Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
The Stygian Brothers. And more, from the sound of it. Nobody could keep track of every sect and small-time group of magic users that proliferated around London like a particularly stubborn venereal disease, but if the Stygians had marked Jack as an undesirable, he was in enough trouble.
He kept to side streets until he came out at the Aldgate East tube station, and waited in the shadows for another ten minutes, until he was sure with both his eyes and his second sight that he hadn’t been followed. Nobody and nothing was watching him.
The cuts on his neck and all of the assorted bruises had begun to ache and sting while he’d been walking. Not to mention his fucking midnight snack was lying crushed on the floor of Sainsbury’s.
Nobody followed him on the tube, and nobody followed him down the Mile End Road to his flat, but Jack didn’t allow himself to relax until the door was shut and locked behind him. The flat was layered in hexes, cobwebs of spellcraft that floated in front of his sight and then flickered and disappeared. He’d shored them up nearly every other day since the riots had died down—not because he was afraid of looters or marauding packs of hoodie teenagers, but because of the exact thing that had just happened at the shop. It hadn’t done one fucking bit of good, though—they’d just waited until he’d left the safety of his flat, like properly smart vengeful psychopaths.
He couldn’t stay shut up in Whitechapel for the rest of his life, and he couldn’t risk another incident like tonight. If the Stygian Brothers had made a move on him in public, outside the Black, then it’d only be a matter of time before somebody with their shit together and their brain clear of low-grade peyote finished the job. It could be necromancers (although the ones who’d tried to wake up Nergal were mostly little bits of flesh and bone in a London mortuary) or it could be the light side—druids or Wiccans or just a pack of particularly slagged-off hippies. And how humiliating would that be?
“Jack?” Pete Caldecott appeared in the hallway from the bedroom, rubbing her eyes. They fell on his empty hands. “Where’s the food?”
“About that,” Jack said. “Anyone been by while I was out? Anything unusual?”
Pete’s gazed closed up and became calculating. “What did you do now?”
“Me? I’ll have you know I’m the victim here,” Jack muttered. “For once.” He got his bottle of Jameson from the old record cabinet that served as a liquor stash, because all at once that seemed like an excellent idea.
“You’re bleeding.” Pete came into the light and tilted his head with a finger, examining the scratches on his neck.
“Not the first time, likely not the last,” Jack said. He tried to keep it lighthearted, but Pete just sighed and went into the kitchen to fetch her first-aid kit. She was silent while she disinfected the scratches and put a large plaster over the spot on his neck. She was silent entirely too much since they’d put Nergal back where he belonged.
“What’s my diagnosis, doctor?” he tried.
Pete shut the metal lid of the kit. “You’re an idiot, but you’ll live.”
She got up and went back into the bedroom without another word. Jack spread out on the sofa, after swallowing a handful of aspirin with his whiskey. It was easier than going to bed and listening to more of the silence.
It hadn’t happened all at once—after the rioting had mostly died down and it was safe for Jack to leave the hospital, where he’d checked himself into the psychiatric unit to set up a psychic buffer between himself and various types who wanted inside his head—things had been rather normal.
No, they hadn’t. That was a comfortable lie, as was the fact that he’d only committed himself to use the psychic static of the other nutters in the place to block out both Nicholas Naughton, necromancer and cunt of the first order, and other, darker, less human things that wanted him. Wanted him to awaken Nergal, wanted him to order the oldest of the old gods to wash the world clean, and leave it slick and bloody for her advance.
Jack mashed his thumbs into the center of his forehead, massaging the point between his eyes. He hadn’t seen her, or dreamed of her, since he’d refused to do what she asked. But it was only a matter of time—she couldn’t die, and she wouldn’t be put off forever. She was the maiden of death, the bride of war, and the hag of the ashes and dust that came after. The Morrigan had marked him when he was only a teenager, and eventually, she’d get her pound of flesh. The fact he’d disobeyed her and her mad plan to cleanse the Black of all but her faithful would only make it a far longer and more painful carving.
But he had more important things to worry about than some bitch and her army of the dead, so he drained the whiskey and shut the light off. Pete had gone quiet by degrees, first about the baby and then about everything else. She was only a few months along, but Jack could already see the endgame. She was realizing that despite her own talents, she couldn’t raise a kid in their lifestyle. Would be mad to try.
Jack agreed—nobody deserved to grow up in the sort of life he’d found himself in. Pete was being practical, letting him down by degrees, slowly cutting off circulation to each part of them rather than throwing crockery in a spectacular breakup. She’d move out in another month or two, go live with her sister, and that would be that. Weekends, alternate bank holidays, and carefully e-mailed pictures to mark each waypoint of the spawn’s growing up. If he was lucky. If he wasn’t, he’d be exactly like his own father—ignorant and happy to stay that way.
Maybe happy wasn’t the word. But he wasn’t fit to be a father, and any daydreams of trying were just his conscience poking him. He didn’t even have to be an actual deadbeat—once Pete made up her mind, that was that. She was immovable as a standing stone. The kid would be better off without him. The world would be, really. But until Pete actually threw him out, he’d be damned if some Universal horror mob bent on revenge was going to do anything to her or the kid to get at him.
The Stygian Brother had been right about that much—he needed out of London. And he needed to convince Pete to come with him.
CHAPTER 2
“I don’t understand,” Pete said at breakfast. She insisted on cooking for them unless she was vomiting so much from morning sickness she couldn’t lift her head off the loo tiles. It was as if she was insistent that Jack would find no fault with her, when she finally broke it off officially, and for good. He wouldn’t have anything to recriminate with. Not that he would have, even if she’d lain about all day shouting at him to bring her chocolate. He was the one at fault here, not Pete.
“Not much to understand, is there?” Jack said. “Pretty much everyone in the greater London area who can sling a spell is clamoring for me blood, and we need to lie low until they find something else shiny to hold their attention.”
“No,” Pete said, “I mean I don’t understand why
I
have to go.”
“Because like it or not, they think you and I are in this together,” Jack said. “A matched pair.”
Pete’s fingers twitched as she picked up their plates, but that was all she betrayed. Jack hopped up from his chair. “Let me. Need a smoke anyway.”
He carried the plates into the kitchen, dumping them in the sink with soap and hot water. He slid open the window and blew his smoke in that general direction.
“I don’t want to do it,” Pete said, so quietly he nearly didn’t hear her over traffic. She stood at the arched entryway to the kitchen, hands folded protectively over her stomach. “It’d be one thing if it was just me, but the little one isn’t paying for your mistakes, Jack. I think this is enough.”
When he thought about Pete chucking him, Jack felt nothing—just the same numbness that cropped up when most people decided they’d had enough of him. Non-feeling. It didn’t matter one way or the other, because it was always going to be this way. But now, he felt something, and it wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed. It was all the things he didn’t let in—anger, because Pete, in his eyes, wouldn’t even give him a chance, and disgust because she was right not to, and the big nasty monster, guilt, because as usual Pete was right. She’d been paying for his mistakes, in one manner or another, for over a decade. He’d already decided to let her go. These feelings cropping up like weeds would die back eventually. He was just doing the decent thing, that was all—keeping an innocent kid and its mother safe.
“Please,” he said, flicking the fag out the window and coming to Pete. She flinched when he took her by the shoulders, but didn’t let herself lean away. Pete was tough. Tougher, in a lot of ways, than he’d ever be. “Look, Pete, I know that you didn’t want this, and that it was a stupid thing for both of us to get into, but it happened. You can think whatever you want of me and when this blows over you can light out and never look back, but until then I’m not letting anything happen to you. Or the kid. It’s my mess, and for once I’m cleaning it the fuck up.” He realized he was squeezing her hard enough to feel bone. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Pete stared at the stained vinyl, pocked with clusters of yellow flowers and cigarette burns, rather than look at him. “Are we really in danger?” she said.
“Believe it,” Jack said. “Fucking Stygian Brothers almost took me head off last night, and they’re far from the most organized outfit I’ve slagged off.”
Pete tightened her jaw, and then pulled a piece of paper from her back pocket. “I was planning to do this on my own,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you until my flight had lifted off from Heathrow.”
Jack took the scrap, tried to summon the non-feeling again and not let Pete’s words sting him. The paper bore Pete’s neat, round Catholic school handwriting.
Benjamin Mayhew Investigations, Venice Beach Blvd., Los Angeles.
An American phone number was scribbled beneath.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“Used to be a cop in Los Angeles,” Pete said. “We met at a seminar a while back. He’s gone private, now, and I guess he was always in the life, because he heard about me from someone around a month ago and e-mailed our business address. Said he had a problem only I could help with.”
“Wait.” Jack waved the scrap, not believing that Pete of all people could fall for such shit. “You were going to fuck off without telling anyone, never mind me, and wander into an obvious trap?” He felt a throb start at his temples that could be from the bottle he’d killed last night, or from pure irritation.
Pete put her hands on her hips. “I’m quite capable of getting into and out of my own trouble, Jack. I managed it nicely before I met you, and after, too. Besides, Mayhew is an all-right bloke. American, but, you know. Not one of
those
types.”
“Even his name makes him sound like a git,” Jack said. “And what’s this problem only
you
can help him with?”
Pete snatched the paper back. “First of all,
you’re
far more of a git than Mayhew ever was, and I don’t know. I figured I’d ask when I got to Los Angeles.”
“No,” Jack said. “Over my dead, cold, and possibly violated corpse. This is just more shite drummed up by somebody who wants to explain to me the error of my ways, and use your dead body to do it.”
“You’re not in charge of me, Jack,” Pete said. “Just because you managed to reproduce with me doesn’t automatically make you smarter. So fuck you, stay here and play your little revenge games with your ridiculous friends. I’m leaving.”
Well, he’d handled that brilliantly. Pete wriggled free of him and slammed into the closet, emerging with her battered Samsonite.
“Pete…” he started, but she held up a finger.
“It won’t work, Jack. I tried, but it won’t. I’m not pointing blame—this is as much me as it is you, but I will say that if you didn’t have the pathological need to be the hero, and to protect me when I don’t fucking need it, none of this would’ve ever happened.”
He tried to keep his mouth shut, but self-control had never been one of his strong points. Hell, if he was honest, it’d never even been a point at all. “Your getting knocked up has very little to do with me being a hero,” he snapped. Pete stopped short, boring holes in him with her glare.
“You’re right about
that,
” she said. “But I wasn’t talking about
that
, was I? The fact that you happen to be my sperm donor has very little to do with what’s happening now.”
He picked up the whiskey bottle and threw it. Not at Pete, because he didn’t want to hurt her. He just needed to break something, to hear the crash and feel the glass fragments bite into the soles of his boots when he crossed the room to the front door. Break something or break himself, and he couldn’t allow himself that luxury right now.
At least it was out in the open. She’d never even considered that they’d do it together. And that was fine by him. Like he needed a brat on top of all the other problems in his life. Maybe if he said that line enough times he’d start to believe it.
Jack almost missed the BMW idling across from his flat. His pulse was throbbing, and his lungs were constricted down to fist size. She wanted a fucking absent father, he’d show her one. He could be on a boat to Ireland in forty minutes, cadge a passport from a bloke he knew in Belfast, and from there make his way anywhere he pleased. Sooner or later someone would come looking for him via Pete, and she’d wish she’d listened to him then, wouldn’t she? But you couldn’t tell Pete anything, and Jack almost wished he’d be there to see her face when necromancers showed up on the front stoop.
He tried to let the anger flow, and the lies with it. Hoped they would eventually be true too, because the alternative was that he was alone again, and it was remarkable how quickly that had become the worst fate imaginable.
“Mr. Winter.” The car window rolled down and with it, out rolled black magic, rendolent and velvety against his senses. Jack nearly flipped the occupant of the car the bird and kept walking, but then he saw the face, craggy and nearly the same color as stone, topped by a wide-brimmed hat.
“Oh, fuck me,” he said.
Ethan Morningstar egressed his poncey ride with surprising grace for a man of his size and bulk, and gave Jack a smile that held all the warmth of a tombstone in January. “You’re more eloquent than usual, Jack. Been taking your vitamins? Men of your age need to start considering these things, you know.”