Anubis et’her ka. Se ta’uk’fhet sa te vapu kuraph. Anubis et’her ka. Anubis, Lord of the Dead, Faithful Companion, protect me, for I am Your child. Protect me, Anubis, weigh my heart upon the scales, watch over me, Lord, for I am Your child. Do not let evil distress me, but turn Your fierceness upon my enemies—
Light bloomed, a faint blue glow. I hitched in a shuddering breath. My eyes popped open.
My rings were dead and dark. The glow came from my katana, lying on the other side of the stone cube with my bag and my coat, thrown in a heap. My plasgun was gone; so was the katana’s scabbard. Oh, thank you, I thought. Thank you, Lord. Thank you.
A faint heat bloomed inside my chest. My shoulder ached fiercely, as if a hot poker was being drilled into the flesh. What had happened to Japhrimel?
And why leave me my sword? I was deadly with edged metal.
Then again, Santino had faced me down with a sword before and won; he’d taken the plasgun, which was the only thing faster than a demon. Santino might not fear me even if I had my other weapons.
Let’s hope that’s his first mistake.
I was trapped in a featureless stone cell with a drain in one corner. A faint sour smell came up from the drain. I wriggled across the floor, not trusting my legs yet.
The chain fetched me up short. I wriggled around, stretching, but the katana was still a good six inches away and I couldn’t twist any other part of my body near enough due to the narrowness of the cell. I finally settled on my stomach, staring at the katana’s hilt.
I was drained. I had not even an erg of Power left. Taking a plasgun bolt will do that, scramble and drain your Power meridians. I’d either have to wait for a recharge, or…
I stretched out my left hand. My shoulder burned. The faint blue glow helped immensely, even though I could see no way out of the cube. Don’t worry, I told myself, if there’s a way in, there’s a way out.
I lay on my back, my left hand out and reaching, stilled myself. Anubis, I prayed, You have shown me Your favor. Give me my weapon, please. Don’t let me die chained like an animal. Please, my Lord, help me, for I have served You faithfully—
I strained, every muscle singing in agony, my heart speeding up, my breathing rising. The blue glow stuttered. I inhaled, waiting for the space inside me where the god lived to open.
—blue crystal pillars, a flash of light, the god’s face, turning away from me. My emerald, flashing, a song of creaking agony.
My katana’s hilt slammed into my palm. I gasped, shocked heart and lungs struggling to function—the body needed Power to survive; to drain myself so completely was dangerous, my heart and lungs could stop and tip me into Death’s embrace.
When I regained consciousness, I had my katana in hand. The Power vibrating in the blade trickled into me. It helped.
In the glow from my blade, I examined the cuff around my wrist. It took a moment to snag the blade on the strap of my bag, and then once I had my bag I dug in to find my lockpicks. They were there—I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving while I worked on the ancient lock. It took a while, and one fit of whispered cursing at my numb fingers, but I finally tickled the lock open.
Wearing my coat helped with the chill. I settled my bag under the coat, against my hip, and held my katana.
There, I thought, that’s definitely better.
I took a few moments to lean against the wall and breathe. The stone cube was windowless, doorless, with nothing but the drain in one corner. There was no Power in the walls that I could sense, but when I closed my eyes and felt around me I discovered two things—that I was still in Nuevo Rio, because the Power here tasted like ashes and tamales and blood, and that there was a dead spot on one wall, where the stone didn’t resonate like stone should.
First things first. I relieved myself into the drain, wishing I’d packed some toilet paper in the bag. Really, I scolded myself, you should have known that you’d end up in a stone dungeon with no facilities. That’s how these things always end up, isn’t it? Who kidnapped me? If it’s Santino, why am I not dead? And why in the name of the gods did he leave me my sword?
Then I zipped myself up and walked over to the dead spot. The ceiling gave me only about an inch of clearance; if I’d been any taller I would have had to hunch.
I had enough Power now to reach out and tap into the city’s well again, thankful I’d had a chance to acclimate. Being locked in this cell with backlash would not have been good.
With the tapline secure and my throbbing headache easing as the Power soaked back into me, I touched the dead spot on the wall. It appeared to be stone to my fingers.
I stared at the stone, and my left shoulder gave a crunching flare of pain. I transferred my katana to my left hand, blade-down so the glow from the steel would give me light, and reached up with my right, sliding my hand under my shirt. The ridged loops of scar pulsed under my fingers. Heat flooded me.
I saw, as if through a sheet of rippling glass, the city underneath me. Fire bloomed in several different places, and my right hand was up, clinging to something rough. Rain lashed down, unable to quench the fires, and there was an incredible noise. Then the world rushed up to meet me, boots thudding into pavement, and someone’s soft throat gave under my iron fingers.
“If she is harmed,” I heard Japhrimel growl, “I will kill all in my path, I promise you this.”
I woke up lying curled on the stone floor, my katana’s hilt pressed to my forehead. I would have a nice goose-egg on my temple from hitting the floor. The tapline resounded as if plucked like a guitar string. “I gotta stop passing out,” I moaned, tasting blood. I’d bitten the inside of my cheek. “I’ll never get out of here.”
The tingle of Power told me I’d been down for about half an hour. That doesn’t tell me anything, I thought, who knows how long I’ve really been down here? Hunger twisted my stomach.
I settled down cross-legged in front of the dead spot, staring at it. The lack of Power here told me something was here, and chances were it was an entrance.
I started to breathe, deep circular breaths. Opened the tapline as far as my aching head would allow, soaking up the Power of the city like a sponge. Three-quarters of the influx went into my rings; they started to sparkle against my fingers. The other quarter I used to start fashioning a glyph of the Nine Canons—Gehraisz, one of the Greater Glyphs of Opening.
If it didn’t blast the door off its fucking hinges, at least it might blow away some of the shell of illusion over the door and give me something to work with. I waited, building the glyph carefully, the faint glow from my katana fading to a dim foxfire glow.
It took a long time for my rings to come back to life, meaning that my Power meridians were settling back into normal. Then all the available Power went into the glyph. It started to pulse, folding up in the air and glowing a fierce silvery-white. Looped and spun, three-dimensional, and I drew it back. Like an arrow, like a cobra coiling itself to strike.
I waited, humming the low note the glyph was keyed to, at the very bottom of my range. I juggled the glyph, forcing an overflow line down into the floor of the cell. If the glyph rebounded or the door was trapped, I didn’t want the backlash. Let the stone take it.
There was an endless moment of suspension, everything paused, the world stopped like a holovid still, and then the glyph released, hurling itself toward the dead spot in the wall.
A brilliant flash of light seared my eyes, and my left shoulder sent a bolt of hot pain through me. When I finished shaking my head to clear it, I saw it had worked.
An ironbound door with a handle and a keyhole stood in front of me. I let out a long satisfied breath.
“Okay,” I whispered, hauling myself to my feet. My left leg had gone to sleep, and I shifted back and forth, gasping as the pins and needles bit my flesh. “Looks like I’m back in the game.”
CHAPTER 36
What felt like an hour but was probably only fifteen minutes later, I pushed the door cautiously open, my katana held re
ady. Stairs hacked out of stone rose up in front of me, and I sighed. Of course not. It couldn’t be easy, could it? I climbed cautiously, my shaking legs protesting, my back on fire, my shoulders tense as bridge cables and my glutes singing a song of agony.
I reached the top of 174 stairs and found another door. This one was more resistant to my lockpicking skills, and I was beginning to gasp with panic, imagining being trapped underground, when it finally yielded. It creaked open, slowly, and revealed the very last thing I expected.
A large high-ceilinged room done in white. White marble floor, a large white bed with mosquito netting draped over it, a fireplace made of the same white marble. A white leather chair crouched in front of the empty fireplace, and a white rug lay on the floor at the bed’s foot. I had to look twice before I recognized it as a polar bear’s pelt. My gorge rose. I pushed it back down.
The tall French doors across the room were open, and the filmy white curtains fluttered on a sultry breeze. I heard the sound of falling rain, smelled oranges.
Out. Get out. Get out of here.
I made it halfway to the windows before he spoke.
“Impressive, Ms. Valentine. Lucifer’s faith in you is well-placed, I expected another six hours before you came through that door. I hope your temper has calmed.”
His voice was chill, high-pitched, and soaked with murderous Power. And then I smelled it—ice and blood, blind white maggots churning in a corpse, the smell that had soaked my nightmares for five long years.
I turned, my sword held ready. Blue fire ran along the blade, dripped on the floor. Gooseflesh roared over my body.
Get down, Doreen. Get down—
Game over.
He stood by the fireplace, one long hand on the back of the chair, the black teardrops over his eyes swallowing the pale marble light. He wore a white linen suit, cut loose and tropical on his thin demon’s frame. His ears poked up through a frayed mat of dark hair, coming to sharp points. My hand shook, but the katana stayed steady. My spare knife slid out from its hidden sheath in my coat, reversed itself along my forearm.
“Santino,” I whispered.
“The very same,” he answered, bowing slightly. “And you, my beauty, are Danny Valentine. I knew I’d meet you again.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I whispered.
“Certainly you want to,” he replied. “But I would like to talk to you first.”
That was just strange enough to make me blink. He’s a demon, he’s tricky, be careful.
“Who are you?” I blurted. “Are you Sargon Corvin, or Santino Vardimal?”
He nodded. “Both. And more. Come with me, Dante. Let me show you what Lucifer doesn’t want you to see.”
“I don’t trust you,” I snapped. My rings sparked. Why did he leave my sword and my gear in there with me, if he wanted to kill me? It didn’t make sense.
But I knew how he liked to play with his prey.
“I didn’t think you would. However, I have not killed you. If I wanted to, I would have while you lay unconscious in the street and saved myself all this trouble. Surely you can afford to listen before you attempt my murder?” He shrugged, a demon’s shrug.
I wish Japhrimel were here, I thought, and hastily shoved the thought away.
“You’re being used, human,” he said softly. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Without waiting for my answer, he turned his back on me and paced across the room.
Don’t follow him, Danny. Take the window, however big the drop is from there you can take it, get out, get out, get AWAY—
I found myself following, advancing, keeping my sword ready. If he tried anything, I’d kill him or die trying. Why did he leave me my blade?
The house was massive, mostly floored in white marble, done hacienda style. It would have been beautiful if I hadn’t been so terrified. He led me down stairs and through rooms furnished with pieces worth more than I made in a year—apparently Vardimal had done very well for himself.
Just like Jace.
He didn’t seem to notice I was following him, but as we walked down a long hall with columns on one side and paintings I didn’t look at on the other, he began to talk.
“Lucifer wants me destroyed because I outwitted him. He never could stand that. Yet he is himself the Prince of Lies. He may know that I’ve managed to do it, I’ve succeeded where so many others have failed.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I said numbly.
He led me into another hall, this one sloping downward. “You’re right. I should tell you from the beginning.” A pair of doors in front of him; he twisted the knobs and flung them open. “A long time ago, when Lucifer had finished twisting the genes of humans to fit his plans, the sons of his kingdom looked upon the daughters of Men, and found them fair. They came to earth and lay with them, and in those days giants roamed the earth.”
I’d heard this story before. Another hall spun under my feet. Where are all his guards and everything? I wondered. And Lucas told me Jace is a Corvin’s youngest son.
“Are you telling me you’ve bred with human women?” I said, my boots whispering over the slick marble. I was beginning to feel sick and dizzy from the backlash of Power—and terror. I was following Santino through his own lair. Close enough to kill him. I was close enough to kill the thing that had killed Doreen.
Why hadn’t I attacked him?
Something else is going on here, I thought. The premonition buzzed under my skin, the vision Japhrimel had interrupted. Would it have shown me this if he hadn’t short-circuited it?
“Of course not. Yet you’re far more intelligent than you’re given credit for. Human women are some of the most pleasant ways to pass the time. Why do you think Lucifer took an interest in your species? But no, I have not fathered a child. Not in the way you think. “
He turned down another hall, this one lit by high-end fluorescents, most of them turned off so only a faint glow showed me the marble floor and tech-locked doors, each with a handprint lock. “Have you wondered why Lucifer granted me an immunity, Dante? Because I am a scientist first and a demon second. Long ago, I did the grunt work for Lucifer’s remodeling of your species. Before demons could play with humans, humans had to be… well, helped along a little.”
My gorge rose again. He talked about playing with humans as if it were slightly shameful, slightly loathsome, the way a Ludder would talk about going to a sexwitch House. Santino stopped in front of a blank, anonymous door, laid his hand on the printlock. Green light glowed, and the door shushed aside. “Come inside.”
I followed him, the chill of climate control closing over my skin. It was a lab—fluorescent light flickered, computer screens glowed, and the temperature was about sixty-five degrees, shocking after the heat outside. Along one wall was something I’d seen before at the Hegemony psi clinics—a DNA map, twisting on a plasma screen, numbers and code running in the lower left corner. One whole wall was taken up with liquid-nitrogen-cooled racks of sample canisters behind glass, each neatly labeled. I had the sick feeling I would recognize the names on some of those labels. Each canister was a life, probably holding an internal organ, or a vial of blood—and a slice of human femur, with its rich big core of marrow. Just the thing for genetic research.
So many, I thought, the racks and rows of canisters gleaming softly under the bright pitiless light. So many deaths.
Santino turned to face me again, and I lifted my sword. Blue light ran over the blade. He looked thoughtful, the black teardrops over his eyes holes of darkness. “I’m sterile, Dante,” he said. “I couldn’t breed with a human woman even if I wanted to. To breed, a demon has to be one of the Greater Flight of Hell—and he must also become one of the Fallen. I can’t do that. So I escaped Hell and came here, in search of something very special.”
My throat was dry. “You weren’t taking trophies,” I whispered. “You were taking samples.”
He beamed at me, razor teeth gleaming, his high-pointed ears wriggling slig
htly. “Correct!” he said, like a magisterial professor talking to a gifted but sometimes-terribly-slow student. “Samples. I felt sure that the key to the puzzle lay in psionics. Humanity exhibits some rather bizarre talents as a result of demon tinkering; if I could find a certain strain of genetic code I could reach my objective. I adopted several psionics and sponsored research in the Hegemony, but they move too damnably slow, even for humans. I decided to do the work myself, and for that I needed other samples. I was running out of time. I knew that the more time passed, the greater the chance Lucifer might decide to create another demon, and find the Egg missing.” His fingers stroked the glass over the sample canisters, his claws making a slight skree against the smooth surface.
“What objective? And what is this Egg thing?” Kill him, my conscience screamed. Revenge for Doreen, don’t listen to him, KILL him!
But if I was being used, I wanted to find out why. Lucifer had told me none of this. Japhrimel had told me none of this. Which brought up the question of what they really wanted—what deeper game was being played here? I’d wondered why they had let him roam around earth for fifty years.
“Come.” He led me through the lab, out another tech-locked door, and into a hallway that was more like a colonnade, an enclosed garden lying still and steamy under the Nuevo Rio rain, an assault after the climate control of the lab room. He turned to his left and I followed numbly, the door almost clipping my bootheels.
This garden was lit with a kind of orange glow—the light pollution from the city. He stopped at a techless door, this one white and etched with a strange design of an unearthly bird done in gold leaf. Santino turned to face me, and I shuffled back quickly, raising my blade. He laughed, a high-pitched giggle that echoed my nightmares and made my heart turn to dumb ice in my chest.
“We are an old and tired race, Dante, and our children are few and far between. Almost none are born without Lucifer’s intervention, and he is most stingy in giving his help. To breed, a demon must go to the Prince as a supplicant.” The black teardrops over his eyes somehow managed to convey the impression of a wide smile. “You want to kill me, Dante, because I took those precious human lives. But those lives were taken in service to a greater good—breaking the hold the Prince of Darkness has on your world and mine. I’ve finally done it, Dante. I’ve birthed a child that can challenge the Prince himself.” He reached behind his back, twisted the doorknob, and backed into the room. “Come and see.”