Lilith Saintcrow - The Devil's Right Hand

The Prince stopped, turned his head so I could see his profile. “Japhrimel.” His voice was back to silk and honey, terrible in its beauty. “I give you a promise, my Eldest. One day, I will kill her.”

Lucifer disappeared. Vanished. The air tried to heal itself, closing over the space where he had been, and failed. He left a scorch on the very fabric of existence.

Japhrimel was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed forward. He didn’t look at me. I was glad, because his face was full of something terrible, irrevocable, and devouring.

“Not while I watch over her,” he said softly.

I finally coughed, a racking fit that ended with me spitting more black blood. It felt like I’d been torn in half. My legs were made of insensate clay. I doubted I’d be able to stand.

Japhrimel knelt beside me, caught my right wrist and pushed my sword away with simple pressure. He said nothing, but immediately slid his other hand under my left arm, pressed flat against my shirt. His fingers burned.

A jolt of Power seared through me. I cried out, hunching over, and retched; a deep, amazing hacking sound. He swore, passionlessly, and I tipped into his arms as the awful tearing agony went away. All right. Everything’s going to be all right. He’s here. The ludicrous, childlike certainty welled up, I choked back tears.

Right then I didn’t care what he’d done to me before. I was just damn glad he’d shown up in time.

He kissed my forehead, my cheek, hugged me. Spoke into my hair. “ A’tai, hetairae A’nankimel’iin. Diriin. ” His voice was ragged now. “Why, Dante? Why? ”

What are you asking me for? I’m just trying to stay alive. I hitched in a breath. Another. It rasped terribly against my abused throat. What was it with demons and crushing my trachea? “Lucas,” I rasped. “Took on Lucifer… is he—”

“Check for the Deathless,” Japhrimel said over his shoulder. “Hurry.”

Who else is here? The thought was very far away. Shaking. Shivers roaring through me. Why? I wasn’t cold. “J-j-j-japh—”

“Be silent. You’re hurt, and you need rest.” His tone was clipped now. “Do not fight me, now.”

“Japhrimel—” I tried to tell him. “I… I saw… before— ”

He didn’t listen. “No more of this.”

I tipped into blackness, but not before I heard Lucas’s wheezing voice.

“Goddammit, that hurt . Get your ass moving, we have a transport to catch.”

Long hazy time of darkness. When I woke, slowly, I found myself on my side. Warmth closed over me, and softness. Power pulsed down my skin, sank in, ran along my bones. I heard Japhrimel’s voice, quiet, saying something in his native tongue. Something stroked my forehead, a touch that sent a sweet gentle fire through my entire body. He traced my hairline, touched my cheek, ran his knuckle over my lips.

Hoverwhine. I felt the peculiar humming sensation of antigrav transport. Was I on a hover?

I don’t think I like hovers anymore.

I opened my eyes. Dim light greeted me. I felt my swordhilt, both hands locked around it. The sword lay with me, its subliminal hum of Power good and right against my palms.

Japhrimel moved as soon as I looked up at him, straightening and stepping back. I was on a medunit table bolted to a wall behind a partition, and the curve of the plasteel walls told me it was a fairly good-sized hover. The table was hard, but I wasn’t being strangled and I didn’t feel ripped in half. I was still breathing, and I had all my original appendages.

It felt great . I closed my eyes, opened them again, and he was still there.

“Gods,” I rasped. “I’m glad to see you.”

He managed to look surprised and gratified at once, his saturnine face easing. “Then I am happy. You are well and whole, your friend Lucas has mended, and McKinley and Vann are no worse for wear. Tiens will meet us in Giza. The humans have gone back to their lives, except for your Necromance.” His mouth turned down slightly at the mention of Leander.

I nodded. It was getting hazardous to hang around me, and humans were fragile.

I felt only a twinge of guilt for thinking that. After all, I’d been wholly human once, hadn’t I?

Was Japhrimel right? Was it no more than a habit? I didn’t want to think so. I was human inside , where it counted.

He leaned forward, his eyes still bright and green. I examined his face as he examined mine, something new in the silence between us.

He broke it first, for once. “He could have killed you.”

I nodded, my hair sliding along a crisp cotton pillowcase. Where had the pillow come from? “He certainly wanted to.” The question spilled out of me. “Did you hunt the Fallen, Japhrimel?”

He froze. I would never get used to his particular quality of stillness, as if his very molecules had slowed their frenetic dance. Then his face darkened. It was all the answer I needed.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” It came out plaintive instead of angry. I was too emotionally exhausted to be angry. “If you would just talk to me—”

“I see no reason to tell you of every assassination I committed at the behest of the Prince.” There was no mercy in his tone; it scorched with bitterness not directed at me. “Why will you not trust me? Is it so hard to do as I ask?”

You could make me do whatever you wanted; you could force me. You probably will. And I’ll fight however I can, no matter how much I love you. You can’t control me. “I want to trust you,” I whispered. “You make it hard.” I had one last question. “Did Lucifer offer you your place in Hell back if you got rid of me?”

He stared at me for an endless moment. Then comprehension lit his face, comprehension and savage anger. “Vardimal’s Androgyne.”

“She wanted to meet me.” I opened my mouth to tell him the other half of it—that she’d said she was my daughter too—and shut my lips.

He didn’t need to know that. That was private. That was human, between Doreen and me. It was mine .

“Ah. Now it makes sense.” Japhrimel straightened, and turned away from me. His shoulders shook, stiffly. He tipped his head back, his inky hair falling away from his forehead, and I felt the slight tremor that raced through the hover.

“Japhrimel?” I didn’t expect him to listen, but he did. “Please, don’t.”

His reaction told me everything I needed to know. He hadn’t kept the knowledge of Eve’s escape from me, he hadn’t even known. I was willing to believe it.

Are you believing it just because you want to, or because it makes sense?

I didn’t care.

The earthquake of his fury eased. I could barely tell anyone else was on the hover, it was so silent.

When he turned back to me, I almost flinched. His upper lip drew back, exposing his teeth; his eyes were incandescent. He looked far more lethal than Velokel the Bull. “An Androgyne out of Hell,” he said tightly. “Of course. Of course . I suppose the Hunter and the Twins are in league with her?”

“I think so.” I freed my right hand from my swordhilt, started to push myself up on my elbow. The softness—it was one of the new microfiber spaceblankets, warm and soft at the same time—crinkled as it folded down. He was immediately there, helping me; I felt clean, my clothes were soft as if freshly laundered. Probably cleaned off with Power; he knew how I hated to be dirty. I was vaguely surprised to find my sword had a new reinforced sheath, deep indigo lacquer. “Japhrimel, she asked me to distract you. To just wait out the next seven years and pretend we can’t find her. She wants to—”