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“Feed him, keep him close. He is not a prisoner.” Japhrimel sounded chilly again, used to command. Why had I never heard this tone from him before? “Tell him he has my thanks.”
“Is she—”
“She will live, Tiens. Do as I say.” Thin razor-edge under the command. Japh might be calmer but he was still on a lasetrigger.
Tiens apparently didn’t consider it a big deal. “Of course, m’sieu. More blood?”
“No. I have enough. Get out.”
Blood? That means Japhrimel’s feeding. He never wanted to feed on blood in front of me, he preferred to visit slaughterhouses or feed on sex. I didn’t think I’d be up for any bedgames for a little while. “Japhrimel?” I sounded delirious, wondered why. Is he all right? The reactive… he sounds all right. I hope he’s okay.
“Be still, now. Let me work.” Power, pulsing along my abused nerves. Coating them with honey. A crackling sound, then a chill as something peeled away from my flesh. Air hitting damp skin, cold and full of knives but still somehow better than the burning.
Peeling away. Fingers in my hair, stroking gently, spi
“No. Let me work.”
Now that the furious pain was gone I could think again. “My emerald—”
“Still there. Still alive with your god’s presence. Be quiet now.”
The strength ran out of my arms and legs. I felt something hard under me, Japhrimel’s arms around me. A tickling touch over my face, down my throat, over my breasts, flowering down my body. A different type of tension stirred in me, my hips jerked forward. I heard a low moan—my own.
What, I’m a sexwitch now? The thought was panicked and dark, laden with uncomfortable hysteria—not at all like my usual self. Power had never evoked a sexual response in me.
Never.
It ran out my toes, a crackling tide of burning leaving me molten and shaken. I blinked several times, something fine and dusty falling from my eyelashes. Closed my eyes, still blind. Let my head tip back like a heavy fruit on my limp stem of a neck.
I still had eyelashes? Had someone said a hover laden with reactive? I’d been too busy trying to get Japhrimel out of the way to think about anything else.
Reaction fire. What was it with these people chasing me and the reaction fire?
Is it any consolation that they are not “people”? Japhrimel’s voice, deep and amused, sounded in my memory.
Had a demon tried to smash me with a hover? It didn’t seem like them, I somehow got the sense that demons liked to do their work a little more up-close. When you’ve got eternity to play in, bloodsport needs to be personal; anything else is just too boring. Or so I think, having studied what I can of demons.
Something else is going on here. Lucifer winds me up and sets me in motion—but he also takes the chance and makes sure I’m separated from Japhrimel. Someone sends an imp after me—but any Greater Flight demon would guess I would be almost capable of taking care of an imp. It was just to keep me ru
But demons had all the time in the world. Lucifer only contracted me for seven years. The smart thing to do was lie low and wait until I was no longer the Right Hand. Seven years was an eyeblink for a demon.
Someone was trying to throw me off the track. Someone wanted me to chase my own tail.
Or someone was using me for another purpose, bait or distraction.
Lucifer? An escaped demon? Who?
All of the above?
I opened my eyes. Saw darkness. Blinked, saw glowing green eyes. A familiar face.
“Japhrimel,” I breathed. My body felt made out of lead, my mouth strangely numb.
His fingertips stroked my forehead. “Dante,” he breathed back. “Did you think to protect me?”
“As a matter… of fact, I did.” I blinked again. “Someone’s trying… to delay… us. Or… use… ”
“Now this is revealed unto you?” He stroked my forehead again, bent to press a kiss onto my cheek. “Think no more on it. Sleep, and heal.”
I fell into darkness, still trying to think through the soup my brain had become.
Chapter 26
The next time I woke, it was to find myself in a small, cheap room in Freetown New Prague. Thick curtains were pulled tightly over blind windows. Day or night? I didn’t know.
I rolled up, pushing aside the softness of Japhrimel’s wing. Examined my hands. Thin tendrils of hair fell forward, brushed my cheeks. It was too long, past my shoulders, as if I’d chopped it months instead of a few days ago. Hair? I’d been in the middle of a reaction fire, I shouldn’t have any hair left.
I shouldn’t have any skin left. Not to mention bones, muscles, or blood.
My hands looked like mine. My shoulder looked like mine, with the scarring decoration of Japhrimel’s mark. Even my legs were familiar, down to the velvet hollows behind my knees. Even my feet were mine.
I made it up to stand, unsteady. Japhrimel lay on his back, motionless, one arm flung over his eyes, his wings a soft darkness, one draping off the bed, the other curled close to his side where I had pushed it. The blankets were pushed down to his hips—he didn’t like anything covering his wings when he lay next to me. He was warm enough I didn’t mind.
A slice of light showed from a white-tiled bathroom. I bolted for it and scrambled inside, blinking against the sudden assault of light. Found the mirror, stood trembling in front of it, my fingers curling around the lip of the porcelain sink.
The same face, a ghost of my human looks bleeding through the lovely golden features. My mouth pulled down at the corners as I examined myself, dark eyes moving over now-familiar arches and curves. For the first time, I felt relieved to see the marks of what Japhrimel had made me in the mirror.
My accreditation tat showed sharp and strong against the golden skin of my left cheek. The emerald glittered, spitting a dart of light. My hair wasn’t as long as it had been—but it wasn’t a chopped-short mess either. It brushed my shoulders in silky disarray.
And so much simpler than going to a salon, the voice of merry unreason caroled inside my head.
I closed my eyes, my fingernails driving against the porcelain with a small screeching sound. Tried to concentrate.
It didn’t work, so I dropped down on my knees. Rested my forehead against the porcelain.
It took a few breaths, but it finally came. My jagged gasping smoothed out, I drew in a few more deep circular breaths and dropped below conscious thought, into the space where a pulse other than my heart thrummed.
Blue crystal walls rose up around me. The Hall was immense, stretching up to dark starry infinity, plunging down below into the abyss. I walked over the bridge, my footfalls resounding against the stone. My feet were bare—I felt grit on the stone surface, the chill of wet rock. The emerald flamed, feeding a bright cocoon, kept me from being knocked off the bridge and into the well of souls. The living did not come here—except for those like me.
Necromance.
On the other side of the bridge the sleek black dog sat back on his haunches, waiting, his high pointed ears focused forward. I touched my heart and my forehead with my right hand, a salute I would give to no other god, demon, or human. Only Death ruled me. Anubis. My lips shaped the other sound that was the god’s personal name; That Which Ca