by TA Moore
“Give me a hand,” he told Ambrose as he got out of the car.
“With what?”
Jack opened the back door, gritted his teeth, and grabbed Mallory’s outflung arm by the wrist. She had a tattoo just under her thumb, and the killer had started his cut at its base. But the arm was more or less intact. He pulled her out of the car… most of her, and Ambrose spun away to puke noisily into the bushes.
The back seat behind her was covered with desiccated loops of gut decorated with spindly, frail-looking toadstools and puffballs. Jack got his arms under Mallory’s shoulders and dragged her around to the back of the car.
“Open the trunk,” he said.
Ambrose spat into the grass. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Well I’m not sticking the kid in the back seat with her dead mother,” Jack said. “So if you want to, I can put her back.”
For a second, it looked as though the thought were going to make Ambrose retch again. Instead he lurched over to fumble the trunk open and spread an old gray tarp over the carpet. He dry-retched as he pulled his sleeves down over his hands and got Mallory’s ankles to lift her up into the trunk.
Jack folded her in and looked down at her. Muddy strands of light brown hair twisted over her face and cut into the water-softened skin. Her milky eyes were open, and a wet, inky-black mushroom sprouted from the corner of her mouth like a piercing.
“It’s for your daughter,” he told her. He hoped that mattered to her. “I’ll make sure you get buried properly. Holy Ground, so they’ll leave you in peace.”
He slammed the lid down on her and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Do you have your gun?” he asked Ambrose.
After a reluctant pause, Ambrose leaned back into the car and fumbled under the ruined back seat. Jack twitched with nerves as he came up with a shotgun and a handful of shells that he pushed into his pocket.
“You trust me with it?” Ambrose asked.
The wails had trailed off, but the faint sound of sobs still carried on the air. Jack shrugged and started up into the woods. “I want to believe I’m not that bad of a judge of character.” He shoved a low-hanging branch out of his way. “Even if you aren’t a good man, I hope you’re smart enough not to want Math as your personal enemy.”
It took a long minute before footsteps crunched on the ground behind him.
The farther Jack hiked through the trees, the quieter it got. The birdsong died away first, and then the sound of their footfalls was cushioned against the thick mat of spongy, fibrous moss that carpeted the forest floor. The trees turned skeletal, the leaves gray instead of brown and the trunks scoured with wet, black wounds that stank of honey and a hint of death.
The back of Jack’s neck prickled as he shied away from the heady sugar stink of an open trunk.
Hell bloomed in cities and towns. It needed the congestion, the weight of all that old, bad history to pull the place down. Jack had never seen Hell in the wilderness before. It unnerved him.
“How long has Zachary been here?” he asked.
“I… not long,” Ambrose said. “He moved back here a few years ago. The house was his grandfather’s, I think. Or great-grandfather’s.”
If there were a bookie who’d put odds on it, Jack would bet money there were corpses buried all over this property—more than one generation’s worth of victims.
The doubt picked at the back of his head that he should have risked a longer trip and not crossed that bridge. He pushed it down with the rest of his regrets. If it turned out he had made a mistake, it could torment him later. With all the rest.
A sudden shriek, full of astonishment as if no one had hurt her before, cut through the trees. It jolted Jack into a run, and he scrambled through the last bank of dead skeletal trees… and into a trap. Five men in bloody aprons, sigils burned deep into the leather, stood with grins and guns aimed at him. In the center stood a sixth man—young, red-haired, and ugly in a way that went beyond rat eyes and a lack of chin—with a bloody rock in his hand and a little girl’s hand trapped under his foot.
Jack staggered to a stop and turned to look at Ambrose. A horrible weight of guilt was scored into Ambrose’s face like the Mark of Cain.
“We couldn’t stop them alone,” Ambrose said as he lifted the gun to point at Jack’s chest. His eyes flickered to the redhead—Zachary, probably—and back to Jack with a mute plea for understanding. “I swear, Jack, I thought the kid was already dead. I just wanted to save you. They promised me they’d let you live.”
Jack bared his teeth in a slow, nasty smile. “You better fucking hope they don’t.”
The lines of guilt deepened, and Ambrose opened his mouth to try and come up with an excuse, but something cracked into the back of Jack’s head, and he missed it.
7
THE DEMONS say there are more exorcists in Hell than in Heaven. The exorcists say that it was worth the sacrifice. Nobody from Heaven has anything to say.
JACK AWOKE chained to a dirt floor in the dark. He groaned as he sat up. It was hard to pick what was worse, the pain in his head or the nausea that retched bile up into the back of his throat.
“I thought you were dead,” a small voice said.
“You’d think you wouldn’t get headaches when you’re dead.” Jack shifted around until he could see the little girl, small and hunched in the far corner of the room, her hair a pale-blonde glimmer. “Hey. I’m Jack.”
“Tracy,” she said after a pause. “You didn’t rescue me very well.”
He scratched his jaw. The stubble was at the point where he was going to have to shave, call it a beard, or—under the circumstances—stop worrying about it for a while.
“It could be worse,” he offered. “And I have a plan.”
The one small window was behind her, high on the wall, so it was hard to tell, but he thought she looked dubious. Jack held his hand up and wriggled his fingers at her. “Is your hand okay?”
Tracy sniffed hard and shook her head. “He hurt it real bad.” Her chin wobbled, and she scrubbed the grubby blue sleeve of her anorak over her face. “I wanna go home.”
To what, Jack wondered bleakly. Poor kid. He reached down and checked the chain wrapped around his ankle. It was tight enough to dig into the leather of his boot and padlocked in place. The other end was two feet away and embedded into the stone wall of the cell.
Jack pulled his leg up and unlaced his boot. He cupped his hand around the heel and started to work it off.
“Do you know how long I was out?” he asked.
Tracy scrambled to her feet and padded over. Her hair was matted and dirty, one side still braided and the other loose. There was a bruise on her jaw and the hand she cuddled protectively across her body was swollen and bruised blue.
“They killed my mommy,” she said, almost matter-of-factly, despite the tears that welled up in her huge blue eyes. “They told me it was my fault.”
“That’s because they’re lying bastards,” Jack grunted as he wrenched the boot off. His ankle was red-raw where the leather had chafed over his ankle bone and the top of his foot. “Bad people will always want to blame you for what they do wrong. You don’t have to listen.”
Tracy took his boot from him and held it as he worked the chain down over his skinny, bony foot. It took some skin with it and raked off the top of his foot, but he was still free… for what it was worth.
He took his boot back from Tracy and yanked it on. The first time he tried to stand, he ended up right on his ass, with the bile and the sour chicken taste of his lunchtime sandwich on the back of his throat. The dark little room swam sickly around him.
“Here.” Tracy grabbed his hand with her good one and pulled. “I’ll help.”
Jack scrambled onto his knees first and steadied himself against the wall. For just a second, it felt like broken teeth and raw flesh, and then like old, damp stone. Whatever was in there didn’t hate him enough to manifest before the Witching Hour—not like Jenny—but the Witching Hour was nearl
y there.
“Do you really have a plan?” Tracy asked suspiciously. “Dad always says he has a plan, but he doesn’t really.”
Jack got to the window and peered out. It was moon-dark and the sky looked black. Only the occasional star was bright enough to wink between the clouds. Still, he could feel the itch of the Witching Hour in the wind. It wouldn’t be long.
“I do,” Jack said with an ache of regret for being right. He’d wanted to trust Ambrose, but he’d already done that once. “Whether it’s a good plan or not, we’ll find out soon enough. Come on. It won’t be long until they come back to get us.”
He went back over to the discarded chain and lowered himself gingerly to the ground. His head swam dully as he leaned forward to drape the heavy metal over his leg so it looked as though it was fastened. It would pass, he told himself as he leaned back against the wall.
Tracy sat down opposite him, her back against the other wall, and watched him warily over her knees. The minutes ticked by in time to the pulse of pain in Jack’s head, and he closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, his foot was cramped and Tracy had crawled into his lap like a puppy.
She was cold—cold enough that Jack wondered sickly if she was dead. Then she sighed heavily and jabbed a restless elbow into his ribs. Jack awkwardly tucked an arm around her shoulder and rubbed her arm through her grubby, shiny jacket. Then he heard the frantic rattle of chains echoing off the walls.
“Nearly time?” he asked aloud.
Something hit him in the side hard enough to make him grunt. On the wall, mute shadows writhed and struggled. Nearly time.
He shook Tracy gently. “Wake up, kid. It’s time to go.”
She mumbled denial under her breath and tucked herself down tighter into sleep, her eyes squeezed shut. Jack reluctantly shook her again.
“I need you to wake up, Tracy.”
Finally she stumbled drowsily to her feet. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and shuffled over to stand under the small window.
“I’m scared,” she said in a loud whisper.
Jack smiled at her. “Hey, kid, we’re in this together. Okay? I won’t leave you.”
“That’s what Mommy said.”
The distant squeak of poorly tended hinges echoed through the still air, and wood creaked under someone’s weight. Jack put his finger to his lips and gestured for Tracy to lie down. She stared at him for a second as she chewed visibly on the inside of her cheek.
“Promise you won’t leave me behind?” she begged him. “Promise.”
“Cross my heart,” Jack said.
She took a huge breath and flopped bonelessly, dramatically onto the ground. Jack would have told her that she didn’t need to hold her breath, but it was too late. Keys rattled in the door, first one and then another, as two voices argued harshly. Jack held his breath in sympathy and urged the men outside to hurry up.
The door finally scraped open, and Zachary stepped through the door with one of the men in butcher’s aprons.
“Hey, Zachie,” Jack said viciously. “Hope you didn’t need the kid alive.”
A twitch plucked at the corner of Zachary’s eye as he looked over at Tracy’s boneless sprawl. The high color in his face drained and left him fish-belly white with anger except for two swipes over his cheekbones.
“You wouldn’t,” he said.
“I figured it was a better death than any you’d give her,” Jack said bluntly. There was no hint of lie in his answer. It would have been kinder than whatever Zachary had planned. “Sorry. Did I fuck up your night?”
Zachary gave him a lipless, vicious smile and took a step forward. “If you’ve ruined this for me, I will fuck up your afterlife, Mr. Jack.” He glanced at his aproned minion and jerked his head toward Jack. “Get him up and shackled while I check on the girl. If nothing else, we can offer him up to something.”
“I’m not willing,” Jack spat.
Apron laughed nastily as he unhooked a set of cuffs from his belt and walked over. “You will be.” He palmed his crotch through the heavy leather. “Eventually. Like you said, it just has to look better than the alternative.”
He bent down to grab Jack’s ankle, and the chain slithered off with a cold rattle. Apron looked baffled for a moment, his mouth open to say something. Before he could get it out, Jack kicked him in the jaw. Apron’s mouth snapped shut with a crack and he staggered backward, hands clutched to his mouth.
“Stupid bastard,” Zachary spat. He dragged Tracy to her feet as she gasped noisily for air. “Do you think that’s going to set you free? We are the heirs of Dee, and tonight I’ll walk through the obsidian mirror to take my rightful—”
Jack braced himself and reached out into the shadows. He’d been there once, in the cold disapproval between Heaven and Hell where the unavenged and suicides lingered, and he knew the way back. It wasn’t a good idea, the dead and the living weren’t meant to see eye to eye. He still grabbed the cold, slimy wrist of one of the haints. Ice dug under his fingernails and shot up his arm. It punched into his armpit and settled there with a dull throb. He pulled, and the dead woman crawled up his arm, out of the dark, and into the living world where neither of them should be.
She had acne and the round doll-like cheeks of the painfully young. Her eyes were missing, and her smile was a nightmare. She grabbed his jaw with nailless fingers and dug in hard until the bone hurt.
“Your fault,” she slurred with what was left of her tongue.
“And them?” he asked.
She swung her empty eye sockets around to Zachary and bubbled behind the ruin of her teeth as she gargled out a scream. With a rough shove, she pushed Jack away from her, and she stuttered across the room in a stop-motion run as she slid in and out of the world as he slapped casually into a wall.
Tracy yelped as she was sent flying as well, but she managed to scramble to her feet and dart to the door. Then she stopped and swung around to look for Jack.
“Go,” he yelled as Apron wrapped a brawny, gore-stinking arm tightly around his throat. “I’ll catch up. Go.”
Tracy bolted with a stifled sob.
“Call the bitch off,” Apron spat in Jack’s ear. Gritty blood spluttered over Jack’s jaw and slid down as Apron shook him. “Fuckin’ do it!”
Jack smacked his head back, and his skull cracked into Apron’s boot-ruined face with a wet smack. It would have been better if Jack hadn’t forgotten about the knot from his earlier nap. Pain fractured blackly through his head, and for a second, he was blind with it, but Apron did let him go. Jack staggered away from him and squinted through a floating mosaic of pain.
“I wouldn’t worry about her if I were you,” Jack said. “I’d worry about the others.”
He’d been right. A lot of people had died badly at this little cabin out in the middle of nowhere, and Jack had dropped them a rope. A man, his smile fixed with razors and two nails through his cheekbones, reached over Apron’s head and dug his fingers in under his eyebrows.
Jack left them to it.
He staggered out the door and up the steps. Tracy was at the top. She’d waited for him despite what he’d told her. Jack nearly fell over as she lunged for him and buried her face against his hip.
“You promised,” she reminded him, voice muffled against his shirt. “You’re not supposed to leave me.”
Jack peeled her arms off him and picked her up. He had to do it one-handed. His other arm was still numb and throbbed with the cold. “You were supposed to leave me,” he reminded her. “I need you to hold on to me. Okay? Tight as you can. And don’t look. Okay.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck even tighter than Apron had managed and buried her face in his shoulder. Jack could actually feel how tightly her eyes were screwed shut as her knuckles dug in under his ear.
The cabin was old and run-down, all cracked walls and dust-covered old-fashioned chairs. There were clothes hung on a rack—oddly nondescript suits and unassuming shirts—and a laptop set up o
n a cracked old dinner table, but it didn’t seem like a place where someone lived.
Apparently people commuted to sin.
Jack dodged through the rooms as the pissed-off dead came crawling out of whatever crack or crevice held their last scream. He covered the back of Tracy’s head with his hand as he scrambled over the frantic kicking legs of one of the Aprons. The man didn’t deserve any sympathy, but Jack thought a little girl didn’t need to see what the haints were doing to him.
He hit the door with his shoulder, and the lock tore out of dry-rotted wood.
The haints’ advantage wouldn’t last long. They had surprise and viciousness on their side—nothing good ever stayed behind to harry the living, just the worst of people—but once the Aprons rallied, they would have every trick they’d traded their scabbed souls for.
“If anything happens to me,” Jack said to Tracy as he scrambled down the steps, “just run. Okay? Get to the road. There will be someone looking for you there.”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “No. You’re to take care of me.”
Jack didn’t know how far she’d get anyhow. He hitched her up on his hip as he broke into a run across the clearing. Halfway there, one of the Aprons roared and smashed his way out of a knot of dead women. He trampled them underfoot—underpaw—as his clawed-away skin revealed slime-wet fur and mad wolf-yellow eyes. Skinned hands flapped from his wrists like a child’s mittens as he tore the haints off him and tossed them aside.
It wouldn’t be easy to put his human skin back together, but for now the haints couldn’t touch him. He tore them apart, dry limb from dry limb, and pointed a knobbled black claw at Jack.
“Ours,” he screamed. “Bought and paid for her.”
It kicked the last haint out of the way and lurched on crooked, half-shifted legs toward Jack.
The thing was built for a chase through the forest. Jack’s advantage had bought him less time than he’d thought. He ran anyhow. Flight gave him slightly more of a chance than fight. Jack could brawl well enough—all it took was a mean streak and a willingness to come out only slightly better off than your opponent—but if the haints couldn’t slow the wolf down, he couldn’t.
