Lilith Saintcrow - Dead Man Rising

Remember, Dante. Remember . Christabel's voice, not insane with an apparition's flat terrible finality, but as if she stood next to me, a skinny girl with bruised knees and folded arms, terrible knowledge in her childlike dark eyes. Remember. Remember .

I could remember nothing but one last despairing cry. The name that beat behind my heart, inside my head, the prayer I had left when all else failed.

Japhri —

My left shoulder suddenly crunched with an agony even greater, as if my left arm was being torn out of its socket one hard millimeter at a time. I managed a strangled noise past the suffocating thing stuffing itself down my throat, black demon blood pattering on concrete, and then the world exploded.

Fire. Red fire.

I heard a sound like thunder smashing the jars of the universe, every star exploding and raining fiery destruction, the grinding of an earthquake and the crackle of ice calving on every mountainside at once. Then blessed cold air seared my throat.

Searing. It hurt almost as much as what Mirovitch had done, my body blindly scrabbling for survival, every demon-tainted, demon-strong cell fighting to live . The wet tearing sound as my battered viscera spilled back into my stomach cavity, bones crackling as the scream bubbled past ectoplasm in my throat, a burst of Power forcing its way along my skin.

Something had happened.

Remember, Dante. Remember . Christabel's voice, grown huge, a bell filling the world, as she stared at me with her dark eyes. Remember. Remember .

I rolled weakly onto my side, coughing, choking the smell of dust, chalk, and aftershave out of my mouth, blowing out through my nose, slick egg-white gobbets of ectoplasm streaming away and rotting in seconds. I retched again, but didn't throw up.

— do part-demons throw up ? The thought made me laugh. I giggled, a high, thin sound of insanity, and made it to hands and knees. My belly ran with fire, tender tissues stretched and straining. Grabbed for my swordhilt.

Found it, my right hand curling around wrapped metal slick with noisome fluids, Power jolting up my arm with a force that made me cry out weakly. Then I collapsed again, my sword solid in my cramping right hand, my shattered shields trying to close over me, Power bleeding out into the night air. Another convulsion, my forehead smacking concrete, a grinding pain flared in my middle as my abused insides rebelled again.

"Dante." The voice was soft and full of fire, smooth like old brandy going down to ignite in the belly. "What have you done?"

I screamed again, weakly, scrabbling against the floor. Yet another convulsion racked me. I vomited a long jet of shuddering, writhing ectoplasm ringed with black, smoking demon's blood and immediately felt much better—only three-quarters dead and burning instead of all the way dead and insane to boot.

Warm fingers closed over the back of my neck, under my tangled hair. "Be still." And then an amazing bolt of Power lanced through me. My shields mended in one explosive flare, but the ragged bleeding wounds in my mind still smoked raw and deep.

On my side. Arms around me, the stroking of a warm hand on the side of my face. "Truly you are foolhardy, hedaira ," he said softly. "I suppose you have your reasons. Be still, now."

But I struggled up, my body obeying me now, the tearing pain inside my chest now soothed. The whistling empty hole in my chest left by his absence, the hole I had stopped noticing, was gone. My left shoulder didn't hurt. Instead, the mark sent waves of hot, soft Power down my body, each a little warmer and deeper than the last. "No," I whispered, my voice a pained croak. Then I coughed and spat another amazing gob of ectoplasm to the side. It hit the floor with a dull splat , and my stomach turned violently again. "No. You burned ."

I raised my head.

His dark eyes met mine, just the same. A lean, saturnine face, his cheekbones balanced, his mouth a straight unforgiving line. The demon Tierce Japhrimel touched my cheek, his knuckles brushing my skin. The contact sent a shudder through me, my body recognizing him before the rest of me could dare to. "You burned," I managed, before another fit of retching and gagging shook me. "You burned—you were ash —"

"While you live, I live." The corners of his mouth turned down, an expressive movement that managed to give the impression of a grim smile. "I suppose nobody told you."

I shook my head weakly. His smell—the scent of a demon, cinnamon incense, amber musk—wrapped around me, filled my lungs. I felt like I could breathe again, without every breath being tainted by the stench of dying cells. The smell of him seemed to coat my abused insides with peace, and flow down into the middle of my body to spread through my veins. "I tried," I whispered. "Books—Magi." I filled my lungs again. While I could, before what was undoubtedly a hallucination vanished. Gasped again, a great rasping breath blessedly free of the stink of dying human cells.

Human. Human cells. The thought of humans reminded me of where I was.

I tried to scramble to my feet but he caught me, his strength embarrassingly more than mine, especially at the moment "Be still. There is no danger."

"But… the… Mirovitch—"

"Is that his name?" Japhrimel moved aside slightly.

Spread-eagled on the floor, coated with ectoplasm, was Kellerman Lourdes. He looked dazed, his eyes rolled back into his head, his body limp. I could see one leg was twisted the wrong way, it looked like a fracture of the lower femur. I flinched. The pool of goo coating him pulsed, and as I looked Kellerman opened his mouth to scream. The cracked bone started to mend itself, creaking and snapping.

Christabel's voice still echoed in my head like a gong, like the circuit of Fate completing itself.

Remember, Dante. Remember for us.

My stomach rose in revolt again, was ordered back down, and subsided. Japhrimel's hands were at my shoulders. "Dante? I suppose you would not care to explain." He sounded mild, but the fractional lift of one eyebrow told me he was very close to violence.

My eyes drank him in. If he was a hallucination, I wanted to store every detail. But there was no time —Lourdes gurgled, a sound of choked agony.

"Up. Help me up."

My hallucination of my dead demon lover stared at me, his dark eyes thoughtful. Once they had been a brilliant piercing green, like Lucifer's eyes. But when he had made me into whatever I was now, his eyes had gone dark. Without the incandescent light behind them, they looked like ageless human eyes, infinite in their depth and as familiar to me as my own. Hot tears rose, I pushed them down.

Lourdes curled into a fetal position, some inhuman effort pushing him over, up on his hands and knees. Then he collapsed, broken as a rag doll, his half-mended leg twisted impossibly to one side. He rasped out something indecipherable. The blue glow pulsed. Lourdes screamed with a human voice, the end of the scream trailing off into a writhing gurgle.

"Explain later ," I said, every word an effort. "Help me up now ."

As usual, Japhrimel wasted little time with human questions. Instead, he hauled me up effortlessly. The long, high-collared black coat he wore was the same, wings masquerading as clothing, but instead of black jeans he wore a very dark blue denim and worker's boots, new and unscarred. It was the same, yet different.

Flakes of the ectoplasm drifted to the floor, cracking and crackling on my skin and clothes. "You found me." The words broke on a sob. I had thought I'd destroyed any chance of his resurrection. That was my penance. What was I going to do now?

"Of course. You bear my mark. Did you think me dead, Dante?"