Dark Days

CHAPTER 16

Moisture dotted his cheeks, and grit and debris abraded Jack’s body as he lay prone. He heard the persistent, unending wailing of emergency sirens drifting over him. Wave after wave of sound penetrated his skin, down to his bones, deep into the fear center of his brain.

Get up, it snarled, and his eyes snapped open, a breath that tasted of chemical smoke and hot ash filling his empty lungs.

The air hung heavy, like wet cotton pressed over his face, and rain plinked onto the metal sheet roofing and the pavement below.

He was on a roof, yes, but not the roof of his flat. He stood with his back to the roiling Thames, on top of a low warehouse in the Docklands, the type he’d thought had all been bulldozed in the service of gentrification.

A slim figure stood with his back to Jack, and at first he thought it was Belial. He had a moment of stinging rage knowing that he never should have given the demon an inroad into his head.

The man turned so Jack caught his profile, and Jack saw it wasn’t Belial at all. This man was fully human, wearing a tan jacket and jeans, the sort of getup a bloke wore when he was trying to appear laid back and fun but only succeeded in looking like a twat.

“You can’t stop me,” the man said to Jack, and a smile grew on his face. The smile was as thin and nasty as a clean wound, oozing malice the way a razor cut oozes blood.

Opening his mouth to reply, Jack instead choked when he saw himself take a few steps across the roof toward the man.

This version of Jack looked like shit. Face beat to hell, one arm hanging in a makeshift sling made from his shirt, his tattoos almost obscured by soot and dirt.

More than that, Jack thought, he looked old. His eyes were sunken, and the salt-and-pepper dark of his natural hair was starting to show below the peroxide job. He favored his bad knee, and exhaustion was evident in his voice when he spoke.

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it the old try.”

This was more than a vision, Jack realized, as his head started to throb with the sort of pain normally produced only by putting a power driver to your skull. It was an echo, a direct window into something that hadn’t happened yet, but would, sooner rather than later. Not a maybe future—a certain one. The psychic feedback of the event was so great that this him, this tired, beat-to-shit future version of Jack Winter, was passing it along the line, back to the Jack who could still do something about it.

Clever bastard, Jack thought. He might not have much, but he at least had that going for him.

“Jack, I admire you and I wish you’d consider the reality here,” said the man. Or was it a man? Jack wasn’t physically here, so his senses were muted, those neurons that lit up when another magic user was near. Was this just a demon who was far better than Belial at looking human, because he’d had more practice? Something like Legion?

“The reality is that this world isn’t a play set for you to kick over whenever you have a temper fit,” future-Jack snarled. His nostrils flared, crusted with dried blood. Jack winced at the thought of the beating coming down the pike at him. Always inevitable, never pleasant.

“This world is broken,” Legion whispered. “Hell is broken. The Black is broken. You don’t understand, Jack. They’re all pieces of something that shattered, and all I’m doing is putting it back together.”

“By killing great swaths of humanity and demons alike,” future-Jack snarled. “You’re a proper fascist, mate. Hitler and Mussolini would be proud to count you.”

“Never invoke Hitler in an argument,” Legion purred. “Weakens your position. And those demons, Jack? You really telling me you’re going to weep for the very creatures who gave you a life full of misery and pain rather than the birthright your talent demanded?”

“Shit choices and smack got me this life,” future-Jack said. “Demons were just a side effect. And right now, my life is the best it’s ever been, so you bet your arse I’m going to give my last breath, my last ounce of blood, to stop you.”

Legion sighed and looked back at the city. The smoke came from a few localized fires, but Jack saw a haze spreading from the north, a dark bank of thunderclouds.

Not clouds, he realized. Birds. Thousands of them, their cries cutting through the rain and the sirens.

“The bride of war comes to feast on the corpses,” Legion said. “And the walls all fall down. This is how it was in the beginning, Jack. And how it shall ever be from now on.”

Legion held up the piece of metal he’d stolen and it formed itself into a small, smooth globe, dark brown in color, the sort of thing a City banker would pay too much for in a gallery. “The Princes denied me, but the world won’t. And if you persist in this, Jack, I’m sorry, but you’re no longer useful.”

Jack saw his future self work the piece of the Gates that Belial had given him out of his sling as he and Legion closed distance.

“I’m warning you,” future-Jack said. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s already done,” Legion said. “I didn’t even need to break down the walls, just weaken them. I’ve used this marvelous little thing to pop around, prying out a stone where I needed to. A whisper in the ear of a mage in the 15th century, the right grimoire in the hands of a Nazi occultist in 1941, loosening the latches just enough to give Nergal and Abbadon and them the idea of escaping and weakening the barriers around Hell … when you think about it as I have, Jack, it’s like the world was always waiting for this. The day it stops being segmented and becomes a whole.”

The birds were close now, sweeping overhead, and Jack saw the tattoos on his future arms ripple and change, the ambient witchfire around him crackling like blue fire. Raindrops sizzled off it, steam adding to the surreality of the scene on the rooftop.

It couldn’t be, Jack thought. The barriers between Hell, death, the Black … they were porous, but they were eternal. And now Legion was saying that everything that had happened since Pete had strolled back into Jack’s life was his doing, his jumping back and forth, molding events to his end. Nick Naughton, Nergal, Abbadon, his deal with Belial … all to break the walls. But nothing could break them down fully. Nothing in the Black could exist on the same plane as the daylight. Side by side, yes. On top of one another, no.

They’d repel each other like magnets.

They’d cause exactly what he’d seen when he’d run from the hospital.

The Morrigan had tried to warn him, and when he hadn’t listened, she’d come. The Hag, the woman who watched the end of the world, who collected the dead for her army.

She’d come to see Legion’s victory.

The other Jack, the one with the eyes empty of everything but rage and grief, lunged at Legion with the key. The demon shook him off, laughing.

“Sorry, Jack. Too little, too late. If you think you’re taking me back to Hell, then you’ll be trapped there, same as I was.”

His other self hesitated, and Jack wanted to scream at the stupid cunt to just do it, just suck them back to the Gates and be done with it. Pete and Lily were counting on them. The fucking world was coming down around their ears, and he couldn’t pull the trigger when it counted.

“Oh, did your dear friend Belial not mention that?” Legion sneered. “He can pass you back and forth like you’re hopping on a tube train, but if you use the key, it’s a one-way trip. You’re a living soul, Jack, and your ticket isn’t good for a return, even if the other Princes would let you go after you’d proven yourself a loyal dog.” He shrugged. “But by all means, use it if you want. If your conviction is that strong. If you really think it’s the way to stop me.”

Do it, Jack tried to scream, but he was just an echo, just a bloke watching television and yelling at the screen.

His arm wavered, just for a moment, and in that half a heartbeat Legion closed the distance between them, grabbed Jack by the throat, and tossed him over the side of the roof.

He heard himself scream, felt his stomach drop, watched Legion’s grin spread, the grin of a small child who’d just stepped on an ant.

“Didn’t think so,” the demon said, and Jack heard his body hit the pavement below before his eyes shot open.