Bone Gods

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “The Black has been torn,” Tyrell said. “Shredded and remade, just now. It has pressurized us here, as if we were submerged deep under the ocean.” He shrugged. “Something massive is passing through, and we are feeling the ripples.”

  Pete slid down the wall, until the floor of the small metal room met her bottom. “Dear lord. I’m going to die in here. With you.”

  “It will pass,” Tyrell said. “These events are more regular than creatures like you realize. The Black is fragile and full of things that can cause such an event. Most are simply too old or too terrible for your kind to believe they still exist, or ever did. The wave will recede eventually.”

  “How soon is eventually?” Pete said into her knees. Don’t panic, she ordered herself. Don’t breathe, don’t vomit, don’t lose your head. Easy to tell herself, hard to put into practice. The effects of Tyrell’s toxic tea were wearing off, and she was nauseated even without being trapped in a sliver of the Black she couldn’t access or escape on her own.

  “Minutes,” Tyrell shrugged. “Decades.”

  “I hate you,” Pete said.

  Tyrell tested the door again. “Ah,” he said as it swung free. “Miss Caldecott.” He presented her a card with sleight of hand, a much cleaner and newer version of the one the long-ago Antiquarian had given Jack.

  CURIOSITIES, the card read in bold script, and below it, MEMORY, ANTIQUITIES, & DREAMS, ALL TRADES CONSIDERED. The flip side contained the same gibberish chant.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Tyrell said. “Good hunting, miss.”

  The door slammed, and Pete was left alone to find her way back to the surface world.

  CHAPTER 11

  Pete bent double on the sidewalk outside the shop, breathing deep, trying to quell the roiling sickness in her guts.

  “I ain’t a fan of sayin’ I told you,” Lawrence said. “But I did. That Antiquarian, he’s a no-good snake.” He rubbed a hand between Pete’s shoulder blades. “You gonna sick up?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Pete mumbled, trying not to move her jaw. The passing posh crowd was casting increasingly alarmed looks, and it would only be a matter of time before someone called the police on the large black man and the skinny white woman acting as if she’d just come off a fortnight heroin binge.

  “You get anything useful, at least?” Lawrence said. “Make this worthwhile?”

  “Walk,” Pete said, even though the pavement looked as crumpled as velvet to her eyes. She grabbed Lawrence’s elbow, and they made their slow way down the high street. “Yes,” she said, when they’d left the stares behind. “Babylonian. Necromantic. Not a death spell. Beyond that, it was all a babbling brook of bullshit.”

  “Antiquarians love bein’ smarter than you,” Lawrence agreed. “Smarmy cunts.”

  Pete thought the rumbling that enveloped them, along with darkness, was her own blood in her ears for a moment, until Lawrence jerked her under the awning of a sweet shop. A moment later, a flashbulb went off across the entire sky and the heavens over London opened, pissing down cold spring rain that filled the gutters and caused a taxi to nearly jump the curb, wipers flailing madly against the windscreen.

  “Just what we bloody need, eh?” Lawrence said. The thunder drowned out anything else, and nerves of lightning lit the skin of the iron-gray clouds that had collected in the space of a few footsteps.

  “Never seen a storm like this,” Pete said.

  “My old nana used to say a storm like this could wake the dead,” Lawrence said.

  “I’m sure if your grandmother was aware of how annoying folksy wisdom is, she’d’ve kept that to herself,” Pete said.

  “Oi,” Lawrence told her. “Just because you in the grumps doesn’t mean we all gotta be.”

  The rain abated after a few more moments, not much but enough to run for the tube. The scarcity of people on the high street was the only reason Pete noticed the man all in black standing near a close, watching her from under the dripping brim of his wide hat. Pete tugged on Lawrence. “Hold it.”

  Dreisden tipped his hat to Pete with a chipper grin, and turned and slipped away before she could take more than one step toward him. A taxi blared, and Lawrence jerked her back. “What’s the matter? Now you looked good and riled, in addition to wet and hungover.”

  Pete glared at the spot where Dreisden had been, then dug in her bag for the card Juniper had handed her outside the Lament. “What’s the matter is I don’t like being fucking threatened.”

  Lawrence didn’t answer, but he did follow her, which Pete didn’t argue with this time. She was through being menaced by Ethan Morningstar, and he’d pushed enough. If Lawrence could help her push back, so much the better.

  * * *

  The Order of the Malleus didn’t reside in any sort of posh modern flat near Canary Wharf, or a sinister, brooding Victorian narrow house watched over by iron gates crawling with ivy and Gothic sensibility. The address was on one of the side streets running up to the south side of Regent’s Park in Marylebone, a nondescript row house with a blue door and two small granite Chinese dogs guarding the steps.

  Pete ignored the devil’s-head knocker, slamming on the wood with the flat of her hand. “Open this fucking door!” She used her best copper voice, and it rattled back from the row of flats opposite. Curtains twitched aside up and down the street.

  Five seconds, then ten, then thirty went by without a response. “Oi!” Pete resorted to kicking, the steel of her boot leaving an ugly black wound in the door. “Morningstar! You know why I’m here, you creepy bastard!”

  “Maybe we should … do something that isn’t this,” Lawrence suggested, from where he stood on the pavement. Pete cast around, then picked up one of the dog statues and walked back to the shiny black BMW parked in front of the row house. She swung hard and deliberate, letting the weight of the stone carry itself.

  Windscreen glass exploded into the street, and the car’s alarm began to whoop. “Ethan,” Pete shouted. “Get your arse out here!”

  The car alarm cut off, and the door of the house opened up. “Petunia Caldecott!” Her mother appeared on the stoop, arms crossed. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  Pete tossed the statue aside. “Nothing that concerns you, Mother.” She pointed at the house. “I know he’s in there. What’s wrong, he can’t come himself? Has to send his overdressed rent boys to be the hard men?”

  Juniper threw up her hands. “Oh, Petunia. You always had a flair for being overdramatic.”

  “You’d know about dramatic entrances and exits,” Pete said. “Listen, Mum, you can prance about with these fuckwits all day long, but I want to talk to Ethan and I’m going to carry on smashing things that belong to him until he comes out.” She folded her arms. “Is that dramatic enough for your taste, Mother?”

  “You’d think somebody nearly thirty would have learned not to be such a disagreeable little brat,” Juniper snapped, her serene Mother Superior composure finally wearing thin. Pete was gratified that she still had the temper that had caused her to bawl out MG for staying away all night and chuck the occasional lager bottle in Connor’s direction when he snapped at them once too often because of his job.

  “It’s all right, Junie,” said a voice from the dark of the doorway. Morningstar appeared, a deal less imposing without the vampire coat and hat, but still with a glare and craggy hands that could crush Pete’s skull into shards. “We weren’t expecting you so soon, Miss Caldecott,” he said. His eye drifted to the smashed car and he sighed. “You know, you might have simply rung.”

  Pete gave him a tight smile. “I don’t work for you, Ethan. We had this talk.”

  Morningstar guided Juniper back over the threshold. “Go inside, dear.” He came into the street, picked up the statue, and set it back on its pedestal. “As I recall that conversation, we agreed you did want to do something for me, Miss Caldecott. If not for your sake than for your dear friends.” He tipped a salute to Lawrence. “Here’s one of them now.”


  Lawrence made a move to Pete’s shoulder, but she waved him off. “He’s a bigot with fancy dress,” she told Lawrence. “This, I can handle.”

  “Not him I’m worried about,” Lawrence muttered. “Your mum’s a lot scarier.”

  “Fuck off,” Pete said, and mounted the steps. Morningstar gave her one of his knife-edged smiles.

  “So kind of you to stop by.”

  “Believe me,” Pete said. “I’m not having kind thoughts, Mr. Morningstar.”

  “Ethan,” he said, shutting the door behind her. “Call me Ethan.”

  Morningstar’s house was furnished in the same bland, vaguely classical style as the outside. Persian rugs muffling the floors, furniture with feet, and dour portraits of a man who looked like the genuine witch-burning article hanging in the front hall. Morningstar flicked a finger at one. “Sir Percival Morningstar, a several times great-grandfather of mine. Disposed of seven sorcerers in his day.”

  “Must have been the toast of his inbred village,” Pete said acidly.

  “I don’t hate you, you know,” Morningstar said gruffly. “Nor people like you.”

  “Love the sinner?” Pete guessed.

  “And burn the sin,” Morningstar agreed. He led Pete to the rear of the house, unlocking a door with a skeleton key he took from a ring in his pocket. “The Order of the Malleus is not what you think, Miss Caldecott. Despite your unfortunate first impression, we’re here to cure, not to torture. We kill as a last resort, to protect the Order.”

  “Yes, well,” Pete said. “Some of us manage it without killing at all. ’M not going to pat you on the head.”

  “How many people have you killed as a law officer?” Morningstar asked. “And how many do you think Mr. Winter caused the demise of before his misdeeds finally caught up with him?”

  “We’ve been over this ground,” Pete said. “You found it full of pitfalls, remember?”

  Morningstar gestured her through the open door but Pete balked. She wasn’t sure Morningstar wouldn’t simply shoot her in the back if she annoyed him excessively. “After you,” she said.

  “Paranoia is an unfortunate side effect of magic on human brain tissue, you know.” Morningstar took a seat behind the sort of desk the headmaster of a snooty prep school would use. It suited him. Pete stood rather than use one of the straight-backed chairs facing Morningstar, as if she were a bloody truant. The office was surprisingly spare and far less grim than the rest of the Order’s house. One row of books paraded across the shelf behind Morningstar’s head, and an arty black and white of Hadrian’s Wall was the only decoration. Definitely a man’s office, a man spare and hard through all his deeds. Pete all at once didn’t feel so right about smashing his car.

  “I’m careful,” she said. “And I learned that a long time before I admitted the Black was real.”

  “Even so.” Morningstar put his feet on his desk. “The human mind was not meant to contain the energies of the Black. I strongly urge you to pull back before you do yourself permanent damage, Petunia.” Morningstar took a cigarette from a silver case at his elbow and lit it, but didn’t offer one to Pete.

  “You’re one to talk about permanent damage,” Pete said, yanking Nasiri’s remaining photo from her bag and tossing it on Morningstar’s desk. “No need to send your boy, Ethan. I was coming for a chat anyway.”

  “Oh?” Morningstar exhaled thin twin streams through his nose. “Regarding?”

  “Let’s cut the shit, shall we?” Pete said. “Carver got killed working some nasty magic, yeah, but these cuts were made over years. And it wasn’t death magic being worked on him, it was something worse. He was arse deep in necromancy and you knew. What happened, Ethan? Did your dog break his chain?”

  Ash grew on the end of Morningstar’s fag, forgotten. “You’ve learned a lot in a short time, Petunia. I’m impressed. But Gerard’s proclivities don’t concern you. He was one of us, sinner or not.”

  “Did you know what he was doing?” Pete said. “Tell me the truth or I swear to your musty old god I’m going to break a lot more than your car.”

  “I very much doubt that,” Morningstar said. Pete gritted her teeth. Morningstar didn’t seem the slightest bit uncomfortable that she was in his house. If anything, he appeared bored, smoking and loosening his tie as if she were a problem he wouldn’t have much trouble solving.

  “I can’t help you if you won’t help me,” she tried.

  Morningstar stubbed out his fag-end in a saucer. “I had an idea, yes. Gerard was a deep cover member of the Order. He had a talent. He had to use it occasionally. And necromancy … it’s seductive. So yes. I knew about his usage. What I don’t know is why he was killed, and that’s a concern. For you as well as for the Order.”

  “I don’t mess with necromancers,” Pete said. “So really, I think I’m safe and sound.”

  “All I want to do is help,” Morningstar said, slamming his hand down on the desk. Pete jumped. He stood, jabbing a fresh fag at her. “You, Gerard, everyone who’s gotten caught in the web. Who got tricked into believing in magic. You must get out before it burns you alive, Petunia. Your mother…”

  “Leave my mother out of this,” Pete snarled. “You’ve already brainwashed her—is that not enough? You want the whole set of Caldecotts? I’ll have you ring up my sister, if that’s true. She’d let you sell her the Tower of London if you told her it was constructed by benevolent elves from outer space.”

  “Goddamn it, this is not a fucking joke to me!” Morningstar bellowed. “I’m saving the good people of the world. They may not see it, but in the end, they get on their knees and thank me in their prayers.”

  “Please,” Pete said. She turned to leave, because being ignored wore on men like Morningstar a thousand times more than defiance. “Preach it to someone who doesn’t know what’s really out there in the dark.”

  “You think I don’t know?” Morningstar said. “You think I’m a fanatic who condemns from the outside?” He sank back into his chair, and jabbed out the cigarette viciously. “I’ve seen, Miss Caldecott. I’ve seen…” He ran a hand down his face. “My sister’s name was Charity. Even though we were brought up God fearing, magic denouncing, as all members of the Order should be, Charity fell in with the Black. Through our research, she met them. The mages and the sorcerers, the unclean things that crawl below the skin of this city, and she fell…” Morningstar’s jaw twitched. “She died. Nearly thirty years gone, now. I spent nights down there, looking for her.” He shook his head. “She still slipped away. I knew enough about necromancy to bring her back, Miss Caldecott. But I didn’t. I redoubled my dedication, and I found the lost souls when I could, and led them to the light. And that’s why, when I found Gerard Carver, I knew I had to save him. And when he died, I knew that something terrible was stirring in the Black. Because I know my enemy, Petunia, and I know that we’ve precious little time left to stop him. Can you say the same? About anything?”

  Pete hadn’t expected a bastard like Ethan Morningstar, with a view narrower than a chimneysweep’s arse and sermons to match, to ever make her feel like shite. Still, she felt her stomach tie in knots as he stared at her, waiting for her reply. She thought about all of the nights looking for Jack in his various drug squats, the hellish week when he’d been detoxing, and knowledge ever after that he was one bad day or bad vision or Hell, stubbed toe away from using again, and she’d have to do it all over. There was never any question of whether she’d go after him when he slipped back down into the Black. She had to. Jack was the one thing she could never be clean of.

  “Gerard Carver didn’t deserve what happened to him,” she said. “But he was into some nasty fucking magic, and it’s going to take some time to unravel it all. Meanwhile, may I suggest you stop following me and stop making these little chats necessary?”

  Morningstar scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I assure you, Mr. Dreisden was there for your protection. I meant what I said. The Black is out of balance, and what information Gerard passed me
was troubling. Necromantic rituals that haven’t been used since before Christ, cropping up again. Horrible stuff. Feisty as you are, Petunia, it would eat you alive.”

  All at once, Pete saw Morningstar with perfect clarity. Perhaps it was the absence of the Black at last, after the oppressive weight of the lost library. With her senses quiet, she saw Morningstar as a man past his prime, exhausted furrows writ into a face that was really too young to hold them, at least so deeply. Back bent from stemming a tide he knew would surely drown him, with the next wave, or the hundredth—it was only time, as his strength ebbed and the Black continued to flow just as it always had.

  “I’m not doing this for you,” Pete said. “Let’s just get that straight. I’m doing it so you’ll leave me and mine alone. Permanently.”

  Morningstar lit his second fag. “I’m going to be honest with you, Miss Caldecott: We’ve been seeking you out ever since you sought the company of Jack Winter, what is it, two years ago now?”

  “It was two years,” Pete agreed softly. “Just about.”

  “Like I said,” Ethan sighed. “We are not ignorant to the movements of the Black. You have a prodigious talent, and you could use it to do so much good.”

  “All due respect, Ethan,” she said. “I’m doing good. You and your Order are doing precisely shite that I can see but sit around wringing your hands.” She opened the door to the main hall. “I can see myself out.”

  “This mystery spell that killed Gerard,” Ethan said, wagon-wheel voice serving to stop Pete in her tracks. “Wouldn’t happen to be Babylonian, would it?”

  Pete knew she’d gone stiff, from the pang in her shoulder where she’d landed on it badly years ago, chasing a shoplifter along the Camden locks. “How did you know that?” She had to be careful. She was alone with Morningstar, a big man with a gun who wasn’t afraid of or even adverse to violence. If she accused him of having a bit more of a hard-on for spellcraft than was officially accepted by an upright outfit like the Order, she had no doubt Morningstar would put her through the nearest wall.