Lilith Saintcrow - To Hell and Back

She paused for a few of the longest seconds of my life. I watched the knife-sharp shadows, sunlight spearing through the temporary shelter of a building older than the Hegemony and still clinging, wrecked and broken, to the edges of life.

"Will you kill him?" She sounded very small, and very young. But that smile was neither small nor young. It was the smile of a vidpoker shark holding a full hand of wonderful about to call your bet and take your firstborn.

Or maybe just your soul. Were demons even interested in souls anymore, now that they had all the government, sex, Power, and favors humanity could come up with?

"Sekhmet sa'es," I whispered back. "Why do you keep asking me? I'm sure as hell going to try."

It wasn't that long until sundown, and I spent most of that time not-thinking as Eve and I flitted from shadow to shadow, working along the edge of the bomb crater and the huge reflective glass pan. Purple veils of shade grew longer and longer, and once I crouched next to her in the lee of a huge pile of scrap preserved by dry desert air while a hellhound slid in plain view through a golden column of fading sunlight, its green eyes catching fire and heat shimmering from its pelt. The Knife vibrated against my hip so hard I expected the beast to pause and look for whatever was buzzing like a wasp, but the slitherings and skitterings of demons in the ruins must have drowned it out.

Or at least, so I hoped. My eyes, dry and heavy from the flying sand, kept welling with hot water. My shoulder pulsed with soft velvet heat.

This is a bad idea. You know this is a bad, bad idea, right? Even if Japh was planning to hand Eve over to him, he would have kept you alive. This is a bad idea.

I dismissed the thought as not even worthy of the craven bastard I was turning into. There was no shame in being afraid, but there was shame in hiding from it. So I was afraid. So what? I've been afraid most of my life, of one thing or another.

But I've never let that fear drive me. Spur me, maybe. But not drive me.

Eve circled our destination a few times before we worked our way closer, picking our way through piles of junk and broken concrete. The sun lowered itself into the west like an old man sinking into a bathtub, slow and aching. I tried not to feel the insistent tugging in my shoulder, a pulling against the ropes of the scar. Where was he? Had he intended to turn Eve over to Lucifer? He'd promised not to, asked me to trust him. Still, I could see how Eve might not want to take that chance.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered now.

The sun turned to blood, and I thought I could see the haze of radiation crawling over every sand-scoured surface. Or maybe it was just the blurring in my eyes.

As the sun sank, Power rose.

It was coming from somewhere close, a diseased heart in the ruins thumping irregularly but gathering strength. One huge broken building, a massive structure that looked like it had once been a pyramid, loomed over a twisted unrecognizable statue. I guess humanity's never lost its taste for making things huger than they need to be.

A slight rise of rubble made a natural amphitheater; the mountains in the background and the edges of the blast zone spilling away, the glass fractured in crazy spiderweb patterns that reminded me of the deep angular scorings on the altar in the city under Chomo Lungma. I shivered as the baking wind, redolent of sand and demon spice, breathed up into my face.

I lay on my stomach and peered down into the bowl of rubble giving out onto the wastes. Eve crouched below the lip of the hill, dust grimed into her hair turning it the color of clotted cream instead of pale platinum ice. Both of us were tattered almost beyond recognition. I pushed matted, filthy hair out of my face and shivered again. My nervous system was rebelling like a Chill junkie's, out on the edge of control, ready to jolt away from under me. Breathe, Danny. Just breathe.

There, in the middle of the wreckage, something that should not be… was. The dying sun gathered itself and plunged fully below the horizon, desert stars striking sparks as the wind veered again, the ground thrumming below. The paint of dusk bled down the vault of heaven, and as true night dropped like a curtain — because it does fall fast out here in the desert, with no streetlamps to hold it back — a slim figure with a shock of golden hair melded out of nothing and took his place at the focal point.

The ruined city cringed.

Other shadows gave birth. The spiderlike things clicked and scuttled, straining at leashes held by graceful, inhuman forms with burning eyes in shades of blue, green, and molten gold. Hellhounds, winged and flightless, snarled and jostled. Imps lolled, some chittering in the strange unlovely tongue of Hell, and the deeper shadows held eyes that had to be higher-ranking demons, not deigning to show themselves.

"Anubis," I breathed, then clapped my hand over my mouth.

Eve said nothing, but crouched tense as a violin string next to me. "Not so many of the Lesser Flight, and none at all of the Greater." The words mouthed my ear as if she'd placed her mouth next to it.

So what? They're still fucking demons. I spotted a way down through the rubble, an easy path.

A primrose path, Danny? Get it? Howling hysterical laughter rose up under my skin, was mercilessly choked, and died without even a gurgle. "I don't suppose we have a plan," I whispered back.

"Do you believe in Fate, Dante?"

Past turned into present again, looped and stuck tight, a gear-wheel sliding into place. Nothing to do but finish this, now.

"No." I wasn't sure whether it was a lie or the truth, but I said it.

Lucifer turned in a circle, the flame of his hair not replacing the sun. My hands shook. My entire body shook. The gaping hole in my mind struggled to open like a cancerous flower, the reality of what had been done to me fighting to break free and douse my sanity with black water. My shields shivered, one powerful burst of fear tinting them purple-red before I controlled myself again. Fudoshin sang as it cleared the sheath and I found myself on my feet at the top of the slope, clearly visible in the backwash of starlight.

Pebbles clicked and shifted, and I knew without looking that Eve had risen too, her lambent eyes glowing over my shoulder. For a moment my heart paused. It should have been Japhrimel standing there, watching my back as I faced down the Devil.

It doesn't matter. It won't matter in a few red-hot minutes.

My sword woke. Blue flame twisted along its edge, runes of the Nine Canons spilling through the steel, its white-hot core singing its own silent song of destruction. I took three steps forward, and my fingers loosed themselves from the scabbard. It clattered to the ground, and my left hand closed around the Knife's warm, wooden hilt.

Lucifer slowly turned. The movement was exquisitely leisurely, light sliding down the line of his body. Gold lived, scorching, in his hair, casting a glimmer around him. He tilted his head back slightly, and the dish of his face rose to catch my gaze.

His face was a holovid angel's, sheerly beautiful and just as completely male. The emerald set above and between his flawless, burning-green eyes snapped a spark. The marvel of his mouth was set and unyielding. There were shadows under his flaming eyes, and his beauty was somehow worn but not diminished.

The Devil looked very tired.

My left cheek itched, the twisted caduceus accreditation tattoo straining inked lines under my skin. My own emerald burned like a lase bonedrill, spitting a tearing-green spark fat as a teardrop.

His eyes met mine and I recoiled without moving, a scream tearing through the blank spot in my head, the one space where my Magi-trained memory mercifully failed.