Dark Days

CHAPTER 7

Jack hated the way the air smelled in Hell. The City belched smoke from its furnaces and factories, and the heavy, hot winds borne out of the surrounding white bone deserts invaded his nostrils with the worst elements of both a garbage tip on a hot day and a vigorously burning tire fire.

He hated the sounds, too. The clanging of the heavy iron trains that ran on tracks fifty stories above the cesspits at street level. The snarling and hissing of the elemental demons that prowled every alley and dark byway like packs of especially hungry dogs. And the screaming. It was like flies buzzing, after a time—the screams of tormented souls floating from every corner of Hell.

Belial’s new quarters, as a Prince, were two thirds up the tallest spire in the City, the triple-towered fortress that, to Jack’s eyes, had always resembled a pitchfork. Jack wondered if that was on purpose. Demons weren’t known for their sense of humor.

“Nice place,” he said, looking around the flat. Twenty-foot ceilings and black glass floors aside, the space wasn’t what Jack had imagined for a ruler of Hell. Everything was black or white, and aside from a rug made from the hide of some furry white creature that had three curling horns sprouting from its lifeless head, everything was made of stone or glass.

“It’ll do,” Belial said. Jack examined himself in a mirror framed in interlocked skeletal hands. He didn’t bothering asking if the bones were real.

“Bit severe, isn’t it?” he said. “Sort of reminds me of a monastery by way of a gay nightclub.”

“You implying something?” Belial asked, standing next to Jack so their reflections overlapped.

Jack turned his head. He didn’t like the demon that close. “You working up the courage to tell me something?”

Belial flashed him that grin and slapped him on the shoulder. “Get it all out of your system now. The Princes aren’t nearly as tolerant of that sewage pit you call a mouth.”

“You know,” Jack said, brushing Belial’s grip off him, “you’re one of them now. Still getting used to that heavy crown?”

“I include myself in that statement,” Belial said. “Now shut up and stay close.”

The first and only time Jack had stood before the Triumvirate, he’d seen them in a dull sort of corporate office, which fit his imagining of the Princes as a stodgy bunch of bureaucrats obsessed with bargains and rules and divvying up Hell so they all got an equal slice of the pie.

This time, Belial led him through smooth black hallways, arched at the top, which looked as if they’d been carved by the passage of some great serpent rather than any tool.

The room he opened the black double doors to was smaller than Jack had expected—too small for comfort. The remaining duo of Princes sat on either side of a long table inlaid with the bones of a winged creature, floating in clear resin like a fossil chipped out of the ground. The walls held a selection of paintings depicting medieval tortures, in graphic and colorful detail.

Jack sucked in a breath to dispel the tightness in his chest. They needed him, for whatever reason, he told himself. And he needed them, for the time being, if they were going to call a halt to the event sending him nervous breakdowns through the frequencies of the Black.

“I’ll never understand your proclivity for running to the humans whenever something goes wrong, Belial,” said the Prince on the right. Baal, Jack remembered, a bloke who did an even more piss-poor job with his human form than Belial. Baal had snake’s eyes and sallow skin spotted with sores. His tongue was twice as long and thin as a man’s, which gave his voice a curious sibilance. Bald, he resembled something that lived in the dark and popped out at night to eat unwitting household pets.

“You don’t understand a lot of things.” Belial took his seat at the head of the table. “You still think this can all be smoothed over.”

“He’s just an elemental, for fuck’s sake,” said the other Prince, Beelzebub. Where Baal couldn’t be bothered to look human, Beelzebub looked almost too human, slick and blond as a film star, and about as plastic. Belial at least looked like he had blood pumping through his veins. Beelzebub resembled one of those dolls that came to life and tried to carve up your family with a chainsaw.

“Wait, wait,” Jack said. Belial slitted his eyes, and Jack ignored the demon’s poisonous look. Belial may have managed to oust Azrael, the oldest of the three Princes, but he was still the same tosser who’d made Jack’s life a pain in the arse for over a decade. “This problem of yours is an elemental demon? Not even one of you Named fuckwits?”

“He is one of the legion, yes,” Baal hissed. “Is there a problem, skin sack?”

“No,” Jack said, spreading his hands. “No problem. Impressed, actually, that one of your office drones managed to get you three in such a tizzy.”

“Do yourself a favor, Mr. Winter, and stop talking before I turn your tongue into an appetizer,” said Beelzebub. “For fuck’s sake, Belial, do you think it’s funny to torture us with breathers?”

Jack kept his mouth shut. Baal was creepy and Belial was irritating, but he’d always had the sense that Beelzebub might actually be unbalanced. For a demon, that was saying something.

“You two knobs know full well how far his influence has spread into the Black and the daylight,” Belial said. “Face it—we’re demons. We need a man on the ground if we’re going to nip this in the bud.”

“Maybe we should give him something,” Beelzebub said. “A token concession so he’ll stop all this nonsense in Hell. Maybe something like … Europe.”

Belial’s fist hit the table, and the resin cracked. “We are not,” the demon snarled, “giving one fucking inch to something that crawled out of the ashes and the mud and challenged the rule of the Named. He’s spitting in your eye, Beelzebub. If your head wasn’t so far up your own colon perhaps you’d have noticed.”

“Listen, you upstart prick…” Beelzebub began, but Baal opened his mouth and let out a long hiss that landed in Jack’s ears like scalding water.

“Enough.” Baal’s tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air. “This matter will not conclude if we are eating one another’s entrails like the carrion birds above this city. It will only turn out in our favor if we can all agree.”

“Excuse me.” Jack held up a finger, and thought by the intensity of the glares turned on him that it might not have been his brightest idea ever. Still, he had their attention now, so there was nothing to do but press on. “This is all fantastic,” he said. “Believe me, I love watching you two gentlemen rake Belial’s pale hide over the coals, but I’m not in your little loop. You maybe want to bring me up to speed, since you’re asking for my help?”

“Are you going to shut him up or am I?” Beelzebub snarled at Belial. “You know, you may have gotten Azrael in the back when he was weak, but I know what you are, Belial. You’re as much of a bottom-feeder as our little problem is.”

Belial pushed his chair back, the screech making Jack flinch, and came around the table to grab him by the arm. “Couldn’t just keep your gob stopped, could you?” he snarled.

Jack didn’t argue as Belial dragged him out of the room. “Tough crowd, those two,” he said. “You’d almost think they were plotting your death behind your back or summat.”

“Of course they are,” Belial said. “And if I get the chance, I’ll throw both of them off the top of this building and take the whole pie for myself. That’s how it works down here, Jack. And now you made me look weak in there.”

Jack wrestled himself from the demon’s grip. “I didn’t do shite to you, Belial. You wanted me to dance, but you didn’t tell me the steps. So either you fill me in on all the lines, not just the alarmist crap about the end of days, or I’m going home.”

He held his breath, feeling his blood throbbing against his neck and his temples. Bluffing with a demon was something he never would have concieved of a few years ago. Back then, Belial owned his soul and scared Jack shitless. Now, though, he’d seen that there was so much worse out there than demons, even one with as much power behind him as Belial.

Belial sighed. “Come with me,” he said, leading them back through the smooth halls, past occasional white-uniformed servants who pressed their bodies against the wall when Belial passed. They were all sorts of common demons—berserkers, scavengers, others that Jack had never clapped eyes on—but they all shrank back from Belial like he was contagious.

Jack could see how someone as power hungry as Belial could get used to this, and how any threat would be like a gun held to his head. He was also starting to wonder if their problems were even connected, or if Belial had manipulated him again into doing the demon’s scut work like he had with Abbadon.

Then again, Abbadon had almost ended the world as Jack knew it, so he followed Belial up and up, through lifts and steps until they finally came out to the top of the spire, the noxious wind stealing Jack’s breath and hearing.

Belial pointed down toward the City spread out before Jack like a dissected corpse. “Look!” he shouted above the wailing wind.

Jack had been to the City before, and while it had been full of smoke and chaos and suffering then, now it looked as if it were actually burning, the figures on the elevated streets and tracks and into the open sewers below churning in a panicked mass.

It was a lot like his vision, Jack realized. People—or demons—with their lives reduced to destruction and misery struggling to survive just long enough to get away.

Gazing down at the broad avenue leading up to the spire, hundreds of feet below, Jack saw a mass of demons, elementals, and even the damned frothing outside the gates of the palace. Vehicles and shops were burning, and even from here he could hear the crunch of bone and the screams of pain as the crowd tore into both one another and the black-suited thugs arrayed in a line before the gates. The guards were Baal’s troops, the Fenris, bone-breakers who were probably having the time of their lives.

Belial took Jack’s arm again and guided him inside, down the lifts, and back to Belial’s flat. The demon stalked across the empty space and poured out two glasses of ruby-red liquid from a black decanter. “Drink?”

Jack eyed the liquid. It moved in a suspicious, oily manner remniscent of spoiled salad dressing. “You think I’m stupid?”

Belial lifted one dark eyebrow. “You really want me to answer that?”

Jack waved the glass off. Belial shrugged and sipped from it. “Your loss.”

“I know you’re never going to give me a straight answer without that babbling brook of bullshit you relish so dearly,” Jack said. “So I’m just going to guess this bloke who has your knickers in a twist started that riot down there?”

He watched Belial, but the demon had a good poker face even for a resident of the Pit. He just drank his drink, staring unblinkingly back at Jack. Jack sighed. “I’m further going to guess he’s someone who didn’t take kindly to you plopping yourself down in the vacant seat on the Triumvirate.” The ruling body of Hell had been unchanged for millennia, until Belial had stuck his upwardly mobile nose into it. The demon who’d once been a bottom-feeding soul-scrounger was now one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Jack had to admit that he was impressed with Belial’s acumen. Say what you wanted about the bastard, but he knew how to step on you to get up the ladder.

Belial sucked his teeth, his ruby tongue flicking over his pale lips. “Maybe.”

“You take out the oldest Prince, and his loyalists bash your windows in?” Jack said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what’d you expect? A gift basket?”

Belial gave a smile that wasn’t directed at Jack, but at the chaos below. “Those aren’t Azrael’s boys.”

Jack shrugged. “No offense, but it’s hard to tell you bastards apart.”

“Some are, of course,” Belial said. “He commanded more legions than anyone. But there are the Egregors—that’s Dagon—and every other kind of fuckwit follower you could name.” He turned that smile on Jack now, and Jack felt the chill in his gut that would never go away, as his warm, beating human heart let him know that no matter how slick and mannered Belial’s demeanor, he was a predator and Jack was a meat sack.

“This isn’t a little upset that can be solved with a few thousand bodies and somebody’s head served up at the dinner table,” Belial said. “This is just a slice. It’s everywhere in Hell, Jack. Do you think anything that’s happened in the last year would have been allowed if everything was fine and dandy?”

Jack shrugged. “Considering the way you lot blather on about the end times, I figured you weren’t too worried.”

That was a lie. Things upstairs had been fucked for a long time. Old gods wandered with impunity; the original demon, Abbadon, escaped his prison to try to kickstart the apocalypse; slices of Purgatory, the one spot uncontrollable by demon, man, or force of nature, seeped into the daylight world and nearly sucked all of England into a plane filled with wild magic and ancient entities starving for human flesh.

“Hell used to rule all,” Belial said. He didn’t sound angry, or even boastful. “The Princes and the Named would never allow anything—in the Black, the daylight world, or anywhere else—to happen without weighing the impact. And if it didn’t serve our interests, it wasn’t allowed. That’s gone now. And it’s not just outside the Pit, it’s at our doorstep.” He pointed at the crowd. “Half of Baal’s Fenris have gone rogue. The damned everywhere have started turning on the Named who rule them. And the Named … they’re all too busy figuring out how they’re going to axe me from my seat to pay the slightest fucking bit of attention. Not to mention that those two soft-headed shite-for-brains I sit on the Triumvirate with think the way to make all this unseemly upset go away is to cut this fucker a deal.” He knocked back the drink and handed it to a stooped, bat-winged creature who appeared with a tray.

“Still not getting how your problem controlling your people translates to the end of my world,” Jack said. “And frankly, if this is a demon-on-demon problem, I couldn’t care less. You lot have always been squabblers.”

Belial braced himself on the railing. “We can’t rule from the shadows any longer, it’s true,” he said. “And the world is going to end, sooner rather than later. But if Hell falls, Jack … it will be so much worse than even I can imagine. Hell is the one constant of existence, from as far back as anything has a memory. If the realm collapses, then everything will. Every plane will blend into one, and then everything will go dark.”

“Waiting to hear what you think I can do to stop this,” Jack said. He knew Belial was right, of course—if too much magic was allowed to bleed into the daylight world from the Black, or too much of the Land of the Dead was allowed to bleed into the living, and you got things like … well, exactly like what had been going on for the last year. If Hell ceased to be Hell, that didn’t even bear thinking about.

“Everything you see before you is the result of soft-headed fanaticism,” Belial said. “The result of one demon—not even a Named, mind you—who has somehow convinced an astounding swath of idiots that he will be the one ruler of the Pit. That the Triumvirate was never meant to rule, and that the Princes, me especially, need to be skinned alive.”

“Welcome to my world,” Jack said. “Every one has its share of zealots.”

“I don’t know how he’s turning these people to his side,” Belial said. “Named, legions, everyone. But I’m going to find out, with your help. And then I’m going to make a tartare out of his balls in the public square, and all of this is going to stop.”

“Again,” Jack said, “this bloke sounds rather more muscular than what somebody walking around in a human body, with bones and internal organs and whatnot, would be smart to tangle with.”

“That’s the trick,” Belial said. “He’s hiding out on Earth, and sometime in the near future, something he does while hiding there sets off those nasty little clips that have been playing in your head. But I don’t know what, and in order to find out I need someone he won’t see coming. It can’t be a demon, and for a human, you’re pretty useful.”

He grabbed Jack and dug his nails into Jack’s palm, drawing a little blood. Jack started to protest, but his mind filled with images, like photographs falling down into a chaotic pile, and his tongue tasted of burning penny. He felt vomit boil up into his throat and tried to scream, but the onslaught stopped as quickly as it had begun.

Belial wiped his fingers on the lapel of his suit. “Like that? I can transfer memories via blood now. Perks of being a Prince.”

“Fuck you,” Jack groaned, clutching his forehead.

“Lucky you have that second sight,” Belial said. “Only works on psychics. Normal blokes would have beans on toast for brain if I did that.”

“I feel so special,” Jack grumbled.

“Everything my spies have been able to gather about where he’s hiding is there,” Belial said. “I need you to find him, and I need you to use your particular talent for being a sneaky cunt to help me smack this bastard back to the Middle Ages before whatever he’s got planned goes down, and he flips the switch on the end of everything.”

“If he figures out that I’m spying on him and turns me into a leather jacket?” Jack said. “I have a wife and kid, you know.”

Belial shrugged. “I suggest you don’t let him figure it out,” he said. “Because I don’t think I need to spell out what’ll happen to your lovely wife and darling daughter if this fuckwit manages to bring down Hell.”

He didn’t. Odd as it was to know his survival depended on a race of creatures as despicable as demons, in a place as dark and dingy as Hell, Jack didn’t argue that Belial had a point.

But that didn’t mean he was going to his mission with a smile on his face.

“If you want me to tangle with the demonic version of Jerry Falwell, I’ll need something to defend myself with besides my good looks and charm,” he said.

Belial inclined his head. “Of course. This way to the armory.”

Jack cast one more look out over the city before they went inside. Thunderheads had built up over the desert, and they rushed in on the screaming winds, bathing the street below in rain, sending rioters scurrying for cover and washing the black blood into the gutters.