I found the door I wanted unlocked, hit it with the flats of both hands. It swung inward silently, banging against the wall. Dust flew. This wasn’t a place anyone entered often.
The room was long, a wooden floor glowing with layers of varnish. At the far end, barred by two shafts of sunlight, stood a high antique ebony table, and on this table lay a scarred and corkscrew-twisted dotanuki, its hilt-wrappings scorched.
Jace’s sword. Still reverberating with the final agonized throes of his death.
A blot of darkness hunched on the floor in front of the table. Japhrimel, on one knee, his back turned to me, his coat lying wetly against the floor behind him.
Of all the things I expected, that was probably the last.
He didn’t move. I strode up the center of the room and came to a halt right behind him, my boots sliding on the floor. I dug my heels in—going too fast. It seemed I would never learn how to slow this body down. My rings spat, swirling with color, each stone glittering.
I waited. Japhrimel’s head was down, inky hair falling forward to hide his face. His back was utterly straight. He didn’t speak. Sunlight fell like honey, but the sun was sinking down in the sky. We were going to go find this door into Hell soon.
I finally settled for stepping close and laying my hand on his shoulder. He flinched.
Tierce Japhrimel, Lucifer’s assassin and oldest child, flinched when I touched him.
I didn’t choke with surprise, but it was damn close. “Japhri—”
“I have been here, asking the ghost of a human man for forgiveness.” His voice slashed through mine. “And wondering why he has more of your heart than I do.”
It was the closest thing to jealousy I’d ever heard from him. I closed my mouth with a snap, found my voice. “He never did,” I finally said. “That was the problem.”
Japhrimel laughed. The sound was so bitter it dyed the air blue. “Are you so cruel to those you love?”
“It’s a human habit.” The lump in my throat threatened to strangle me. “I’m sorry.”
Even now, saying I’m sorry didn’t come easily. It tore its way out of my chest with razor glass studded along every edge.
Japhrimel rose to his feet. I still couldn’t see his face. “An apology without a battle. Perhaps there is hope.”
I knew he was using that black humor again, like a blade laid along the forearm to ward off a strike. It still hurt. “If I’m so bloody bad why don’t you go back to Hell?” Great, Danny. Lovely. You’re really on edge, aren’t you? This is really adult. No wonder he treats you like a little kid.
“I would not go back, even if Hell would have me. I seem to prefer your malice.” He turned on his heel, away from me, the hem of his coat brushing my knee. “I will wait for you.”
My voice had turned ragged, but even that couldn’t stop the dripping sweetness along its edges. “Don’t run away from me, dammit.”
He paused. Stood with his back to me still, his shoulders iron-hard. “Running away is your trick.”
You little snot of a demon, why do you have to make this so fucking hard? “You’re an arrogant son of a bitch,” I informed him. The air turned hot and tight, the twisted corkscrewed sword lying on the table ringing softly, its song of shock and death cycling up a notch. Catching the fever in the air, maybe. We were both throwing off enough heat and Power to make the entire room resound like an echo chamber.
“I am what you make of me, hedaira. I will wait for you outside the door.” He strode away, every footfall a clicking crisp sound. Anger like smoke fumed up from his footprints. His coat flapped as if a wind was mouthing it.
“Japhrimel. Japh, wait.”
He didn’t pause.
“Don’t do this. I’m sorry. Please.” My voice cracked, as if Lucifer had just finished strangling me again.
Two more steps. He stopped, just inside the door. His back was straight, rigid with something I didn’t care to name.
I folded my arms defensively, the slim length of my sword in my right hand, a bar of darkness. “I’m frightened, Japh. All right? I woke up, you weren’t here, and you drop this on me. I’m fucking terrified. Cut me a little slack here, and I’ll try to stop being such a bitch. Okay?” I can’t believe it, I just admitted being scared to a demon. Miracles do happen.
I thought he’d continue out the door, but he didn’t. His shoulders relaxed slightly, the hurtful static in the air easing. It took the space of five breaths before he turned back to me. I saw the tide of green drifting through his eyes, sparks above a bonfire. His mouth had softened. We looked at each other, my Fallen and I. I tried to pretend I wasn’t hugging myself for comfort.
“There is no need for fear,” he said finally, quietly.
Yeah, sure. We’re about to go meet the Devil, for the third time in my life. I could have done without ever meeting him at all. He’s probably got something special planned for us, and the Devil’s idea of a little surprise is not my idea of a good time. “You’ve got to be joking.” I sounded like I’d lost all my air. The mark on my shoulder turned to velvet, warm oil sliding along my skin from his attention. “It’s the Devil.” I don’t think he’s likely to be in a good mood, either.
He came back to me, each footfall eerily silent. Stopped an arm’s-length away, looking down to meet my eyes, his hands clasped behind his back. “He is the Prince of Hell,” he corrected, pedantically. “I will let no harm come to you. Only trust me, and all will be well.”
I’ve trusted you for a long time now. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I searched his face, the memorized lines and curves. He had his own harsh beauty, like a balanced throwing-knife or the curve of a katana, something functional and deadly instead of merely aesthetic. Funny, but when I was human I had thought him almost ugly at first, certainly not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. The longer I knew him, the better he looked.
He shrugged. Gods, how I hate demons shrugging at me. “If I told you what I guess, or what I anticipate, it would frighten you needlessly. Until I am certain, I do not wish to cloud the issue with suppositions. Best just to go, and to trust in your Fallen. Have I not earned as much?”
Goddamn it, I hated having to admit he was right. Even I knew that anticipating something from the Prince of Hell was likely to end in a nasty surprise. Japh had never let me down. “I do.” My voice dropped, the soft ruined tone of honey gone granular soothing the last remains of tension away. “Of course I trust you. Don’t you know that?”
I thought he’d be happy about it. Instead, his face turned still and solemn as we looked at each other, the mark on my shoulder pulsing and sending a flood of heat down my skin. “Cut it out.” I could hardly get enough air in to protest. It was as intimate as his fingers in my hair, as intimate as his mouth against my pulse. “Let’s just get this over with.”
A single sharp nod, and Japhrimel offered me his hand. I let him take my right hand, my sword hand; it made me nervous as hell to know that he could very easily keep me from drawing just by tightening his fingers a little.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t. Japhrimel led me out of the room, and the doors closed behind us, silent on their maghinges. But if I have to face down Lucifer, at least I’ve got Japh with me.
It wasn’t as comforting as I’d thought it would be, since Lucifer had killed him once before. Dead, or driven him into dormancy—gods, I didn’t want to try to figure out the difference again. Even with Japh on my side, seeing the Prince of Hell was likely to be hideously unpleasant.
Still, I’d do it. What you can’t run away from, you have to face. Living with the ghosts inside my head had taught me that much, at least.
I just hoped facing this would leave me alive.
CHAPTER 7
The town of Arrieto has dozed in the middle of wheat fields and olives for centuries, drowsing in southern sun. We caught a transport in the town square, a piazza still picturesquely cobbled with worn-down stones. Here in a historical preserve of the Hegemony,
there was no urban sprawl and no great flights of hover formations—but every sunbaked house had a bristling fiberoptic array and invisible security nets humming. Slicboards were racked outside cafes, and a Necromance was still local news.
By the time we lifted off, me in the window seat and Japhrimel in the aisle, I had already had enough of stares and whispers hidden behind hands. I’ve walked the streets of Saint City, one of the biggest metropolises in the world, and had my armor hold up. But this little town’s obvious fear got to me. Normals always think psions want to read their deep dark secrets, or use mental pressure to force them to do something embarrassing. Not one normal seems to understand that to a psion, touching a normal’s mind is like taking a bath in a festering sewer. Messy thoughts, messy emotions, messy fantasies all stirred together, randomly emitting and decaying; a normal mind was the last place a psion wanted to find herself in. The psions that did take advantage of normals very quickly found themselves subject to bounty hunters and dragged in to answer felony charges.
I should know. I’ve dragged more than a few in.
Still, all the holovids are full of evil psions and occasional psion antiheros, taking down the bad guys while crippled by their own talents. The fact that psions don’t work in the holovid biz only makes it worse.
None of the normals could tell what Japhrimel was, but I had a tat on my cheek, the emerald flashing, and my sword. Only an accredited psion can carry edged metal in transports and guns on city streets. Only an accredited psion or the police, that is. So I stuck out, and Japhrimel blended in.
Sort of. It’s kind of hard to hide a tall, golden-skinned demon in a long black Chinese-collared coat. To normals he probably looked like he’d only been genetically augmented, which was a little odd but not way out of the gravball court. A genescan would show him as a different species but no weirder than a werecain or kobolding. No, it would take a psion to see the twisting black-diamond flames of his aura. They would know what he was. But there were no other psions on the transport.
I leaned my head back against the seat. The flight was quiet, only ten people—we had plenty of empty seats around us in every direction. Nobody would want to crowd me; Necromances have a reputation for being a little twitchy. “So we’re going to get a guide, and go through a door,” I said.
“Yes.”
I wanted this all very clear. “You’ll negotiate our passage, but you’re not going to talk—once we pass through the door.”
“No.” Japhrimel’s eyes were closed. He leaned back into the seat, his mouth a straight line, his hands cupped and upturned in his lap.
“Because that would look as if I was weak.”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t speak and you stay behind me while we’re in Hell, you’re just a bodyguard—and not responsible for anything impolite I do.” Which is bound to be something, since I have the worst manners in the world. Don’t think I’m going to make a special effort for Lucifer either.
“Yes.”
“Don’t touch anything, don’t take anything from the Prince, and especially don’t eat or drink.” I looked out the window. The whine of hover transport settled against my bones. I hated it, my back teeth grinding together before I could make my jaw unloose. “And you don’t know what he wants me for. Won’t even venture a guess.”
“I have my guesses. None of which are pleasant.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Care to clue me in?”
That earned me a quirk of a smile. “If we go to meet death, I would prefer it to be a surprise for you. I do not want you dreading it and becoming distracted.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking, for once. His sense of humor was a little strange, when it wasn’t mordant black wit or irony it was a particular brand of macabre I was beginning to recognize as purely demon. “Oh, how comforting.” I tapped the sword’s hilt with my fingernails. I’d been painting them with black molecule-drip polish for so long the polish was starting to maintain itself on my nails. I knew how to make my fingers into claws now, I was stronger and faster than any mortal.
Fat lot of good it would do me against Lucifer. Every culture has its stories about nonhuman beings—beings whose beauty didn’t conceal their essential difference, beings who didn’t necessarily believe in the human idea of truth. The fact that we can separate them into loa, etrigandi, demons, or what-have-you doesn’t make them any less dangerous.
The Old Christers had called Lucifer the Father of Lies. I was beginning to think they’d had the right idea, even if their conception of gods was so narrow as to be laughable in this day and age.
“Japhrimel?”
He moved slightly, restlessly. “What is it, my curious one?”
“If I died, what would happen to you?”
One eye opened a fraction of an inch, glanced at me. “There is little cause to worry, hedaira. Even Fallen I am still the one who was Lucifer’s assassin, and that is your safety. There are not many demons who would challenge me, weakened as I am.”
I shouldn’t have felt guilty. I hadn’t asked him to Fall. If he’d told me what he’d intended to do I would have done everything possible to dissuade him, including drawing my sword or lighting out to track Santino on my own. I hadn’t had the faintest clue of what he’d intended when he’d changed me.
Still… I did feel guilty. Right up under my breastbone and slightly to the left, the place where my heart still kept steady time. “I’m sorry. That you’re… weakened.”
I watched, fascinated, as his right hand curled into a fist. My own right hand had been spoiled and knotted for a good year or so after I’d killed Santino. I’d been unable to draw another sword until Gabe called me in to work on the Lourdes murders.
That thought sent another hot prickle of guilt up my spine. She’d sent some news clips about the murders and some other messages through my datpilot, and I called her as frequently as I could stand to. The conversations were usually short. Hi, how are you. Not bad, Eddie’s good? Oh you’re busy? Sorry about that. Okay, well, catch you later.
Ghosts of the words we could never say to each other crowded the phone line, robbing us both of breath. She tried to apologize for bringing me in on the Lourdes case, I didn’t let her. Each time she started, I would tell her not to.
I would try to thank her for performing a Necromance’s duty at Jace’s bedside. She would tell me not to. Everything that lay between us stopped the words in both our throats.
Why was it so damn hard to talk to the one person I could have said anything to?
I wished now that I’d spent more time on the phone with her. I would have given a lot to call her, maybe even use my datpilot’s fiendishly expensive voice capability. But she didn’t even know Japhrimel was alive. I had, for the first time, lied to her when I’d left Saint City. Even if only by omission, it was still a lie told to the one person on earth I should never have misled. Gabe had gone through hell for me.
You can’t do anything about it now, Dante. Focus on the task at hand.
I raised my left hand, threaded my fingers through Japhrimel’s. It took some doing—he didn’t fight me, but his fist was clenched. I finally pried it open, and the touch of his skin on mine rewarded me. “Talk to me,” I said, so softly only a demon’s sensitive ears could have heard.
He let out a quiet breath. His anger could blow the transport to pieces, but no whisper of it escaped. Except for the mark on my shoulder, burning as it twisted its way more deeply into my skin.
“You are cruel and gentle, in the manner of your kind,” he said finally. “You have never treated me as anything less—or more— than human. As one of your own.”
I thought about that for a moment. I had fallen into the habit of treating him just like another human early on in the hunt for Santino and never quite grown out of it. Was that what he was talking about? “It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”
“Fair?” His hand relaxed slightly. His eyes were closed, but I would have bet hard credit and the emerald in m
y cheek that he knew the location of every person on the transport and had them evaluated down to the last millimeter. “Life is not fair, Dante. Even demons know this.”
“It should be,” I muttered, looking at my swordhilt.
“I dislike the pain you inflict on yourself.” He stroked my wrist with his thumb, an intimate touch making me catch my breath. “We will arrive exactly nowhere if we do not reach an agreement.”
Memory rose around me. He’d said the same thing in my kitchen, all those years ago, during the first stages of the hunt for Santino. One terrified Necromance bent on revenge and a demon without the sense to keep from falling in love with her, and the Devil pulling all the strings behind the scenes.
“An agreement? How about I try to be a big girl and keep my mouth shut, and you try not to keep things from me from now on?” I’m pretty sure I can keep my half of that bargain if you can manage to keep yours. What do you say, Japhrimel?
His thumb stroked the underside of my wrist again. My breath hitched. “There.” He sounded less tense and more like the Japhrimel I knew. “That is the Dante I know.”
I could have laughed at the parallel thoughts. Instead, I studied my swordhilt. Jado-sensei was an old crafty dragon, and I wondered if he’d given me a blade that could cut the Devil himself. Yet another thing I missed—Jado’s nut-brown wrinkled face framed by long pointed ears. Maybe I did want to go back to Saint City.
The thought made my heart pound. I took a deep breath. “Japhrimel?”
A slight, subtle shift, he leaned toward me in his seat. “What?”
“Don’t hide things from me. Even if you think it’ll scare me.”
“You’re persistent.”
It was like one of our sparring sessions. During the first few I’d held back, afraid of hurting him because he so rarely used a weapon. It was only after the third time he took my blade away from me without even seeming to try that I started to get angry—and I hadn’t held back since. The same sense—of slashing at an opponent who simply melted away from my strikes then blurred in to take my weapon away—was there in our conversation.