Dante Valentine

A pair of boots, well-worn, placed just so against the dirty floorboards. I saw the edge of his coat, too, liquid darkness stirring a little. He must have been agitated for his wings to move so much.

  I saw something else, too.

  The tip of a familiar lacquered indigo scabbard.

  He eased himself down to sit cross-legged facing the bed, his coat flaring away along the floor. Set my sword down with a precise little click, just out of reach.

  His silence was so absolute the candleflame’s hiss became loud. I saw his knees—a pair of worn jeans ragged at the hems, and the scarred leather of his boots tinged with darkness. He’d been wading through something liquid, up to the ankles.

  I didn’t want to know what.

  I stared at the sweet curve of my sword, lying quiescent and tempting. Hot water boiled out of my eyes, tracked down to touch the dirty, blood-crusted hair at my temple. My vision blurred.

  Japhrimel said nothing.

  It took every remaining erg of courage I possessed to make my right hand unclench. I eased forward, bit by bit, silent as an adder under a rock.

  The mark on my shoulder flared again, Power spilling from it and coalescing, a cloak of black-diamond fire closing around my battered shields. It was the equivalent of a borrowed coat, the weight of so many psyches shunted aside from my shivering mental walls. Along with the soft caress of Power against my skin came something else—my rings beginning to swirl with deep light again.

  Japhrimel’s strength. Given without reserve or hesitation, as simply as he might have poured water into a cup. I let out an involuntary sigh, my arm falling limp to the floor. The relief was overwhelming. No more shouting of messy normal minds trying to get in, trying to drown me. The blessed silence was almost enough to make me weep with relief.

  He still said nothing. His silence was sometimes like speaking, a complex patterned thing. But not now. Now his silence was simply the absence of every sound, a breathless feeling of waiting.

  I realized, as if I’d known it all along, that he’d wait there for as long as it took for me to gather myself. He would let me make the first move.

  He’d wait forever, if that was what it took.

  Two sides of a coin, the betrayal and the waiting. I wished he’d just choose one and get it over with, so I could fight for him or against him.

  I inhaled sharply, catching the last half of the sigh in my teeth. When I spoke it took me by surprise, my voice rusty and disused for all its velvety half-demon roughness.

  “I guess I don’t look so good.” The words trembled.

  Great, Danny. Can you sound any more fucking stupid? The darkness behind my eyelids had knives in it. Every one of them was pointed at me, and quivering with readiness. The black hole in my memory yawned.

  Japhrimel didn’t stir. When he spoke it was soft, even, and soothing, the most careful of his voices. “I care little for how you look, Dante.”

  More sharp relief, tinged with deep unhealthy shame and a dose of panic, made my heart thud frantically inside my chest. “Something happened to me.” I sound about five years old and scared of the dark.

  I’m really going to have to work on my vidpoker face.

  “Indeed.” Still very quiet. “I am still your Fallen, you are still my hedaira. Nothing else is of any importance.” He paused. “It is… enough that you are still alive.”

  I flinched. You don’t get it. Something boiled below my breastbone, something sharp. Claws, sinking into my chest, something wriggling and squirming against violated flesh. “Something happened to me.”

  “Your sword was delivered to me two days ago, by the Prince of Hell’s messenger.” His shielding didn’t quiver, but I knew enough of the faint shadings in his voice to read terrible, rigidly controlled fury in him.

  Japhrimel was a hairsbreadth away from rage. The thought, for once, didn’t frighten me. Instead, it filled me with a sick unsteady glee.

  I wanted him to be angry.

  “I left you,” I whispered. “In Eve’s circle.” Trapped. I told you it was war between us.

  “That is of no account.” He didn’t shift his weight, but I got the idea he would have waved the idea away with one golden hand. Just gone, poof, like so much smoke.

  “You’re mad at me.” I sound like a stupid girl on a holovid soap. I opened my eyes, stared at the light of sanity and the beautiful curve of my sword, its scabbard a mellow indigo glow. “I left you there.”

  “I did not expect you to release me. In fact, I demanded that you do so in order to make you more valuable in the escaped Androgyne’s eyes, so she would keep you alive as a bargaining chip and not slaughter you to revenge herself on me.” Japhrimel sighed, a slight colorless sound. “I expected to collect you soon enough. I broke free of the Androgyne’s trap and searched for you, but you had disappeared. I found no trace of you in the city but your perfume, and the knowledge that a door had recently been opened into Hell. Then I knew Lucifer had taken you, and the game had changed.”

  “Oh.” I began to feel slightly ridiculous, hiding under the bed. He sounded so calm, so rational. I didn’t feel ridiculous enough to risk leaving this safety, no matter how flimsy it was. “I don’t remember.” I’m beginning to get a bad feeling about what I don’t remember. I felt so heavy, every particle of flesh weighed down by gravity. Had it always been this hard, this tiring to draw breath?

  “I suspect that is a mercy of short duration. Events are afoot, hedaira. I think it best we do not linger here.” He didn’t shift his weight.

  “What’s going on?” I didn’t think for a minute he’d tell me anything. Keeping things from me seemed to be a real hobby with him. I wondered if he got any satisfaction from it.

  Then I had to swallow that thought, because he opened his mouth again.

  “I have not only declared war on Vardimal’s Androgyne, but on the Prince of Hell himself. I intend to kill my Maker, hedaira, and to do so I will need your help.”

  My help? Killing Lucifer? I shut my mouth, opened it to speak, and shut it again. I felt like a fish tossed onto shore, and probably looked just as ridiculous. If anyone could see me under the bed, that is.

  Is that who I have to kill to get myself back?

  Somehow the idea didn’t seem laughable at all.

  “Do you hear me, Dante?” The fury was back, circling just under the surface. I had sometimes thought I knew him, the demon who had Fallen and bound himself to me. This rage was something new, and the only thing scarier than its icy crackle was how good he was at keeping it tightly reined and controlled. “I have not only Fallen but rebelled. Yet I will not yoke myself to Vardimal’s Androgyne in the Prince’s place. I shall make you a bargain, my curious one. If you wish me to lay aside my claim on the rebel Androgyne, I ask that you help me defeat my Prince.”

  My heart squeezed itself down to a concrete lump in my chest. Blackness rose from the hole in the floor of my mind, threatening to choke me or tip me into howling insanity. I struggled, my rings popping and snarling with sparks—no spells in them, but pure Power fluxing and trembling through metal and stones. Moonstone, amber, bloodstone, and silver, each ring bought and charged and worn continuously. The rings had seen me through countless bounties, never leaving my skin even while Japhrimel murmured in my ear in a Nuevo Rio bedroom, the taste of his blood in my mouth and the feel of his body imprinted on mine, my bones crackling as he changed me into something else. Something more than human, or less, depending on how you looked at it.

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Is it not enough that I will?” Tension crackled below the surface of his familiar voice. I should have been terrified.

  What’s enough, Japh? My right hand crept out. My wrist looked fragile, too thin; my fingers slid out into the flickering candlelight along the dirty floor. My sword was a little too far away, so I edged forward, moving my heavy recalcitrant body like a sled on reactive-greased runners. My hip bumped the cot above me, my head barked itself on a metal support.

  Th
e lacquer of the reinforced scabbard was cool and slick under my fingers. My left hand slid out from under the bed too, and I groped empty air for a terrifying moment, thinking maybe he’d changed his mind or I was hallucinating.

  Japhrimel’s fingers threaded through mine. I found myself dragged out of my sheet and from under the cot like a stuffed toy, almost limp. He flowed upright, carrying me with him and ignoring my sudden panicked flinch, every inch of my body shivering as terror rose with a blinding snap like the sound of a hammer on a projectile gun.

  Air flirted and swirled unsteadily as he pulled me against him, his coat separating in front as his wings spread, wrapping around me and pulling me into the shelter of his body. The musk-cinnamon smell boiling from his skin closed around me, a heavy drenching scent, and my knees buckled.

  Damn him. He still smelled like home. Like safety. Except something trembling under the surface of my skin told me safety was just a word. I doubted I would ever feel safe again.

  He dropped his face to my tangled, filthy, blood-caked hair and inhaled, shuddering, his bare chest feverishly warm with the heat of one of Hell’s children. And I surprised myself again by starting to scream—but the screams were muffled by wrenching sobs as I pressed my face into the exposed hollow between his collarbone and his shoulder, his arms and wings around me and the only haven I had left safely reached at last.

  That’s the problem with being a tough girl. The crying fits never get to last long enough.

  The bathroom door yawned like an open mouth. I stared at it like a rabbit stares at a snake. I’d wrapped the sheet around myself again, clutched my sword’s slim hard length, and perched guiltily in the one chair. Japhrimel settled himself on the edge of the cot, his eyes burning green and half-shuttered.

  I couldn’t look at his eyes. I glared at the open door, daring it to come get me, if it wanted me.

  Outside the room, I heard a muttered question. Lucas’s answer reassured me.

  Since when did I find Lucas Villalobos reassuring? The world had indeed gone mad.

  Tall, saturnine, gold-skinned demon, sitting motionless on the edge of the rucked bed. Japhrimel’s coat fell away from his knees, clasped his throat with a high Chinese collar, and trembled just a little under the gold of the candle’s uncertain light. His face was familiar, winged eyebrows and sharp nose, the architecture of his cheekbones unfamiliar to anyone used to human faces, his lips thinned and held in a straight line, betraying nothing. His hair had grown out, a fall of darkness softening the harsh lines of his face. The length was new—he’d always kept it trimmed, before.

  I wondered again how I could have ever thought of him as ugly, long ago in the dim time of our first meeting.

  He finally stirred slightly. “We should go, Dante. It isn’t wise to linger.”

  My legs trembled, but I hauled myself to my feet. Pulled the sheet up, tucking it under my arm to keep it wrapped around me, and cast around for my bag. “Fine. Where are we going?”

  “Don’t you want a shower?” He very carefully didn’t look at me, but the edges of his coat ruffled again. Light ran wetly over its surface. “I seem to recall you have a fondness for hot water.”

  I spotted my bag, lying on the floor. It looked very small and very sad, its knotted strap and stained canvas a reminder of… what? Something terrible.

  Panic trembled under my skin until I took a deep breath, just like I would calm a rattling slicboard. One thing at a time, Danny. You’ve got your sword and Japh’s here. Just take it one step at a time.

  “There’s a mirror in there.” The queer flatness of my tone surprised me. For a completely ridiculous objection to the idea of a shower, it stood up pretty well the more I thought about it.

  Japhrimel rose, slow and fluid. He ghosted over the floor, his coat now making no sound as it moved with him.

  I searched for some way to ask the question I needed most answered, and failed miserably. “Lucas said you were looking for me.”

  He shrugged as he pushed the bathroom door open and flicked the switch inside. Electric light stung my eyes, flooding a slice of none-too-clean tile. “I seem to spend a distressing amount of time doing so.”

  I opened my mouth, but a wall-shattering sound smashed through whatever I would have said. Japhrimel stepped out of the bathroom, his fingers flicking. He stopped, his coat rippling and settling and his eyes not quite meeting mine. “There is no mirror.” The words turned sharp and curt. “Be quick, and careful of glass on the floor.” His stride lengthened, and my Fallen brushed past me on his way to the door.

  My pulse slowed down a bit. I caught my breath, my knuckles white around the scabbard. Lacquered wood groaned as my fingers flexed, battle between my will and my unruly body joined again.

  Japhrimel halted, between me and the door. His head dropped, and if I hadn’t been shaking so hard myself I might have sworn he was trembling. His hair whispered as it brushed his shoulders, strings of darkness. “I would counsel you also to be careful of me,” he said, softly. “I do not think I am quite… safe.”

  You know, of all the things you could have said, that’s one of the least comforting. My mouth had turned dry and glassy, a tide of terror rising up against my breastbone. “Are you saying you’ll hurt me?” Because, you know, I wouldn’t put it past you. Even if I am really glad to see you.

  Go figure. Ten minutes with him and I was already feeling more like myself. Except I felt so goddamn heavy, my body weighed down with lead.

  And I had no real clue who “myself” really was anymore. Details, details.

  His shoulders hunched as if I’d screamed at him. “I would not,” he said, clearly and softly, “hurt you. But I am not quite in control of my temper. You could cause an injury to someone else, by way of me.”

  Great. That’s really reassuring. The familiar bite of irritation under my breastbone spurred and soothed at the same time. “Oh.” My fingers relaxed, a millimeter at a time. “Japh?”

  He said nothing, and he didn’t move. The shaking in him communicated itself to the air.

  “Thank you.” I’m going to have to rethink any plan that includes cutting loose of you.

  My Fallen’s black-clad shoulders dropped. The sense of breathless fury in the air waned, swirling uneasily, ruffling the candleflame and touching the creaking walls.

  “I told you I would always come for you.” As calmly as he might have told me what was for lunch. “Be quick, Dante.”

  I hitched the sheet up on my chest and edged for the bathroom. There was nothing to be scared of in there, now.

  CHAPTER 4

  We were still in North New York Jersey, deep in the festering wasteland of the Core. Japhrimel brought me clothes—a Trade Bargains microfiber shirt, a pair of jeans too new to be comfortable, and a pair of boots in my size that would need hard use before they were anything close to broken-in. With Fudoshin’s comforting weight in my left hand, I almost felt like myself again.

  I came out of the bathroom rubbing at my hair with a towel that had seen much better days. Once I scrubbed the crusted blood and filth away, I felt scraped-raw and naked, but at least I’d stopped bleeding. The city dozed outside my borrowed mental walls, a pressure I didn’t have to directly feel to be wary of.

  If a psion’s shields broke, the mind inside those shields could fuse together in meltdown, just like any delicate instrument after a power surge. I was lucky my brain hadn’t been turned to oatmeal.

  Lucky. Yeah. I was lucky all over, lately.

  My heart slammed into my throat.

  Japhrimel stood by the door, his eyes half-closed and burning green. “How do you feel?”

  I took stock. I felt like I’d eaten too much and now had to lie in the sun to digest, like a lizard. A slow heavy cramp wended its way through my belly, and I sighed, testing my arms and legs. I could still make a fist, and my toes wiggled when I told them to. “Fine.” I don’t feel quite like myself, but after the week I’ve had, I don’t blame me. A half-hysterical sound caught
me off-guard, and I clapped my right hand over my mouth to trap it.

  Stop it. I struggled for control, peeled my hand away from my mouth. I locked my fingers around the hilt instead. A simple motion clicked the blade free and it leapt up, three inches of steel shining, oiled and perfect. My voice turned into something else, cut off savagely midstream.

  Blue fire tingled in the steel. Fudoshin hummed, ready for blood to be spilt. “Just fine,” I repeated, my eyes locked to the blue shine. “Where are we going?”

  “We must leave here.” Did he sound uneasy? “There is much to be done.”

  Does it involve killing someone? If it does, I’m all for it. I slid the blade back home with an effort. Not now. Soon. “What’s first?”

  “First we must have a small discussion.” He had gone utterly still. “There are some things we must say to each other, and they are not comfortable.”

  Great. Why don’t we just get a sedayeen arbitration specialist? I hear they’re cheap this year. “Like what?” He’s going to ask me why I left him trapped in that circle and let Eve get away. He’s going to ask me where I was, what happened to me.

  Japhrimel paused. Electric light slid lovingly over the planes of his face, touched the wet blackness of his coat. The edges ruffled, his wings responding to agitation. When he spoke, it was the gentlest of his voices, and he held himself very still. “You were taken to Hell.” The question ran under the surface of the words.

  I closed my eyes.

  How much did Japhrimel know or guess? “It hurt,” I heard myself say, in the flat odd voice that only showed up when I was talking about the past. That was a relief—it was over and done, now. The worst had happened.

  I winced as soon as I thought it. Thinking the worst has happened is a sure way to invite Fate to serve up another heaping helping of gruesome.

  “Did you take anything from the Prince? Accept any gift, eat anything? Even a single mouthful of water, a single bite of food?” Gentle, but tense, the words straining from a dry throat.

  Tierce Japhrimel sounded worried.