Dark Days

CHAPTER 33

Usually when his sight was so bothered, Jack dreamed—vivid, terrible dreams informed by the psychic residue of whatever space he was in when he blacked out. This time, though, he had a real dream. Seth had taken him to his summer cottage when he was fifteen, the night before his birthday.

“Thought we might spend the weekend here, and I could show you a few hexes,” he said. “You don’t need to spend your birthday listening to Wallace yell at the news channel.”

It was August, and the green lay over the countryside like a fog, making everything appear smeared and unreal, bringing the heavy scent of cut grass and sheep manure, tinged with the nearby ocean spray, to his nostrils.

Seth looked at Jack sideways while he regarded the mage’s small tumbledown cottage. “You ever had a proper birthday before?”

“Once,” he said. “When I was five, me mum got a clown.”

“Christ, that’s horrible,” Seth said. “Had I known, I would have bought you a few sessions on the couch as a gift for this particular anniversary.”

Jack watched as one crow, and then another, landed on the ridgeline of Seth’s thatched roof. “I think I’m way beyond that,” he said, getting out of the car. Seth did as well, also watching the birds. Nothing escaped his gaze. He took the cigarette from behind his ear, making it disappear in his right hand and reappear in his left.

Jack remembered thinking that was odd. Seth only did his sleight of hand tricks when he was nervous.

“Listen, kiddo,” he said. “You’re going to hear this sooner or later, so I’m just going to tell you. One day soon, you’re going to hear some things about yourself that are going to be hard to take. I don’t want you to get upset, though. I want you to know how I saw you when we met, and know that won’t change.”

Jack watched another crow join the two staring at him. They seemed awfully tame, but he’d spent his entire life in cities, surrounded by nothing but pigeons. What did he know about wild birds?

Seth thumped the top of the car. “You listening to me, boyo?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. He could hear the sea roaring at the foot of the cliffs beyond Seth’s front yard. It was the only sound aside from their voices. He’d never been anywhere so quiet.

“You’re a good lad,” Seth said. “Whatever happens, don’t you go and forget that.”

The crows took flight, screaming, and Seth didn’t move until they were out of sight, black dots on the gray sky that eventually faded away into nothing.

The light of the sky turned into the bare bulb of a hanging lamp glowering down at him, and Jack squinted into it. “If this is the afterlife, the ambience is shit,” he said to whomever might be listening.

Pete’s face slid into his vision, slightly blurred at the edges. Jack took inventory of his parts and felt slow and dopey, the warm caress of opiates warming his bloodstream.

“I’m sorry,” Pete said. Her voice was full of vibration, and it came to him as if through a pane of wavy glass, distorted and high. “You were screaming. They had to give you a shot.”

“They?” Jack said. His throat was sore when he talked, and he could barely make out his own words.

“Relax, Mr. Winter,” said Morwenna Morgenstern, coming to stand next to Pete. “You’re in good hands.”

“Fuck me,” Jack groaned at the sight of her. “Pete, what’d you do?”

“Called some people who could help,” she said. “Now, relax. They didn’t undress you or anything. They’re just giving us a safe place to fix you up.”

Even in his excessively drugged state, Jack picked up the signal. The Prometheans hadn’t searched him. They didn’t have the blade.

That helped the screaming inside his mind quiet down a bit. To come this far, only to be foiled by the Dudley Do-Rights of the Black, would sting more than any betrayal from Belial.

Which made him remember that he owed Belial a kick in the balls, and he tried to sit up and get off the table.

“Whoa, whoa,” Morwenna said, shoving him back down. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere, Mr. Winter.” She turned away, out of Jack’s line of sight. “Victor, we need another shot over here! Now.”

“Bad girl,” Jack said, a giggle bubbling out of him unbidden. “You know I was a drug addict?”

“Believe me, Mr. Winter,” Morwenna sighed. “I know more about you than I ever wanted to.”

“You lie,” Jack said, giving her a wide smile. “You know you can’t get enough of me, luv. Uptight broads like you always fall for the dark, dangerous types.…”

“All right,” Pete said as Morwenna’s shambling horror, Victor, came into view with a syringe. “If you don’t knock him out with that I’m going to do it with my foot.”

“Calm down,” Morwenna said. “He’ll be dreaming, Ms. Caldecott. Don’t you worry.”