"In the Tank District," Lucas said easily. "Just follow Leander, chica. We'll get you there."
Chapter 13
Anwen Carlyle lived in a rickety, filthy apartment building in the Tank District; and not a nice part of the Tank either. This close to the Bowery, the worst festering sore in the middle of the Tank, the air was full of pain. Bloodlust, desperation, Chillfreaks, pimps, hookers, Mob runners, and other human flotsam congregated there. The Tank is where you go if you're a rich techno-yuppie slumming, or a bounty hunter looking to connect with the shadow side. It's also where you don't go if you want to get through the evening without a fight. It isn't as bad as the Core in Manhattan or the Darkside in Paradisse, but it's bad enough. The urban renewal that had gone through Trivisidiro hadn't visited this part of the Tank, it was likely none ever would. This close to the Rathole where the sk8 tribes congregated, renewal wasn't a priority. Survival was.
The smell inside the sloping tenement was incredible: dirty diapers, piss, desperation, food cooked on little personal plasfires. "What the hell's a Magi doing here?" I asked, quietly enough, as I followed Lucas up the stairs. There was an elevator, but it didn't work. I didn't mind, even through the titanic stink of human despair and dying cells. I'd rather smell stink than be caught in an elevator, unable to breathe as claustrophobe terror crawls down my throat. "She can't make rent?"
Leander, behind me, made a low snickering sound. "Taken in by appearances?" His tone was light, a welcome distraction from the close dank quarters that almost triggered latent claustrophobia. My sword was heavy in my hand, and the cuff was chill against my skin.
I ignored the itching, nagging desire to take the thing off again. "Lucas?"
His bloody sleeve flopped as he climbed the stairs with shambling grace. "Anwen don't like company; chica. But she owes me."
I shivered at the thought of what a Magi might owe Lucas. I wondered if he liked to keep a few debts in reserve, for just such an emergency. My skin chilled at the thought of the price he usually demanded from a psion, anyone with Talent would have to be really desperate to hire him.
Japhrimel had paid him. What would a demon pay the Deathless?
I decided I could live without knowing. "Great. So she owes you." I looked at the intaglio of graffiti rioting over the walls in permaspray. Most of the lights were broken or burned out. The ones that remained gave enough of a glow I could see every crack and splinter, every patched and unpatched hole in the wall, every small bit of trash and scuttling cockroach. Demon eyes need a few photons to work with, not like Nichtvren and their uncanny ability to see in total dark.
The thought of Nichtvren sent another shiver up my back. For some reason they scare me more than demons.
It's an atavistic fear; a human fear of something higher up the food chain. It's also completely unrealistic, a demon will kill you quicker. But I was more scared of suckheads. Go figure.
Let's just get this over with so I can go talk to Abra and start untangling this mess. impatience rose; I pushed it down. I didn't want to be here in the Tank, I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, tracking down a killer.
Gabe's killer, Eddie's killer. I had revenge to get started with. But if I could also find out exactly what Japh was up to, I had to at least try.
What wasn't he telling me, and where the hell was he? I didn't like my protection-the only protection I was certain of-vanishing while the inside of my head turned into a bad holovid show. I was sinking fast, as usual, without any clue what the hell was going on now.
Well, we're here to figure some of it out, aren't we? A Magi who owes Lucas. Let's hope she has something useful to tell me.
We reached the sixth floor, Lucas and Leander both breathing a little more raggedly than usual. My own breath came deep and slow, the mark on my shoulder pulsing softly with Power, I wasn't winded in the least.
"One thing;" Lucas wheezed. He smelled like copper, dried blood, and the dry throat-stinging tang of a stasis cabinet, under a screen of male effort and stale sweat. "Try not to scare her, Valentine."
"I'll do my best." My left hand tightened on my sword. "Why anyone's scared of me when you're around…" Good gods above, I'm actually bantering with Lucas Villalobos. Christer Hell must be frozen over by now.
Amazingly, he gave a whistling, wheezing laugh as he pushed the heavy fire door open. I saw a glimmer down at the end of the hall-shields, powerful subtle shields. "I'm a reasonable man, Valentine. You ain't."
Not reasonable, or not a man? I feel pretty damn reasonable, considering my best friend was just murdered and the man I love won't give me a straight answer when it comes to the Prince of Hell and why I'm suddenly such a high-priced chip in this goddamn game. "I'm reasonable," I muttered darkly. "Considering everything that's going on, I'm pretty damn reasonable." My throat was dry, my voice soft and seductive in the dark despite or maybe because of my damaged trachea.
"Hear, hear." Leander bumped into me, maybe his human eyes couldn't pierce the dark like mine could. He still smelled like sand and the thick langorously-spiced coffee of Cairo Giza under the cloak of dying cells that meant human.
I wondered why the smell sent such a frisson of distaste up my back. I liked him, didn't I? And Lucas's dry stasis-cabinet scent was no better.
"Shut up, deadhead," Lucas snarled. He seemed to have no trouble navigating over the debris in the hall-soymalt bottles, empty takeout cartons, rancid clothing, other shapeless bits of stuff. "I do the talkin' here."
"Leave him alone." My own tone vvas flat and bored. "He knows enough to keep his mouth shut when dealing with an edgy Magi." Although how dangerous a Magi who chooses to live in a dump like this is, I won't venture to guess.
Villalobos didn't dignify that with an answer. We reached the end of the hall, apartment 6A; he knocked once, twisted the knob, and pushed the door wide.
Well, that's interesting. I watched the shimmering layers of Power shunt aside from his aura, magickal energy refusing to touch him. It was something I'd noticed about Lucas, he didn't use Power himself, but it couldn't be used against him either. An impasse, and food for thought… if I could figure out what to think about it.
A breath of kyphii-scented air puffed out, caressed the hall. I followed Lucas, stepping nervously through a cascading sheet of energy that parted to let me through before flushing a deep beautiful rose-spangled gold as whoever inhabited this place felt the Power flux change around me. Female. Magi. Not too young, but not old. I took a deep breath, all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, tasting the air as if I was on a bounty. Leander followed, sweeping the door shut behind him, and we found ourselves in a hardwood-floored entryway, smelling mellowly of beeswax, kyphii, and Power.
Anubis et'her ka, she's powerful, whoever she is. The shields were carefully done, a subtle taint of demon spice threading through them telling me she was an active, demon-dealing Magi.
Like «Shaman», «Magi» is a catch-all term for a wide range of variously-talented psions. A Magi might or might not know what to do with a demon when it pops up, depending on their study-and depending on the demon. Magi have been trafficking with Hell since before the Awakening, but before that great collective human leap forward in psionic and magickal Power, their methods had been spotty and uneven at best. Still, when the Awakening happened, the Magi were the only ones who had an idea of how to train psionic talent, or a framework for making Power behave. Nowadays all psions are Magi-trained in memory Power-handling, and theory of magick, but that doesn't make us all Magi.
I knew how to call up an imp and constrain it in a circle now; I knew how to consecrate tools to be used in closing an etheric portal into Hell and send a Low Flight demon back. I even knew a few more things about demon anatomy than I had before. But demon-dealing Magi are secretive in the extreme, committing information about their successful experiments in breaking the walls between our world and Hell to only one apprentice at a time and writing their shadowjournals-the equivalent of a Skinlin's mastersheets or a Ceremonial's grimoire-in co
des that could take months to break. Even if they work with circles, they don't share many of their private secrets, and I couldn't lay my hands on the great books of magick the accepted circles had access to. Another impasse, this one frustrating in the extreme because I needed to know more about what I was. What Japhrimel had made me.
The inside of the apartment was a surprise. It held no trace of clutter or poverty; the floor was polished hardwood and the walls painted varying shades of rose, pale pink, and white. Lucas led us into a living room decorated with an altar draped in silver cloth and sporting a three-foot-tall statue of Ganej the Magnificent, the elephant god. There was a restrained fainting-couch done in rose velvet and a V'ucelia print on the wall, an original if my eyes didn't fool me, and the windows were cloaked with heavy silken drapes.
Ganej. The Remover of Obstacles. Odd, but an effective choice now that I think about it. What better way to break the barriers between here and Hell than with the help of a god who surmounts barricades? The statue was an antique, creamy marble veined with gold, and thrumming with Power. So this Magi took her god seriously, as seriously as I took mine.
I cautiously decided to reserve judgment.
There was a click from the doorway opposite the one we'd come in through, and my sword left the sheath in a singing blur as I stepped instinctively in front of Leander. After all, I knew I could take more damage.
The Magi, a slim caramel-skinned woman with long dark-brown hair and a pair of wide gray eyes, stared at us. She held a very nice 9 mm Glockstryke projectile gun in her right hand, her stance braced and professional. She was pretty in an unremarkable way that wasn't helped along by the design of her tat, which wasn't flowing or graceful; she'd chosen an angular Varjas design, like a Ceremonial. It didn't do a thing for her face, being too thick-lined and sharp. But her aura flamed with Power; she was strong for a human.
Gods, did I just think that? I'm human too. I am. "Drop the gun, girl. Or I'II make you eat it." My voice stroked the drapes, made the walls groan.
"Fuck me with a hover," she breathed, her gray eyes flicking from Lucas to me, settling on me, and widening. The gun dipped slightly, ended up pointing at the floor. She wore jeans and a pretty blue wide-sleeved, square-necked shirt embroidered with Canon runes around the collar and cuffs. "This is your client, Villalobos?" The high edge of fear colored her voice, and a rill of excitement slid down my back. Her aura jittered slightly, her dread coloring the air like wine.
It wasn't quite as drunkening as Polyamour the sexwitch's fear, but it was still pleasant. Because Carlyle's terror was tinted with the edge of attraction, a promise that filled the air like the smell of anything fragrant and good, and comprehension flowered in those wide-spaced, rainy-gray eyes.
She knew something. A Magi that knew something, and owed Lucas a favor.
My sword slid back into the sheath, clicked home. "That's right." My pulse pounded in my throat. "I'm his latest employer. And I think we have some things to talk about, Magi."
She didn't offer us anything to drink. Instead, she pointed us toward a pile of cushions on one side of the living room, then stood with her back to her altar and her gun trained on Lucas. I didn't blame her, if I'd been human it's what I would have done.
Her eyes kept flickering over to me, no matter how steady the gun was. "So it's true," she said finally, her voice low and pleasant and reeking of terror. Her tat shifted and strained uneasily under the skin of her left cheek.
"What's true?" I didn't sit on a cushion but I did try to keep my aura close and contained, not wanting to scare her more than was absolutely necessary. After all, she'd just let a part-demon, a Necromance, and Lucas in her front door. The Necromance she was probably sure she could handle-Leander was human, just like her. But still.
Lucas gave me a slanting yellow-eyed look, pushing his lank hair back from his forehead. His breathing had evened out, and he was back to looking like every psion's worst nightmare. "Just tell her what you told me, Carlyle."
She licked her lips, examined me. The gun shook just a little, her sleeve trembled, and her aura shivered right on the edge of going hard and crystalline, locking down. Her pulse throbbed under the damp mortal skin of her throat. Was that what I looked like when I met Lucas in Rio? Was that what I looked like to Japhrimel? So fragile, and so scared?
And the even more uncomfortable thought, Do I still look that way to him? Does he smell my fear, and does it taunt him like hers taunts me?
"This cancels the debt?" Her voice shook. There wasn't a psion in the building, but the psychically-dense atmosphere kept her shields from being seen. She was almost perfectly hidden, like a scorpion under a rock. Not many people would brave both the Tank and the filth of the building outside to intrude on her privacy. Even if she did have to live with the psychic noise and stench of so many angry scrabbling people, it was a fair trade-off.
I wondered what type of work she did, and I also wondered how she'd managed to turn this apartment into such a clean, luxurious nest. She was combat-trained, the way she held the gun-the way she moved-toldme as much. It struck me that I was looking at someone very much like the person I had been.
Before Rio. Before Japhrimel.
"Mostly," Lucas rasped. "I did you a big favor, Carlyle."
That made her aura turn sharp and pale. "I paid you," she insisted. "I may not be able to kill you, but I can hurt you plenty."
Irritation and impatience rose under my skin, spiked and deadly. Will you two just get on with it so I can do what I have to do? I took a deep, sharp breath, kept a firm hold on my temper. The vision of Gabe's body retreated just a little.
Just a very little. I wasn't going to be able to see Abra before the next sunset, so I might as well spend my time getting some information on demons and A'nankhimel.
I was hoping like hell she knew something about hedaira too. It would be a regular Putchkin Yule down here in the Bowery if she did.
I was suddenly aware of three pairs of eyes on me. Gray Magi eyes, Lucas's almost-yellow, and Leander's dark worried gaze a weight I could feel even though he was behind me. I must have been radiating, despite trying to keep my aura close and contained. "I don't have time for petty bargaining," I finally said, softly. "So if you two could finish up sometime this week I'd appreciate it. I've got a lot of business to handle."
Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Tell her what you told me, Carlyle. I promise I won't make any sudden moves. Unless you get jumpy again." His smile, stretched over his pallid thin face, was enough to send a faint shiver down even my back.
She cleared her throat. The perfume of her fear made the mark on my shoulder throb, pleasantly. Was it because she was a Magi? I'd damn near drowned in Polyamour's pheromones before; this was a sharper feeling, like synthhash spiked with thyoline.
A stimulant, like Chill.
She cleared her throat. "There's talk going around. There are demons boiling through the Veil to our world. Imps have been sighted in ever-growing numbers, and there've been some… disturbing signs, at the collegia meetings."
Her eyes flicked over me again. "Gods. It's true," she whispered. "It has to be. You're… you were chosen."
My eyebrows threatened to nest in my hairline. Imps coming through, and she's mentioned collegia. I thought they were a myth, secret societies of Magi getting together to work collective magicks across Circle affiliations. Wow. My pulse abruptly slowed to its usual regularity. At last we're getting somewhere. "Chosen for what?" I kept my tone absolutely dead level, reined in. Controlled. Still, the husky honey of my voice turned the air dark. Not like it needed any help-the only light was from the novenas ranked under Ganej, his eyes twinkling merrily in the flickering gloom.
"To be a… human bride. A fleshwife." Her pupils dilated, and the salt tang of her fear filled my mouth. Goddammit, none of the bounties I hunted made me feel like this, psion or normal. What's wrong with me?
"I believe the proper term is hedaira," I corrected, dryly, as if I knew what the hell I was talkin
g about. My emerald spat a single green spark, and she flinched. "Why don't you tell me everything you know about it, and everything you know about what's going on with the imps and these `disturbing signs'? I'm sure Lucas will be very satisfied with that."
She eyed Lucas, eyed me, her cheeks were cheesy-pale under the even caramel. Then, far braver than I would have been in her shoes, she eased the hammer of the gun back down with a small click. "I don't know much. But what I do, I'll tell you. And this cancels the debt, Villalobos." Her sharp chin lifted defiantly. "If anyone, Magi or demon, knew I was talking to you like this, my life wouldn't be worth a bag of Tank trash."
"You got it," Lucas rasped. "I'll even let you talk to her alone." His grin was wide and chilling in its good-natured satisfaction. "Your kitchen still in the same place?"
Her hands were shaking, but she glared at him. I was beginning to like her. "Don't drink all the wine, you greedy bastard. Go. And don't touch anything else. You, too, Necromance." Her lip didn't curl when she said it, but she still sounded disdainful. I wondered why, it wasn't like a psion to be so dismissive of another.
Then again, precious little about this woman was normal even for a Magi.
Lucas shuffled out of the room, deliberately noisy with his worn-down bootheels. Leander touched my shoulder before he left, an awkward gesture that oddly enough didn't irritate me.
Immediately, Carlyle became a lot calmer. She holstered the gun at her hip and took a few steps away from the altar. "When did it happen? The change. You're not Magi, how did you convince the demon to do that? Which demon was it? Can you call him anytime you want, or-"
What the hell? "I came here for answers, not to be interrogated," I said frostily. The smell of kyphii made me think of Gabe, and the sharp well of pain behind my breastbone made water start in my eyes. "Keep it up, and you'll owe Lucas more."
She actually flinched, again. Her hair fell down over her forehead in a soft wave. Then she collected herself. "May I see it?"
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