"Dead Man Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Saintcrow Lilith)

Chapter One

The cavernous maw of the warehouse was like the throat of some huge beast, and even though it was large and airy claustrophobia still tore at my throat. I swallowed, tasted copper and the wet-ratfur reek of panic. How do I talk myself into these things? "Come on, do a bounty, it's easy as one-two-three, we've done a hundred of them." Sure.

Darkness pressed close as the lights flickered. Damn corporate greed not putting proper lighting in their goddamn warehouses. The least they could have done is had the fluorescents replaced.

Then again, corporations don't plan for hunters taking down bounties in their warehouses, and my vision was a lot better than it used to be. I eased forward, soft and silent, broken-in boots touching the cracked and uneven floor. My rings glinted, swirling with steady, muted light. The Glockstryke R4 was in my left hand, my crippled right hand curled around to brace the left; it had taken me weeks to shoot left-handed with anything like my former accuracy. And why, you might ask, was I using a projectile gun when I had two perfectly good 40-watt plasguns holstered in my rig?

Because Manuel Bulgarov had taken refuge in a warehouse full of plastic barrels of reactive paint for spreading on the undersides of hovers, that's why.

Reactive paint is mostly nonvolatile—except for when a plas field interacts with it. One plasgun blast and we'd be caught in a reaction fire, and though I was a lot tougher than I used to be I didn't think I could outrun a molecular-bond-weakening burst fueled by hundreds, if not thousands, of gallons of reactive. A burst like that travels at about half the speed of light until it reaches its containment edge. Even if I could outrun or survive it, Jace certainly couldn't, and he was covering me from the other side of the T-shaped intersection of corridors faced with blue barrel after blue barrel of reactive.

Just like a goddamn bounty to hide in a warehouse full of reactive to make my day.

Jace's fair blond face was marred with blood that almost hid the thorny accreditation tat and the spreading bruise up his left cheek, he was bleeding from his shoulder too. Ending up in a bar brawl that alerted our quarry was not the way I'd wanted to do this bounty.

His blue eyes were sharp and steady, but his breathing was a little too fast and I could smell the exhaustion on him. I felt familiar worry rise under my breastbone, shoved it down. My left shoulder prickled with numb chill, a demon's mark gone dead against my flesh, and my breathing came sharp and deep, ribs flaring with each soundless gasp, a few stray strands of hair falling in my face. Thank the gods I don't sweat much anymore. I could feel the inked lines of my own accreditation tat twisting and tingling under the skin of my left cheek, the emerald set at the top of the twisted caduceus probably flashing.

Tone it down, don't want to give the bastard a twinkle and let him squeeze off a shot or two.

Bulgarov didn't have a plasgun—or at least, I was reasonably certain he hadn't had one when he'd gone out the back door of the PleiRound nightclub and onto an airbike with us right behind him, only slightly slowed down by the explosion of the brawl. After all, the PleiRound was a watering hole for illicits, and once we'd moved and shown we were bounty hunters all hell had broken loose. If he'd had a plasgun, he probably wouldn't have bothered to run. No, he would have turned the bar into a firezone.

Probably.

I'd almost had Bulgarov, but he was quick. Too quick to be strictly normal, though he wasn't a psion. I made a mental note to tell my scheduler Trina to tack 15 percent onto the fee, nobody had mentioned the bastard was gene-spliced and augmented to within an inch of violating the Erdwile-Stokes Act of 28. That would have been nice information to have. Necessary information, even.

My shoulder still hurt from clipping the side of a hover as we chased him through nighttime traffic on Copley Avenue. He'd been keeping low to avoid the patrols, though how you could be inconspicuous with two bounty hunters chasing you on airbikes, I couldn't guess.

It was illegal to flee, especially once a bounty hunter had identified herself as a Hegemony federal officer. But Bulgarov hadn't gotten away with rape, murder, extortion, and trafficking illegal weapons by being a law-abiding jackass who cared about two more counts of felony evading. No, he was an entirely different kind of jackass. And staying low meant a little more time without the Hegemony patrols getting involved in the tangle, which made it him against just two bounty hunters instead of against full-scale containment teams. It was a nice move, and sound logic—if the two bounty hunters weren't an almost-demon and the Shaman who had taught her a good deal about hunting bounties.

My eyes met Jace's again. He nodded curtly, reading my face. Like it or not, I was the one who could take more damage. And I usually took point anyway; years of working bounties alone made it a tough habit to break.

He was still good to work with. It was just like old times. Only everything had changed.

I eased around the corner, hugging the wall. Extended my awareness a little, just a very little, feeling the pulse thunder in my wrists and forehead; the warehouse was magshielded and had a basic corporate security net, but Bulgarov had just walked right in like he owned the place. Not a good sign. He might have bought a short-term quickshield meant to keep him from detection by psions or security nets. Just what I'd expect from the tricky bastard.

Concentrate, Danny. Don't get cocky because he's not a psion. He's dangerous and augmented.

My right hand cramped again, pointlessly; it was getting stronger the more I used it. Three days without sleep, tracking Bulgarov through the worst sinks in North New York Jersey, taxed even my endurance. Jace could fall asleep almost instantly, wedged in a hover or transport seat while I crunched data or piloted. It had been a fast run, no time to catch our breath.

Two other bounty hunters—both normals, but with combat augments—had gone down trying to bring this guy in. The next logical choice had been to bring a psion in, and I was fresh from hunting a Magi gone bad in Freetown Tijuana. From one job to the next, with no time to think, perfect. I didn't want to think about anything but getting the next bounty collared.

I would be lying if I said the idea of the two extra murder charges and two of felony evading tacked onto Bulgarov's long list of indictments didn't bring a smile to my face. A hard, delighted grin, as a matter of fact, since it meant Bulgarov would face capital punishment instead of just filling a prison cell. I edged forward, reaching the end of the aisle; glanced up. Nothing in the rafters, but it was good to check. This was one tricky sonofabitch. If he'd been a psion it would have made things a little easier, I could have tracked the smears of adrenaline and Power he'd leave on the air when he got tired enough. As it was, the messy sewer-smelling drift of his psychic footprint faded and flared maddeningly. If I dropped below the conscious level of thought and tried to scan him, I'd be vulnerable to a detonation circuit in a quickshield, and it wasn't like this guy not to have a det circuit built in if he spent the credit for a shield. I could live without the screaming migraine feedback of cracking a shield meant to keep a normal from a psion's notice, thank you very much.

So it was old-fashioned instinct doing the work on this one. Is he heading for an exit or sitting tight? My guess is sitting tight in a nice little cubbyhole, waiting for us to come into sight, pretty as you please. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Sekhmet sa'es, he better not have a plasgun. He didn't. I'm almost sure he didn't.

Almost sure wasn't good enough. Almost sure, in my experience, is the shortest road to oh fuck.

Jace's aura touched mine, the spiked honey-pepper scent of a Shaman rising around me along with the cloying reek of dying human cells. I wished I could turn my nose off or tone it down a little. Smelling everyone's death on them was not a pleasant thing, even if I, of all people, know Death is truly nothing to fear.

Whenever I thought about it, the mark on my shoulder seemed to get a little colder.

Don't fucking think about that, Danny. Nice and cautious, move it along here.

A popping zwing! made me duck reflexively, calculating angles even as I berated myself for flinching. Goddammit, if you heard the shot it didn't get you, move move move! He's blown cover, you know where he is now. I took off, not bothering to look behind me—Jace's aura was clear, steady, strong. He hadn't been hit.

More popping, clattering sounds. Reactive paint sprayed as I moved, blurringly, much faster than a normal human. My gun holstered itself as I leapt, claws extending sweetly, naturally, my right hand giving a flare of pain I ignored as I dug into the side of a plastic barrel, hurling myself up, get up, and from there I leapt, feet smacking the smooth round tops of the barrels. My rings spat golden sparks, all need for silence gone. The racks holding the barrels swayed slightly as I landed and pushed off again, little glowing spits and spats of thick reactive paint spraying behind me as lead chewed the air. He's got a fucking semiautomatic assault rifle up there, sounds like a Transom from the chatter, goddamn cheap Putchkin piece of shit, if he had a good gun he'd have hit me by now.

I was almost under the floating panel of a hover platform. Its underside glowed with reactive paint, and I could see the metal cage on top where the operator would guide the AI deck through manipulating the dangling tentacles of crabhooks to pick up five racks at a time and transport them to the staging area. A low, indistinct male shape crouched on the edge of the platform, orange bursts showing from the muzzle of the semiautomatic rifle with the distinct Transom shape. He wasn't aiming at me now, he was aiming behind me at Jace, and this thought spurred me as I gathered myself and leapt, fingers sinking into the edge of the platform's corrugated metal and arms straining, the deadweight of my body becoming momentum as I pulled myself up as easily as if I were muscling up out of a swimtank. Almost overbalanced, in fact, still not used to the reflex speed of this new body, proprioception still a little off, moving through space faster than I thought I was.

Don't hit Jace, you motherfucker, or I'm going to have to bring you in dead and accept half my fee. Don't you dare hit him, you piece of shit.

Gun barrel swinging, deadly little whistles as bullets clove the air. A smashing impact against my belly and another against my ribcage; then I was on him, smacking the barrel up. Hot metal sizzled, a jolt of pain searing up my arm from the contact, then faded as my body coped with the damage. He was combat-augmented, with reactions quicker than the normal human's, but I'd been genetically altered by a demon, and no amount of augmentation could match that.

At least, none that I'd come across yet.

I tore the Transom away and grabbed his wrist in my cramping right hand, setting my feet and yanking sharply down. An animal howl and a crunch told me I'd dislocated his shoulder. Fierce enjoyment spilled through me, the emerald on my cheek giving one sharp flash, the kia burst from my lips as I struck, hard; ringed fist ramming into the solar plexus, pulling the strike at the last moment so as not to rupture fragile human flesh. My rings turned my fist into a battering ram, psychic and physical power wedded to a strike that could kill as well as daze. The oof! sound he made might have been funny if I hadn't felt hot blood dripping down my ribs and the slight twitching as a bullet was expelled from the preternatural flesh of my belly. Ouch. It stung, briefly, then smoothed itself out, black blood rising and sealing the seamless golden flesh. Another shirt ruined. I was racking up dead laundry by the ton now.

Of course, I could afford it. I was rich, wasn't I?

Knee coming up, he struggled, but he was off balance and I shifted my weight, hip striking as I came in close, he fell and I was on him; he howled as I yanked both arms behind his back, my fingers sinking into rubbery, augmented muscle fed by kcals of synthprotein shake and testos injections. Gonna have to pop that shoulder back in so he can't shimmy free of magcuffs. You've got him down, don't get cocky. This is the critical point. Just cuff him, don't get fancy. He bucked, but I had a knee firmly in his back and my own weight was not inconsiderable, heavy with denser bones and muscle now. The quickshield sparked and struggled, trying to throw me off; it was a sloppy, hastily purchased piece of work—all right for hiding, but no good when you had an angry Necromance on your back. One short sharp Word broke it, my sorcerous Will slicing through the shell of energy—a Magi's work, and a good one, despite being so hurried. I snapped the mental traces aside, taking a good lungful of the scent; maybe we could track down whoever did the quickshield, maybe not. They hadn't done anything illegal in providing the shield; quicks were perfectly legal all the way around. But a Magi this good might have something to say about demons, something I'd want to hear.

"Jace?" I called into the warehouse's gloom. The sharp smell of reactive paint bloomed up, mixing with dust, metal, the smell of human, hot cordite, sweat, and my own spiced fragrance, a light amber musk. Sometimes my own smell acted like a shield against the swirling cloud of human decay all around me, sometimes not; it wasn't the psychic nonphysical smell of a true demon, but the scent of something in-between. "Monroe? How you doing?" Jace? Answer me, he was aiming at you, answer me! My voice almost cracked, stroking the air with rough honey. My throat was probably permanently ruined from Lucifer's fingers sinking in and cracking little bits of whatever almost-demons had in their necks. I sounded like a vidsex operator sometimes.

Apparently I could heal from bullets, but demon-induced damage to my throat was another thing entirely.

"You're so much fun to hang out with, Valentine," he called from below. I tried not to feel the hot burst of relief right under my ribs. The bitter taste of another hunt finished exploded in my mouth, my heart thudding back to a slower pace. My left shoulder prickled numbly, as if the fluid mark scored into my skin was working its way deeper. Don't think about that. "Got him?"

Of course I've got him, you think I'd be talking if I didn't? "Stuffed and almost cuffed. See if you can find the control panels and bring this sucker to the loading dock, will you?" My lungs returned to their regular even task.

My tone resumed its normal, whispering roughness. Most Necromances affect a whisper after a while; when you work with Power wedded to your voice it's best to speak softly. "You okay?"

He gave a short jagged spear of a laugh, he was rubbed just as raw as I was. "Right as rain, baby. Get you in a second."

My right hand clumsily rumbled for the magcuffs. Bulgarov mumbled a curse in some consonant-filled Putchkin dialect. "Shut up, waste." I sank my knee into his heaving back. Short squat man, corded with heavy muscle and dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans under his assassin's rig, a long rat-tail of pale hair sliding out from under the kerchief he'd tied around his head like a kid playing minigang. "Unlucky day for you."

The magcuffs cooperated, and I had to hold him down while I popped his shoulder back into the socket with a meaty sound, eliciting a hoarse male scream. The cuffs creaked but held steady, and just to be sure I dug in my bag and retrieved the magtape, spent a few moments binding the bastard's elbows, knees, and ankles; I gagged him too. I was ready when the hover platform's control board lit up, I kept the man down and watched him cautiously while the platform jolted into life and began to glide on its prearranged path. Bulgarov had escaped last year from a seven-person Hegemony police unit that had him down and cuffed; I didn't want to underestimate him.

Four little girls, six hookers we know he killed for sure, three we're not sure of, and eight men, mostly Chill dealers. I wouldn't have minded the Chill dealers, but the kids… My rings were back to a steady glow: amber, moonstone, obsidian, and bloodstone all swirling with easy Power.

I surveyed the mess the bullets had made of the reactive barrels as the hover platform glided over neatly-placed racks and rows. Glowing paint dripped thickly under dim sputtering light from fluorescents turned down for the night pulsing outside in all its shades of darkness. And he killed them slow. Gods.

I could understand killing when necessary, the gods know I've done my share. But kids… and defenseless women. Even a sedayeen healer experienced with mental illness could do nothing for this man; he was a pure sociopath. No remorse, no hesitation, no conscience at all; he was neither the first nor the last of his kind the world would see. And probably not the last one I'd hunt, either.

The trouble was, I'd had little difficulty tracking him. Thinking like him. Being like him, to catch him.

That was starting to worry me.

The hover platform settled with a jolt and Bulgarov thrashed, making a muffled sound behind the gag. It probably wasn't comfortable, lying facedown on a cold metal platform with a stretched-out, busted shoulder and a bruised solar plexus. I might have broken his nose, too, when I had my knee in his back. At least, I hoped I had. My hand tightened on the neck of his jacket as I finished searching him for weapons, finding the trigger to the quickshield—a pretty ceramic medallion with a Seal of Solomon etched into one side—four knives, two projectile guns, and a little 20-watt recharge plasgun fitted into a pocket on the thigh of his jeans.

I turned the plasgun over in my hand. Gods. A tremor slid through me, my teeth chattering briefly. That close to blowing up this whole warehouse, would have taken a good chunk out of the neighborhood here too. You son of a bitch. Thank the gods you didn't use this.

The assault rifle bothered me, but he could have had it stashed on the airbike. My tat tingled, ink running under my skin, and my left shoulder tingled too. I was used to both sensations by now; did my best to ignore them. I'd smashed my slicboard into the side of a concrete building. If I was still human I'd be dead by now.

Jace met me on the platform. He looked like hell, his clothes torn and his face bloody and bruised. He also looked chalky-pale under his perpetual tan. I'd have to healcharm him, or find a healer to do it.

"You okay?" My throat rasped a little, but my voice still made the air shiver like a cat being stroked.

He nodded, his blue eyes moving over the trussed package on the floor, checking. I reached down, set my feet, and hauled Bulgarov up, nodding toward the pile of weapons. Without the brace of his Shaman's staff, Jace almost-limped on his stiff knee over to the pile, his sword jammed through the belt on his rig. It was a dotanuki; heavier than the last sword I'd used. My right hand cramped again, remembering driving the shattering blade through a demon's heart as we both fell through icy air and smashed into the surface of the frozen sea.

Don't think about that. Because thinking about that would only make me think of Japhrimel.

I winced inwardly as I hopped down to the yellow-painted concrete of the loading dock, the shock grating in my knees. I'd gone a whole… what, forty-five minutes without thinking of him? Adrenaline was wonderful, even if I wasn't sure what the demon equivalent to adrenaline was. Now if I could just find another bounty as soon as I dragged this guy in, I'd be all set.

"Chango," Jace breathed. "He had a plasgun."

I could have laughed, didn't. The short man was a heavy limp weight, more awkward than hard to carry; I was a lot stronger than I looked. He'd given up thrashing, his ribs heaved with deep breaths. I caught him straining against the magtape and dumped him on the concrete. Drew one of my main-gauches from its sheath and dropped to my knees, my fingers curling in his greasy hair. This close I could see the blemishes on his skin, blackheads rising to the oily surface. A side-effect of illegal augments, he had a pallid moon-shaped face scarred and pocked by terminal acne. Revulsion touched my stomach. I pushed it down, pulling his head back and craning his neck uncomfortably. It would be easy to give a sudden twist, hear the snap like a dry stick. So easy.

I laid the knifeblade against his throat. "Keep struggling," I whispered in his ear, my voice husky and broken. "I'd love to rid the world of a blight like you. And I'm a deadhead, Bulgarov. I can easily bring you back over the Bridge and kill you twice."

I couldn't, of course. Death didn't work like that; an apparition brought back from the halls of the hereafter couldn't be killed twice, only sent back into Death's embrace. But there was no reason for this bastard to know that. I'd seen the files and the lasephotos. I knew what this bastard had done to the little girls before he killed them.

He went limp for a moment, then struggled frantically against the magtape. I held him down, easy now that he was bound, and used the knife's razor edge to prick at his flesh, right over where the pulse beat. "Come on," I whispered. "Struggle harder, sweetheart. I'd love to do to you what you did to the little blonde girl. Her name was Shelley, did you know that?"

"Danny!" Jace's voice. "Hey, I've keyed in for pickup; we've got a Jersey police transport coming to get us and our little package. Want me to bag the weapons?" Did he sound uneasy? Of course not.

Or did he? I might be a little uneasy if I hung around me. I wasn't hinged too tightly these days. Call it nerves.

"Sure. Make sure that plasgun's sealed." My messenger bag's strap dug against my shoulder as I turned my head, objects inside shifting and clinking a little against my hip. A tendril of dark hair fell in my face, freed of the tight braid I'd put in this morning. Bulgarov had gone limp and still as a fresh corpse underneath me.

I resheathed the knife and let him go, his head thudding none-too-gently against the concrete. My hands were shaking, even my crippled right hand, which rubbed itself against my jeans. I was durty and tired, no time for a shower while I was tracking this bastard, barely time enough for food to keep Jace going, since my stomach usually closed up tight on a hunt. Jace was looking a little worse for wear, but he insisted on coming along. And I was soft enough to let him—after a bit of bitching, of course.

Anything was better than staying at home, staring at the walls and thinking thoughts I would rather not think. Especially since the only thing I seemed able to do while I was at home was research in Magi shadowjournals and stare at the black urn that held a demon's ashes.

A Fallen demon. Japhrimel.

You will not leave me to wander the earth alone, a soft male voice, flat but still expressively shaded, whispered in my head. I shut my eyes briefly. The mark on my left shoulder—his mark, the burning scar Lucifer had pressed into my flesh to make Japhrimel my familiar—hadn't faded with Japh's death, just gone numb as if shot with varocain. Sometimes it was hike a mass of burning ice pressed into the skin, pulsing every now and again with a weird necrotic life of its own. I wondered how long it would feel like that, if it would ever fade, and how long it would take for the cold burning numbness to fade.

If it ever did.

Goddammit, Dante, will you quit thinking about that?

Distant sirens began at the edge of my hearing, slicing through the rattling whine of hovertrafric. All this reactive paint, and the bastard had a plasgun all the time. What if he'd decided to take a potshot, take us with him?

Would a reactive fire kill me? I didn't know. I didn't know what I was now, other than almost-demon. Part demon. Whatever. I was stuck with the face of a holovid model and a body that sometimes escaped my control and moved far faster than it should, and I was taking down bounties like they were going out of style. Gabe called it "bounty sickness," and I wasn't sure she was far wrong.

I'd be home this week for my usual Thursday rendezvous with Gabe in the back booth they saved for us at Fa Choy's. I'd missed it last week. That's a good thought, I told myself grimly as the sirens drew nearer and Jace finished bagging Bulgarov's weapons. Keep that one.

But what I thought of, as I watched the shapeless lump of the man magtaped on the floor, was green eyes, turning dark and thoughtful, and a long black coat, golden skin, and a faint, secretive tilt to a thin mouth. Goddammit. I was thinking about a demon again. A dead demon, at that.

Does a demon have a soul? The Magi don't know, they only know what demons tell them, and the question's never come up. And what am I? What did he do to me, and why didn't I die when he did?

That was a bad thought. Jace brought the bagged weapons over, his injured knee slowing him a little, and gave me a tight smile. "Fresh as a daisy," he said in his usual careless tone. "I hate that about you."

"Fuck you too." It was postjob banter, meant to ease the nerves and bring us down. It was working.

"Anytime, sweetheart. We've got a few minutes before the transport gets here." His mouth quirked up into a half-smile, and he rolled his shoulders back under the leather straps of his rig. But his eyes slid over the man on the floor, checking the magtape. Professional to the last. A handsome blue-eyed man, spirit bag dangling from a leather thong around his neck marking him as a vaudun just as the tat on his cheek marked him as a Shaman. He'd cut his hair like Gypsy Roen's sidekick on the holovids, soft and spiky, a nice cut on him. Especially with his lazy smile and his electric eyes.

Despite myself, I laughed. I tried not to; my ruined voice made it sound like a rough invitation, velvet curled under sweating fists. "You're the soul of chivalry, as always."

"Only for you, baby." The sirens were screamingly close. "Wanna carry him outside?"

"Do I get to drop him headfirst?" I sounded only halfway joking.

So did he. "If you want, sweetheart. Make sure you do it on concrete."

We caught the redeye transport back to Saint City; it deposited us onto the dock amid a stream of normals. I was glad to get off the transport, claustrophobia tends to run in psions. I was also happy to get rid of the whine of hover travel. It settles in the back teeth, hoverwhine, and rattles your bones. Normals can't hear it, but they get itchy on long hover flights too. Of course, it could be because all the normals I've seen on transports are a little edgy at being in a compartment with a psion. For some reason they think we want to read their minds or force them to do embarrassing things, though the gods know that the last place a psion wants to tread is the messy, open sewer of a normal person's brain. Without the regulation and cleanness imparted by training, minds can get rank and foul very quickly—and they stay that way. I don't know how normals endure it.

I was wearing my last clean shirt, but the fact that my jeans were dotted with black blood that smelled like sweet rotting fruit might have had something to do with the sidelong looks and not-so-subtle avoidance of normals. Or perhaps it was my rings, glowing faintly even in the gray thin morning light, or the rig with the guns and knives, stating clearly that I was combat trained and licensed to carry anything short of an assault rifle on public transport. Or the holovid-star face with velvety golden skin, and dark eyes set above a sinfully sweet mouth; or the way my right hand twisted sometimes into a claw without my realizing it, cramping up as if it was trying to grab a corkscrewed swordhilt. I missed the feel of a hilt and the clean confidence of carrying a katana; knives just aren't the same. But shattering a sword in a demon's heart isn't the best way to keep your swordhand whole. I was lucky; if Japhrimel hadn't changed me into whatever I was now, killing Santino might have killed me instead of just crippling my slowly-healing hand.

Yeah. Lucky, lucky me.

My skin tingled as we stood there, Jace leaning on his staff—rescued from the hotel room in Jersey—with its raffia twine at the top, small bones clicking and shifting against one another, even though the staff wasn't moving. After a while a Shaman's staff tends to take on a personality of its own, much like any object used to contain Power. There are even stories of Shamans who have passed their staves on to students or children, mostly in the older traditions. Jace was an Eclectic, like most North Merican Shamans; it's hard to work for the Hegemony and only stick with one discipline. Plus, psions tend to be magpies. We pick up a little of this, a little of that, whatever works. The use of magickal and psionic Power is so incredibly personal we'd be fools to do otherwise.

The tingling on my skin was my body adjusting to the flux of Power in the rainy air, the transport well was full so we had docked in an auxiliary outside bay. Rain misted down, a thin barely-autumn drizzle that smelled of hover-wash, the salt from the bay, and the peculiar damp radioactive smell of Saint City.

Home. Funny how the longer I spent chasing down bounties, the more I thought of Saint City as home.

"You coming home?" Jace tapped the butt of his staff against the concrete, but gently. Just a punctuation, not the sharp guncrack of frustration. His wheat-gold hair was beginning to darken and slick itself down with the drizzle; the bruise had faded and I could see the faint pulsing of the healcharm I'd laid on him. He'd slept on the transport, I hadn't; but we were both night creatures. Being out in the light of early morning was guaranteed to make both of us cranky. Not to mention he'd need a few hours or so to reaccustom himself to the flux of ambient Power here, we hadn't been gone long enough for his body to set itself to Jersey's Power flux. It was like hover-lag, when the body isn't sure whether it's day or night because of the speed of transport, only harder and if a psion was drained and exhausted enough potentially very painful.

Glancing at the glass doors, I found my voice. Wherever we were going, we could take the lifts down to the street together. If I wanted to. "No, I've got a few things to do."

"I thought so." He nodded sagely, a tall, spare man with a quick famous grin, his assassin's rig easy over his black T-shirt and jeans, the dotanuki thrust through his belt and his staff in hand. If it wasn't for the accreditation tat, he might have been a holovid star himself. But there were fine fans at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there before, and he looked tired, leaning on his staff for support instead of effect. The last ten months hadn't been easy on him. "It's the Anniversary, isn't it."

I didn't think you'd remember, Jace. The last time you saw me do this was years ago. Before Rio. Before you left me. I nodded, biting my lower lip. It was a sign of nervousness I never would have permitted myself, before. "Yeah. I'm glad we're back in town, I… well, missing it would be rough."

He nodded. "I'm going to pop in at Cherk's and have a drink before I go home." He tipped me a wink, the patented Jace Monroe grin flashing. That smile used to line up the Mob groupies for him, he never had any trouble with women—as he was so fond of remarking—until he met me. "Maybe I'll get all drunk and you can take advantage of me."

Damn the man, he was making me smile. "In your dreams. Go on home, I'll be along. Don't get too drunk."

" 'Course not." He shrugged and stepped away, heading for the door.

I wanted to go after him, walk down to the street together, but I stood very still and closed my eyes. My right hand lifted, almost of its own accord, and rubbed at the numb spot on my left shoulder. Was it tingling more than it had before?

Stop it, Dante. It was the stern voice of my conscience again. Japh's gone. Live with it.

lam, I told that deep voice. Go away.

It went, promising to come back later and taunt me. I rubbed my shoulder, scrubbing at it with my knuckles since my fingers were curled under and cramped. At least it didn't hurt anymore. Not there, anyway.

I wondered, not for the last time, why the mark hadn't faded with Japh's death. Of course, Lucifer had first burned it into my skin.

That was an uncomfortable thought, to say the least.

Jace was nowhere in sight when I took the lifts down and emerged blinking again into the gray day. Down on the street the drizzle had turned to puddles vibrating with hoverwash and splashing up whenever an airbike or wheel-bike went by, the ground hovertraffic moving a little bit slower than usual. The sidewalks were crowded with people, most of them normals intent on their own business, since the psions would probably be home in bed. It felt good to walk, my hands dangling loose by my sides and my braid bumping my back, my boots light on cracked pavement Bulgarov had been left in a holding cell in Jersey lock-down; the fee for the collar plus the extra 15 percent I'd told Trina to charge was probably safely in Jace's bank account by now. I didn't need the money, as there was plenty left from Lucifer's payoff. Even though I had no qualm about using it, I still flinched internally whenever I looked at my statements or signed on through my computer deck. Blood money, a payment for the life Lucifer had manipulated and cajoled me into taking, even though left to myself I would have killed Santino.

I had needed revenge. Lucifer still owed me, both for Doreen's daughter and for Japhrimel. I didn't have a chance of collecting, but still. He owed me, and I owed my life to a dead demon.

I winced, pacing through the rainy gray Saint City morning. The Prince of Hell might still be keeping an eye on me.

I owed him nothing, and that was exactly what the Prince of Hell was going to get from me. End of story.

Think about something else, Dante. You've got a lot to brood over. Like Jace.

Jace had given up his Mob Family for me, just handed it over to his second-in-command without a word and signed the papers for cessation-of-ownership. After fighting so hard to get his own Family he'd turned his back on it and showed up at my door.

Dante, you are spectacularly good at thinking things you don't want to.

It took me an hour to get to the corner of Seventh and Cherry. I had stopped at a street vendor's for a bouquet of yellow daisies, and I stood on the south corner under the awning of a grocery store that had been put in two years ago. The times I'd been here with Lewis, there had been a used bookstore across the way.

My pulse beat thinly in my temples and throat, as if I was taking down a bounty again. I clutched the daisies in their plasticine wrap, their cheerful yellow heads with black centers nodding as I held mem in my trembling right hand. Coming back here every year was a penance, maybe, but who else would remember him? Lewis had no family, substituting the psionic kids he fostered for a real blood link. And to me, he was the only family I'd known, my caseworker from the time I was an infant until I was thirteen.

If I was anything to be proud of, it was because Lewis had taught me how to be.

Memory rose. That's the curse of being a psion, I suppose. The Magi techniques for training the memory are necessary and ruthless. A Magi-trained memory can remember every detail of a scene, a magick circle, a canon of runes, a page of text. Necessary when one is performing Greater Works of magick, where everything has to be done right the first time, but merciless when things happen that you want to forget.

The prickling in my shoulder had gone down, thankfully. There wasn't much of a crowd here, most passersby ducked into the small grocery and came out carrying a plasbag full of alcohol bottles or synth-hash cigarettes. I stood just around the corner, tucked out of the way close to the wall, and stilled myself, forcing the memories to come clear and clean.

He'd brought me down to the bookstore, a special treat, and the smooth metal of the collar against my throat was less heavy on that unseasonably sunny autumn day. The crisp cinnamon smell of dried leaves hung in the air and the sky was impossibly deep blue, the type of blue that only comes in autumn. Blue enough to make the eyes ache, blue enough to drown in. Lewis had pushed his spectacles up on his beaky nose, and we walked together. I didn't hold his hand like I did when I was a little girl, having grown self-conscious in the last few years. I had ached to tell him something, anything, about how bad things were at school, but I couldn't find the nerve.

And so we walked, and Lewis drew me out, asking me about the last books I'd read, the copy of Cicero he'd loaned me and the Aurelius he was saving for if I did well on my Theory of Magick final coming up at the end of the term. And did you enjoy the Ovid? he asked, almost bouncing with glee inside his red T-shirt and jeans. He didn't dress like a social worker, and that was one more thing to love about him. He had given me my name, my love of books, and my twelve-year-old self had cherished wild fantasies of finding out that Lew really was my father and was just waiting for the right time to tell me.

I enjoyed it, I told him, but the man was obsessed with women.

Most men are. Lewis found the oddest things funny, and it was only once I reached adulthood that I understood the jokes. When I was young, of course, I had laughed with him, just happy that he was happy with me, feeling the warm bath of his approval.

I had been about to reply when the man blundered around the corner, jittering and wide-eyed, stinking of Clormen-13. It was a Chillfreak desperate for his next dose, his eyes fastening on the antique chronograph Lewis wore, a glittering thing above his datband and looking pawnable. Confusion and chaos, and a knife. Lewis yelled for me to run, my feet rooted to the ground as the Chill-freak's knife glittered, throwing back a hot dart of sunlight that hurt my eyes. Run, Danny! Run!

My eyes were hot and grainy. Drizzle had soaked into my hair and coat. I was standing exactly where I'd stood before I'd obeyed him, turning and running, screaming while the Chillfreak descended on Lewis.

The cops had caught the freak, of course, but the chronograph was gone and the man's brain so eaten by Chill he could barely remember his own name, let alone what he'd done with the piece of antique trash. And Lew, with his books and his love and his gentleness, had left me for Death's dry country, that land where I was still a stranger even if I'd known my way to its borders.

I laid the flowers down on the wet sidewalk, as I did every year, their plaswrap crinkling. The bloodstone ring on my third left finger flashed wetly, a random dart of Power splashing from its opaque surface. "Hey," I whispered. "Hi."

He had a grave marker, of course, out in the endlessly-green fields of Mounthope. But that was too far for a student to ride public transport and get back to the school by curfew, so I ended up coming here, downtown, where he had died almost immediately. If I'd been older, combat-trained and a full Necromance, I could have run off the Chillfreak or mended Lewis's violated body, held him to life, kept him from sliding off the bridge and into the abyss, under the blue glow of Death… if I'd been older. If I'd had some presence of mind I could have distracted the Chillfreak, diverted his attention; wearing a collar meant I couldn't have used any psionic ability on him, but there were other ways. Other things I could have done.

Other things I should have done.

"I miss you," I whispered. I had only missed two Anniversaries, my first year at the Academy up north and the year Doreen died. Murdered, in fact, by a demon I hadn't known was a demon at the time. "I miss you so much."

MM desperandum! he would crow. Never fear!

Other kids were raised on fairy tales. Lew raised me on Cicero and Confucius, Milton and Cato, Epictetus and Sophocles, Shakespeare. Dumas. And for special treats, Suetonius, Blake, Gibbon, and Juvenal. These are the books that have survived, Lew would remind me, because they are as close to immortal as you can get. They're good books, Dante, true books, and they'll help you.

And oh, they had.

I came back to myself with a jolt. Morning hovertraffic whined and buzzed overhead. I heard footsteps, people passing by on Cherry to get to the shops, but nobody going down this side of Seventh because it was apartment buildings, and everyone was gone for the day, or in bed. The daisies, a bright spot of color against cracked hard pavement, glowed under the thickening rain.

"All right," I said softly. "See you next year, I guess."

I turned slowly on my heel. The first steps, as usual, were the hardest, but I didn't look back. I had another appointment today. Jace would beat me home, and he would probably already have a few holovids from the rental shop on Trivisidero. Maybe some old Father Egyptos, we both loved that show and could quote damn near every line of dialogue. What evil creeps in the shadows? Egyptos, the bearer of the Scarab of Light, shall reveal all! Uncharacteristically, I was smiling. Again.