The Devil's Right Hand

Chapter 34

Inside, mellow candlelight played over the soaring interior. All unnecessary interior walls had been taken out. The choirloft was an empty space, and the belltower had no steps anymore. The floor was stone, polished to a low shine by centuries of foot traffic. The path up the middle toward where the altar would have been was still visible, and the pattern of darker stone where pews would have marched in ordered rows. Up on the dais, thick white pillar candles crouched on holders of every shape, their drenching, flickering glow burnishing every surface with mellow gold. I heard a soft, deep whirring, and it landed softly on the floor.

I say it, because it was strangely sexless. Lucifer had his own brand of pure androgynous beauty that was nevertheless tinted with absolute masculinity. This being lacked the hurtful razor edge of the Devil’s golden immaculateness. Pale skin feathering into platinum hair, winged colorless eyebrows, slim bare shoulders and a long white silken vest; it wore loose fluttering trousers and had shapely bare white feet. Its eyes were bleached but glowing, a blue that reminded me of the winter sky in certain parts of Putchkin Russe on sunny days when the wind comes knife-edge over the permafrost and slices straight through the best and warmest synthfur. That blue is as intense and fathomless as it is cold, a faded color that nevertheless looks infinite and manages to drench everything underneath it with eerie, depthless light. The eyes were set in a face that could have shamed every genespliced holovid star by comparison, a marvel of delicately flawless architecture.

Japhrimel stopped. I wanted to look around, take in the territory just in case, but the creature looked at me and its wings ruffled.

Did I mention the wings? Much taller than the creature, who towered a head and a half above Japhrimel; the wings were soft white and feathered, wide and broad like a vulture’s. It actually mantled as it landed, bare feet soundless on stone floor. The smell of feathers mixed with a deeper, sweeter fragrance I couldn’t place, a warm breeze redolent of baking bread and that sweet smell kissing my face. I stared, I’ll admit it. I gawked like a primary schooler arriving at Academy for the first time.

It examined us both. Its mouth moved, and a low sweet sound filled the air. The voice sounded like bells stroked gently, a melody against my ears that eased aches I hadn’t even known I was carrying. The meaning arrived complete in my head without passing through my ears, as if the speaker was a class 5 telepath.

My greetings to you, Avarik A’nankhimel. And to your bride.

“Greetings, Anhelikos Kos Rafelos.” Japhrimel spoke in Merican, maybe for my benefit. The winged being’s eyes didn’t leave my face, I noticed a slender hilt at its side, attached to a long slim sword-shape. Who would want to fight this creature? It was tall but thin, and looked fragile. “I trust your wings have not faltered.”

Not yet. Nor your own, Kinslayer. You are not the first of your kind to come to me lately. The bell-like tone drifted through my head, leaving a sense of lassitude in its wake.

“Ah.” Japhrimel tilted his head to the side. I tore my eyes away from the Anhelikos, looked at him. The candlelight touched his face, slid over it kindly, and I was surprised by a jolt of starry pain lancing through my chest. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered but his fingers in mine, warm and solid. I began to feel distinctly woozy. “I wondered if that might not be the case. Has the treasure left your keeping, then?”

The wings mantled again. Soft white feathers scattered, the redolent breeze ruffling my shirt and fingering my hair. It has left my keeping, but not in the way you imply. It has gone on its ancient route to the Roof of the World, as was agreed between your Prince and our kind. How did you come to regain your pride after Falling? You do not seem weakened.

Japhrimel didn’t dignify the last question with a reply. “Who else came, Rafelos?” His voice was harsh and clipped compared to the music of the Anhelikos. Harsh, but somehow cleaner. I frowned, trying to figure out just what I was feeling. Relaxed, very relaxed… but also unsettled. Deeply disturbed. Like a fly struggling in a narcotic web, tiring itself as it thrashes.

I pushed the mental image away with an exhausting effort.

I can so rarely tell you apart, Kinslayer. But this one hunted the A’nankhimel and their brides. I recognize him from the fall of the White-Walled City and the Scattering of the Fallen. The creature’s eyes met mine again. Wooziness spilled through me, ignited inside my head as if I was human again and drunk. The only other time I’d felt this inebriated was when I’d questioned a terrified sexwitch during the hunt for Kellerman Lourdes. Did this creature also flood the air with pheromones so strong they could turn me inside-out? How could I fight that?

The creature’s slim fingers tapped at the bone swordhilt at his side. Hanging a sword off the belt is not generally recommended, it’s best to have the blade to hand if you think you might need it. Barring that, the best place to have a sword is strapped to your back, easier to draw and less likely to bang on things when you turn around. But having wings probably made things a little different. I swayed, Japhrimel’s fingers tightening in mine.

The swirling disorientation poured through me. Why does it feel so weird? Then again, weird is my life now. Why can’t I be a normal psion?

Has your Prince lifted his ban, then? The creature’s hand caressed the swordhilt; I finally figured out what the look on its beautiful, feral face was.

It looked suspiciously like hunger.

My lips parted. “Japhrimel—” It was a whisper, I was barely aware of saying the word and wished I hadn’t, because the thing’s attention centered on me. This scares me. Oh, gods, this scares me more than you do. Why did Lucifer pick me to inflict this on? I could have lived my entire life without getting this close to a demon or this… whatever it is. My entire, entire life.

“Of course not.” There was an edge to Japhrimel’s voice, grim satisfaction and sudden comprehension. Not to mention terrible anger. The kind of anger that could tear stone apart with a word. “A’nankhimel are under the sentence of death, wherever the Prince finds them. And if one cannot kill a Fallen, their brides are ever so fragile.”

Ah, yes. So vulnerable. So trusting. The creature blinked, first one eye, then the other.

The mark on my shoulder crunched down on itself, a jolt of pain spearing through the languor wrapped around me. I found myself leaning against Japhrimel, our hands clasped between us, the butt of a projectile gun caught between my hip and forearm. The harder I fought, the more limp and relaxed my body became. I tried to stand up, lean away from Japh, anything. The strength spilled out of my legs, if I hadn’t been propped against him I might have gone down in a heap.

The creature stared at me. A pale tongue flicked out, passed over its colorless lips. The blue eyes were hooded now.

“My thanks for your aid, Kos Rafelos.” Japhrimel nodded briefly. “We will trouble you no more.”

Oh, please. Just one little taste. They are so sweet, after all. Its mouth stretched into a lipless smile, showing a bloodless tongue and suddenly sharp teeth.

Japhrimel laughed. The sound sliced through the languid air, I gained my feet with a massive effort, bracing myself with his fingers laced through mine. Stiffened my knees, fighting, fighting to stay upright. “Not today, Kos Rafelos. This little one is not to your taste; she has a sharp spine. Good night, Anhelikos.”

The creature’s hand clasped around the hilt. I saw the muscles in its thin, wiry arm tense, flickering under smooth pale skin.

My left hand jumped of its own volition, scabbard blurring, wrist flicked back, hand palm-upwards; fingers closed around the hilt of the sword and the hand snapping down, blade singing free as the inertia of the scabbard slid it from the sheath. Strength returned, flooding me like freeplas fumes, igniting in my head as I jerked against Japhrimel’s hand. He didn’t let go as I stepped forward, my knees unsteady, reflex brought the sword up and over in my left hand, held steady and slanting, a bar between the creature’s pale gaze and my own level glare. The scabbard flew in a perfect arc behind us, striking the wooden door with a thin snapping sound. Hope I didn’t break it, I thought, instinct pushing me away from Japhrimel, giving me enough room to fight without getting tangled in him.

“Draw that blade,” I said, my voice slurring a little but still steady, “and you’ll have more goddamn trouble than you can handle, wingboy.”

The voice of self-preservation made its appearance, as usual, a good two seconds too late. Danny, what are you doing? This thing is goddamn fucking dangerous and you’re as drugged as a New Vietkai whore! Let Japh take care of this goddamn thing if it draws down on you!

Japhrimel’s hand was suddenly not clasped in mine, it was closed around my right shoulder. “Easy, hedaira.” Did he sound, of all things, amused? Damn him. “There is no danger.”

The creature’s face shifted, from one moment to the next. Instead of sexless, transparent beauty, the jaw jutted forward and the nose turned to slits, the pale incandescent eyes bulging. It was only a flicker, there and gone so quickly I gasped, stumbling backward. Japhrimel dug his fingers in, holding me up.

The entire interior of the church rattled with a slow even hiss, the creature’s supple body melting bonelessly into a serpent’s fluid curve before it snapped back into a recognizably humanoid form. The wings ruffled, more white feathers boiling free, the smell of baking bread and sweet perfume turned cloying-thick.

A hedaira seeking to protect the Kinslayer. The thing’s voice burrowed into my head, the bell-like tone suddenly gone brittle. Surely the time of reckoning is upon us now.

I wasn’t trying to protect him. I was going to kill you if you drew, goddammit. I couldn’t make my mouth shape the words.

“It makes no difference.” As Japhrimel drew me back, I didn’t look away from the creature. Its hand dropped from the swordhilt, wings smoothing as we retreated, step by careful step. The mark on my shoulder pulsed with soft, oiled Power. “If others of my kind come, you may tell them what you like. Only be sure to add this: as long as the Prince endures, my hedaira enjoys his protection. That means I am disposed to consider his… requests… most kindly.”

My knees almost gave out on me again as I realized what I’d just done. The candle flames hissed. Japh dragged me out the door, the night air sparkling clean after the cloying interior of the temple. He somehow bent to retrieve the scabbard on the way out, too, though his hand never left my shoulder. He handed it to me as we stood on the top of the steps, the wooden door closing behind us. I heard another hissing, chuckling sound from inside as a wave of thick sweet clotted perfume belched out through the rapidly narrowing crack between the door and the jamb.

The Prince will not allow a hedaira to live, Kinslayer. Especially not your hedaira. You would do well to remember the White-Walled City and the screams of the Fallen—

The door clicked shut. The garden rustled, leaves rubbing against each other with the sibilant sound of feathers rasping. I coughed, the smell of dry feathers and bread coating the back of my throat. My eyes watered, but I could still resheathe my blade; the action was habitual enough not to need sight.

Japhrimel pushed me down the steps. I stumbled and he held me up. His arm came over my shoulders, but I didn’t care. I simply wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible. My boots echoed on the flagstone path, Japh’s were silent.

What was the White-Walled City? The roof of the world? This thing was holding a stash of something and now it’s gone. What’s Japh looking for? Goddammit. Frustration rose, fighting with the way my arms and legs tingled numbly, clumsy. “Gods.” I coughed again, wanted to spit to clear my throat, didn’t. “What the…” I couldn’t get enough breath to finish the sentence. Little bits of plant life touched me—leaves, branches; they all felt like tiny grasping fingers.

“Anhelikos.” Japhrimel’s tone was even and thoughtful. “They feed on anger. And hatred. You are perhaps the first human to have seen one in almost five hundred years.” He pushed open the narrow wooden gate, the heat of him cleaner than the thick clotted scent left behind us. I shivered galvanically as we passed through the diaphanous shielding laid over the high wall. His arm tightened, drawing me into his side, and my sword bumped my leg as it dangled in my nerveless left hand. “You are perhaps the only living creature to survive drawing steel inside one’s nest. That was ill-advised.”

“Sorry.” I didn’t sound sorry, wanted to shake his arm away, couldn’t. My legs felt like I’d just run a thousand-mile marathon, and my head throbbed unevenly. “I feel sick.”

“It is a thing inimical to you. The feeling will pass.” He glanced at the wall, where McKinley suddenly reappeared.

“Any news?” The Hellesvront agent’s black eyes flicked over me, I hoped I wasn’t shaking visibly.

It feeds on anger, that’s why I felt so drained. Gods. What is that thing? I don’t care, I never want to see it again. Gods above.

“Some,” Japh replied. “It has been moved, I expected as much. Someone came to fetch it, failed, and triggered the game.” He stopped, glanced back over his shoulder at the high, smooth concrete wall. Then he looked down at me. “Did you think to protect me, Dante?”

No. I wanted to kill it before it drew. “It was about to draw, Japh.”

“Unlikely.” He paused. “I told you there was no danger.”

I don’t care what you fucking told me. “I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.” I don’t even know why I did that. I hate you. I can’t hate you. I wish I’d never met you.

No, I don’t. Gods. I was too confused and shaken to think straight. Stepping in front of him had just happened. I’d tried to protect Doreen, I’d tried like hell to protect Jace—but they’d been human. Like me.

Japhrimel probably didn’t need me at all.

That thought hurt more than anything else.

“So it seems.” He studied me for a few moments.

Sekhmet sa’es. I gave up. Leaned into his side, blinking as I stared at the pavement at my feet. My boot-toes seemed strangely far away. “Fine.” My quads and hamstrings were starting to tremble, something I hadn’t felt since before Rio. I felt about three seconds away from collapsing. “Whatever. Can I sit down somewhere?”

The silence stretched on for a good thirty seconds. I couldn’t tell if they were looking at me or each other, didn’t care. Finally, Japhrimel spoke. “The weakness will pass. Come.”

He set off down the cracked and uneven pavement, I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

Once again, I don’t see how things could get any worse. I winced as I thought it. You’d think I would have learned by now not to say that, even to myself.

This being a nonhuman Freetown, the hotel was run by swanhild.

Swanhild, with their ruffs of white feathers and delicate long-fingered hands, are weak when compared to Nichtvren or werecain or even kobolding. But their flesh is extremely poisonous to most carnivorous paranormal species, and a variant of touch-telepathy means that a ’cain or a Nichtvren that kills a swanhild suffers a kind of psychic death in return. It’s unpleasant to say the least, and as a result the ’hilds are the paranormal equivalent of Free Territorie Suisse. They function as message carriers and bankers, as well as several other kinds of service providers, for paranormal communities.

Swanhild don’t like humans. Something about a pre-Merican Era prince who had trapped one, tried to marry her, and ended up killing her and committing suicide, I think. There used to be a very old ballai about it, but the swanhild campaigned so effectively it’s hard to even get bootleg holos of old performances. Modern ballai companies won’t perform it for audiences, either.

The hotel was a kobolding-restored building, with the characteristic fluid stone decorations carved into its facade. Inside, the lighting was dim, the windows UV-screened, and a collage of paranormals hung out in the hotel bar while McKinley checked us in. I saw—for the first time outside a textbook—a batlike Fumadrin, its snout buried in a bowl of what looked like whiskey but was probably paint thinner. I saw a red gaki with a long black drooping mustache talking to a blond man in a long black coat with a sword strapped to his back. The man looked human enough, but he had a crimson-black stain of an aura, which told me he was probably a host for something. A gaggle of swanhild gathered at one end of the bar, clicking and chirping back and forth; a single Nichtvren yawned as she paid her tab with a fistful of New Credit notes, wiping a red stain away from her exquisite lips. Two kobolding slumped in a corner, their table almost groaning under the weight of empty beer tankards; the bartender was a husky golden werecain whose yellow eyes flicked over the hotel lobby every now and again.

Japhrimel kept his arm over my shoulders, his thumb stroking my upper arm every so often. I kept looking down at the floor, though I was feeling a lot better. The languid, drained feeling had faded within a couple blocks of the Anhelikos’s temple. I wasn’t feeling a hundred watts, but I was all right. Except for the way my chest hurt, especially the rubbed-raw little spot under the diagonal leather strap of my rig.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to use an elevator to get to the third floor. McKinley led us up a long, sweeping red-carpeted flight of stairs lifting from the marble-floored lobby. A sharp right-hand turn past a glowering werecain guard, and I was ushered into a room that was dim and soft and luxurious, with antique blue velvet chairs and a silky cream-colored carpet I immediately wanted to foul in some way. A wet bar gleamed. There was even a canister of cloned blood in a stasis cabinet under the shelves of liquor. A plasma holovid player perched on a wide cherrywood dresser, and the beds were huge and looked soft enough to sink into.

There were, unfortunately, no windows. The walls were smooth and blank. A Nichtvren room, safe from daylight. Airless.

As soon as I realized this I looked up at Japhrimel, already feeling the air grow thick. “No. Please, no.” My voice cracked, my throat closing with claustrophobic weight. If McKinley hadn’t been right behind us I would have tried to backpedal. As it was, I tried fruitlessly to tear myself out from under Japh’s arm, failed. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll be a good little prisoner and stay.”

He shrugged, his fingers gentling but still iron-hard. I couldn’t break his grip. “I am sorry.”

“There’s no goddamn windows. You know how I feel about—” I was about to start hyperventilating, I could feel it.

“This is necessary, Dante.” His arm loosened, but I could feel his readiness. Even if I could bowl over McKinley, Japh would catch me before I got to the hallway. The fight went out of me. I could feel it leave, like a splinter drawn out of torn flesh.

“Fine.” My voice cracked, making a picture-frame rattle against the wall. “Whatever.” I tore away from him, stalked past the beds into the furthest corner of the room, and pushed the chair occupying it away. I put my back to the corner and slid down until I sat on the floor, my knees up, my katana across my lap, right hand clamped over the hilt, left around the scabbard. I leaned my head into the corner, closed my eyes, and struggled to breathe.

Japhrimel murmured to McKinley, I heard the room door open and close again. Peeked out from under my lashes to see Japhrimel walking softly around the end of a bed, approaching me. The familiar breathless feeling of demon magick rose as he warded the walls, demon defenses springing into being under the humming of the hotel’s security net and magickal shielding. Cracking a kobold-constructed building run by swanhilds was a tall order indeed. We were probably safe, even if my heart hammered and my throat felt savagely constricted.

I took the only refuge I had left, shutting my eyes and breathing, reaching into the still quiet part of myself that had never failed me. “Anubis et’her ka,” I whispered. “Se ta’uk’fhet sa te vapu kuraph.” My mouth was dry, the whisper was cracked and imperfect. “Anubis, Lord of the Dead, Faithful Companion, protect me, for I am Your child. Protect me, Anubis; weigh my heart upon the scale; watch over me, Lord, for I am Your child. Do not let evil distress me, but turn Your fierceness upon my enemies. Cover me with Your gaze, let Your hand be upon me, now and all the days of my life, until You take me into Your embrace.” I breathed in again, tried it again. “Anubis et’her ka. Se ta’uk’fhet sa te vapu kuraph. Anubis, Lord of the Dead…”

The blue flame rose up before my inner eyes. I didn’t see the hall of infinity, or the bridge, or the well of souls—but the blue light closed around me, and that was good enough. With a grateful sobbing breath, I gave myself up to the comfort of my god.