Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
“Fuck off,” Jack said. “I give you this and you’re going to skip straight back to the Princes and act like the good little scent hound.”
“I’m not that predictable.” Belial snatched for the paper again. “Come on now, Winter. Don’t be a cock.”
Jack folded the paper and tucked it inside his jacket. “Or maybe I was wrong,” he said to Belial. “Maybe you’ll hold on to it and use it with the Princes to leverage yourself. Get yourself a room in that tower and a nice little legion of your own to command.”
Belial’s lip curled. “Now you’re thinking like a demon, Winter. Always said you had it in you.”
“Either way,” Jack said. “We’re holding on to this until Abbadon and his merry band shows.”
Belial stepped out of the tomb, onto the grass, and folded his arms. “You really think I couldn’t take it from you if I wanted it?”
“You really think I know you wouldn’t have already tried if you could?” Jack said. “The Princes hung you out, mate. You’re not on your home turf, and you’re pissing yourself because Abbadon can play footie with your head as long as we’re in the daylight world. So just simmer down.”
Belial set his jaw, but he sat down on the steps of Lucinda’s tomb and looked at the lake. “This place is a laugh,” he said. “You’d think Roman emperors were lying in state.”
“Close,” Jack said. “Film stars. Rock stars. Basically the same thing in America.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many bargains I’ve wrought with the stiffs in this place,” Belial said. “Me and others.”
“I would,” Jack said. “Would explain most of cinema for the past twenty years.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Belial said. “I used to try to bargain with the ones who actually had some talent, but there’s only so many Connerys. The rest are Luncindas and Lockes.”
Jack watched the lamplight on the lake. If Abbadon came, he couldn’t rely on Belial. To defend Locke’s secret, yes. Him, no. He was expendable, and Belial would probably enjoy watching him twitch while Abbadon ripped his guts out.
“This is your fault, you know,” Belial said. Jack turned on him.
“Yeah? How is possible Hell wrought on earth
my
fault, exactly?”
“If I had never made that bargain with you, back when you were lying there bleeding out lo these many years ago, then we wouldn’t be here.” Belial sighed. “What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You fucking stoned?” Jack said. “I wasn’t exactly specific. I was dying, and I was looking for anyone. You just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“No,” Belial said quietly. “I wasn’t.”
Jack felt a cold in him that had nothing to do with his talent or his tattoos. He hadn’t called any one demon, that day fourteen years earlier. Hadn’t even expected it to work. It was a last gasp. He was dying, he’d drawn a summoning mark in his own blood, sent out the call to any bottom-feeder who bargained souls from the boot of his car. And instead Belial had come, one of the Named, and cut him a sweetheart deal. Thirteen years of life in exchange for his soul. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned that a decade of that would be spent in a smack haze, sleeping on floors and hustling for cash, but demons weren’t famous for specifics. He’d lived, and Belial had saved him. That was all it was.
“So what?” Jack said at last. He lit a fag, the one thing that could reliably calm tremors in his hands and disguise fear as something else. “You just hung around waiting for some ghost to rip my lungs out during an exorcism and swooped in for the kill?”
“Think it through, Winter,” Belial said. He shoved a hand through his hair, and in the low light the lines of his face were stark. The demon looked tired, if such a thing were possible, and worn down in the way of long-term addicts on the arse end of a bender. “A Named demon doesn’t show his face because you scribble something in your own blood and flop about like a fish, calling down every elemental and scum-sucker in the greater London area.”
“Just spit it out.” Jack blew smoke. “Whatever you’re alluding too, quit the foreplay and plunge it in.”
“I had my eye on you,” Belial said. “It was like a gift. The crow-mage, dying and begging for my help. Taking a favored son from that bitch of a Hag, well. That’s a thing most of us soul-traders dream of.”
“Didn’t manage to keep me for long,” Jack said. “Bet your bosses loved that one.”
“You’re always going to be in Hell, Winter,” Belial said. “One way or the other. You’re bound to Death as surely as you’re bound to your own skin. You’ll be back. It’s just a matter of time.”
“It’s over, remember?” Jack snapped. “Nergal’s gone. The war is over. The Morrigan doesn’t have a claim on me any more than you do.”
Belial barked a laugh. “Boy, look at yourself. That cunt’s fingerprints are all over you. And if you think Nergal was her last volley, you’re a fucking idiot. That was an opening salvo. The Morrigan will never stop trying to bring her armies to the daylight world. She’s the endless cycle—war, birth, and death. You can’t stop those things, Jack, any more than you can stop the sun from rising.”
“So what?” Jack said. “I’m supposed to be scared about something that might go on, decades from now? I think I’ll save myself for Abbadon.”
“I’m saying that when the Hag comes back for you,” Belial said, “Hell might not be such a bad alternative after all.” He grinned. “We’d love to have you.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Abbadon purred from behind Jack, close enough to feel his breath. “You two kissed and made up.”
Jack threw himself down the steps just ahead of Abbadon, rolling to the side as the beast’s foot came down. He didn’t appear any larger than he had at Locke’s ranch, but his psychic presence was infinitely larger, and Jack felt the power suck the air from his lungs.
“Heya, Belial,” Abbadon said. “Boy, you clean up nice. You have to tell me where you get those suits.”
“Just you?” Belial said. He was pale and sweating, but he stood ramrod straight. “Where’s your brood? You leave the kids at home?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Abbadon said. “They’re amusing themselves with Jack’s baby mama. I figured I could handle two of the three Stooges on my own.”
Jack lifted his head. There was blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten down, tasting like acid and pennies. “Pete?”
“Her.” Abbadon nodded. “Although we’ve got to think up a new name for her.
Pete
is just confusing.”
Jack hauled himself to his feet. The cold didn’t come this time, just the rage, hot and blood-pounding and familiar. “I swear, if you’ve touched her…”
“Oh, save it,” Abbadon said. “We’re not going to use your little crumpet to re-enact
Last House on the Left.
What good is a body if it’s fucked up beyond repair?”
Belial stood, then came at Abbadon from behind, but Abbadon turned, and the shadow of his power moved, and Belial went flying into the lake. He landed with a shallow crunch, then lay still amid the sloshing reeds.
“So, Jack,” Abbadon said. “My offer stands. Quit being a bitch about all this and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We could use a fucked-up critter like you. You and those freaky death powers will be real useful once things are different around here.”
Jack smacked the hand off his shoulder. “Where’s Pete?”
Abbadon wagged a finger under Jack’s nose. “That’d be telling. Say you’ll help and I might give you a clue. It’ll be a little fun for us. Or, you know, I could torture you into a pile of meat to tell me how you really open Locke’s gateway.”
Jack pulled the paper from his jacket. In that moment, if he were honest, he didn’t give a fuck what Abbadon did with it. Didn’t care if the hot, dry wind swept up from Locke’s doorway and blew away the entire world. It was a mad feeling, the sort that made people smash their cars into bridge abutments, beat their wives to death, or douse their children in kerosene and light a match. All that mattered was Pete.
“Here.” He threw it in the grass between them. “Have fun in Hell, you piece of shit. Now tell me where Pete is.”
Abbadon grinned at him. “Not the deal. You want to set the terms, you should have held out a little longer.” He bent to pluck the paper square from the grass, and Jack lifted his boot and drove the steel toe hard as he could into Abbadon’s gut. The body Abbadon had picked out wasn’t big as far as things went, and he folded around Jack’s foot, spitting out a mouthful of blood.
“So it’s like that.”
“Yeah.” Jack snatched the paper back up and shoved it in his jacket. “You can try to do whatever you want to me, Abbadon, but you’re not getting this. Where’s Pete?”
Abbadon got to his feet, brushing grass and dirt from his front. “I told you. Safe and sound and with my kind. I have to say, she’s way too good for you. Regulation hottie, too. How did you manage that?”
Jack called up the leg-locker hex silently, and when Abbadon went down, banged his forehead into the steps of Lucinda Lanchester’s tomb. “I was in a band.”
Abbadon started to laugh, the blood dribbling down his forehead and across his mangled nose like dark fingers. “All right, Jack. All right, we’ll do it your way.” He shoved Jack off and stood. Jack hit the ground and realized that this might be the last shit plan he didn’t think through. He hadn’t gotten beyond pissing Abbadon off, making him tell where Pete was, and then kicking the blue hell out of him in return.
Abbadon’s shoe pressed into his chest, and Jack felt a rib creak and then give. He didn’t have enough air to make any sound, so that was a blessing. It was difficult to feel hard when Hellspawn was crushing your ribcage. “You fucked up,” Abbadon told him. “I wanted to be friends, but now I’m just going to pull out your spine and shove it up your ass. You’re a worm, like all the rest.”
He moved his foot, but Jack did not make measurable progress toward sitting up. His chest was on fire, and his body had given his commands up for a bad job. Clearly, he didn’t have their best interest in mind, and he was no longer in charge.
Jack stared as Abbadon grew large, eclipsing the lamppost, the Fairbanks mausoleum, everything. He lengthened and his eyes went black, his teeth grew and his hands formed into scaly masses, tipped with claws.
“
You wanted to see, Jack,
” Abbadon hissed. “
So behold the dragon.
”
“Fuck me,” Jack whispered, because it was all he had the air for. “You do love the sound of your own fucking voice.”
Abbadon’s body curled between the tombs, and he leaned down so that Jack could smell the fetid breath pouring from between his underslung jaws. “
You cost me a good body. I’m going to take yours apart slowly, now.
”
A claw lanced into his arm, down to the bone, and Jack ground his teeth together. Even if he could scream, he wouldn’t give Abbadon the satisfaction of hearing.
Abbadon held him down with his claws and ran a long, black tongue across Jack’s face. “
This is my real face,
” he hissed. “
What do you think of it, Jack?
”
“I think your mum beat you every day with the ugly stick, and then kicked you down the stairs,” Jack grunted.
Abbadon snarled and snapped his jaws. “
Funny man to the last, eh? See how funny you think it is when I make you eat your own guts.
”
Jack saw a shadow rise behind Abbadon, and the creature screamed as something latched on to his back. Jack sailed through the air as Abbadon’s claw slipped from his flesh, then landed with a crash against the gates of Lucinda’s tomb.
The thing striking at Abbadon wasn’t as large, but it was lithe and black, a wingspan behind it blotting out the sky. Black smoke roiled around the body, obscuring the details, and Jack smelled the scent of Hell, the burnt ash crowding his throat and sucking out what little breath he could draw.
“You may have come first,” Belial snarled. “But you never grew beyond a petulant child, and it’s time somebody showed you where you belonged.”
“
Finally, you grow some balls,
” Abbadon said. He and Belial circled each other, the ground shaking under Jack’s feet. He heard Belial scream as Abbadon turned on him, wrapping him in serpentine coils, snapping at his exposed neck.
Belial’s form shimmered and writhed in Abbadon’s grip. Abbadon put his claws through Belial’s wing, tearing at the membranes, causing a spray of oily black liquid. Jack winced as he heard a bone crack, and Belial crumpled.
“
We should have gotten it on a long time ago, demon,
” Abbadon said. “
In a stand-up fight, you’d never break me, and you knew it.
”
“Fuck you,” Belial gasped, as Abbadon dug his talons into Belial’s belly. Jack saw the meaty sheen of intestines, then rolled onto his back.
Stand up, Winter. You’re dead if you don’t get your arse up.
Belial’s blood stank of sulfur, and Jack felt the memory of the hot wind of Hell race across his senses.
“
Oh, we’ll get to that,
” Abbadon purred. “
Because now you’re going to be
my
bitch, demon
,
and you’re going to know exactly what it felt like for all that time, alone in the dark with ghosts for company.
”
Jack levered himself up on the smooth marble of Lucinda’s tomb. He didn’t owe Belial shite. He could creep away now and hopefully find Pete before the rest of Abbadon’s kind killed her or worse. Or he could never find her. Abbadon alone had nearly turned him into paste. The other three would swat him like a bug.
The memory of standing at the edge of the chasm, of hearing the faintest whisper, came back strong amid the screams and the smell of blood. Abbadon’s family had marked him, had marked him while he was in Hell.
Hello, Jack
. Teddy’s voice, or perhaps Levi’s. It didn’t matter. When they’d gone free, they’d told Abbadon about him, and Abbadon had known the crow-mage would be the one to use for his mad schemes.
He was a game piece, just like he was to Belial. And he was fucking sick of it, Jack decided, sick to the core. Belial, at least, had always been upfront that he was using Jack. And having a demon who owed you one would go a long way toward taking the edge off Abbadon’s brood. Having a demon who owed him might be what saved Pete’s life.