Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

straight from the bottle. The Lord Kartakis was stamping back and forth on top of the table, fondly believing he was dancing to the ribald song he was singing defiantly off key. Valentine smiled on them as errant children and allowed them their fun. There wasn’t much for them to do, and they had been cooped up in the castle for a long time. And Valentine did so like to see the Deathstalker’s precious things being violated, as he would someday destroy the man himself.
    Valentine Wolfe sat in a chair far too large for him, one long leg slung over an arm of the chair, his other foot up on the table. Dressed as always all in black, his pale white face surrounded by long dark ringlets of oiled and scented hair, his mouth a scarlet slash, and his eyes heavy with mascara, he looked the very picture of the utter villain he strove to be. And the drugs, the glorious drugs, ran riot in his system as they always had. It had been truly said of Valentine that he’d never met a chemical he didn’t like, and if you could smoke it, swallow it, inject it, or stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, Valentine was right there at the front of the line, ready to give it a try. He saw his chemically enhanced mind as an ongoing work of art, and was constantly striving to perfect it. The ultimate high was still out there somewhere, and Valentine pursued it tirelessly.
    To that end he’d taken the rare and immediately addictive esper drug, even though he knew it killed a small but significant percentage of those who took it. Valentine had survived, of course. Probably because you couldn’t affect his radically transmuted body chemistry with anything less than fuming nitric acid. The drug had given him minor telepathic powers, along with complete control of his autonomic nervous system, and his thoughts moved along strange and unfamiliar tracks. He threw one drug on top of another, maintaining a complex balance through sheer effort of will. Valentine thought of himself as the first in a new breed of Humanity, like the Hadenmen—an alchemical step forward, or perhaps sideways, on the evolutionary ladder.
    He watched Carlos Silvestri throw his knives again and again, tearing the eyes out of great men just because he could, to prove to everyone that he wasn’t afraid of the mighty Owen Deathstalker. Silvestri was a tall, thin man, all long limbs and sudden angles. He dressed in shades of red, the traditional color of his Clan. It didn’t suit him. His face was round and puffy, as though it hadn’t yet decided what it wanted to be when it grew up, though the man had to be at least forty. He shaved his head bald and plucked his other hairs. He was good with a knife and better with a sword. He would have made a great swordsman and duelist if only he’d had the courage of his convictions. But the Silvestri had always been a very cautious man who preferred to watch from the sidelines and work through underlings, and never, ever, get his hands dirty himself. He’d never forgiven Finlay Campbell for the assassination of his good friend William St. John, and had spent much time and money on plans to have the Campbell killed, but none of them had succeeded. Now with Finlay a man of power and substance once again, and the Silvestri’s powers drastically reduced by Random’s deal and the emergence of Blue Block, Carlos Silvestri had been forced to turn to Valentine as his only possible savior. And if that had turned out very differently from what he’d intended, it just put a little more emphasis into the throw of his knives.
    Valentine smiled and turned his attention to Pieter Romanov, that fat and ruddy man wrapped in a torn masterpiece. Pieter believed a man should be recognized by the breadth and achievement of his appetites, and indulged each sense till they groaned under the weight of his will. There was in him a hunger that would not be satisfied, no matter how he tried. His people obeyed his every whim, or he had them killed and replaced with those who would. Pieter was an aristocrat’s aristocrat, and he had taken Random’s deal hard. Not for him the lesser power and rewards of mere business. So he went looking for an ally, a great man of power and influence, who would put things back the way they once were, the way they should be. A man of vision and destiny. Unfortunately, all he could find was Valentine. But the Wolfe at least had a plan, which was more than most, and Pieter couldn’t help but admire a man whose taste for