Working for the Devil

CHAPTER 50

I floated. Face-down.

Stinging. Cold so intense it burned. Lassitude creeping up my arms and legs.

No. A familiar voice. Familiar fingers on my cheek, tipping my head up. No, don't, Danny. You have to live. You promised.

I didn't promise! I wailed silently. Let me go! Let me go, let me die—

You have work to do. Doreen's voice, gentle, inexorable. Please, Danny. Please.

Floated. Sinking. Even a share of a fallen demon's Power couldn't keep me alive for long in this. Something had happened—Santino had done something, that small glittering thing had hit Japhrimel—

Santino. I'd killed him. I'd watched his body dissolve under my fingernails, I'd torn through his throat. He was, indisputably, dead and scattered on the freezing ocean. No little bit of him would be left.

I killed him, I pleaded. I did it. I got revenge for you. Isn't that enough?

No, she replied, solemn. Live, Danny. I want you to live.

It hurts too much, I keened to her.

Blue crystal glow, the bridge under my feet. For one dizzying moment I was between two worlds—the Hall of Death, its blue directionless light pouring through me, Anubis standing tall and grim on the other side of the bridge; and the real world, where I floated face-down under a sheet of broken ice. For one infinite moment I was locked under the pitiless, infinitely forgiving gaze of the Lord of Death, weighing, evaluating, His black eyes fixed on mine. It hurts too much, I told him. Please don't make me go back.

He shook His sleek black head, once, twice. I struggled—no! Let me stay! Let me stay!

Then He spoke.

The Word boomed through me. It was not His name, or any Word of Power. It wasn't the secret name I held for Him, my key to the door of Death.

No.

It was my name—only more. It was my Word, spoken by the god, the sound that expressed me, the sound that could not be spoken aloud. My soul leapt inside me, responding to His touch. The god took the weight from me, briefly, let me feel the freedom, the incredible freedom, rising out of my body, leaving the world behind, the clear blue light becoming golden, the clear rational light of What Comes Next.

Then it dwindled to a single point in the darkness, and I rammed back into my body, fingers clamped in my hair, yanking. I was torn from the water's embrace, glazed with ice, choking, coughing, the landing lights of the garbage scow named Baby exploding through the darkness. Jace, his lips blue, tangling the plasnet around us both and we were yanked up together, his arms and legs wrapped around me. We broke through the airseals and into the warm interior of the hover, and the hatch slammed closed as the peculiar weightless pressure of a hover quickly ascending pressed down on me.

I coughed and choked, spluttering.

"Breathe, you stubborn little bitch—" Jace shivered and cursed, raging at me. Water washed the decking, rapidly melting ice shrinking under the assault of climate control.

"Is she alive?" Eddie said from the front. After the deafening noise, the quiet of the hover's interior and someone speaking normally was a muffled shock.

"She's alive," Jace said, and flung his arms around me again. Water dripped. My fingers and toes tingled and prickled. "Gods damn you, Danny, don't you ever do that to me again." He kissed my forehead, examined my fingers and my dark rings, wrapped me in a spaceblanket that started to glow, heat stealing back into me. My teeth chattered. My right hand was twisted into a fist, and I couldn't unloose it.

"G-G-Gabe—"

"She'll live. Your demon friend patched her intestines back together up there in that room, damndest thing I ever saw. She's lost a lot of blood, but she's stable and the medunit's monitoring her." Jace kissed my cheek, pushed sodden strands of dark hair back from my face. "Don't ever do that to me again, Danny. I thought he'd killed you."

"The k-k-k-k—" I began.

"The kid's fine. Curled up in a seat with a spaceblanket. She's asleep." Jace coughed. "Look, Danny—"

"Japhrimel?" I whispered.

Jace shook his head. "There was a hover—another hover. It might have scooped him up, I don't know. We looked for him, Danny. We really did. The entire goddamn island's broken down and iced over, I don't think anything survived that. If we hadn't been airborne we'd have been toast. What happened?"

"I killed him," I whispered. "I killed Santino. He threw's-s-something at J-J-aph…"

"We couldn't find him," Jace said. "I'm sorry, Danny."

I clapped my fists over my ears, huddled under the spaceblanket, and started to cry. I'd earned it, after all.