“Suppose I was to do this,” Jack hedged. “What’s in it for me?”
“No more demons, of course,” Don said. “No more Hag dogging your steps. You’d be a free man, and all you’d have to do is help us be reborn.”
“You seem all right to me,” Jack said. Teddy groaned, and he felt his stomach flip again. “I mean, aside from Jabba over there.”
“We burn flesh fast,” Don said. “Teddy was supposed to be walking around like the rest of us, but like the song says, you can’t always get what you want. Teddy needs a second chance at a meatsuit, and Levi needs a permanent one. In case you hadn’t noticed, the rest of them can’t exactly cruise up and down Sunset looking for skins. You’d be our agent, in a way. Finding the correct sort of flesh.”
“Yeah, that’s where it falls down for me,” Jack said. “I don’t generally hold with rounding up humans for slaughter and possession.”
“Possession is a demon word,” Don said. “A word for the weak who can’t mold the flesh. We used to have bodies—strong, terrible, beautiful to behold. Now, we have to look like everyone else. We have to blend in. You people are like a virus, and we have to mimic you if we don’t want the pitchfork brigade at our door.”
Jack braced himself for Don’s convivality to die a sudden death. “And if I say no?”
“Then we wouldn’t be friends anymore,” Don said. “And that’d be a real disappointment.”
“I do hate to disappoint anyone,” Jack said, “but yeah—I don’t think I’m the man with the plan, Don. I’m not in it for you or for Belial—I’m in this life for myself. And I don’t respond well when things that crawled up out of Hell threaten it.”
He drew in a breath, held it. Waited for the surge of black magic that would signal that Don had well and truly ended their powwow.
“I’m disappointed, Jack,” Don said. “Very, very disappointed.”
Bad luck, pilgrim, Teddy hissed in his head. You were nice to talk to.
The blow Jack expected didn’t come. The Black didn’t surge and the screaming in his sight abruptly faded. His vision went white, and when he came to a wave of vertigo slammed into him and took him to one knee. “Fuck,” he hissed, feeling as if he’d been full-body slammed into a brick wall. A trickle of fresh blood worked its way out of his nose, and the cuts on his head smeared more blood across his forehead.
He swiped blood away from his eyes. He was in a men’s loo, a single bulb swinging in the draft from his passage. A warped metal mirror reflected his hollow-cheeked reflection, his hair streaked pink from the blood. Jack spun the rusty tap and splashed water on his face, cuts stinging.
“You look like shit.”
He turned sharply, but wasn’t entirely surprised to see Belial leaning against the cinder block wall, head haloed by Spanish gang tags. “Feel like it, too,” he said. “Why, you want to give me a makeover?”
“Sorry about the smash and grab,” Belial said. He pushed himself away from the wall and came to Jack, taking his chin in his hands and turning his head from side to side. Jack tried to pull away, but the demon’s pointed nails dug into his flesh, and Belial dipped his head and pressed his face into the crook of Jack’s neck, inhaling sharply. “Right,” he said. “Just had to check on you. Those blokes have a habit of crawling under your skin.” He stuck his fingers in his mouth and lapped Jack’s blood from under his nails.
Jack swiped at the spots where the demon had touched him. Being close to a citizen of the Pit was like plunging your hand into raw meat—slimy, cold, and unpleasant. “If you fancied me, you should’ve just said something,” he told Belial.
“You’ll have to tell me how old Abaddon is looking these days,” Belial said. “Fuck-ugly, I’ll wager.”
Don. What was it with these cunts and their precious nicknames? Gator had been bad enough. “Healthy, actually,” he said. “Wears flash suit and talks like a cowboy.”
“He always was a pretentious fuck,” Belial muttered. “He give you that speech about destiny and how he and his little band of cunt-faced circus children are the true rulers of Hell?”
“Something like that,” Jack said. “With more big words and dramatic gestures.” He kept an arm’s distance between himself and Belial. The demon was being downright chatty, and Jack didn’t trust that any more than he’d follow a rent boy down a dark alley in Tower Hamlets.
“It’s crap,” Belial announced. “They might’ve been there first, but we outnumbered them. Demons are the true citizens of Hell, and we always will be. Abbadon got loose, but a scrap of memory is all he’s ever going to be in the Black. Sooner or later, things will be back as they should be.”
Belial closed the distance between them faster than blinking, and Jack wondered why he’d even bothered to try and keep them apart. In a contest between mage and demon, the demon would always win. It was simple physics.
Belial slammed Jack into the mirror, and he felt the sink crack under his lower back, along with the associated column of fire blooming up his spine. His skull dented the reflective metal, and his vision doubled. The demon squeezed his throat, and Jack felt the last of his air flutter and die in his lungs.
“Let’s get one thing very fucking clear,” Belial hissed. His lips were so close to Jack’s ear that his breath sounded like the hot wind that never ceased howling across the Pit. “You try to fuck me, Winter, and I won’t care what kind of favored son of the Hag you are. I won’t care what kind of magic you and your little Weir can sling. I won’t care if Jesus Christ himself shows up riding a unicorn, backed up by Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I will end your fucking existence and that of everyone you care about, and your soul will spend the eternity until the Black and Hell both fall into the singularity under my tender loving care.” He let Jack down, and Jack’s knees decided it was a good plan to give out and send him tumbling to the floor amid the shards of the sink. Brown water from the ruptured pipes dribbled around him.
“Do we understand each other, crow-mage?” Belial hissed. “Abbadon has been in the dark for more years than even I can count. Yes, he escaped and managed to break the others out, but he’s not going to win. And you’re mostly certainly going to lose very fucking large if you try and fuck with me on this point.”
Jack laughed, which caused him to cough a little blood. He spat it at Belial’s shoe and missed. “He’s got you good and scared, doesn’t he? Never seen you with so much as a hair out of place, and look at you now.”
Belial’s black eyes were wide, and twin blood flowers had blossomed in his pale, waxy cheeks. Even his pristine suit was wrinkled and looked more like it had spent the night on a street corner than one of Hell’s posh palaces. “You watch your mouth, crow-mage. I doubt you’d be laughing at me if the Hag hadn’t scrubbed your memory all shiny-clean.”
Jack pulled himself to his feet. Belial didn’t know his memory was knitting itself back together, and he intended to keep it that way as long as possible. “For the record, I told Abbadon to go fuck himself, and I’m telling you the same thing. I’ve seen him and those things he hangs about with, and I’m not accustomed to admitting it, but they’re beyond me. You knew there was no way I could put those cunts back underground by myself. You’re just setting Pete up to fail. You probably think this is funny.”
“Trust me,” Belial snarled. “This is not my happy face.”
Jack kicked open the door, into the face of a very surprised bartender with a goatee. “Hey!” he said. “One guy in the john at a time. You two take it somewhere else.”
Belial twitched his cuffs and straightened his tie. “Gladly,” he said. “And might I remind you, Winter, you’re still on the hook, regardless of what you think. I wouldn’t be using you if I had a choice, believe me. Abbadon and his friends belong back in the darkness where we sent them, and you’re the man for the job, whether you know it or not. Get it done.”
“Fuck off,” Jack muttered, but Belial did his peculiar trick where you blinked and he’d simply gone.
“You’ve got pubic hair on your face,” Jack told him. “Might want to wash.”
The kid opened his mouth, but Jack shoved by him. He was in a dank bar, neon beer signs casting the only light. He reached behind the bar, grabbed the first bottle of strong whiskey he saw, and kicked open the swinging door to the street. He was back on Hollywood Boulevard—exactly where he’d started.
Jack sat down on the curb and opened the bottle, taking a long pull. Everything hurt. It was an unfortunate side effect of slagging off things that were higher in the food chain than you, and he’d accepted it.
The whiskey was shit, and it burned all the way down, lighting his already upset stomach aflame. Jack scanned up and down the pavement, until he caught a kid in a tracksuit and a do-rag nodding against the front of the hipster bar. He might be white, and old, and straightened out, but he still knew a dealer by scent.
“Oi,” he said to the kid. “Need to borrow your mobile.”
“Fuck you,” the kid said promptly. “Go suck cock and buy your own, old man.”
Jack set the bottle down—it was shit booze, but it was all he had. He wrapped one hand around the green-tinged gold necklaces at the kid’s throat, and the other around his balls. He’d had to do this entirely too often lately, he thought. “I’m just going to borrow it,” he said, adding a squeeze for emphasis.
“Fuck,” the kid hissed. “You crazy, fool? You know whose corner this is?”
“I’m sure he’s a terrifying gent, and that I’m well and truly fucked, but right now I need to make a fucking phone call and you’re standing in my way,” Jack said. “So you can either be a helpful lad or a soprano. I really don’t care at this point. Not having the best of days.”
The kid considered for a moment, and then shook his head, pulling a gleaming smart phone from his tracksuit. “You’re a fuckin’ crazy white dude, aren’t you?” he said.
“Been accused of it, yes,” Jack said, and dialed Pete.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “I thought you were dead. I’ve been driving circles around Los Angeles looking for your corpse.”
“I’m fine,” Jack said. “Need a lift, though, if you can manage it.”
“Is the car safe to drive now?” Pete asked. “I don’t fancy another go-round like at the garage. Where did you go, anyway? One moment you’re talking to that git Sal and the next he’s falling all over me, blubbering about ‘them’ taking you away.” She sighed. “Where are you?”
“Hollywood and Van Nuys,” Jack said. “Thanks, luv.”
“Fuck you,” Pete told him. “Only doing this so I don’t have to claim your body at the morgue. Damned inconvenient.”
Jack polished off more of the whiskey while he waited, undisturbed by the dealer once he handed the mobile back. How he was going to explain this royal mess to Pete, he didn’t know. Maybe he could drink enough to forgo explaining anything, but that would take a lot more than one bottle of paint thinner disguised as booze.
He wasn’t about to blame Pete for all this, even though it was tempting—she’d done what she’d thought necessary in the moment. When things like Nergal loomed on the horizon, people got scared and stupid, made decisions they didn’t think they’d ever live to regret, because they wouldn’t be living at all.
Abbadon had said that Jack had made it all possible. He’d made his own decision, when he was in hell and the Morrigan had come to him. He had certainly never thought he’d live to regret that one. And now the regret was all over him, under his skin.
Jack looked at his own hand gripping the whiskey bottle, at the black curlicues that terminated just short of his knuckles. It wasn’t ink—it was part of him, or part of the Morrigan that was in him. The thing that had only manifested as sight and Death dogging his steps tenaciously before now was visible, telling anyone who cared that Jack Winter was inexorably bound to the mistress of death and destruction.
He was pissed enough for there to be a warm buzz in his skull when the Fury rumbled to the curb, but at least it shut up the persistent circle-jerk of whispers inside his skull. All your fault. She’s not done with you. None of this is over.
“Jesus, Jack,” Pete said, jumping out of the car and crouching beside him.
“Not him,” Jack said. “Wager I could take on that bloke. Pacifistic and shit, wasn’t he?”
Pete took his arm and Jack let himself be pulled along and installed in the back seat. Between the thumping he’d taken and the whiskey, he was ready to fall asleep for a decade or two and wake up when everyone had a jetpack and nobody gave a fuck about Jack Winter.
“I’m not going to ask where you got off to or what happened,” Pete said as she put the car in gear. “But if you don’t want another bruise or two in the collection, you’re going to tell me once you stop stinking like a transient who sleeps outside a distillery.”
“Fair enough,” Jack mumbled. He tried not to drift off, tried to stall the dream that had to be coming by counting the turns the Fury made. “We can’t go back to Venice,” he said. “They know Mayhew.”
“I made arrangements,” Pete said. “You concentrate on not bleeding on the seats.”
“Figure this heap is ours now,” Jack said. “Seeing as Sal’s not on the side of angels.” This wasn’t his sight or a spell—this was just tired, a fatigue he never would have felt even five years ago.
“Thought there were no angels,” Pete said. Jack’s eyes fluttered closed, and he couldn’t prop them up any longer. He was going under, and he’d just have to hold his breath.
“Not in this world, luv,” he mumbled, before the hot, dry wind filled his lungs, and he was back in Hell.
CHAPTER 18
Belial kept a hand on his shoulder, almost constantly. He never spoke above a whisper, but Jack heard every word. Belial knew he would—his sight echoed, and his skull split and re-formed again and again as the demon hissed into his ear. They walked every inch of Hell, Jack’s bare feet blistering and rotting as cinder and offal worked their way in.
“I want you to see,” Belial whispered. “I want you to see what Hell is, Jack. The vast majesty of it. See it and know that from now until we all fall into a star, this is your home.”
He ran his sharp nails along the back of Jack’s neck. “This is your fate.”
The demon’s lips brushed his earlobe. “This is where you belong.”
Pete nudged him, and Jack saw an alley, brick buildings reaching to block out the bleached sky. Cars and people sounds moved past the mouth, but it was silent and shaded, much like the alley next to his flat at home.
Was it his home? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been unceremoniously chucked out of a city he’d once considered friendly. But London was different. London was the only spot where he could sleep, without dreams. The only spot he’d allowed roots to reach below the surface. He knew the Black there. Everywhere else was the Wild West.
“Come on,” Pete said. “Your creepy friend from the bar said we could lay low for a few days.”
“Sliver?” Jack got out of the Fury and tried lifting his arms. A dozen knives, from his skull to his knees, stabbed him for his trouble. He twisted the kinks from his back, trying not to gasp as his tender ribs vibrated.
“Yeah, him.” Pete grabbed her bag, his kit, and a disintegrating cardboard box from the trunk. “What’s wrong with his face?”
“For a wraith, nothing,” Jack said. “He’s an all right sort.”
Pete shouldered open a metal door marked FIRE EXIT ONLY. Considering that it was propped open with a cinder block, Jack figured the building either had a lot of fires, or had stopped worrying about the eventuality.
“We never have any normal friends,” she said.
“Normal’s overrated,” Jack said. The door swung shut and only a single bar of light illuminated the metal staircase, leading
up and up. He smelled piss and stale air, and pulled Pete behind him. “Let me,” he said. The Black here was like smoke curls from a candle just snuffed—thin and ethereal, the boundaries of the daylight world worn to practically nothing.
On the one hand, Abbadon and his merry band of freaks would have a hard time finding them in the swirling hotspot of magic. On the other hand, anything could be lurking in the dark and his sight would only hear the static of the nexus.
“Fine,” Pete muttered, shoving the box at him. “Take this, then.”
Jack accepted the burden, and saw in the slice of sunlight that Pete was pale, with sweat beading on her forehead. “You all right, luv?”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she said. “Only been vomiting more than that bloody child from The Exorcist. Had it with this fucking pregnancy, I’ll tell you that much. I want to climb in the TARDIS and fast-forward to when the kid is about eleven.” She set her jaw and followed Jack up the stairs. He tried not to listen to her sawing breath. Pregnant birds threw up. His mum had certainly never let him hear the end of it. Morning sickness out the arse, and what do I get? Ten fuckin’ hours of labor to pop out the world’s most ungrateful little cunt.
It didn’t mean anything, and fussing over Pete would just make her chuck something at his head. Maybe if he repeated it enough times in his own head he’d believe it. Pete would be all right. The kid would be all right. He just had to play the game a bit longer, and he’d no longer be in any danger of fucking either of them up.
And that was the way it should be. The way it had to be, unless he wanted to raise another Winter to get nicked by the cops, slam handfuls of smack, and drift through the Black as useless flotsam.
“Here,” Pete said. “Sixth floor. Said the key would be on the jamb.”
The hallway of the flat wasn’t much better—someone had made an attempt to cover the stained diamond-shaped tiles with green lino, but most of it had been ripped back up, leaving jagged continents. The wood paneling and sooty lamps had probably once been grand, but that had been decades, if not centuries, ago. The high ceiling merely served to create a smog layer inside, a miniature of the outdoors, made of cigarette smoke and stale stench from cooking oil.
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