"Don't interfere," Kev said, leveling his knife at her. "This isn't your show."
Pete pushed herself up and came at him again, swinging for the hateful smile, and again he pushed her back, lifting her clean off her feet. He was so strong, the strength of a child's nightmare.
"You're not my demon," Pete said, as Kev pushed the knife tighter against Jack's mother's throat. "Jack wasn't afraid of you. Jack wouldn't be afraid of a piss stain like you, not even then."
"You're afraid of me, missy," said Kev with certainty. He looked up and started as he saw Jack standing inches from him, eyes totally white. "I told you stay put, you little freak!"
He started to say more, but his throat twitched and closed, and he dropped the flick-knife to claw at his breast over his heart. Robotically, Jack picked up the flick-knife and put the business end into Kev's neck, the arterial blood washing the wall, Jack, and his mother in a graceful arc. She let out a feeble cry and covered her eyes.
Jack crouched on his heels, watching with unblinking attention until Kev's last ounce of life ran out of him and stained the cheap carpet with wine. "You're right," he told Pete finally, his voice thin and not all present. He picked up the flick-knife, cleaned it on his sleeve, and tucked it away. "I stopped being afraid of monsters. The shadows, the transparent voices I heard… they told me how to keep the monsters back. And I listened. I learned. When did you first feel it, Pete? This was my day."
"You're not here," Pete said. "That much I know. Tell me. Please? I'm running out of time so fast, Jack…"
"I see you," young Jack said solemnly. "I see you doomed by your need to help me. You'd rush headlong in front of a train."
"Into Hell," Pete answered.
"What do I do to earn your loyalty?" Jack crossed his thin little arms. "You shine."
"You don't make it easy, that's for bloody sure," Pete said. "But nobody deserves what Treadwell plans, Jack. Not even you." She touched the little boy on the shoulder, and he winced. "You don't have such a dark heart as you think, Jack. Hope someday you see that."
Jack pointed to the locked door, now grown iron and arched, a portal bound up in magic.
"Through there," he said. "I'm there. Be careful, Pete."
"Of what?" she said, standing slowly from the ruin of glass where she'd landed.
Jack blinked his white eyes. "You look into Treadwell, not as Jack sees him, but as magic does. And when you do it, he can see you, too, Pete. All of you."
Pete put both her hands flat on the door. It was cold, a cold of old things with no space in the real. "Bloody wonderful," she muttered before she put her hands on the massive twin latches and pushed the door free.
Chapter Forty-five
Stepping back into a graveyard caused her to stumble, because it was a calm spring night and not the boiling, fiery center of Jack's terrors she'd envisioned.
A gaslight flickered blue, casting the whole scene in black-and-white film, all shades of bright and shadow that danced in time with the flame.
Pete walked across the grass to a single headstone; crooked and tilted to one side, planted in the earth long enough to get comfortable. Jack stood, his head bowed, hair white in the light of the lamp. He stared down at the gravestone without breathing, without even a wind to move his coat. If not for the cigarette curling smoke slowly upward, he might have been a ghost himself.
Next to him, Pete stopped. "It's really you, then."
Jack nodded once, chin tucking down against his chest. Blue slivers of magic sluiced off him, burning away like sparks in the cool air. "Really here. Just like you."
The magic glowed all over him, the spirit raven a corona that Pete watched fill up with black as if something had spilled ink across Jack's ghost-form, pulsing and retreating and growing again. The taint caused a physical ache in Pete, a feeling of loss.
"We'd better hurry and get out of here," Pete said. "Wake up, or go away from the light, or whatever it is you do… here."
Jack made a bitter noise in his throat. "I never asked you to come after me, Pete. You die just like the rest of us."
Pete felt her mouth open, forced it shut quickly. "Jack, I didn't endure pain and kidnapping and massive internal bleeding so that I could come here and be snarled at. Now come, before Treadwell finds you."
"He wants to take my body as a vessel," Jack said. He raised his head and confronted Pete with a face of hollows behind his cigarette. "Could you do it, Pete? If Treadwell wore my face? Could you kill him?"
Pete answered without thinking, too quickly. "No. I could never make my nightmare real, Jack. Not again."
He sneered. "Then what good are you?" The cigarette sailed away into the grass, trailing embers. "My nightmare is real, Pete. How's your grand plan to save me working so far?"
Pete looked at the headstone, realized with a start that the broad letters carved into it were familiar.
Jack Winter
Born 15 June
Died
But the date was scratched out. Pete faced Jack, reaching for his wrist. "You're not dead."
"Might as well be," he muttered. "What a life I've led. Every breath, every kick and scream against the pricks, all down to nothing, just a funeral no one will ever see for a man nobody cares about."
"Oh, buggering fuck," Pete shouted. "You cannot expect me to believe that you're actually feeling sorry for yourself, you stupid sod! Look at me! I've fucking killed myself over you, and all that time I thought you'd already gone I carried that wound close, never let you fade all the way to memory because you were all I had to convince myself that maybe there was something out there beyond living and dying with just gray in between!" She grabbed Jack, shook him, fighting against fingers numb from encroaching passage to the land of the dead.
"I cared for you so much it nearly drove me mad," Pete whispered. "So, you see, you can't leave. You simply can't."
Jack sighed. "Sometimes the thing you want won't be yours, no matter how hard you grasp onto it, Pete. This is the end. You'd do well to walk away before any hope of saving you has passed. Leave me to Treadwell, and go get on with your life."
You should heed the young man. Treadwell formed out of the crackling power in the air, a sure form of a man here, simply silver and ephemeral. He wore a frock coat and his long hair was combed back from a broad forehead. His eyes lit hungrily as he gazed upon Jack.
"I don't understand," Pete whispered. "You came to fight, Jack, and now you're giving up."
Mr. Winter is both a product and a victim of his fears, as we all are, Treadwell said, folding his hands and looking pleased. In the end he has nothing-—not faith, not hope, not love. Just fear, and fear is the most powerful agent of all.
He stepped forward, passing through Jack's headstone. lime has come, Mr. Winter, for you to step aside and for me to step in.
Jack nodded numbly, opening his arms. "I'm yours."
Pete cast desperately, but the graveyard was totally empty except for Jack's headstone, lone and neglected.
"Jack," Pete said. Treadwell paused in front of him, raising one palm to brush his fingers over Jack's face. Jack didn't flinch even as ice crystals grew on his brow, but he did when Pete gripped his hand. "You're not alone," Pete said, all resolve to keep calm gone. She heard her voice through a tunnel, knew she was slipping away. "That's it, isn't it—dying and more than dying, dying alone."
Keep out of this, Treadwell hissed. He raised his hands heavenward and began to chant, the incantation rising around Pete and Jack like a black mist, a swarm of dark magic.
Pete squeezed Jack's hand, hard as she could. "You're not alone," she told him. "If you've made up your mind to die, then I'll be with you here, until the end. I'd follow you into death if that's what you asked, Jack. Heaven, Hell. Anywhere at all."
Silence! Treadwell screamed. The smoke rose and formed, an exact replica of Jack, featureless and incorporeal. I will gain a form. Do not test me.
Pete held Jack's hand, barely felt herself trembling as she made her
peace, let the strands already slipping through her fingers float away. So be it. "Anywhere at all," she repeated.
Jack shuddered and sighed, drawing in a ragged breath. "Oh, Pete," he murmured. "Why didn't you just give up on me?"
Pete smiled at him; saw a tiny lift in his shoulders. "You told me we'd see it through together. I believed you."
Fire flamed to life in Jack's eyes and he turned on Treadwell. "Thought you'd trap me in the thin space and take my body? Lovely plan, if a bit flawed in the fact that I am not going to bloody let you anywhere near me."
Treadwell smiled, the expression on him truly terrifying. Too late for theatrics, Winter. Too late, too late, always too late. He muttered, Victus. The smoke flowed into Jack, through his nose and mouth, through his eyes. Jack went to his knees, choking, gagging, and Pete saw the aura of magic around him flare and begin to change to ice-bred silver, the raven overtaken by a ravening wolf, starved and trailing spittle from its maw.
Submit to me, crow-mage, Treadwell said. And your soul's passage to the land of the dead will be swift.
"Leave him alone!" Pete screamed. The smoke engulfed Jack wholly, and he stopped fighting as Treadwell watched grimly, with the kind of terrible satisfaction vengeance brings over a person.
You are too late, Treadwell whispered, already beginning to thin around the edges as Jack began to strengthen, stop choking, and stand upright. Helpless little thing. How I pity you.
The cemetery scene washed out, the ink of nightmares running off the page, and Pete felt the cord, frayed down to a few strands, pull her backward and away. She reached for Jack, tried desperately to stay, but he stood tall now, Tread-well's magic in him.
"I'm sorry…" Pete called. "I'm sorry…"
And she woke. The pain from the knife wound was incendiary, blade still lodged in her stomach. She pressed down on the cut and pulled the knife out, wincing as a dribble of dark red-black blood came with it. Pain was good, Pete reminded herself. Pain means you are not in shock, that you have a chance to stand up and walk away. Still, she retched from dizziness as she tried to sit up, and fell again, body shrieking alarm.
Beside her, Jack stirred and then opened his eyes, sucking in air as if he'd forgotten how. His eyes were gray and ringed, shined like two-pound coins, and the smile that split his face was cruel as a straight razor.
"Treadwell," Pete said, her voice thickened with shock.
"My stars," said Treadwell softly, through Jack's lips. The voice was Jack's, but also not Jack's, the accent lilting into something musical and antiquated instead of a Manchester drawl, timbre scaling downward into menace. "If someone had told me what abominable condition the crow-mage had left himself in, I would have attempted this with another candidate entirely."
He blinked and looked all around, eyes widening. "I say, who are these people?"
Pete saw no one except the few sorcerers who had remained, al! watching anxiously just out of arm's easy reach. "Master… ?" one said hesitantly. "Master Treadwell, is there anything you need?"
Treadwell groaned and pressed a hand against Jack's wound, slicking his palm with blood. "A surgeon, you fool. Fetch me a surgeon before I pass through the bleak gates a second time!" He shook his head, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of Jack's hand. "Who are these silent, staring imbeciles? Why are they permitted to bear witness?"
Pete pushed harder against her wound and spoke. "You didn't know? About Jack's sight, I mean."
Treadwell turned on her with a hiss, his eyes flaring silver. "What do you speak of…" And then he cried out and threw his hands over his eyes, stumbling away from Pete. "Treachery! What are you, woman?"
"You see me," Pete repeated the words of the child in Jack's nightmare, of Bridget and Patrick and Diana. "You know what I am, Treadwell."
Treadwell gasped, and pulled himself straight, staring at her with one hand shading his eyes. "A speaker for the old ones. Of course. How else would Winter have bested me?"
"You think about that for a minute, Algy." Pete tossed her head with a carelessness she did not feel, one that sent rolling breakers of nausea all through her. "You can have Jack—you do have Jack, and his talents. You can have his sight and his body that's probably going to give out on you in another ten or fifteen years—you didn't know back in the old days what long-term heroin abuse will do to a person." She got to one knee, putting all her weight on a headstone—steady, Pete—and even though unconsciousness seemed like a blessed port she stood, and faced Treadwell.
"His sight almost drove him mad, and that was with a lifetime of practice, of years and years and bloody decades to try to control what he sees. With you coming into it all at once, Treadwell…" She managed to shake her head. "It doesn't look sunny for you, mate."
"I have seen the dead!" Treadwell bellowed. "I know what phantoms may appear! I am not frightened by death!"
"No, 'course not," Pete said. "That's why you tried so bloody hard to cheat it. You're a terrible liar, Treadwell. You see the shades even now, all around us, and you can't shut them off. Nothing shuts them off. Jack used the needle every day for twelve years and even that didn't completely take the sight away. So you're welcome to it—sit there in your rotting body and be reminded every second of what's waiting for you when it ends."
Treadwell's eyes narrowed and he stepped toward Pete, obvious from the set of his shoulders that he thought he frightened her. "A woman who talks as much as you is surely bargaining, Weir. What do you propose for me?"
This was the place she should have come the first time, Pete thought. The last dozen years were a borrowed echo, a desire not to see the true road to her death.
"Me," she said, her voice coming out a whisper. "Use me, Treadwell. Give Jack back the time he has left and take me. I'm strong. I have power." Admitting it nearly broke her, a final dismantlement of the careful construct she'd placed around her mind after the first ritual. "I have all the power you'll ever need, Treadwell. You can shape me any way you like. Take me."
Treadwell considered for only a second, his gaze gleaming with a hunger that was nearly palpable. "I accept."
"Master…" the sorcerer started. Treadwell turned on him.
"I am your master now! Keep silent!" The sorcerer cowered. Treadwell's eyes rolled back in his head and he exhaled, silver smoke running out of Jack's mouth and nose and silver tears coursing down his cheeks. It crossed the small space between them, unbelievably cold, it should be killing her, something this cold. Pete's lungs seized as crystalline chill spread across her skin, her face, and she felt Treadwell all through her, a malignant reptile mind, power and ice.
Dimly, she watched Jack shake himself awake, take in the scene, grab his hair in anguish as Treadwell's soul flowed through her, freezing and killing her. It's all right, Pete thought, wishing she could speak.
Treadwell laughed inside her mind, icicles growing over and around her few shreds of precious consciousness, and Pete stopped fighting.
I am a conduit, she whispered. I am a shaper of magic. Treadwell cried out as their power touched and sparked.
The pain ceased and Pete had the giddy feeling of standing on a precipice, toes hanging into open space. Behind her, the freezing encroachment of Treadwell traveled ever forward, and in front was something vast and deep.
Take my power, Pete told Treadwell. Take it into yourself and rid me of it. I do not want this. I never wanted to be this. Take it, take it, take it…
She touched the void in front of her, felt it flood through her being, painless but so vast it was as if all the pieces of her had blown away. She had ceased to be Petunia Calde-cott, had joined into the ancient mystery of what came after life, and what had come before. The power formed and shaped and bowed and when Pete opened her eyes, she saw the shrouded man standing before her.
"This is yours," he said, and held out his hand, hot and slick with blood. Pete looked into his face for the first time, a young face, a human face, streaked with dirt and old scars on top of his chieftain's armor, washed
clean of the blood of battle.
"This is no one else's," the shrouded man said, and over his shoulder Pete discerned a thousand shadows, ravens all, and below them a tall woman with eyes like marbles and hair made from feathers who touched the shrouded man's shoulder and gibbered in his ear. A single tear worked down his cheek, and he reached out and grabbed Pete's hand, uncurling her fingers to expose her frozen blue palm. "You must take it now, at last."
Into her hand, Pete let him drop the small beating bird's heart, and then the magic took away her vision and she couldn't see the shrouded man or the raven woman anymore. From the heart, warmth spread and just for a moment Pete felt right and at home here, on the edge of everything.
Then Treadwell's freezing talons clamped down around her neck, the completion of the circuit, and he took all the magic from her, drew it into himself with a cry of ecstasy as Pete felt herself husking away.
He pulled back, or tried to, and a heat rose around them, all of Treadwell's icy power going to steam. You… you tricked me! Treadwell howled.
"I didn't," Pete told him softly. She felt their two talents rubbing ragged edges against each other, Treadwell's fraying as he wailed. "But I will die to keep you from coming back."
The magic rushed into him, more and more, filling up the reservoirs, and Pete clamped her own hand around Treadwell's skeletal one, refusing to break their connection.
You are mine! Treadwell shouted. Mine, and I will live… I will live…
The magic did not burn Pete, but filled her, lit every corner of her, burned down into her darkest core, where all her knotted fears lay. She saw Treadwell for what he was, a shattered, tattered echo of the sorcerer he'd once been, stretched thin between too many worlds. She saw the magic for hers, and how it could not be anyone else's.
"Go back," Pete commanded, locking her grip around his wrist, watching the magic burn him from the inside, turning his shadow to ash. "You are dead, and you belong with the dead. Go back, Algernon Treadwell, and trouble the living no more."
Black 01 - Street Magic Page 25
