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"A'nankimel. Not demon. Fallen." His eyes did what his hands didn't, touched my face, roamed over me. "I will not give you up, Dante."
"I don't belong to you," I flared.
"No," he agreed. "You do not."
I swallowed dryly. "Why? Why did you do this?"
"If you were merely human, Vardimal might kill you." Japhrimel cocked his head to the side. "Now you are neither human nor demon. Neither man nor demon may kill him, that was the immunity given to him by the Prince in return for his services."
That brought up another question. "What's Lucifer going to think of this?"
For a long moment, Japhrimel examined me. Then one corner of his mouth quirked slightly up. The slight smile made my heart pound. "Ask me if I care."
"Do you care?" My breath caught on the last word.
"No."
Well, that about summed everything up. Except one thing.
I stepped around a pile of splinters that had once been a chair. Approached him cautiously, my boots grinding against the plaster dust and small bits of wreckage on the floor. I held my katana to the side and stopped less than a foot from him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from him. His eyes held mine, but he didn't move.
"Did you mean any of it?" I asked him. "What you said?"
He nodded. "Of course, Dante. Every word."
His eyes glittered feverishly, and a faint, almost-human flush crept up his cheeks.
I believed him. Gods help me, but I believed him.
"You're going to have to tell me what all this means and what exactly I am now," I said finally. "After I kill Santino." There's a whole lot about my life that I'm going to sort out once that motherfucker's dead. The thought was welcome—it sounded like me. At least I sounded like myself inside my own head.
"When he is dead, I will explain everything," Japhrimel agreed. "My apologies, Dante. But I am not sorry."
I licked my dry lips. "Neither am I," I said harshly. He deserved the truth. "I… I just… it's a shock, that's all." It took more courage than I thought it would, but I reached up and rested my fingertips on his cheek. "I never thought I'd even consider dating a demon." I was still searching for levity and failing miserably.
His shoulders sagged. He closed his eyes, leaning into my touch. We stood there for a few moments before I took my hand away, and his green gaze met mine. His eyes seemed strangely dark now.
"Now come on," I said. "We've got a demon to kill, and the Egg to get back, and Doreen's little girl to save. We'll do some pla
CHAPTER 44
They ate di
We weren't anywhere near ready yet, but I felt a whole lot better about the deal.
I settled cross-legged in front of the fireplace, the chill of climate control playing over my face, staring at the map. It unrolled in front of me, Hegemony territories in blue, Freetowns in red, Putchkin in purple, and the wastelands where nobody lived in white. There was precious little white—mostly around the poles and one spot in Hegemony territory, the Vegas Waste where the first and only nuclear bomb of the Seventy Day War had dropped.
Why do all these rooms have fireplaces? I thought. It's Nuevo Rio, it never gets cold here.
Gabe and Eddie held a fierce whispered conference, silverware clinking against plates. Jace said nothing, staring at his plate as if it held the secrets of the universe. Japhrimel stood by the French doors leading out into the courtyard-garden, slim and dark and utterly impenetrable.
I held my hand over the map, trying to feel anything. Nothing. Nothing at all.
I sighed. Then I drew one of my main knives out of my coat.
Silence fell.
I set the blade against my hand.
"Dante?" Japhrimers tone was cool, but the snarl below his voice warned me.
"Calm down," I said. "Easy. Blood's what I'm tracking, let me work."
He said nothing else, but I felt the weight of his eyes on me.
I drew the blade against my palm, willing the blood to come out. The new golden skin was a lot tougher than human skin; I almost had to force my flesh open. A thin line of smoky-black blood welled up.
My breath hissed out between my teeth. The slash began to close almost immediately.
I closed my eyes and my hand, slippery hot blood burning in my palm. Held my hand over the map.
"Doreen," I whispered. Doreen.
I had found her while on the Brewster job, the one that had made my reputation as a hunter, not just a Necromance. I'd taken the contract and tracked down Michael Brewster, psychopath and serial killer; brought him back from the Freetowns to the Hegemony justice system, getting shot at, knifed, almost gang-raped by a Circle of Magi, and nearly burned alive in the process. It had been Doreen's distraction at the warehouse that had bought me enough time to escape the Magi and go to ground, and I'd hunted Brewster down with increasing panic after that. The day after he was processed into lockdown, I flew back on the red-eye hover transport and sprung her from that whorehouse in Old Singapore, using most of the bounty credit to pay off her tag fee and threatening the pimp into letting her go.
She'd been in bad shape. I guess that when the rogue Circle couldn't have me, they went for her. One psion almost as good as another, and a sedayeen couldn't even fight back like I would have. Might have, if I hadn't been spell-tied and chained.
Who was I kidding? I knew I wouldn't have been able to escape that without her help. Leaving her there was a shoddy fucking way to repay her for that, but I'd had no choice.
It had taken a long time for either of us to get any real sleep after I brought her to Saint City—she would scream in the dark for months, nightmares torturing her until I woke her up. My bare skin on hers, her mouth meeting mine, our hair tangled together in the safety of my bed.
You saved my life, she would often say, I owe you, Da
And I'd always reply, You saved mine too, Reena. I wouldn't have survived that job without her. Or the years that followed, while I learned how to work the mercenary field and started tracking down criminals. The house I bought with the bounties became our house: she had always wanted a garden and after Rigger Hall I had wanted a space all my own. As a Necromance I needed space and quiet, the house was the only piece of Doreen I had left.
And Doreen had given me the greatest gift of all: she had taught me how to live again.
Her pale hair, cut short and sleek; her dark-blue eyes. She'd worked in a Free Clinic in the Tank District and also patched up mercenaries and psis when they played too rough. Quiet and serene, her mouth always tilted into a smile, her eyes always merry. The Saint City psionic population closed around her like a protective wall. Psionic healers—sedayeen—were pacifists to a fault, they couldn't stand to hurt anyone. The pain they inflicted would rebound on them. They were helpless. So we all watched out for her—but it had done no good.
The flowers, blue flowers. I knew now that they were Santino's gift to the "mothers of the future," but back then, all I had known was the threat to Doreen's life.
And Gabe had been the only cop who believed me about the danger Doreen was in.
I had moved Doreen from safehouse to safehouse, but the flowers always found her. Gabe and I had taken turns standing guard, frantically trying to dig up the murderer who seemed intent on stalking her. Once we blew his human cover—once we knew it was Modeus Santino we were looking for and his company was seized—he went underground, and we had a week of breathing room before the flowers showed up again and the last desperate endgame started. Always one bare step ahead, moving her around, hiding first in one part of the city, then another—