Huntress

by Christine Warren, Marjorie Liu, Caitlin Kittredge, Jenna Maclaine

  “Sure, I’ll just wave my wand, twitch my robe, and do a lap on me broomstick while I’m at it.” Jack leaned back against the stone of the mausoleum. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat.

  Nina leaned forward and put her wrist against his forehead. Her fingers ruffled his hair. Jack felt a chill down his spine. “No fever,” she said. “You’re healing up. Tough bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Worse things to be.” Jack said.

  Nina’s mouth quirked. “It’s almost fate, you know. If I believed in a stupid thing like that. I’ve been down here for a long time.”

  “You’re not more than twenty-two if you’re a day,” Jack said. “How long can it have been?”

  “Long enough for me to turn pale as Princess Diana.” Nina tossed her head. “My dad’s from Pakistan. I’m not supposed to be Snow bloody White.” She got up and stood in the doorway, watching. “Areshko told me it would be one job.”

  “And she tackled you and jammed her nails into your flesh when you tried to go topside?” Jack guessed.

  Nina nodded. “She’ll keep me here until I die. It’s what she does. She is the Hunger. She consumes.”

  “I saw,” Jack muttered, sitting up. Between the drugs and the food, he felt like the tail end of a drunk, rather than the beginning of death. “Ava’s gone,” he said.

  Nina cocked her eyebrow. “That demon-hunter bird who dragged you in here? She’s not dead.”

  “I’m pretty sure that when a demon vaporizes you with the sheer force of her rage, you’re dead.” Jack passed a hand over his face. He needed a bath, and a shave.

  “Areshko …” Nina sighed. “Look. We both want something, yeah? I want out of here and you want your girlfriend back.”

  “I suppose, yeah,” Jack muttered. Ava had tricked him, nearly gotten him killed, but she hadn’t bored him.

  “I saw your look.” Nina smiled. “You cared for her.”

  “She was … a bit of a crazy bint, really,” Jack said. “But innocent, in a way. Too many innocent people burn in the Black.”

  “You’ll have her back,” said Nina. “Areshko didn’t kill her.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Jack said.

  “Because the last demon hunter come down here, she kept alive for a good long time. Until he was sorry he’d ever been born.”

  Jack flinched. “That’s a demon for you.”

  “We can get her back,” Nina said. “But we have to get to the surface first.” She leaned in, and put her hands on his shoulders. “Can I trust you, Winter?”

  “Probably best if you don’t,” Jack said.

  Nina laughed. “Sleep. We’ll leave after the festivities start.” She picked up Jack’s empty tray and left. Jack let himself drift for a time before he fell into an orange-tinged morphine sleep, dreaming of twisting black spirits bending over his bed, cooling his fever, silencing his dreams.

  Jack woke with a raging hangover and a crick in his neck, to Nina shaking him.

  “It’s started.” Through the stone wall, Jack could hear music, wild and keening, bansidhe song or goblin band.

  “What kind of security does Areshko keep about?” he said. Nina pulled his boots from under the bed and thrust them at him.

  “Scavengers, mostly. A few of her human groupies who get a bit too involved with the whole ‘child of the dark’ bit.”

  Jack pulled on his leather and followed her to the door. He felt like he might wobble off keel at a breeze, never mind having to cut through a swath of border guards.

  “You’re a mage, yeah?”

  Jack nodded, focusing on putting his foot down on stone instead of air. Nina chewed on her lip.

  “Ever met a demon like Areshko?”

  “No.” Jack’s foot slipped and Nina grabbed his sleeve. A zombie grumbled and swerved to avoid them. It still wore a tattered corset, mostly whalebones, and one shoe from its burial.

  “Not like her,” Jack said. “She’s a fright, that one.”

  “You’ve really never dealt with demons before?” Nina cocked her head. “You seem like the type who wouldn’t blink.”

  “Me, never,” Jack said shortly. “Friends, yes. Too many friends. I’ve seen what demons do, and it’s never worth what they take from your hide. Demons are for people who have a weakness in them, a fragility.”

  Nina’s eyes froze over. “You really do have a narrow mind inside that pretty head, don’t you?”

  “I just know what I’ve seen,” he returned.

  “Some people have no choice,” Nina snapped. “Some people have a choice between a demon and something much worse. Don’t act like you know the mind of the entire world, Jack.”

  Jack raised a hand. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

  Nina just rolled her eyes. “Mages. Sanctimonious bastards, the lot.”

  “Where do you get off?” Jack caught her wrist when she turned to walk away. “You came down here on your own. No one forced you.”

  “My dad, the one I mentioned?” Nina said. “He’s ill. Needs to go to America and get experimental treatment NHS won’t pay for. I’m supposed to let my da die?” She disengaged his hand from her cool skin and walked away.

  “Oi.” Jack followed her, both of them sticking to shadows and avoiding the zombies drifting aimlessly up and down the length of the steps. “I’m sorry,” he hissed. “I’m not bloody telepathic, am I?” That would be worlds better than the sight, he thought.

  Nina sighed. “You’re a wanker. But I’ll let it go for now.”

  “Guess I’m lucky,” Jack said.

  “Not what I’d call it.” She flipped her spiky black head and led him down the steps to the lowest point in the catacombs. They skirted a gentle bowl with a fire pit at the center, a mass of demons and dead gathered around the blaze.

  Areshko stood at the edge of the stone depression, her hands folded over her swollen stomach. Jack tugged Nina in the opposite direction, and she stuck close to his back, small and warm.

  He’d lost sight of the avenue that Ava had brought him down when they came, but he ducked into one of the tunnels leading out of the catacombs and stepped carefully, like he would through a back alley in a bad part of London.

  “Cold down here,” Nina said. She pulled a flat silver flask from the pocket of her painted-on jeans and swigged, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, left the sheen of bruised lips. “Never realized how cold.”

  “It’s all of the spirits,” Jack said. “The dead steal all the warmth out of a room.”

  There was a sound in the tunnel ahead of them, coughing and scraping, like a bum spending his last hours on a steam vent. Nina’s breath hitched. “Can you see what’s up there?”

  “I’m not a television psychic,” Jack said. “I can’t do tricks like that.”

  Nina sneered. “Might have known. Typical mage wanking.”

  Jack knew he’d regret it, but he reached out a hand and clapped it on Nina’s shoulder. Her bones were lighter than a bird’s. She felt fragile, under all the black and posture.

  Her magic slammed into his sight with all the force of a waterfall. It was deep, and dark, like sinking into a pool, at night, with just moonshine to guide the way. Fronds of it brushed his face, his skin, feathery and decayed as a dead man’s hand reaching aboveground.

  Jack had felt that cold, dry power only once before, and he recoiled as visions of bones and flesh and skin wound together flashed in front of his eyes. “ ’Strewth,” he said. “You’re a … you’re the necromancer. No bloody wonder all of your zombies gave us a berth.”

  “You don’t have to look so disappointed in me,” Nina said. “Reminds me of my da.”

  They shuffled to the curve of the tunnel and peered around. Jack saw the carrion demon who’d been hanging around Areshko.

  “I’m not disappointed,” he said.

  “Shocked?” Nina whispered.

  “A bit,” Jack agreed. “You’re much more attractive than the last skin dealer I ran into.”

  �
�So, Mister Big Mage, what are we going to do about him?” Nina asked.

  “I look like a thug, do I? I don’t bloody know,” Jack said.

  The demon flapped and scratched itself between the legs. Nina wrinkled her nose.

  “Well, I’m not a ninja, Jack. My tricks mostly work on stuff that’s already dead.”

  Jack narrowed his eyes. “That gives me an idea.”

  The carrion demon picked bugs off the wall, weevils and maggots crawling over a new body stuffed on top of the old in the crevice of the tunnel. It slurped them with a smacking of lips and tongue. Jack flinched as it ripped a finger off the fresh body and sucked the bone and marrow like it was a chicken leg.

  Jack stopped a fair distance away, but close enough to surprise it. “ ’Ey. Ugly.”

  The demon spun around, wobbling on its clawed feet. “Yeah!” it shrieked.

  “I can’t figure out what’s worse,” Jack said. “That you look like a bat smashed arse-first into a donkey, or that your mum actually fucked something like that to get you.”

  The demon stripped its lips back from its teeth and let out an angry squawk. “What!”

  “You heard me.” Jack spread his arms. “You’re ugly, you’re stringy, and you’ve got nothing between those legs to even scratch at.”

  The demon snarled, a long black tongue unfurling, its eyes bugging out.

  Jack grinned. “What are you gonna do about it, Arse-face? Wank me off with those little T rex arms?”

  He sidestepped as the demon sprang, its claws catching him across the abdomen. They fell in a heap of wings and limbs, the demon snapping at Jack’s neck. Jack punched it, and skinned his knuckles on the thing’s teeth.

  Nina’s shadow fell across them. “Any old time now, luv,” Jack grunted, as the thing kicked at him, coming dangerously close to the goods.

  She hooked her upper teeth over her bottom lip, and cocked her head to one side. The fingers of her left hand twitched, and the carrion demon jerked, twisting to and fro like there were hooks in its skin.

  “No!” it screamed, and then its skin bubbled, swollen, and the great boiling mass of dead flesh the demon had ingested burst through its stomach.

  The carrion demon screamed again, twitched, and died.

  Nina ran her hand through her hair. “Good idea.”

  Jack felt warmth and wet on his face, and Nina’s eyes widened. “You’ve got a bit on you. Just there.” She brushed her fingers over her cheek.

  “Help a bloke up?” Jack extended his hand. “Not as young as I used to be.”

  Nina pulled him to his feet. Behind them, voices rose and fell, and footsteps followed.

  “We’re not alone, luv,” said Jack. He swiped a hand over his face to get rid of the blood and bile and pulled Nina along with him.

  “What grand plan have you?” Nina said, as they ran along the catacomb tunnel. “If we make it topside, I mean.”

  “Tell you if we make it,” Jack said. All of his cuts and aches were starting again, and he could feel the press of more demons behind them, along with a few bright, malignant human minds that unfurled darkness across his sight.

  “There!” someone shouted.

  Jack saw a broken brick wall and an old sewer line beyond. He jerked Nina hard left, pulling them into the dank blackness.

  They ran until Jack was completely out of breath, starbursts exploding in front of his eyes, and his ribs stabbing him every time he sucked in the moist air.

  Nina pulled back, tugging his arm. “We have to stop. There’s something here.”

  Jack bared his teeth. “Exactly. Care to speculate what, Nina?”

  “She slipped out, all right?” Nina growled. “Going to crucify me for a little slip?”

  “If I get some sort of undead virus from those neck scratches and start craving the brains of humans, it’ll be your fault,” Jack said. He stopped joking when Areshko’s minions came around the corner.

  The two men who closed in on them weren’t anything remarkable—young, skinny, the sort of street kids you could find in any city, in any country, starved and starving for connection. Their eyes, however, burned with the fire that Jack usually saw only in cultists.

  Having been touched by Areshko, he knew she’d have no trouble inspiring such devotion.

  “Don’t worry, Nina,” he said. “Just back up slowly.” A chill kissed the scratches on his neck.

  “ ‘Don’t worry’?” she demanded. “One of them has a knife!”

  “I’ve got a knife, too,” Jack said.

  “Areshko told us about you.” The one with the knife smiled, his eyes bright. “She told us what she did to you. She said we’d taste your blood.”

  Jack shivered, taking another measured step back. “When I say get down, curl up in a ball. Don’t move.”

  Nina cut a look at him, back at the two advancing men. “You’d better not get me killed, mage.”

  Jack’s sight blossomed, tendrils of silver curling like fog around his face, and he folded at the knees. “Down, Nina!”

  She dropped, pulling her knees up to her chest, and Jack felt the revenant pass over them, her feet trailing through his back, the chilling shock of this making his heart skip.

  The revenant fell on the two men in the tunnel, hungry and moaning, her hands spreading frost over their skin.

  Nina’s eyes widened. “That really was a mistake, you know.”

  “Likely. Never let a mistake steal any sleep from me yet.” Jack extended his hand. “I need fresh air, and a pint. What do you say?”

  “I say you’re an odd sort,” said Nina. “But all right.”

  Jack squinted in the sun as they emerged from a utility hatch. He hadn’t expected it to be morning, the world looking as usual as it ever had.

  Nina jerked her chin across the small cobble street. “Pub.”

  Jack followed her. “Hallelujah. The gods are kind.”

  “Not particularly,” said Nina. Jack snorted.

  “Woman after my own heart.”

  He ordered a whiskey instead of a pint, drained the tongue of liquid fire down his throat, and ordered another.

  “You want your Ava back, yeah?” said Nina. “You’re going to have to challenge Areshko to do it.”

  Jack shook his head. “Not something I fancy.” Ava’s face, just before she vanished, wasn’t leaving his eyes, even as he got a third glass of whiskey.

  Nina snorted. “Yeah. I’d worry about you a bit, if you did.” She sucked on the straw in her tonic water. “The things some blokes do for love.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say love?”

  She snorted. “Please. I saw her tits. It’s love.”

  “Barely know her,” said Jack. “But I did like her, and I don’t like demons. Not at all.”

  “So, demon killer”—Nina grinned at him over her drink—“how will you slay the dragon this time?”

  “I’m thinking that there’s another bloke in this city who doesn’t have any love for Areshko,” Jack said. “And that he might be interested in what I’ve got to tell him.”

  Nina drained her drink. “Do I know this person?”

  Jack tossed back the last of his whiskey and gave her the rakish grin it inspired. “I don’t think so, nice little girl like you.”

  “I may be little,” Nina retorted, “but I’m no little girl.”

  Jack thought of the gray, grasping sorcery that she commanded, the sort of power that could pull a spirit back from beyond the Bleak Gates, out of the City and into its own dead flesh. “I suppose not,” he agreed. Lighting a fag, he ran a hand over his hair. It was hopeless, a rat’s nest of lopsided spikes. “Poor choice of words. You with me, or going to slap my face and storm off?”

  Nina sighed. “Depends. Are you always so arrogant?”

  “On me good days. And on days when a demon kills a friend and I nearly get chewed to death by Hell’s mistakes.” He gave Nina a grin, from the wicked spot inside his heart. “You fancy shagging me cheerful agai
n? Might work.” Dimly, he realized he was drunk and exhausted, which was the only reason to be such a chav, but he didn’t stop.

  Nina slapped his hand away. “I have a dirty talent but I’m a nice girl. Fuck you, Jack Winter.”

  Jack pulled out his sharpest razor of charm—his smile. “That’s the general idea.”

  Nina shook her head. “Just because I helped you, just because I owe you something for helping me get out of Catacomb City, doesn’t mean you can be a wanker and put your hands anywhere you bloody please!”

  “Could just be a hummer round back,” Jack muttered, feeling the venom on his tongue. Or maybe that was just stale whiskey. “That’s how the last one got me, you know.” He was being exactly the kind of cunt he despised when he was in clubs or out drinking, and he cursed the whiskey that he could feel rising in his throat.

  “You’re drunk,” Nina said. “And you did get me shut of Areshko, so I’m going to forgive you.” Her eyes darkened. “Speak to me like this again, and I’ll slit your throat and raise you to carry my purse about while I’m out at the shops.”

  She jerked him up by the elbow. “Come on. You want to get your Ava back, you need to be sober. And not a twat.”

  Jack sneered as they left the pub, but he leaned against Nina’s small frame and stayed close. He owed her that much. He was a twat, no argument.

  Nina was nowhere to be found when Jack woke up. He heard a telly from another room, saw a water-stained ceiling and a patch of wall, and smelled a curry cooking.

  He winced when Nina came back into the room. “Me head.”

  “Serves you right,” she said, handing him a paper cup of tea and a sandwich, transparent with grease. “Breakfast of champions. Eat up, drunkard.”

  “Wicked woman,” Jack moaned, downing the tea and burning his tongue.

  “I am,” Nina said. “You don’t care to know how wicked.”

  “Not until my head stops vibrating.” Jack forced himself to bite into the egg and bacon butty. Noise rose from the telly, like a night bus in the fog.

  “Manchester’s playing,” Nina said. “Think you can make it into the front room?”

  The room didn’t swim much when Jack sat up, so he nodded. “Where are we?”