Working for the Devil

by Lilith Saintcrow

  It was the shadow of knowledge in her dark eyes, and the absolute lack of fear. I knew she had somehow been waiting for me. Had somehow known I was coming, and accepted it. The knowledge chilled me right down to my new bones.

  She’s not human, I thought. What if it’s best to leave her with Santino?

  I scooped her up and turned, ran for the others, her hot, chubby arms wrapped around my neck.

  Eddie had just finished triggering the third golem’ai. Screams. The heavy, ironbound door leading into the rest of the castle resounded with shouts and thuds. They were breaking in. Santino’s human army was on its way.

  Where did Santino go? How long will it take him to get back up here?

  I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  I shoved the girl into Jace’s arms. He took her before he realized what I was doing, and I pushed him out of the hole in the wall, his slicboard whining and taking the kinetic energy I supplied. Too much Power, sorry about that, Jace— “Get her to the ship, Jace! Move!” Japhrimel hauled Gabe up, Power thundering in the confined space and dyeing the air with diamond-dark, twisting flames. Gabe flopped in his arms, but Japhrimel had said she would live.

  Eddie took Gabe’s limp weight. Her slicboard lay twisted and useless against the far wall. “He went that way—” Eddie screamed, pointing at the hole in the wall, his face a mask of rage.

  I grabbed him by the collar and shook him. “Get Gabe out of here! Move it!”

  I didn’t have to tell him twice. He bolted for the hole in the wall, Gabe in his arms, blood dripping from her long dark braid. I hope she’s still alive, if she dies goddammit Santino I’ll kill you twice—

  “Danny, get out of there,” Jace yelled, the commlink crackling in my ear. “Hurry up!”

  Japhrimel started toward the hole in the wall.

  Oh no, I thought. I am not leaving. I have business to finish here.

  I turned toward the door, my katana sliding free. I dropped the borrowed scabbard, tore the commlink out of my ear, and fitted the plasgun into my left hand. Took a deep breath. Japhrimel twisted away from the hole in the wall, his boots skidding. Had he really thought I would leave without doing what I came to do?

  As long as Santino was alive, I would never be able to rest again.

  Japhrimel’s lips shaped my name as I took in a deep breath, my blade blazing with pitiless blue light that threw sharp reflections through the ruined room. I pointed the plasgun at the door, where a circle of white-hot glow told me they were using lasecutters to break in.

  “Santino!” I roared with all my newfound Power, and squeezed the plasgun’s trigger just as the demon Vardimal broke through the wall behind the bed, mahogany splinters flying like shrapnel, stone turning to dust and icicle shards. The shockwave caught me and threw me against the stone wall, and I almost lost my sword when I hit with a sickening thump that shivered yet more stone from the roof and wall.

  Japhrimel let out a sound so huge it was almost soundless and hurled himself at Santino.

  Who threw up one clawed hand that held something glittering, made a complicated twisting motion, and tossed the glitter straight at Japhrimel.

  The Egg! The thought seemed to move through syrup.

  I gained my feet in a shuffle, hearing groans from the ruins of the door. The plasgun bolt had smacked into the cutter’s field and caused a chain reaction, plasbolt reacting with the lase energy and freeing a whole hell of a lot of violent energy. It’s a basic law of dealing with plasguns: never shoot at reactive or lase fields. Nobody caught in that would want to fight anymore—not if they were human. If I’d been human the concussion might have killed me.

  I launched myself at Santino as the small glittering thing, no bigger than my fist, smacked Japhrimel in the chest—and blew him through the wall and out into the night with a sound that made a gush of blood drip down from my ears and nose. I shook my head, dazed for only a split second. The drilling pain flashed through me and was gone, the warmth of the blood freezing against my skin in milliseconds. My breath puffed out, turned to a tissue-thin cloud of ice crystals, fell straight down.

  Japhrimel! I skidded to a stop, facing Santino, whose claws cut the cold air. Our feet crunched in glass and tinkling stone shards as he moved, circling.

  He didn’t look happy to see me. “Fool!” he hissed. “The fool.”

  My katana circled. The rest of the world faded away. Here he was, right in front of me.

  My revenge.

  “Santino,” I hissed. The entire world seemed to hold its breath, the shape of my vengeance lying under the fabric of reality, rising to meet me. “Or Vardimal. Or whoever the hell you are.”

  “You can’t kill me,” he sneered. “Neither man nor demon can kill me. Lucifer assured me of that.”

  I showed my own teeth, boots shuffling lightly, quickly. “I am going to eat your fucking heart,” I informed him. I’m not a man or a demon, Santino. Your immunity doesn’t apply.

  “You could have been a queen,” he snarled at me, the black teardrops over his eyes swallowing the light. “You could have helped me kill Lucifer and take the rule of Hell! But no, you stupid, silly human—”

  “Not human,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  He bared his teeth again. “Who do you think helped me escape from Hell?” he screamed, my blade flashing up as we circled. “He’s Lucifer’s assassin! His Right Hand! He’s used you—”

  That answered the question that had been teasing the back of my mind since this whole thing started—of how exactly Santino had escaped Hell. I should have been enraged at Japhrimel for hiding that from me, I should have been wondering what else he’d hidden. What other secrets he might have kept. But with my revenge in front of me and Japhrimel’s blood filling my veins, I could have cared less.

  “I don’t fucking care,” I hissed, and my own voice tore more stone from the ceiling and sent it pattering down in a drift of dust. “I’ve come to kill you, you scavenger son of a bitch, for what you did to Doreen. And every other woman you murdered.”

  And then there was no more time for talk, because he moved in with that spooky invisible speed of demons.

  I parried his claws, my katana ringing and blazing with blue fire. He screamed, a horrible drilling sound of awful agony, the plasgun tore out of my hands but I hooked my fingers and swiped at him, hot black demon blood spraying and freezing in the too-cold air. Something had happened when he’d thrown that thing at Japhrimel. It was too cold even for Antarctica.

  He leapt on me, his compact weight knocking me off my feet. We tumbled, and his claws tore at me, a horribly familiar gush of pain. I screamed, forgetting I was no longer human, and did the only thing I could.

  I jackknifed my body, using his momentum as well as my own, and flung us both out into the night as I buried my katana in his chest, shoving with every ounce of preternatural strength Japhrimel had given me. The blade rammed through a shell of magick, through muscle and the carbolic acid of demon blood, and the agony of the blade’s shattering tore all the way through me.

  One of the shards pierced his heart. I flailed at him with my claws, his throat giving in one heated gush that coated my face and hands and instantly froze, almost sealing my nostrils. If I hadn’t been screaming, I might have suffocated.

  I was still hacking at him with my claws when we hit the water, his slack lifeless body exploding out in noxious burning fragments. The shock of that hit drove all breath and consciousness from me, and I fell unresisting into the embrace of the ocean, waves crackling and freezing closed over my head.

  CHAPTER 50

  I floated. Face-down.

  Stinging. Cold so intense it burned. Lassitude creeping up my arms and legs.

  No. A familiar voice. Familiar fingers on my cheek, tipping my head up. No, don’t, Danny. You have to live. You promised.

  I didn’t promise! I wailed silently. Let me go! Let me go, let me die—

  You have work to do. Doreen’s voice, gentle, inexorable. Please, Danny
. Please.

  Floated. Sinking. Even a share of a fallen demon’s Power couldn’t keep me alive for long in this. Something had happened—Santino had done something, that small glittering thing had hit Japhrimel—

  Santino. I’d killed him. I’d watched his body dissolve under my fingernails, I’d torn through his throat. He was, indisputably, dead and scattered on the freezing ocean. No little bit of him would be left.

  I killed him, I pleaded. I did it. I got revenge for you. Isn’t that enough?

  No, she replied, solemn. Live, Danny. I want you to live.

  It hurts too much, I keened to her.

  Blue crystal glow, the bridge under my feet. For one dizzying moment I was between two worlds—the Hall of Death, its blue directionless light pouring through me, Anubis standing tall and grim on the other side of the bridge; and the real world, where I floated face-down under a sheet of broken ice. For one infinite moment I was locked under the pitiless, infinitely forgiving gaze of the Lord of Death, weighing, evaluating, His black eyes fixed on mine. It hurts too much, I told him. Please don’t make me go back.

  He shook His sleek black head, once, twice. I struggled—no! Let me stay! Let me stay!

  Then He spoke.

  The Word boomed through me. It was not His name, or any Word of Power. It wasn’t the secret name I held for Him, my key to the door of Death.

  No.

  It was my name—only more. It was my Word, spoken by the god, the sound that expressed me, the sound that could not be spoken aloud. My soul leapt inside me, responding to His touch. The god took the weight from me, briefly, let me feel the freedom, the incredible freedom, rising out of my body, leaving the world behind, the clear blue light becoming golden, the clear rational light of What Comes Next.

  Then it dwindled to a single point in the darkness, and I rammed back into my body, fingers clamped in my hair, yanking. I was torn from the water’s embrace, glazed with ice, choking, coughing, the landing lights of the garbage scow named Baby exploding through the darkness. Jace, his lips blue, tangling the plasnet around us both and we were yanked up together, his arms and legs wrapped around me. We broke through the airseals and into the warm interior of the hover, and the hatch slammed closed as the peculiar weightless pressure of a hover quickly ascending pressed down on me.

  I coughed and choked, spluttering.

  “Breathe, you stubborn little bitch—” Jace shivered and cursed, raging at me. Water washed the decking, rapidly melting ice shrinking under the assault of climate control.

  “Is she alive?” Eddie said from the front. After the deafening noise, the quiet of the hover’s interior and someone speaking normally was a muffled shock.

  “She’s alive,” Jace said, and flung his arms around me again. Water dripped. My fingers and toes tingled and prickled. “Gods damn you, Danny, don’t you ever do that to me again.” He kissed my forehead, examined my fingers and my dark rings, wrapped me in a spaceblanket that started to glow, heat stealing back into me. My teeth chattered. My right hand was twisted into a fist, and I couldn’t unloose it.

  “G-G-Gabe—”

  “She’ll live. Your demon friend patched her intestines back together up there in that room, damndest thing I ever saw. She’s lost a lot of blood, but she’s stable and the medunit’s monitoring her.” Jace kissed my cheek, pushed sodden strands of dark hair back from my face. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Danny. I thought he’d killed you.”

  “The k-k-k-k—” I began.

  “The kid’s fine. Curled up in a seat with a spaceblanket. She’s asleep.” Jace coughed. “Look, Danny—”

  “Japhrimel?” I whispered.

  Jace shook his head. “There was a hover—another hover. It might have scooped him up, I don’t know. We looked for him, Danny. We really did. The entire goddamn island’s broken down and iced over, I don’t think anything survived that. If we hadn’t been airborne we’d have been toast. What happened?”

  “I killed him,” I whispered. “I killed Santino. He threw s-s-something at J-J-aph . . .”

  “We couldn’t find him,” Jace said. “I’m sorry, Danny.”

  I clapped my fists over my ears, huddled under the spaceblanket, and started to cry. I’d earned it, after all.

  CHAPTER 51

  Twelve hours later we floated over an oddly quiet Nuevo Rio. Dry and finally warm again, I sat in the seat next to Doreen’s daughter (I couldn’t think of what else to call her), watching out the window as morning lay over the city. Jace had moved up front next to Eddie, and the comms up there were crackling with messages. Gabe lay across a table, strapped down and deep in a sedative-induced slumber, the medunit purring as it monitored her and dripped synthetic plasma and antibiotics through a hypo into her veins. She’d wake up with a headache and a sore gut and spend a week or so recuperating, but she’d live.

  The Corvin Family was gone. Just . . . gone. They hadn’t even put up a real fight. Jace was now the owner of a hell of a lot of Family assets.

  When I looked back at Doreen’s daughter, I saw she was awake. In the light, her eyes were wide and clear, and dark blue. Like Doreen’s.

  Exactly like Doreen’s.

  She watched me gravely, a small child with frighteningly adult eyes, far too much Power and knowledge swimming in their depths. For a few moments, we sat like that, one tired, sobbed-out half-demon Necromance and one small demon Androgyne child.

  I can’t handle this, I thought. Then, I have no choice.

  I finally managed to clear my throat. “Hi,” I said quietly. “I’m Danny.”

  She watched me for a few more seconds before she responded. “I know,” she said, in a clear light voice. “He told me you would come.”

  My mouth was dry and smooth as glass. This wasn’t normal for a kid.

  Like I knew what was normal for a kid. I never spent any time with children if I could help it. “Who told you?” I managed. “Santi—ah, um, your daddy?”

  She nodded, her pale hair falling forward over her face. “He said he was my daddy,” she confided, “but I don’t think he was. My real daddy talks to me inside my head at night. He has green eyes and a green stone like me and he told me you would come for me. He said he would send you.”

  She seemed to expect some sort of reply. It was obvious who her “real daddy” was. Either Lucifer had some way of communicating with her, or she was precognitive, or . . . My brain stopped sorting through alternatives. It didn’t matter. Lucifer already knew about the kid, I’d bet. I’d also bet that Lucifer had known about Santino’s “samples.” Or if not known, guessed. The Prince of Hell was no fool.

  Why then had Japhrimel promised not to tell him?

  “I promised your mommy I’d take care of you,” I said rustily. Oh, gods, Danny, you’ve done it now.

  The little girl nodded solemnly. “You’re not like them.” She pointed at the front of the hover, where Jace and Eddie conferred in low worried tones. “You’re not like my real daddy either.”

  “I hope not.” I shifted uncomfortably in the seat, the spaceblanket crackling as I moved. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Eve,” she said, matter-of-factly. I flinched. Of course, I thought, and watched as her dimples came out. She smiled at me. “Can I have some ice cream?”

  “I don’t think we have any, kiddo.” Japhrimel had to live on blood, or sex, or fire, I thought. What does this girl eat? Oh, you are not ready for this, Danny. Not ready at all.

  The hover circled slightly, and began to drift downward toward Jace’s mansion.

  “Um, Danny?” Jace called. “You may want to come take a look at this.”

  I hauled myself up, and the little girl pushed her blanket off and shimmied down from her seat. She held her small perfect hand up. “Can I come, too?” She wore a short white babydoll nightie, and her chubby feet were bare. I fought the urge to pick her up off the hover’s cold metal deck.

  “Okay,” I said, and took her hand. It was warm in mine—a demon’s touch
.

  Like Japhrimel’s. Was he dead? Or had Santino’s men taken him? What could they do to him? Was he injured?

  I made my way up to the front, holding the girl’s hand. “What’s up?” I peered out the front window.

  “Take a look.” Jace glanced up at me. “How’s the kid doing?”

  “She seems okay,” I replied.

  Below us, the familiar blocky outlines of Jace’s mansion grew larger as the hover slowly dropped. On the wide marble expanse of courtyard in front, two sleek limo-hovers crouched, and four police cruisers.

  “Fuck me,” I breathed, forgetting the child’s small hand in mine. “What the hell?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Jace said. “I’m incorporated and operating under codes, so I’m fairly sure they’re not here to roust me.”

  “Sekhmet sa’es.” I was too tired to come up with a good plan. “No chance they’re here for you, Eddie.”

  “’Course not, unless they’d like to arrest Gabe for fucking almost dying,” he said, with no apparent growl in his voice. He must be exhausted. “What do we do, Danny?”

  I wish they would stop nominating me as the idea man, I thought. “Nothing else to do,” I said. “Drift on down and land, but keep the motor running until we’re sure we won’t need it. Jace, can I have a commlink?”

  “Of course,” he said. “What do you want me to do, Danny?”

  “Stay here with the kid,” I answered, glancing down at Eve. The little girl looked up at me, as if I were the only person in the hover. “If they take me, get the kid somewhere safe and wait for me to show up.”

  Jace swung out of his chair, not even bothering to argue with me. I felt a weary relief. Was it normal to feel this way? So tired, but unable to sleep.

  No sleep. Not until I finished this game. And it was a game, I’d been pushed from square to square all along.

  I took the child back into the hold and settled her back into the chair, tucking the blanket around her again. When I finished, Jace was standing by a crate of supplies, a strange expression on his face. His hair curled into a halo, drenched in ice water and then dried in climate control. I probably didn’t look very good either.