Working for the Devil

CHAPTER 44

They ate dinner in the ornate dining room while I examined the map and checked my gear. I'd lost my scabbard, but Jace had an antique katana hanging on his study wall, so I took its scabbard. It was better than nothing.

We weren't anywhere near ready yet, but I felt a whole lot better about the deal.

I settled cross-legged in front of the fireplace, the chill of climate control playing over my face, staring at the map. It unrolled in front of me, Hegemony territories in blue, Freetowns in red, Putchkin in purple, and the wastelands where nobody lived in white. There was precious little white—mostly around the poles and one spot in Hegemony territory, the Vegas Waste where the first and only nuclear bomb of the Seventy Day War had dropped.

Why do all these rooms have fireplaces? I thought. It's Nuevo Rio, it never gets cold here.

Gabe and Eddie held a fierce whispered conference, silverware clinking against plates. Jace said nothing, staring at his plate as if it held the secrets of the universe. Japhrimel stood by the French doors leading out into the courtyard-garden, slim and dark and utterly impenetrable.

I held my hand over the map, trying to feel anything. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I sighed. Then I drew one of my main knives out of my coat.

Silence fell.

I set the blade against my hand.

"Dante?" Japhrimers tone was cool, but the snarl below his voice warned me.

"Calm down," I said. "Easy. Blood's what I'm tracking, let me work."

He said nothing else, but I felt the weight of his eyes on me.

I drew the blade against my palm, willing the blood to come out. The new golden skin was a lot tougher than human skin; I almost had to force my flesh open. A thin line of smoky-black blood welled up.

My breath hissed out between my teeth. The slash began to close almost immediately.

I closed my eyes and my hand, slippery hot blood burning in my palm. Held my hand over the map.

"Doreen," I whispered. Doreen.

I had found her while on the Brewster job, the one that had made my reputation as a hunter, not just a Necromance. I'd taken the contract and tracked down Michael Brewster, psychopath and serial killer; brought him back from the Freetowns to the Hegemony justice system, getting shot at, knifed, almost gang-raped by a Circle of Magi, and nearly burned alive in the process. It had been Doreen's distraction at the warehouse that had bought me enough time to escape the Magi and go to ground, and I'd hunted Brewster down with increasing panic after that. The day after he was processed into lockdown, I flew back on the red-eye hover transport and sprung her from that whorehouse in Old Singapore, using most of the bounty credit to pay off her tag fee and threatening the pimp into letting her go.

She'd been in bad shape. I guess that when the rogue Circle couldn't have me, they went for her. One psion almost as good as another, and a sedayeen couldn't even fight back like I would have. Might have, if I hadn't been spell-tied and chained.

Who was I kidding? I knew I wouldn't have been able to escape that without her help. Leaving her there was a shoddy fucking way to repay her for that, but I'd had no choice.

It had taken a long time for either of us to get any real sleep after I brought her to Saint City—she would scream in the dark for months, nightmares torturing her until I woke her up. My bare skin on hers, her mouth meeting mine, our hair tangled together in the safety of my bed.

You saved my life, she would often say, I owe you, Danny.

And I'd always reply, You saved mine too, Reena. I wouldn't have survived that job without her. Or the years that followed, while I learned how to work the mercenary field and started tracking down criminals. The house I bought with the bounties became our house: she had always wanted a garden and after Rigger Hall I had wanted a space all my own. As a Necromance I needed space and quiet, the house was the only piece of Doreen I had left.

And Doreen had given me the greatest gift of all: she had taught me how to live again.

Her pale hair, cut short and sleek; her dark-blue eyes. She'd worked in a Free Clinic in the Tank District and also patched up mercenaries and psis when they played too rough. Quiet and serene, her mouth always tilted into a smile, her eyes always merry. The Saint City psionic population closed around her like a protective wall. Psionic healers—sedayeen—were pacifists to a fault, they couldn't stand to hurt anyone. The pain they inflicted would rebound on them. They were helpless. So we all watched out for her—but it had done no good.

The flowers, blue flowers. I knew now that they were Santino's gift to the "mothers of the future," but back then, all I had known was the threat to Doreen's life.

And Gabe had been the only cop who believed me about the danger Doreen was in.

I had moved Doreen from safehouse to safehouse, but the flowers always found her. Gabe and I had taken turns standing guard, frantically trying to dig up the murderer who seemed intent on stalking her. Once we blew his human cover—once we knew it was Modeus Santino we were looking for and his company was seized—he went underground, and we had a week of breathing room before the flowers showed up again and the last desperate endgame started. Always one bare step ahead, moving her around, hiding first in one part of the city, then another—

— and Santino had probably known all the time, I realized. Had probably simply played cat-and-mouse with us, allowing us to spirit her away, drawing out the final coup, finally moving in for the kill—his "samples" — in that warehouse. Gabe had been called away on another case, Eddie had gone for supplies, and it was only me and Doreen, hiding in a shattered hulk of a pre-Hegemony building.

Slippery blood in my palm. I felt the Power take shape.

My cheek ignited, the emerald singing a faint thin crystal note. I reached into that place I had not touched since her death, the place inside me where her gentle presence had gone.

— Slight sound, scraping, a high thin giggle in the dark. Doreen whirled, her pale hair ruffling out. I leapt to my feet, sword ringing free of the sheath, spitting blue fire. I shoved her and she fell, scraping both palms and crying out thinly. Rumbling sound—the freight hovers, rushing past the warehouse; here in the shattered part of town they ran a lot closer to the ground.

Explosions. No—projectile fire. And the whine of plasbolts. I tracked the sounds—one gunman, firing at us both. No—Doreen was trying to get up, but he was firing at me, he wanted her alive. I pushed her toward the exit.

"Get down, Doreen. Get down!"

Crash of thunder. Moving, desperately, scrabbling… fingers scraping against the concrete, wiling to my feet, dodging the whine of bullets and plasbolts. Skidding to a stop just as he rose out of the dark, the razor and his claws glittering in one hand, his little black bag in the other.

"Game over," he giggled, and the awful tearing in my side turned to a burning numbness as he slashed; I threw myself backward, not fast enough, not fast enough.

"Danny!" Doreen's despairing scream.

"Get out!" I screamed, but she was coming back, hands glowing blue-white, still trying to heal.

Trying to reach me, to heal me, the link between us resonating with my pain and her burning hands—

Made it to my feet, screaming at her to get the fuck out, Santino's claws whooshing again as he tore into me, one claw sticking on a rib, my sword ringing as I slashed at him, too slow, I was too slow.

Falling again. Something rising in me—a cold agonizing chill. Doreen's hands clamped against my arm. Warm exploding wetness. So much blood. So much.

Her Power roared through me, and I felt (he spark of life in her dim. She held on, grimly, as Santino made little snuffling, chortling sounds of glee. The whine of a lasecutter as he took part of her femur, the slight pumping sound of the bloodvac. Blood dripped in my eyes, splattered against my cheek. Sirens—Doreen's death would register on her daiband, and aid hovers would be dispatched. Too late though. Too late for both of us.

I passed out, hearing the wet smacking sounds as Santino took what he wanted, giggling that high-pitched strange chortle of his. His face burned itself into my memory—black teardrops over the eyes, pointed ears, the sharp ivory fangs. Not human, I thought, he can't be human, Doreen, Doreen, get away, ran, ran—

Her soul, carried like a candle down a long dark hall, guttering. Guttering. Spark shrinking into infinity. I was a Necromance, but I couldn't stop her rushing into Death's arms…

I came back to myself with a jolt. Tears slicked my cheeks. Japhrimel knelt on the other side of the map, his fingers clamped around my wrist. My finger rested on the map, far south of Nuevo Rio, in the middle of a field of white and the paler non-Hegemony blue of ocean.

An island in the middle of a cold sea. Almost in Antarctica. The last place anyone would look for a demon.

"That's where he is," I said, husky, my voice making the map flutter against the floor, held down by my finger. "Right there."

Japhrimel nodded. "Then that is where we will go," he said. "Dante?"

"I'm fine," I said, wiping at my cheeks with my free hand. "Let go."

He did, one finger at a time. I looked over at the table.

Gabe's fork paused in midair. She watched me, her pretty face pale, her emerald flashing as the tat shifted against her cheek. Eddie stood, his chair flat on the floor as if he'd tipped it over. Jace had pushed his plate away and was staring at me, blue eyes wide, fever spots of color high in each pale cheek.

"Finish your dinner," I said. I sounded like Japhrimel, the same flat voice, loaded with a full-scale plasgun charge of Power. "Then get some rest. We've got work to do soon."