Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Lucas.” Eve’s voice held a warning now. “Give me the Knife.”

  “It ain’t yours. Neither am I.” The footsteps paused. Something nudged my shoulder. “Here, chica. You’d best hold this.” Cold fingers touching mine. Something obscenely warm touched my palm, feverish energy jolting up my wrist, slamming into my elbow, and socking into my shoulder before spreading down through my healing bones. I tried to open my eyes. They obeyed, slowly. A slice of blurry light danced in front of me. What the hell just happened? Echoes of a god’s touch drained away, swirling. Leaving me alone again inside my mind, the red ribbon of rage turned to ash, blowing away. Fine, cinnamon-scented ash, lifting on the confused wind.

  My vision cleared. Lucas stood, threadbare and slump-shouldered, an unholstered 60-watt plasgun pointed at the ice-haired demon who stood, her emerald glowing. Dust danced as if the amphitheater was a hot griddle.

  The Knife buzzed in my hand. Japhrimel kissed my forehead. “Merely breathe, hedaira. All is well.”

  “I hired you first,” Eve said, silkily. “Don’t make an enemy out of me, Deathless. You won’t like the results.”

  He leveled the plasgun, yellow eyes narrowed. “I think you’d better get the fuck out of here, Blue Eyes. I already killed one demon today, and I might take it in mind to kill another. Besides, ain’t you got some trouble back home to take care of?”

  She shrugged. The movement was so uncannily like Lucifer’s my heart jolted in my chest. “It makes little difference, anyway.”

  “J-J-Japh—” My voice wouldn’t work properly. I finally managed to wrap my lips around a single syllable. “Eve—”

  Her eyes slid away from Lucas, traveled over acres of burning air to look at me. Around the rim of the rubble-bowl, the paired lamps of demon eyes were winking out, stealthy scrapes and clawings retreating. Show’s over, folks. Nothing left to see here. Move along.

  “Goodbye, Dante. Thank you for your help.” Her smile was the plastic grimace of a child’s doll. “Though you were wrong.”

  About what? My throat was stoppered with dry dust. I could only stare, accusingly, from the shelter of Japhrimel’s arms. His fingers closed around mine, sliding under the Knife’s finials, his lips against my filthy hair. Still murmuring something, over and over.

  “Any Key will do in a lock, with enough coaxing.” Eve’s gaze lingered on the Knife for a few moments. A calculation crossed her face, and another.

  I almost cringed. Was she thinking how easy it might be to set me barking up another tree?

  I had been so blind.

  Japhrimel raised his face from my hair. When he spoke, the entire pan of rubble rattled, little bits shifting and sliding. “This stays with me, Androgyne.”

  “One day, I might come to reclaim it.” The gasflame glow of her eyes dimmed slightly, a new color blooming underneath the screen of light.

  Green. Like sunlight through new leaves. Like a laser.

  Like Lucifer’s gaze.

  I shuddered. Japhrimel’s hand was warm and steady, holding my fingers against a silken hilt of wood and grief.

  “On that day, you will meet his fate. Rule Hell if you will; I care little. But us you will leave in peace.” He sounded absolutely certain.

  I found I could breathe again. Eve. I struggled to sit up, to shake free of Japhrimel’s arms. What was happening to her?

  My daughter tilted her head slightly as the last shades of blue died out of her eyes. She was unmistakably female, the sheerness of her beauty maturing in breathtaking leaps, her face thinning a little and the gold of her skin flushing warmly. Had it been another glamour?

  No, this change was something else. Something deeper. Any pretense she might have made at humanity was now laid aside, and I found myself lying under the hard brilliant sky of the Vegas Waste and watching something inhuman settle into its newest form.

  The Prince is dead. Long live the Prince.

  She turned away, her supple back under the torn dust-smeared sweater shining with its own grace. “My thanks for your aid, my friends. But now I have a whole world to conquer.”

  “May it give you joy,” Japhrimel said softly, like a curse. But she was already gone, vanishing between one breath and the next. A sound like ripping silk assaulted the air, died away.

  My Fallen let out a long, shaking breath. For a few moments, he held me, while the dust settled, silence returning and filling the amphitheater like liquid in a cup.

  It was over.

  I was still alive. But I had failed in every way that ever counted.

  CHAPTER 37

  There was another hover, a long sleek new craft with a battery of mag-and-deepscan shielding that resolved out of the desert sky, landing with a bump and opening its side hatch like a flower. I didn’t question it, even when Tiens greeted us all with a cheery smile that showed the tips of his abnormally long canines. Anton Kgembe, his head bandaged, didn’t even look up from strapping down cargo containers. Vann looked a little worse for wear, bruised and battered and moving slowly as he brought a blanket that Japh wrapped around me before handing me and the Knife over to McKinley.

  I felt nothing except a numb wonder that they had all survived.

  All except Leander, that is. Was he dead? The numbness even covered that with a sheet of plasticine wrap, insulating me from the bite of guilt.

  It was McKinley, oddly enough, who brought me up to speed on the long twilight journey back from the Waste. Him, and the holonews, because Japhrimel wouldn’t speak to me and neither would Lucas.

  The incidences of Magi dying had tapered off a little. The Hegemony directive was rescinded and everyone got back to work. There were still… problems, of course. Plenty of demons had escaped Hell and would have to be dragged back kicking and screaming. But that was a job for the new head honcho, the brand new Prince of Hell, the leader of the successful rebellion.

  Eve. Or more properly, Aldarimel, the Morning Star, Lucifer’s youngest and most favored consort. The new toy he’d brought back to Hell, reverse-engineered from Doreen—a human descendant of the Fallen—and his own genetic material. Was it narcissism, or was the Devil just like a human with a new love affair?

  In any case, she’d gotten just what she wanted. The Prince of Hell was dead.

  Long live the Prince.

  Hello? I said to the silence inside myself. Hello?

  The holonews was salt in the wound. Picture after picture of shattered houses, Magi gone missing, weird occurrences all over the world as the jostling factions from Hell fought it out. I watched the flickering pictures through a heavy blanket of water-clear exhaustion, refusing to close my eyes, refusing to look away. They were comparing it to the chaos at the time of the Great Awakening, and expert holo-heads weighed in with utterly useless analyses.

  “Here.” McKinley handed me a thick china mug. It smelled like coffee, and I slumped in an ergonomic chair bolted to the floor with the blanket pulled tight around me, staring fixedly at the dark liquid. “You should drink.” He even managed to sound kind.

  “Why?” Shell-shocked, numb, and exhausted, I pushed away a curtain of weariness and tried to take a drink. My stomach closed, tighter than a fist.

  He shrugged, rubbing at his metallic left hand. His fingers left no smudge behind on the smooth, gleaming almost-skin. “It’s over. At least, for now.”

  What, you’re expecting more? I set the cup down on a slice of table snugged into the chair’s side. “What happens now?” I sounded like a kid again, breathy and scared.

  “Now we pick up the pieces.” He tilted his head slightly, indicating the front of the hover, Japhrimel in whispered conference with Vann and Tiens, Kgembe slumped asleep in a foldout chair bolted to the hull, Lucas leaning on the hull at the periphery of that conversation, his yellow eyes trained on me.

  I swallowed hard. The hover bounced a little, the AI piloting since Tiens was now leaning closer to Japh, making some earnest point. The Nichtvren’s gaze flicked to me and away, and he brought one fist soft
ly into the palm of his other hand for emphasis.

  My sword lay across my knees, the metal quiescent and shining only as much as ordinary steel. It had rammed through Lucifer’s chest, and still remained intact. The Knife lay on the table, its slow song of grief and rage sounding more and more foreign.

  My eyes drifted closed. The coffee sloshed. I drifted, my fingers and toes gone cold and rubbery. The broken places inside my head shivered, too tired to even try knitting together.

  For a long time I rocked like that, my head lolling against the back of the seat, the bumps and jostles of the hover a cradle’s soft movement. I heard raised voices, and Japhrimel’s tone suddenly cutting through the cotton wool surrounding me. He said something short and sharp, and all discussion ceased.

  Not too long afterward, someone touched my dirty, dust-caked hair. The fingers were gentle, and I opened my eyes to see Japh standing over me, his face drawn and thoughtful. My left shoulder twitched, as if a fishhook in the flesh had been pulled.

  “Can you stand?”

  He might as well have asked if I could fly.

  I grabbed the arms of the chair. Braced myself, tensed, and managed to push myself up with a low sound of effort, my right hand scooping up Fudoshin’s hilt.

  Japhrimel steadied me with one hand, picked up the Knife with the other, using only his fingertips and wincing slightly. “I shall have Vann make another sheath for this.”

  I shook my head, the entire hover tilting as I did. “You keep it. I don’t want it.” I’d say give it to Lucas, but I don’t know if he wants it either.

  Japhrimel paused. He glanced over his shoulder. Lucas had closed his eyes, leaning against the hull and listening while McKinley said something to Tiens, the Nichtvren casting a dubious look at me.

  I didn’t care anymore.

  His hand fell away from my arm.

  I swayed. “Where are we going?”

  “I thought you might prefer a bed. Such as it is.” His eyes caught fire, but his face was merely set and thoughtful. “Dante.”

  I set my jaw. A bed. Just one more thing, and I can sleep for a week. That’d be nice. “Japhrimel.”

  Then I can start untangling the rest of this mess. All those things I swore I’d do once I finished. All those promises I made.

  The pain wouldn’t go away. It was right under my ribs, my heart caught in a nest of splinters. All my friends were dead, and so was the Devil.

  Why didn’t I feel any better?

  The hover bounced. McKinley finished what he was saying, and silence folded through the interior.

  All eyes on you, Danny. Do something.

  I took an experimental step. Swayed. Japhrimel moved restlessly, but I waved his hand away. I’d make it to the bed on my own, goddammit. One thing at a time.

  Why don’t I feel better? Tears rose in my throat, prickled behind my eyes. Why?

  “Valentine.” Lucas, his whisper half-strangled.

  I stopped, tensed, and waited. The hand that can hold the Knife has faced fire and not been consumed, has walked in death and returned, a hand given strength beyond its ken.

  Had there truly been a prophecy? Or was it just absurdity? He was the Deathless, but Eve had thought I was the Key.

  Had I been? Would I ever know?

  What he said next bordered on the absurd. “We even?”

  Even? How the hell could we be even? I tried to kill you; you were working for everyone except me—but you killed Lucifer. And you gave me back the Knife. Even doesn’t happen in this kind of situation.

  An exotic thought stopped me. I considered it, in my exhaustion-fogged state. Thought about it for a long while, as the hover rose and fell, its gyros coping with various stresses.

  “Valentine? Are we even?” Tension under his throat-cut whisper, I could almost feel his entire body tightening.

  Amazing. Was Lucas Villalobos asking if we were still friends?

  I never thought I’d live to see the day.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, now. If I could live without knowing some things, I could live with calling Lucas Villalobos something other than an enemy. “We’re still friends, Lucas. If that’s what you’re asking.”

  Nobody moved. I barely even breathed.

  “Good ’nough.” Villalobos sounded relieved, and my heart eased, a sudden convulsive movement. “Get some rest.”

  Not all my friends are dead. I followed the hem of Japhrimel’s coat, stumbling with exhaustion and clutching Fudoshin’s hilt. When the door closed behind us and he took me in his arms, I found tears running hot and thick down my cheeks.

  For once that didn’t matter, either.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Santiago City, Dante. Your home. Ours, now.”

  Epilogue

  The city lies under its pall of orange light and fog, sheets of white coming up from the bay. It pulses, from the depths of the Tank to the spires of downtown, the financial district to the suburbs. Against the skyline, lines of hovertraffic slide between buildings in patterns almost random enough to practice divination with. You can spend a whole night up here, the curtains pulled back and the bulletproof plasglass dialed to maximum transparency, the entire room dark except for the red eye of the nursery monitor. Each night the sound of human breathing soothes me, a child’s deep trustful sleep in a room guarded by two agents.

  They take turns at her door.

  In our house, a little human girl sleeps. She does not ask, anymore, when her mother is coming back. I know better than to think she’s forgotten the question.

  She has Eddie’s golden curls and Gabe’s wide dark eyes, and dimples when she smiles. Oddly enough, it’s the demon she likes best; he is endlessly patient with her, willing to spend hours reading brightly colored primary books or playing small games designed to teach her how to control her gifts. Of course, she is a child of psions, and testing at birth returned a Matheson score almost as high as mine.

  Her mother’s will is explicit; I’m named as guardian and trustee. Gabe, with her inherent precision, reaching from beyond the grave to hold me to my promise. Love and obligation, the net that holds me here, all boiled down to a child’s laugh and scattered toys.

  Did I break the other promises so I could keep this one?

  Do I want to know, if I did?

  Tell me what you want, he says, and each time I shake my head. I take my sword into the long dimly lit practice room, its wooden floor smelling of workouts and its mirrored wall reflecting a body I no longer have to strain to control. The katas my teacher first taught me unfold, each movement precise and restrained.

  Sometimes that control breaks, and the blackness infecting my mind leaks out. It is most often at night, and I will resurface to find myself in his arms, my throat aching with unshed screams and my body tense, stiff and wooden with the strain of holding it back.

  If I can’t, if it escapes me and I struggle, there is another net to hold me above the abyss. It is the net of a demon’s arms, his hand cupping my skull to keep me from battering it to pieces, the grip he keeps on my wrists so I cannot claw my own eyes out.

  We do not speak, those nights. I cannot stand the sound of another voice.

  There are whispers.

  The net of human and financial assets available to demons on earth is strangling in its own blood. The only ones safe from vengeance and chaos are vassals of another demon, one the new Prince does not control. They hear the whispers, and pass them on, safe in their scrupulous neutrality. Kgembe visits each month with a report, and each time he studies me as if I am the answer to a question never asked.

  Hell has never been quiet. Lucifer ruled with fear and iron discipline, torture and trickery. Ousting him from his throne was the easy part; now the new Prince must solidify her grip on power. She is young, and there are older and mightier among the Greater Flight. There are also those who might not believe Lucifer is quite dead.

  He was, after all, the Prime. The alpha of demonkind, if not the omega.
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br />   The whispers are mounting. Magi have never found it so easy to break the walls between our world and Hell. It’s a Renascence in their branch of magick, and precious few are looking for a sting in the tail of the gift. Those who question its provenance are told they don’t have to participate. Psions are uneasy, and violent attacks on those with Power are at an all-time high.

  If it’s a chemical reaction, it’s nowhere near finished yet. Even the cure for Clormen-13, that great drug blight of our time, hasn’t helped. There are new drugs, and rumors of a high better than any drug—a high available, for a price, from new sources. Inhuman sources.

  There’s one more thing.

  The urn sits on the mantelpiece, over the nivron fire I never turn on, in the bedroom where I sit at night and watch the city glow. It’s black and wetly lacquered, a beautiful restrained demon artifact. It is full of cinnamon-scented ash.

  Japhrimel and I do not speak of it.

  The broken places inside my head are healing, slowly. I have not spoken to a god since the moment of spillskin ecstasy when they filled me, denying me, body and soul, from a demon’s grasp. I can’t call my faith lost, precisely. It’s just… quiet.

  Dormant. If it ever wakes, I’ll light my candles and speak to my god again. I think He, of all creatures, understands.

  On the other end of the mantel, set on a twisting stand of glass, a Knife of silken wood and grief hums sleepily to itself. Its point spears toward the urn, and sometimes it quivers a bit, as if sensing…

  But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Lucifer was not Fallen. A Fallen’s dormancy doesn’t apply to him, does it?

  It matters little. The Knife was made to kill demons, no matter how powerful. While we hold it, the weapon guarantees us some safety.

  If the new Prince manages to hold Hell, we’re safe.

  Or are we? Plot, counterplot, lies, and agendas.

  If the new Prince doesn’t hold Hell in check, what might happen? The walls between their world and ours grow thinner every day. And sometimes, when he thinks I’m not looking, my Fallen’s face holds a familiar expression. Listening for a sound I can’t hear, ready for a threat I can’t imagine.