Saint City Sinners

Chapter 28

I called Jado from a public callbox in the University District, leaning against the side of the booth and watching the crowd of late-afternoon shoppers contending with the steady persistent drizzle. Another storm was moving in, I could tell from the way the rain smelled and the air was full of uneasy crackles. Whether that storm was weather or trouble, I couldn't tell. I suspected it was both.

Jado could tell me nothing except that Cam and Mercy were gone. Not particularly surprising; I'd expected it. He still had the sealed pouch with the mastersheets and file-it would take more than either of them had to steal from him.

He asked if I had found what I was looking for.

"After a fashion, sensei." I hardly trembled at all, though I did sound husky and ruined. For once, I felt just as tired as I sounded. "Thank you. I'll keep in touch."

That done, I hailed a hovercab at the corner of University and Thirteenth. The driver, a fat pasty normal in a blue felt hat, for once didn't mutter or turn pale when he saw my tat. He seemed blissfully unaware that I was a psion.

Well, little miracles do happen.

"Trivisidiro, North End. Get me there fifteen minutes ago."

I only hoped I wasn't too late.

Jace taught me more about bounty hunting in a single year than all the law-enforcement supplements at the Academy had in five. The first rule, he always said, was to understand your prey. When you comprehend the nature of what you hunt, you understand what it is capable of-and can anticipate its next move.

I watched as dusk fell over Trivisidiro, chill purple shadows gathering in rain-drenched corners. The high walls of Gabe's property line stood mute under a lash of rainy just-above-freezing wind; the shields were still viable, the work I'd done binding them together holding steady. I leaned against the wall of my hiding spot, tucked between another house's high walls and a dripping holly hedge prickling against my hand and shoulder and hip, poking through wet fabric. My skin steamed where the rain hit it, but the steam shredded before it could rise above the hedge and give away my position. I waited still and quiet, counting on the instability of the storm and the flux of Power to keep me hidden-since I was having a hard time keeping myself buttoned down anymore. I needed rest, I needed food, I needed sleep.

I wasn't going to get any of what I needed. Best just to deal with it.

There's a mind-numbing brand of circular mental motion that takes place while you're on stakeout. I thought about Japhrimel, would remind myself not to think about him and wrench my mind into remembering Gabe, lying tangled in a young hemlock. I would think of Gabe's daughter and a holostill smile. Would she have the dimple in her left cheek, like Gabe? Would she have a hoarse little braying laugh like Eddie? Would I be able to protect her while I was running from both Japhrimel and Lucifer, trying to keep Eve alive long enough to make a difference?

Though Eve didn't seem to be doing too badly. What the hell did she need me for? What was it with demons being so interested in me?

Which would lead me right back to thinking about Japhrimel. I'd begged him not to hunt her. Yet he'd refused to tell me what was going on, left me with McKinley while he went out looking for her. If he had managed to catch her and return her to Lucifer, what would have happened? Would he even have told me?

I shouldn't have been, but I was still surprised. Wearily, heart-wrenchingly surprised, each time I thought of it. He was a demon. His idea of truth wasn't necessarily mine. To him, I might be no more than a valued possession; a pet, even. You love your cat or your cloned koi, but you don't treat it like a human. No, you pet it, feed it, take it to the Animone for its shots and checkups. You don't treat it like a partner, or an equal.

Even if it's referred to in the singular, with you.

Had he thought that it would push me back on Lucifer's side if he appeared to be in danger? Or had he miscalculated, not thinking Eve was strong or smart enough to catch him or hold him this long?

Why? If I could have asked him anything, that little word would be it. It would cover so much, if I could trust his answer.

But he had held me while I cried, hadn't he? And no matter what kind of trouble I was in, I usually could count on him to bail me out. That was worth something, wasn't it?

I cherish my time with you. His voice, smoky-dark and smooth.

I tore my thoughts away from him again with an almost-physical effort, wondering about Lucas and Leander. Where were they? Were they even now frantically looking for me? Or had they been killed?

There was no more time for thinking. My prey came down the sidewalk in the early-morning dark, walking arm-in-arm as if they hadn't a care in the world. They might even have believed themselves safe.

After all, what did a sedayeen and a Saint City cop have to fear?

Only me, I thought, silent and deadly in the shadow of a holly hedge.

Only me.

I let them get through the shields. The layers of energy flushed a deep blue-green, settled as the healer stroked them. Bile rose in my throat. Gabe would not have denied a sedayeen entrance into her house, especially one working with Eddie. So she would have been already inside when something alerted Gabe to a possible attack on her property and the defenseless healer inside. Gabe, sword in hand, went out alone to defend her home and got shot. Then it was child's play for the healer to «clean» the psychic traces inside Gabe's house after she and the normals she'd let in through Gabe's shields searched for the vials.

Just like now it was child's play for the healer to slip in through the defenses with her normal in tow.

I let them get inside the dark, silent house, then drifted across the street and touched the shields. Softly, a kitten's brush of a touch, warning them not to react to me. Gabe's work recognized me-how could it not?

Oh, Gabriele. I failed you. I should have stayed. Even though it was hard, I should have stayed. Why didn't you tell me you were getting married, you had a kid, you were afraid for your life? Why? Didn't you trust me to come if you needed me?

No, she hadn't, because I'd lied to her about Japhrimel. With the best of intentions, because it would only raise more questions, because I couldn't stand to admit to her that I loved a demon and I was no longer fully human. Each phone call, with its long silences and the things neither of us could say, was another failure on my part. I should have told her.

It was my fault. I hadn't been here to protect her.

I slid through the layers of energy slowly, so slowly. Gabe's front gate squeaked as I pushed through it, but they wouldn't hear. Even if there had been Saint City PD magshielding or a lock on the place as the site of a homicide, a cop would have no trouble getting clearance, especially a normal homicide deet flush with dirty Chill money.

Everything so neatly arranged. Everything so perfectly planned. Down to the fact that I'd bet hard credit the cop had the missing fifth vial to sell to the highest bidder-the sample the healer had probably talked Gabe into producing after Eddie's death. I didn't know for sure, but that felt right.

The front door was open, the shields on the house quivering with the presence of intruders, even acceptable ones. The windows, blank empty darkened eyes, watched as I approached carefully, cautiously, and closed my right hand around my swordhilt. Up the stairs to the massive double door, not the side door that any friend of Gabe and Eddie's knew to go to. I slid through the front door, my new boots soft and soundless.

Just like a thief.

I found the trigger by the front door, my fingers sliding over the base of a bronze statue. The statue was Eros in Psyche's embrace, his wings pulled close around the halfnude female. Eddie had called it Classic Porn, sniggering every time he passed it. Gabe would icily remind him that it was an antique, and that it had been in her family for generations, and that the artist had been a close family friend. I could just see her immaculate eyebrow lifting as she repeated this patiently, as if Eddie was a primary-school kid with a dirty mind.

Of course, Eddie did have a primary-school kid's dirty mind. It was one of his greatest personality traits.

It was dark, but demon sight pierced the darkness easily, showed me the coats and boots from Gabe's hall closet scattered in careless lumps, each pocket sliced. They were coming back for another search, looking for the four vials I had given away.

I smelled kyphii and Gabe's particular scent, the tang of Eddie's dirt-drenched aura. Then I felt the other psion's shock as I dropped the outer layer of my shielding and blazed through the Power-soaked house like a star.

I pressed down on the trigger, and had the satisfying experience of hearing the locks on each window and door click shut. Maglocks, to turn the house into a fortress. The front door whooshed on automatic hinges, thudding closed and locking too.

I'm sorry, Gabe. I walked through the foyer, my boots absolutely silent. I could feel them both, the sloppy wash of the normal man tainted with fear and thudding heart, copper adrenaline. And the healer's deep well of violet-scented calm, underlain with a slight nasty wet-fur smell of panic fighting with her training and genetic disposition to tranquility.

The kitchen. I gave them plenty of time, walking slowly, the rage rising until my aura flushed red, almost in the visible range. A low punky crimson stain spread through the trademark swirling glitter of a Necromance's aura, mixing with the black diamond flames of an almost-demon. Strength flowed hot down my left arm, poured through the mark on my shoulder. I wondered if Japhrimel could feel me drawing on the mark, could feel my anger.

I didn't care.

The sword whispered out of its sheath as I stepped into the hall. Nothing had changed-the place still looked like a tornado had hit it. It hadn't even been dusted or scanned for prints; it hadn't even been touched by a Reader or another Necromance.

I would have thought they would go through the motions of investigating, for a cop as good as Gabe. Or had this case been given to Pontside too? Of course, if the Chill cure was still here, they couldn't run the risk of anyone else finding it. Not after they tossed the house with a psion to clean up the traces of normals trooping through.

If the cops didn't care or were unable to investigate, Gabe would never be avenged, and her daughter would remain in danger.

Not while I'm alive. Not while I have a single breath in me.

Tension, screaming in my shoulders; the cuff blazed with dappled, fluid green light. Light like Japhrimel's eyes, blazing while he looked up from the floor. I drew in a long sweet breath scented with kyphii and the old delicious smell of Gabe's house, the scent-landscape of a place lived in and loved by generation after generation of Necromances.

I stepped around the corner and into the kitchen.

A ricocheting blaze of loud pops, pain tearing into my chest. Black blood rose to seal the bullet wounds away even as I blurred, moving with inhuman speed. The bullets from a Glockstryke 983 projectile repeater would have killed a human psion-but I was no longer human. My sword was a solid arc of silver, white flame singing in its heart, as I carved Pontside's hand off at the wrist.

He was blond, but his muddy hazel eyes were the same as hers. He wore a crumpled gray suit and a damp tan trenchcoat, a gleaming badge clipped to the front pocket of his blue cotton button-down shirt. I could see the resemblance-they shared a parent, at least. Did Pontside hate psions because his half-sister was one and he wasn't, or did he simply hate all of us except her because he was a cop? Did he even hate his sister? Or was the rumor about him hating us just coffee-break fodder?

Blood sprayed. He howled and I kicked him, heard ribs snap under the force of the blow. He fell backward, grinding into broken dishes, before Mercy even had time to scream. The gun, with his hand still clutching it, thumped wetly on Gabe's kitchen floor.

Revenge filled my mouth; sweet and hot. I let out a chilling little giggle that shivered glass from the cabinet doors and made the windows squeal as they bowed out in their frames. Then I stamped down hard into his fair blond face.

It was like kicking a watermelon with fragile glass bones. Mercy let out a short, violent cry, I looked up as Pontside's body jerked and twitched, flopping. I saw the light as the soul fled, one sharp burst of brilliance fading into the foxfire glow of false life, the nerves beginning to die in increments.

I wanted to stuff his soul back into his body and kill him again. But I'd settle for her, the bigger traitor.

Mercy's eyes were wide and dark. Sweat stood out on her pale skin, darkening her plain blue T-shirt. The smile stretched my lips, a grimace that made her flinch and cower against the kitchen island, her hip smacking a piece of broken plate and pushing it down to shatter on the floor.

I studied her for a long moment, my sword flicking. Blood smoked off the blade. The smell of violets and white mallow mixed with the reek of blood and stink of released bowels.

I lifted the blade. "Why?" Again the windows squealed, as my voice throbbed at the lowest registers of what could be defined as "human." "You're a psion! A healer! Why?"

Her hands curled into fists as she stared at me, her proud spiked hair beginning to droop. Spots of fevered color blossomed on her cheeks and her lower lip trembled.

I can kill her. I can kill her right now. Right fucking now. I shook with the urge to do just that.

But I wanted to make it last. And I wanted to know why.

"We were poor," she choked out, her eyes falling past me to linger on the mess of meat that was her brother. "Herborne paid for my Academy schooling, I was in debt up to my eyeballs and Gil… he never made enough." Her chin quivered. "Eddie was going to give it away, Valentine! Give away the cure! The stupid motherfucking Skinlin was going to ruin everything." She sucked in a deep painful breath. "You don't know," she whispered. "He was rich, he had his little rich-girl Necromance and-"

So she had hatched this plan, bombed her own clinic, arranged Eddie's death, arranged Gabe's death, collaborated in the murder of how many? "For money." My contempt smoked, shattered more glass, made the walls tremble. "How many have you killed? And how many have fucking died of Chill while you tried to cover everything up?"

Noise, cutting through the syrupy tension and crackling static of my fury. Sirens in the distance. I heard them, and maybe she did too. Pontside probably had time to trigger a call for help on his HDOC. The Saint City PD was on their way.

Doesn't matter. If they had a hand in this I'll kill them too. The ease and naturalness of the thought should have disturbed me.

My hand twitched, the tip of my blade making a precise little circle, painting blue flame on the air from the runes running along the keen edge. The steel's heart flamed white, and the sword sang to itself, a low echoing song of bloodlust and chill certainty.

"You've never been poor," she whispered. "You don't-"

What the fuck? "I've been poor." My voice sliced through hers. "I've eaten heatseal-and sometimes not even that. I was poor and hungry for years, you stupid bitch. I did espionage and bounty hunting. But I never assassinated anyone." It wasn't strictly true-I'd killed in self-defense, and I'd killed Santino.

But that was different. Wasn't it?

I don't kill without cause. My own words rose up to taunt me. But by the gods, this was cause.

This was vengeance.

"Congratulations." She jerked her chin in the direction of the still-twitching body. "That makes him your first." How dare you, you piece of shit? The fury rose in me again and blue fire answered, crawling up my sword to caress my hand. I stopped, my jaw dropping as I stared at the shivering sedayeen. The sirens whooped and brayed, getting closer.

No. It couldn't be.

The world slowed down. Time stopped. Blue fire closed over my vision, and I felt the touch of my god, slipping through the stubborn, torn-raw layers of my mind. The feeling was weightless, like leaving the meat of the body behind and rising into the clear rational light of What Comes Next, the great secret Death whispers into the ears of the departing. My left shoulder squeezed with sudden pain so sharp and fierce I gasped, falling back into the low guard, the blade slanting up and singing a high thin keening note as my steel recognized the presence of the only Power I bowed my head to, Death Himself.

This? This little bitch, this traitor, was who Death wanted me to spare? This was the geas laid on me by my god, who I had always trusted with everything, my life, my fears, my vulnerability itself?

The choice is yours, He said, His deep infinity-starred eyes resting against mine. It is always yours.

"No," I whispered. "No."

I wanted to kill her. I ached, I hungered to strike, to carve, to watch the blood flow, to end her miserable life. I'd sworn. Was I required to break the oath I had sworn to my best friend, my only friend?

The sirens dipped closer, and I heard the whine of police hovers. I heard my voice, shaking, freighted with a fury so intense it shivered more glass into breaking. "Anubis et'her ka."

The prayer died on my lips. My vision cleared. I saw her teeth pulled back in a grimace of effort as she cowered against the counter. She was sedayeen, a healer, incapable of defending herself.

But she was perfectly fucking capable of betraying Eddie, of tossing Gabe's house while looking for the cure, capable of lying to me. Lying like Japhrimel, lying like a stone faced demon. Lying worse than a demon, even; Japh hid things from me for a reason!

"Cameron," I croaked. "Your bodyguard. Pico-Phize."

Mercy shook her head, sadly. "She suspected. We were going to eliminate her at the clinic, but…. She was Pico-Phize corporate too, she was going to meet Massadie yesterday, when he called from Tanner's, gabbling something about seeing you. It was… we had to… well." Her eyes flicked down to Pontside's body again. "He did it." Realization, detonating like a reaction fire in my head. The team waiting to assassinate near the clinic hadn't been Tanner Family troops. They'd been off-duty Saint City police normals, crooked cops, to get rid of an inconvenient bodyguard who had maybe started to ask too many questions. Then I'd shown up, and Mercy had lied with a cool ease that would have put even Lucifer to shame.

Cam had been going to meet her death yesterday, while I'd been in a demon house. If they hadn't taken me I might have saved her too. "Herborne supplied the staff for the hit on Eddie, it was routine given the amount of profit you were talking about. But for Gabe, you needed more. You needed crooked cops with your brother in the lead."

Her teeth chattered. She said nothing. There was nothing she could say. I was right.

"I should kill you." A strained, unhealthy whisper. She shivered and cowered even more, sliding down the side of the island until she crouched, making a small screaming sound like a rabbit caught in a trap. "I should kill you slowly. I should send you to Hell in the flesh. I should kill you."

"Go ahead!" she screamed, lifting her contorted face. She didn't look young now. "Go ahead; you goddamn fucking freak!"

The next few seconds are hazy. My sword chimed as I dropped it, my boots ground in shattered dishes and broken glass, and I had her by the throat, lifted up so her feet dangled, my fingers iron in her soft, fragile human flesh. The cuff pulsed coldly; green light painted the inside of the kitchen in a flash of aqueous light. She choked, a large dark stain spreading at the crotch of her jeans. Pissed herself with fear.

My lips pulled back. Rage, boiling in every single blood vessel. Heat poured from me, the air groaning and steaming, glass fogging, the wood cabinet-facings popping and pinging as they expanded with the sudden temperature shift, the floor shaking and juddering. The entire house trembled on its foundations, more tinkling crashes as whatever Pontside and Mercy and their merry crew of dirty fucking Saint City cops hadn't broken as they searched the house shattered.

It is your choice. It is always your choice. Death's voice was kind, the infinite kindness of the god I had sworn my life to. If I denied Him, He would still accept me, still love me.

But He should not have asked this of me.

She was helpless and unarmed, incapable of fighting back. But she was guilty, and she had lied and murdered as surely as any bounty I'd ever chased.

Anubis et'her ka… Kill. Kill her kill her KILL HER!

I could not tell if the reply was Anubis, or some deep voice from the heart of me. But she can't fight back. This is murder, Dante.

There was only one prayer I could utter as I shook, trembling, on the verge of grateful insanity.

"Japhrimel," I breathed, and the mark on my shoulder twisted again. I reached for him, for help, for strength, for anything. "Japhrimel… oh gods help me…"

Strength flooded through the demon mark on my left shoulder. No answer, except the soft velvet heat of Power sliding through his name scarred into my skin, dappling my entire body with heat.

A piece of his power, given without reserve or hesitation. Did he feel it when I drew on the mark? Did he care? Did it matter?

I dropped her. She thudded onto the floor and lay there moaning. My hands shook. Hot tears splashed onto the sweater Eve had given me. The house groaned again, complaining, and settled on its foundations.

The god waited, his presence filling the room, invisible but heavy. I smelled kyphii and the odor of stone, felt the invisible wind of the blue-crystal hall of Death touch my cheeks, ruffle my hair. My god waited to see what I would do, if I would spare this traitor at his request… or if I would strike.

If I killed her, like this, would I be any better than her and her brother? Was I any better right now?

Oh, gods. Who am I? I no longer knew.

"Thy will be done," I grated out, and backed away. She groaned again, scrabbling against the floor as terror robbed her of everything but the urge to get away. I sobbed, once, hoarsely. Sirens rattled the air, and I heard shouts. Someone was pounding on the magsealed front doors.

My sword made a low metallic sound as I picked it up from the debris-littered floor. Mercy gurgled. I slid the blade home in its sheath slowly, every muscle in my body protesting. My hands and legs shook with the urge to rip the metal free, pace back to the helpless cringing animal on the floor, and finish her off as bloodily and painfully as I could.

The sense of the god's presence faded, bit by bit. I felt it go, swirling away from me.

Kill her. Rage swirled through my skull, tender bruised places on my psyche cracking under the strain. She betrayed Gabe. Kill her.

I walked heavily out of the kitchen. Paused for a moment in the middle of the dark hallway, my head down, hair curtaining my face. I heard the whine of lasecutters at the front door.

Blood slicked down my skin, warm and wet. My feet moved, carrying me into the front hall. I lowered myself down on the steps, watching the bright points of light as the lasecutters began slicing through the magshielded door to let the Saint City PD back into Gabe's house.

As I sat there, I rocked back and forth, both hands wrapped around my sword, softly repeating in the deepest recesses of my brain the only prayer I had left since my god had betrayed me too.

Japhrimel. Japhrimel, I need you. Japhrimel.