Страница 70 из 74
Long hazy time of darkness. When I woke, slowly, I found myself on my side. Warmth closed over me, and softness. Power pulsed down my skin, sank in, ran along my bones. I heard Japhrimel’s voice, quiet, saying something in his native tongue. Something stroked my forehead, a touch that sent a sweet gentle fire through my entire body. He traced my hairline, touched my cheek, ran his knuckle over my lips.
Hoverwhine. I felt the peculiar humming sensation of antigrav transport. Was I on a hover?
I don’t think I like hovers anymore.
I opened my eyes. Dim light greeted me. I felt my swordhilt, both hands locked around it. The sword lay with me, its subliminal hum of Power good and right against my palms.
Japhrimel moved as soon as I looked up at him, straightening and stepping back. I was on a medunit table bolted to a wall behind a partition, and the curve of the plasteel walls told me it was a fairly good-sized hover. The table was hard, but I wasn’t being strangled and I didn’t feel ripped in half. I was still breathing, and I had all my original appendages.
It felt great. I closed my eyes, opened them again, and he was still there.
“Gods,” I rasped. “I’m glad to see you.”
He managed to look surprised and gratified at once, his saturnine face easing. “Then I am happy. You are well and whole, your friend Lucas has mended, and McKinley and Va
I nodded. It was getting hazardous to hang around me, and humans were fragile.
I felt only a twinge of guilt for thinking that. After all, I’d been wholly human once, hadn’t I?
Was Japhrimel right? Was it no more than a habit? I didn’t want to think so. I was human inside, where it counted.
He leaned forward, his eyes still bright and green. I examined his face as he examined mine, something new in the silence between us.
He broke it first, for once. “He could have killed you.”
I nodded, my hair sliding along a crisp cotton pillowcase. Where had the pillow come from? “He certainly wanted to.” The question spilled out of me. “Did you hunt the Fallen, Japhrimel?”
He froze. I would never get used to his particular quality of stillness, as if his very molecules had slowed their frenetic dance. Then his face darkened. It was all the answer I needed.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” It came out plaintive instead of angry. I was too emotionally exhausted to be angry. “If you would just talk to me—”
“I see no reason to tell you of every assassination I committed at the behest of the Prince.” There was no mercy in his tone; it scorched with bitterness not directed at me. “Why will you not trust me? Is it so hard to do as I ask?”
You could make me do whatever you wanted; you could force me. You probably will. And I’ll fight however I can, no matter how much I love you. You can’t control me. “I want to trust you,” I whispered. “You make it hard.” I had one last question. “Did Lucifer offer you your place in Hell back if you got rid of me?”
He stared at me for an endless moment. Then comprehension lit his face, comprehension and savage anger. “Vardimal’s Androgyne.”
“She wanted to meet me.” I opened my mouth to tell him the other half of it—that she’d said she was my daughter too—and shut my lips.
He didn’t need to know that. That was private. That was human, between Doreen and me. It was mine.
“Ah. Now it makes sense.” Japhrimel straightened, and turned away from me. His shoulders shook, stiffly. He tipped his head back, his inky hair falling away from his forehead, and I felt the slight tremor that raced through the hover.
“Japhrimel?” I didn’t expect him to listen, but he did. “Please, don’t.”
His reaction told me everything I needed to know. He hadn’t kept the knowledge of Eve’s escape from me, he hadn’t even known. I was willing to believe it.
Are you believing it just because you want to, or because it makes sense?
I didn’t care.
The earthquake of his fury eased. I could barely tell anyone else was on the hover, it was so silent.
When he turned back to me, I almost flinched. His upper lip drew back, exposing his teeth; his eyes were incandescent. He looked far more lethal than Velokel the Bull. “An Androgyne out of Hell,” he said tightly. “Of course. Of course. I suppose the Hunter and the Twins are in league with her?”
“I think so.” I freed my right hand from my swordhilt, started to push myself up on my elbow. The softness—it was one of the new microfiber spaceblankets, warm and soft at the same time—crinkled as it folded down. He was immediately there, helping me; I felt clean, my clothes were soft as if freshly laundered. Probably cleaned off with Power; he knew how I hated to be dirty. I was vaguely surprised to find my sword had a new reinforced sheath, deep indigo lacquer. “Japhrimel, she asked me to distract you. To just wait out the next seven years and pretend we can’t find her. She wants to—”
“She is in rebellion against the Prince.” He stroked my hair back from my face with his free hand as he steadied me. “She ca
“She can win if you help her. You’re…” I couldn’t believe I’d said it, and apparently neither could he, because he set his jaw and looked away, a muscle flicking in his golden cheek.
“No.” Just the one word, forced out through his lips.
“Japhrimel—” Please, I was going to say. I was going to plead, to beg if that was what it came to. Stopped myself just in time. Begging was weakness.
But she was part Doreen’s, and part mine. It was worth any weakness if I could make him understand, if I could convince him to help me.
He spoke before I could muster the words. “You are asking me to endanger your life by throwing our lot in with a rebellion that ca
“Lucifer wants to kill me anyway.” It came out flat and hopeless. What chance did I have if the Devil wanted me dead?
“I can keep him from you.” His hand bit into my shoulder. “Have I not kept him from you so far?”
Oh, Japh. Please. Help me out here. “She only asked, Japh. She didn’t demand, she didn’t manipulate, she didn’t force me. She just asked.”
That seemed to make him even angrier. “She’s demon. We lie, my curious one, in case you have not noticed.”
Oh, I’ve noticed. Believe me, I’ve learned to count on it. “What about you?”
He leaned in close, his nose an inch from mine, his eyes filling mine with green light just like the wristcuff’s warnings. “Judge me by what I do. Have I not always kept faith with you?”
I opened my mouth to retort, but he had a point. All I had to do was breathe to understand the answer to that particular question. “The Master Nichtvren didn’t say it was Lucifer, he just said it was a demon with a green gem. You did lie.”
No response. My heart pounded. You gave up Hell for me, and you just lied to the Prince of Hell for me. “You lied to protect me from the Devil. And you pushed him back. You stopped him.”
He shrugged, his coat moving with a whispering sound. Said nothing.
I reached up with my right hand, touched his face. He sighed, closing his eyes. Leaned into my fingers.
If he hadn’t been so close, I might have missed the single tear that slipped out beneath his eyelashes and tracked down his cheek in the semi-darkness.
Oh, Japhrimel. My heart broke. I could actually feel it cracking apart inside my chest.
“What am I going to do with you?” I managed around the lump in my throat. “You tried to force me to do what you wanted. You hurt me.”