Dead Man Rising

by Lilith Saintcrow

  My failures rose to choke me. I hadn't been quick enough as a human to kill Santino, and if Japhrimel hadn't given up a large share of his demon Power for me he might have been too tough for Lucifer to kill so easily. And even with the strength and speed Japhrimel had given me, I had not been able to catch Jace when he rocketed past me to protect me from whatever twisted sorcery had dredged up Mirovitch to torture seemingly everyone who had survived Rigger Hall.

  The glyph took shape at the end of my sword, encased in a sphere of lurid crimson. It was Keihen, the Torch, one of the Greater Glyphs of Destruction, a little-used part of the Nine Canons.

  I don't love you, I had told him after Rio. I won't ever love you.

  And his answer? If I cared about that I'd still be in Rio with a new Mob Family and a sweet little fat-bottomed babalawao. This is my choice, Danny. And stubbornly, over and over again, he had proved his love for me in a hundred different ignored ways.

  I had never even guessed how much he meant to me.

  There was only one thing I could give up, one penance I could pay, for the mess I'd made of everything. If Japhrimel could be resurrected, it was probably too late; he had Fallen. Lucifer's word meant nothing; hadn't he always been called the father of lies? If a Fallen demon could be resurrected and Lucifer wanted him, he could have sent another demon to collect me and the urn, or just the urn. I was part-demon, sure, but no match for a real one.

  None of it mattered. All that mattered was that I had tortured myself with hope, when I had known all along there was no hope. Japhrimel was never coming back, and neither was Jace. If I survived taking down a Feeder's ka, I'd live afterward with the knowledge that I had denied myself even the faintest slim chance of resurrecting Japhrimel.

  My toll to the dead: my hope. It was the only penance big enough.

  I took my time with the glyph, no shuntlines, no avenues for the Power to follow except one simple undeniable course. The crimson globe spat, sizzled, and began to steam. Vapor took angular shapes, tearing at the air. I clamped my teeth in my lower lip, ignoring the pain, and stood in my front hall, Japhrimel's urn tucked under my arm and the house shields quivering uneasily but calming when I stroked them. The glyph twisted inside its red cage, trying to escape. I flicked it off the tip of my sword, in the hall between the stairs and the living room, and held it spinning in the air with will alone, my sword sliding back into its sheath.

  I got a good grip on Japhrimel's urn. I had to hold the glyph steady while it strained like a slippery fiery eel.

  I spat black blood from my cut lip, sank my teeth in again until I worried free a mouthful of acid-tasting demon blood. This I dribbled into my palm and smoothed over Japhrimel's urn, the rising keening of the glyph inside its bubble of crimson light beginning to scorch the ceiling. The heat blew my hair back. The paint blistered on the walls, bubbling, and I smelled more smoke.

  I tossed Japhrimel's bloodied urn straight up. My sword rang free of the sheath, a perfect draw, the sound of the cut like worlds colliding. Ash pattered down, the cleanly-broken halves of the urn smacking the floor and shattering, but I was already shuffling back, my sword held away from my body. Running with every ounce of demon speed, I reached the door before the bubble holding the glyph… burst.

  There was an immense, silent sound, felt more in the bones than heard. I spun aside at the door and leapt, but a giant warm hand pressed against the back of my body and threw me clear. I landed and rolled, instinct saving me. I came to a halt panting, my head ringing with flame, my bitten lip singing with pain until black blood coated the hurt and sealed it away.

  My left shoulder came alive with agony. I screamed, the force of my cry adding to the explosion that shook the ground. Flame bellowed up, and bits of the garden igniting and crumbling to ash. The heat was like a living thing, crawling along my body, only the shield of my Power kept my clothes from smoking and catching fire.

  There. Both the men in my life, gone. I had read, long ago, of the Vikings sending ships out to sea alive with flame, burial barges to go with the dead into the afterlife. Now I sent my house into Death as well as Japhrimel and Jace. If I was lucky, when I died they might be waiting for me.

  The only thing left now was anger. Fury. Rage. A crimson wash so huge it shoved all other considerations aside. Easier to fight than to cry. Easier to kill than to admit to the pain.

  And oh, anger is sweet. Fury is the best fuel of all. It is so clean, so marvelous, so ruthless. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, rage against evil is better than sorrow. Sorrow can't balance the scales.

  Vengeance could. And she would too, if I had anything to say about it.

  I was already on my feet, unsteady, walking away. I made it to my front gate as the layers of shielding on my house imploded, fueling the Power-driven flames. There would be nothing left but ash and a deep crater. My head rang and my shoulder crunched again with pain. I inhaled, staggering.

  I had always wondered what the limit of my powers was. The wall was scorching, concrete turning black and brittle on the outside. My garden was swallowed alive with flame, kissed with choking ash. I dimly heard human screams, and wondered if the Shockwave would break a few windows. The gate itself was beginning to melt and warp. It almost seared my hand when I touched it, tough painted plasilica bubbling and smoking.

  I opened my front gate, stepped out.

  A few enterprising holovid reporters tried to take pictures. I no longer cared. I stalked through them like a well-fed lion through a herd of zebra. Some of them were cowering behind their bristling hovers. Fine hot flakes of ash drifted down. I heard sirens, and thought that the house was past saving. I did feel a moment's pity for my neighbors, but it passed.

  It was three blocks before I remembered to sheathe my sword. The mark on my left shoulder settled into a steady burning that was not entirely unpleasant, except for one last flare that stopped me for a full thirty seconds, head down as I breathed heavily, ribs flickering as my lungs heaved. Then I pushed my hair—dry now from the fierce heat, and crowned with tiny flakes of ash—back, and continued on my way. The sun had sunk below the rim of the bay in the west. The column of smoke from my shattered home blazed a lurid orange, underlit by flame.

  Night had fallen.

  And it was going to be a long one.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Four hours later I stopped in a coffeeshop in midtown, ordered five shots of their best espresso, and stood at a table. My sword tucked into a loop on my belt while I tapped at my datpilot. The shop's holovid feed was on, and I saw without much surprise that my house had made the evening news.

  I didn't look after seeing the first few moments of scrambled footage: the column of flame going up an impressive couple of thousand feet, making a mushroom cloud of smoke that led some hysterical people to think that there had been a nuclear attack on Saint City. There had been no hovertraffic overhead, since my house was outside the main lanes, and the force of the explosion had been channeled up instead of outward, so apart from some broken windows and traumatized holovid reporters, there was precious little damage to anything other than my house.

  Which was, of course, what I'd wanted. Something I'd done right, for once.

  I took down the five shots of espresso at once. The mark on my shoulder had settled back to a satisfied glow, spreading over my body like warm oil. I looked at my datpilot. The information Gabe had sent was interesting, to say the least: a summary of all the bodies so far, dates of death, and thumbnail digitals of the crime scenes. She'd also had an analysis done of the glyphs, and it was this that I studied, going from one to the next while my datpilot glowed. It took a couple of hours of standing there, my eyes glued to the screen, to really get a sense of how the Feeder glyphs altered from the regular Ceremonial alphabet of the Nine Canons, and how twisting each rune in a particular fashion would serve the purpose of strengthening a psychic vampire. My secondary talent as a rune-witch helped.

  I felt the gnaw of hunger just under my breastbone. For the
first time, I had truly extended my powers, and I found I was starving. I ignored it, for now.

  My eyes felt dry and grainy. I locked my jaw against the slight moaning sound I wanted to make. Grieve later, I told myself. Work now. Grieve later.

  The door to the coffeehouse opened, and I glanced over. Nothing impressive, just a slicboard kid, his hair done in wild spikes of blue and green, wearing three torn, layered Fizzwhackers T-shirts and loose plasleather shorts with a chain for a belt, along with the newest and most expensive gleaming white Aeroflot sneakers. He looked at me with the supreme unconcern of the very young, and my blood turned to ice when I thought I recognized his face. Then the moment passed. He was too young to have been at Rigger Hall. Far too young, and normal besides. Not a psion.

  I noticed for the first time that the shop was very quiet, and glanced up. The three employees were trying not to stare at me, and uneasiness roiled in the air. I set my jaw, put my datpilot away, and left, no doubt to their great relief.

  Walking through Saint City at night is always interesting, due to the fact that the city rarely sleeps. In some districts, it never sleeps at all except during daylight. I wandered, head down and hands more often than not clasped around the katana's scabbard. I wasn't quite thinking. It was more like a sort of haze, shot through with different crystal-clear images.

  Like the corner of Thirtieth and Pole, a hooker leaning against a streetlamp opening her mouth to proposition me but retreating rapidly as soon as she saw my tat, the call dying on her lips as streetlamp light kissed and slid over her tired human face.

  Or a neon-lit alley, where I paid the entrance fee and went into a screaming shuddering nightclub, going to the bar and paying also for a shot of vodka I didn't drink; the atmosphere of synth-hash smoke, sex, and frantic clinging as painful as the loud screeching noise that passed for music. Then, turning away from the bar, wandering aimlessly through the dancers and the occasional ghostflit riding the waves of sound and sensation, and finally going out the front door again onto the black streets.

  Or a deserted street, wet because rain had started to fall, patterns of street light swimming against the gleaming concrete. Shapes I almost knew flickered through the gleam of the falling droplets as the storm moved in, washing the air clean.

  I penetrated the tangle of alleys in the Bowery, the deepest part of the Tank District. They led to the Rathole, and I spent a little while standing on an abandoned shelf looking down into the huge sinkhole that used to be a transport well, watching the little firefly flickers that were the sk8 tribes getting ready for their nightly cohesion of slicboard deviltry and community-building. Each young slictribe kid down there whirling on a slicboard through the ramps and jumpoffs was a star, reactive paint glittering as they swooped and yelled with joy; I felt the meaning of the patterns of their chaotic dance tremble at the edge of my understanding.

  The idea swam just under the surface of my mind. I always thought best while moving, and this aimless back and forth did qualify as moving. I had read once that sharks in the ocean's cold depths couldn't stop swimming or they would drown.

  I understood.

  Dawn came up in a glow of rose and gold, the storm passing to the south after having dropped its cargo of water. I found myself up on a rooftop in the University District, the spell of night wearing off and the furnace of the sun breaking free of Earth's darkness. I saw dripping trees in Tasmoor Park below me, heard the hovertraffic overhead take on a new urgency to begin the day, felt my dry burning eyes wanting to close.

  When the sun had been up for a while, I got up from lying on the wet, cold concrete of the rooftop and climbed down the rusty fire escape to the alley below, and went in search of a callbox. It took some doing—on this edge of the U District the last riots had destroyed a few callboxes, and phone companies were loath to put more in when everyone had datpilots with voice capability—but I finally found one on the fringe of the Tank District on the edge of an abandoned lot. I stepped into the lighted box, my wet clothes sticking to my steaming skin, and dialed a familiar number.

  "Spocarelli, Saint City Parapsych." She sounded hassled and tired. Behind her, frantically ringing phones and raised voices, snuffling papers. It sounded busy.

  "Gabe." My voice was a husk of its former self. "It's me. Any news?"

  One lone second of silence was all I got. Then, "Holy fuck," Gabe whisper-screamed into the phone. "Where the fucking hell are you, Danny? Eddie and I been looking everywhere for you! What the fuck are you doing? We thought Lourdes had taken you out too! What are you doing?"

  This struck me as an excellent question. What was I doing? "Thinking. Been thinking. Look, the other four on the list—"

  "Three," she said grimly. "It was a busy night. He got a Shaman named Alyson Brady last night and killed four cops to do it. It's like he has some sort of link with them, he's hunting them down like a bloodhound. We had all of them in safehouses. Now we're moving them every two hours. The holovids are having a field day. They're calling him the Psychic Ripper. Chief just got finished chewing my ass out over this. I sure hope you have a good fucking idea in that steel box you call a head, I have been worried sick about you, goddammit! Why didn't you call me? Goddamn you and your theatrics, Valentine!"

  I closed my eyes. Four Spook Squad cops down, and Brady. I'd known Brady, even worked on a mercenary job or two with her. I might have even seen her wearing that spade necklace. We'd never discussed Rigger Hall at all, not even when we were crouched behind a pile of wreckage with three desperate bounties shooting at us, me bleeding from my head and her bleeding just about everywhere else. That had been the Gibrowitz job; the bounties were wanted for the rape and murder of the Hegemony senator's daughter. We'd brought them in a little worse for wear. Brady, in particular, did not like rapists.

  The necklaces.

  Instinct clicked under my skin. I actually gasped, cutting off Gabe's frustrated swearing.

  If I hadn't been so tired, so physically and emotionally exhausted, I might not have seen it. "Gabe." My voice took on a new urgency. "Look. Do they still have the spade necklaces?"

  "I don't… I know Brady had one." Gabe's tone sharpened suspiciously. "Danny, what are you thinking?"

  "Get those necklaces from them. Do it now. Take 'em to the station, and don't touch them if you can help it. Leave them on your desk for me and clear out. I think that's how he's tracking them. Get all the necklaces together. I'll be there in an hour to get them. Draw him off."

  "Danny, we still don't know what we're dealing with!" The high edge of panic colored her voice. "If it's a ka—"

  "I think I know what's going on. And he killed Jace because he couldn't kill me, Gabe. I'm the best equipped to track him down, goddammit, if it's a ka I'll take my goddamn motherfucking chances." My voice was infused with a certainty I didn't feel. Then something else occurred to me. "Why did you think Lourdes had taken me out?"

  "Your house, you idiot! Didn't you see the footage?" Phones beeped and buzzed behind her. I heard someone shouting about a Ceremonial trace. More shuffling papers.

  Click of a lighter and a long inhale—she was smoking again.

  I think that is the very first time you have ever called me an idiot, Gabe. "What footage?"

  "Hades, Danny. It's been all over the news. Your house was wrecked and they have footage of you wandering off looking like you'd been hit on the head. Worrying the fuck out of me, I might add! I thought Lourdes was following you, I thought you might be dead!"

  A slight, shaky laugh boiled out of me. "I am dead, Gabe. I just don't have enough sense to lie down and admit it. Get the necklaces. I'm coming to collect them, and I'll take care of Lourdes or Mirovitch or both or whoever this is. And Gabe, if you've got the necklaces there in the building and you start to feel hinky, run. Don't take him on."

  "But—backup, Danny! For the love of Hades—"

  "No fucking backup." My voice was flat and level. "You saw what he did to Jace, he's already killed enough of your people. I'm
part demon, Gabe. If anyone can take this on, it's me; if I think I need backup or a goddamn thermonuclear strike I'll call in and tell you. Don't you fucking dare put anyone in danger by sending them after this guy. He's mine."

  "Danny—"

  "Your word, Gabe. I want your word."

  Long crackling silence. If I had to worry about human psions behind me getting hurt my effectiveness would be halved, and I was, after all, stronger, faster, and able to take more damage. Gabe was in an unenviable position—throw more of her coworkers in the line of fire and hope this man, whoever he was, didn't kill them, or send me and trust me to finish the job. Trust the lying certainty in my voice. There was only one choice she could make. Sacrifice the many, or trust me to handle it.

  "Fine. You're on." But Gabe's voice shook. Another inhale, a long exhale of synth-hash smoke I could almost taste over the phone line. "I'm glad you're alive, Danny."

  That makes one of us. A choking laugh ripped its way free of my throat. "Thanks, Gabe. Be careful."

  "You got it. Don't do anything stupid." She slammed the phone down. I rested my head against the metal and plasilica of the phone booth, laying the receiver back into its cradle. Hunger twisted under my breastbone. A wave of weakness slid over me.

  Doreen. Eve. Japhrimel. Jace. The litany kept going under my conscious thought, the sharp spurs of guilt sinking in, poisoning all they touched.

  "I need food," I muttered.

  … feed me…

  Can it be you have not resurrected him?

  "Can't now even if I want to, sunshine," I said, with a kind of grim humor. "Look at this. I'm talking to myself in a phone booth. Come on, Danny. It's time to go get some food."

  Another thought stopped me. I keyed in another number from my datband's clear plasilica display. It rang four times.

  "The House of Love," a male voice purred out of the receiver. "What is your wish?"

  "This is Dante Valentine," I said, low and fierce. "I need to speak to Polyamour. Now."