Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
Margaret started to shake behind Pete, and Jack moved in, gripping her arm. “Pete…”
he said, low. “Do something.”
“What the fuck am
I
supposed to do?” she hissed as Morwenna went to Victor and shook him by the lapels of his expensive suit.
“Do as I say!” she shouted. “She’s one girl! Take care of it.”
Victor drew back, wresting himself from her grip. “No. It’s not going to happen, Morwenna. Find someone else.”
“Idiot,” she spat at Victor, then turned on her heel toward Pete
and Jack. “Donovan,” Morwenna snapped, and Pete’s heart skipped in time with the sound of him checking the chamber on his pistol.
“Sorry, Jackie,” he said. “We all do things we don’t want to because we must.”
“For the greater good?” Jack growled at his father. “Or just because you’ve bought into the lies this bitch has fed you?”
“I’m beginning to sense that you can’t or won’t see the bigger
picture,” Donovan said. He aimed the pistol between Margaret’s eyes, and the girl let out a strangled little cry that Pete mirrored involuntarily.
From the corner of her eye, Pete saw the shadow descend, gliding above the rooftops before it turned on the breeze and bore directly toward her. She ducked at the last second, pulling Margaret with her as the raven fell on Donovan, black wings frenzied
as it raked and pecked at his face.
Donovan screamed, and in the sky Pete saw a dozen dark shadows, the rest of the ravens she’d seen in the village, watching over the people and the graveyard.
Pete took the opportunity. She hooked Donovan’s leg with her foot and shoved, sending him tumbling into the loamy earth. The ravens covered him, black and shiny, rippling backs like oily water. One looked
Pete in the eye.
Go. Find the edge of the village.
“What about Jack and Margaret?” she asked.
Jack is the Morrigan’s favored son,
the raven said.
He and the girl have the same protection offered to you. Now
run.
“Bitch,” Donovan gasped from the ground, but Pete ran without looking back. She couldn’t care less what sort of fate befell Donovan.
“Go,” she snapped at Margaret as more and more
ravens descended, alighting on Morwenna and Victor as well, spreading out to follow the other agents of the Prometheus Club, who shouted and ran for cover as the fog filled up with black bodies and the birds’ guttural cries.
Jack paused at the edge of the square, watching the rippling mass of birds that covered Donovan. Pete grabbed his arm and yanked, not being gentle. “Don’t tell me this is
the time you pick to get sentimental,” she said.
“No,” Jack said after a heartbeat. “Fuck ’im.”
They ran, all three, and Pete didn’t look back again until the low cottages of Overton were out of sight in the fog.
Part Three
Wasteland
There’s not much more to be said
It’s the top of the end.
—Bob Dylan
25.
After they all ran until Margaret’s short legs and Jack’s abused lungs couldn’t take it any more, Pete found a small cottage tucked into the hills, locked up long enough that leaves had piled against the front door and moss had grown on the sills.
“Thank Christ for posh twats and their vacation cottages,” she said, peering in the window.
“Odd person to thank,” Jack said. He was still
breathing hard and heavy, and Pete didn’t know if it was from the running or the burden of Donovan stabbing him in the kidney when his back was turned.
“Let’s get inside,” she said, as mumbles and moans echoed through the fog. “Hills are lousy with folks gone George Romero.”
Jack got the door open with a few words, and Pete locked it again when they were all inside and slid the ancient sofa
in front of it. She pulled a chair close to the fireplace and put Margaret in it, wrapping a blanket around her thin shoulders. “You all right, luv?”
She shook her head without a word, and Pete sighed. Stupid question. Margaret might never be all right again.
Jack opened the damper and piled some wood in the grate, muttering “
Aithinne
” to get it going.
“Thought we were fucking dead,” Margaret
said at last.
“Not yet,” Pete said, trying to paste on a cheerful face. Margaret’s baleful expression told her she’d failed miserably.
“Can’t say I’m surprised every last one of those Prometheus Club cunts was holding out on us,” Jack said. “But I do think a fucking-over as deep and thorough as this one is pretty impressive. Once they manage to harness the soul well, we might as well just throw
open the door and welcome the apocalypse.”
“I thought you said that ritual was bunk,” Pete said, casting a meaningful look at Margaret.
“’Course it’s not bunk,” Jack said. “That Morgenstern bitch knows what she’s doing, much as I hate to pay her any kind of compliment. All she needs to get things kicking off is that soul cage.”
“Speaking of,” Pete said, feeling in the pocket of her jacket.
“I’m so sorry I made you responsible for this, Margaret. I never meant to.”
In the low firelight the soul cage danced, as if the interior were alive and moving, trying to find any egress to the larger world. “Who d’you think it is?” Pete said, turning it in her hands.
“Crotherton, probably,” Jack said. “He seems like a patsy type, all Dudley Do-Right and noble.”
“Preston gave me this,” Pete
said. “Out of everyone, he trusted me, and I walked right back into Morwenna’s grasp and practically gift-wrapped the thing for her.”
“All that tells you is that he had shite for brains,” Jack said. “Probably so buggered from being close to the soul well he didn’t know his own name.”
“He tried to warn me,” Pete said. The soul cage’s energy writhed, turning colors under her grasp. She imagined
poor Jeremy Crotherton, just looking for his friend, getting a whack on the head and a horrific end as worm food in that awful cellar. Add the indignity of having Morwenna Morgenstern suck out his soul, and it was a crap day all around.
“And you didn’t listen because he came across as a crazy fuck,” Jack said. “Blame isn’t needed at this late stage, Pete. A plan would be nice, though.”
Pete
found a blanket for herself and wrapped up in it, inhaling the musty odor of mothballs and damp. “You want me to plan a full frontal assault on a bunch of mages who’ve already got us beat? I can do it, but it’s not going to end any way except with us dead.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Margaret muttered. In the low light, Pete saw that dirt streaked on her face and her T-shirt was torn, things she’d missed
in the frantic escape. “We’re dead anyway.”
“Luv, don’t talk that way,” Pete sighed. “Jack and I are going to find a way to get you out of here.”
“And go where?” Margaret whispered. Pete saw a shadow flick in front of the windows, and away. A shiver ran through Margaret, though the cottage was almost stuffy as the fire blazed. “My parents are out there. All the people are out there. We’re the
last normal ones. Where’m I supposed to go?”
“She’s got a point,” Jack muttered. “We’re either target practice for the Prommies or worm food. I don’t exactly relish either choice.”
“You want a plan, you could try being the least bit helpful,” Pete snapped. “I’m not the one who’s been running with mages his entire life. What happens if Morwenna gets hold of the soul cage she made?”
Jack sighed,
but he played along. “Likely she’s channeling the power of Purgatory through her, giving herself regular old Hulk powers like that stupid, stupid story about the Merlin. And you need a soul to do that—something agonized, in enough pain to lure in the things capable of taking up residence in you and lending you the sort of power Morwenna is after.” He poked at the fire. “Mage soul is the only kind
that will do, and the more pain Crotherton was in when he died, the better it’ll work.”
“So very well, then,” Pete said, thinking of the stricken terror frozen on Crotherton’s face when she’d found his body in the cellar.
“Like gangbusters,” Jack agreed. “She wants to be top of the heap, and if we give her that thing she will be.”
Pete looked from Jack to Margaret. She thought of their friends
in London. Lily. Everything she knew, engulfed in this endless fog. Every face that was familiar, white-eyed with a worm looking out. Or worse, simply shambling about, chewing on the neighbors and waiting to die.
“Fine,” she told Jack. “I couldn’t care less if Morwenna gets what she wants out of this.”
He blinked at her, and Pete spread her hands. “Do you? Let the Prometheans and the old gods
fight it out. I don’t care. I care about us surviving until the next sunrise.” She hefted the soul cage and gave Jack a smile. It wasn’t much of one, wan and exhausted as she was, but she did try. “This is the last bargaining chip we have. Morwenna gets us away from here, she can have it and then we’re done with her and I no longer give a fuck what her plan is.”
“They’re not going to do anything
in the dark,” Jack pointed out. “Give you a few hours to realize this is a bad fucking plan.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Pete said. “We’re not going to beat her, Jack. Maybe a year ago I’d have been inclined to try, but things are different now.”
She prayed he wouldn’t argue with her anymore. She was too tired to keep trying to convince Jack that the attack plan wasn’t always the best plan.
“Never thought I’d see the day when fucking Prometheans beat me,” he grumbled.
“In the morning we’ll make the exchange,” Pete said. “And we’ll be alive, Jack. That’s the best deal I can think of. Only your pride is keeping you from seeing that.”
“I’m tired,” he snapped, and stretched out on the floor, rolling away from her.
Pete watched the fire for a long time, trying to believe the lie she’d
told Jack, and Margaret, and herself, and not having any luck.
26.
When what passed for morning crept through the fog, and the villagers had retreated to whatever dank holes they crawled into to hide from the daylight, Pete, Jack, and Margaret walked the path Pete’d followed twice now, one asleep and once in memory.
The black rocks poked up all around them, but Pete saw tire tracks in the grass now, and a cluster of figures at the top of the hill.
Silver shapes flitted about, too, a pale counterpoint to the ravens that perched in a loose ring on rocks and twisted trees, and the occasional bloated corpse.
“Shit,” Jack muttered, scrubbing his thumb across his forehead. “He’s brought those fucking monsters with him.”
“Let me handle this,” Pete murmured. “Keep Margaret safe. That’s your job.”
“Pete…” he started, but she cut him off with a
look, and then raised her voice toward the Prometheans.
“Oi!” she shouted from what she judged to be a safe distance. The wraiths turned to her as one, and their fangs glowed in the mist.
“If you want your precious little rock back, you’re going to call off your low-rent Dementors and speak to me, Donovan!” Pete bellowed.
Faster than she’d give his a man his age credit for moving, he appeared
from the clot of the ground, trailed hotly by Morwenna. They slowed, and the wraiths withdrew as he got close to Pete. Donovan sneered through the scratches and bandages on his face. “You’re like a cockroach, aren’t you?”
Pete pulled the soul cage from her pocket. “I believe you’re looking for this.”
Donovan’s eyes lit up, and he snatched for the soul cage, but Pete whipped it out of reach.
“Ah-ah. You promise us safe passage out of here—a
real
promise, this time, and then we’ll talk.”
“How about I let my friends here drink you dry and take it from your corpse?” Donovan snapped.
Pete dropped the soul cage to the ground and positioned her boot over it. “I’ll smash this thing to bits before they even get a drop.”
Morwenna gave an involuntary cry, and Pete pinned her with her worst
glare. “I want out of here, Morwenna. I didn’t ask to be any part of this, and I’m done. You do what you want with the soul cage, but before you get it, you do what I say for once.”
Morwenna pursed her lips, as if all this were a minor annoyance. Donovan, on the other hand, looked ready to pop.
“I’m going to clean your mind out, you little bitch,” he snarled. “Give it over, or the last thing
you’ll remember will be your daughter dying in your arms, over and over again.”
“You so much as breathe on her and I’ll kill you,” Jack snarled. “I was ready to let you go—not forgive you, but at least get on with me life—but you just made my shit list all over again, boyo.” He toed up to Donovan, and Pete realized with a start that Jack was taller than his father, by a good few inches, and when
he was angry he blew Donovan out of the water in terms of the hard man act. “I would like nothing better than to wring the life from your carcass by inches for every miserable fucking day of me life since you left but especially for this one, so
please—
fucking talk to my wife again.”
“Enough!” Morwenna shouted. She extended her hand to Pete. “I’ll take you out of here after I finish the ritual.”
“Not good enough.” Pete shook her head. “Now or never.”
“Then I might as well just have Victor shoot you—if he has the
stones
,” she tossed at Victor over her shoulder, “because I’m not leaving until I get what I came for. You can either leave with me at that time or not at all.”
Pete felt a grimace of pure irritation at how thoroughly Morwenna could take control of a situtation, but she moved
her boot. Donovan swooped in and scooped up the soul cage, shoving her back so she would have gone on her arse in the mud if Jack hadn’t been there to catch her.
Morwenna nodded. “Good. Victor, take them up the hill and keep them quiet while we do what needs doing.”
Victor prodded all three of them into a loose knot at the edge of the black rocks. Pete watched the cairn rise from the mist. The
pull was so strong she could feel it like a second heartbeat, and it was clear Morwenna was wallowing in it like a pig in a sty as she placed the soul cage at the apex of the black rocks.