Dark Days

CHAPTER 24

Declan lived in a bedsit over a closed-down chip shop, and the odor of stale cooking oil and fish permeated the plaster and the narrow staircase. A naked bulb swayed as Jack and Pete mounted the stairs. “We’ll wait here,” Keith said. “Declan doesn’t like too many people in at once, and he gets on best with Moira. Any sign of trouble, though, and you’re done. I’ll see your carcass on a boat back to England myself.”

“Yeah, yeah, shaking in me boots, rest assured,” Jack said, following Moira up the stairs. Pete brought up the rear.

“I don’t like this,” she murmured. “It’s a bottleneck if anything goes wrong.”

“Things have already gone wrong,” Jack said in an undertone. “But this is going to turn out all right, I promise. Just let me talk to this Declan and we’ll see if he can help us.”

“I wouldn’t expect too much,” Moira said. “He doesn’t make any sense on a good day, and on a bad day, good luck getting a word in edgewise.”

She knocked on the single door at the top of the stairs, soft and unthreatening. “Declan? It’s Moira. I’ve brought visitors, if that’s all right.”

They waited for a long minute, Jack listening to the buzzing of the light, and then the door rattled with the sound of half a dozen bolts being undone. “Moira?” The voice was small and hesitant, sounding more like a scared kid than a full-grown psychic.

“Yes, luv,” she said. “Do you think you might let us in?”

Declan peered around the doorframe. He had owlish eyes behind black-rimmed glasses and a shock of dark hair that looked as if he spent most of his time sleeping on the left side of it. His face was soft, rounded, and covered in dark stubble. He blinked shyly when he saw Pete and Jack.

“Why Moira,” he said. “You’ve brought the storm with you.”

“These nice folks just have some questions,” Moira said. She reached in through the crack and laid a hand on Declan’s arm. Jack expected the psychic to kick up a fuss, but instead he smiled at her and pulled the door open.

“Then you bring the wind and rain inside, yes?” His voice had the singsong quality that Jack had encountered in quite a few folks he’d met in the mental ward, the kind of dreamy voice that was focused on things only the owner could see.

“Thank you,” Pete said, as Declan stepped back to allow them in. “This means a lot to us, truly.”

Declan frowned at her. “You are a hole, full of light. You are the sun exploding. I can’t look at you. You burn me.”

Pete gave Jack a raised eyebrow, but she shrugged. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“What about me, Declan?” Jack said. He tried to keep his tone soothing and even, though that had rarely worked on the psychics and schizophrenics he knew. You just had to play in their world, go along with what they saw, until you learned what you needed and could drop back into reality.

Often enough, he’d been the one off in dreamland, and so he didn’t begrudge going along with Declan.

“You?” Declan examined Jack, through his glasses and then closer, lifting the lenses and bringing their noses almost to touching. “Your wings are lifted by the storm. You are in the dark but you are not the darkness.”

“No?” Jack tilted his head. Declan blinked, then shook his head to and fro hard enough to give himself whiplash.

“No. Not yet.”

“Declan,” Jack said, as gently as he could manage. “What else do you see around me?”

Declan cocked his head, as if he were listening to a dog whistle, and then he reached out quicker than a cobra and grabbed Jack’s chin between his pudgy fingers.

Jack stayed still. Dealing with psychics was tricky, especially one in the throes of a severe break from reality. As if there were any other kind, when you could see things that would drive the average plod on the street screaming into the nearest nuthouse.

Declan breathed, eyes screwed up behind his streaky glasses, and Jack glanced around the man’s one-room flat, seeing what his options were if this little trust exercise didn’t go his way.

One corner was taken up by a bed, just a mattress and box spring up on cement blocks, covered in a rumpled sleeping bag and more crisp wrappers than Jack had previously believed one man could generate.

The wall opposite the bed was entirely taken up with televisions—small, large, old, new, all square old-fashioned sets that buzzed quietly, tuned to a dozen different channels. They heated the room to a temperature that made sweat roll down Jack’s spine, and he saw Pete wipe at her forehead.

The ceiling of the flat was plastered with newspapers, which also covered the windows in layers thick enough that even the streetlight outside didn’t penetrate. The four corners of the room were strung with dusty herb bundles, red thread, all the trappings of every sort of protection hex Jack could think of.

“You scared of something, Declan?” he asked, keeping his voice even and low. “Worried about something getting in here?”

“Oh,” Declan breathed, turning Jack’s head to and fro in his vise grip. “He’s already inside. He’s in my head. He’s in your head, too.”

Jack frowned, and Declan mirrored his expression. “Don’t be sad, Jack,” he said. “Soon he’ll be everywhere, and then you and I won’t feel so lonely, seeing his shadow falling across our footsteps.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, easing out of Declan’s grip. “That can’t happen. Do you see anything else? A way that Legion doesn’t end up with the world in his hands?”

Declan sat down in a rickety rolling chair arranged in front of the TV screens and spun around. “Nope,” he singsonged. “Nothing. Nothing but the darkness, the storm, and then when he comes, you’ll all be like me.”

Jack fought the urge to slam his fist through one of the screens. “So you’re telling me to just lie down. That there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop this?”

“Ashes, ashes,” Declan whispered. “We all fall down.”

Jack did bang his fist into the wall, rattling the detritus littering the shelves and the floor. Moira started toward him, her hand raised. “Enough. He did as you asked. He gets tired.”

Jack watched the look that passed between Declan and Moira. He gave her a sweet smile, before crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue.

“You two together long before he went off the deep end?” he asked. Moira went to Declan and stroked the sweaty strands of dark hair away from his forehead.

“Five years,” she said. “Then, about eighteen months back, things got really bad. Got so he couldn’t sleep, because he’d wake up screaming, and when he was awake he couldn’t tell the difference between me and one of his visions.”

“Nergal,” Pete murmured. “Hate that ancient bastard a little more with each passing day.”

“There’s nothing here,” Jack said. “Sorry to have troubled you and Declan, Moira.” He rubbed his forehead, throbbing from the buzz of the screens. The Fiach Dubh weren’t what he remembered. Hell, not much was what he remembered in these strange times. Seth never would have lain down and accepted the end of the world.

But Seth wasn’t here. He was probably sloshed in some karaoke bar halfway around the world, if he wasn’t dead in the gutter outside it.

The crow brothers couldn’t help him. He was on his own.

“Don’t be sad,” Declan said. “Don’t cry out loud, the lady says. That’s not thunder you hear. That’s the wings, the wings beating the drums, and the drums are the heartbeat of the dead.” He looked up again and pointed at Jack. “I know you hear it, crow-mage. I know you.…”

Something skittered outside the window, flashing across the paper cover, almost too fast for the eye. Moira and Pete both wheeled around, hands dropping inside their coats, Pete’s for her stun gun and Moira’s for a small leather-wrapped bundle. A focus for some sort of hex, Jack wagered, something strong enough to blow a hole in the wall of the flat.

He would have liked Moira and Declan if he’d met them under different conditions. They reminded him of himself and Pete, if things had just gone a bit differently, and he’d replaced his penchant for smack with one for greasy snack foods.

“What the fuck was that?” Moira said.

Declan wrapped his arm around himself and started to rock. “All around,” he said. “Cold and fire, all around, muddy blood and black eyes, staring at me … stop staring at me … stop stop stop stop…”

His voice rose into an incoherent scream, and Moira grabbed his arm as more shadows filled up the window frame, scratching and chittering as they tried to find a way in.

Jack heard a pane shatter, and he jerked his head at Pete. “We need to go.”

They thundered down the rickety staircase, Declan clinging to Moira and babbling. At the door, Keith met them with a frown. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “But your boy here has gone full throttle around the bend, so whatever it is, I assume it’s not here to cuddle.”

Jimmy pointed into the close shadows around them as the street lamp blinked out under the onslaught of the small, chittering creatures. “They’re everywhere. Those flying bastards are just the start.”

Jack saw the three pale figures fold out of the shadows. He saw the Fae’s arm come up, too late. By the time he’d figured out what they were, it was already far, far too late.

Keith went down first, the black glass blade embedded in his throat so he couldn’t even scream. Jimmy lasted a bit longer, firing off a hex that spat currents of electricity all over the street, striking one of the Fae assassins in the chest and knocking him to the ground.

The swarm with them, though, was relentless; tiny bodies with oily, translucent wings covered Jimmy, stripping his flesh even before he fell to the pavement, writhing in agony.

Pete yanked Jack back inside and slammed the door as the swarm landed against it, the sound of a thousand tiny nails on the wood like sandpaper against Jack’s ears. Pete wheeled on Moira. “Is there another way out of here?”

“There’s a basement,” Moira managed. “But I’m not leaving him.”

Declan sat curled in a ball, staring at the door with wide eyes. Jack stooped in front of him and repeated the gesture of grabbing the man’s chin in his fingers. “Oi. Listen. I’ve been where you are, mate. Those are Fae soldiers outside, cold-blooded killers, and I know they’re playing hell with your sight right now. But forget them, mate. Moira’s not leaving without you, and if we don’t move, she dies. Even you can’t be so far gone, yeah?”

Declan swallowed hard, blinked, and stared up at Jack. “Your fingers are cold.”

Jack helped Moira sling the pudgy psychic to his feet, and together they got Declan down to the basement. Moira pointed at a grate in the floor. “That goes down to the storm drains. Lots of iron—they’ll have a hard time following us.”

Pete flipped the grate off and gestured at Moira and Declan. “You two first.”

She grabbed Jack’s arm after the pair dropped into the wet, dank black space below. “What is going on? What do the Fae want?”

“Damned if I know,” Jack said. “But they seem pretty insistent on getting it, so let’s keep moving.”

He dropped and grabbed Pete around the waist so she wouldn’t break her ankle in the drop. She landed hard and cursed. “I hate being short.”

“But you’re so adorable,” Jack said.

Pete shot him a look that he could tell, even in the near pitch dark, was poisonous. A green glow lit the way ahead of them, and Jack saw Moira standing at the junction of the drain and a larger pipe, gesturing them along while witchfire writhed around her.

“These drains let out down at the piers,” she said. “From there, we can make it out to sea.”

“Fae hate salt water,” Jack told Pete. “If we can get to a boat we’ll be safe.”

“I know that,” Pete hissed as they walked single file, hugging the wall to stay out of the worst of the waste water. “I have spent almost five years tagging after you now, you know.”

Footsteps rattled in the tunnel behind them, and Moira waved her hand. “Keep it down,” she said.

They walked in silence for another few hundred yards, and then Moira breathed a sigh of relief. “I think that’s done it. If I never see another Fae again it’ll be too soon—”

She choked, and her knees buckled. Moira went face-first into the water, her red hair spreading around her head like a billow of blood. The witchfire she’d conjured flickered and went out.

Declan gave a wail, the sound of an animal in excruciating pain, crumpling against the tunnel wall.

Jack conjured a light of his own, and the harsh blue glow illuminated the blade in Moira’s back. A good hit, jammed squarely into the center of her back, next to the spine. A nick of the heart, a near-instant bleeding out.

“Jack,” Pete said softly. He looked up to meet the eyes of one of the Fae, who leaned down and retrieved his knife from Moira’s body.

“I track warm-blooded things like you,” the Fae said. His voice was musical and low, like listening to a snake try to speak English. “No matter how far underground you burrow.”

Pete pulled her stun gun, but Jack waved her off. “Don’t bother, luv. He’s an experienced killer, and he’ll have a blade between your eyes before you can pull that trigger.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “But at least I’ll give him something to think about.”

“Try to harm me,” the Fae said. “I would relish the kill of a Weir. It would be very good to return home with such a trophy.”

“You don’t want to do this,” Pete said. She was using her copper voice, the voice designed to calm killers and free hostages. “I’m a friend to the Queen. I—”

“I serve no Queen,” the Fae snarled. “My King follows the path of war and conquest, and so that is the path I follow.” He pointed at Declan. “Now stand aside. My blade still wants for blood.”

Jack didn’t feel anything—not the cold water rushing past his ankles; not the cold, foreign magic of the Fae assassin; not the panic-stricken heartbeat driving the blood through his ears at a thousand miles an hour. At the stage where he knew he was about to either die or do something so monumentally stupid he’d wish he were dead, his brain shut down all the but the essentials.

So.

He could hex the Fae, but some of them resisted magic. The bean sidhe who’d tried to kill him wouldn’t be dented by anything less than an incendiary hex, and down here he’d suck out all the oxygen and crisp-fry Pete, Declan, and himself along with the Fae.

He could try to take the knife, but the only way that would work out would be when the Fae voluntarily planted it in his spleen.

Everything snapped back—Declan’s screaming, the freezing water, the cold magic rolling off the Fae.

Jack looked at Pete, who spared him only a glance, stun gun still pointed at the Fae. “Don’t use that on him, luv,” he said softly. “Shooting him wouldn’t do a bit of good.”

Pete caught his meaning as he lifted his feet from the water, bracing on a narrow ledge above the spill. She was brilliant like that. He was damn glad she was there.

“Declan,” he said, making sure to shift his body between the Fae and his new psychic mate, “might want to get those feet out of the water.”

Declan curled himself into an even tighter ball, and as the Fae lifted his hand to use his knife again, Pete pointed the stun gun down and shot into the water.

The leads sparked, and the entire gun blew up with a pop, shards of plastic flying in every direction. Acrid chemical smoke filled the tunnel as the Fae was lifted off his feet by the charge and went flying backward, smashing against the bricks, his blade falling into the water.

Jack slung the hex before the Fae could recover, the leg locker making the creature go stiff, snarling like a dog who wanted to chew his leg off.

Making sure to keep his distance, Jack came over and looked down at the creature. He didn’t look so tough after ten thousand volts had run through him, but still, the black eyes, the veiny face, and the pointed teeth would be enough to make anyone keep their distance.

“Right,” Jack said. “Either I leave that hex on and by the time I’m far enough away for you to slip it, you drown, or you tell me what I want to know.”

The Fae spat at him, a black glob of saliva hitting Jack’s pantleg.

“I’ll take that as a sign you’re happy to chat,” Jack said. “Why’re you trying to kill me?”

The Fae’s lip curled. “I wouldn’t dirty my blade. You consort with demons.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your ruler is consorting with the king bastard of all Hellspawn,” Jack said. “So that sort of makes us even. Except not at all, because you just murdered three mages.”

“I follow orders,” the Fae said.

“And Legion ordered you to kill me?” Jack snapped. “Warning you, mate, I’m getting bored, and leaving you to drown would alleviate that pretty quickly.”

“Legion ordered me to kill all remaining members of the Fiach Dubh I could locate,” the Fae grumbled. “He left orders to leave you and the Weir alive. That’s the only reason I didn’t stick a blade in your lovely bride back there.”

Jack shut his eyes for a brief second, trying not to slam the Fae’s head inside out against the bricks. “Of course not. Because he used me to find them and wanted me to know it.”

The Fae gave him a nasty, razor-edged grin. “That sounds about right.”

Pete came to his shoulder. “I think we need to get Declan away from this bastard before he has a stroke.”

“But I have so much more to tell you,” the Fae purred. “How you led me right to your old order. How that old man, Wallace, put up such a fight when we came for him. His blood will be in the plaster and wood of that pub forever. Fitting, if you think about it…”

“You listen to me.” Jack’s voice didn’t shake, and he was glad of that, because he wanted to make sure the message got through. “You tell Legion that there is nothing I will not do to see him dead at my feet. Nothing he can leverage against me, because if it comes down to me or him, I’ll ride the both of us straight down to Hell.”

“He’s counting on it,” the Fae said, starting to laugh again. “He wants you alive, you stupid sack of meat. He wants you to be a witness to his glory, to watch every last thing you care about burn. And you will, mark my words. Your crow brothers, your loves, your daughter…”

Pete’s boot connected with the side of the Fae’s head, snapping it to the side. He slumped. She stood back, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Prop him up so he doesn’t drown if you like. I don’t give a fuck.”

She turned around to help Declan, and Jack nudged the Fae with his toe until he sat upright again. “More than you deserve, you bastard,” he said. The Fae moaned, and Jack bent over, so his lips almost touched the creature’s ears. “If you get out of here, you tell Legion I’m coming for him,” Jack whispered. “No more games and empty threats. Him or me.”

“Jack!” Pete called. Declan sagged against her, but he looked a bit less green around the gills, and he accepted Jack’s arm when he offered it.

Pete scouted ahead, but they made it to the piers without further incident. Jack found Declan some dry clothes in a crane operator’s shed, while Pete sat with him, her hand over his, listening as he rocked back and forth, a few tears dribbling down his pale cheeks.

“We should get on the ferry back to the UK,” Jack told Pete. “Just in case any more visitors from fairyland show their faces.”

Pete frowned. “What about Declan? We can’t just leave him here.”

Jack looked down at the psychic, who sniffed and shook his head. “It’s all right. I’ll just wait here until they gut me like a pig. Or like a fish, now. I always wanted to live near the ocean. It sings to me. Quiets down the sight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack said. “Just come with us, and we’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

“Moira,” Declan said, rubbing his temples. “Moira could tell me what was real and what wasn’t. Now what will I do?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Jack said. “Look, I don’t have any answers, Declan. My bright idea was to get blitzed on heroin to keep the sight at bay. But I know what you’re going through, and Pete and I just want to help you.”

“Liar,” Declan said. “You want me to tell you how to keep the storm away. Well, I don’t have an umbrella. We’re all going to die. Except you. You’ll be alive, your body, but you’re just as dead as the rest of us, once he takes his place.”

“You can doomsay all you like if you just get on the bloody ferry,” Jack said. “Come on, mate. Humor me.”

“If you ride on the storm, if you don’t hide, then you can fly,” Declan whispered. “Let the wings lift you. Don’t rip out the feathers. Put the blood in the air, blood he can use to water the earth of his new world, his new graveyard, ashes of the dead raining down on your tongue.”

Pete looked up at him, and Jack couldn’t meet her eyes. “What is he saying?”

Jack felt a headache spike behind his eyes, and he rubbed his forehead viciously. “Nothing. It’s nothing that can help.” He was not taking up the mantle of the Morrigan. Because if he did, he wouldn’t stop the end—he would be directly responsible for it. A different apocalypse was still an apocalypse, wasn’t it?

“Ashes, ashes,” Declan singsonged sadly. “We all fall down.”