Saint City Sinners

by Lilith Saintcrow

  A rectangle of laseprint paper crinkled under my fingers as I drew it out. Gabe’s daughter grinned up at me, the edges of the glossy paper wrinkled with blood. I tucked the picture securely in my bag, reached up to push a strand of wet heavy hair out of her face. My fingertip slid over her emerald, dead and lifeless now; the tat that would never shift to answer mine again. My cheek burned, though her emerald was dark.

  A slight crackling buzz sparked between the gem and my fingertip. An EMP. Of course. They trigger an electromagnetic pulse, and everyone’s so busy trying to get their holovids reprogrammed they don’t notice a Necromance’s murder. But what about the AI well? Her pulse monitor would have sent distress signals every half-second! Unless . . . unless it was a focused EMP pulse, that would reset the hardcode.

  I touched the datband with one finger. It flushed red. Hardcode wiped. It was about as useless as plain plasilica now. A focused EMP pulse, cop or Hegemony hardware.

  Which meant I was dealing with someone very serious about killing her for some reason. Someone who had the funding and hardware to get away with triggering an EMP pulse within the borders of the city’s hoverzones.

  “I have to go inside.” I straightened, my fingers leaving Gabe’s cold motionless wrist reluctantly.

  “We must be quick.” Japhrimel cocked his head. “I hear sirens.”

  In a city this size, of course you hear sirens. It was useless, he had some way of knowing the cops were finally coming. Hours too late.

  Why? Why were they coming now?

  I took one last long, lingering look at Gabe’s body. Fixed every line, every curve, every drop of blood in my Magi-trained memory.

  Roanna. Lewis. Doreen. Jace. Eddie. And now, Gabe. My throat swelled again, I swallowed the scream. Some of those deaths I had avenged, never enough to assuage the deep sleeping sense of guilt; there is only so much satisfaction to be had from spilling blood for vengeance.

  But I owe it to her. To both of them, to Eddie and Gabe.

  I turned on my heel and stalked away. Japhrimel fell into step behind me, silent again. The pressure of his attention wrapping around me helped to keep the scream inside—I couldn’t let it out while the velvet fingers of his aura stroked my skin, the mark on my left shoulder burning deeper and deeper into my flesh.

  Gabe’s house shields quivered. They would eventually lose Power and become no more than shadows, holding the psychic impressions of her family, generation upon generation of Necromances and cops. But since her family had been shielding this house for a very long time, it might well take hundreds of years for the Power to fade.

  The back door was unlocked and open, and I peered in. Let out a sharp breath. This door gave into the kitchen, and I could see smashed plates and appliances. Someone had tossed the hell out of Gabe’s beautiful, expensive, comfortable kitchen.

  My boots ground on broken ceramic and plasglass as I picked my way inside. Japhrimel laid a hand on my shoulder. “I do not like this,” he said quietly.

  I inhaled. Sage, and salt. Someone had been cleaning up in here, erasing psychic traces. “Her shields aren’t torn here. Someone she knew, then. Someone who didn’t have to break in.”

  Which pretty much ruled out demon involvement. I was fairly sure this had nothing to do with Lucifer, which was a huge bloody relief. Finally, something the Prince of Hell didn’t control.

  The thought of Lucifer turned my stomach over hard, splashing its contents against the sides of my ribs.

  I slid through the hall—even the pictures had been torn down, some yanked out of their frames. The first-floor living room, where Gabe and Eddie had done their meditating and had their altars, was a shambles. Gabe’s exquisitely painted ceramic statue of Graeca Persephonia lay smashed on the floor, Persephonia’s sad flat eyes gazing up thoughtfully at the ceiling. The tang of sage was very thick here, nose-stinging, overpowering Gabe’s kyphii.

  I made my way to the stairs, counted up to the seventh one, and knelt below it. My fingers ran along the bottom of the wooden lip of the seventh step.

  “Dante? They are drawing closer. Do you wish to be seen here?”

  I ignored him. My fingers found the slight groove, pressed with a small tingle of Power along my nails, and the nonmagickal lock yielded. The top of the step came away in my hands. I let out a low sigh.

  There, in the hidey-hole, were four sheets of heavy-duty paper with Skinlin notations—snatches of musical notes, ancient Judic symbols, and complicated chemistry equations. There were also four vials of a white, grainy substance. Otherwise, the hole was empty and suspiciously clean. Gabe must have hoped I’d find this—or hoped nobody else would.

  Her house exhaled around me, shaking free of sage-reek, the frowsty smell of old construction and uneven, sloping, renovated floors mixing with the heady spice of kyphii and the comfortable soft scent of a well-lived-in home. Faint tang of synth-hash smoke—she’d been smoking, probably not around the kid.

  Where exactly was Gabe’s daughter? Had she been kidnapped? In a safe place, Gabe had said. I wondered where, and hoped the place was safe enough.

  What the hell is going on?

  I scooped everything up. Paper crackled in my hands. “Let’s go.”

  11

  Leander still wasn’t back at the hotel, and Lucas was nowhere in sight. I stalked past McKinley without a glance, into the suite I’d slept in. Dropped down on the bed, laid my sword down carefully, and dug in my bag, retrieving Eddie’s murder file. Pearly sunlight fell through the window, making a thin square on the blue carpet. I swallowed a scorching curse, my rings sizzling and sparking. Tasted bile.

  Japhrimel closed the bedroom door and leaned back against it, his arms folded and his eyes alight. I looked at the file, set it aside with the sheets of paper covered in Skinlin scribbles, and held up one of the vials.

  The grainy substance inside glowed faintly in rainy afternoon light. Silence stretched inside the room. The curtains fluttered uneasily, once, and were still. Between Japh’s taut alertness and my own furious, tightly-controlled pain, the walls groaned a little and subsided.

  My chest ached. My eyes burned, dry and determined to stay that way. Nevertheless, my hand shook a little, making the fine grains inside the glass vial tremble and spill from one side to the other.

  The mark on my shoulder lay quiescent against my skin now, no longer burning or spurring me away from shock. But the deep prickling sense of Japhrimel’s attention remained, sliding around me the way a cat might, rubbing its head against its owner. Offering comfort, maybe.

  Was it so bad of me to want to accept it? Things were as hopeless as ever between us.

  I looked over at the door. His eyes were half-lidded, the green glow muted; perhaps for my sake. Still, they were the most vivid thing in the room, so bright they cast shadows under his high cheekbones.

  We paused like that for twenty long seconds, each ticked off with a single deadly squeeze of my heart. My traitorous pulse still beat, reminding me I was alive.

  “She’s dead,” I said finally, dully. Who is that, using my voice? She sounds defeated. Hopeless.

  “I am sorry.” It was the first time I heard his voice shake with sadness, ever so slightly. “If I could make it otherwise for you, I would.”

  I almost believed him. No, that’s a lie. I did believe him. How was that for ironic? If he could have torn Death away and brought her back, he would have. Simply another present for his hedaira, a token of his strength given because he did not know what else to give me. How else to make me happy.

  It was a shame he couldn’t do it. I would have begged him for it, if he could have.

  But Death will not be denied. I knew that, even as something old and screaming inside me rose up in rebellion that was quelled by what had to be done now.

  I held up the vial again, shook it gently. The grains inside rattled softly, mocking me. “What do you suppose is in this?” The words hitched, caught. I closed my eyes, dropping my hand. It was getting harder to breathe
. The air had turned to clear mud.

  I heard him cross the room, his booted feet making noise for my benefit. He stopped by the bed, and his fingers slid through my hair again. The touch was gentle and intimate, a gesture he habitually performed in Toscano to request my attention away from my feverish research. He trailed his fingertips down my temple, over my cheek, infinitely gentle.

  “I would almost prefer your weeping.” His voice stroked the air, turning it to golden velvet. Soothing, a tone so far divorced from his usual flat dry irony he hardly sounded like the same person. “What would you have of me? Tell me what to do, Dante.”

  My bag clinked as it shifted against my hip. “How savage can you be?” The words turned to ash in my throat. “Because when I find whoever did this, I want them to suffer.”

  Another long pause as he stroked my cheek again, his sensitive fingertips skimming my skin, sending comforting tingles and ripples of fire down my back. My breath caught, the spiked mass of pain inside my chest turning over.

  “Demons understand vengeance.” He touched my upper lip, tracing the curves.

  Gods. “What don’t demons understand?”

  “Humans.” He said it so promptly and ironically I laughed, a forlorn little chuckle that didn’t sound like me at all. I scooped up three of the four vials and handed them to him.

  “Keep these. They’re safer with you.” If I can trust you to give them back, that is. But this is nothing you’d be interested in, I’m betting.

  His fingers flicked, and the small plasglass containers disappeared just like the tiny origami animals he’d made out of my notes. He said nothing else, simply stood and watched me, waiting.

  Thinking of how fast his hands were made me wonder where all the little folded-paper animals had ended up. Now that I thought about it, I really couldn’t remember seeing creases in any of my notes; I couldn’t remember seeing any piece of paper he’d selected to fold and amuse me with ever again.

  Dammit, Danny, don’t lose your focus. Your problem isn’t Japhrimel. Not right now, anyway.

  You know, if it wasn’t so grim, that’d be a relief. Guilt scored me even as the black humor of the thought helped.

  I let out a long shuddering sigh. Held up the small vial again, shook it. I opened the file, scooting back and pulling my legs up onto the bed, retreating from him. “Come take a look at this, if you want. It’s Eddie’s homicide file.” Hooray for me. I sound almost normal, except for the way my voice cracks. I sounded like a vidsex operator, my ruined throat giving each word a rough husky pleasantness. Except for the unsteady fury smoking under the soft surface.

  “The dirtwitch.” Japhrimel settled on the bed next to me. Did he sound uncertain? “He was . . . he was a good man.”

  What, for a human? But that was unfair. Japh was trying to be kind. I swallowed around the hard lump in my throat, tasting bile. “He was.” I steeled myself. Looked down to find the laseprint of Eddie’s mangled body glaring accusingly up at me. “Gods above.” A shocked whisper, as if I’d been punched.

  “Perhaps you should be still for a moment.” Japhrimel leaned back until he half-reclined on the bed, propped on his elbows. It was a curious pose for someone so controlled, especially with his hair slightly ruffled. A vulnerable stance, exposing his stomach.

  Are you crazy? I just got up late and found my best friend—my only friend—dead. I’m not resting. Not for a long, long time. I shook my head. “No.” The lamp rattled on the bedside table, pushed by the plascharge of Power in my voice. My rings sparked again, golden crackles in the charged, swirling air.

  The temptation to draw my sword and start hacking at the graceless, ugly furniture was overwhelming.

  I looked back down at the file. Hot bile whipped the back of my mouth, and my blade rang softly inside its sheath.

  Japhrimel reached over, his golden fingers closing on the file. He pulled it away from my unresisting hands. I heard the rattling whine of a hover outside the hotel’s windows, human footsteps in the hall. I heard the walls groaning their long slow songs of stress and windshift, heard the faint sound my hair made as it slid against my shoulders.

  He closed the file, set it aside. Then, deliberately, he lay back on the bed, his fingers laced behind his dark head. I felt the weight of his eyes on my back, looked down at my hands.

  Chipped black molecule-drip polish on my nails, the graceful architecture of demon bones, the fragility of my wrists. “I should look at it. I have to start . . . finding out what I can. I have to.”

  “I know,” was the quiet answer. “But not yet, Dante. Not just yet.”

  “Why not?” Goddamn you, why not?

  “There is nothing you can do at just this moment. Be still. A hunter does not rush blindly after prey.” A thread of gold in the room, his voice brushed the paint, ruffled my hair, touched my cheek. The soundless static of his attention filled empty space; I wouldn’t have been surprised to find he was aware of every dust mote, every fiber of the carpet, every stitch in the curtains. Japhrimel was tense, edgy.

  Ready for anything.

  It didn’t help that he was right. I was so keyed-up I would maybe miss something important—or crucial—by forcing myself to look through the file now. I had to think clearly. I had to be cold, chill, logical; I had to be.

  So what could I do?

  Think about it. Just sit still. Study.

  But sitting still only made me more aware of the weight behind my eyes, the clawing in my chest. Wine-red, wine-dark, sharp as my sword and chill as the ocean I’d been dumped into after I’d killed Santino—

  I shuddered. Don’t, Danny. Don’t think about that.

  I jerked, moving as if to lever myself off the bed, but Japhrimel caught my wrist and pulled, catching me by surprise. My balance tipped, I landed hard enough to drive a small sound out between my teeth, ending up trapped in his arms with my sword between us, my rig creaking, the holster of a plasgun digging into my hip and a projectile gun higher up, shoved painfully against a floating rib. Knife-hilts dug against my ribs and pressed into my back.

  “Be still,” Japhrimel hissed in my ear, his breath touching my skin and sending a hot spill of sensation through my flesh. “Please, Dante.”

  I kicked him, twisting to get free, the plasgun digging even deeper into my hip. “Let me go!”

  “No.”

  I wriggled, tried to knee him, but his arms turned to iron bands. It was a novel kind of sparring match. He was demon; I was only a lousy human infected with demonic Power. No contest. I started to struggle in earnest, earning myself a starry jolt of pain when I cracked my head against his shoulder and finally collapsed, breathing heavily, his leg over both of mine, his arms almost crushing me.

  “Let go,” I said into the hollow between his throat and shoulder. I contemplated biting him. “What are you fucking doing? Let go of me!”

  “You are in a mood to harm yourself.” His breath was warm in my hair. “When you are calm I will let you go, not before.”

  Goddamn him, he’s right. I was in a fey space between agony and revenge, I could easily see flinging myself out the window, running, smashing my fist through the wall just to break something, hurt something, kill something. “I am not going to harm myself,” I whispered. “I’m going to kill whoever did this to her.”

  “Very well. This is only a hunt like any other. You are starting ill and will finish badly if you do not calm yourself.” He was breathless too; the spice and musk smell of demon drenched the bed, filled my nose, coated the back of my throat.

  Damn demon pheromones. He smells safe, dammit. Oh, gods. Gods help me. I choked back a panicked giggle. After a long pause, he rested his chin atop my head. I shut my eyes tightly, willing the stone egg inside my chest to stay hard and smooth. Impenetrable.

  It didn’t help that I could see the cool logic of what he was saying. If I started out half-cocked and crazy, I’d get nowhere—and Gabe might be unavenged.

  Like Doreen had been unavenged for so long.
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  If I’d been smarter or faster—or a Magi—I might have recognized Santino for what he was, and Doreen might still be alive. If I’d been stronger and not half-crippled from killing Santino, I could have kept my promise and saved Eve. If I’d been faster, able to use all the preternatural speed Japh had given me, Jace might still be alive. If I’d been home instead of hiding out with a demon in Toscano, Eddie and Gabe might still be alive.

  If, if, if. I hated that dried-up, prissy, disapproving little word.

  I’d even blamed myself for Japhrimel’s first death, though he had indisputably come back. Had it been death at all, or a kind of sleep? The word he used—dormancy—conveyed only a type of rest. A sleep of a body ground to cinnamon-smelling ash, with only a will to survive left in its crystalline matrices, calling out to me.

  Japhrimel drew in a long, soft breath. “Calm,” he whispered into my hair. “Calm, my curious one.” He said more, but I didn’t listen. It wasn’t the words, it was the rumble in his chest telling me I was safe, that he was with me, that I had to calm down.

  A small click echoed inside my head, the same sound a work of magick makes sliding whole and complete into place. It was the sound of a hunt starting, of the right moment to begin. I inhaled deeply, drawing musk-spice smell all the way down to the bottom of my lungs. Here was a demon who had lied to me, misled me, hurt me, dragged me into working for the Prince of Hell again—but he still comforted me. He’d protected me when it mattered most. He had even matched his strength against Lucifer’s and come away the winner.

  I was still soothed, listening to the strong slow beat of his pulse echoing mine.

  How was that for crazy?

  “I’m all right,” I managed. “Really.”

  “I doubt it.” He kissed my hair, a slight intimate movement. I was glad I don’t blush easy. “If you continue in this manner, you may well drive me mad.”

  Drive you mad? What the hell does that mean? When he didn’t continue, I wriggled impatiently and he eased up a little. His arms were still tense; if I tried to escape he’d just clamp down again. “What?”