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Though that might have been a good disguise strategy, too.
I slipped out through the third-story window and down the rickety iron fire escape, leaving the door locked—I had another day paid for—and I didn’t leave anything behind.
The alley below was filthy, but I was relatively comfortable in my own bubble of demon scent. I found a mound of garbage and threw down the heavy mass of curling black hair, then used a very small bit of Power to spark the strands. They smoked and smelled awful, but they burned. I finally stamped the fire out and kicked garbage over it to hide the stench and the crisped ash. I tried not to feel victorious, but I didn’t try very hard. I’d survived for five days—not bad when you’re matched against demons.
I stepped out into the wilds of Freetown New Prague on a chilly afternoon just as the sky was begi
Six bars and one short, vicious fight in an alley later, I stepped into a dingy pivnice, a watering hole tucked under a bridge. I brushed at my sleeve—one of the group of normals who’d thought I’d be easy prey had bled on me. I hadn’t killed any of them, but I’d been tempted. Human flotsam tends to collect in Freetowns. Sometimes their greed overpowers their good sense and they decide to find out if a psion carrying steel is combat-trained.
I can never understand why any accredited psion—someone legally allowed to carry anything short of an assault rifle on the streets—would not undergo combat training and stay in shape. Even non-accredited psions are allowed to carry steel and one projectile weapon, though non-accrediteds usually didn’t go in for bounty hunting or anything else that would make a weapon necessary. Still… it doesn’t make sense to me not to both carry steel and know how to use it. Life is just too dangerous, especially for a psion. Normals hate and fear us enough that the less law-abiding are often tempted to think of us as targets.
The silence that fell in the pivnice when I entered was enough to make me think I’d done the wrong thing. It was a low, smoky room, three steps down from the sidewalk outside, a first floor that might have been at street level a hundred years ago but was now halfway to being a basement.
I sca
Well, isn’t this par for the course. Shock and unfamiliar fear slammed into my stomach. A queasy sense of unease boiled under my breastbone. Of all the people I expected to see here, he was the last.
But I’d been looking for someone I knew, and this was better than I’d hoped for. If I could convince him not to try to kill me.
I paced away from the door, through the haze of synth-hash smoke and the effluvia of unwashed human. This was a rough place—for once I didn’t look out of the ordinary with my weapons. Freetowns don’t have the type of legislation covering who could carry what the Hegemony or Putchkin have; it’s largely up to the ruling cartel of each town to make the rules and enforce them. So I saw projectile guns and shortswords, a few machetes, assorted other odds and ends. No plasguns.
That was a mark in my favor. I had a bounty hunter’s license, and here in the Freetown I could carry whatever I wanted if I kept my nose clean and didn’t interfere with Mob Family wars or cartel turf disputes.
Lucas Villalobos sat in a heavily shadowed back booth, a bottle on the table in front of him. I picked my way between tables, giving the bartender in his stained apron one glance when he opened his mouth. My tat shifted on my cheek, burning, my emerald spat a single green spark. I saw a few normals around me flinch.
Don’t say anything. I really don’t want to kill anyone today.
The bartender, a stolid heavy Freetowner with a long, drooping black moustache, closed his mouth and wiped his hands on his apron. I felt no gratitude or relief.
Lucas had his back to the wall. There was nothing I could do—I slid into the other side of the booth, my back prickling at the thought of the door behind me. It was an implicit gesture of trust. Lucas wouldn’t get many clients if he let them get shot in the bars he frequented. He was known for taking difficult, complex jobs most generally involving assassination; if you had enough cash to hire him, he would kill whoever you asked. He only had one rule—no kids. He wouldn’t kill anyone under eighteen.
At least, not unless they got in the way during a job. I’d heard unavoidable casualties didn’t bother him too much.
His eyes met mine. A river of scarring ran down the left side of his narrow face. I shivered. Word was—now, this is only pure rumor, I don’t know for sure—that he’d once been a Necromance, and committed some act so awful Death had denied him.
I couldn’t imagine. To be a Necromance, to be protected by Death, and to have that protection snatched away; to be able to see other psions but unable to touch, unable to perform in that space where a Necromance is most fiercely alive… that would be torture. I could have pitied him, if he wasn’t so dangerous.
He examined me, blinking slowly like a lizard. His almost-yellow eyes brightened a little, and his lipless mouth curled up slightly. “Well,” he said, lifting one finger and tapping his ruined cheek. “You come up in the world, chica.” He used the same whispery tone most professional Necromances adopt after a while. Or maybe it could have just been something wrong with his throat. Sometimes a whisper’s more effective than a shout for scaring the blue lights out of people.
I felt a prickle between my shoulderblades. Did not look back over my shoulder, did not dare even shift my weight. “I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.”
“I’d know that tat anywhere. You still move the same, too.” His hair lay lank against his skull. He smelled, as usual, of a dry stasis-cabinet, and I realized it wasn’t a human smell. Whatever he’d once been, he wasn’t strictly human now. “You owe me.”
I’d bargained with him in Nuevo Rio, while hunting Santino. “You turned down payment that time,” I reminded him. Shivered at the thought of paying him what he usually asked of a psion. There was a reason most of his clients were corporations and Mob Families. I heard he even did secret work for the Hegemony sometimes. “You thought I was dead.”
His face didn’t alter in the least, his expression was blank uninterested boredom. “Ain’t you? I don’t see much of what you once was in your face, Valentine.”
A hot plasburst of relief exploded in my stomach. So he did know who I was, he wasn’t just bluffing. Or if he was bluffing, he’d bluffed right. “Every day is a death,” I quoted, tapped my fingers on the table. “I’ve got a question and an offer for you, Lucas.”
He looked at me for a long time. There was a time when I would have raised my sword between me and his gaze, a time when the demon Japhrimel had been melded to my shadow while I faced down Lucas and I’d been damn glad of the backup. Now I held his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t see how desperate I was. I kept my thumb on my katana’s guard and my right hand near the hilt, just in case. I might be almost-demon, but Lucas was truly dangerous. They don’t call him the Deathless for nothing.