Dead Man Rising

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Jace wasn't home. He was probably off digging through public records. Because psions so often worked at night, public buildings rarely closed before two in the morning.

  It was a pity. I could have used some easy banter.

  I lifted my left hand because my right was shaking too badly, examined the black molecule-drip polish and the graceful wicked arches of my fingers. The fingers flexed, released.

  The smell of lilacs still clung to my dress. Lilacs, and terror. The quiet dark inside my house suddenly made the flesh hang traitorously heavy on my bones—slender, arching frames, architecturally different than human bones but not agreeing with demon physiology in any of the books I read. Stuck in between, trapped like a butterfly halfway out of a glass chrysalis and frozen, popped into a kerri jar stasis. I didn't belong here in my old life, had nothing and nowhere to move into despite all my frantic thrashing on bounties. Stopped, frozen between one step and the next like a holovid still.

  What butterfly wants to go back into the chrysalis? Or revisit being a caterpillar?

  Remember. Remember Rigger Hall.

  Bile rose, I forced it down. A rattling tremor slid from my scalp to my booted toes. I could feel it circling, the panic attack deep and needle-toothed, combat and the shock of memory both catching up to me.

  Hey, Danny, the lipless mouths of my nightmares said. Thought you shook us loose, huh? No way. Let's get out the old fears and rattle them around, let's dance in Danny's head and shake her left and right, what do you say?

  "Why am I shaking?" I asked the still darkness of my refuge. Took a deep breath and realized how musty the place smelled. I rarely cleaned anymore, and there was only so much Jace would do. Besides, we were gone all the time, tracking down criminals.

  Compassion is not your strong suit. Jado's voice careened inside my skull, echoed, stopped as if dropped down a well.

  My left shoulder crunched again. I bent over, retching, my hair coming loose and the stiletto chiming on the hardwood floor. Almost a year of hiding behind the image of a big, tough bounty hunter hadn't changed a goddamn thing.

  It never would.

  Japhrimel was gone.

  The floor grated against my knees and palms, cold and hard. The world went gray. I'm going into shock. And nothing around to bring me out. The layers of shielding energy over my home shivered, singing a thin crystalline note of distress, like a thin plasglass curve-edge stroked just right.

  "You will not leave me." A voice like old, dark whiskey. Familiar.

  My entire body leapt, to hear that voice.

  I looked up. Saw nothing but my front hall, iron coatrack, the mirror, a slice of warm gold from the kitchen. Jace had left the light on.

  "You will not leave me to wander the earth alone." The voice slapped at me, yanked me up off the floor, and shoved me back against the door, pressure like a wave-front of Power against my entire body, squeezing around me, forcing away the gray shocky cloudiness.

  I'm being smacked around by a ghost. A ripping unsteady laugh tore out of me. I opened my eyes, saw the empty hall again. Fragrant, sweet black blood was hot on my chin—I'd bitten my lip almost clean through. It stung before it healed over, as instantly as any other wound.

  "Lucky me," I half-sang. "What a lucky girl, lucky girl, I'm a lucky girl, Necromance to the stars."

  "Dante." Merely a whisper, but I felt it all the way down to my bones.

  "It's not fair. I want you back." Then I clapped my hand over my mouth, and my entire body tensed, listening.

  Listening.

  A long silence greeted this. I made my hands into fists. Careful. I always had to be so stinking careful. Had to hold back, so as not to damage the less resilient. The humans.

  A long sigh, and the voice—more familiar to me than my own, by now—brushed my cheek. "Feed me…"

  I scanned the hall. Empty. The entire house was empty.

  No human. No demon. No nothing. Nothing in my house but me, dead air, my possessions, and the lingering smell of Jace. Dust, and the smell of stale grief. That was all.

  Great. The dead will talk to me, but never the way I want them to. Never the useful way. Oh, no. The dark screaming hilarity in the thought was troubling, but it was like a slap of cold water across the face of a dreaming woman.

  I am an adult, I told myself. I grew up, goddammit. I am all grown up now.

  I peeled myself away from the door, silk rustling around my legs as I strode for the stairs. Halfway up, I stopped so quickly I almost overbalanced and fell on my ass all the way back down.

  The niche stood as it always had. No dust on the scorching black urn.

  Anubis dipped his slender beautiful head, examining me. The wine was gone.

  The god had accepted the offering.

  The rose petals were withered too. Dry. Sucked dry.

  "This is crazy." My shoulder throbbed. "I've got a killer to hunt down. A killer that uses Feeder glyphs in some kind of elaborate Ceremonial circle. And I can't afford to be haunted by…"

  But being haunted by Japhrimel was better than missing him, was better than grieving for him. "Are you talking to me?" The urn's gleaming curves mocked me. "Please tell me you're talking to me."

  Of course, no reply. Nothing but the still hot air teasing at my face, the statue of Anubis shifting, as if demanding my attention.

  I met the statue's eyes. Was it a hallucination, or did the god appear to be smiling slightly?

  "I've missed you." This time, I was talking to the god. My voice sounded thin, breathless. It was true. I'd missed the sense of being always held, protected—the god of Death was the biggest, baddest thing around. Even Nichtvren feared Death.

  Even demons did.

  I always wondered if that was why I was a Necromance. A helpless, collared girl pushed into the Hegemony psi program because of her Matheson scores, an orphan sent into Rigger Hall like all the rest—and in the Hall, you either found a protector or you didn't last long.

  Death was the best protector. At least I didn't have much to fear; when I finally died it would be like going into a lover's embrace.

  There were whole months of my schooling when I merely endured through the day, going from one task to the next, one foot in front of the other. I would wait for every visit with Lewis, but I was getting older and couldn't see him as often. I had only the books.

  At night, I would read by the light of a filched flashlight under my covers, every book Lewis had left me. When I could read no longer, when I finally closed my eyes, I would slip into the blue-fire trance of Death.

  That kept me going. I was special, both because Lewis had given me his books and because Death had chosen me. I withdrew mostly into myself after Roanna's death, learning to live self-contained, a smooth hard shell. But I always had the books and the blue glow, twin lines going down into the heart of me, feeding me strength. Telling me I could endure.

  I aced every single Theory of Magick class, every single Modern Classics test. I was academically perfect no matter how bad it got, having absorbed Lewis's love of study.

  More importantly, I never doubted that I would survive. Lew had given me a primary gift: a child's knowledge that she is loved completely. And though the punishments were bad, some of the teachers had been dedicated, true masters of their craft. There were good things about the Hall—learning to control my abilities, learning who could be trusted and who couldn't, learning just how strong I really was.

  And always, always, there was Death.

  I was too young to tread the blue crystal hall or approach the Bridge, but I would feel the god's attention, a warm communion that gave me the strength to become self-reliant instead of withdrawing into catatonia or developing a nervous tic like some of the other kids. Sometimes, even during the worst punishments, I would close my eyes and still see that blue glow, geometric traceries of blue fire and the god's attention, my god's attention, and I had made up my mind to be strong.

  I had endured.

  And when Mirovitch was dead
, the inquest finished, and the school shut down, I went on through the Academy and my schooling up to my Trial, that harrowing ordeal every Necromance must pass to be accredited, the stripping away of the psyche in an initiation as different as it is terrifying for every individual. You can't handle walking in Death until you've actually died yourself, and what is any initiation but a little death? I'd had an edge over every other initiate: I never doubted I would survive my Trial. And afterward, with a few white hairs I dyed to make them the standard black of a Necromance, I'd gone on and never looked back. Never stopped in my steady march, moving on.

  But all the time, I hadn't had a goddamn idea what I was marching toward. I still didn't, but I knew one thing for sure: I didn't want to go back.

  And yet that was what Christabel was asking me to do.

  "Rigger Hall." My eyes locked with the statue's. "I swore I'd never go back."

  You must The eyes were blank and pitiless, but so deep. Death did not play favorites—He loved all equally. What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure. The god's voice—not quite words, just a thread of meaning laid in my receptive mind—made me shudder, my knees bumping the wall. That had been my first lesson when they cupped the collar on me at the Hall. Endurance. The primal lesson, repeated over and over again. Even later, when I seriously doubted I would get out of some new horrible situation alive, a thin thread of me down at the very core of my being had merely replied, You will. And that was that.

  I've been called suicidal, and crazy, and fey; I've even been called glory-hungry and snobbish. I don't think that's accurate; I simply always knew I would survive, a core of something hard and nasty in me refusing to give in even at the worst of times. Better to face what frightens you than to live cowering in fear; and if Death frightened me I need only go further into the blue glow of His embrace until even fear was lost and the weight lifted from me.

  I had nothing to fear. I kept my honor intact. An honorable person was only as good as the promises she kept, the loyalty she showed. My honor was unstained.

  A familiar touch against my shields warned me—Jace coming back, probably on a slicboard. He was dropping in fast, probably to avoid being seen or shot by the holovid reporters outside. I felt the security net slide away to let him pass.

  I made it almost all the way down the stairs before my legs started to tremble alarmingly. I slid down to sit, my knees giving out so I thumped inelegantly onto the second step. When Jace opened the front door I was perched on the steps, leaning against the wall, my knees drawn up.

  He kicked the door closed. "Danny?" His voice, blessedly normal, sane, made me shut my eyes again. I rested my chin on my forearms, braced on my knees, the silken cascades of the dress falling to either side. The wall was doing a damn fine job of holding me up.

  Three scars, dipping down my back, and the brand laid along the crease below my left buttock. I smelled the sick-sweet odor of burning flesh again, heard whistling soft laughter and my own throaty screams, felt blood and semen trickling down my inner thighs.

  And I heard something else: Headmaster Mirovitch's dry, papery voice whispering while the iron met my skin. I forced myself to stare unflinchingly into the memory, the door inside my head a little ajar, showing me what I'd locked away so I could go on living.

  "Danny." Jace stood in front of me. "You okay?"

  I lifted my head. His hair was messy, windblown, and his blue eyes were humanly kind. I didn't deserve his kindness, and I knew it.

  My eyes burned, but my left shoulder had quieted. It took me two tries to reply through a throat gone dry as reactive paint. "No. I'm not. Get the shovels, Jace. We've got some digging to do."

  Chapter Seventeen

  The garage housed garden implements and a sleek black hover, dead and quiescent on its landing gear. This space had been empty before I'd gotten rich. I had always meant to turn it into a meditation room, but I ended up avoiding it and doing my meditating in the living room or bedroom.

  I pushed a stack of boxes aside, my hands trembling, and looked up to find Jace watching me, his wind-ruffled hair a shock of gold in the light from the bare full-spectrum bulbs.

  "Listen." He pushed his hand back through his wind-struck hair. The motion achieved absolutely nothing in terms of straightening it, only made it stick up raffishly. He looked like Gypsy Roen's sidekick Marbery, all angles and cocksure grace under a shock of hair. "Why don't we call this off and get drunk? Tackle this tomorrow night."

  "You might be able to get drunk. I can't" I was surprised by how steady my voice was. The smell of the garage, the hover on its leafspring legs and cushion of reactive smelling of metal and fustiness, clawed at my throat.

  "Well, why don't we just fall into bed and shag until we forget this, huh?" He tried to make it sound like a light, bantering offer. Just like prejob bullshitting to ease the nerves. Unfortunately, his breath caught and ruined the effect.

  Oh, Jace. I actually managed a smile, then pushed again. The boxes of files scraped along the floor, cardboard squeaking against smooth concrete. I looked down, saw the wooden door set in the concrete. A round depression in the center of the trapdoor held an iron ring.

  "You truly are amazing." Jace propped the two shovels over his shoulder like an ancient gravedigger. "This is right out of a holovid."

  Irritation rasped at me, but my retort died on my lips. He was too pale, sweat standing out on his forehead. We were both claustrophobic, and he… what was he feeling? If I touched him I would know. Bare skin on skin, I might have been partly-demon but I was still the woman who had shared her body and psyche with him. Almost a decade ago, but that kind of link didn't fade.

  Was that why I couldn't quite let go of him? Or was it because he reminded me of the person I had been before Rio, a feeling I couldn't quite remember for all the sharpness of my Magi-trained memory?

  "You don't have to come down." I closed my hand over the metal ring. It was so cold it scorched—or was it that my fingers were demon-hot? Dust stirred in the still-hot air; I was radiating again. I'll never need climate-control again, maybe I should hire myself out as a portable dryer. Rent your very own psionic heater, reasonable rates, sarcasm included.

  "And let you face this alone?" He shook his head. "No way, sweetheart. In for a penny, in for a pound."

  Words rose in my throat. I'm so sorry. I wish I could be what you needed.

  Instead, I wrenched the trapdoor up.

  A musty smell of sterile dirt exhaled from the square darkness. I felt around under the lip of the hole. "Probably not working," I muttered. "That would just cap the whole goddamn day."

  My fingers found the switch, pressed it, and a bare bulb clicked into life. I let out a whistling breath through a throat closed to pinhole size.

  "How was the suckhead convention?" Jace's tone was light, bored. I glanced up at him, suddenly intensely grateful for his presence. If I owed Gabe and I owed Eddie, what did I owe to Jace?

  The answer was the same in each case: too much to easily repay. Debt, obligation, honor; all words for what I would keep paying until I took my last breath, and be damn grateful for the chance.

  It was better than being alone, wasn't it?

  It sure as hell was. "Interesting. He says he's got some books on demons I'm welcome to come by and peruse." I managed not to choke on my own voice.

  "You do have a way of making friends." Hipshot and easy, Jace Monroe examined the trapdoor, the bare bulb's glare showing a drop bar and a square of pale, dusty dirt.

  "Must be my charming smile." I leaned forward, catching the drop bar in both hands. The dress slithered as I trusted my weight to the iron, pulling my legs in and dropping them, then slowly lowering myself down. Thank the gods my swordhilt didn't snag. I hung full-length for a moment, then dropped the three inches to the dirt floor. "There was a werecain attack while I was there."

  He hadn't mentioned my torn dress or the black demon blood crusted on the side of the bodice. I would never have b
elieved him capable of such restrained tact. If I went upstairs to change out of the dress, I would find some way of putting this off.

  "I can't leave you alone for a moment, can I." Jace handed the first shovel down, the second. He took his sword from his belt and handed it to me.

  "Guess not. I went by and checked out Christabel's apartment." Bits of garden dirt still clung to the rusting metal of the first shovel. The second shovel was new. Why had I bought it? Was my precognition working overtime again?

  Sometimes I hated being gifted with precognition as well as runewitchery. Being gifted with precognition is like being shoved from square to square on a chessboard, you're never sure if your intuition is working or if you're just getting paranoid. There's precious little difference between the two. Out of all the Talents, precogs—Seers—go insane the most.

  "Find out anything interesting?" He leaned over, caught the drop bar, and levered himself down gracefully. His T-shirt came untucked when he curled down and I caught a flash of his tanned belly, muscle moving under skin. His boots ground into the dirt, and he scanned the unfinished space. "Anyone else would have a ladder, Danny."

  "You think I come down here often enough for that? And yes, I found out something interesting, at least at the suckhead convention. The Prime and his Consort identified the circles as being marked with Feeder glyphs."

  I felt cold just mentioning it. Feeders were nothing to mess with. It's every psion's worst nightmare, tangling with a Feeder.

  Jace whistled tunelessly, taking both shovels from my unresisting hands, leaving me his sword. I was abruptly wanned by the implied trust. "That's… well." His sandy eyebrows drew together, his lips compressed.

  I studied the perfect arc of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. He had always been so very attractive; and his air of self-assuredness was compelling too. I wondered if I'd fallen for him because he'd always seemed so damn sure I would, and my own well-camouflaged uncertainty made his confidence even more magnetic. I had always secretly wanted to be as sure as he seemed to be, instead of faking it as I usually did. His facade never cracked, his good humor rarely faded. "What did you find out?"