyes. “You do not understand.”

  “I don’t want to. You lie.” Still quiet, as if every shade of inflection had been washed out of my throat.

  “I have the other half of the Knife, Dante. We are so very close to being free.” He sounded so reasonable. Over his shoulder I could see the rest of the narrow room, a shelflike bed and plasglass-fronted cabinets. “I have returned from the very depths of Hell, and I have—”

  I know what you did. You sold me out. “Shut up.” I didn’t know if it was possible to care less. “Where’s Eve?” If you’ve hurt her I’ll—

  “Vardimal’s Androgyne is safely confined. Lucas and McKinley restrained her.” His fingers softened, but not nearly enough for me to slip free. The hover settled into a rhythm, short choppy bounces as if we were just above rough water, gyros straining as antigrav slipped and slithered against waves. “Her supporters are scattered. It was necessary. I had to, Dante.”

  I finally slumped against the wall, leather and hilts digging into me as Japhrimel leaned in. His eyes were inches from mine, filling the world until I closed my eyelids, shutting out that green fire. Fudoshin’s bladetip clattered, my shaking hand pushing forward against a vise-grip. “You were going to kill her,” I whispered.

  “If it would serve my plans, I would.”

  Great. I suppose that’s one statement I can unequivocally believe. The deep, sarcastic voice inside my head showed up again, right on time. “Your plans. Do I serve your plans?”

  If the words had carried any steel they could have cut. They could have shattered the hull and left me free. I would have tried to struggle free, but it would do no good. Instead, I gathered myself, harsh hurtful tension building in my muscles.

  “You do not serve my plans. You are what I engage in planning to keep safe. Look at me.”

  “No.” Other people might have a witty saying or a pretty epitaph. Not me. I will have only sheer, stubborn refusal. He was still forcing me, still demanding.

  “Look at me.” The softest of his voices, the most careful. The most human. “Dante. Please.”

  My eyes flew open.

  He leaned in close, lashes veiling the green burn of his gaze. His hair fell, thick choppy streaks of silvery contrasting sharply with wet blackness. Fine lines bracketed his mouth, fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

  After so long unchanging, he seemed to have aged. But demons don’t age. Was it another mask?

  “What happened to you?” My traitorous heart pounded inside my chest.

  “I made a fresh bargain with the Prince.” He overrode my sudden surging struggle. “Our salvation is so very close, do not doubt me now.”

  “Eve—”

  “That is not her Name. She is Lucifer’s Consort, not a human child. You fool. Did you open a door into Hell at her bidding? Do you have the least comprehension of what that means? A large portion of her allies, her precious resistance, escaped into the free air. Lucifer will make war upon them himself, he cannot afford to do otherwise—but she was my bait in a trap I laid with care, a trap you almost made unusable. I had to kill her gathering once you broke the walls between your world and Hell.”

  How could I even begin to explain? “I was giving you time,” I whispered. “And staying alive. It was the only way I could—” Do something, instead of waiting for you! I was going to finish, but he didn’t let me.

  “McKinley was more than capable of hiding you.”

  “Not from her he wasn’t.” She’s mine, Japhrimel. The words trembled on my lips, the secret I had not opened my mouth to tell him directly. My own small private deceit in this snakepit of lies and clashing agendas. I couldn’t tell him now. “I had to, Japh.” I sagged against the wall, going limp in his hands, but my fingers were tight on Fudoshin’s hilt. I
f he let go of me now—

  He sighed, a sharp dissatisfied sound. “It matters little now. We are on our way to a meeting with Lucifer. I will deliver the wayward Androgyne and—”

  I brought my knee up, sharply, he countered the movement, and we almost spilled to the floor. He regained his balance, fingers biting in cruelly. “Stop.” Did he sound breathless? The scar turned to molten metal on my shoulder, another warm pulse of Power filling my nerves and veins.

  My skin crawled. I opened my mouth to scream at him, but he overrode me.

  “Once she is delivered to him, she has agreed to distract his attention. I will strike him down even as he gloats over her. Will you stop?”

  I went utterly still, a clockwork spinning inside my head pausing for just a moment. Don’t trust him. Don’t listen. Plot and counterplot, Danny.

  When I did speak, it was a low, gravelly whisper. “How can I trust anything you say to me?”

  “I have gone into Hell for you, not once but several times.” He let go of me in a sudden convulsive movement. “That should be enough. Even for you.”

  “You think I’ve been on a fucking holiday cruise? Where do you think I’ve gone?” My arm fell to my side, Fudoshin avoiding a stack of crates strapped to the floor.

  “As far as necessary. As I would for you.” His hands dropped. His coat was just as black as ever, but that shock of silver-threaded hair… he was different. Too different.

  We had both changed out of all recognition. What was left?

  “Let me get this straight.” I swallowed, my dry throat clicking. “You expect me to stand there and trust you while you hand Eve over to Lucifer—the very thing he’s always wanted out of this game.” He wanted me to tell him where she was, and when I wouldn’t I was a Judas goat, meant to lure her in. He used me, you used me—what’s the goddamn difference?

  His left hand came up. In it, satiny wood gleamed, and the sheathed Knife at my hip gave a slow sonorous ringing, like crystal stroked just right. The finials of its other half cradled Japh’s hand, moving slightly, yearning out of his grip and toward me. His fingers trembled as he held it, as if he wanted to drop it.

  He took two slow steps forward as the hover’s gyros stabilized, the bounce telling me we were ashore now. We’d just made landfall.

  Where the hell were we?

  Off the map, sunshine. You’ve just gone off the fucking edge of the world.

  Japhrimel offered me the Knife. “Take it.”

  My heart thumped against my ribs. I eyed his hand, eyed the other half of the Knife. So he had retrieved it. Where had he hidden it in Hell?

  Would I ever have the time or the courage to ask him?

  He cupped the blade in his right hand and released the hilt, offering it like a goblet of wine to thirsty gods. If it hurt him, his face showed no sign. Time ticked by as the hover began to climb, the earpopping of altitude a heavy auditory weight.

  If you take that, Danny, you’ll be able to kill him. He’s fast and strong, but you saw what it did to Sephrimel. You’ll have some power in this relationship. You’ll have a little control.

  And if he pulls a mickey on you one more time, you can bury the thing in his guts.

  My tat shifted on my cheek, diamond pinpricks under skin. My emerald lit, a spark popping in the gloom. Japhrimel waited, half of the Knife trembling in his hands, aching to clasp its twin and be whole again.

  “It’s yours.” Very softly, his mouth its usual straight line after it had given the words to the air. Still, he didn’t look at me, his eyes hidden behind that fringe of hair. A muscle in his cheek flickered. “It was made for a hedaira’s hand.”

  Go ahead, Danny. Take it. You’ve got to finish this game anyway. You dealt yourself in at Notra Dama. Time to pick another card.

  I didn’t realize I’d moved until I closed my fingers over the hilt. It hummed in my hand, happily, and the memory of the sick gulping noise turned my stomach over hard.

  Japhrimel raised his eyes, shaking his hair back. He shook both his hands free, flicking his fingers. “Will you trust me?”

  Four little words. I weighed half the Knife in my hand, its mate vibrating against my hip like a slicboard rattling before it dumps you. I don’t know if I should. I don’t know if I want to. “I don’t know if I can.”

  His shoulders dropped. My stomach rattled and flipped, as if I was tumbling in freefall again. Roaring wind in my ears, prepared to leave all this struggling and striving behind. The look on his face was like being stabbed, and all the broken places inside my head gave a flare of devouring pain.

  Why was I such an idiot for him? Just when I thought I had no reason to trust him, he went and did something like this. Like giving me a weapon.

  My mouth opened. “But I can try.”

  We stared at each other. The hover groaned and rocked as the angle of ascent sharpened. I stood there gripping half the Knife with white-knuckle fingers, my head suddenly full of the rushing noise of Paradisse wind sliding past as I prepared to splatter myself over the pavement below. I’d been so ready just to give up.

  Again.

  Japhrimel nodded, a short sharp movement. The silver in his hair glittered. “Thank you.” Gravely, as if he hadn’t just handed me the only weapon in the world that could possibly kill him.

  The scar flamed with soft heat, and his aura over mine settled, thin fine strands of gossamer energy binding together rips and tears, healing the rent tatters of my shielding with infinite care. Was he doing it consciously?

  Did it matter?

  I searched for something else to say, another question to keep him standing here and talking to me. “What happened to you? In Hell?”

  One shoulder lifted, dropped. Goddamn shrugging demons.

  “Nothing of any account.” Dismissive.

  The sharp bite of frustration whipsawed through me, drained away. “Come on, Japh. Your hair.”

  “It doesn’t please you?” He tilted his head slightly, letting the dim orandflu light play over its shagginess.

  Goddammit. “That’s not the point. I just wondered what happened.” You’re not going to tell me a damn thing, are you? Especially not now. You just want me to trust you blindly. You want to control everything about this.

  But the weight of half the Knife in my hand said differently.

  “Tell me why you almost killed yourself fleeing me.” His hands spread slightly, expressive. I glimpsed dark shadows across his palms—from the touch of the Knife?

  I wondered.

  The edges of his coat ruffled as the hover shifted, settling at a new altitude.

  You really want to know? “I…” How could I put it into words? Because he’d tried to force me. Because Eve was the last shred of Doreen left walking the earth, and I had to believe there was some humanity left in her—because if there wasn’t, there was none left in me either. Because I could no longer pray, because the Devil had robbed me of myself, because Eve was sticking it to Lucifer where it hurt—for any number of reasons, none of which I could explain without a half-hour, absolute silence on his part, and a whole lot of luck. Or maybe a demon-Merican dictionary, if such a thing existed.

  “Exactly.” He clasped his hands behind his back, his feet placed just precisely so. “There are some things that cannot be explained, even between us. Whether we founder on them or learn to leave them unsaid, I leave to you.” He turned on one heel, his long black coat flaring with a sound like feathers rippling. “You should gain some rest. We will be there sooner than you think.”

  “Where?”

  “Where else would Lucifer meet us? Where he can see us coming.” With that, he was gone through a hatch door, a brief slice of daylight outside stinging my eyes.

  I let out a sharp breath. The shaking in my arms and legs circled like a beast waiting to pounce.

  I drew the first half of the Knife from its sheath. It was awkward, but I hitched one hip against the shelflike medbay bed and compared the two wooden weapons. They both looked complete, bu
t after a few moments my brain started to work and I saw how they could be fitted together, by tangling the finials and twisting just so. They hummed, my hands drawing together as if I held two powerful electromagnets, thrumming their attraction almost audibly.

  I slid them together with infinite care, my almost-translucent fingernails still bearing chips and flecks of black molecule-drip polish. They matched the mellow glow of the wood, and the humming intensified until I gave the final twist, locking both halves of the Knife into place.

  Power drew heavy and close in the confined space. The hover bounced, and the Knife’s hum dropped below the audible. The world warped around it, the same kind of seaweed drifting I remembered around the edges of a door torn in the fabric of the world. The geometry of the Knife was slightly off, for all its grace, yet it looked at home in my grasp, the finials caging and protecting my slim golden hand. The blade, now leaf-shaped and slightly curved, looked wicked enough to do some damage just sitting there, and I suddenly had no trouble believing this thing could kill any demon it chose.

  Still, it didn’t do the other women any good. Don’t get cocky, Danny.

  Had Sephrimel’s hedaira ever held this thing? If I tried, could I find any traces of the women who might have thought they could wield it locked under its glossy surface? Psychometry wasn’t a skill of mine; I was no Reader.

  And it was only made of wood, from some unspeakable tree I couldn’t imagine.

  The Knife hummed. It was power, and control, and a way to end this madness so I could breathe again. So I could think again, without the black hole in my head threatening to drive me insane, without the hole in my heart that kept crying Japhrimel’s name. Without the weight of sick grief and guilt I couldn’t let myself feel if I was to function.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered to the empty air.

  Because it didn’t. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference whether I could trust Japhrimel or not. We were locked into this course, like an AI locking in a freight hover. Like a Greater Work of magick completing itself, snapping home and driving a change into the fabric of the world, reshaping reality according to its own laws.