Saint City Sinners

Chapter 9

Despite waking up warm under the covers-with Japhrimel sitting across from me in a chair situated so the thin rainy light of a Saint City afternoon fell over him, turning him into an icon of dark coat and golden skin with jeweled eyes-the day started out unsatisfactorily. For one thing, it was still strange to be up during daylight hours. I've been a night creature all my human life-most psions are, something about our metabolisms and a gene marker for nocturnalism. During the day I felt sluggish, not slow enough to handicap me in a fight but as if a veil of misty fatigue was drawn over the world. It was when night fell that I truly felt alive.

I finished tugging my boots on and pushed my damp hair back. One thing I haven't grown out of is my love of hot water; even though I rarely sweat I like to have a daily shower. I've gone without on too many bounties not to appreciate being clean.

The other unsatisfactory thing? Leander was gone. "What do you mean, gone?" I fixed McKinley with a steely glare the Hellesvront agent bore all too easily. He glanced at Japhrimel, who said nothing.

Apparently deciding that meant I could know, the agent went on. He still wore unrelieved black to match his hair and eyes, and only two knives. McKinley didn't appear to need much in the way of weapons. I'd seen him with a gun once, on a rooftop in New Prague, never again. "Not in his room this morning. No luggage, not that he had much to begin with. I can comb the city… " He didn't sound too concerned, I realized.

"Not necessary." Japhrimel stood slim and dark, his hands clasped behind his back. "Perhaps he had an attack of good sense."

There it was again, that faint note of disdain. Why didn't Japhrimel like him? "Anubis et'her ka. So what if he's human? I am too, remember?" Still human where it counts, Japh. I rose to my feet, stamped to settle my boots, and slid the strap of my bag over my head, settling its weight properly against my hip. Rotated my shoulders to make sure my rig was all right. Closed my left hand over my sword. "I swear, you're as bad as a normal. Always thinking that a human can't be good enough for anything, just like normals think all psis are mindstealers." I stalked between them, toward the door of the suite, wishing the room wasn't done in pale blue with old Merican Era fustibudgets for decoration. Even in Sarajevo the rooms had been better decorated.

Japhrimel fell into step behind me, McKinley said nothing. He was going to stay behind, thank the gods.

I made it out the door and down the hall, pushing the door to the stairwell open. I would be damned if I'd take an elevator. My nerves were raw enough.

My footsteps echoed on the stairs; his were soundless. I could have moved quietly, but what good would it have

I felt Japhrimel's eyes on me as I stalked through the lobby and out through the climate control, into the familiar cold chembath of a rainy Saint City early afternoon.

Immediately, habitually, I checked hovertraffic and reached out with all my senses to take in the mood of the city. The flux and glow of Power here was so familiar another lump rose in my throat.

Stop it. You've barely ever cried before in your life; stop being an I diot and use those brains you're so famous for. The feeling-which I had to examine thoroughly before admitting it was relief and a sense of being home again-filled my entire body with an odd combination of lightness and a completely uncharacteristic desire to weep-angst like a holovid soap star. I swallowed the blockage in my throat, glancing down Ninth to see the familiar bulk of the skyline lifting its scallops and needles around the bay. I wanted to get to Gabe's quickly, of course; but still I walked. Japhrimel, saying nothing, walked behind me.

Three steps behind and to my left, soundless as Death Himself, his presence felt like sunshine on my back. His mark on my shoulder was warm, comforting. The streets were familiar, resounding under my boots. One moment I wanted to dance with crazy joy.

The next I felt the weight of my bag, with the folder inside it. Then my eye would fall across a slight change-a new building, an old building remodeled, something different-and the change would hit me hard in the solar plexus.

It was small consolation that with a war shaping up between Lucifer and Eve, and something else in the offing Japh couldn't be prodded to tell me about, I might not live long enough to see other changes.

I finally hailed a hovercab at the corner of Fifteenth and Pole, right at the edge of the Tank District. The driver-an Asiano man-didn't look happy to find out his fare was a psion, but he'd descended and flipped the meter before seeing my tat. Japhrimel gave the driver Gabe's address in flawless unaccented Merican. His control of the language-indeed, of most languages-was phenomenal.

Then again, demons like languages just as they like technology, or genetics, or meddling with humans. Meddling with humans-but not feeling any affection for them. Or Falling, for them.

The unsteady flutter of my stomach as the hovercab rose into the sky intensified as I studied Japhrimel's profile. He stared straight ahead, laser-green eyes burning intently as if they intended to slice through the plasilica barrier between us and the driver, out through the front bubble, and cut the sky with a sword of light. "Japh?"

"Hm?" As if startled out of his own uncomfortable thoughts. His eyes turned to me, and I found it slightly easier to meet them.

"Can I ask you something?" My left hand eased on my katana, I even drummed my fingers a little bit against the scabbard.

"Gods protect me from your questions, my curious. Ask." Did he smile? If he did it was a fleeting expression, moving over his face so quickly even my demon-sharp eyes barely caught it.

No time like the present. Since you won't explain anything else, I might as well ask for the moon. I plunged ahead. "Why did you Fall?"

I expected him to turn the question aside, refuse to answer it. He would always make some ironic reply before, or simply, gently, refuse to tell me anything of A'nankhimel. Would tell me myths about demons, old stories, tales to make me laugh or listen wide-eyed with a sweet sharp nostalgic terror like a child's-but never anything I could use to find out what I was, what the limits of my new body were. Nothing about himself, or what his life had been like. He would only talk about things that had happened since I'd met him, and even some of those he wouldn't speak about.

As if he'd been born the day he showed up at my door. I never knew dissatisfaction before I met you, hedaira. Today, he cocked his head. Considered the question.

I felt his awareness again, closing around me. His aura stretched to cover mine, the mark on my shoulder staining through the trademark sparkles of a Necromance's energetic field with black diamond flames.

When he spoke, it was soft, reflective. "I lived for countless ages as the Prince's Right Hand and felt no guilt or shame at what I did. I still do not."

No philosophy for me, he'd said, during the hunt for Santino. I don't take sides. The Prince points and says that he wants a death, I kill.

He was silent for so long, his eyes burning green against mine, that I finally found my lungs starving for breath and remembered to inhale. He'd refused to kill me to gain back his place in Hell. I had it on good authority; better authority than if he'd tried to tell me himself. So what did that mean?

"Then, the Prince set me to fetch a human woman and use her in a game that would end with the created Androgyne under his hand. I found myself in the presence of a creature I could not predict, for the first time in my life."

He shrugged, a simple evocative movement. "I did not understand her-but knew her in a way that seemed deeper than even my kinship with my own kind. And thus, my dissatisfaction."

"Dissatisfaction?" I sounded breathless. What a surprise-I was breathless. Damn hard to breathe when he was staring into my eyes like this.

"I Fell through love of you, hedaira. It's simple enough, even with your gift for complicating matters. I don't want your fear of me; I have never wanted you to fear me." He looked as if he would say more, but ended up shutting his mouth and shaking his head slightly, as if mocking himself for what he couldn't say.

I don't want to fear you either. "I don't want to be afraid of you. But you make it so goddamn hard, Japh. All you have to do is talk to me."

"I can think of nothing else I would rather do." He even looked like he meant it, his eyebrows drawn together as he studied me, his eyes holding mine in a cage of emerald light. "I cherish my time with you."

That made my heart flip and start to pound like a gymnasa doing a floor routine.All right, Japh. One more try. One more chance. "What aren't you telling me?" My fingers tightened on the scabbard.

A long pause. The hovercab began to descend, the driver humming a tune I didn't recognize. There was a time in Saint City when I would have known all the songs.

"Like calls to like," he repeated, softly. "I am a killer, Dante. It is what I am."

So, by extension, that's what I am. That wasn't what I meant, I wanted you to talk to me about Eve. I thought about this, turned it over inside my head. "I don't kill without cause." My eyes dropped away from his, to the slender shape of the katana. Fudoshin. A blade hungry for battle, Jado had said.

Jado lived in Saint City. I wanted to ask him about this sword. Yeah, sure. Like I have so much free time. "Anyway," I continued, "a killer's not all you are. If it was I'd be dead too, right?" You've never let me down when it counted, Japh. You even stood up to Lucifer-and pushed him back. You made the Prince of Hell back off. He's scared of you.

He had no pat reply for that. The hovercab landed with a sigh of leaf springs. He paid the cabdriver. I wondered-not for the first time-where all the money came from.

Then again, Lucifer had paid me too. Cash was no problem to demons. Some Magi even said they'd invented the stuff. It certainly made sense, given money's seductive nature and the chaos it could create.

I decided to push a little more, since he was so willing to talk. "So what's this Key, and what's going on that's changed everything?"

He didn't reply for a few moments, watching the cab lift off and dart back into the stream of hover traffic. "Later, my curious. When we are finished with your Necromance friend."

Disappointment bit sharp under my breastbone. I folded my arms, my sword a heavy weight in my left hand. "Japh?"

"Hm?" His eyes returned to me. "More questions?"

If I didn't know better, I'd think he was baiting me. "Just a request. Quit being a bully. Stop keeping me in the dark."

His mouth pulled down at both corners. But I'd already turned on my heel and dropped my arms, heading down Trivisidiro just like I always used to do, the click of my bootheels marking off each step. How about that? I think I finally got the last word in.

I didn't feel happy. What I felt was uneasy, and growing uneasier by the moment.

I blinked at Trivisidiro Street and cast around, vaguely troubled. If I hadn't been so bloody distracted, I would have noticed it right away. As it was, it took me a few seconds before I realized why I was disoriented.

Gabe's front gate was slightly open. Not only that, but the shields on her property line were torn, bleeding trickles of energy into the early afternoon.