“There’s a sparhall near here,” Lucas said over his shoulder. “You could find something there. Lot of bounty action, psions. Rent’s reasonable, ten New Creds an hour.”
Relief smashed into my breastbone. A sparhall full of psions—I could rent a cage or a circle and get some action or just work through a few katas. “Thank the gods. Which way?”
“Due west, gray building on the Prikope. Can’t miss it, got a cage hanging from the side.” Lucas appeared to forget all about me, studying a map of New Prague. He was absorbing this with an incredible amount of equanimity. Than again, he hadn’t batted an eye the time he’d seen Japhrimel with me in Rio. I wondered just what Lucas knew about demons, and how soon I could get him alone to pick his brains.
Vann’s sad brown eyes flicked from me to Japhrimel and back again, for all the world as if asking for direction. Japhrimel’s face didn’t change.
“I will accompany you,” Japhrimel said. “It is not perhaps quite safe for you to go alone.”
As if I was stupid enough to want to wander around alone with demons out looking to kill me. “Sounds good. Let me get my bag.”
Japhrimel nodded. I headed for the room I’d slept in last night.
“My lord?” I heard Vann say quietly. “Does she intend to continue—”
Japhrimel said nothing. I ducked inside the room, grabbed my bag and Jace’s coat, and made it out just in time to see Japhrimel shake his head.
“No,” he said. I got the feeling I’d missed something. “I will not.”
“But—” Vann flinched as Japhrimel’s eyes rested on him. “Forgive me, my lord.”
Japhrimel nodded. “Be at peace, Vann. There is nothing to fear.”
Ogami, his eyes wide, stared from his chair. I caught him examining me as if I was a new and interesting type of bug.
“What’s up?” I asked. Lucas was apparently absorbed in the maps, as if he wasn’t listening. I didn’t believe it for a moment. I think you and I are going to have a little chat, Villalobos.
“Nothing,” Japhrimel’s eyes met mine. “Vann thinks I am too forgiving of your disobedience.”
I looked at the brown man. I could almost feel one of my eyebrows quirk. Time to get everyone on the same page about Danny Valentine. “Really? Let me clear everything up right now, then. I don’t obey. I haven’t since primary school.” For a moment, my skin roughened, remembering Rigger Hall. The phantom scars across my back didn’t burn, and I was grateful for that. Maybe I was starting to heal.
Maybe. “I’m generally reasonable when I’m asked instead of told what to do. But let’s just get this straight: I don’t take orders well. You got a problem with that?”
Vann’s brown eyes widened as if I’d called his mother something unspeakable. “No ma’am,” he said hurriedly, his gaze flickering over to Japhrimel, who merely looked bored and ever so slightly amused, just the smallest fraction of a smile tilting a corner of his lips up. “Not at all.”
“Good. I’m going to go and get my head cleared out. When I come back, we’ll try this again.”
Outside the room, I stalked for the elevator. I had the odd feeling someone wasn’t telling me something, but I chalked it up to being tense and decided to revisit the whole chain of thought once I was cleared out from some hard sparring. I was getting paranoid.
Then again, paranoid would help keep me one step ahead of the game, wouldn’t it? Paranoid meant careful, and careful was good. I jabbed at the button for the elevator.
Japhrimel moved closer. I sensed crackling static in the air as his aura covered mine again briefly, a caress. The mark on my shoulder burned, a soft velvet flame. The elevator dinged and opened. I stepped in, familiar nausea and breathlessness rising. Japhrimel followed me, waiting until the doors closed to curl his hand around my shoulder. “Easy, Dante. There is enough air.”
Says you. I couldn’t spare the breath to say it aloud. There was never enough air in small spaces. It was like some sort of thermodynamic law. Small space plus no windows equals no goddamn air, equals me gasping in panic. What a blow to my tough-girl image.
His hand slid up and around, warm fingers touching my nape. It helped, but not nearly enough. “I am with you.”
I swallowed, closing my eyes. “Yeah. For how long?” My voice sounded gasping, panicky. I didn’t mean to say that, I didn’t. Oh, gods.
“As long as you allow it. And perhaps after.”
I can’t imagine that. I leaned against his fingers. “I wish I could go slicboarding,” I muttered. That would work all my fidgets out.
“Do you truly wish that?” A curious, husky tone; my stomach flipped as the antigrav floated us down. He leaned closer, his solidity comforting.
I shrugged. “It’s okay. I know you don’t like that. I was just talking.” Just shooting my mouth off to keep from screaming, that’s all.
“If it would please you, I would learn to live with it.”
I opened my eyes, saw him leaning close and examining my face, his fingers hard and warm against the back of my neck. His eyes glittered green, casting shadows under his cheekbones and drowning me in emerald light. I had always tried to avoid looking him in the eye before, when he’d been demon instead of Fallen. “Too dangerous,” I said finally, as the elevator fell to a stop. The chime rang, couth and discreet, and I bolted out of the cage and away from his eyes.
Why am I so scared? It’s only Japhrimel.
That was like saying it was only a hungry tiger. Living with him had only brought home how much more than human he was, and now that he had a demon’s Power back he was something else again. I had been pretending that he was only a man. Bad idea when it came to anything nonhuman. But still, I couldn’t think of him as anything other than human. I couldn’t stand to think of living in a world without his quiet, dry humor and steady hands. Go figure—the one guy I had a bad case for, and it was a demon who had already proved he wouldn’t necessarily tell me things I really needed to know. Here I was, still hanging out with him. How was that for crazy?
I wasn’t thinking clearly. I couldn’t throttle back the irritation I felt, steady low-burning irritation that was buried rage trying to work itself free. When you live your life on the edge of adrenaline and steel, you can get really jittery. It’s best to clean it all out with exercise, cleanse the toxins from the body and clear the mind.
I stalked through the hotel lobby, ignoring the normals—guests and employees—scattering out of my path. Japhrimel fell into step behind me, close as my shadow. Just as he had since he’d met me. “You’re running away,” he said in my ear as I gave the door a push and stepped out, blinking, into the pale watery sunlight.
I didn’t dignify the obvious with a response.
Cracked pavement and a crowd of normals greeted me. I glanced up to get my bearings and turned to my left, heading generally westward and lengthening my stride.
New Prague is old, having been settled well before the Merican Era. The buildings are an odd mix of new plasteel and old concrete, as well as some biscuit-colored stone. The shape of the buildings is different from Saint City’s, echoing a time before hovers and plasteel, a time before accredited psions, even though Prague had been a town known for its Magi and Judic Qabalisticon scholars.
It is also a town full of history. Here was where Kochba bar Gilead’s last Judic followers had been killed by laserifle fire in the overture to the Seventy Days War, and where Skinlin had first learned the process of creating golem’ai, the semisentient mud-things that were a dirtwitch’s worst weapon. This town was old, and I wondered if Japhrimel had ever been here before on Lucifer’s business.
I wished I could find a way to ask.
One of the good things about being a Necromance is that even in a Freetown people get out of your way in a hell of a hurry when you come striding down a sidewalk with your sword in your hand and your emerald flashing. Many Necromances only use their blades ceremonially—there’s nothing like good edged steel to deal with a hungry ghost or
to break the spell of going into Death. The ones who, like me, deal with bounties or law enforcement are combat-trained. There’s also a subculture of Mob and freelance psions who are generally very tough customers. Most normals are more frightened of a psion reading their mind than they are of the weaponry we carry, something I’ve never understood.
Jace had been Mob freelance. He’d been very good, but I’d had to hold back sometimes while sparring with him.
Thinking of Jace, as usual, made a lump of frustrated grief and fury rise to my throat. I slowed down a little, Japhrimel’s soundless step reverberating behind me. He was demon, and all but shouted it now that I was hedaira and peculiarly sensitive to him I could feel the harpstrings of Power under the physical world thrumming in response to his very presence. Part of it was sharing a bed with him, my body recognized him.
But that wasn’t it, was it? I frowned, trying to figure out why it felt so different. Was it just because he was a full demon again? I stalked along the sidewalk, one little corner of my mind focused on tagging the people around me, cataloguing their various levels of dangerousness. There weren’t a lot of psions out on the streets—of course, it was during the day. Hard to find a psion in the morning, unless you spot one heading home to bed.
I still hadn’t figured it out by the time we reached the sparhall, a large gray building due west of the hotel with the universal signs of violence-in-training—magscan and deep combat shielding, a twisted sparring cage dangling from a hook bolted into the side of the building high enough that slicboarders could tag it and make it rock, slicboards racked along the front of the building, and the blue psychic haze of adrenaline and controlled bloodlust waving like anemones in the air.
Oh, yes. This was what I wanted—effort, maybe enough to sweat, a few blessed seconds where I wouldn’t have to think, only move. No memory of the past, no thought for the future, only the endless now.
Japhrimel said nothing as I stepped inside, but his golden hand came over my shoulder and held the door open for me. I tapped my swordhilt with my fingernails and met the wide blue eyes of a Ceremonial behind the front desk.
Her tat curved back on itself, she wore a rig with more knives than I’d ever seen before. Propped next to her against the desk was a machete with a plain, functional leather-wrapped hilt. I measured her, she measured me, and her hand leapt for her blade.
“Whoa!” I lifted my hands. “I’m here to hire, not to drag anyone in.” I didn’t blame her one bit, I was popping with almost visible twitchy lasetrigger anger, and I looked like a demon to otherSight. Not to mention the fact that I was being followed by a very tall definitely-demon.
Her hand paused. I felt Japhrimel’s attention behind me, drew myself up and leaned back into him. He was wound just tight enough to go for her if she twitched. I didn’t like to consider how I knew or my instinctive response both to soothe him and to keep him away from her. I wasn’t sure I could stop him if he started, but keeping myself in between them seemed like a really good idea. I’d never seen him in this mood before, not even during the hunt for Santino.
I heard the faint sounds of a sparhall behind soundmuffling—little sounds of effort, the clang of metal, the clicking of staves.
The Ceremonial eyed me, said something in Czechi.
Oh, damn. She doesn’t speak Merican?
Japhrimel replied over my shoulder in the same language. I am really going to have to learn a few new languages, I thought as I caught a flicker of motion.
The roll of New Credit notes landed on her desk as Japhrimel said something else, short and harsh. I felt the air pressure change, and knew without looking back that he now wore a small chilling little smile.
I’d seen that smile before, and I hoped my reaction was less visible than hers. She paled, the inked lines of her tattoo suddenly glaring on her cheek. Her aura flared with fear, the air full of the rough chemical tang of it. The smell was pleasant, not drunkening like a sexwitch’s fear but still enough to make my breath catch.
She reached slowly for a communit on the desk, spoke into it. I heard the ghostly tones float through the rest of the building as she made an announcement in Czechi.
The sounds of metal clashing and heated exclamations trailed off. I restrained the urge to look back at Japhrimel, instead watched the Ceremonial’s right hand as it hovered near the hilt of her machete.
She relaxed a bit, scooping up the roll of notes and riffling through them. She glanced up at Japhrimel, jerked her chin up fractionally at me, and rose. She picked up her machete, carefully keeping her fingers away from the hilt. She said something that sounded vaguely conciliatory, then backed away to put her shoulders against the wall.
I didn’t blame her one bit. I’d had that reaction before too.
“We may go in,” he said behind me.
“Great. You’re making friends all over, aren’t you.”
“It must be my personality,” he replied, deadpan. I actually laughed, surprising myself.
I went past the desk to a pair of heavy airseal doors, pushed at them. They opened easily, the whoosh of airseals and the chill of a sparring room’s climate control washed over my skin, roughening the smooth gold. Hedaira don’t often get goosebumps—but I felt awful close for a moment.
The air swirled uneasily. If there was a place to find psions during the day, this was it.
Several Shamans, each of them holding a staff and eyeing the door uneasily. Three more Ceremonials, males each with edged steel, gathered around a watercooler, sweat gleaming on tats and wide shoulders. A few Skinlin and one Magi were scattered around. At the far end of the room a heavy bag shuddered as a double oddity—a male Necromance, with the trademark spatters of glitter in his aura—worked it low and dirty, throwing an occasional elbow, paying no attention to anything else. I took all this in with a glance.
The building was an old warehouse, the floor fitted with shockgel and full-spectrum lights boiling down from the ceiling. Shafts of sunlight lanced down from windows overhead, and weapons were racked in stasis cabinets along two walls. Dueling-circles were painted into the shockgel flooring, I finished my inspection by testing the magscan and combat shielding. Nice and deep, laid with skill and reinforced punctually.
Lucas was right. This was a good place.
“How long do we have?” I slipped my bag over my head and hung it on a peg near the door next to several similar bags, all glowing to Sight with different defensive charms. I shrugged out of my coat, unbuckling my rig at the same time and hanging both up over my bag. Flicked my fingers, my obsidian ring sparking slightly. A keepcharm blurred in the air, settling over my bag and coat to keep them safe from prying fingers. Not that I worried much—the very last place you’ll usually find a pickpocket is in a sparhall. Few thieves are that suicidal.
“As long as you need.” Japhrimel’s eyes finished their own circuit of the room. The thuds from the Necromance working the heavy bag didn’t diminish. “It seems we will have an audience.”
So he was going to spar with me. I thought I’d have to find a psion partner and hold back. “Fine by me.” I was hard-pressed to keep my tone businesslike, my pulse rose in my throat to choke me. I stepped out onto the shockgel, my right hand curling around the hilt. “You going to use a blade?”
“Not unless it becomes necessary.” Was it just me, or did he sound amused? “I think I am equipped to handle one angry hedaira.”
It was the first time he’d ever goosed me before a sparring match.
It worked.
I turned on my heel, my eyes coming up and meeting his. We stood like that, demon and hedaira, his eyes burning green, a spatter of golden sparks popping from my rings. “I think I’m angry enough to give you a little trouble.” My voice was so harsh it sounded as if Lucifer had tried to strangle me again, and I was grateful I didn’t sound like a vidsex queen right now. “I’m wound a bit tight.”
Just a little tight. Just like Lucifer’s a little scary.
He shrugged, spreading
his hands. “I expected no less.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” It was my last-ditch effort to give him a graceful way to back out. I needed to work off my adrenaline, true—but I could spar with someone else, couldn’t I?
Couldn’t I?
No, I realized, as the Power began to shift between us, straining. We were heading for something, some shape of an event already lying under the surface of the world. There was a collective in-breath from the assembled psions. The steady thudding of the Necromance’s fists against the punching bag paused. A few more good solid hits, then the sound stopped altogether.
Japhrimel nodded. Never one to use words when a single gesture would do.
I half-turned, walking sideways, keeping Japhrimel in my peripheral vision as I headed for the center of the warehouse.
I don’t just want to spar to work my nerves off. I want to make him pay for making me afraid. Gods, I’m not a very nice person. I want to fight him, I have to fight him, to prove I’m not afraid.
The realization shook me. I looked down at my hand wrapped around the swordhilt.
“Dante,” Japhrimel said softly, “you cannot hurt me.”
That did it. We’ll just see about that. I drew the blade free, the slight ringing sound of steel slicing thick air. Heat bled away from my skin, the demon-fed heat of a hedaira, it would make the climate control start to strain after a while.
I saluted him with the shining length of steel. Blue fire began twisting in the metal depths, runic patterns slipping like raindrops down a window, sparkling. I must really be upset for my sword to be reacting this way, usually blessed steel didn’t react to his presence. It hadn’t since he’d Fallen.
But he’s demon again, isn’t he? And so much more powerful than I could ever be. My rings crackled. I shook my head a little, forgetting my hair was a chopped-short mess.
“All right,” I breathed. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it. Come and get me.”
Chapter 23
He paused for just the briefest moment before moving in, deceptively slow, his feet soundless against shockgel. My sword flicked, he slapped it aside. I used the momentum, whirling, shuffling back as he moved in; I darted forward and almost caught him. He actually had to take two steps back, bending slightly to the side to escape the whistling arc of my blade.
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