Lilith Saintcrow - Working for the Devil

"Are you telling me you've bred with human women?" I said, my boots whispering over the slick marble. I was beginning to feel sick and dizzy from the backlash of Power—and terror. I was following Santino through his own lair. Close enough to kill him. I was close enough to kill the thing that had killed Doreen.

Why hadn't I attacked him?

Something else is going on here , I thought. The premonition buzzed under my skin, the vision Japhrimel had interrupted. Would it have shown me this if he hadn't short-circuited it?

"Of course not. Yet you're far more intelligent than you're given credit for. Human women are some of the most pleasant ways to pass the time. Why do you think Lucifer took an interest in your species? But no, I have not fathered a child. Not in the way you think."

He turned down another hall, this one lit by high-end fluorescents, most of them turned off so only a faint glow showed me the marble floor and tech-locked doors, each with a handprint lock. "Have you wondered why Lucifer granted me an immunity, Dante? Because I am a scientist first and a demon second. Long ago, I did the grunt work for Lucifer's remodeling of your species. Before demons could play with humans, humans had to be… well, helped along a little."

My gorge rose again. He talked about playing with humans as if it were slightly shameful, slightly loathsome, the way a Ludder would talk about going to a sexwitch House. Santino stopped in front of a blank, anonymous door, laid his hand on the printlock. Green light glowed, and the door shushed aside. "Come inside."

I followed him, the chill of climate control closing over my skin. It was a lab—fluorescent light flickered, computer screens glowed, and the temperature was about sixty-five degrees, shocking after the heat outside. Along one wall was something I'd seen before at the Hegemony psi clinics—a DNA map, twisting on a plasma screen, numbers and code running in the lower left corner. One whole wall was taken up with liquid-nitrogen-cooled racks of sample canisters behind glass, each neatly labeled. I had the sick feeling I would recognize the names on some of those labels. Each canister was a life, probably holding an internal organ, or a vial of blood—and a slice of human femur, with its rich big core of marrow. Just the thing for genetic research.

So many , I thought, the racks and rows of canisters gleaming softly under the bright pitiless light. So many deaths .

Santino turned to face me again, and I lifted my sword. Blue light ran over the blade. He looked thoughtful, the black teardrops over his eyes holes of darkness. "I'm sterile, Dante," he said. "I couldn't breed with a human woman even if I wanted to. To breed, a demon has to be one of the Greater Flight of Hell—and he must also become one of the Fallen. I can't do that. So I escaped Hell and came here, in search of something very special."

My throat was dry. "You weren't taking trophies," I whispered. "You were taking samples ."

He beamed at me, razor teeth gleaming, his high-pointed ears wriggling slightly. "Correct!" he said, like a magisterial professor talking to a gifted but sometimes-terribly-slow student. "Samples. I felt sure that the key to the puzzle lay in psionics. Humanity exhibits some rather bizarre talents as a result of demon tinkering; if I could find a certain strain of genetic code I could reach my objective. I adopted several psionics and sponsored research in the Hegemony, but they move too damnably slow, even for humans. I decided to do the work myself, and for that I needed other samples. I was running out of time. I knew that the more time passed, the greater the chance Lucifer might decide to create another demon, and find the Egg missing." His fingers stroked the glass over the sample canisters, his claws making a slight skree against the smooth surface.

"What objective? And what is this Egg thing?" Kill him , my conscience screamed. Revenge for Doreen, don't listen to him, KILL him !

But if I was being used, I wanted to find out why .

Lucifer had told me none of this. Japhrimel had told me none of this. Which brought up the question of what they really wanted—what deeper game was being played here? I'd wondered why they had let him roam around earth for fifty years.

"Come." He led me through the lab, out another tech-locked door, and into a hallway that was more like a colonnade, an enclosed garden lying still and steamy under the Nuevo Rio rain, an assault after the climate control of the lab room. He turned to his left and I followed numbly, the door almost clipping my bootheels.

This garden was lit with a kind of orange glow—the light pollution from the city. He stopped at a techless door, this one white and etched with a strange design of an unearthly bird done in gold leaf. Santino turned to face me, and I shuffled back quickly, raising my blade. He laughed, a high-pitched giggle that echoed my nightmares and made my heart turn to dumb ice in my chest.

"We are an old and tired race, Dante, and our children are few and far between. Almost none are born without Lucifer's intervention, and he is most stingy in giving his help. To breed, a demon must go to the Prince as a supplicant." The black teardrops over his eyes somehow managed to convey the impression of a wide smile. "You want to kill me, Dante, because I took those precious human lives. But those lives were taken in service to a greater good—breaking the hold the Prince of Darkness has on your world and mine. I've finally done it, Dante. I've birthed a child that can challenge the Prince himself." He reached behind his back, twisted the doorknob, and backed into the room. "Come and see."

I followed him, cautiously. Don't trust him, Dante! Kill him now! Kill him or run !

It was a nursery. Slices of dim light fell through iron bars on the windows. Toys scattered across the hardwood floor, and plush rugs too. I saw a rocking horse, and a set of chairs around a table low enough for a little person. Wooden blocks lay scattered near a fireplace. And on the other side of the room, Santino stalked toward a low queen-sized bedstead wreathed in mosquito netting.

I followed, my boots occasionally kicking a small plush animal. Dear gods , I thought, he has children here? What kind of kids are raised by a demon ?

"Lucifer rules because he is powerful," Santino whispered, his voice buzzing with secrecy. "But not only that—he rules because he is Androgyne , almost like a queen bee, capable of reproducing. It took me forty-five human years, but I finally found out how to birth another demon Androgyne. All it takes is the proper genetic material and engineering, Dante." He paused, maybe for effect. "Engineering by the scientist Lucifer used to create humanity in the first place—and material taken from a sedayeen , perhaps. A human psionic with the ability to heal, an almost-direct descendant of the A'nankimel —the demons that loved human women, and raised families with them eons ago. Until Lucifer, fearing the birth of an Androgyne on earth, destroyed them."

It made a twisted kind of sense. I approached the bed slowly, step by step. Needing to see.

"Demon genes don't lose their potency as human genes do," he whispered. "Witness the growth of human psychic powers, the fantastic blossoming of those powers during the Awakening—"

"Shut up." I sounded choked.

In the bed, under the smooth expensive sheet, was a pale-haired little girl about five years old sleeping the sleep of childhood innocence. Her long hair tangled over the pillow; I heard the faint whistle of her breathing. I tasted salt, and bitter ash. I knew that face—I had seen it before.

She lay on her back, one chubby arm upflung. Her forehead was odd, because there was a mark that glittered softly green on the smooth skin. My cheek started to burn. An emerald. I wondered why Lucifer had one . I could tell this emerald wasn't implanted—it was too smoothly and sheerly a part of her skin. Almost like a jeweled growth. It made me deeply, unsteadily sick to think that maybe my own emerald was an echo.