Saint City Sinners

Chapter 26

I remember only flashes. A face over mine, a face I'd seen in DMZ Sarajevo while a nightclub full of Nichtvren and other paranormals danced to the throbbing beat below and a hellhound dozed at his side. Round and heavy, square teeth that still looked sharp, cat-slit glowing eyes. The face wasn't human, for all that a human Magi's hand had once drawn it in a charcoal sketch. The eyes were too big, the teeth too square, and the expression was… inhuman.

Yelokel? The Hunter. Allied to Eve. Anubis, help me. "She was not to be harmed." A harsh unlovely voice, but with its own compelling undertone. A voice that demanded obedience, burrowed along the nerve endings and hurt as It yanked at my bones, ran hot lead into my marrow. I moaned softly, half-swallowed the sound. I could barely even think the disorientation was so intense.

"She'll live." Someone else, clear and chill as a bell. I recognized it, didn't I? I'd heard it taunting Japhrimel, when my fingers were glued to the ropy scar of his name against my shoulder.

"Here is your payment." Clink of something light and metallic, a short chuffing inhale of breath. "Consider our alliance renewed."

Darkness took me again as I strained to open my eyes, to see, to fight.

The next flash-a candleflame. Red flame, crimson as blood. Standing up straight, then wavering in a nonphysical direction, not guttering but seeming to shudder anyway. I struck out with fists and feet, dimly aware I was in danger. I heard shouts, and someone caught my wrist, a touch that sent fire through me and made my left shoulder crunch with vivid pain.

"Be still," he said, the voice that demanded I obey. I struggled against it, against him, felt the python squeeze of another mind close around mine, Power crushing down until my strangled scream choked the air. He squeezed, almost as I would with a werecain, but harder, determined-this was no warning, this was a prelude to brutal mental rape.

No. The core of stubbornness in me rose, something hard and ugly as biting on magtape. It was the strengthless endurance that had kept me alive and conscious during some of the worst parts of my life.

What you cannot escape you must fight. What you cannot fight, you must endure.

Scars in the fabric of my mind tore open, bled afresh. Tearing, ripping, my defenses resisted, denying him entrance to my mind, to the innermost core of me. For a dizzying eternity I was back in the shattered cafeteria in Rigger Hall, choking on ectoplasm as a Feeder ripped and stabbed through my psyche-

— shoving against the back of my throat, against my nose and eyes and ears, fingering at the zipper of my jeans, another tide of slime as Mirovitch's ka tried to force its way in-

A breathless scream spiraled up out of me. No. I would fight, I would die before enduring another vicious mental assault. I could not be violated that way again and remain sane.

"Stop." Female, young, and edged with steel, a smell like baking bread and heavy musk, a smell I recognized. The smell of Androgyne.

Eve, Doreen's daughter. Lucifer's child. And maybe mine too.

"Stop I t. Didn't I tell you not to hurt her?" The sharp guncrack of a slap, and I fell into darkness again, the mental pressure falling away and my slight helpless moaning spiraling into silence.

Next came the gutwrench of hover transport, my stomach turning over in purely psychosomatic reaction to the rattling hum of antigrav. My cheek against freezing-cold metal, the Gauntlet on my left wrist propping my head up. I moaned, soundlessly, my mouth hung slack. Something was very wrong. I felt too weak, too fevered. What was happening to me?

Burning fingers stroked my forehead. "Hush," Eve said, gently. "It's all right, Dante. I'm here now."

I don't want you, I thought hazily. I want Japhrimel. It should be him saying those words to me. Where is he? Japh?

Power jolted down my spine, spread through nerve channels still screaming-raw with pain, detonated agony in my belly and my side, as if all the old wounds, from Lucifer's kick to the helihound tearing into me, were slashing back open. I screamed, more and more Power forced into me, with no regard for pain or humanity.

"There," she whispered, stroking my forehead again. "Better?"

It wasn't better. Japhrimel wouldn't have hurt me like that, he had never hurt me like that. Childish faith rose up in me, I was too exhausted to fight it. Darkness, since I couldn't open my eyes, the crackling breathlessness of a small space full of demons, a heavy spice in the air that closed around me and soothed even as my nervous system jolted with more electric pain, raw acid tracing through my bones.

"Japhrimel," I heard myself whisper, cracked lips shaping the word.

"Soon enough," she said, and I heard cloth moving. She walked away, but the aura of her scent lingered, sinking into my head, confusing me until I passed out again.

When I woke next, my fingers slid against my breastbone. I lay on my back, on something soft. I felt the arc of my collarbone, the calluses on my fingertips scraping as I reached instinctively for my left shoulder. Then, contact, Japhrimel's mark writhing and hot, bumps and ropes of scarring moving under my skin like the inked lines of my tat.

I don't care, I thought hazily. I need you. Please.

The vision swallowed me whole, I sank into seeing out through his eyes as if I had never stopped. Had I always resisted before?

— spine straight, sitting in the middle of the circle holding square holding pentacle, the diagram spinning lazily against the glassy floor Wrists braceleted with ignored agony, shoulders afire, staring straight ahead with dry burning eyes. The candleflame was low and guttering, now and then stretching. A few more hours, and he would be free.

The door opened, slowly, and she had come. As he had suspected, she could not ignore the chance to taunt him. Tall demon, the mark of the Androgyne on her forehead, a sleek cap of pale hair and a half-smile that tore at him, reminding. She was not the woman he wanted to see.

She wore simple blue, the marriage-color, a sweater and loose breeches hiding none of her slender grace. The aura of an Androgyne-spice, the potent smell of possible-breeding, the attraction of fertility-teased at him.

It was not the scent he wanted.

"A spider emerges." Forcing the words out between his teeth, no politeness, no petty games of silence. "The trap was baited well."

She shrugged, pushing her sweater-sleeves up. "Sometimes the clumsiest tools are the most effective. You could be free in a single moment, Eldest. All that is necessary is to say the word." Her voice stroked the air, the weapon of an Androgyne, meant to seduce, cajole, entice.

His right hand became a fist, and the flexing of muscle pushed at his wrist, a red tide of pain sweeping up his arm.

She laughed, a low sarcastic bark of merriment. Perhaps he truly did amuse her. "Then I will be forced to treat with your companion, Fallen. She, at least, will listen to reason."

Both wrists burned now as his fists knotted. The candle guttered, recovered itself slowly. "If she is harmed-"

"Why would I harm her? She is so amenable, so willing to please."

It was his turn to laugh, sweeping his eyes across the room at the windows. No sunlight. Another day gone while he worried at the walls of his prison, tearing apart the demonic magick that held him bit by bit, thread by thread. Inhuman patience, a single pointed will, spurred by the need burning in his veins. Need, like addiction. He wanted to see her again, he needed to see her again, to reassure himself she was alive, unharmed.

He needed to touch her.

"You have not found her so?" Eve continued, patent surprise in her tone. "But of course not. And now all her frustrated passion for you will fall upon me. I am, at least, willing to simply ask her. She does not trust you."

"She will know better in time." The words scraped his throat raw, he forced down rage. It would blind him, and he needed clear vision now.

"She escaped and killed a hellhound, Eldest. Even now she cries out your name as she dies wounded-no, not by my hand, I assure you. Such a thing has never been seen before, a Fallen's concubine overmatching a Hound."

He shrugged, the movement spilling pain into his shoulders. The heavy liquid of his armored wings slid against his skin. "You do not deceive me."

It was not an answer.

Her tone was gentle. Of course, she did not need to shout. "You are Fallen, yet with a demon's Power. She is hedaira, bound to you and sharing in your newfound status. Such a pair could help me topple him, Eldest. Such a pair could name their price for support or service."

He closed his eyes. "You bore me."

"What side will you choose if she ties herself to me? Answer me that, Deathbringer. Should I add any of your other titles, Right Hand? Kinslayer?"

He said nothing.

"She had this," the Andmgyne continued, and he opened his eyes again. Saw, with no real surprise, the book. How had she found it? How had she had time to find it? Or was it another lie? "I think perhaps I should read it to her, I may even teach her the language it is written in. It will make a wonderful bedtime story."

His legs twitched, ready to bring him to his feet. But it was still not yet time. He closed his eyes again, did his best to close his ears.

The silvery laugh taunted him. "Pleasant thoughts, Eldest." The door scraped along the floor as she closed it, and the sound-not-sound of another hellhound appearing, its padded obsidian feet striking against the floor like fingers caressing a drumhead, scored his ears. His-

— fingertips fell away from the mark, and I blinked up at a ceiling made of blue. Deep dark blue velvet hung in waves, stitched with tiny little things that glittered in the low clear light pouring in through a gray, rain-speckled window.

The bed was fit for a princess, four-postered and choked in dark blue silk and velvet. I pushed myself up on my elbows, flinched as my tender head reminded me someone had been messing with my psychic shields. Silk sheets slid cold against my naked skin. There was a nivron fireplace spitting blue flame, and the decor ran to heavy faux-Renascence. A slice of white tiled bathroom gleamed through an open door. Two chairs, both of blue watered silk, and something incongruous-a steam-driven radiator, painted white, set under the window.

I thought there weren't any of those left. If I hadn't been so research-oriented, I might not have recognized it. As it was, I'd swallowed history books whole all my life. A printed page was a psion's best friend-books didn't point, or mock, or beat, or manipulate. They simply told the story.

My eyes closed, slowly, as if my eyelids were falling curtains. The moments seen through Japhrimel's eyes had taken on the quality of a dream, fuzzy and fading. I sighed.

What dream is this, before my eyes? I heard Lewis's voice, even and deep. Dreams, the children of an idle brain… I dreamed a dream, and lo my dream was taken from me….

My head echoed with jabs of pain, poking into my temples. My mental shields had held up, demon-strong-but old scars had ripped apart again, as if my psyche was part of my flesh and torn open. A nervous trembling like voltage through a faulty AI relay quaked up from my bones. I shivered, cold and feverish at the same time.

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well, Lewis's ghost whispered. I could almost smell the coffee he used to drink, thick espresso cut with cream. Could feel my child-self's cheek resting on my small hand as I listened to his flexible voice slide through the ancient words, strangely accented. Lord, what fools these mortals be. Night and day the gates of dark Death stand open….

Another voice cut across the recitation. I will always come for you.

Japhrimel. My eyes flew open. My sword lay sheathed next to me. My right hand curled loose around the hilt. My bag, a dimple of darkness, lay against the bottom of the bed. I heard stealthy creaks, little tiny sounds, telling me others moved in this place. But the sounds were… different. Too light and quick, or too groaningly heavy. They were not the human sounds of an inhabited house. The air was thick and heavy with crackling Power, the walls vibrating with demon shielding. I recognized it as the type of shields Japhrimel had laid in every room we'd shared. Shielding to keep a room invisible, to keep everything inside safe.

My bedroom in Toscano had been blue, too. But the light in that bedroom had been warm, southern sun flooding every surface. This light was cold, gray, and wet. Saint City light.

I reached for my bag, making a small noise as my abdomen protested. The sight of the Gauntlet, no longer dull silver but turned dark as if corroded, barely stopped me. I couldn't tell if the cold clasping my flesh was from the cuff or not.

I didn't care, either.

I dragged my bag across velvet, flipped it open, and found it unransacked. Even Selene's book was still there. It was small, the size of a holovid still romance, and in the light I saw the cover, too fine-grained to be leather.

Had I really seen the book in Eve's hands, through Japhrimel's eyes? Had Eve slipped it back into my bag? Or was Japhrimel even able to lie to me while I looked through his eyes, since he was no longer a familiar but Fallen?

I wouldn't put it past him. But there would be no way for him to know when I was going to touch the mark. Eve wants my help, she wants his help too. If she can't have both of us she'll take me. I don't blame her at all. I didn't even mind her telling him about my "frustrated passion" for him.

Hey, you can't argue with the truth.

My fingers trembled, the chipped black polish on my nails glowing mellow. My cuff ran and rang with green light, the fluid lines carved in it twisting and straining. Sheets and blankets pooled in my lap, my golden skin unmarked but feeling stretched-thin, too strained.

Hedaraie Occasus Demonae, stamped into the cover with gilt. It looked old, and the faint spice of demons clung to every closely-written page. It was written in a spidery alien hand, the ink deep maroon on vellum pages. It was in a language I had no hope of reading, vaguely Erabic but with plenty of spiked diacritical marks I couldn't decipher. Useless unless I did some more research, found someone who knew what language it was and had time to teach me or translate it. I glanced at a few pages without truly seeing them, examined the binding, and dropped it in my bag as if it had burned me.

It was skin, but not animal skin. Bile whipped the back of my throat. I yanked my bag closed and tightened my grip on my sword.

I sensed her before the door opened, the black diamond fire of a demon's aura. When the door opened-I heard no click of a lock-and Eve stepped in, I sucked in my breath and pulled the sheet up with my right hand; covering my chest and wadding the silk against the mark on my shoulder. My left hand closed around my sword so tightly the knuckles turned white.

She was slim, with sleek pale hair and flashing darkblue eyes. Today she wore white, a pristine crisp buttondown shirt with the tapered sleeves that were fashionable now, a pair of bleached jeans, good boots. Doreen had always worn sandals.

Doreen. The cuff squeezed my wrist again, so hard the bones creaked.

She looked like Doreen, the same triangular face and wide eyes, the same way of tilting her head. She folded her arms, a fall of material caught in them, and I breathed in the smell of Androgyne, the Power flooding from her sparking along my nerve endings.

"Dante," she said quietly. "I've brought you clothes. And explanations."

"The h-hellhounds." I sounded like a little girl. The wristcuff above my datband glowed green. "Velokel?"

"Only one was ours, and only supposed to find you so I could speak with you. The other, I do not know. Kel would not harm you, Dante. He knows how much you mean to me."

Is that why he tried to tear my head open like a sodaflo can? My throat was dry. "You have Japh."

She nodded. "It was a stroke of luck, capturing instead of killing him." Her pale hair didn't ruffle, it was as sleek as a silken cap. Her skin glowed, burnished gold. "I'd hoped you would be able to distract him."

Me too. "He's persistent." The thin trickle of heat in my belly made my stomach turn. I am not a sexwitch. I do not respond this way to Power.

But I did, didn't I? After all, I was staring at her, at the shape of her lips, filling my lungs with the scent of her. Fresh bread, musk, and demon, a smell that whipsawed me between terror and desire, a smell that made it difficult to think straight. Pheromones like a sexwitch, drenching the air. She smelled like Lucifer, but she didn't scare me the way he did.

She sighed. "We've had a difficult time evading the Eldest."

"You and me both. He kept putting me to sleep without my realizing it. I asked him not to hunt you, Eve. I begged him not to hunt you, and not to lie to me." I sound like a whiny three-year-old. But it was suddenly very important for Doreen's daughter to understand I'd tried my best to keep him away from her.

She made an expressive gesture with one hand, brushing away the need to explain. "Demons lie, Dante. It's in the nature of the thing." Her lips quirked up into a half-smile, my own expression, familiar. Was it true? Was she also my daughter, the sample Santino took from Doreen contaminated with my blood as well?

Doreen's daughter, Gabe's daughter. Both mothers dead and depending on me.

How am I going to pull this one off. My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. "You too?"

"Maybe. I suppose you'll have to figure out if you can trust me. There are no guarantees." She held up the handful of material, jeans and something else. "I brought you fresh clothes. Then I'll take you to see the Eldest."

My throat closed up. He's here. In the same building, maybe? The mark was numb, maybe because whatever they have him trapped in cuts him off from me? "What if I don't want to see him?" It was a rusty croak. The light caressed her face, ran its fingers over her hair, touched the arc of her golden neck where the pulse beat.

She shrugged. "How else are you going to know if I'm lying?"

I tore my eyes away from her face, away from the slope of her breasts under the crisp white cotton. My eyes fell on my sword's curved length, resting against the velvet in the glowing indigo sheath Japhrimel had given me. "I have a revenge to do." I still sounded like a little girl; high and squeaky, and breathless.

"I won't force you, Dante. I'll ask for your support, but I won't force you." She approached quietly, cloth whispering as she laid the clothes on the end of the bed. "Your weapons are there, on the floor. Whenever you're ready, you may go on your way or see the Eldest, as you wish. If you decide to… to throw your lot in with us, we'll welcome you. You killed a hellhound; there's not many that could have done so."

It almost killed me too, it was trying to take my heart out through my ribs the hard way. "The h-hellhound was t-trying t-t-to-"

"The one we sent was supposed to find you and bring you to us, not harm you. I'm sorry, Dante. Events have become… complex."

Complex. I was getting to hate that word. When someone said it's getting complex, the translation usually was Danny Valentine's about to get screwed.

My head hurt. I had revenge to accomplish and Gabe's daughter to collect; I didn't have time for demon games. My heart thudded behind my breastbone. "Leander. And Lucas. The demon-"

"The demon who brought you to us was uninterested in the others, Dante. Or so he told us. I believe he was led to you in a manner I would not quite agree with." I felt more than heard her back away, toward the door. "Kel mistreated you, and for that I am sorry. I will punish him, if you like."

Oh, gods. I shook my head, speechless. Leave me the hell out of this. I don't need another demon mad at me. "If you like," she repeated, patiently.

"No," I whispered. Where did they go? Did they sense the demon coming? Gods grant they got out of there in time. I shuddered again, ice water creeping through my veins. I wasn't thinking straight. "No," I repeated, louder.

The gods knew I didn't want to make another demon enemy. Just add it to my laundry list, the merry voice of unreason chirped brightly inside my skull. I choked down a maniacal giggle.

"As you like." She paused. "If you change your mind, all you have to do is tell me."

I shook my head again, and she retreated.

When she closed the door with a quiet click, I scrambled up out of the bed to get dressed. My legs were a little shaky but still solid, and once I had clothes on I felt a lot better. If I kept moving, the vision of Eddie's shattered body-and the vision of Gabe's broken, battered, bloody one-wouldn't torture me so much. If I could just keep moving I might be able to get through this.

The clothes were… well, they were almost certainly Eve's. The sweater was too big for me, as was the silk T-shirt. But they were clean, and the jeans fit, and the boots were my size even if they were too new. They would need hard use before they were good.

My head gave an amazing flare of pain, so did my left shoulder. I crouched at the foot of the bed for a little while with my sword in my hands and my forehead pressed into the velvet of the coverlet. The shivers and hyperventilating finally stilled. Even my god was silent. There was no blue glow, no comforting sense of being held in Death's hands. There was only the breathless sense of waiting. For what? True to Eve's word, my weapons rig was tangled on the floor by the bed. Everything was undisturbed, I buckled myself in and wished for a microfiber shirt and a coat. Jace's necklace still rested against my throat, pulsing reassuringly as my fingers touched the knobs of the baculum. The mark on my shoulder had turned warm but quiescent, feeling like normal skin for the first time since it had been pressed into my flesh.

The cold retreated bit by bit, and the sense of being watched returned, but oddly distant. As if something was trying to see me, through layers of interference. Something deadly and inimical.

The Gauntlet was still dead-dark against golden skin, its surface swallowing instead of reflecting light.

I don't think I'm thinking clearly.

My right hand shook when I held it out in front of me. I tried to stop it, but the harder I tried the harder it vibrated. My fingers jittered like a slicboard needing tuning.

That reminded me of the Valkyrie, under a hedge in the rich bayfront part of town. I wanted the slicboard. It was a ridiculous thing to focus on, but it seemed the only thing that mattered was the sleek black deck, gleaming as I pressed its powercell and flung myself into open air, going fast enough to outrun… what?

First things first, Dante. Get this the fuck over with so you can kill the fucking traitors. Then you can go on living. Everything else-demons, Hell, Lucifer, even Eve-can wait.

I stopped the trembling in my hands by simply clamping them around the sword's slenderness. Once I got right down to it, the world was really simple. All I had to do was just cut out the bullshit and decide who to kill first.

I found Eve waiting for me in the hall, leaning against the wall and looking out a long window while gray light washed her face. She had tucked her pale hair behind her ears and stood slumped, as if tired. But she turned to me with a smile, as Doreen always had, and my heart thudded in my throat. "It's so nice to see the sun," she said, a little wistfully. Her smell mixed with mine, a fleshy ripe combination of musk and cinnamon, demon and female. "I missed that, in Hell."

A year in Hell is not the same as a year here, they all told me. I hoped I'd never find out. I glanced out the window, saw a slice of green and a high concrete wall. The hall was long, with high narrow windows. Blank doors stood at even intervals.

"You weren't ever allowed to come out?" Miraculously, my voice didn't shake. I clenched the sword in my hands, the hilt bobbing a little as my arms jerked.

She shook her head slightly, her eyes dropping. "Coming to your world, is a privilege for us. One earned only by obedience." Eve peeled herself away from the wall, pushing her sweater-sleeves up. "I have not been obedient in the slightest."

The hall was painted white too, with a hardwood floor. It looked like an institutional hall, and the skin on my back roughened to phantom gooseflesh at the thought that it might be a school. Or any old abandoned government building, maybe. Who knew? About all I could tell was that I was still in Saint City.

My arms jerked again.

Eve's fingers closed around mine. She was too close; I flinched. Demons had a spooky habit of getting too damn close to me; maybe they liked to move in on humans and see them flinch.

Only I wasn't quite human, was I?

The Androgyne's hand was warm, her skin impossibly soft. "Avayin, hedaira," she murmured. "Peace, Dante. Breathe."

I did. It was what Japhrimel always told me-Breathe, Dante. Simply breathe. It was enough like him that I felt my shoulders unloose, I closed my eyes. The iron bands squeezed around my lungs loosened a little, I dragged air down into the very bottom of my belly, and blessedly saw the blue glow of Death rise behind my eyelids. It wasn't much just subtle traceries of blue fire-but it made the shakes settle down.

My god, at least, had never betrayed me.

When I opened my eyes, I found Eve's face inches from my own, her nose almost touching mine. Her eyes were like Doreen's, dark blue, and except for the gold of her skin and the green gem glittering above and between her eyes, it was like looking at Doreen again. The crucial millimeters of difference weren't so visible close up, the overlay of demon that made her so exotic. Was there a similarity to my own face lurking in her bones?

My daughter. All I had left of my sedayeen lover. "Better?" she asked again.

I nodded, just a slight dip of my chin. "I've got to go;" I managed through the lump in my throat. "I've got a revenge to finish before I'm free to handle the rest of this." Now my knees were shaking for a different reason. She was so close I drowned in her smell, fire rising through my bones and blood and flesh, a heat I recognized pounding in my wrists and throat-and low in my belly.

I stepped back, breaking her hold on my hands. She let me go. There was a faint smile playing on her lips-an expression that was neither Doreen's nor mine, or even her own.

It reminded me of Lucifer. A slight, cruel lift of the corners of the lips, the eyes lit from within, the entire shape of the face changing from sweet or tired to predatory.

Desire turned to ice, crackling through me. Gray light bleached her platinum hair even further, made her eyes lighter than their usual dark blue. With the emerald glowing in her forehead, her eyes took on a slightly green cast.

Gods-My heart hammered. "Eve?" The word shattered on my lips, fell to the floor.

She shook her hair back and was again familiar. Or if not familiar, then at least more like what I thought I recognized.

Demons lie, Dante. Demons lie.

But Eve hadn't done anything to make me distrust her. As a matter of fact, she was the only demon I seemed able to believe at this point.

"See him," she said. "Please. If you would, Dante." Weariness swept over me, sucked at my legs. What did it matter? I knew what I needed to know, knew where my revenge lay. Five minutes facing down Japhrimel wouldn't matter one way or another. Would it?

"Can he get out?" Her shrug was a marvel of even fluidity.

"He's the Eldest. Even an Androgyne can't hold him for long, even in a circle made harder to break by the use of his hedaira's name. No one except the Prince could hold him, and perhaps not even that." She studied me for a moment, her hands dropping graceful and loose to her sides. "Of course, if you broke even a single line of the circles around him… that would set him completely free. I only ask for a little warning, enough to get my people out of here. We fear him."

The set level look in her blue eyes convinced me. You used my name in a circle to trap him? No wonder he's pissed. I swallowed, tasted copper. "There's a bunch of demons running around loose. What's going on?"

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. "My rebellion, it seems, has spread. I suspect that isn't what worries him the most, though." As usual, when she mentioned Lucifer her lip curled and her expressive eyes filled with disdain and loathing, not to mention a healthy dose of fear.

I stared at her face. "The treasure." A thin croak, the words turned to dust. "The Key."

"So he's told you?" She looked puzzled.

I shook my head. I felt gawky next to her sleek beauty. She was so comfortable inside her golden skin, and I felt like an imposter every time I saw my face in the mirror. "He wouldn't tell me. We saw the Anhelikos in Sarajevo, though. I didn't have time to tell you."

Eve nodded. "We're searching for something, Dante. A weapon that can change our fortunes and turn our rebellion into a successful coup. It will take time to track it down, but there have been most encouraging signs." Her mouth tilted up in a smile, so much like Doreen's gentle, forgiving expression I almost choked. "And once we have that weapon, he is welcome to find us."

A weapon. So the treasure is a weapon. "What's the Key?" I asked, my heart sinking.

"Not what, Dante. Who. We don't know who the Key is yet, but I have a good idea. I think I'm the only one who does." She was looking brighter and happier all the time. "When the time comes, the Key will be revealed. I think that's what the Eldest is afraid of. If he finds the weapon first, he will be in a position to dictate to the Prince. If I find it… he may find himself on the losing side. If that happens, you may well be the only person who can save him. He's too dangerous to be allowed to live."

She sounded as calm as if she was discussing dinner plans. "You mean you'd…"

"For your sake, I want to give him every chance. You are, after all, the only mother I have left." Now her eyes were large and dark. The rainy sunlight fell over the curves and planes of her face, so like Doreen's. "Will you help me, Dante?"

Gods above and below, you don't even have to ask. I'm already in up to my neck because I'm helping you, I might as well drown.

"Okay." My throat was dry, my heart pounding in my wrists and temples. I could even feel the pulsing of my femoral arteries, my heart thundered so hard. "Fine. Lead the way, let's get this over with."