Dante Valentine Book 5 - To Hell and Back

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Japh shook his hand, a quick short movement, as if ridding his skin of the feel of the thing. "I will return." He made it sound like a fact instead of a promise. "As quickly as I may. Time moves differently in Hell."

  Don't I know it. "If you're going to do it, do it." For once I sounded steady, and strong. "Let's not wait around."

  26

  The walk back to the hover was too short for serious brooding and far too long for me to feel anything other than horribly exposed and completely vulnerable. I wanted to stay and watch, but Magi don't practice in front of other psions ... and as Japh had pointed out, a doorway to Hell was not anything I wanted to be around.

  Because if something can go in, something might be able to come out. So we all stepped merrily out Kgembe's front door.

  Without Japhrimel.

  Ten minutes later the scar in the hollow of my left shoulder went numb, a varocained prickling that probably meant he was nowhere in the normal world. I'd felt that before, and it was miserable to have confirmation of what it meant.

  Vann spoke once. "Don't worry. He'll be back before you know it."

  When I said nothing, he shut up. The rest of the walk was accomplished in complete silence, except for Lucas swearing under his breath, a steady monotony of obscenities mixed in different languages, a song of nervousness.

  That certainly didn't help my mood. Wet heat lay thick and clotted against every surface, the shadows knife-edged and drenched with color. I carried my sword, wanting it to hand.

  Just in case.

  Sirens boiled through the air as we drew closer to the transport well.

  That doesn't sound good. Precognition tickled my nape under tangled hair. Still, why assume that every disturbance in Caracaz had to do with me?

  We rounded the corner. Because it probably does, Danny.

  There was a snarl of hover traffic in holding patterns and a column of black smoke lifting from the depths of the well. I stared, Vann cursed, and McKinley pushed me back around the corner. "Stay back. Lucas?"

  "On it." The yellow-eyed man unholstered a plasgun and set off down the street, moving quickly but smoothly. He looked bleached, surrounded by blocks of primary color.

  Who the hell put McKinley in charge? I swallowed my protest and tried to peer around the corner. McKinley pushed me back, his metallic left hand glittering. A fine sheen of sweat covered the Hellesvront agent's forehead. "Just a minute, Valentine. Let's not be hasty."

  "Leander. And her." Eve. Or whoever she is.

  "Lucas'll see what's going on. We don't want to risk you." He exchanged a worried look with Vann, one I could decipher all too easily. This changed things a little. It was faintly possible the column of smoke had nothing to do with us. Faintly.

  The semi-industrial district butting up against Kgembe's quiet neighborhood provided no cover at all. I felt like a huge neon-lit sign. Tasty demon treat, just come and take a bite.

  "Mac." There was a long, low, sibilant hiss - Vann had drawn a knife.

  "I know." McKinley let out a short sharp breath, and I smelled sudden peppery adrenaline from both of them under the dry stasis-cabinet smell of Hellesvront. "Valentine?"

  "What?" My right hand almost-cramped, and I squeezed my swordhilt and felt every nervestring pull itself taut. This suddenly began to feel normal. There was violence approaching.

  I didn't mind a bit.

  "If this gets ugly, you'd better run. As fast and as far as you can. We'll take care of the rest."

  We'll see about that. "What is it?" A demon, all right. Which one, and where, and what the hell are you two going to be

  I didn't even get to finish the thought. They boiled out of the daylight, low unhealthy shapes with skittering legs, and I swallowed a scream before McKinley shoved me so hard I stumbled. "Run!" McKinley screamed.

  My sword cleared its sheath, and the rage woke in a blinding red screen.

  Oh, no. I have had enough of running. I rocketed forward past Vann, who had gone into a crouch as one of the things leapt, an uncoordinated fluid movement twisting its flexible two-part body. It looked like a nightmare of a spider, with the off-kilter grace of something demonic. It was also sickly-hot, a feverish icy heat cutting through the sunshine and raising my hackles. A coughing roar exploded, either from my throat or from someone's projectile gun.

  No. It was me. It was the cry of a hunting cat.

  I ducked into a crouch, sword whipping in an arc, blue flame painting the air behind it in a sweet natural curve as the scabbard clattered to the concrete and my left hand closed around the hilt of the Knife, ripping it free.

  Tchuk. Fudoshin split demonic flesh, and the spider thing made a screeching hurtful sound. I rose from the crouch, the long muscles in my legs providing impetus, and leapt, twisting with the follow-through of the slash. The Knife whipped out, following the arc, and the hell-thing screamed again.

  I hit the ground before I'd finished my yell, my throat scorching with the sound.

  And fire bloomed. Red-yellow flames coughed into existence, running wetly over the thing's bristling, glassy black hide. The scar hummed with Power, flushing along my skin and armoring me in liquid heat.

  Had it always been this simple? The world was no longer a garden of threat and fear. Instead, it was a clear, shimmering web of action and reaction, violence and death. All I had to do was look to see the shining path of killing that would free me from this.

  It had never felt so right to destroy everything in my path.

  "Valentine!" McKinley, screaming. I pivoted on the ball of my left foot, bringing the sword around again, and engaged the second spider. Plasfire crackled around me, the air seared with a stinging smell of something dry and bristled, its mouth stuffed with silk, flicked into a candleflame and shriveling.

  Something ripped along my calf, but I paid it no heed. Short thrust, pivoting again, boots scraping the concrete, and the Knife let out a high keening as I plunged it into the spider's back. The horrid gulping noise cut short, a flood of hot sickening Power jolting up my arm before I pulled the blade free and ducked, venomous black blood flying.

  More whining plasbolts. There were so many of them, the spiders clicking and hissing, moving to flank me. Rage smoked and strained as the reflex of a lifetime spent bounty hunting calculated the odds and came up with something I didn't quite like.

  They were about to surround me.

  Don't care, the rage whispered. Kill them. Kill them all. Make them pay.

  It hit me hard and low, driving me down as a laserifle whined. I landed hard, twisting, and almost drove the Knife into McKinley's throat before I realized he wasn't one of them.

  It was harder than it should have been to stop myself. The spiders screeched and writhed, black rotting blood steaming on the concrete. The aftermath of a repeating laserifle isn't a pretty sight, and these creatures seemed even more vulnerable to lasefire than the hellhounds. The smell was incredible, but even more incredible was the sound of little bristled demon feet scratching, scratching, scratching.

  More of them, and they're massing. I gulped at stale, fetid air. The heat was incredible.

  "Get up!" McKinley hauled on me, I scrambled to my feet. "Now run, goddamn you!"

  I ran.

  I didn't wait to be told twice. Still, every muscle in me resisted for the first few steps, wanting to turn back and kill until there was nothing left. He shoved me again, right between the shoulderblades, and it took every vanishing thread of control I had left not to spin and plunge bright steel into the man's body.

  His footsteps followed mine as we flashed through wet sunlight and sharp-edged shade, harsh heaving breaths echoing in my straining ears. I heard more lasefire, and the chattering of projectile fire. On the far end, another explosion rocked the transport well.

  They're certainly going all-out, aren't they. Whoever they are. I wonder if I'll ever find out. Does it matter?

  I can move very quickly, especially since Japhrimel taught me to use the demon-born strength he
'd given me. McKinley kept pace, having enough breath to yell when I instinctively bolted left at the next intersection, impelled by the idea that I had to find some cover. The city thrummed, a deep well of ambient power at its core beckoning. There was enough static in those depths to hide me, maybe.

  Except for the sudden ravine cutting across our path, a waist-high railing and hover traffic whizzing by. A major traffic lane, an artery feeding the city's throbbing heart.

  Oh, shit. I was moving too fast, dug my heels in, and skidded to a stop.

  McKinley almost ran into me, gasping for breath. He snapped a quick glance down into the hovertraffic. "Do you trust me?"

  What? "What?" I looked over my shoulder. The street seemed clear, but the shadows warped in a way I suddenly didn't like. As I looked, one of the shadows developed legs and skittered out into the hot sun, sending up a high piercing cry.

  "Do you trust me?" McKinley repeated. He still held a knife, the blade reversed along his right forearm, his metallic left hand limned with pale violet.

  I had no time to lie. "No." I don't trust you. I don't even like you.

  "Fine." He grabbed, his left hand tangling in my rig's straps, and hauled. The railing hit me at hip level, he yanked again, and we tumbled over the edge.

  Instinct pulled my arms and legs close, I twisted like a cat in midair and almost crunched into the side of a freight hover, its wash of warm air stinging my eyes. Gravity eased for a heart-clenching moment, McKinley fell free, and we landed hard on a moving surface, the breath driven from my lungs in a hungh! of effort that might have been funny if it hadn't hurt so goddamn much.

  "-ow-" My voice was very small in the rushing wind.

  He'd aimed us for a hovertrain, bulleting along at the bottom of the trough. If I'd been human, the fall would have killed me. As it was, I shook the stun out of my head and made it to my feet, sword in one hand and Knife in the other, miraculously mostly unharmed. Wet warmth dripped into my eyes before black blood sealed the hurt away. The top of the train was dimpled from my landing, lines of force clearly showing in the plasteel.

  Hope we didn't scare anyone inside.

  McKinley was on all fours, coughing up bright crimson blood. He looked terrible, and his ribs on one side were malformed, hammered in by the force of our landing. Oh, lovely. This is ever so much better. I opened my mouth to say it, but a motion further down the flexible snake of the hovertrain caught my eye.

  Shit. I spared another glance at McKinley, whose eyes had rolled back into his head. The violet glow around his left hand flashed, getting brighter, and crackling noises punctured the wind-sound as his ribs snapped out, mending.

  He'll live, the voice of experience inside my head whispered. But not for long, if they get to him in this state. Loping on all fours up the hovernain's bouncing back, their bald heads glistening in the golden light and their eyes firing when they passed through brief shutterclicks of shadow, were imps. Their long, waxen-white flexible limbs bent in ways no human's would, and they snarled and chattered through the roaring wind as the train took a sharp bend, my knees flexing to keep me upright. My sword came up, blue flame streaming and dripping from its keen edge, its heart burning white-hot, visible even through daylight.

  I could just leave him here. I really could.

  I launched myself over McKinley, who blurted out something through his coughing and choking for breath, and ran headlong for the imps, not realizing I was screaming in defiance until I ran out of breath and slammed into the first imp with a sound like hovers colliding. The Knife rammed into the thing's chest, and its screech was sweet music as rage took me again, the inside of my skull turning into a grassfire, smudges of charcoal and dull stained crimson taking the place of thought.

  Front foot planted, yank the Knife free and swing back foot around, whirling to extend in a lunge as effortless as it was deadly, a roar of speed-laced wind stinging my eyes, my hair rising and obscuring my vision. It didn't matter, I wasn't using my eyes to track them anyway. They were smears of black-diamond fire on the landscape of Power, interlocking cascades of intent and threat. I lost track of myself in the clear light of what Jado called mind-no-mind, moving with a speed and clarity I had rarely achieved in my human life and never since - until now.

  The enemy vanishes, Danyo-chan, and all you face is yourself.

  The leap uncoiled, my knees coming up, and I kicked, my boot meeting another imp's face. The sound of a watermelon with glass bones dropped on scorching pavement was satisfying, to say the least, but not as satisfying as carving the thing's arm off on my way down, landing splay-footed and bouncing again, the train's rollicking passage suddenly a rhythm I had no trouble catching.

  Just like riding a slicboard, eh, Danny?

  The flood of feverish Power up my arm from the Knife was almost natural. Gritty ash exploded, demonic flesh sucked clean of vitality, and the sound I heard - a falsetto giggle, high and clear as ringing glass in an empty room after midnight - was my own insane laughter. I was laughing as they swarmed me, jaws champing and sharp teeth clicking through foam, maddened by daylight or by my presence, I couldn't tell.

  I was still making that sound when McKinley grabbed the back of my rig again. The train halted for one vertiginous second, and I realized what was happening as it fell away from underfoot and we launched out into space again. The hovertrain was heading down a sharp almost-vertical slope to plunge underground, probably a commuter line, and we were in freefall again as one imp leapt the sudden distance, slavering and champing, for my throat.

  Landed, hard, breath driven from my lungs again and something snapping in my right leg, a sudden sickening sheet of pain bolting through the clarity I'd just achieved. McKinley was cursing, low and steady in a hoarse broken tone. My hair stung my eyes, whipped into a tangled mass by the wind. I fetched up on my side, trying to get in enough breath to scream as the freight hover we'd landed on bounced, a sudden application of force controlled by its whining gyros. The imp vanished into the slipstream, not lucky enough to catch our trajectory.

  Oh, ow. Ouch. Agony rolled through the rage, sharpening it like a shot of vox sharpens a sniffer's senses. Pulling everything into a different kind of clarity. "Sekhmet sa'es," I moaned, the words filling my mouth like hot copper blood. Why does it take getting the shit beat out of me before I feel human again?

  "Don't ever do that again!" McKinley yelled. "Goddammit! I'm trying to protect you!"

  You didn't look in any shape to take on those guys, buddy boy. My right femur crunched with pain as the bone swiftly healed itself, demon metabolism running fiercely, heat blurring out from my skin. It actually felt cold with the wind howling as us, the freight hover moving at a good clip away from the trainline.

  Caracaz wheeled above and below, skyscraper spires piercing hot hazy sky, stretching down to pavement crawling with crowds below. Ambient Power stroked my skin, interference rising like steam to cloak my aura. This is better.

  This, I can work with. I coughed, swallowed a mouthful of something too warm and nauseatingly slick to be spit, and tested my right leg. It hurt like hell, but it was better. I made it up to hands and knees, the hilts jarring against my palms as the hover bounced again. The Knife hummed, a low satisfied sound that suddenly made me feel like emptying my stomach.

  Quit it, Danny. Puking won't get you anywhere. I snapped a glance over my shoulder - the hovertrain had vanished. I wondered if the imps had survived.

  I got my feet underneath me, made it up. My right leg ached fiercely, the bone assaulted and unhappy. The scar sent another warm pulse of Power down my skin, and I was suddenly glad Japhrimel's repair work on my shields had held up.

  And glad that neither imp nor spider-thing had been able to use Power against me.

  McKinley grabbed at my shoulder, and I controlled the twitch that could have buried the Knife in his guts. Twitchy, twitchy, Necromance. Mellow down, easy. I came back fully into myself and felt suddenly ... what was it?

  Whole. Cleansed, the fir
e of rage having burned something sticky and viscous away from me. I'd fought them off. I'd won.

  I liked the feeling. I wanted it to last.

  I tore myself out from under McKinley's hand. "Watch it."

  "We've got to get off this thing." He checked the sky, his black hair lifting on the wind of our passage, cut now because the freight hover was in a downtown holding pattern.

  My eyes followed the loops and curves, hovers delicately woven into streams of unsnarled traffic. This one's remote from the realtime AI controller, probably, since it didn't change course when we thumped into it. At least, let's hope so. My eyes stung, whipped by wind and hair. I should have tied it back, but how was I to know I'd go jumping off hovers?

  You should have guessed, Danny. Isn't that how these things always go?

  "There." McKinley pointed. A residential high-rise, with the hoverlane going directly over it. The fall was bad but not immense, and there was plenty of room for error.

  "You want me to break my leg again?" I sounded delighted, the remainder of the chilling little giggles spilling through my voice.

  "Better than the alternative," he snapped. Dark circles had bloomed under his eyes, and he was chalk-pale. The violet glow around his left hand had subsided.

  "Guess so." The Knife slid back into its sheath. "What about Vann and Lucas?"

  "They can take care of themselves. They'll provide a distraction, it's part of the plan."

  "Plan? What plan?" There was a plan?

  "Standard for bodyguard duty. If we get separated, Vann goes low and fast and loud, drawing everyone away. I get the package and we rendezvous." He coughed, a racking sound, and winced. His ribs didn't look staved-in, as they had before. I wondered just how fast a Hellesvront agent healed.

  "Where?" I would have liked to know this, you know.