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The cathedral rose in spires toward the sky just begi
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes flaring with runic patterns of emerald green for a moment. “This is simply where I was told to meet our guide. Though most temples are very good places to find a door into Hell.” He led me up the steps, and I ran the fingers of my right hand over the waist-high iron railing. The hand that had killed Santino—it had twisted into a claw after I had driven the shards of my other sword into the scavenger demon’s black heart.
I touched my swordhilt, lifting the slim scabbarded blade in my left hand.
Did Jado give me a blade that can kill the Devil?
I hadn’t thought to ask him at the time, too busy thinking about Rigger Hall and too sick with mourning Japhrimel. Besides, how could I have known the Prince of Hell would start messing with my life again? I thought he’d had enough of me the first time around. I had certainly emphatically had enough of him.
I looked at Japhrimel’s back as he paused at the double doors, one golden hand lifting to touch them. I’d thought him dead once.
Dead and gone. Grieving for him had almost killed me. So he’d said nothing about Lucifer asking for me, trying to protect me. He was right, if I’d had to deal with Lucifer and the echoes of Mirovitch’s papery voice rustling in my head, I might have gone gratefully, howlingly insane.
No extenuating circumstances, my conscience barked. What happened to the old Da
I did something I’d never done before—tried to shut that voice up. It didn’t go gracefully.
“Japhrimel.”
He turned his head slightly, keeping both me and the door in his peripheral vision.
“I never would, you know. Doubt you.” I’ve violated one of my biggest rules for you. I couldn’t bring myself to say the rest of it, and hoped he understood.
His lips thi
He pushed the door open, glanced inside, and his shoulders went rigid for half a breath. Then he turned back to give me one eloquent, heart-freezing look, warning me something was wrong, and stepped inside. He paused just inside the door, his attention moving in a slow arc over the church’s interior. I waited.
He finally moved forward. A heavy fragrance boiled out of the opened door, and my heart rose to lodge in my throat again like a lump of freeplas. Smoky musk, fresh-baked bread, the indefinable smell of demon.
Not just any demon, either. I knew that smell. Had hoped to never, ever smell it again.
I stepped into the church, Power brushing along my skin, teasing, caressing. My mouth had gone dry. My heart fell down from my throat into my stomach, somersaulted, then started to pound in my chest, my wrists, my neck. I even felt my pulse in my ankles, my heart worked so hard.
Well, would you look at that. The doors slid along the floor behind me, closing of their own will—or his. Ranks of pews marched all the way down the cathedral’s interior, but on the altar was a massive Hegemony sunwheel; other gods had their own niches in the halls going to either side. Candles flickered in the dimness, I smelled the faint tang of kyphii. My nose filled with the heatless scent of generations of worship, guilt, and fear, and the later tangs of Power: Shamans and Necromances and sedayeen and Ceremonials coming to make offerings, dyeing the air with energy all mixed together to make a heady charged atmosphere.
Most old temples and later cathedrals were built on nodes, junctures of ley lines. During the Merican Era churches had stopped being built on nodes and started to spring up like mushrooms. After the Vatican Bank scandal and in the begi
This place had been reverberating with Power and worship for a very long time. And there at the altar rail was a tall, black-clad figure with a shock of golden hair glowing with its own flaming light. A figure slim and beautiful even from the back, and obviously not human.
We hadn’t needed a guide into Hell after all, despite all Japh’s careful preparations.
Anubis et’her ka. My throat closed. For one frantic moment I wanted to scramble back for the doors, wrench them open and run, anywhere was fine as long as I could get away; the feel of Lucifer’s steely fingers sinking into my throat rose like an old enemy, taunting me. This was the last chance I had to bolt. I almost made it, too, my body straining against horrified inertia.
Japhrimel half-turned, caught my arm, pulled me forward. He ended up walking just behind me and to my left, to protect both my blind side and my back. The mark on my shoulder flared with heat again. I choked back what I wanted to say and instead moved up the central aisle, each booted footfall echoing along stone and harsh wooden edges. Just like doing a slicboard run through Suicide Alley in North New York Jersey; the only thing you can do is hold your breath and go full throttle—and hope it doesn’t hurt too bad on the way through.
I stopped at the front pew. Lucifer stood at the rail, his golden hands loose at his sides. My heart thudded.
I thought we were going into Hell to meet him. The frantic idea that I might almost have preferred the trip into Hell just so I could have a few more moments before I had to face down the Devil made a gasping, breathy laugh rise up in my throat. I killed it, set my jaw so tightly I could feel my teeth squealing together. A worm of suspicion bloomed; I didn’t want to think that my gentle Fallen, the lover who had nursed me through the double blow of Mirovitch’s psychic rape and Jace’s death with more patience than anyone had ever shown me, could still be on the Devil’s side.
It’s not possible, Da
I said nothing. Japhrimel went still as a stone behind me, radiating a fierce hurtful awareness. I had rarely felt this kind of pressure and tension from him. It was the same feeling—him listening to a sound I could not hear, seeing something I could not see—only magnified to the nth degree.
Finally—probably after he thought I’d stewed enough—Lucifer turned slowly, as if he had all the time in the world.
He probably did.
He was too beautiful, the kind of androgynous beauty holovid models sometimes have. If I hadn’t known he was male, I might have wondered. The mark on his forehead flashed green, an emerald like a Necromance’s only obviously not implanted, the skin smoothly turning into a gem. Lucifer’s radioactive, silken green eyes met mine, and if I hadn’t had practice at meeting Japhrimel’s green gaze—and later, his dark eyes so much older than a human’s—I might have let out a gasp.
Instead, I stared at the emerald. He might think I was looking him in the eye if I focused on the gem. The emerald grafted in my own cheek burned. I tried to remind myself it wasn’t like his; my emerald was a mark of my bond with my personal psychopomp, the god whose protection I carried, the mark of a Necromance.
It didn’t work. I still felt nauseated.