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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 begi
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 begi
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 ru
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 slightly. "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 ru
"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 colo
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."
I followed him, cautiously. Don't trust him, Dante! Kill him now! Kill him or run!
It was a nursery. Slices of dim light fell through iron bars on the windows. Toys scattered across the hardwood floor, and plush rugs too. I saw a rocking horse, and a set of chairs around a table low enough for a little person. Wooden blocks lay scattered near a fireplace. And on the other side of the room, Santino stalked toward a low queen-sized bedstead wreathed in mosquito netting.
I followed, my boots occasionally kicking a small plush animal. Dear gods, I thought, he has children here? What kind of kids are raised by a demon?
"Lucifer rules because he is powerful," Santino whispered, his voice buzzing with secrecy. "But not only that—he rules because he is Androgyne, almost like a queen bee, capable of reproducing. It took me forty-five human years, but I finally found out how to birth another demon Androgyne. All it takes is the proper genetic material and engineering, Dante." He paused, maybe for effect. "Engineering by the scientist Lucifer used to create humanity in the first place—and material taken from a sedayeen, perhaps. A human psionic with the ability to heal, an almost-direct descendant of the A'nankimel—the demons that loved human women, and raised families with them eons ago. Until Lucifer, fearing the birth of an Androgyne on earth, destroyed them."