Saint City Sinners

Book 4: Dante Valentine

by Lilith Saintcrow

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

Saint City has always been Dante Valentine's home. It's where she grew up, it's where her dead are buried, and it's where she learned to hunt.

Now, one call from an old friend will bring her back to investigate a murder too close to home for anyone's comfort. But the one person she trusted has just betrayed her.

Sometimes revenge is best served demon-hot . . .

Release date: November 1, 2007

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 400

Sample

Overture

Japhrimel stood in the middle of the wrack and ruin of the Haunt Tais-toi, his long wet-dark coat lying on his shoulders like night itself. Lucifer faced him, the Prince of Hell’s lovely face twisted with fury, suffused with a darkness more than physical. Japhrimel’s hand closed around Lucifer’s right wrist, muscle standing out under Lucifer’s shirt and Japhrimel’s coat as the Devil surged forward—and Japhrimel pushed him back.

If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have believed it possible. But Japh’s entire body tensed, and he forced Lucifer back on his heels.

The Devil stepped mincingly away, twisting his wrist free. Retreated, only two steps. But it was enough.

Lucifer’s aura flamed with blackness, a warping in the fabric of the world. They looked at each other, twin green gazes locked as if the words they exchanged were only window dressing for the real combat, fought by the glowing spears of their eyes. The two hellhounds wove around them, low fluid shapes. Lucifer’s indigo silk shirt was torn, gaping, across his midriff, showing a slice of golden skin—and as I watched, a single drop of black blood dripped from one torn edge. More spots of dark blood smoked on the silken pants he wore.

I’d cut the Devil.

One dazed thought sparked inside my aching head. Jado must’ve given me a hell of a good blade.

Then another thought, ridiculous in its intensity. Here. He’s here. Everything will be all right now.

Childish faith, maybe, but I’d take it. If it was a choice between my Fallen and getting killed right this moment, I’d settle for Japh, no matter how much of a bastard he’d been recently. Funny how almost getting killed radically changed my notions of just how much I could forgive.

Japhrimel’s eyes didn’t flick over to check me, but the mark on my shoulder came to agonized life again, Power flooding me, exploding in my belly. White-hot pokers jerked in my viscera. My scalp twinged, I tasted blood and burning. My sword rang softly, the core of the blade burning white, blue runic patterns slipping through its keen edge and painting the air. I managed to lift it, the blade a bar between me and the Devil facing his eldest son.

The red lights were still flickering, sweeping over the entire building in their complicated patterns, eerie because there were no dancers. “You would have me believe—” Lucifer started. Stone and plaster shattered at the sound of his voice, dust pattering to the wracked floor.

Japhrimel interrupted him again. I felt only a weary wonder that he was still standing there, apparently untouched, his long black coat moving gently on the hot fire-breeze. “We were told by the Master of this city—your ally and Hellesvront agent—that you wished to meet Dante here alone. Did you lure your Right Hand here to kill her, Prince? Breaking your word, given on your ineffable Name? Such would conclude our alliance in a most . . . unsatisfactory fashion.”

I could swear Lucifer’s face went through surprise, disgust, and finally settled on wariness. He studied Japhrimel for a long, tense thirty seconds, during which my throat burned and tickled but I didn’t dare to cough.

Japh clasped his hands behind his back. He looked relaxed, almost bored. Except for the burning murderous light of his eyes, matching Lucifer’s shade for shade.

I stayed very still, my left arm cramping as my belly ran with pain and my right trembling as I held my sword. A small part of me wondered where Lucas was. The rest of me stared at Japhrimel with open wonderment.

If I survive this, I’m going to kiss him. Right after I punch the shit out of him for lying to me. If he lets me. The nastiness of the thought made me suddenly, deeply ashamed of myself. He was here, and he was facing Lucifer. For me.

He had given up Hell. He had also taken me to Toscano and let me heal from the psychic rape of Mirovitch’s ka, protecting me from dangers I hadn’t had the faintest idea existed. He was loyal to me after all.

In his own fashion.

Lucifer finally seemed to decide. The flames among the shattered wreckage twisted into angular shapes as some essential tension leached out of him. “I rue the day I set you to watch over her, Eldest.” The darkness in his face didn’t fade, however—it intensified, a psychic miasma.

The tickling in my throat reached a feverish pitch. I had to cough, shoved the urge down, prayed for strength. Anubis, please don’t let me attract their attention. Both of them look too dangerous right now.

Japhrimel shrugged. “What is done, is done.” His voice pitched a little higher, as if he imitated Lucifer. Or was quoting him.

The Prince of Hell set his jaw. I saw one elegant hand curl into a fist, and perhaps the other one was a fist too, but I couldn’t see it. I think it was the first time I saw the Devil speechless, and my jaw would have dropped if I hadn’t clenched it, trying not to cough. I took a fresh grip on my belly, trying not to hunch over. I wanted to see, needed to see. My sword held steady even though my hand was shaking, the blade singing a thin comforting song as its heart glowed white.

He finally seemed to regain himself. “You deserve each other,” he hissed. “May you have joy of it. Bring me back my possession and eliminate those who would keep it from me, Tierce Japhrimel, or I will kill you both. I swear it.”

Japhrimel’s eyes flared. “That was not our bargain, my lord.”

Lucifer twitched. Japhrimel didn’t move, but the mark twisted white-hot fire into my shoulder, a final burst of Power. The urge to cough mercifully retreated a little. I blinked drying demon blood out of my eyes. I wanted to look for Lucas.

I couldn’t look away from my Fallen. He stood tense and ready, in front of the Devil.

“I am the Prince of Hell,” Lucifer said coldly.

“And I was your Eldest.” Japhrimel held Lucifer’s eyes as the air itself cried out, a long gasping howl of a breeze coming from them, blowing my hair back. I felt the stiffness—blood and dust matted in my hair. I was filthy, and I ached. I stayed where I was. “I was the Kinslayer. Thus you made me, and you cast me away. I am yours no longer.”

“I made you.” The air itself screamed as the Prince of Hell’s voice tore at it. “Your allegiance is mine.”

“My allegiance,” Japhrimel returned, inexorably quiet, “is my own. I Fell, I am Fallen. I am not your son.”

One last burst of soft killing silence. I struggled to stay still.

Lucifer turned on his heel. The world snapped back into normalcy. He strode for the gaping hole torn in the front of the nightclub. Red neon reflected wetly off the street outside. A flick of his golden fingers, and the hellhounds loped gracefully after him, one stopping to snarl back over its shoulder at me.

Well, now I can guess who sent the hellhounds. You bastard. You filthy bastard. I sagged. My sword dipped, and the urge to cough rose again. It felt like a plasgun core had been dropped into my gut.

The Prince stopped, turned his head so I could see his profile. “Japhrimel.” His voice was back to silk and honey, terrible in its beauty. “I give you a promise, my Eldest. One day, I will kill her.”

Lucifer vanished. The air tried to heal itself, closing over the space where he had been, and failed. He left a scorch on the very fabric of existence.

Japhrimel was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed forward. He didn’t look at me. I was glad, because his face was full of something terrible, irrevocable, and devouring.

“Not while I watch over her,” he said softly.


1



Cairo Giza has endured almost forever, but it was only after the Awakening that the pyramids began to acquire distinctive etheric smears again. Colored balls of light bob and weave around them even during daytime, playing with streams of hover traffic that carefully don’t pass over the pyramids themselves, like a river separating around islands. Hover circuitry is buffered like every critical component nowadays, but enough Power can blow anything electric just like a focused EMP pulse. There’s a college of Ceremonials responsible for using and draining the pyramids’ charge, responsible also for the Temple built equidistant from the stone triangles and the Sphinx, whose ruined face still gazes from her recumbent body with more long-forgotten wisdom than the human race could ever lay claim to accumulating.

Power hummed in the air as I stepped from glaring desert sun into the shadowed gloom of the Temple’s portico. Static crackled, sand falling out of my clothes whisked away by the containment field. I grimaced. We’d been on the ground less than half an hour and already I was tired of the dust.

One worn-out, busted-down part-demon Necromance, sore from Lucifer’s last kick even though Japhrimel had repaired the damage and flushed me with enough Power to make my skin tingle. And one Fallen given back the power of a demon pacing behind me, his step oddly silent on the stone floor. The mark on my left shoulder—his mark—pulsed again, a warm velvet flush coating my body. My rings swirled with steady light.

My bag bumped against my hip and my bootheels clicked on stone, echoing in the vast shadowed chamber. The great inner doors rose up before us, massive slabs of granite lasecarved with hieroglyph pictures of a way of life vanished thousands of years ago. I inhaled the deep familiar spice of kyphii deeply as my nape prickled. My sword, thrust through a loop in my weapons rig, thrummed slightly in its indigo-lacquered scabbard.


A blade that can bite the Devil. A cool finger of dread traced up my spine.

I stopped, half-turning on my heel to look up at Japhrimel. He paused, his hands clasped behind his back as usual, regarding me with bright green-glowing eyes. His ink-dark hair lay against his forehead in a soft wave, melding with the Temple’s dusky quiet; Japhrimel’s lean golden saturnine face was closed and distant. He had been very quiet for the last hour.

I didn’t blame him. We had precious little to say now. In any case, I didn’t want to break the fragile truce between us.

One dark eyebrow quirked slightly, a question I found I could read. It was a relief to see something about him I still understood.

Had he changed, or had I?

“Will you wait for me here?” My voice bounced back from stone, husky and half-ruined, still freighted with the promise of demon seduction. The hoarseness didn’t help, turning my tone to granular honey. “Please?”

His expression changed from distance to wariness. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Of course. It would be a pleasure.”

The words ran along stone, mouthing the air softly.

I bit my lower lip. The idea that I’d misjudged him was uncomfortable, to say the least. “Japhrimel?”

His eyes rested on my face. All attention, focused on me. He didn’t touch me, but he might as well have, his aura closing around mine, black-diamond flames proclaiming him as demon to anyone with otherSight. It was a caress no less intimate for being nonphysical—something he was doing more and more lately. I wondered if it was because he wanted to keep track of me, or because he wanted to touch me.

I shook my head, deciding the question was useless. He probably wouldn’t tell me, anyway.

Was it wrong, not to hold it against him?

I heard Lucas Villalobos’s voice again. Take what you can get. Good advice? Honorable? Or just practical?

Tiens, the Nichtvren who was yet another Hellesvront agent, would meet us after dark. Lucas was with Vann and McKinley; Leander had rented space in a boarding house and was waiting for us. The Necromance bounty hunter seemed very easy with the idea of two nonhuman Hellesvront agents, but I’d caught him going pale whenever Lucas got too close.

It was a relief to see he had some sense.

Then again, even I was frightened of Lucas, never mind that I was his client and he’d taken on Lucifer and two hellhounds for me. The man Death had turned his back on was a professional, and a good asset . . . but still. He was unpredictable, impossible to kill, magick just seemed to shunt itself away from him—and there were stories of just what he’d done to psions who played rough with him, or hired him and tried to welsh. It doesn’t take long to figure out so many stories must have a grain of truth.

“Yes?” Japhrimel prompted me. I looked up from the stone floor with a start. I’d been wandering.

I never used to do that.

“Nothing.” I turned away, my boots making precise little sounds against the floor as I headed for the doors. “I’ll be out in a little while.”

“Take your time.” He stood straight and tall, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes burning green holes in smoky cool darkness. I felt the weight of his gaze on my back. “I’ll wait.”

I shook my head, reached up to touch the doors. The mark on my shoulder flared again, heat sliding down my skin like warm oil.

He was Fallen-no-more. I would have wondered what that made me now, but he hadn’t even told me what I was in the first place. Hedaira, a human woman given a share of a demon’s strength. Japhrimel just kept saying I would find out in time.

With Eve to save and Lucifer looking to kill me, I just might die before I found out. Wouldn’t that be a bitch and a half.

I spread my hands—narrow, golden, the black molecule-drip polish slightly chipped on my left fingernails—against rough granite, pushed. The doors, balanced on oiled mag-hinges, whooshed open easily. More kyphii smoke billowed out, fighting briefly with the burning-cinnamon musk of demon cloaking me.

The hall was large, all architectural space focused on throned Horus at the end, Isis’s tall form behind him, Her hand lifted in blessing over Her son. The doors slid to a stop. I bowed, my right hand touching heart and forehead in the classic salute.

I paced forward into the house of the gods. The doors slid together behind me, closing Japhrimel out. Here was perhaps the only place I could truly be alone, the only place he would not intrude.

Unfortunately, leaving him outside meant leaving my protection too. I didn’t think any demon would try to attack me inside a temple, but I was just nervous enough to take a deep breath and welcome the next flush of Power spreading from the scar.

Another deep breath. Panic beat under my breastbone. I told myself it was silly. Japh was right outside the door, and my god had always answered me before.

Still, ever since the night Anubis had called me out of slumber and laid on me a geas I couldn’t remember, He had been silent. Losing that compass left me adrift in a way I’d never been before. If I’d ever needed direction and comfort, it was now.

Cairo Giza had been Islum territory in the Merican era, but Islum had choked on its own blood during the Seventy Days War, along with the Protestor Christers and the Judics, not to mention the Evangelicals of Gilead. In a world controlled by the Hegemony and Putchkin Alliance, with psions in every corner, the conditions that gave rise to the Religions of Submission have fallen away. After a brief re-flowering of fundamentalist Islum during the collapse of petroleo use, it became just another small sect—like the Novo Christers—and the old gods and state religions had risen again.

The single biggest blow to the Religions of Submission had been the Awakening and the rise of the science of Power. When anyone can contract a Shaman or Ceremonial to talk to the god of their choice, and spiritual experiences becoming commonplace—not to mention Necromances proving an afterlife exists and Magi definitively proving the existence of demons—most organized religions had died a quick hard death, replaced by personal worship of patron gods and spirits. It was, in all reality, the only logical response on humanity’s part.

Here in Egypt those old gods have returned with a vengeance, and the pyramid Ceremonials are slowly taking on the tenor of a priesthood. Most psions are religious only to the extent that the science of belief makes Power behave itself. Necromances are generally more dedicated than most; after all, our psychopomps take the faces of ancient gods and act a little differently from the average man’s deities.

Part of that probably has to do with the Trial every accredited Necromance has to face. It’s hard not to feel a little bit attached to a god who resurrects you from the psychic death of initiation and stays with you afterward, receiving you into Death’s arms when it is finally time to go into What Comes Next.

The debate remains—could a Ceremonial be a priest or priestess, and what exactly did the gods want anyway? Only nowadays, people aren’t likely to murder each other over the questions. Not often, anyway. There’s a running feud between the priestesses of Aslan and the Hegemony Albion Literary College, who say the Prophet Lewis was a Novo Christer, but only ink is spilled in that battle, not blood.

I turned to my right. Sekhmet sat on Her throne, lion-headed and strangely serene, heat blurring up from the eternal fire in a black bowl on Her altar. The heady smell of wine rose; someone had been making offerings. Past Her, there was Set, His jackal-head painted the deep red of dried blood. The powers of destruction, given their place at the left hand of creation. Necessary, and worshipped—but not safe.

Not at all safe.

Japhrimel’s last gift before breaking the news that Lucifer had summoned me again had been a glossy obsidian statue of the Fierce One. That same statue, repaired and burnished to a fine gloss, was set by the side of the bed in the boarding house even now. Please tell me She isn’t about to start messing around with me. I have all the trouble I can handle right now.


I shivered, turned to the left. There, behind Thoth’s beaky head, was the slim black dog’s face of my own god, in his own important niche.

I drew kyphii deep into my lungs. A last respectful bow to Isis and Her son, and I moved to the left.

Thoth’s statue seemed to make a quick movement as I passed. I stopped, made my obeisance. Glanced up the ceiling, lasepainted with Nuit’s starry naked form.

Plenty of psions worship the Hellene gods. There are colleges of Asatru and Teutonica as well as the Faery tradition in Hegemony Europa. The Shamans have their loa, and there are some who follow the path of the Left Hand and worship the Unspeakable. The Tantrics have their devas and the Hindu their huge intricate assemblages, Native Mericans and Islanders their own branches of magick and Shamanic training passed down through blood and ritual; the Buddhists and Zenmos their own not-quite-religious traditions. There are as many religions as there are people on the earth, the Magi say. Even the demons were worshipped one long-ago time, mistaken for gods.

For me, there had never really been any choice. I’d dreamed of a dog-headed man all through my childhood, and had taken the requisite Religious Studies classes at Rigger Hall. One of the first religions studied was Egyptianica, since it was such a popular sect—and I’d felt at home from the very beginning. Everything about the gods of the Nile was not so much learned for me as deeply remembered, as if I’d always known but just needed the reminding.

The first time I’d gone into Death, Anubis had been there; He had never left me since. Where else would I turn for solace, but to Him?

I reached His niche. Tears welled up, my throat full of something hard and hot. I sank down to one knee, rose. Stepped forward. Approached His statue, the altar before it lit by novenas and crowded with offerings. Food, drink, scattered New Credit notes, sticks of fuming incense. Even the normals propitiated Him, hoping for some false mercy when their time came, hoping to live past whatever appointed date and hour Death chose.

My rings sparked, golden points of light popping in the dark. From the obsidian ring on my right third finger to the amber on my right and left middle, the moonstone on my left index, the bloodstone on my left third; the Suni-figured thumbring sparked too, reacting with the charge of Power in the air. The Power I carried, tied to a demon and no longer strictly human myself, quivered uneasily.


My Lord, my god, please hear me. I need You.


I sank down to my knees, my katana blurring out of its sheath. Laid the bright steel length on the stone floor in front of me, rested my hands on my thighs. Closed my eyes and prayed.


Please. I am weary, and I hunger for Your touch, my Lord. Speak to me. You have comforted me, but I want to hear You.


My breathing deepened. The blue glow began, rising at the very corners of my mental sight. I began the prayer I’d learned long ago, studying from Novo Egyptos books in the Library at Rigger Hall. “Anubis et’her ka,” I whispered. “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 scale; watch over me, Lord, for I am Your child. Do not let evil distress me, but turn Your fierceness upon my enemies. Cover me with Your gaze, let Your hand be upon me, now and all the days of my life, until You take me into Your embrace.”

Another deep breath, my pulse slowing, the silent place in me where the god lived opening like a flower. “Anubis et’her ka,” I repeated, as blue light rose in one sharp flare. The god of Death took me, swallowed me whole—and I was simply, utterly glad.

The blue crystal walls of Death rose up, but I was not on the bridge over the well of souls. Instead, the crystal shaped itself into a Temple, a psychic echo of the place my body knelt in. Before me the god appeared in the cipher of a slim black dog, sitting back on His haunches and regarding me with His infinitely-starred black eyes.

I had not come here of my own accord since Jace’s death.


I had wept. I had raged against Him, set my will against His, blamed Him, sobbed in Japhrimel’s arms about the utter unfairness of it. Yet I know Death does not play favorites. He loves all equally, and when it is time, not all the grief of the living will dissuade His purpose.



This, then, my agony—how do I love my god and still rage against His will? How do I grieve and yet love Him?



Here I wore the white robe of the god’s chosen, belted with silver dripping like fishscales. My knees pressed chill against blue crystal floor, the emerald burning against my cheek like a live brand. It was His mark, set in my skin by humans but still with His will, the gem that marked me as Death’s chosen. I blessed whatever accident of genetics gifted me with the Power to walk in His realm and feel His touch.



I met His eyes. I was not bringing a soul back from Death, so I did not need the protection of cold steel—but my hand ached to close reflexively around a swordhilt. His gaze was blackness from lid to lid, starred with cold blue jewels of constellations none of the living would ever see and glazed with blue sheen. Galaxies died in Death’s eyes as the god’s attention rested on me, a huge burden for such a small being—though I was infinite enough in my own right, being His child. That in itself was a mystery, how I could contain the infinity of the god, and how He could contain my own endless soul.



He took the weight from me, certainty replacing the burden. I was His, I had always been His. From before my birth the god had set His hand upon me. He could no more abandon me than I could abandon Him. Though I had set my will against His, even cursed Him in the pain of my grief—and still, sometimes, did—He did not mind. He was my god, and would not desert me.



But there was Lucas, wasn’t there? The man Death had turned His back on.



Thought became action instantly in this space; my question leapt, a thread of meaning laid in the receptive space between us, a cord stretched taut. The sound brushed through me, an immense church-bell gong of the god’s laughter. The Deathless’s path was not mine, Anubis reminded me. My path was my own, and my covenant with Death was always unbroken, no matter if I cursed him in my human grief.



I am clay—and if the clay cuts the hand of the potter who created it, who is to blame?



He spoke.



The meanings of His word burned through me, each stripping away a layer. So many layers, so many different things to fight through; each opening like a flower to the god. There was no other being, human, god, or demon, that I would bow my head in submission to. And so, my promise to Him. I accepted.



The geas burned at me, the fire of His touch and some other fire that moved through him combining. I had something to do—something the god would not show me yet.



Would I do what the god asked? When the time came, would I submit to His will and do what He asked of me?



Bitterness rose inside me. Death does not bargain, does not play favorites, and had already taken people I loved.



Doreen, Jace, Lewis, Roanna . . . each name was a star in the constellations filling His eyes. I could have raged against Him, but what would be the point? His promise to me was utter certainty. The people I loved went into Death and He held them; when my own time came I would see them again. No matter what else What Comes Next contained, I could be certain it held the souls of those who mattered to me in life, whose love and duty still lay upon me, a welcome weight of obligation.



That weight was the measure of my honor. What is honor without promises kept?



As for myself, going into Death’s embrace would be like welcoming a lover, a celebration I feared even as I ached for it. Every living creature fears the unknown. To have even a small measure of certainty in the midst of that fear is a treasure. Unlike the poor blind souls who have to take my word for it, I know who will clasp my hand when I die and help me through the door into What Comes Next. Knowing helps the fear, even if it does not lessen it.



I bowed, my palms together; a deep obeisance reaching into my very heart. My long stubborn life unreeled under His touch.


I am Your child, I whispered. Tell me what I must do.


The slim black dog regarded me with awful, infinitely merciful eyes. Shook His head, gravely. Even the geas was only to tell me what choice was required when the time approached. I was free. He only asked, and in the asking, did not promise to love me less if I denied Him.



Such perfect love is not for humans.



There was no other answer I could give, for all the freedom He granted me.



I would not deny Him, it would be denying myself. His approval warmed me, all the way down to my bones. How could I have doubted Him?



There was one more question I had, and meaning stretched between us again, a cord strained to its limits.



I could not help myself. I lifted my head, and I spoke his name to the god. Japhrimel.


The emerald on my cheek flared, sparks cascading down. The god’s face changed, a canine smile. His eyes flashed green for the barest moment.



My god released me, unanswered—and yet, with a curious sense of having been told what was important, holding the knowledge for one glorious heart-stopping moment before the shock of slamming—


—back into my body drove the understanding away. I gasped, bent double, my cold, numb hand curling reflexively around my swordhilt. I leapt to my feet, my boots slamming against stone floor. My heart pounded inside its flexible cage of ribs. I swallowed several times, blinked.

The entire Temple was full of shadows, soft nasty laughter chittering against its high roof. Demon-acute sight pierced the gloom, showed me every corner and crack, down to the flow and flux of Power wedded to the walls. There were no other worshippers, and that was strange, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like a temple—especially this one—to be empty, especially in the middle of the day.

Copper-tasting demon adrenaline jolted me. The chill of Death flushed itself out of fingers and toes. Other Necromances use sex or sparring to shake the cold of Death and flush the bitter taste of it away. I used to go slicboarding, using speed and antigrav danger to bring myself back to the land of the breathing. This time, I was brought back by the sense of being watched.


No. The knowledge I was being watched.

But I saw nobody. My heartbeat finally returned to something like normal, and I let out a soft sigh. I was in a temple, under the gaze of my god and with Japhrimel right outside the door. What could harm me here?

My sword sang, sliding back into the sheath. Fudoshin, Jado had named it, and it had served me well. Very well, considering it had bit the Devil’s flesh without shattering. There was some Power locked in the steel’s heart my sensei hadn’t told me about. . . .