“Belial has failed,” Baal said. “He’s no longer of any use to us.”
“I think you’re wrong there,” Jack said. “Because Abbadon still needs a demon to open Locke’s doorway, and you know what they say.” He spread his hands. “Better the devil you know.”
Azrael cocked his head. “What are you proposing, crow-mage? You may be the Morrigan’s pet, but a pet can still be a nuisance.” He smiled, revealing a toothless mouth with a long, serpentine blue tongue. “Choose your next words very, very carefully.”
“Let us go back upstairs,” Jack said. “Abbadon will come after Belial, you get Abbadon and his backup singers, and then you can do whatever you want with the lot of them.”
“And I suppose in exchange for this, you go free,” Beelzebub said. “We’re not idiots, Winter. Idiots don’t stay in these seats while all below them are scheming for their heads.”
“Never said you were, darling,” Jack said. The room was cold but he was as soaked as Belial was, his T-shirt sticking to his skin like cold, clammy hands.
“So what do you want?” Azrael rasped. “Nothing is free, crow-mage. What’s your bargain?”
“Leave me and Pete and our kid the fuck alone from now on,” Jack said. “No demons sniffing around. No Belial trying to collect on whatever debts he thinks we owe. Point of fact, if I see one fucking bloke stinking of sulfur darkening my doorway from now until the day I die, I’m walking out right now and I’ll see you all when you’re roasting on Abbadon’s victory fire with a spit shoved up your arse.”
Baal started to laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. It was the sound, Jack decided, of several small animals in excruciating pain. “Oh, I like him,” he purred. “He’s got some swinging brass ones, doesn’t he?”
“You’d be better off showing some of that,” Azrael told Belial. “Why should we think that you can send Abbadon back from whence he came, crow-mage, when a Named demon of Hell can’t manage the task?”
“Put Nergal’s lights out, didn’t I?” Jack said. “And from what I’ve heard, Abbadon is a fluffy pup in comparison. A veritable ray of fuckin’ sunshine.” He wasn’t, but the only chance for Pete was for Jack to get out of Hell, and the only way he was doing that was by talking. Talking was the one thing he was always good at—he could talk that dole woman out of extra cash, his friends out of their shitty drugs, girls he fancied out of their knickers. Talking was the only skill he could always rely on, the source of and solution to most of his problems.
He waited, watching the Princes, feeling his blood flow in and out of the chambers of his heart. If these were the last moments of his life, they were shit. He wasn’t sentimental. There wasn’t anything he wished he’d said, but he would’ve liked to see Pete again, to know that she was safe from Abbadon and from everyone else.
The Princes separated their heads and stared at Jack, three sets of black snake eyes, measuring the weight of his soul. “He’s got a point,” Beelzebub told his companions. “None of ours have managed anything better. We could waste legions chasing this fuckwit.”
“If you do this and if you and the moron here survive the task,” Baal said, “then your debt with Hell will be considered void, crow-mage. We’ll gladly leave you to your fate. But only if.”
“And Pete, and the baby,” Jack reminded them. “They’re out. Out of the life for good.”
“If you insist,” Beelzebub sighed. “I’ll never understand your attachment to other humans, but so be it. We have no interest in your whore or your spawn.”
“And watch your language, while you’re at it,” Jack said. “Before I come over that table and knock your teeth back a step.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Belial muttered. “Always have to push it, don’t you?”
Beelzebub stood to his full height, which Jack had to admit was impressive. “I’m a Prince of Hell, boy,” he rumbled. “And you’d do well to remember that. While you’re at it, you leave this place at my whim, because it amuses me to watch you struggle through the shit and mud of the human world. Now go, and do as you’ve promised, or you’ll be standing in front of me again and I’ll take every one of those ill-considered words out of your miserable, clammy hide.”
“Got it,” Jack said. The Fenris moved back as he turned, pulling Belial with him, and made for the door.
“Are you insane?” Belial asked when they were in the hall.
“You know, a ‘Thanks, Jack, for saving my arse when you didn’t have to’ would be in order here,” Jack said.
“What do I have to thank you for?” Belial snapped. “You’re planning to offer me up to Abbadon on a plate.”
“Like you didn’t do the same to me just a day ago,” Jack said. “Don’t play wounded hero with me, demon. You’d bend me over soon as you got the chance in there.”
Belial curled his fists, and then uncurled them, taking a deep breath. “Fucking Azrael,” he said. “He’s been trying to shove me out for centuries, get me booted to some backwater like the Well of Sorrows. Can’t stand that I bring in more soul traffic than his little legions of dead men.”
“I get it, he’s not on your Christmas card list,” Jack said. “Now are you going to take us topside or not?”
“Not like I have a choice,” Belial snarled.
“Nope,” Jack told him. “How are you liking that shoe on the other foot, by the way?”
“I’m going to pull your intestines out through your arse for this,” Belial muttered.
“You won’t,” Jack said, “because I saved your arse, and now, for once, you owe me something.” He snapped his fingers in the demon’s face. He wouldn’t be able to get away with that much longer, and he was going to savor it while he still held something over Belial’s head. “Fetch, boy. Go bring me a monster.”
CHAPTER 26
The air of Los Angeles was almost palatable after the constant burnt-hair stink of Hell, and Jack inhaled deeply. “Good to be back, eh?” he said.
Belial sat on the curb and scrubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes. “Centuries of devotion, of bringing them souls, and they hang me out to dry. Those fucking bastards.”
Jack sat down next to him, lit a fag, and offered one to the demon. Belial took it and sucked on it viciously, until the cherry flared bright orange. “Cheer up,” Jack said. “All you have to do is lock Abbadon back up and you’re in their good graces.”
“You don’t understand,” Belial said. “Abbadon and his kind are a threat to the Princes, and a threat to the Princes means scorched earth. Anyone responsible for their breakout is going to be a cinder when this is over, including me.”
“Fuck me, you’re a cheerful one, aren’t you?” Jack said. He’d never come across a maudlin demon and decided he definitely didn’t like it. Seeing Belial slumped like a City trader who’d just been sacked wasn’t right. It was like seeing a wolf who’d been hit by a car—you could discern the shape of the predator it had once been, but it was as broken and bloody as the next sad thing lying in the gutter.
“Abbadon’s been free too long,” Belial said. “Always knew if he ever broke out, there was no putting him back.”
“This might be an odd thought for your sort,” Jack said. “But why not try giving him the old sorry we fucked up, here’s a patch of Hell and a lovely potted palm to make amends?”
“Because Abbadon doesn’t understand peace,” Belial snapped. “He thinks Hell is his to rule, and after he’s done burning it down he’ll move on to the Black and everything outside it.” He blew a long stream of smoke into the air. “Abbadon is the closest you’ll come to Armageddon, Jack. He’s the end. The end of me, the end of people like you, the end of a world balanced on a knife-edge. It’s a hard balance, and sometimes it cuts you, but we’ve all been able to coexist since the beginning. Abbadon and his ilk have no interest in coexisting. They just want to consume, and make the world their own. He’s the metaphysical cockroach. Whatever we throw at him, he’ll survive.”
“You can step on a roach wi
th a great bloody boot,” Jack said. “That works for me.”
“Azrael was right about one thing,” Belial said. “I do wish I was human sometimes. That endless optimism and idiotic hope, even when things are clearly fucked. I like it.”
“So glad you approve,” Jack said. “And might I remind you, you had some grand secret plan to get Abbadon back where he belongs. If we can’t squash him, we can at least put him back in his roach motel. That’s got to be better than moaning about how it’s the end of all things.”
“The doorway ritual isn’t complete,” Belial said. “I got a good look when that great pig’s arse Sanford had me hanging like a decorative mobile. Wouldn’t have worked even if he’d bled me dry. That means Locke left something out of his notes, and I have an idea of where that bit might be.”
Jack felt himself start to smile. Basil Locke hadn’t been such a fuckwit after all. Fascist, quite possibly, but not an idiot. If Jack had carved a back door into Hell, he sure as fuck would have hidden the specs where nobody could get clever and decide to recreate his work. “Do share this wisdom,” he told Belial.
“Locke was obsessed with an actress named Lucinda Lanchester,” he said. “Nobody you’ve ever heard of. She played nightclub singers, gangsters’ molls, the sister in the farces who takes the pratfalls.”
“You’re starting to sound like Sanford,” Jack told him. “So old Basil had a hard-on for a no-name actress. Wouldn’t be the first.”
“Lucinda Lanchester happened to sell her soul to me in exchange for being in pictures,” Belial said. “Sad for her, she didn’t specify what pictures, and she never climbed off the B-roll. Locke wooed her, bought her extravagant presents, practically bankrupted himself. Then he knocked her up and she and the baby both kicked it during the birth. That was when he went to Germany and made friends with Himmler. Who wouldn’t have had any talent for magic if it had crawled up his arse and fallen asleep, by the by.”
“So you think Locke told this Lucinda girl whatever his great secret was,” Jack said.
“I checked in with her from time to time, as I do with all my bargains,” Belial said. “The last time she wasn’t making any sense—well, less sense than she usually did. She had a love for little white pills of all varieties, poor thing. But she was ranting how she wasn’t afraid of me, how she had a secret that would make her the mistress of any demon who tried for her soul. Obviously it was bollocks, as I collected not two months later, but now I wonder. I wonder what Locke told her to put her in such a state.”
“Unless you have a hand for necromancy, I don’t think we’re finding out,” Jack said. Belial grinned, and it was the familiar grin Jack knew, the sign the demon knew something the rest of the world at large did not. He’d always hated that look.
“I don’t need a bone-rattler to recall a soul that I own,” he said. “Although I don’t fancy going down to the catacombs of Hell just now. No, all we need is her corpse, and I wager we’ll have our answer.”
“And I suppose you know right where she’s buried,” Jack said.
“Haven’t the faintest,” Belial said. “I don’t care what happens to the body once I have my property. I leave the flesh and bone to the necrophiliacs.”
“Movie star dies tragically, gotta be something on where they put her bones down,” Jack said. “Got a mobile? We can check online.”
“She’s something of a cult figure since she died,” Belial said. “Vandals dug her body up twice in the sixties and stole bits, so they moved her and now the grave’s unmarked. No idea where she’s at now.”
“Good job you have me,” Jack said. “Otherwise you’d be lost.”
“Don’t tell me you know where Lucinda finally rested herself,” Belial scoffed. “You barely know what day of the week it is, Winter.”
“It’s Thursday,” Jack said. “And I don’t, but I know someone who will.”
CHAPTER 27
The shop was locked and shuttered when Jack and Belial climbed out of the taxi, but Jack banged on the grate until a light came on. The dark-haired, death-tinged shop girl appeared, glaring out at them, holding an old-fashioned shotgun in her fists. “What do you want?” she mouthed through the door.
“Sorry to bother you, luv,” Jack said. “Need to ask you something.”
She unlocked the door and pointed the shotgun toward Belial’s chest. “You can come in. The diablo waits outside.”
Belial bared his teeth at her. “Trust me, sweetheart—I am far from the worst thing in this miserable little hole of yours.”
“Fuck you, pendejo,” she snapped, and tugged Jack inside. “Why are you mixing it up with demons?” she demanded. “Sliver told me you were all right.”
“I’m not mixing anything,” Jack said. “I need him, and for the moment, he needs me. And we both need something from you.”
“Oh yeah?” She propped the shotgun behind the counter and led Jack through the beaded curtain into a snug back room. A small flat telly blasted Spanish-language news and a glass of tequila sat on the arm of a ratty vinyl overstuffed chair. “Ask,” the girl said, and offered Jack an empty jelly glass and a tequila bottle.
He poured a stiff shot. The tequila was fire mixed with turpentine, and it burned on the way down, spreading the fire through his guts and numbing his tongue. “Need to know where an old-timey sorceress is buried. Figured you’d be in the know.”
The girl shrugged. “Maybe, what’s her name?”
“Lucinda Lanchester,” Jack said. The tequila was steadying everything, bringing it back into focus. He wondered when he’d last slept. He couldn’t remember. The world vibrated at the edges—nothing to do with his sight, but with the throbbing in his skull. More tequila. That’d help.
“I’m supposed to know about some white bitch who kicked the bucket sixty years ago?” The girl snorted. “No way, man. You want my advice, leave the dead where they are and stop having demons for your homies. That’ll make your life a lot easier.”
Jack set the glass down. “Please,” he said. “This isn’t for my own amusement. Sliver told me you knew things. And I know what you are. We can both tell that Death is coming, that the Black is out of order. If you really don’t know Lucinda, I’ll turn and walk out. But don’t brush me off and play like we don’t both know what you are.”
The girl sighed, and then clicked off the television and pointed through a curtain made from a faded floral bed sheet. “Go in there. Don’t touch anything.”
Jack ducked through the curtain. He was expecting a workroom or a sex dungeon, but not a tiny backroom crowded almost to bursting with an altar. Candle wax had congealed to stalagmites down the front and sides, and bowls of candy, bullets, and rosary beads were arranged at the foot of a statue of skeletal creature. More bottles of tequila crowded her feet, bourbon, every kind of liquor you could pick up cheaply and by the quart at the local market.
“They call her La Flaca,” the girl said at his shoulder. “The skinny girl.” She kissed her fingertips and pressed them to the statue’s feet.
“Santa Muerte,” Jack said. “Ran into some of your lot down in Mexico City about ten years ago. Not very friendly.”
“Not to nosy outsiders, no,” the girl said. She folded her arms and looked at him, eyes boring in. Jack dropped his eyes to the beads around her neck and the crucifix riding between her cleavage. She had a gimlet stare, even for an avatar of Death. Her eyes were the Morrigan’s eyes, black and animal and ancient. “Don’t let me down, man,” La Flaca said. “I know you follow Death. Might be the Eurotrash white-boy version of Death, but we’re headed to the same place. Down the dark highway. That’s the only reason I’m considering this.”
Jack pulled back his sleeve and showed her the markings. “I’ve been involved with my own skinny bitch for quite some time,” he said. “So yeah, I know what you’re on about.”
La Flaca pointed at the altar. “Give something to Santa Muerte. Ask your question, but unless you have an offering, I don’t answer.”
&n
bsp; “Seriously?” Jack said. He looked into the face of the skeleton icon. It was cheap plaster, the features blurred and painted crookedly. Santa Muerte’s robes were polyester, singed at the edges from the dozens of candles that cast the room’s only pools of light. He looked back at her living counterpart. “What do you want from me, a kiss? A lock of my hair?”
The girl smacked him in the back of the head. “A little respect, for starters. Santa Muerte answers all requests. You just have to know how to ask her.”
Jack looked into the girl’s black eyes, back to the statue’s crooked plaster face. “I don’t have anything to offer you. Or anyone.”
The girl took out a pocket knife and offered it to Jack. “You have what we all have.” A small clay bowl between Santa Muerte’s toes held a sticky red-black liquid, evidence of who’d come here before Jack.
“I never got your name,” he told the girl as he took the knife and folded the blade open.
“I have a lot of them,” she said. “Ana’s good as any, and you’re Jack Winter, the crow-mage.”
“That obvious, is it?” The knife didn’t hurt much—he’d cut himself enough times on purpose to know you just squeezed your fist around the blade and tugged a bit. If the steel was sharp, it would do the job for you.
The dribble became a rivulet, and Jack worked his fist a few times, sending a stream of droplets into the bowl to combine with the other blood. La Flaca folded her hands.
“Pray with me,” she said.
Jack swiped his cut palm against his jeans. “Not much for praying. You got a plaster?”
The girl sighed and passed him a rag draped over the only piece of furniture in the room, an old kitchen chair. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”
Jack started to reply, but out of the corner of his eye, the statue moved. He blinked and looked again, putting it down to the flickering flames all around the edges of his vision, but no. The skinny girl’s arm, holding its long scythe, was definitely lifting, and the cheap robes wrapping the plaster were ruffling in a breeze.
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