Working for the Devil dv-1

by Lilith Saintcrow

  More footsteps. I tried to roll onto my side again. No dice. Just more pain. Bubbling on my lips—

  — blood it's blood I'm dying, I'm dying—

  "Oh, my God. Oh, God. He shot her, he shot her—" Jace's voice, high and breathless. "Goddammit, do something!"

  A growled curse in a language I didn't know. But I knew the voice. A gigantic grinding shock against my chest.

  "— leave me," Japhrimel snarled. "You will not leave me to wander the earth alone—breathe, damn you, breathe!"

  Another shock, smashing through my bones. My left shoulder, torn from its socket, liquid fire in my veins. I gasped. Darkness tingled on the edges of my vision. I smelled flowers, and blood, and the musky smell of demon, drenching and absolute.

  "You will not leave me," Japhrimel said. "You will not."

  I tried to tell him to chase Santino, to kill him, to save the little girl—but before I could, Death chewed me with diamond teeth and swallowed me just as I hitched in breath to scream.

  CHAPTER 37

  A voice, reaching into the darkness.

  I stood on the bridge, irresolute, my feet bare against cold stone. I felt the familiar chill creeping up my fingers, up my arms.

  My emerald flashed as the souls fluttered past me, streaming over the bridge. The cocoon of light holding me safely on the bridge dimmed.

  Why was I here? I wasn't pulling a soul back. Was I? I could not remember.

  I looked at the other side of the bridge, the other side of the great Hall. The blue crystal walls rang softly, whispering a song I almost understood. I could feel it pressing in upon me, that great comprehension of Death's secret, the mother language from which all Necromance chants derived. The current of souls pushed at me, the emerald's light weakening, my cocoon of safety shrinking.

  Yet that voice cajoled, pressed, demanded. I saw the god, His form shimmering between a slender Egyptian dog and some other form, a shape of darkness that seemed to run like ink on wet paper even as I looked at it.

  My lips shaped the god's name, but the syllables sounded alien. The crystal walls shuddered, and for a moment I saw stone, a great grim drafty stone hall, with a dour-faced King upon a throne at the far end. The throne was crusted with gems, glittering madly, and at the King's side sat a Queen with a face like springtime. I felt my mouth shaping alien words, desperation beating in my throat. I wanted so badly to understand the secret language, to feel the clasp of the god's arms around me as I laid my head on His chest and let the weight of living slip from me—

  BOOM.

  The sound startled me. It seemed to take forever for me to turn around. Before I could, the sound came again, as if a gong was being beaten, a brazen sound, pulling me back.

  BOOM.

  I struggled as if through syrup. I wanted to stay.

  I wanted to stay dead.

  BOOM.

  One of the souls streaming past me halted, held up a pale hand. Formless as all souls were, a crystal drapery of unique energy, still it seemed I knew it, could put a face on it.

  BOOM.

  "Go back," it said. "Go back."

  BOOM.

  I opened my mouth to protest. Shimmering, the soul brushed my cheek.

  BOOMBOOM.

  "Go back," Doreen said. "Save my daughter. Go back."

  BOOMBOOM. BOOMBOOM.

  Then I understood it was not a gong or a brass bell. It was my heart, and I was called back to the world.

  Dizziness. Cold seeping up my arms. Voices.

  "Call her back!" Eddie, yelling, the bass in his voice rattling my bones.

  My heartbeat thudded in my ears. To be forced back into a body was excruciating, even worse than being shot.

  "Dante!" Japhrimel, howling.

  "Danny! Danny!" Jace screaming at the same time. Cacophony. "Let me go—"

  Scorching pressed against the side of my face. A hand.

  Gabe's chant stopped, the last throbbing syllable shattering inside my head. I gasped a breath like knives. My chest hurt.

  A great scalding wave of Power lashed me. I cried out, weakly, convulsing.

  "Do not leave me," Japhrimel husked. "Do not leave me, Dante."

  "Goddamn you, Eddie," Jace hissed, "let me go or I will kill you."

  Light struck my eyes like a newborn's. I reacted the same way, screaming, raw from the lash of Japhrimel's Power and Gabe's Necromance. Japhrimel closed his arms around me and rested his chin on my head. I gasped, screamed again, muffled against his chest. The scream degenerated into sobbing. I cried because I had been wrong, and because I'd been right. I cried because the comfort of death was denied me. I cried because I had been dragged back into my weary body and shackled again.

  And I cried in relief, clinging to Japhrimel the demon. He was solid and warm and real, and I did not want to let go.

  CHAPTER 38

  I was weak but lucid by the time we got back to Jace's mansion.

  Eddie covered Jace with a plasgun most of the time. Gabe, paper-pale with exhaustion and bloody all over (most of it was mine), piloted the hover. I didn't ask where it had come from—if it was Jace's, it was all right, if it wasn't, I didn't want to know. All three of them—Gabe, Eddie, Jace—looked as if they had been through the grinder. Eddie's left arm hung limply by his side, Jace's face was covered in blood from a scalp wound and most of his shirt was torn off, stripes criss-crossing his torso. Gabe's clothes were tattered, filthy, smelling of smoke and blood and something suspiciously like offal.

  Japhrimel carried me. His face was shuttered, closed, his eyes dark, a smear of my blood on one cheek. Santino had shot me in the chest. Otherwise, his dark coat was pristine. He occasionally stroked my cheek, sometimes glancing at Jace while he did so.

  I didn't want to know. I had the uncomfortable feeling I'd find out soon enough.

  I was too tired to think. My brain reeled drunkenly from one thought to the next, no logic, nothing but shock.

  The city lay under a pall of smoke. It looked as if a full-scale riot had gone down. I saw several craters, but the rain had intensified and was drowning the fires. The aroma of burning filled the air, even inside the hover. When we touched down at Jace's, it was a relief.

  Inside, Gabe herded us all into a sitting room done in light blue and cream. Eddie shoved Jace down on a tasteful couch. I hope he searched this room, I thought, tiredly, Jace could have a weapon stashed in here.

  I shivered. It would be a while before I took another Necromance job. If I went back to the borders of the land of Death too soon I would perhaps be unable to come back, training or no training.

  "Okay," Gabe said, stalking across the room to a walnut highboy and tossing it open to reveal liquor bottles, "I need a motherfucking drink."

  I cleared my throat. "Me, too," I said, the first words out of my mouth since leaving Santino's hideaway. "We need to move quickly," I said, as Japhrimel carried me to the couch facing Jace's. Instead of setting me down, he simply dropped gracefully down himself, still holding me. A little rearranging and I found myself in his lap, cuddled against him like a child.

  A child. I shuddered at the thought. But it was comforting, his heat, and the smell of him.

  Gabe groaned. "Give me a minute, Danny. I just found out one of my friends is a fucking traitor and yanked you out of Death's arms. At least let me have a bourbon in peace."

  I cleared my throat. "Pour me one," I said, husky, my voice almost refusing to obey me. "We've got big-time problems."

  "I would never have guessed," Eddie growled. "You get into more fucking trouble, Valentine. That thing nearly burned down the entire goddamn city looking for you."

  I barely had the courage to look up at Japhrimel's face. "You did that?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "I had to find you," he said, simply.

  I let it go. Instead, I started telling my story with the accompaniment of rain smacking the windows. Gabe knew me well enough not to interrupt, and Eddie watched Jace. Halfway through, Gabe handed me a glass of bourbon and
settled down stiffly in a chair, her split lip and black eyes combining to turn her thoughtful expression into sadness. I downed the liquor, coughing as it burned the back of my throat, then continuing. By the time I got to the child sleeping in the bedroom, Japhrimel's eyes were incandescent. He had turned slowly to stone underneath me.

  When I finished, Gabe drained the rest of her drink. Silence stretched through the room, broken by a low rattle of thunder.

  Then she leapt to her feet and hurled her glass across the room, letting out a scream as sharp as a falcon's cry. The shattering glass didn't make me jump, but the scream came close.

  She half-whirled, and pinned Jace with an accusing glare. "Traitor!" she hissed. "You knew. "

  "I didn't know a goddamn thing—" he began. Eddie growled.

  "Let him talk," I said, quietly, but with a note of finality that cut across the Skinlin's rambling. "And while he does that, Gabe, can you take a look at Eddie's arm?"

  They all stared at me for a moment. Then Gabe moved stiffly to the hedgewitch and touched his shoulder. Some unspoken agreement seemed to pass between them, and Eddie's shoulders sagged just a little. More thunder crawled across the roof of the sky. I was so tired that for once it didn't hurt me to see Gabe press her lips to Eddie's forehead—but I did look away. I looked at Jace, who was paper-pale, the tic of rage flicking in his cheek.

  "Talk fast," I told him. "Before I decide it was a bad idea to do that."

  "I didn't know a goddamn thing," he said, harshly. Gabe started poking at Eddie's arm, and I felt the vibration of her Power start. She was doing a healing. I shuddered—every time she pulled on Power, it was like another astringent stripe against my abraded psyche. She had pulled me back from Death.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were a blood Corvin?" I asked. Are you part demon, Jace? The question trembled on my lips. My skin crawled.

  "I'm not," he said, sagging into the couch back. His hair was matted with blood and water. We were a sorry-looking group—except for Japhrimel, who was untouched except for the swipe of my blood on his cheek. "I was adopted by one of the Four Uncles—Sargon Corvin's adopted sons—because of my psi potential. That's what gets you into the Corvins—psi. I hated every goddamn minute of it, Danny. Once Deke Corvin died I made my escape and I ran as far as I could… and then I met you."

  "You knew Sargon Corvin, the head of your fucking Mob Family, was Santino?" I asked, very clearly.

  "No," he answered. "Gods, no. I swear on my staff, I had no idea. Nobody's seen Sargon for years except the older uncles—they give all the orders, supposedly from him. I thought the great Sargon was a motherfucking myth, Danny. Nobody was allowed into the Inner Complex—where we found you. That's where all the gene research went down, they were heavy into illegal augments and gene splices because it made money—that's what I knew. I didn't know. I thought Sargon was after you for revenge, since my street war with them killed all three of the surviving Uncles. They died hard, too. I've had my hands full while you were up in Saint City moping." He dropped his head back, leaning against the couch, and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "He would know that the only way to hurt me would be to kill you, Danny. That's why I left you, and why I insisted you stay here during this little hunt of yours."

  "Why didn't you tell me you were a Corvin? You should have told me." I tried not to sound hurt and failed miserably. I was just too tired.

  He laughed, dropping his chin to look at me. "Everyone knows how you feel about the Mob, baby. I never would have gotten past your front door."

  "So you lied to me."

  "I love you, Danny," he said, closing his eyes and tipping his head back onto the couch. Dark circles stood out all the way around his eyes. He was unshaven, gaunt. "I didn't have a choice. Not if I wanted to stay clean; if I'd told you who I was, you would have ditched me. I wanted to be clean for you. I was out, until you went on the Morrix job. They threatened to kill you. The only thing I could do was disappear and hope they would leave you alone." He sighed. "Sargon's been too busy to bother with you, I'd guess, while he perfected this fucking process of his and I slipped my chain and started giving him trouble. Until you came back and shoved yourself in his face again. I didn't know, Danny. If I had known, I would have killed him myself. Or tried to, at least. Why don't you ask your pet demon what he knows about all this?"

  "Watch your mouth, human," Japhrimel said quietly, his tone completely cold. "Did the Prince know that Santino has gone so far as to create an Androgyne, he would have brought Hellesvront—Hell-on-Earth—to bear on this Corvin Family, and wiped them from existence. This affects him far more than it affects you."

  Jace snorted and opened his mouth. "Shut up," I said. "Just shut up."

  Japhrimel lifted his free hand and stroked my hair back from my face. "You should rest, Dante."

  "What about the little girl?" I asked, craning my neck to look at his face. "Did you know Santino was trying to breed a new kind of demon?"

  "Not a new kind of demon," Japhrimel said. "An extremely rare kind of demon. Lucifer is the Prime, the first Androgyne from whom all demons are descended—the younger Androgynes are either his vassals or his lovers. It is not a thing spoken of to humans."

  I let out a long sigh. I was so damnably tired, my eyelids felt like lead. "So you knew. What does it mean, Japhrimel? I'm tired, and I died back there. I'm feeling kind of stupid, spell it out for me."

  "The Egg is a sigil of the Prince's reign," Japhrimel said. "It holds the Prince's genetic codex and a portion of his Power—so much Power that he cannot leave Hell without it. Santino can access the genetic codex by virtue of his function as one of Lucifer's genetic scientists, but the Power locked inside the Egg is not his to use. If another Androgyne unlocks the Egg, the balance of power in Hell itself will shift. The Androgyne with the Egg will control Hell—and who will control the Androgyne?"

  "Santino," I breathed. I believed it. I didn't need the canisters or the vision of the little girl with Doreen's face to convince me any more than I already was. Demons played with genetics the way they played with technology—some scientists said our own genes were proof of that. It was one of the greatest scientific mysteries, hotly disputed and contested by Magi and geneticists—could demons theoretically interbreed with humans? Only no demon had done so for thousands of years, if they ever had—if you could believe the old stories about demons marrying human women and giants roaming the earth.

  I thought of the rows and rows of canisters and shuddered. Santino had figured out how to make another Lucifer, a Lucifer he could use for his own ends? A lovely little malleable, controllable genetic copy of Lucifer—using Doreen's genetic material in the process.

  And now he wanted to use mine. Or maybe just my body as an "incubator." You could be the new Madonna, his voice whispered in my memory, soft and chillingly inhuman.

  I shuddered. I had escaped being assigned as a breeder in Rigger Hall; I didn't want to be turned into one now for a crazed demon. And what about other sedayeen or Necromances, possibly kidnapped and forced to incubate more of the filthy little things?

  I should have been angry. Japhrimel had omitted to tell me far more than Jace had, but I only felt a weary gratefulness that the demon was here—a gratefulness I didn't want to examine more closely. Silence stretched through the room. Eddie hissed a curse between his teeth, and Gabe murmured an apology, bandaging his arm.

  "He's playing for control of Hell itself," the demon said quietly. "And if that happens, he will gain control of your world as well."

  "He says it's for freedom," I answered. Exhaustion pulled at my arms and legs, wrapped my brain in cotton wool.

  "Freedom for Vardimal, perhaps." Japhrimel shrugged. The movement made my head loll against his shoulder.

  I closed my eyes. It was so hard to think with exhaustion weighing me down.

  "So what now?" Gabe said.

  "Now I get a couple hours of sleep, and I do what I should have done in the first place."

  "And what
is that?" Japhrimel didn't move, but his arms tightened slightly. If I hadn't been so tired, I might have thought about that.

  Sleep was stalking me a little more gently than Death had. It was the expected reaction; most people fell into a deep sleep after being yanked back from death. It was the psyche's method of self-defense, trying to come to terms with brushing the Infinite. "I'm going to get up, and find my sword, and hunt the motherfucker down. Alone."

  "Not alone," Gabe said. "We'll tie you up if we have to, Danny. Don't start that again."

  I was about to tell her to back the fuck off when I passed out. The last thing I heard was Japhrimel's voice. "If I did not leave her at Death's door, I would not leave her now. I will take her to bed."

  CHAPTER 39

  I slept for twenty-eight hours.

  Plenty of time for Santino to get away.

  When I finally surfaced, it was to find myself tucked naked into a large dark-green bed. The climate control was on, so the room was cool, even though fierce early-morning sunlight stabbed through the windows. I blinked at the light, propping myself up on my elbows.

  My entire body ached, the reverberation of the plasgun bolt and Power backlash. I'd pushed myself far beyond the limits of pain-free Power use. I would be lucky to escape a migraine in the next twenty-four hours.

  My shoulder didn't ache, though. I touched the scarring of Japhrimel's mark and had to steel myself against a wave of painful nausea.

  "I'm here," he said, and turned from the window. I hadn't seen him there, maybe dazzled by the sunlight. Maybe he hadn't wanted to be seen. "Rest, Dante."

  "I can't rest," I said, tasting morning in my mouth. "Santino—"

  "He's being tracked. You will not be helpful if you do not rest." He approached the bed silently, his black coat floating on the sunlight. "Events are moving, Dante. The Prince, now that he knows what Santino was attempting, has placed the full resources of Hellesvront under my control. Every Hell-on-Earth agent is looking for Santino. He will not long escape our attention."