“So, why do you need to talk to them?” Margaret asked. “It’s bad, right? You and Pete wouldn’t go unless it was bad.”
Jack watched the traffic, the street vendors, the usual people going about their usual lives. He tried very hard not to see the superimposed image from his visions of the burned-out hulk of Tower Hamlets and the dead roaming the streets.
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t believe in lying to kids. What good would that do now, at any rate? “It’s about as bad as it can possibly get.”
CHAPTER 13
Secret societies weren’t really as secret as they all liked to claim, especially when you had something they wanted. Less than twenty minutes after Jack had Pete dial up Morwenna Morgenstern, the public face of the Prometheus Club, a car was idling at the curb in front of their flat.
Jack hadn’t bothered with the suit after all—it wasn’t like Morwenna had any friendly feelings toward him. Especially not after he’d done a dust-up with her little best mate, Donovan Winter. The Prometheans, and Morwenna in particular, excelled at manipulation in the way that only lifelong, dyed-in-the-wool sociopaths could. Using Jack’s father to get Jack and Pete to try and rip open a seam to Purgatory was a small game, in the scheme of things.
Anyway, he wasn’t there to impress Morwenna or revist his animosity toward Donovan. The hatred was there, though, a hot coal in his guts as the car sped through the West End and into wide, green, flat countryside with the occasional rise of a stately home.
He’d told Donovan that if the man interfered with his family or his life again, he’d kill him. Donovan knew he was prepared to follow through, too, so Jack hoped that would keep the father-son chatter to a minimum.
“I don’t understand,” Margaret said, staring out the window as they wound up an endless private road lined with beech trees toward the hulk of a brick mansion. “I thought they all lived up in Manchester.”
“They’ve got hidey-holes all over the place,” Pete said. “Rich folks like them are the greatest paranoids. Why have one secret clubhouse when you can have ten?”
Jack looked past the trees at the rolling hills, bracketed by stone walls and bracken bathed in gold as the sun went down. Absurdly, he thought of “Stairway to Heaven”. If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.
Stupid airy-fairy bullshit. If that’s what most people thought real magic was all about, then they had it coming when real magic broke through the barriers, chased them down, and turned them into dinner.
Jack sighed, then looked up to find Pete’s eyes on him. He was so on edge he felt like he’d snap back like a rubber band at the slightest provocation, and she could tell. They shared the gentle brush of talent against talent—it just felt like static electricity now, but when mages spent enough time together they got to know each other, how they felt when they were happy or hurt or tense or afraid. Margaret’s clean energy, the bell-tone of white magic, muddled things a bit, like muffling your head with a pillow when things got loud and you had a raging hangover.
She would outdo either of them, if she lived long enough. Sure, Jack had some muddy, bloody talent the Morrigan wanted, and Pete was still stronger than him because she could take on other mages’ gifts and magnify them from a stray cloud to a storm that could sweep the whole of the Black clean if she let it. But Margaret was going to be stronger still than Pete, a force unlike anything the world had seen in ten centuries. The Merlin, the hawk on high who saw everything, top of the food chain.
Jack was just glad as fuck she’d gone light-side and hadn’t turned out like him. Because then the world really would be fucked, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
The car pulled into a round drive, gravel crunched, scary blokes in cheap suits patted them all down, and finally they were granted entrance into the Prometheans’ posh den of idiocy.
It looked like any other posh country house Jack had had the misfortune to find himself in—lots of dark wood, ugly oil paintings, and hushed tones. Margaret gave everything an appraising glance, and then her high forehead crinkled. “My magic’s gone.”
She insisted on calling it magic, no matter how many times Jack told her that she’d be laughed out of any mage gathering in the UK with that sort of language.
“They keep the whole place cut off,” he said. “No service in this area, luv. Sorry.”
Pete fidgeted next to him. “I hate this. I fucking hate this.”
“You think I feel any different?” he muttered. “Take away my talent, and what am I?”
“A man who is rather poor at following through on his promises.” Morwenna Morgenstern glided from a set of double doors at the far end of the entry. She was still doing her slick City getup: slim skirts, perfect hair, and lips like a fresh wound.
“Morwenna,” Jack greeted her. “You’re looking particularly constipated this evening. I’d think the Prometheans all indulged in monthly group colonics.”
Her face wasn’t as pretty as she’d probably been told it was her entire life, but it wasn’t bad, and she managed to give only a twitch of her cheek muscles at Jack’s jab. “The last I recall, Mr. Winter, you were leveling some extremely vulgar and insubstantial accusations at me before promising never to step foot within a mile of me again.”
“Oh, that wasn’t a promise,” Jack said. “That was a threat. I never would have let your merry band of psychopaths within spitting distance of Margaret if we weren’t desperate.”
Morwenna made a show of turning her back on him before she extended her hands to Margaret. He was nothing, over, a speck on her shoe. Jack tried not to feel a prick of offense, despite hating the woman’s fucking guts. He could do these people some damage. They should at least be smart enough to treat him like he was dangerous.
“My dear, dear girl,” Morwenna intoned with a voice that could have given a pixie a toothache. “I am so glad you reconsidered.”
“Fuck off,” Margaret said when Morwenna tried to take her hands. “I’m only here because Jack asked me to help him.”
Jack gave Morwenna a wide grin when she whipped her head back around. “Sorry. Looks like you’re going to have to deal with the unwashed peasants a bit longer.”
Pete gave a small shoulder-shrug of a laugh, which he took as a good sign. If she was calm enough to appreciate winding up Morwenna, this all might just go the way they’d planned. Pete was his barometer for calm. She never lost her head, never wavered, until it was well and truly time to go off the rails. He didn’t have that built-in stabilizer, didn’t trust himself not to ignore danger signs and still, after all his fuck-ups, think he could smile and charm his way out of something. Just one more time.
“You seem to be laboring under the misconception that you can bargain,” Morwenna said. “Let me make this very clear, Jack—you have no leverage here. Margaret is meant to be among her own kind, and by taking that from her you’re making her life very difficult. If you think I’m letting her walk back out that door, to the gods know what sort of life, you must be fucking delusional.”
There was the Morwenna Morgenstern he knew, all hard eyes and flashing teeth as she bit and raked at you with her words, leaving you a flayed mess too cowed to argue.
“Fine.” That was Pete. “Try and keep her here, then. Ignore the fact that if we came to you voluntarily, things are already sideways and spinning into the ground. Be a stupid self-righteous cunt like always, Morwenna, because that worked out so well the last time the world was ending.”
Pete ended her speech less than a foot from Morwenna’s nose, between the woman and Margaret. It was Jack’s turn to grin. Even-keeled and cool-headed as Pete was, it was terrifying to see her slagged off.
“We only came here because things are so bad we couldn’t go anywhere else,” Pete continued. “That ought to scare you, and if it doesn’t, consider this: If you try to keep this girl against her will—a girl I consider my child—I will burn this pile of bricks to the ground with your
carcass inside it, and make it my personal mission to fuck up your little club’s agenda from here to kingdom come.”
Morwenna swallowed hard, cheeks flushed and hands fluttering ever so slightly with nerves. Jack caught Pete’s eye and nodded. Shock and awe were the only things mages like the Prometheans understood. You can think you’re top of the heap, until one of your herd is ripped apart in front of you, and then you’re off balance and scared.
Good, Jack thought. He wanted Morwenna Morgenstern scared.
“If you help Pete and Jack, I’ll consider coming here once a month to be trained,” Margaret said. They’d gone over this part carefully before the call. “But only once a month, and only if Jack or Pete is with me. And if I don’t like it, I’m quitting. You lot don’t have one tiny say in what I do or don’t do with my talent.”
Morwenna straightened her spine, a boxer shaking off a bad round, spitting out the blood and putting her defenses back up. “What sort of help do you require? A catastrophe of your own making, no doubt.”
Jack tried not to let the accusation smart. It figured, the one time he hadn’t backed himself into a corner with a demon deal or a slagged-off primal creature of Hell on his arse, and Morwenna assumed he’d caused the whole mess.
“The Black and the daylight world,” he said. “Barrier’s going to rupture unless we find the bloke who set things in motion and send him back downstairs for a spanking and no supper from the Princes.”
And I’m having visions of the apocalypse that may have already been triggered. Even if I do what Belial wants, there may be no way to stop it.
He pushed the thoughts down. They weren’t any that Morwenna or whatever pet mind reader she had eavesdropping needed to hear.
“And that’s all you have?” Morwenna said, mouth crimping in the cruel smile of a girl who’s just realized her rival came to school with her skirt tucked into her tights. “‘A bloke’? Care to be a bit more specific?”
Jack thought of Belial confronting the demon, of how easily the demon had turned the Fenris, and took out his pen. “He’s been kicking this symbol around,” he said, grabbing up a pad from next to an old-fashioned rotary phone to sketch on. “Doesn’t mean anything to me. Also, he’s not a Named—he’s an elemental who got too big for his britches. Thought maybe with all your vast high and mighty anointed-one mage knowledge, you might’ve run across the symbol somewhere.”
Morwenna reached for the pad, but Jack held it back. “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “Not until you promise me—a real promise, none of that crap where you use some clever language loophole—to abide by Margaret’s terms.”
Margaret crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, a pitch-perfect imitation of Pete that would have made Jack laugh, had this been anywhere else, any other time.
Morwenna’s jaw bunched and relaxed, and she let out a long-suffering breath. “I promise that I shan’t try to keep Margaret here against her will. I make no promises, however, about trying to persuade her to join us on our own merits, and leave you two idiots in the gutter where you belong.”
“I wouldn’t live here if it was raining piss and this was the only place with a roof,” Margaret said. Morwenna squeezed her eyes briefly, while Margaret gave Jack a wide smile.
“I feel so terribly for what they’ve put in your head, child,” she said. “I really do.”
“Oi.” Jack snapped his fingers. “Less sob-sistering, more information.”
“Assuming you know anything,” Pete scoffed.
Morwenna grabbed the paper from Jack and stormed back toward the double doors. “Well, come on!” she snapped when no one followed her.
Beyond the doors was a sitting room, the sort of overstuffed, flower-plagued place that old folks and the clinically depressed flocked to. Morwenna sat disdainfully on one of the threadbare velvet armchairs, touching it with as little of her slim frame as possible.
Jack stayed standing, as did Margaret and Pete, until Morwenna raised her eyes with a glare.
“I’m not going to ambush you with idiot-eating armchairs the moment you sit down,” she said. “So for fuck’s sake, stop hovering like a pack of wild dogs.”
Jack sat, figuring he’d probably get an answer faster, and have to listen to Morwenna’s store-bought plummy accent less, than if he’d pushed the issue.
“Mean anything?” he asked, pointing at the paper. The memory of the sigil was seared into him. He’d see it until he died, imprinted on his brain like a scar. Fucking Belial.
Morwenna examined the drawing under the light. Turned it, examined it again. Her lips pursed, and she gave Jack a glare as if he were a naughty schoolboy, fitting her for a wind-up.
“Let me guess,” she said. “One of the Named gave this to you.”
“What does it matter?” Jack said. He was surprised she’d gone right to the consorting-with-demons place. To Morwenna, such a thing was distasteful; plus, she probably thought Jack was too stupid to do anything with a Named except get turned into a carpet.
“Because this is the sigil of Legion, an elemental demon who has many hearts and minds at once,” Morwenna said.
“Wait, wait.” Pete waved a hand. “Are we talking Legion, the one Christ cast into a herd of pigs and drove off a cliff? That bloke?”
“Legion is not a name,” Morwenna said. “Because he’s not a Named. And he’s much more than just a hive mind demon with a lot of bodies. Legion has been the boogeyman in Hell for a long time.”
“Great,” Jack said. “Any idea where he might vacation, were he to slip the surly bonds of that crap pool he calls a home and visit earth?”
Morwenna started to laugh—not the cool Bondian chuckle he’d expect from a woman like her, but a genuine laugh, shoulders shaking, rich and cruel. “I have no fucking idea,” she said. “Because Legion is a story, Jack. He’s a campfire ghost for the Named—the elemental, the legion member who’s stronger than they are, could take over and wipe them out.” She crumpled the paper, dropped it, and stepped on it with her pointy witch shoe when she rose. “Have fun chasing your apocalypse, you two,” she said, opening the doors wide. “Because Legion doesn’t fucking exist.”
CHAPTER 14
Pete and Margaret were silent the entire length of the private lane, until the driver pulled back onto the motorway and accelerated. “I think that went well,” Pete said at last.
“Don’t even start,” Jack muttered.
After a moment, Pete’s hand closed over his in the dark car. “I believe you,” she said.
“Well, you shouldn’t.” Shame ate at Jack’s throat like stomach acid. “I bought it hook, line, and sinker. Whatever sick game Belial’s playing, I walked right into it and looked like a proper fool.”
He’d let the demon inside his head. Fuck, what had he done? What else had been planted there while Belial had been making his cerebral cortex a demon’s playground?
“Maybe he wasn’t just playing around,” Pete said. “You said that Hell was in an uproar. Something is going on. I know plenty of spittle-flecked cult leaders who co-opt symbols to make their followers toe the line. If Legion is a scary story, maybe someone in Hell capitalized on that.”
Jack felt a headache blossom behind his eyes like someone had hit him. It was too much, the visions and the demons, and he just wanted it to stop.
“Something is happening,” he muttered. His sight had never acted up this way. Something was causing it, and Belial’s nameless demon was involved. “But this Legion business leaves me right where I was before—holding me dick in me fist with nothing to show what might kick off the end of the world.”
Pete gave him a sharp nudge and jerked her head at Margaret, sitting across from them in the car’s vast rear seats.
“Sorry, luv,” he said. “Don’t take the filth that I spew as an example, eat your vegetables, don’t skip school, etcetera.”
Pete heaved a sigh. “So you’re just going to give up.”
Jack felt the headache multiply, spreading across the crown of h
is head like someone had smacked him repeatedly in the skull. “I’m not giving up, but where do you suggest we go from here? If the Prometheans say this is bunk, then I’m at a loss as to who this demon is, where he is, or what he’s up to.”
“Then ask the person who can tell you,” Pete said. “In all the time you’ve known Belial, has he ever been completely straight with you? Even if the world was on the line, Belial doesn’t care about humans. He only cares about himself. He’s a survivor, just like you, and like you, he puts himself first.”
Jack watched London growing larger in the windscreen, glittering and rising out of the blackness of the land around. Pete was right. The acid-soaked pit of hopelessness in his stomach hardened into something else, the old rage from his younger days, the thing that protected him, armored him, kept him from being fucked with by things like Belial.
“Jack?” Pete said. She withdrew her hand as a crackle of blue energy passed between them, the ambient magic that gathered when Jack let his rage or any strong emotion grow. The interior of the car was bathed in blue for a moment, and then Jack tamped it down again. He was going to save this for the target who deserved it.
“I’m fine,” he said. “When we get home, though, the Prince and I are going to have a talk.”
CHAPTER 15
Early, when the sun had just started to give a thought to coming up, Jack grabbed his kit and climbed to the roof of his flat. The roof was bumpy with tarpaper and disused chimney pots, covered in empty lager cans and pigeon shit, but it was quiet and private. He wasn’t going to take the risk of summoning Belial in his flat, where Pete and Margaret and Lily slept.
He’d had the green canvas bag since he’d left Manchester, and in almost thirty years the color had gone from green to a vague moldy-vomit shade, the weave smoothed by thousands of hours carried on his back. The edges were frayed, and the numbers and names he’d inked on the canvas over the years were mostly rubbed out, but the contents had never varied much. Chalk, some herbs that came in handy, a flat antique mirror he’d found in a junk shop in Dublin that he used for scrying, some red thread for binding curses, and the other bits and bobs accumulated over the course of a life spent slinging hexes to get by.
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