Lilith Saintcrow - The Devil's Right Hand

Japhrimel had told me to stay inside, but if someone crashed a hover into the house I didn’t want to stick around to see it.

No route like the short route. I gathered myself and leapt. The crash and tinkle of breaking plasglass filled the air, I landed cat-silent, cat-quick, and streaked along the wall of the house, making for the corner. It was a relief to have something to fight at last.

I rounded the corner and saw it, a low black vaguely humanoid shape moving with blurring speed. I let out a short, sharp curse just as it twisted away from the wall of the house, which was resonating like a struck bell, stone singing with the stress of the Power wedded to it stretching. Another magickal attack, and I’d gotten out of the house just in time. The shields sang a low feedback squeal I didn’t like at all, the night suddenly alive with half-heard chittering and shrieking. I heard a terrible glassy growl float from the front of the house just as the shields shuddered from that direction, taking another massive impact and going hard and crystalline, locking down.

The thing I was chasing bolted across the field on the west side of the house. I jabbed my left hand forward as I ran, making a complicated nonphysical gesture. The bloodstone ring on my left third finger shot a single bolt of thin red light. I’d sunk four or five trackers into this ring, little runespells meant to latch onto a bounty, an unshakeable magickal bloodhound. I was secondarily talented as a runewitch, able to use the runes of the Nine Canons with more accuracy and ease than most; I could make my own trackers rather than buying them from a Shaman or a Skinlin dirtwitch.

I gathered myself and hurtled forward, following the thin smear of red light, using every iota of demon speed. Heard the whining sound as the tracker slammed home. Then, something shifted.

POW!

There was a massive sound like every bell in the world struck at once. I dropped to my knees, all speed gone. Reflex took over, earthed the Power, red crackling along my skin in rippled lines. The Power meridians along my skin burned, subsided as I shook my head, my hair slipping forward over my shoulders. My braid had come loose. I sat there on my knees, blinking, my sword gone dark since I no longer needed it.

The thing, whatever it was, had done something… strange. Just popped out of existence and thrown the tracker back at me.

Nothing human could do that. The trackers were meant to hang on to even a combat-trained human psion. I should have been able to follow that thing to the ends of the earth.

We’re not dealing with earthly things here, Danny. Get with the program, will you?

I levered myself to my feet, reflexively. If I’d still been human, the backlash would have knocked me out, possibly even burned me physically along my Power meridians. As it was, I shook the stunning sound out of my head, gained my feet, and took a deep breath, my almost-demon body taking a split second to deal with the burning from the snapped tracker. I cocked my head. “What the bloody blue fuck ?” I barely even realized I was whispering aloud.

The whine of hovercells crested with an abused squeal of antigrav, and a massive shattering sound slammed into me. I was tied to the shields on the house, so I felt a sharp pain, like a tooth yanked from its socket, as the layers of energy, both mine and Japhrimel’s, imploded. It would take unimaginable force to break those shields, even with both Japhrimel and me away. Only one thing could supply that kind of force.

Well, two, actually. A god, which was unlikely—gods just don’t attack people like that. They have other ways to make their displeasure known.

Or a demon. If presented with a choice like that I wouldn’t even lay odds on it; there wasn’t any point.

This just keeps getting better.

I sheathed my sword again, and turned to look back at the house just as fire lanced the sky.

For the second time in as many minutes, my legs spilled out from under me. A white-hot column of flame boiled up from the house.

Holy shit. I laid on my side as the shockwave rolled over me. That’s reactive and plas! Blood slid from my nose in a painless gush, my body trying to cope with this new demand. I waited for the aftershock, half my face tingling where it was exposed to the scorching air. The smell of cooking grass simmered in my nose, I felt another wave of fruitless rage rise up.

Jace’s sword. My altar. My books. Goddammit. Heat boiled over me, then aid hovers began to wail in the distance.

My brain started to work again.

Someone had just seriously tried to kill me.

Lucifer, or one of the demons he said he wanted me to hunt? Which would mean they already know the Devil’s hired me—which means I’m not going to survive for long without Japhrimel around.

Four of the Greater Flight of Hell, and I’m Lucifer’s new little errand girl. All on my own, without Japhrimel. Who told me to stay in the fucking house and get killed. Goddammit. I spared myself one grim smile and shook my head, rolling onto my stomach and bringing myself up to hands and knees, my sheathed sword braced against the earth in my left hand.

I made it to my feet in two tries. There’s a limit to what even my body can handle. If Japhrimel’s return to Hell and reclaiming his place as a demon undid my change and made me human again, I was looking at a very short, exceedingly uncomfortable lifespan.

The mark on my left shoulder tingled faintly. I closed my eyes against a wave of dizziness. Then I patted myself down.

Bag, knives, gun, plasgun, sword. Everything there. Including all my fingers. Hallelujah.

I looked at the inferno my home had become, suddenly glad none of the servants had been there. The stone itself was warping and twisting, the structure of the marble weakened by the interaction of reactive and plas fields, the very molecular bonds broken down. This was why you never discharge a plasgun near reactive, why shooting a plasgun at a hover isn’t used even as an assassination technique. The interaction of reactive paint and a plasfield creates a chain reaction that propagates at roughly half the speed of light, burning and warping molecular bonds, leaving giant scars on the earth unless contained and decontaminated. Even after that, the effects linger in living things, trees grow brittle and other plants wither and die. It’s a hugely messy way to kill someone, but pretty effective if you don’t care about being fined for contamination and ecological irresponsibility.

And if you were pretty sure you could outrun the shockwave.

“Anubis,” I breathed. My statue of the god, the obsidian statue of Sekhmet Japhrimel had given me, Jace’s sword—probably gone. Had the vision of a dead Shaman been a warning, one my god knew I would heed? “Thank you, Lord Death,” I whispered. “For saving my life.”

The first of the aid hovers from Arrieto crested the rise, lights flashing. I looked around for cover. They would dump plurifreeze on the flames to keep them from spreading and damp the reaction field, then stamp out any grass fires. I didn’t think any of the attackers would stick around after this, they would think they’d trapped me when the house shields went into lockdown. Gods alone knew what had been loosed inside the house when the shields broke, the reaction fire consuming all evidence and mopping me up if I’d survived.

Wait in the house, don’t answer the door. As advice goes, Japh, that was terrible.

I faded into a small stand of olive trees, leaning against one, my hand resting on warm bark. There would be a scar on this hillside until the plant life recovered from stresses in cellular structure caused by the reaction and the heat. More glowing aid hovers crested the hill, some of them already beginning to release a fine silvery mist of plurifreeze. Decontamination from a reaction fire this big would take a while, two days at least. The books Japh had bought me were gone, and gods alone knew if anything else might survive. It wasn’t likely.