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My lips shaped the god's name, but the syllables sounded alien. The crystal walls shuddered, and for a moment I saw stone, a great grim drafty stone hall, with a dour-faced King upon a throne at the far end. The throne was crusted with gems, glittering madly, and at the King's side sat a Queen with a face like springtime. I felt my mouth shaping alien words, desperation beating in my throat. I wanted so badly to understand the secret language, to feel the clasp of the god's arms around me as I laid my head on His chest and let the weight of living slip from me—
BOOM.
The sound startled me. It seemed to take forever for me to turn around. Before I could, the sound came again, as if a gong was being beaten, a brazen sound, pulling me back.
BOOM.
I struggled as if through syrup. I wanted to stay.
I wanted to stay dead.
BOOM.
One of the souls streaming past me halted, held up a pale hand. Formless as all souls were, a crystal drapery of unique energy, still it seemed I knew it, could put a face on it.
BOOM.
"Go back," it said. "Go back."
BOOM.
I opened my mouth to protest. Shimmering, the soul brushed my cheek.
BOOMBOOM.
"Go back," Doreen said. "Save my daughter. Go back."
BOOMBOOM. BOOMBOOM.
Then I understood it was not a gong or a brass bell. It was my heart, and I was called back to the world.
Dizziness. Cold seeping up my arms. Voices.
"Call her back!" Eddie, yelling, the bass in his voice rattling my bones.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears. To be forced back into a body was excruciating, even worse than being shot.
"Dante!" Japhrimel, howling.
"Da
Scorching pressed against the side of my face. A hand.
Gabe's chant stopped, the last throbbing syllable shattering inside my head. I gasped a breath like knives. My chest hurt.
A great scalding wave of Power lashed me. I cried out, weakly, convulsing.
"Do not leave me," Japhrimel husked. "Do not leave me, Dante."
"Goddamn you, Eddie," Jace hissed, "let me go or I will kill you."
Light struck my eyes like a newborn's. I reacted the same way, screaming, raw from the lash of Japhrimel's Power and Gabe's Necromance. Japhrimel closed his arms around me and rested his chin on my head. I gasped, screamed again, muffled against his chest. The scream degenerated into sobbing. I cried because I had been wrong, and because I'd been right. I cried because the comfort of death was denied me. I cried because I had been dragged back into my weary body and shackled again.
And I cried in relief, clinging to Japhrimel the demon. He was solid and warm and real, and I did not want to let go.
CHAPTER 38
I was weak but lucid by the time we got back to Jace's mansion.
Eddie covered Jace with a plasgun most of the time. Gabe, paper-pale with exhaustion and bloody all over (most of it was mine), piloted the hover. I didn't ask where it had come from—if it was Jace's, it was all right, if it wasn't, I didn't want to know. All three of them—Gabe, Eddie, Jace—looked as if they had been through the grinder. Eddie's left arm hung limply by his side, Jace's face was covered in blood from a scalp wound and most of his shirt was torn off, stripes criss-crossing his torso. Gabe's clothes were tattered, filthy, smelling of smoke and blood and something suspiciously like offal.
Japhrimel carried me. His face was shuttered, closed, his eyes dark, a smear of my blood on one cheek. Santino had shot me in the chest. Otherwise, his dark coat was pristine. He occasionally stroked my cheek, sometimes glancing at Jace while he did so.
I didn't want to know. I had the uncomfortable feeling I'd find out soon enough.
I was too tired to think. My brain reeled drunkenly from one thought to the next, no logic, nothing but shock.
The city lay under a pall of smoke. It looked as if a full-scale riot had gone down. I saw several craters, but the rain had intensified and was drowning the fires. The aroma of burning filled the air, even inside the hover. When we touched down at Jace's, it was a relief.
Inside, Gabe herded us all into a sitting room done in light blue and cream. Eddie shoved Jace down on a tasteful couch. I hope he searched this room, I thought, tiredly, Jace could have a weapon stashed in here.
I shivered. It would be a while before I took another Necromance job. If I went back to the borders of the land of Death too soon I would perhaps be unable to come back, training or no training.
"Okay," Gabe said, stalking across the room to a walnut highboy and tossing it open to reveal liquor bottles, "I need a motherfucking drink."
I cleared my throat. "Me, too," I said, the first words out of my mouth since leaving Santino's hideaway. "We need to move quickly," I said, as Japhrimel carried me to the couch facing Jace's. Instead of setting me down, he simply dropped gracefully down himself, still holding me. A little rearranging and I found myself in his lap, cuddled against him like a child.
A child. I shuddered at the thought. But it was comforting, his heat, and the smell of him.
Gabe groaned. "Give me a minute, Da
I cleared my throat. "Pour me one," I said, husky, my voice almost refusing to obey me. "We've got big-time problems."
"I would never have guessed," Eddie growled. "You get into more fucking trouble, Valentine. That thing nearly burned down the entire goddamn city looking for you."
I barely had the courage to look up at Japhrimel's face. "You did that?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I had to find you," he said, simply.
I let it go. Instead, I started telling my story with the accompaniment of rain smacking the windows. Gabe knew me well enough not to interrupt, and Eddie watched Jace. Halfway through, Gabe handed me a glass of bourbon and settled down stiffly in a chair, her split lip and black eyes combining to turn her thoughtful expression into sadness. I downed the liquor, coughing as it burned the back of my throat, then continuing. By the time I got to the child sleeping in the bedroom, Japhrimel's eyes were incandescent. He had turned slowly to stone underneath me.
When I finished, Gabe drained the rest of her drink. Silence stretched through the room, broken by a low rattle of thunder.
Then she leapt to her feet and hurled her glass across the room, letting out a scream as sharp as a falcon's cry. The shattering glass didn't make me jump, but the scream came close.
She half-whirled, and pi
"I didn't know a goddamn thing—" he began. Eddie growled.
"Let him talk," I said, quietly, but with a note of finality that cut across the Skinlin's rambling. "And while he does that, Gabe, can you take a look at Eddie's arm?"
They all stared at me for a moment. Then Gabe moved stiffly to the hedgewitch and touched his shoulder. Some unspoken agreement seemed to pass between them, and Eddie's shoulders sagged just a little. More thunder crawled across the roof of the sky. I was so tired that for once it didn't hurt me to see Gabe press her lips to Eddie's forehead—but I did look away. I looked at Jace, who was paper-pale, the tic of rage flicking in his cheek.
"Talk fast," I told him. "Before I decide it was a bad idea to do that."
"I didn't know a goddamn thing," he said, harshly. Gabe started poking at Eddie's arm, and I felt the vibration of her Power start. She was doing a healing. I shuddered—every time she pulled on Power, it was like another astringent stripe against my abraded psyche. She had pulled me back from Death.