Dante Valentine

  Not too long ago I was in a pediatrician’s waiting room. There was a Ukrainian family (at least, I think they were Ukrainian) and a Hispanic family, each chattering away in their respective languages, the kids either playing or sticking close to Mum or Dad or Grandma if they were feeling poorly. I remember a glance of total accord exchanged between two mothers from different continents—a glance I had no trouble deciphering—when one child ran around in a circle making an airplane noise. The slight smile, lifted eyebrows, and rueful love in the expression was universal.

  It is that moment I think of when I say the word “history.” Often we forget, when studying other cultures or even our own, that people are pretty much the same the world over, with the same basic needs for food, shelter, love, and art. The diversity of cultures does not detract from that one glance shared between mothers—a glance no mommy, from the earliest furry human to whatever cyberpunk age comes next, would ever have trouble translating.

  But I digress. Hey, it’s an appendix. I suppose I’m allowed.

  Danny’s world probably says more about me and my own position as a reasonably literate middle-class citizen of America at the turn of the twenty-first century than it does about whatever future will be slouching along toward infinity six hundred years from now. The influences feeding into the world of psions and the Hegemony are many and varied—from a long list of music I’ve listened to, like Rob Dougan, the Cure, the Eagles, and Beethoven; movies like Blade Runner and Brazil, not to mention The Matrix and Life of Brian, and Kill Bill where Danny got her katana; books like From the Ashes of Angels and The Devil in Love, not to mention The Club Dumas and LJ Smith’s The Forbidden Game series; and the history books that are my touchstone and, to some degree, Dante’s as well. Her love of the classics springs from my own unrepentant and unabashed love for the same works, books that survive because they touch something deep in the soul. Livy and Shakespeare and Milton and Dumas and Gibbon and Sophocles and…

  You realize I couldn’t begin to list all the different influences that shaped Danny’s world, any more than I could list every influence that shapes my own. Still, I am conscious of them, an underground river feeding whatever well I dredge up stories from. I am neverendingly grateful that I live in an age and a cultural-social position where I have access to a truly stunning array of human knowledge and the leisure time (however harried by deadlines and children and cats) to sample this great buffet largely at my own discretion. I am even more grateful that I am in a position to do the thing I love and was made for, telling stories.

  Danny and Japhrimel’s story is finished now. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to their world. I don’t know if I told their story the best way possible, but I told it as best as I know how. I enjoyed every goddamn minute of it. (Even revisions.) I am glad I did it.

  Even if Japhrimel pulled a doublecross on me, and even if Dante is a difficult and unlikeable person sometimes, and even if I imagined a world that says more about me and my time than it ever will about the future. I had a Hell of a time.

  I can’t wait to do it again.

  When I do, dear Reader, you’re invited to come along. The story is in the sharing, after all. It would be right bloody useless if it wasn’t.

  The only thing that remains to be said is, thank you for reading. I hope you had a good time.

  And flying skateboards are still cool.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due first to Maddy and Nicholas, my darlings. And to the usual suspects: to Miriam Kriss, who never gives up; to Devi Pillai, who won’t stop until it’s good enough; to the long-suffering Jennifer Flax; to Mel Sterling, the best writing partner ever; to Sixten Zeiss, for love and coffee; to Christa Hickey, with simple love. Last but not least, I thank you, dear Reader. Without you, this would not be.

  extras

  meet the author

  Amanda Hupp

  LILITH SAINTCROW was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington. Find out more about the author at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  DANTE VALENTINE,

  look out for

  NIGHT SHIFT

  Book 1 of the Jill Kismet series

  by Lilith Saintcrow

  Sit. There.”

  A wooden chair in the middle of a flat expanse of hardwood floor, lonely under cold fluorescent light.

  I lowered myself gingerly, curled my fingers over the ends of the armrests, and commended my soul to God.

  Well, maybe not actually commended. Maybe I was just praying really, really hard.

  He circled the chair, every step just heavy enough to make a noise against bare floorboards. My weapons and my coat were piled by the door, and even the single knife I’d kept, safe in its sheath strapped to my thigh, was no insurance. I was locked in a room with a hungry tiger who stepped, stepped, turning just a little each time.

  I didn’t shift my weight.

  Instead, I stared across the room, letting my eyes unfocus. Not enough to wall myself up inside my head—that was a death sentence. A hunter is always alert, Mikhail says. Always. Any inattention is an invitation to Death.

  And Death loves invitations.

  The hellbreed became a shadow each time he passed in front of me, counterclockwise, and I was beginning to wonder if he was going to back out of the bargain or welsh on the deal. Which was, of course, what he wanted me to wonder.

  Careful, Jill. Don’t let him throw you. I swallowed, wished I hadn’t; the briefest pause in his even tread gave me the idea that he’d seen the betraying little movement in my throat.

  I do not like the idea of hellbreed staring at my neck.

  Silver charms tied in my hair clinked as blessed metal reacted to the sludge of hellbreed filling the ether. This one was bland, not beautiful like the other damned. He was unassuming, slim and weak-looking.

  But he scared my teacher. Terrified him, in fact.

  Only an idiot isn’t scared of hellbreed. There’s no shame in it. You’ve got to get over being ashamed of being scared, because it will slow you down. You can’t afford that.

  “So.”

  I almost jumped when his breath caressed my ear. Hot, meaty breath, far too humid to be human. He was breathing on me, and my flesh crawled in concentric waves of revulsion. Gooseflesh rose up hard and pebbled, scales of fear spreading over my skin. “Here’s the deal.” The words pressed obscenely warm against my naked skin.

  Something brushed my hair, delicately, and silver crackled with blue sparks. A hiss touched my ear, the skin suddenly far too damp.

  I wasn’t sweating. It was his breath condensing on me.

  Oh, God. I almost choked on bile. Swallowed it and held still, every muscle in my body screaming at me to move, to get away.

  “I’m going to mark you, my dear. While you carry that mark, you’ll have a gateway embedded in your flesh. Through that conduit, you’re going to draw sorcerous energy, and lots of it. It will make you strong, and fast—stronger and faster than any of your fellow hunters. You’ll have an edge in raw power when it comes to sorcery, even that weak-kneed trash you monkeys flatter yourself by calling magic.”

  The hellbreed paused. Cold air hit my wet ear. A single drop of condensation trickled down the outer shell of cartilage, grew fat, and tickled unbearably as it traced a dead flabby finger down to the hollow where ear meets neck, a tender, vulnerable spot.

  “I’ll also go so far as to help you keep this city free of those who might interfere with the general peace. Peace is good for profit, you know.”

  A soft, rumbling chuckle brushed against my cheek, with its cargo of sponge-rotten breath.

  I kept my fucking mouth shut. “Stay silent until he offers all he’s going to offer, milaya.” Mikhail’s advice, good advice. I was trained, wasn’t I? At least, mostly trained. A hunter in my own right, and this was my chance to become
… what?

  Even better. It was a golden opportunity, and if he thought I should take it, I would. And I wouldn’t screw it up.

  I would not let my teacher down.

  So stay quiet, Jill. Stay calm.

  I kept breathing softly through my mouth; the air reeked of hellbreed and corruption. Tasting that scent was bad, as bad as breathing it through my nose.

  I just couldn’t figure out which was worse.

  Something hard, rasping like a cat’s tongue, flicked forward and touched the hollow behind my ear, pressing past a few stray strands of hair. If I hadn’t been so fucking determined to stay still, muscles locked up tighter than Val’s old cashbox, I might have flinched.

  Then I probably would have died.

  But the touch retreated so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d felt it. Except that little drop of condensation was gone, wasn’t it?

  Shit. I was now sweating too bad to tell.

  The hellbreed laughed again. “Very good, little hunter. The bargain goes thus: you bear my mark and use the power it provides as you see fit. Once a month you’ll come visit, and you’ll spend time with me. That’s all—a little bit of time each month. For superlative use of the power I grant you, you might have to spend a little more time. Say, five or six hours?”

  Now it was negotiation time. I wet my lips with my tongue, wished I hadn’t because I suddenly knew his eyes had fastened on my mouth. “Half an hour. Maximum.”

  Bargaining on streetcorners taught me that much, at least—you never take the john’s first offer, and you never, ever, ever start out with more than half of what you’re willing to give.

  Sometimes you can pick who buys you, and for how much.

  That’s what power really is.

  “You wound me.” The hellbreed didn’t sound wounded. He sounded delighted, his bland tenor probing at my ear. “Three hours. See how generous I am, for you?”

  This is too easy. Be careful. “An hour a month, maximum of two, and your help on my cases. Final offer, hellbreed, or I walk. I didn’t come here to be jacked around.”

  Why had I come here? Because Mikhail said I should.

  I wondered if it was another test I’d failed, or passed. I wondered if I’d just overstepped and was looking at a nasty death. Bargaining with hellbreed is tricky; hunters usually just kill them. But this wasn’t so simple. This was either a really good idea or a really bad way to die.

  A long thunderous moment of quiet, and the room trembled like a soap bubble. Something like masses of gigantic flies on a mound of corpses buzzed, rattling.

  Helletöng. The language of the damned. It lay under the skin of the visible like fat under skin, dimpling the surface tension of what we try to call the real world.

  “Done, little hunter. We have a bargain. If you agree.”

  My throat was like the Sahara, dry and scratchy. A cough caught out in the open turned into a painful, ratcheting laugh. “What do you get out of this, Perry?”

  That scaly, dry, probing thing flicked along my skin again, rasped for the briefest second against the side of my throat, just a fraction of an inch away from where the pulse beat frantically. I sucked at keeping my heartrate down, Mikhail warned and warned me about it—

  “Sometimes we like being on the side of the angels.” The hellbreed’s voice dropped to a whisper that would have been intimate if the rumbling of Hell hadn’t been scraping along underneath. “It makes the ending sweeter. Besides, peace is good for profit. Do we have a deal, little hunter?”

  Christ. Mikhail, I hope you’re right. I didn’t agree to it because of the hellbreed or even because the thought of that much power was tempting.

  I agreed because Mikhail told me I should, even though it was my decision. It wasn’t really a Trader’s bargain if I was doing it for my teacher, was it?

  Was it?

  “We have a deal.” Four little words. They came out naturally, smoothly, without a hitch.

  Hot iron-hard fingers clamped over my right wrist. “Oh, good.” A slight wet smacking sound, like a hungry toddler at the breakfast table, and he wrenched my hand off the arm of the chair, the pale tender underside of my wrist turned up to face cold fluorescent light. My heart jackhammered away, adrenaline soaking copper into the dry roof of my mouth, and I bit back a cry.

  It was too late. Four tiny words, and I’d just signed a contract.

  Now we’d see if Mikhail was right, and I still had my soul.

  CHAPTER 1

  Every city has a pulse. It’s just a matter of knowing where to rest your finger to find it, throbbing away as the sun bleeds out of the sky and night rises to cloak every sin.

  I crouched on the edge of a rooftop, the counterweight of my heavy leather coat hanging behind me. Settled into absolute stillness, waiting. The baking wind off the cooling desert mouthed the edges of my body. The scar on my right wrist was hot and hard under a wide hinged copper bracelet molded to my skin.

  The copper was corroding, blooming green and wearing thin.

  I was going to have to find a different way to cover the scar up soon. Trouble is, I suck at making jewelry, and Galina was out of blessed copper cuffs until her next shipment from Nepal.

  Below me the alley wandered, thick and rank. Here at the edge of the barrio there were plenty of hiding places for the dark things that crawl once dusk falls. The Weres don’t patrol out this far, having plenty to keep them occupied inside their own crazy-quilt of streets and alleys around the Plaza Centro and its spreading tenements. Here on the fringes, between a new hunter’s territory and the streets the Weres kept from boiling over, a few hellbreed thought they could break the rules.

  Not in my town, buckos. If you think Kismet’s a pushover because she’s only been on her own for six months, you’ve got another think coming.

  My right leg cramped, a sudden vicious swipe of pain. I ignored it. My electrolyte balance was all messed up from going for three days without rest, from one deadly night-battle to the next with the fun of exorcisms in between. I wondered if Mikhail had ever felt this exhaustion, this ache so deep even bones felt tired.

  It hurt to think of Mikhail. My hand tightened on the bullwhip’s handle, leather creaking under my fingers. The scar tingled again, a knot of corruption on the inside of my wrist.

  Easy, milaya. No use in making noise, eh? It is soft and quiet that catches mouse. As if he was right next to me, barely mouthing the words, his gray eyes glittering winter-sharp under a shock of white hair. Hunters don’t live to get too old, but Mikhail Ilych Tolstoi had been an exception in so many ways. I could almost see his ghost crouching silent next to me, peering at the alley over the bridge of his patrician nose.

  Of course he wasn’t there. He’d been cremated, just like he wanted. I’d held the torch myself, and the Weres had let me touch it to the wood before singing their own fire into being. A warrior’s spirit rose in smoke, and wherever my teacher was, it wasn’t here.

  Which I found more comforting than you’d think, since if he’d come back I’d have to kill him. Just part of the job.

  My fingers eased. I waited.

  The smell of hellbreed and the brackish contamination of an arkeus lay over this alley. Some nasty things had been sidling out of this section of the city lately, nasty enough to give even a Hell-tainted hunter a run for her money. We have firepower and sorcery, we who police the nightside, but Traders and hellbreed are spooky-quick and capable of taking a hell of a lot of damage.

  Get it? A Hell of a lot of damage? Arf arf.

  Not to mention the scurf with their contagion, the adepts of the Middle Way with their goddamn Chaos, and the Sorrows worshipping the Elder Gods.

  The thought of the Sorrows made rage rise under my breastbone, fresh and wine-dark. I inhaled smoothly, dispelling it. Clear, calm, and cold was the way to go about this.

  Movement below. Quick and scuttling, like a rat skittering from one pile of garbage to the next. I didn’t move, I didn’t blink, I barely even breathed.

  T
he arkeus took shape, rising like a fume from dry-scorched pavement, trash riffling as the wind of its coalescing touched ragged edges and putrid rotting things. Tall, hooded, translucent where moonlight struck it and smoky-solid elsewhere, one of Hell’s roaming corruptors stretched its long clawed arms and slid fully into the world. It drew in a deep satisfied sigh, and I heard something else.

  Footsteps.

  Someone was coming to keep an appointment.

  Isn’t that a coincidence. So am I.

  My heartbeat didn’t quicken; it stayed soft, even, as almost-nonexistent as my breathing. It had taken me a long time to get my pulse mostly under control.

  The next few moments were critical. You can’t jump too soon on something like this. Arkeus aren’t your garden-variety hellbreed. You have to wait until they solidify enough to talk to their victims—otherwise you’ll be fighting empty air with sorcery, and that’s no fun—and you have to know what a Trader is bargaining for before you go barging in to distribute justice or whup-ass. Usually both, liberally.

  The carved chunk of ruby on its silver chain warmed, my tiger’s-eye rosary warming too, the blessing on both items reacting with contamination rising from the arkeus and its lair.

  A man edged down the alley, clutching something to his chest. The arkeus made a thin greedy sound, and my smart left eye—the blue one, the one that can look below the surface of the world—saw a sudden tensing of the strings of contamination following it. It was a hunched, thin figure that would have been taller than me except for the hump on its back; its spectral robes brushing dirt and refuse, taking strength from filth.

  Bingo. The arkeus was now solid enough to hit.

  The man halted. I couldn’t see much beyond the fact that he was obviously human, his aura slightly tainted from his traffic with an escaped denizen of Hell.

  It was official. The man was a Trader, bargaining with Hell. Whatever he was bargaining for, it wasn’t going to do him any good.