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He finally scooped up the bottle, lifted it to his lips, took a swig. Set it down with a precise little click. “What you want, chica?”
Relief, sharp and acrid. I didn’t let it show. He wasn’t averse to bargaining, or being hired. Maybe I could pull this off. “Are you afraid of demons?”
That won a small whistling wheeze from him, Villalobos’s version of a laugh. I watched his face crinkle, scarred flesh pleating. “They die just like everythin’ else,” he finally whispered.
I’m not even going to ask you how you know that. “All right. How would you like to work for the Devil, Lucas Villalobos? The Prince of Hell?”
He measured me for a long moment. “You’re fucking serious?”
I held his eyes for longer than I would have thought possible. “I’m fucking serious. Pay’s negotiable; the boss is a bitch, but you get to kill things the like of which you’ve never seen before.” At least I hope you’ve never seen them before. Or maybe I hope you have, and you know what to do to keep me alive.
He thought about it. I hoped he was tempted, too.
Dante Valentine, alive despite demons for maybe a little while longer, tempting a man who couldn’t die. I thought temptation was a demon trick.
Maybe I’d learned it from the best.
“Pay’s negotiable?”
I set my jaw, stared into his eyes, and nodded. “Negotiable, Lucas. What do you want?”
The faint twitch at the corner of his eye warned me. I slapped his hand aside, locking his wrist, the knife buried itself into the table. I found myself sitting across from him, my slim golden fingers locked in a vise around his hand on the knife.
Lucas Villalobos smiled, the river of scarring down one side of his face wrinkling. He hadn’t meant to attack me, just see if I was on my toes. His other hand was loosely clasped around the bottle.
I’ve never seen anyone human move that fast. If I squeezed, I could probably break a bone or two in his hand, and my fingers would sink into plasteel if I extended my claws.
His pupils dilated, turning his almost-yellow eyes a darker shade. “What’s the job?” he whispered. His skin was dry and surprisingly fine, but I could feel the tense humming strength in his arm. No, he wasn’t human anymore.
If he ever was. It’s only rumor when it comes to him, Da
I took a deep breath. “Keep me alive long enough to kill four Greater Flight demons, and be my eyes and ears.” I quelled the urge to look behind me. The mark on my shoulder was soft heat now, wrapping around me, each pulse of Power sliding through my veins and bones. Distracting—but I could use the Power. Was Japhrimel tracking me even now?
Oh, gods, I hope so.
Lucas made that whistling, wheezing sound again, as if he was being slowly strangled. “You’re never boring,” he said in a low, choked voice. “Let’s go out the back door.”
Relief made me feel a little weak, but I didn’t look away. “What do you want in return, Lucas?”
“The usual.” His mouth twitched. “Or I’ll think of somethin’ else.”
Oh, gods. Gods above. My skin seemed to chill. But here was an opportunity, and he was definitely the lesser of two evils. I was slightly nauseated at the thought of what I was about to agree to.
Slightly? More than slightly. But when it comes to a choice between nausea and dying in some hideous way, I’ll take a little bit of indigestion.
“Done.” My voice husked through the word, like sodden silk dipped in honey. “One thing.” I paused, my hand still clasped around his. The knife creaked in the tabletop, a muttering tide of whispers rising through the pivnice. The town would soon be buzzing with the news that Villalobos had found a new client. “What are you doing in New Prague?”
He rasped out a laugh. I wasn’t sure I liked being the butt of Lucas Villalobos’s humor. “Abracadabra.” He pulled a wad of rumpled New Credits from his pocket and tossed a few on the table. “I was in Saint City way; she told me to go to New Prague and you’d find me. Bad news always turns up. I owed her a favor.”
The Spider of Saint City wasn’t quite a friend, but she wasn’t an enemy either. We’d done each other some good turns in the past—and she had warned me about Santino and given me the direction to track him. So she’d used a favor to send Lucas to me, which meant I owed her now.
Oddly enough, I found myself not minding. And unsurprised that Abra knew I’d turn up in New Prague. I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but she wasn’t human either, and she always seemed to know far more than she should even with her thriving trade in information.
But there might be more to this. “What were you doing visiting Abra?” I loosened my fingers, and he worked the knife free of the tabletop and made it vanish back into his clothing. I watched, but he didn’t so much as twitch toward another weapon.
“I drop in every twenty years or so. Nice to have a client that doesn’t age.” He stood up, and I slid out of the booth as well. Now I could see he was only about three inches taller than me (instead of the five-inch edge he used to have), and bandoliers still crisscrossed his narrow chest. He wore a blousy cotton shirt, yellow with age, and old broken-in jeans. The heels of his boots were worn down. “Let’s go, Valentine. From now until the fourth demon’s dead, I’m your new best friend.”
I let out a sound that wasn’t quite a sigh. Lucas was a viper, deadly and unpredictable—but if he said he was my man, it was a bargain. Villalobos didn’t back down from his word. He still scared the hell out of me, but if you’re facing down a clutch of demons you could do worse than have the Deathless on your side.
Chapter 15
When you spend decades doing assassinations, it pays to have a bolthole in a major city or two. I was just glad Villalobos had one here.
I followed his shuffling feet and slumped shoulders through twisting narrow streets in the Old Town, marking each turn in a Magi-trained memory that has seen many cities; it’s amazing how much they start to look alike after a while.
We ducked down an alley and into the sewers through the basement of a crumbling building that now housed a colony of slicboard couriers, Neoneopunk music pounding through the air and the sharp smell of Czechi cooking filling my nose, sparking hunger. I already had a good basic grasp of the shadow side of the city after my six-bar odyssey. Now Lucas took me underneath.
Here under the Stare Mesto, water dripped in chilly rivulets down stone, twisting its dark way from the rounded ceilings of the old sewers. Lucas pressed the scanlock on the round door, after making sure we weren’t followed by doubling back a few times.
Claustrophobia filled my throat with acid and made my heart pound. I didn’t say a word. The door creaked open. I lose a lot of my sense of direction underground, but I was fairly sure I could make it to the surface and give anyone chasing me a good run. If I didn’t expire of hyperventilation when the walls started to close in on me. I do not do well with closed spaces; most psions don’t. I have memories that don’t help either, memories of the Faraday cage in the sensory-deprivation vault under Rigger Hall, where the darkness was like worms eating the foundations of my mind and the air itself turned to solid glass, choking and slick.
Better claustrophobic than dead. I can live with an awful lot when demons are trying to kill me.
Beyond the door, mellow full-spectrum light played over wood and tile. I stepped through the round hole and let out a soft breath of wonder.
Lucas’s lair in New Prague was in a long, vaulted chamber, well insulated from psychic or physical attack. If I knew Lucas, there would be a few little surprises hidden in the room, as well as quick ways to get out that didn’t involve the front door. But for a moment, I simply stopped to admire as he closed the door behind us.