Dark Days

CHAPTER 10

Jack came out of his psychic wormhole with a start, finding himself on the floor, grit and glass shards clinging to the side of his face.

He choked and spat out a little bile, and he felt a wet dribble work its way from his nose over his upper lip.

“Fuck you, Belial,” he muttered. His body felt like he’d tangled with a lycanthrope and lost badly, but he forced himself up. His skull was throbbing so hard that bright light collected at the corners of his vision.

Jack couldn’t decide what was worse—the post-sight migraine his talent left him as a gift, or the fact that Belial had only told him half the story. Headache, he thought. Thinking that for once he was getting the straight truth out of a demon was just foolishness on his part.

And there was the object the demon had stolen from the vaults. Jack had only seen Belial afraid once, when he’d realized that Abbadon, one of the primordial beings in Hell, had escaped his prison and was about to turn Earth into his own private amusement park.

Abbadon could have easily killed Belial. He almost had, in fact; Jack had seen the fight between the leather tosser and Belial in his true, demonic body. It wasn’t something you forgot. But more than that, Jack remembered the fear in the demon’s eyes. What he’d seen then was nothing compared to now.

Whoever this demon was, whatever he’d taken, Belial hadn’t been kidding. This was the last act, the end of the line. And he’d trusted Jack to stop the curtain from falling.

Which makes Belial an idiot, Jack thought as he stumbled down the rickety stairs and out into the fresh air, and me an even bigger one for agreeing to do it.