Besides, if there were more hellhounds out there, I didn’t stand much of a chance anyway.
I dropped into low black pleather seat, laid my katana across my knees, and proceeded to stare out the window at the lights of New Prague. No wonder Bella and Ogami had been frightened. No wonder Japhrimel hadn’t seemed worried with the group’s progress—he’d just been waiting for the enemy to show himself. Just playing patty-cake with me in the meanwhile, callously using the humans as bait. The fact that he’d sent them out with Vann and Tiens didn’t excuse the pitilessness of the action. No harm done, but still.
I’d been a part of it. He’d made me a part of it. If it had gone bad, I would have been partly responsible.
Now I also knew why he’d been so damn close-mouthed about the Fallen. If I’d had any intimation that he was no longer bound by the rules of a demon familiar, I might have dug my heels in a little more and demanded he tell me everything. If I’d had any warning.
I hadn’t had any warning. I hadn’t even known the Devil was asking for me, hadn’t even had a clue. Japhrimel hadn’t acted guilty, or as if he was hiding anything, he had spent every waking moment with me. That led me to an uncomfortable wondering about just how often I’d been left alone while I slept, lulled into defenseless unconsciousness and abandoned while Japhrimel met with Lucifer. It could have happened easily. I’d trusted him.
He’d changed plans midstroke, bargained with Lucifer for a demon’s Power, and dumped me in the hover to be flown home just like a kid. Never mind about Dante, she’s so easily led. So easily manipulated. Only a human, after all.
I closed my eyes, searching for calm and an idea. Neither came.
McKinley took the hover’s controls while he held a murmured conference with Japhrimel. I shut my eyes, opened them again, staring at the lights. Floating streams of hovertraffic threaded between the glowing cubes of high-rises.
The nagging sense of something wrong had gone away. Something hadn’t jelled, hadn’t seemed right—and this was why. Japh had never had any intention of letting me do what Lucifer’s Right Hand was supposed to do.
The thought that I wouldn’t have minded playing second fiddle on a hunt like this if he’d just explained to me what was going on wasn’t very comforting either. Demons were nasty, tricky, and mostly too strong and fast for even a hedaira. Never mind that I’d killed an imp. If it hadn’t been for the reactive paint things might have been very different indeed. And the hellhounds . . . my skin chilled, roughened into actual goosebumps. I most definitely wouldn’t mind backup when facing them.
Most chilling of all was the logical extension to my line of thought—Lucifer had been angling to snare Japhrimel, use me for bait or distraction, and possibly kill Japh all along. If by some miracle we succeeded, we would still have to deal with the machinations of the Prince of Hell. Chances were if this plan failed, there would be another one. And possibly another after that.
I didn’t think the Devil believed in giving up easily.
Japhrimel lowered himself into the seat opposite me. I stared out the window, my fingernails tapping at the hilt. He’d been holding back while sparring with me the whole time. The whole time. He’d even let me cut him once or twice.
Just to make me feel better?
Silence. Hoverwhine settled into my back teeth. A lump rose in my throat, I pushed it down. My sternum hurt, but that was because I kept rubbing it, reflexively, unconsciously.
He stirred, went still, and moved slightly again.
As if expecting me to say something.
I held my tongue. I was tempted to scream. Should have screamed. Should have busted out the hover windows and thrown myself down. Gone limp. Nonviolent resistance. Something.
Anything instead of just sitting there.
What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure. An old lesson, my first true life lesson—but I wasn’t enduring. I was simply unable to do anything. I was in a glass ball of calm, a type of shock insulating me from the world. He had used his strength on me, something I’d thought he’d never do. He was going to force me to do what he wanted. I was trapped, by the very last person I’d expected to trap me.
“I do not require you to forgive me, or to understand,” he said finally. “I demand only your cooperation, which I will get by any means necessary.”
“You should have told me.” Point for him, he’d made me talk. I didn’t recognize my own voice—none of my usual half-whispering. I said it as if I was a normal discussing dinner plans, the velvet weight of demon beauty in my voice taunting me. “I asked you. You should have told me all of this.”
“You would not have agreed to any of it.” Quiet, silken. “Especially my request for you to retreat while I deal with things beyond your strength.”
Gods damn you. You might be right. “We’ll never know now, will we.”
“Perhaps not.” A small tender smile. I could barely stand to see that expression on his face, his eyes softening and his mouth curving. Didn’t he understand what he’d just done to me?
I couldn’t help myself. “I could really hate you for this.” You asked me to trust you, I did, and this is what I get? You hurt me, hold me up against a w-wall—I could still feel the casual strength in his hand as he held me helpless, my legs dangling, his knuckles digging into my chest.
“You will outgrow that.” He still smiled, damn him.
I don’t think I will. I shut my eyes again, closing him out. The hover banked, my stomach flipped. “You shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have done that to me.” I sound like a broken holodisc player. Come on, Dante. Snap out of it.
“I will do what I must. I am your Fallen.” He didn’t sound contrite in the least.
That would mean something to me if you hadn’t just held me up against the wall and admitted lying to me. “I only have your word for that.” It wasn’t true—I had Lucifer’s word as well as my own experience. But if I couldn’t hurt him with steel, all I had left were words. The darkness behind my eyelids was not comforting, I could still see him, the black diamond flames that meant demon.
Was it just me, or did he seem to pause uncertainly? “I only wish to keep you safe. You are fragile, Dante, for all that I have given you a share of my strength.”
I’m strong enough for some things, Japh. Go away. “Leave me alone.”
“I will not.” Flat, utter negation. I had rarely heard him sound less ironic and more serious.
“I mean it, Tierce Japhrimel. Leave me alone. Go finish your goddamn hunt and play patty-cake with Lucifer.” I wanted to pull my knees up, curl into a ball, and wait for the tearing pain under my breastbone to go away. I didn’t think it would go soon, but I needed to find a nice dark quiet place to hide in for a little while. “I want to go home.”
Wherever that is. The whine of hover transport settled in my back teeth. My stomach roiled. I hadn’t felt this unsteady, this defenseless, since . . . since when?
Since I’d been about twelve, that’s when. My twelfth year, when the man who had raised me since infancy had been knifed by a Chill junkie. Losing Lewis had left me adrift in a world too big for me, and I felt the same way now, my breath choked and my fingers and toes cold as if I’d just gone treading into the hall of Death, my skin far too sensitive for the brutality of the world.
I felt very, very small.
Of course, he knew the thing to say that would hurt me the most. “Do you have a home, Dante?”
I hunched my shoulders. Saint City’s close enough. That’s where I lived most of my life before you showed up to ruin it. Ruin everything. Dragged me into Hell, turned me into an almost-demon, died and left me alone, come back and finished off by . . . by . . . I couldn’t finish the thought. Still felt the tile, cold and hard against my back, and his fingers gone hard instead of caressing. I thought you were my home, Japh.
My skin crawled. I’d shared my body with him, let him into private corners of myself I had let no other lover access. Ev
en Doreen, who had taught me to have a fierce pride in my body and its needs again, her gentleness opening up whole new worlds to me.
Even Jace.
The thought of Jace made the glass ball of calm numbness closed around me crack a little. I set my jaw, determined not to break.
I will not break. My teeth ground together, my hands tightened on my sword, my emerald spat a single defiant spark.
He sighed again. “Our legends warn of the price of becoming A’nankhimel. I cannot be human, Dante, not even for you. Can you not understand?”
What was it in his voice that hurt so badly? Pleading. He was definitely pleading.
Fury rose inside me, my right hand curling around my swordhilt. My eyes flew open. He’d just held me up against the wall of a New Prague subway station, and he wanted me to understand? “Understand you? I thought I did! I thought I—I thought you—” I seemed to lose all capability of speech, though I didn’t splutter. It was close, though.
He nodded, leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, fingers steepled together. “Rage at me, Dante. Be angry. Extract your vengeance later; I will allow it. As long as you will have me and after, I am yours. There is no escaping it, not now.”
I shook my head, as if shaking away water. “I would have done anything you asked if you were just honest with me,” I said miserably, tears welling up. I hated myself for crying. I hadn’t cried through the hell of Rigger Hall, I had rarely cried afterward. It was the tone he used, I think, the gentle tone my body responded to. More than the softness in his voice was the betrayal. It was the betrayal that hurt the most.
Or was it the softness? I couldn’t tell. I found myself rubbing at my sternum again, my knuckles scraping against my shirt under the diagonal leather strap of my rig. I thought I knew you. The lump in my throat swelled bigger each passing second, as if I was trapped in a windowless room.
“You are still in the habit of being human, Dante. It will take time.” He didn’t even sound sorry. At least when a human guy beat his girlfriend up, he makes a show of being contrite afterwards.
A hot tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t even fight him, he was too strong. “I could hate you,” I whispered.
“I warned you that you would. But you will outgrow that too.”
I glared at him. Jackshit I’m going to outgrow hating you. How could you, Japhrimel? My eyes narrowed slightly, I dropped my right hand with an effort, tapped my swordhilt. Said nothing.
“You are contracted for seven years to the Prince. I will make sure you survive them. If I must chain you to my side I will.” His jaw set and his eyes glowed. I believed him.
Oh, I’ll survive all right. I’m good at surviving. And if I die I have nothing to fear, my god will take me. Maybe you won’t follow me there.
I closed my eyes again. Leaned my head against the back of the seat. It was actually very comfortable. Nothing but the best for the Devil’s henchmen.
“You do not have to forgive me,” he repeated. “But I will have your cooperation.”
“You know,” I said, keeping my voice level, “you could really teach the Devil a thing or two.” The blackness behind my eyelids was tempting. Unfortunately, I could still see him, the tightly controlled black-diamond flames of his aura, still reaching out to enfold me, the mark on my shoulder burning softly, Power spreading down my skin like warm oil. Soothing, like fingers stroking my skin, working out the knots in my muscles, easing away tension.
There was a faint rustle as if he’d moved, his coat shifting with him. “I am the lesser evil, hedaira. Remember that.”
There was nothing I could say. If it was either the Devil or Japhrimel, where did that leave me?
Screwed, that’s where. Painted into a corner by a demon.
Again.
32
Demilitarized Sarajevo is still almost-contested territory. It took two Nichtvren warlords and a whole cadre—seven Packs—of werecain to restore order after the nightmare of genocide following the Seventy Days War. Nowadays, it’s the kind of place where even psion bounty hunters don’t go—because human bounties don’t either.
The northern half of the city is the Demilitarized Zone itself, where most nonhuman species have their enclaves; the southern half is patrolled by werecain whose only boss is the Master of the territory, a Nichtvren named Leonidas who was the final winner of the scramble for power. It’s one of the four nonhuman Freetown territories in the world, a zone from the Adriatic to the forward border of Putchkin Austrio-Hungaro, bordered on the south by Hegemony Graecia. The last humans fled after the final Serbian uprising was put down by Leonidas and a werecain alpha named Masud about a century after the War, and the Hegemony and Putchkin negotiated absorbing the ethnic minorities and resettling them in the cultural areas that most closely resembled their former home. Linguists and culture-historians were busy for years sorting the tangles out.
Leonidas, probably understanding that even a Nicht-vren can’t argue with joint Hegemony-Putchkin thermonuclear attack, made sure most of the surviving humans were released unscathed.
A few humans tried to go back, but nobody ever heard from them again. For a while there was a movement to reclaim the territory, especially the psychic whirlpool of the Blackbird Fields, but in the end the Nichtvren paid off whoever they had to and the whole issue became a moot point. Any human dumb enough to go into DMZ Sarajevo was either dead or Turned within twenty-four hours—and that went for psions too. Even accredited psions with combat training and bounties under their belt don’t go there.
There are rumors, of course, of people desperate enough to go into Sarajevo and bargain to be Turned. There are also rumors of indentured servants and slave trading—but those are only whispered in dark corners. The Hegemony and Putchkin largely paid very little attention as long as Leonidas kept order and nothing thermonuclear was smuggled out of the territory.
I’m actually in Sarajevo, I thought with dazed wonder, looking out the hover window.
“We’ve got clearance.” McKinley looked back over his shoulder. “They’ll meet us at the dock.”
Japhrimel merely nodded. He had sat there the entire flight, watching me. After a while I had dropped all pretense of sleeping and instead had studied the darkness outside slowly falling under the hover. A faint grayness had begun in the east, the herald of dawn. I saw fewer lights than most cities, slices of complete darkness in certain districts north of the river, lots of neon as we banked over the DMZ, McKinley piloting the hover with a sure, deft touch.
“My lord?” McKinley asked.
Japhrimel finally stirred, swinging the seat to look toward the front of the hover. “Yes?”
“Is she. . . .” It sounded like he couldn’t find a polite way to phrase it. What was he asking? If I’d been taught my place yet? If I was all right? If I was still alive? Why the fuck should he care?
“That is not your concern.” Nothing shaded Japhrimel’s voice except perhaps a faint weariness.
“Yessir.” McKinley turned back to the front. After a few moments, I saw the console begin to flash as a hoverdock AI took over. McKinley eased himself out of the seat and stretched, joints popping. The metallic coating on his left hand shone dully with reflected light.
He didn’t look at me. I was happy about that.
Japhrimel turned back to me. “Your cooperation, Dante. I want your word on it.”
That managed to wring a laugh out of me, a jagged sound that made the air shiver. “You sure you want to trust my word, demon?”
“You will give me little else.” The mark burned on my shoulder, velvet flame coating my nerves. The sensation had once been pleasant. Comforting.
Now I hated it. The feeling of my skin crawling with loathing under the Power was new, interesting, and awful. It was the way I imagined an indentured servant would feel, helpless impotent loathing and rage. My sternum still throbbed with raw pain, maybe because I’d kept rubbing it, scrubbing it with my knuckles, trying to scour away the helpless feeling of
being trapped and betrayed at once.
“I will make you pay for this,” I whispered. My throat was full, my eyes hot and grainy. You shouldn’t have done that, Japhrimel.
“No doubt. Your cooperation, Dante. Full and complete cooperation. Your word on it.”
“Or what, you’ll kill me?” I tried to make it sound like a challenge. “Hold me up against a wall again? Maybe you’ll beat me up a little. Slap me around. Teach me my place.”
A muscle in his sleek golden cheek twitched, but his voice was still soft and even. “I can think of more pleasant things to do with you, my curious. Your word.”
I glared out the window, faintly surprised when the plasilica didn’t crack. You’re going to regret this, you bastard. “Fine. You have my word. I’ll cooperate.” Cooperate with what and who, though? That’s the question.
He studied me. I let him have my profile, kept my gaze out the window. “You will cooperate with me for as long with our bargain with the Prince lasts.”
“You get seven years from the day I negotiated with Lucifer,” I returned tautly. The first chance I have I’m ditching you, I can “cooperate” from anywhere in the world.
The bravado was pure reflex, and I knew it. If I left him, how long would I last on my own?
“I have your word?” Damn him, he was pushing me. I could tell from the faint shadow of carefulness in his tone that he had probably gauged just how far he could push me without me snapping and trying to run him through.
If I did leap at him now, what would he do? Take my sword away? Cuff me with plasteel cuffs or the shackle of a demon’s magick? I am no longer your familiar; I am your Fallen. I am not bound to obey, only to protect.
To a demon, “protection” might not mean what it meant to me. He was being careful, but he could force me to do just about anything. I had the same chance of escaping him as a stuffed and cuffed bounty has of escaping a good hunter.
In other words, no fucking chance at all unless I got a little creative and very lucky. But even if I managed to pull anything, what then? “I already said so.” I bit off the end of the sentence. “Don’t fucking push me.”