Lilith Saintcrow - Dead Man Rising

My failures rose to choke me. I hadn't been quick enough as a human to kill Santino, and if Japhrimel hadn't given up a large share of his demon Power for me he might have been too tough for Lucifer to kill so easily. And even with the strength and speed Japhrimel had given me, I had not been able to catch Jace when he rocketed past me to protect me from whatever twisted sorcery had dredged up Mirovitch to torture seemingly everyone who had survived Rigger Hall.

The glyph took shape at the end of my sword, encased in a sphere of lurid crimson. It was Keihen , the Torch, one of the Greater Glyphs of Destruction, a little-used part of the Nine Canons.

I don't love you , I had told him after Rio. I won't ever love you .

And his answer? If I cared about that I'd still be in Rio with a new Mob Family and a sweet little fat-bottomed babalawao. This is my choice, Danny . And stubbornly, over and over again, he had proved his love for me in a hundred different ignored ways.

I had never even guessed how much he meant to me.

There was only one thing I could give up, one penance I could pay, for the mess I'd made of everything. If Japhrimel could be resurrected, it was probably too late; he had Fallen. Lucifer's word meant nothing; hadn't he always been called the father of lies? If a Fallen demon could be resurrected and Lucifer wanted him, he could have sent another demon to collect me and the urn, or just the urn. I was part-demon, sure, but no match for a real one.

None of it mattered. All that mattered was that I had tortured myself with hope, when I had known all along there was no hope. Japhrimel was never coming back, and neither was Jace. If I survived taking down a Feeder's ka , I'd live afterward with the knowledge that I had denied myself even the faintest slim chance of resurrecting Japhrimel.

My toll to the dead: my hope. It was the only penance big enough.

I took my time with the glyph, no shuntlines, no avenues for the Power to follow except one simple undeniable course. The crimson globe spat, sizzled, and began to steam. Vapor took angular shapes, tearing at the air. I clamped my teeth in my lower lip, ignoring the pain, and stood in my front hall, Japhrimel's urn tucked under my arm and the house shields quivering uneasily but calming when I stroked them. The glyph twisted inside its red cage, trying to escape. I flicked it off the tip of my sword, in the hall between the stairs and the living room, and held it spinning in the air with will alone, my sword sliding back into its sheath.

I got a good grip on Japhrimel's urn. I had to hold the glyph steady while it strained like a slippery fiery eel.

I spat black blood from my cut lip, sank my teeth in again until I worried free a mouthful of acid-tasting demon blood. This I dribbled into my palm and smoothed over Japhrimel's urn, the rising keening of the glyph inside its bubble of crimson light beginning to scorch the ceiling. The heat blew my hair back. The paint blistered on the walls, bubbling, and I smelled more smoke.

I tossed Japhrimel's bloodied urn straight up. My sword rang free of the sheath, a perfect draw, the sound of the cut like worlds colliding. Ash pattered down, the cleanly-broken halves of the urn smacking the floor and shattering, but I was already shuffling back, my sword held away from my body. Running with every ounce of demon speed, I reached the door before the bubble holding the glyph… burst.

There was an immense, silent sound, felt more in the bones than heard. I spun aside at the door and leapt, but a giant warm hand pressed against the back of my body and threw me clear. I landed and rolled, instinct saving me. I came to a halt panting, my head ringing with flame, my bitten lip singing with pain until black blood coated the hurt and sealed it away.

My left shoulder came alive with agony. I screamed, the force of my cry adding to the explosion that shook the ground. Flame bellowed up, and bits of the garden igniting and crumbling to ash. The heat was like a living thing, crawling along my body, only the shield of my Power kept my clothes from smoking and catching fire.

There. Both the men in my life, gone . I had read, long ago, of the Vikings sending ships out to sea alive with flame, burial barges to go with the dead into the afterlife. Now I sent my house into Death as well as Japhrimel and Jace. If I was lucky, when I died they might be waiting for me.

The only thing left now was anger. Fury. Rage. A crimson wash so huge it shoved all other considerations aside. Easier to fight than to cry. Easier to kill than to admit to the pain.

And oh, anger is sweet. Fury is the best fuel of all. It is so clean, so marvelous, so ruthless. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, rage against evil is better than sorrow. Sorrow can't balance the scales.

Vengeance could. And she would too, if I had anything to say about it.

I was already on my feet, unsteady, walking away. I made it to my front gate as the layers of shielding on my house imploded, fueling the Power-driven flames. There would be nothing left but ash and a deep crater. My head rang and my shoulder crunched again with pain. I inhaled, staggering.

I had always wondered what the limit of my powers was. The wall was scorching, concrete turning black and brittle on the outside. My garden was swallowed alive with flame, kissed with choking ash. I dimly heard human screams, and wondered if the Shockwave would break a few windows. The gate itself was beginning to melt and warp. It almost seared my hand when I touched it, tough painted plasilica bubbling and smoking.

I opened my front gate, stepped out.

A few enterprising holovid reporters tried to take pictures. I no longer cared. I stalked through them like a well-fed lion through a herd of zebra. Some of them were cowering behind their bristling hovers. Fine hot flakes of ash drifted down. I heard sirens, and thought that the house was past saving. I did feel a moment's pity for my neighbors, but it passed.

It was three blocks before I remembered to sheathe my sword. The mark on my left shoulder settled into a steady burning that was not entirely unpleasant, except for one last flare that stopped me for a full thirty seconds, head down as I breathed heavily, ribs flickering as my lungs heaved. Then I pushed my hair—dry now from the fierce heat, and crowned with tiny flakes of ash—back, and continued on my way. The sun had sunk below the rim of the bay in the west. The column of smoke from my shattered home blazed a lurid orange, underlit by flame.

Night had fallen.

And it was going to be a long one.

Four hours later I stopped in a coffeeshop in midtown, ordered five shots of their best espresso, and stood at a table. My sword tucked into a loop on my belt while I tapped at my datpilot. The shop's holovid feed was on, and I saw without much surprise that my house had made the evening news.

I didn't look after seeing the first few moments of scrambled footage: the column of flame going up an impressive couple of thousand feet, making a mushroom cloud of smoke that led some hysterical people to think that there had been a nuclear attack on Saint City. There had been no hovertraffic overhead, since my house was outside the main lanes, and the force of the explosion had been channeled up instead of outward, so apart from some broken windows and traumatized holovid reporters, there was precious little damage to anything other than my house.

Which was, of course, what I'd wanted. Something I'd done right, for once.

I took down the five shots of espresso at once. The mark on my shoulder had settled back to a satisfied glow, spreading over my body like warm oil. I looked at my datpilot. The information Gabe had sent was interesting, to say the least: a summary of all the bodies so far, dates of death, and thumbnail digitals of the crime scenes. She'd also had an analysis done of the glyphs, and it was this that I studied, going from one to the next while my datpilot glowed. It took a couple of hours of standing there, my eyes glued to the screen, to really get a sense of how the Feeder glyphs altered from the regular Ceremonial alphabet of the Nine Canons, and how twisting each rune in a particular fashion would serve the purpose of strengthening a psychic vampire. My secondary talent as a rune-witch helped.