Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The Devil looked very tired.

  My left cheek itched, the twisted-caduceus accreditation tattoo straining inked lines under my skin. My own emerald burned like a lase bonedrill, spitting a tearing-green spark fat as a teardrop.

  His eyes met mine and I recoiled without moving, a scream tearing through the blank spot in my head, the one space where my Magi-trained memory mercifully failed.

  Lucifer paused, the silk of his simple black tunic and trousers fluttering. A hood of darkness slid over his perfect features, a psychic miasma of hate made visible. His eyes slid past me as if I was a piece of furniture, coming to rest on Eve.

  When he spoke, it was with the utter finality of a being who expects immediate obedience. The voice of the Prince of Hell lashed every exposed surface of the wreckage and made it groan and tremble.

  “Aldarimel, the Morning Star, most beloved of my consorts.” Lucifer’s mouth twisted down at one corner, rose again in a sneer. The thin white scars on my belly twitched as if something still lived in the bowl of my pelvis, a heavy heated stone.

  The wall inside my head quivered, stretched—and held, my stubbornness sticking fast. I lifted the Knife and stepped forward again. The demons had frozen, hellhounds, spiders, and imps all alike crouched and staring like statues.

  Lucifer took no notice. He ignored me, speaking past me to Eve. “I shall offer you one chance, and only one, to return to your nest and await your penance.”

  I’m not sure what she would have said. She never got the chance. I opened my big fat stupid mouth.

  “Hey.” My voice, cracked and husky, echoed all along the bowl of rubble. “Blondie. You two-faced lying sack of demon shit.” My face froze, lips stretched in a facsimile of a smile. “You’ve got business with me first.”

  “Indeed I do.” He nodded, and I almost had no time to duck before the first hellhound leapt for me.

  The Knife jerked in my hand. Fudoshin sang, and wood met demon flesh as I pitched forward, blade stuck to the hilt in the roasting hide of a hellhound I had barely even seen.

  The sucking sound hit a high keening note, and Power slammed up my arm, exploding in my left shoulder and fluorescing in the visible range. Black-diamond fire burst in a perfect sphere around me, the edges of my ragged aura clearly visible under the smooth carapace of Japhrimel’s borrowed Power.

  A quick twist of my wrist, muscles flexing in my forearm, breaking the suction of muscle against the blade. The finials scraped against my skin, caging my hand and protecting it as a writhe of the hellhound’s flexible body almost tore the Knife free.

  I kicked the body, fine ash already spreading in capillary-patterns through the glassy shifting heat of its hide. I rose from the half-crouch its attack had driven me down into, Fudoshin sweeping down in a curve painted with blue fire, slicing across an imp’s face.

  Clarity spilled through me, rage sharp and bright as a new-pressed credit disc. They descended on me, the lowest of the scions of Hell, and the Knife screamed in my hand as the world unrolled, strings of energy under its surface showing me the path through. Step-kick, demon bones crunching and the Knife sending another shock of feverish Power up my arm, the sword halting in midair and slicing down, the Knife’s finials crunching against a hellspider’s face. They moved in on me, skittering and chittering in their demonic language, or snarling and clicking.

  This is what I was born to do.

  All thought vanished. My grip on Fudoshin’s hilt was gentle, like clasping a lover’s hand. The sword responded, steel flexing as it bent, whipping through forms coded into the very lowest levels of my brain.

  Turn. Flex the wrist, back foot stamping down, front foot turning out, bring the knee up, quickly, don’t think don’t think, kill it, drive the Knife in, pull it free.

  It was a string of fire tied to my wrist, the Knife humming as it settled into jerking my body like a marionette’s, burning all the way down to the bone, the finials clasping tighter and tighter as the weapon took over.

  And I didn’t care.

  The last hellhound fell at my feet with a thud, whimpering as veins of ash threaded its flesh. It convulsed, and hissing whimpers sounded as the rest of them drew back, a circle of glowing eyes and heatshimmer in the darkness. The temperature had dropped, steaming sands losing the day’s baking. My boots crunched on silica glass at the bottom of the hill, and I faced Lucifer over a rubble-strewn plain. Raised my eyes, the ribbon of rage widening. It flushed my body, this clear clean fury, sweet in its single-mindedness.

  I knew what he had done to me. I didn’t quite remember it, but I knew as if it had happened to someone else, some brutalized girl crouching in the corner of a bedroom, whimpering as she beat her head against the wall, the borders of her body violated, her mind no longer quite her own.

  The Prince of Hell’s green eyes narrowed. That was all. The emerald in his forehead ran with light as sterile as the radiation crawling through the ruins.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a single plant or animal since touching down. Just sand, shattered buildings, and trash. Pure destruction, so intense that after centuries nothing grew here.

  Lucifer’s hands were loose at his sides, elegant fingers relaxed.

  I filled my lungs. Grit-laden wind touched my cheeks, fingered my filthy hair. My ribs heaved with deep gasping breaths, but I didn’t care. My heartbeat mounted behind my eyes, so quick and hard it threatened to burst out through my veins.

  “Here I stand, Lucifer.” My throat cracked with dry heat, but my voice was steady. “And not all the hosts of Hell shall move me.”

  In other words, you want Eve? Come and get her—but you’re going to go through me first. And I have some payback for you.

  The voices in my head stilled. My left shoulder ran with velvet fire, and the heat was building in my arms, my legs. It pressed against the thin film of my psyche, stretched over some unknowable bulge.

  More lamps lit in the dark behind him. Demonic eyes, shadows resolving around slim graceful shapes. The air crawled and ran with Power, whispers, little tittering gasps of laughter. Those of the Greater Flight that still called the Devil “Master” gathered, just in time for the show.

  I didn’t care.

  Lucifer stirred. “Not all the hosts of Hell are necessary, Necromance.” His hair lifted, gold running along its edges. His Chinese-collared tunic ran with wet light as he lifted one graceful arm and pointed at me, the claw-tip at the end of his index finger lengthening. “Just one.”

  Fudoshin’s tip described a precise little circle in the air before the hilt floated to the side, a natural movement settling in second guard, the Knife along my left forearm singing its high-voltage song of gathering murder. Stars ran overhead, their crystalline fires not choked by cityshine. Eve was still behind me at the top of the hill; I felt her attention, spark after spark crackling from the emerald in her forehead echoing Lucifer’s. The gem on my cheekbone sparked too, my tat running wildly under the skin, a high sweet itching pain.

  The world narrowed, shrank to a single point. Neither of us could back out now. Gauntlet thrown down, challenge accepted, and I was about to die.

  I wondered if my god would take me in His arms, or if I would slide unnoticed into the well of souls I had crossed over so often.

  Did it matter?

  “Come on,” I whispered. Come and get me. If you can. If you dare.

  I had no warning. Before the words died he was on me.

  The shock was like worlds colliding. My left arm was thrown aside, his bladed fingers striking my solar plexus, robbing me of breath as shocked lungs and heart struggled to function. Fudoshin jabbed in, hilt used like a battering ram to strike the Prince of Hell’s fair golden face, now twisted with rage and horribly, inescapably still beautiful. It snapped his head back and he was flung down as I stumbled back, digging in my left heel to regain my balance, nausea rising and my bruised torso seizing up, cramping.

  Nausea retreated as he flowed to his feet. A single dot of black bl
ood welled at the corner of his mouth and I dropped into position as he lifted the back of one golden hand to touch his lips. Fudoshin described a bigger circle this time, the blessed blue flame along its edge adder-hissing.

  I heard myself speak. “I remember.”

  I remember how I screamed when you put that thing in me, how you sliced me open like I was a sodaflo can—and how you laughed when I screamed. I remember what you said, and how you really seemed to enjoy yourself. I remember how you sent me out to betray my daughter and my lover.

  “What do you think you remember?” Contempt loaded Lucifer’s voice, smoking land glittering like carbolic tossed over reactive paint. “Where were you when I made your kind? Where were you when I made your world?” He drew himself up and pointed again, the holocaust glow of his eyes so intense teardrop trails shimmered horizontally from their corners. “You have interfered for the last time!”

  Oh, will you just shut up and kill me? I raised the Knife slightly, its clawlike finials prickling against my forearm, and felt the points slide into my skin. The sweet rotting-fruit smell of demon blood hung cloying in the air. Was I bleeding?

  I didn’t care. I brought my sword down and around, a swordsman’s move, hilt rotating in my hand as the blade spun like a propeller, before he leapt for me again.

  Impact. Bones snapping in my side, the agony immense and useless, like everything else. Stars of pain shattering across the surface of my mind, I brought the Knife up in a sweep and felt the blade bite, a feedback squeal grinding the rubble around us into dancing cascading dust—

  —and the Knife, wrenched from my grasp, clawed my hand desperately before flying in a high impossible arc, up and away, the Power feeding up my arm jolting to a stop as Lucifer backhanded me, smashing me to the ground.

  CHAPTER 36

  Rolling.

  Get up get up get up— Before the words faded I was on my feet, every ounce of demon speed I could use in one last desperate lunge, swordblade screaming as it split air and twisted, driving home in the Devil’s chest. A spike of fire jabbed through my left lung, blood dribbling down my chin, muscles pulled out of alignment by smashed bones, I swayed on my numb feet and saw what I had done.

  We stood like that, Lucifer pinned like a butterfly, the scream dying on my lips as the Devil, black blood griming his ivory teeth and his eyes inches from mine, smiled.

  The world halted. Sick realization thumped home in the wasteland my shattered mind had become, smoking with fury. That’s not going to kill him.

  There seemed no shortage of time as I watched his hand come up, claws springing free. This is going to hurt. I shifted my weight to pull Fudoshin free, knowing I would never be able to cut him a second time.

  The Knife I dropped the Knife ohgods I’m dead I’m dead—

  It was hopeless. But I tore my blade free, metal howling under the abuse, Power raying out from the event we had just created in spiderwebs of force and reaction, rubble grinding to smaller bits and dust pluming, shaping into mushroom clouds.

  Everything inside me rose and halted, hanging in the air above my skin. My left shoulder burned, a prickling mass of hot ice and barbed wire flooding me with a desperate burst of Power, straining through me, trying to shield me against the inevitable. Flexible demon-altered bones crackled, and the relief and weightlessness I had felt falling through the roof of Paradisse wrapped around me again.

  It’s over.

  Lucifer’s hand began its descent, claws sparkling with emerald flame to match the gem in his forehead. His face was a mask of unholy rage, psychic darkness flooding under its beauty, and my heart stuttered as the essential inhumanity of the thing I saw beneath that screen of loveliness was revealed.

  And I recognized it. I recognized the twisted teeth and burning eyes. I heard its echo in my own brain. It was my own hatred.

  How much more like the Devil was I going to have to become to kill him?

  No.

  Time paused again.

  No. I will not be like you. No. The only word I could say repeated, gathering force in my eyes and arms and lips, filling me. It was the only prayer I could utter.

  Dante, you have been so blind.

  And I struck.

  Not with my sword. If I tried to cut with Fudoshin again, it would be in rage, in anger. I already knew how useless that would be, fury turning back on itself, destruction for its own sake.

  Compassion is not your strongest virtue, Danyo-chan.

  How had my teacher known?

  The red ribbon of rage in my head paled. It shrank to a thread-thin line. I did not want it to go. It was my only defense. I could not help what had been done to me, but I could fight. I could kill.

  Couldn’t I?

  I can’t hold a gun to your head and make you more human.

  The dead rose about me, each of them a distinct shape of silver lattice and crystalline intent holding an imprint of the flesh they wore in my life. Lewis, with his smile and his steadfast love. Doreen with her gentleness; Jace with his stubborn refusal to give in. Gabe, who had known me better than I knew myself—and Eddie, always on the periphery but still necessary, who would have done for me what I did for him and not counted the cost.

  All of them rose in me, a tide of love and obligation, the nets of duty and the lines of promises made, kept, broken, and kept again. The dead keened in my bones, spilled through my blood, and blazed through me as the red thread inside my head opened its jaws and roared.

  Has a god ever used you to complete a circle? Have you ever been ridden by a loa? A vaudun Shaman will understand. The god or spirit spills into you, stretching you like a too-small glove on a hand, and the thin ecstasy of a bursting, too-ripe fruit shatters whatever you thought you were. Infinity recognizes you, and how can you help but recognize the infinity in your own soul?

  My god woke in me, His slim canine head turning to look with its terrible eyes that became my eyes. For a dizzying moment Death filled me.

  Compassion is not your strongest virtue.

  Lucifer screamed. The force boiled out of me, my hand spread instead of locked in a fist. I touched the Devil’s face, cupping his cheek as if he was a lover, my fingers gentle and delicate, the silk of an impermeable, invulnerable skin sending a heatless pang through my cracking ribs and bleeding meat.

  Yes, it is, I replied. Gods grant I do not forget it.

  They did not.

  Married to Anubis’s still quiet, Sekhmet woke. She took a single step, the stamping dance that would unmake the world moving on, creation flooding in its wake. It was and was not me who did the striking, at the last. It was them.

  No, it was me too. I swear it was.

  The scream was the world stopping. It was a death-cry, or the cry of love like a knife to the heart. The god I thought had abandoned me gathered me to His chest, comfort singing through my sobbing, broken body.

  It was not Anubis who had turned away. It was me. He had never left me for a moment.

  You may not take this, Anubis-Sekhmet said. This is Mine, and you may not have her.

  Ash threaded through Lucifer’s skin, the even gold and bright light dimmed by spreading veins of dusty dirty gray. The sound was a crackling. My other hand came up, met his face. His emerald cracked, sending out one vicious caustic flash. The gulping sound was very loud in the stillness. A dripping point speared free of Lucifer’s ribs, and over the Devil’s shoulders, a pair of yellow eyes dawned, meeting mine with a blow no less critical than the one I had just meted out.

  Lucas twisted the Knife, and Lucifer screamed again. My breath jagged out of me, the gods receding like a tide full of wreckage, foaming and split.

  The flesh under my fingers collapsed, runnels of dry decay replicating furiously. The twin pieces of Lucifer’s emerald ground themselves into dust. The Knife keened, satisfaction in its chill, curling voice.

  The explosion of dusty diamond grit blew my hair back, scouring my eyes and filling my mouth with dry sand. I coughed, choked, and stumbled back, my le
gs failing me.

  Someone caught me, breaking the force of my fall. My sword clattered on the ground, my fingers spasming open. Power slid through the mark on my shoulder, detonated inside my bones, and Japhrimel folded himself over me, saying something I could not quite hear. It might have been my name. It could have been anything.

  I convulsed. Footsteps sounded through the deafness of pain in my ears. My head tilted back, stars scoring the sky through veils of dust.

  The ground tilted, desert shaking like liquid brushed with hoverwash. The pain was a diamond nail, driven through me from crown to soles. My body struggled against it, a fish on a hook.

  Lucas said something, in a deadly-quiet whisper. Footsteps brushed a slope of wreckage, picking their way delicately down.

  Japhrimel’s arms tightened. He pulled me, once more, into the shelter of his body. My cheek burned, the emerald grafted into the bone red-hot. “The Prince is dead,” he said quietly. “Long live the Prince.”

  Eve laughed, the sweet carefree giggle of a little girl. “It is the way of our kind, is it not?”

  Demons drew close. I felt them against the raw edges of my broken shielding, Japhrimel’s aura over mine smooth and seamless. Whispers and chittering, their voices tearing at the night. The smell of burning cinnamon turned cloying, dust-decay threading its sweet muskiness. Eve’s smell—baking bread, vulnerability, pure sweetness—rose in my nose, slid down the back of my throat.

  I gagged.

  “Come any closer and I’ll make you eat this thing.” Lucas’s tone was flat and utterly serious.

  “Give me the Knife.” Eve sounded like she was smiling. “It’s what you were contracted for.”

  “Funny thing about that.” Dust squealed under booted feet and a clicking sounded before the whine of an unholstered plasgun drilled the air. “I ain’t never welshed on a contract before. All three of you tryin’ to hire me away from each other, and all for a simple goddamn assassination.”

  I was just trying to stay alive, Lucas. The thought was clean, the shock of a god’s touch falling away from my mind. The blank spot in my memory receded, Japhrimel murmured something into my hair.