Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Eve stared over his shoulder, her blue gaze finding mine. The Knife buzzed against my hip. “Merely a pawn, Eldest?” Her voice was familiar, and a thread of her scent escaped the circle. Baking bread, heavy musk, and the edge of some spice, purely demon. “Who is the queen?”

  “None of us may move as we will.” Japhrimel shrugged at someone other than me for once.

  “Are you so sure?” She indicated the circle holding her captive. “I am to play the prisoner, very well. Will I be shackled?”

  “I see no need for such theatrics.” Japhrimel didn’t move, but the circle’s hum slowed, deepening. “Though were I to return your recent hospitality, we might learn the look of your blood.”

  I made a small restless movement. McKinley’s shoulders came up, his metallic left hand flexing into a fist as he stared at me. No, not at me.

  At the Knife at my hip, and at Japhrimel’s unprotected back, turned to me. At Eve, looking over Japh’s shoulder.

  Did he think I was going to stab my Fallen in the back?

  Wouldn’t put it past me right now, would you. Can’t blame you. Instead, I looked out the hatch, the airseals shimmering as sand rasped them. The vast bowl of the blast zone shed heat like liquid, the hover’s climate control working overtime. Puffs of cool air touched my cheeks.

  “It was necessary.” Eve didn’t sound regretful in the least. “Even your hedaira knows as much.”

  “I am not here to bandy words of what might have been. I am here for what is to be done now. Should I shackle you?”

  “You say yourself there’s no need.” Eve’s relaxed amusement filled the air with softness.

  Impatience boiled under my breastbone. “I realize this is the usual roundabout demon way of doing things.” The scabbard creaked as my fingers clenched, lacquered wood protesting. “But can we pretty please with sugar on top get on with this?”

  “You’re so anxious to see him again?” Eve spread her hands, a graceful movement expressing resignation. “I am ready, Eldest. We may as well accede to your hedaira.”

  Japhrimel was silent for such a long moment I almost thought we were going to have trouble. The world slowed down, hissing sand caressing the hover’s plasteel skin, a thin film of sweat covering my forehead.

  The circle’s hum spiraled up and winked out of existence. Silver drained away, fading under the assault of actual daylight. The thought of radiation sickness returned again, circling my brain, and I shifted my weight back as Lucas holstered his last plasgun and sighed.

  “I’m pretty sure I got somethin’ more pleasant I could be doin’,” Villalobos said. “We’re not meetin’ el Diablo until dark.”

  “I would prefer some necessary reconnaissance of the terrain, which will allow you the time to hide yourself should you so choose.” Japhrimel turned away from Eve, who stood smiling at me, the tips of her white, white teeth showing. My Fallen’s boots were soundless as he took three long strides away from my daughter.

  I tensed. Premonition tickled my nape, swam through dark water, flowered in the space behind my eyes—and sank away, showing me nothing. Nothing except the dread of something unpleasant about to happen.

  “I ain’t gonna hide,” Lucas said. “I want him to know I’m standin’ with you. That was the deal.”

  What the hell? “What deal?”

  Lucas coughed, rolled his shoulders back, and settled his bandoliers. “The one I made with your boyfriend, chica. The one that kept me in this game. What, you thought I was workin’ for you?”

  “That was my understanding, yes.” But Eve hired you before I did, and Japh paid you. So I suppose you were working for me until a better offer came along.

  “If I was still workin’ for you I’d’ve killed you. After you tried to unzip my guts, that is.” Lucas brushed past me. McKinley and Vann, wearing identical expressions of worry, stood like statues. Eve still didn’t move, watching me with that unsettling smile.

  You lying sack of shit. “I said I was sorry,” I repeated, despite Japhrimel halting less than two feet from me, his head slightly bowed. The scar, softly burning against my shoulder, pulsed once. Another warm, soft coat of Power eased down my skin. Caress or last-minute bolstering, it cleared my head a bit.

  The thin red ribbon of rage smoking in the bottom of my mind shivered, uneasy. Eve finally eased forward, stepping cautiously over the now-defunct borders of the circle. My nape prickled, the skin of the world suddenly too thin and full of whispers just beyond my auditory range.

  I braced myself. Eve’s smile widened, and her hands came up, elegant fingers spread. The thermagrenade bounced as she flung it, one deadly accurate throw, straight into the middle of the ammo crates Lucas had been digging in, stacked alongside the wall.

  “Oh, shi—” McKinley never got time to finish the word.

  The world turned over. Japhrimel spun aside and I dove for cover, oxygen hissing as fire bloomed, a hungry flower. I hit hard, rolling to the side, searching for something, anything, in the vast naked space of the cargo bay to hide myself behind.

  Eve landed next to me, catlike, one hand tented against the floor for balance as the other curled around my upper arm and hauled. The scar gave a flare of spiked heat, Japhrimel’s aura compressing over mine, and the desert invaded the hover as an explosion so huge it was soundless tore plasteel like paper.

  What the he— This time it was me who didn’t get to finish a word as my body left the grating, the shockwave and Eve’s application of force conspiring to drag me through air turned hot and viscous. I went limp as a rag doll, the slim iron bar of Eve’s arm now around my waist as she compressed herself, then let loose, flinging through space, my head jolting as we cleared the huge starfish hole torn in the side of the hover.

  Bleeding. Nose and ears. Sand grinding underfoot as Eve landed hard, physics taking revenge as we both skidded. A cloud of grit rose, Power screaming, and I realized debris was raking the ground around us.

  Eve leapt again, my sword almost jolting free before my fingers clamped shut, and I searched for a way, any way, to help her instead of just bouncing along for the ride.

  Nothing came to mind. There was a brief starry moment of unconsciousness, desert heat mouthing my skin, and Eve dragged us both down a rocky incline scarred with detritus. We reached the cover of the edge of the blast zone, but even then she didn’t stop, fleeing not just for escape but also for her life.

  There was no water. We sheltered in the twisted ruins of what might have once been a tallish building, one side of it black and flash-fried from the blast centuries ago. Eve propped her back against the wall, gasping, and peered out onto the wasteland of Vegas. “Are… you… hurt?”

  I shook my head, struggling to bring my own lungs under control. When I could talk, I still kept breathing, savoring the feel of air in my lungs. It was hellishly hot even in the shade, and something about this heat wasn’t as nice as, say, the sun I’d basked in outside the boarding house in Hegemony Afrike. I’d always hated sweating before Japhrimel changed me; afterward I’d had much more tolerance of temperature variance. But this heat was something else—an oppression, helped along by the thought that thousands had died and crumbled to dust in these very buildings.

  “You’re bleeding,” Eve finally said. Fine thin stripes of black demon blood on her own strange face glistened before they soaked back into golden skin. “My apologies.”

  “So were you.” I braced my back against the wall and cast around, calculating fire angles. “Didn’t know you had a grenade.”

  “Necessity being the mother of invention.” She shook her head, the icy ropes of her hair providing no relief from the heat. “I could not warn you, either.”

  “Understood.” And it was.

  “I couldn’t afford to let the Eldest chain me, or take the chance he might—”

  I wouldn’t trust him either, if I was you. “Understood, Eve.” I sounded weary even to myself. The scar on my shoulder throbbed angrily, another bolt of pure Power flushing down to my
bones and spreading outward. “Really. So what’s the plan?”

  “The best I can come up with is not very good.” She slid down to sit cross-legged, scooching herself between a shattered chunk of concrete and something that might have once been a couch covered in faded tattered plaid. Shards of silica glass littered the building, sand-laden wind whistling on the other side of the wall. In this wilderness of cracked and dead buildings, cover was cheap and sight-lines a dime a dozen. If I’d had six or seven bounty hunters and was up against a human adversary, it might have been a good locale. “He is due to arrive at dusk.” Her face twisted, blue eyes rivaling the heaving light outside. Every time she mentioned Lucifer, her expression held such pure loathing it almost covered up the fear. “We can either run and search for another opportunity to kill him, or take our chance now. Without allies—unless your Fallen decides, as I hope he will, that covering your attempt is the best way to keep you alive.”

  I tipped my chin down toward the scar. “I’m not exactly inconspicuous. He’s going to come looking for me.”

  She nodded. “Dusk approaches. It won’t be long, and we are not the only danger here. Listen.”

  I did, tilting my head in a parody of her graceful motion. My entire body ached.

  Wind, moaning. The ever-present hiss of sand, and the sound of roaring distance without hovers or crowds.

  And little, skittering noises. Too light or too heavy, too fast or too slow to be mortal. Noises that hit the ear wrong and raised my hackles.

  I breathed in softly, tasting the air. Dust, dry rotting things, decay and the faint odor of long-ago violence. Threading under that, a faint well-traveled hint of burning cinnamon and musk.

  “This is not a human place,” Eve whispered. “Even when it was a city, it wasn’t a human place. Since the catastrophe here, a door to Hell has remained open. He will use it, if he has not already, either to issue forth from Hell or to return once he has won. At least, that is what he thinks.” Her eyes glittered, her mouth twisting. She seemed not to notice her sweater was torn to rags, the firm golden slopes of her breasts peeping out.

  Nausea rose hot and acid. I swallowed it, my rig creaking as I shifted. I had all my weapons and a serious case of sand-in-the-crevices; it’s why I never go to the beach. “Okay.” You and me against the Devil? We’re dead.

  “We know where he will be,” she persisted. “And despite the Eldest, I am not without allies. Hell is in revolt. We have challenged him, you and I.”

  Exhaustion crested, washed over me. Just shut up and show me where I can die, all right? “Eve, there’s no need for the speeches. Just tell me what you want me to do.” My muscles trembled on the edge of cramping; I slumped against the wall and shook the ringing out of my ears.

  She paused for a few of the longest seconds of my life. I watched the knife-sharp shadows, sunlight spearing through the temporary shelter of a building older than the Hegemony and still clinging, wrecked and broken, to the edges of life.

  “Will you kill him?” She sounded very small, and very young. But that smile was neither small nor young. It was the smile of a vidpoker shark holding a full hand of wonderful about to call your bet and take your firstborn.

  Or maybe just your soul. Were demons even interested in souls anymore, now that they had all the government, sex, Power, and favors humanity could come up with?

  “Sekhmet sa’es,” I whispered back. “Why do you keep asking me? I’m sure as hell going to try.”

  CHAPTER 35

  It wasn’t that long until sundown, and I spent most of that time not-thinking as Eve and I flitted from shadow to shadow, working along the edge of the bomb crater and the huge reflective glass pan. Purple veils of shade grew longer and longer, and once I crouched next to her in the lee of a huge pile of scrap preserved by dry desert air while a hellhound slid in plain view through a golden column of fading sunlight, its green eyes catching fire and heat shimmering from its pelt. The Knife vibrated against my hip so hard I expected the beast to pause and look for whatever was buzzing like a wasp, but the slitherings and skitterings of demons in the ruins must have drowned it out.

  Or at least, so I hoped. My eyes, dry and heavy from the flying sand, kept welling with hot water. My shoulder pulsed with soft velvet heat.

  This is a bad idea. You know this is a bad, bad idea, right? Even if Japh was planning to hand Eve over to him, he would have kept you alive. This is a bad idea.

  I dismissed the thought as not even worthy of the craven bastard I was turning into. There was no shame in being afraid, but there was shame in hiding from it. So I was afraid. So what? I’ve been afraid most of my life, of one thing or another.

  But I’ve never let that fear drive me. Spur me, maybe. But not drive me.

  Eve circled our destination a few times before we worked our way closer, picking our way through piles of junk and broken concrete. The sun lowered itself into the west like an old man sinking into a bathtub, slow and aching. I tried not to feel the insistent tugging in my shoulder, a pulling against the ropes of the scar. Where was he? Had he intended to turn Eve over to Lucifer? He’d promised not to, asked me to trust him. Still, I could see how Eve might not want to take that chance.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.

  The sun turned to blood, and I thought I could see the haze of radiation crawling over every sand-scoured surface. Or maybe it was just the blurring in my eyes.

  As the sun sank, Power rose.

  It was coming from somewhere close, a diseased heart in the ruins thumping irregularly but gathering strength. One huge broken building, a massive structure that looked like it had once been a pyramid, loomed over a twisted unrecognizable statue. I guess humanity’s never lost its taste for making things huger than they need to be.

  A slight rise of rubble made a natural amphitheater, the mountains in the background and the edges of the blast zone spilling away, the glass fractured in crazy spiderweb patterns that reminded me of the deep angular scorings on the altar in the city under Chomo Lungma. I shivered as the baking wind, redolent of sand and demon spice, breathed up into my face.

  I lay on my stomach and peered down into the bowl of rubble giving out onto the wastes. Eve crouched below the lip of the hill, dust grimed into her hair turning it the color of clotted cream instead of pale platinum ice. Both of us were tattered almost beyond recognition. I pushed matted, filthy hair out of my face and shivered again. My nervous system was rebelling like a Chill junkie’s, out on the edge of control, ready to jolt away from under me.

  Breathe, Danny. Just breathe.

  There, in the middle of the wreckage, something that should not be… was. The dying sun gathered itself and plunged fully below the horizon, desert stars striking sparks as the wind veered again, the ground thrumming below. The paint of dusk bled down the vault of heaven, and as true night dropped like a curtain—because it does fall fast out here in the desert, with no streetlamps to hold it back—a slim figure with a shock of golden hair melded out of nothing and took his place at the focal point.

  The ruined city cringed.

  Other shadows gave birth. The spiderlike things clicked and scuttled, straining at leashes held by graceful, inhuman forms with burning eyes in shades of blue, green, and molten gold. Hellhounds, winged and flightless, snarled and jostled. Imps lolled, some chittering in the strange unlovely tongue of Hell, and the deeper shadows held eyes that had to be higher-ranking demons, not deigning to show themselves.

  “Anubis,” I breathed, then clapped my hand over my mouth.

  Eve said nothing, but crouched tense as a violin string next to me. “Not so many of the Lesser Flight, and none at all of the Greater.” The words mouthed my ear as if she’d placed her mouth next to it.

  So what? They’re still fucking demons. I spotted a way down through the rubble, an easy path.

  A primrose path, Danny? Get it? Howling hysterical laughter rose up under my skin, was mercilessly choked, and died without even a gurgle. “I don’t
suppose we have a plan,” I whispered back.

  “Do you believe in Fate, Dante?”

  Past turned into present again, looped and stuck tight, a gear-wheel sliding into place. Nothing to do but finish this, now.

  “No.” I wasn’t sure whether it was a lie or the truth, but I said it.

  Lucifer turned in a circle, the flame of his hair not replacing the sun. My hands shook. My entire body shook. The gaping hole in my mind struggled to open like a cancerous flower, the reality of what had been done to me fighting to break free and douse my sanity with black water. My shields shivered, one powerful burst of fear tinting them purple-red before I controlled myself again. Fudoshin sang as it cleared the sheath and I found myself on my feet at the top of the slope, clearly visible in the backwash of starlight.

  Pebbles clicked and shifted, and I knew without looking that Eve had risen too, her lambent eyes glowing over my shoulder. For a moment my heart paused. It should have been Japhrimel standing there, watching my back as I faced down the Devil.

  It doesn’t matter. It won’t matter in a few red-hot minutes.

  My sword woke. Blue flame twisted along its edge, runes of the Nine Canons spilling through the steel, its white-hot core singing its own silent song of destruction. I took three steps forward, and my fingers loosed themselves from the scabbard. It clattered to the ground, and my left hand closed around the Knife’s warm, wooden hilt.

  Lucifer slowly turned. The movement was exquisitely leisurely, light sliding down the line of his body. Gold lived, scorching, in his hair, casting a glimmer around him. He tilted his head back slightly, and the dish of his face rose to catch my gaze.

  His face was a holovid angel’s, sheerly beautiful and just as completely male. The emerald set above and between his flawless, burning-green eyes snapped a spark. The marvel of his mouth was set and unyielding. There were shadows under his flaming eyes, and his beauty was somehow worn but not diminished.