"Don't you dare die on me," I snarled. "Who sent you? Give me a name and I'll ease your passing."

I heard a low choked sound from the mouth of the alley-the sedayeen.

I ignored it, shook the man again as he mumbled. "So help me Anubis, if you don't tell me now I'll rip the knowledge out of your soul once you've passed the Bridge."

I couldn't, of course-I could only have someone question him as I held an apparition, as long as that person was trained in the protocol of questioning the dead. You can get misleading answers if you don't phrase the questions right.

Just like with demons.

I couldn't rip the knowledge free of his soul-but he was normal. He probably didn't know that. I felt less guilty than I should have for even threatening it.

"P-P-Po-" The man choked on blood as he tried to scream. I shook him again, his six-foot frame like a doll's in my slim golden hands. My fingers tensed, driving my claws into his shoulders.

A hand closed over my shoulder, and I almost slashed before I realized it was the sedayeen. A familiar deep smooth sense of restful Power slid down my skin, clearing my head and washing away some of the cold fury.

"Let him go." A clear, soft, sweet, young voice. "I can tell you who sent them. They're Tanner Family goons." Blood bubbled on the man's lips. His eyes widened frantically. I saw gold-touched stubble on his cheeks, a crooked front tooth, the fine fan of his eyebrows. He'd just taken a job, after all. He was just a mercenary.

What am I doing?

I let out a short guttural sound and freed my right hand, hooking my fingers; my claws extended as I made a quick sharp almost-backhand movement. Blood gushed free, but I'd already pushed him away. The arterial spray missed me, and in any case, he was bleeding so badly internally it wasn't like he had much blood pressure left.

I tore away from under the sedayeen's touch. Had I not noticed her approach or had she slipped under my magscan because she was a healer, and harmless? Sedayeen are incapable of harming anyone without horrific feedback, they are the swanhilds of the psionic world, helpless pacifists without the natural advantage of poisonous flesh 'hilds have. Sedayeen survived by attaching themselves to the more powerful in the paranormal or psionic world, and they were valuable enough to their protectors to avoid the near-extinction sexwitches had suffered in the chaos just after the Awakening.

She was dressed in a faded PhenFighters T-shirt and a pair of jeans, Silmari sandals on her small feet. Short spiked brown hair stood up from her well-modeled head, and a wide pair of muddy brown eyes met mine. She had a triangular face like most healers, a sharp chin and a cupid's-bow of a mouth. Her accreditation tat was the characteristic ankh of the sedayeen, this one with an additional short bar through the vertical line and a small pair of wings. She wore a hemp choker with turquoise beads, and looked only about sixteen or so. But then, sedayeen age well. It probably meant she was around thirty.

The Shaman, a taller woman with her blonde hair braided back in rows, stood at the mouth of the alley with her oak staff raised. Yellow ribbons knotted around the top of the staff fluttered as a slight morning breeze played with them. Her eyes were a fantastic shade of amber, probably genespliced. Her tat shifted uneasily on her left cheek, the spurred and clawed triquetra of a Billebonge-trained Shaman. She stood a little too tensely to be completely untrained for combat, her hand on the staff was steady and placed just so. I wondered why she had no sword. Shamans with combat training usually like steel.

Tanner Family. Why would the Mob want to kill a healer and a Shaman now? After filling a Skinlin and a Necromance with holes. Is it a Mob war on psions? I shook my right hand out, my claws retracting slowly. My breath came in harsh gasps, not because of effort.

I was gasping because I didn't want to stop. I wanted to kill. The seduction of bloodlust whispered under conscious thought, tempting me. It would be so easy.

They were, after all, only human.

Stop it, Danny. You're human too. You're too close to the edge. This is too personal, and you're going over the line. Calm down. The cold on my left arm retreated before the heat of bloodlust as I struggled to control myself.

"Annette Cameron," I husked. "I'm looking for Annette Cameron." Please, Anubis. Give me a little help here. I don't think I'm quite safe right now. Rage receded slowly, leaving behind a slow smoky feeling of strain.

I'm deconstructing. This is bad. Too much stress and too little rest, my psyche was beginning to fray at the edges. The worst thing was, I wasn't sure I cared.

The sedayeen nodded. Her eyes were a little wide, I think I was too much for even a sedayeen's calm at the moment. "That's Cam." She pointed at the Shaman. "I'm Mercy. Come inside."

"Do you know who I am?" I managed around the lump in my throat. My shoulder was still numb, but underneath the numbness a deep broad pain began to surface.

"You're Dante Valentine." The yellow-haired Shaman's hands shook only slightly, the ribbons atop her staff fluttering. "Eddie described you. He said that if anything ever happened to him, you were someone we could trust."

I'd forgotten what it was like to be around sedayeen. Inside the clinic-dark because the windows were boarded up and Mercy didn't turn the lights on-the sense of peace was palpable, stroking and calming even the most jagged of auras. The smell of violets wafted through the air; one of the peculiarities of psion noses is that violet scent doesn't shut off in our nasal receptors like in everyone else's. We're maybe the only humans who can smell violets for a long time.

Call us lucky.

The waiting room had chairs and a children's corner. The sight of brightly-colored plasticine made my heart leap into my throat. I tasted bile and looked away, shoving my sword into the loop on my rig. I didn't trust myself with edged metal right now. The reception desk didn't have an AI deck, I would bet they had a psion there to get an initial read on the patients during open hours. A good idea when dealing with Chillfreaks and human refuse in a free clinic. A maintenance 'bot retreated as we came in, its red LED blinking. The air was dyed blue with calm, freighted with the smell of flowers and mallow. Mercy led me back through a pair of swinging doors and into a maze of examining rooms, offices, and private labs.

The Shaman-Cameron-kept giving me nervous little sidelong glances. I didn't blame her. I knew what my aura looked like-the trademark glitterlamp sparkles of a Necromance threaded with black diamond demon flames, the mark on my shoulder pulsing and staining through my shifting defenses and cloaks of energy. I tore through the psychic ether like the sound of a slicboard through a Ludder convention, not as loud as Japhrimel but unable to hide with little effort like some other psions could. I looked, in short, like trouble.

It was truth in advertising. I felt like trouble now. "What was Eddie working on?" I asked, as Mercy touched a scanlock to the right of a smooth plasteel door. She actually flinched. Great, I even scare sedayeen. "Gabe didn't tell me."

"It's not what he was working on," the healer replied. "It's what he found, what he finished." The door fwooshed aside, white full-spectrum bulbs popping into life. The light speared my eyes before they adjusted, I found myself looking into a stripped-down, empty lab. "This is where he was working."

This isn't where he died. The lab he was in had different tiles on the floor.

Then I saw the counter under growlights. Blooming under the hot radiance of the lamps, their roots safe in hydropon bubbles, were Eddie's datura plants, blossoming and healthy. Each one of them had frilly double-trumpet flowers, purple and white. Datura, used for binding spells and painblockers, if I remembered right; it used to be called crazyweed or jimsweed. Poisonous, and illegal for anyone but a registered Skinlin or sedayeen to propagate.