Lilith Saintcrow - The Devil's Right Hand

If I looked hard enough, I could still see traces of who I’d been in my face—my eyes were still mostly my own, and when I relaxed my mouth still quirked up habitually on one side as if I didn’t quite believe what I was seeing. The little half-smile had always seemed welded onto my face before, a professional defense. If I was smiling, it couldn’t hurt that bad, could it?

I brushed my hair back with wet fingers, washed my face. Scrubbed my skin dry with a towel. Shrugged inside my rig a little, tested the action of each knife. Checked my bag, scorched and battered but still mine. Extra ammo. I still had my plasgun, too.

I looked at myself in the mirror, the water still running into the bowl of the sink. I wiped the half-smile off my face, watched as the lovely woman facing me grew solemn, the tattoo on her cheek shifting slightly. The twisted caduceus ran its sharp ink lines lovingly over her skin. The emerald set high on her flawless left cheekbone flashed.

There was another green flash, and my eyes dropped. I lifted my left wrist, the breath slamming out of me.

The wristcuff ran with green light, fluid lines scrabbling with humming urgency. A warning.

I drew my plasgun. Left the water running. Edged for the bathroom door. Stopped, and looked at the shower. My eyes snagged on the bathtub, too. A low stone-tiled wall between the bathtub and the shower, only about three feet high. Probably for the plumbing. The bathtub was set in the floor, but behind it was the wall the room shared with the outside hallway.

I bet that wall isn’t stone all the way through. It likely wasn’t kobolding-made, which meant it wasn’t as tough as the exterior wall.

The wristcuff squeezed, a bolt of pain firing its way up my arm. My breath stopped in my throat. Demons. Whether from Lucifer or escaped from Hell, they certainly didn’t mean me any good.

You’ve got to make up your mind, Danny. Let Japhrimel push you around or strike out on your own. Even if you won’t last long without him, at least you won’t have someone owning you. Forcing you. Lying to you.

Clear coldness settled over me. In the end, everything boiled down to one thing—what I had to do. Even if I loved Japh, I couldn’t be a slave.

I heard McKinley’s voice, low and urgent. Then, a soft light rap on the hotel room’s door. Demons, here and knocking at the door.

A static-laden silence smashed through the room. Then a crunching, smashing impact; the bathroom door rattled against its hinges. A low, coughing snarl—a hellhound.

Just before all hell broke loose, I took a deep breath, stepped back, and pointed my plasgun at the wall. Power spiked under my skin, and I squeezed the trigger.

Night lay thick and heavy over Demilitarized Sarajevo. It felt strange to be in a city of paranormals, but the static in the air was enough to hide even me for once. I crouched in the lee of a dark alley, listening to the snarling as two werecain engaged in a deep philosophical discussion about something out on the pavement across the cobbled square, right in front of the Haunt Tais-toi nightclub.

Nightclub is too kind a word. It was a Nichtvren haunt, communal feeding ground, and social gathering spot rolled into one. Instead of thick shielding to keep the hungry Power contained, this had only token barriers—after all, who would be stupid enough to attack a haunt in Sarajevo? And besides, there were no normals or psions around to keep away from the well of carnivorous Power because of the risk of Feeders.

This particular haunt had been a temple once, a twin-towered cathedral in the café section of Sarajevo, facing out onto a wide square now eddying with every conceivable shape and size of paranormal. Species I’d only read about in school lived here in their own enclaves, and night was the time they came out to play.

My shields shivered, demon-strong and flexible. I blinked a few times, feeling a purely human reaction uncomfortably like what any prey would feel in the presence of predators. Maybe I wasn’t fully human anymore—but I’d been born one, and something blind and old inside me recognized that to these creatures, the Danny Valentine before Japh’s alterations would be walking meat in Sarajevo.

My head still felt tender from the plasgun-plus-Power burst. True to my guess, the wall hadn’t been pure stone, just plasteel struts and sheetrock with thin marble tiles. It had blown out nicely. I, on the other hand, had slid into the glassed-in shower. The single low stone wall between the shower and the bathtub provided perfect cover as I buttoned myself as tightly down as I could. My feet had crunched on broken glass from the shower door. The mark on my shoulder bit down with sudden pain as the demon attackers, followed by McKinley and Japhrimel, streaked out into the hotel. I heard a werecain’s howl—the guard at the top of the stairs. Everyone thought I’d busted out and was running away—or was being dragged.

Jeez, not too bright, I’d thought, my breath still choked in my throat. Then I’d scrambled out through the hole in the wall, Power bleeding into the air from where my strike had smashed through Japhrimel’s demon-laid wards. Any other demon’s shielding, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do so—but I wore Japh’s mark, and his wards weren’t meant to strike against or harm me.

Or so I’d hoped, and turned out to be right. Besides, the smashing against the front door meant the shields were automatically concentrating to throw back the force of that attack and were thus more vulnerable here.

Low and silent, I turned to the left and was around the corner in another hall before I heard the crashing chaos of a hell of a fight behind me. I didn’t wait around. Instead, I kicked in a door, and— thank Anubis —found a room with actual windows. A swanhild room, actually, with a large round nestingbed full of feathery stuff. I didn’t stop to apologize to the screaming swanhild trio that greeted me, feathers swirling around their shocked faces and narrow naked torsos. I simply dove out the plasglass window and was gone before the attacking demons had realized I’d outsmarted them. The drop hadn’t been pleasant, but it hadn’t hurt me much.

Finding the Haunt Tais-toi had been as easy as getting to a busy street and politely asking a passing swanhild, then following her careful directions.

The psychic interference was so intense I couldn’t scan the place. Nichtvren poured in, and I spotted a whole pack of werecain—from an alpha in a long leather coat all the way down to a few teenage pups. A few swanhild decked out in silver chains, miniskirts, and not a lot else waltzed in the front door.

There wasn’t a lot of hover traffic. I guess the paranormals around here didn’t use them—who needed a hover when you could use the Nichtvren shimmer-trick, or when a werecain could cover ten blocks of city street in seconds? Swanhild were territorial and rarely traveled despite their messaging system, and kobolding hated to leave wherever they’d been hatched.

At least if there aren’t a lot of hovers, I might not get hit with one.

I checked the street again. Too many shadows. Any one of them could hold a demon, and the interference was intense enough I wouldn’t know it in time.

I was pretty sure I’d shaken all pursuit, and the interference that would hide them would hide me a lot better, since I wasn’t as big a disturbance in the Power flow.

Danny, what are you doing? You should be running as far away from here as you can, going as deep into cover as you can.

I couldn’t run forever. If Lucifer wanted to kill me, he was welcome to try. I’d die fighting. Besides, why bother to schedule a meeting with me and send assassins for me? Far easier and more satisfying to do it himself.