Devil's Business

CHAPTER 12

On the freeway, Alligator pulled out a black canvas sack. “You understand,” he said. “Our boss is pretty privacy conscious.”

“Fuck off,” Jack said. “He wants me so bad, he can bloody well take me without a sack on me head.”

Alligator sighed. “Figured you might say that.”

Jack felt a prick in the side of his neck, and whipped his head around to see Alligator holding a disposable syringe. “Nothin’ to worry about,” he told Jack. “Just a little shot of dream-time. You’ll be right as rain by the time we get where we’re goin’.”

Jack tried to reach for the man’s thick, sweaty neck, or even merely curse at him, but his mouth was stuffed with cotton wool and his brain was flying out the window, lifting up and then falling into crushing depths.

He tasted the hot wind and felt embers land on his exposed skin, face and chest and arms. Belial stood with him at the lip of a chasm, smooth sides made from riveted iron plunging into blackness his eyes couldn’t fathom. Far away, the fires of Hell burned, keeping the souls of the damned hot and aware of every second of their torture as they powered the great city that shredded the horizon like the claws of a beast in the tender pink flesh of the sky.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Belial told him, but Jack couldn’t step away, couldn’t stop staring at the blackness below.

“This is an old place,” Belial said. “A damned place. Nobody should be here. How did you slip away and find it?” His face in Hell was different, reptilian and slit-eyed, two sets of lids blinking against the hot wind. A forked tongue raked over his pointed teeth. He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, black nails digging bloody half moons. “I’m not finished with you yet,” he said. “It’ll be a long time before I put you down there, Jack. You don’t need to start making friends just yet.”

The blackness rippled gently far below, the slightest echo across his sight. Just a match flare in the endless dark, and then it was gone. At the time, panic and fear had overridden his senses. He’d managed to slip from his cell, cross acres of bone and ash, turning to glassy sand and finally to foot-shredding rocks, before he’d fetched up here. Now Belial was leading him back toward the fires and the cities of Hell, to start his sentence all over again, and the next time escape wouldn’t be simply a matter of physical pain.

But now that he was remembering, he heard a whisper drift up from the ravine, from that ripple across his sight.

Hello, Jack.

Jack came awake when the SUV guttered through a rut, and slit his eyes open to get his bearings before Alligator caught on. Another mansion, another gated drive—but this wasn’t the cookie-cutter glass-and-rock type that the Herreras had been murdered in. This was an actual mansion, a pile of rocks that looked like William Randolph Hearst could have put his feet up and felt at home.

“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” said Alligator, jabbing Jack in the tender side of his ribs.

The drugs left him thickheaded and slow, but Jack shook off Alligator’s fat, gold-encrusted hand and walked under his own power. The mansion had double doors, banded in iron, a giant Mission-style statement that whoever lived there was better than you.

Iron bands could mean other things, too, and Jack looked up as Alligator and Parker skirted him through the door. A protection hex hung above. A magic user, then, and somebody who either knew what he was doing or knew somebody he could pay to do the job right. The hex was strong, and Jack felt it examine and discard him as he crossed the threshold.

“This way,” Alligator said. Parker broke off for parts unknown, and Jack found himself escorted through a high-ceilinged sitting room where dust filled his nose, and out to the ubiquitous pool. This one was surrounded by statues, pitted and chipped from wind and sun to be faceless and in many cases limbless. A thin scrim of algae floated on top of the pool and a dead squirrel bumped against the filter.

A single figure stood with his back to them, looking out over the water and to the drop into the canyon beyond.

“Mr. Winter,” he said, and turned. “Thanks so much for agreeing to meet me.”

“He didn’t exactly agree, boss,” said Alligator. “Had to dose him up.”

“That’s unfortunate.” The man approached Jack and turned his head this way and that with a strong, tanned hand. “You five by five, Winter?”

“I’ve felt a lot worse,” Jack said. Nothing sparked when they touched. So far nobody except Parker had pinged his radar as talented in any way besides paying people to do dirty errands for them.

“Good to hear,” said the man. “Give us a minute.”

Alligator glared at Jack from under his thick eyebrows, but he drew back into the sitting room, watching Jack from behind the stained-glass French doors.

“Sorry about my man,” Jack’s host said. He went to a poolside bar and dropped two ice cubes into a glass, covering them with scotch. “Drink?”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to go any further down the rabbit hole,” Jack said. He was still slow and sounded as if he were shouting at himself from down a long tunnel, but he could at least move and speak under his own power. Running and screaming might soon have to follow, so he was counting the small favors.

“That wasn’t my intention,” the man said. He sipped the scotch, nodded as if it had said all the right things, and gestured Jack into a high-backed wicker chair poolside. It creaked under his weight and smelled of mold. “I have to say,” his host said, “it really is a thrill to have you sitting here.”

“Your life’s not very exciting then, is it?” Jack asked. “Who the fuck are you, mate? What do you want with me?”

“My name’s Harlan Sanford,” the man said. “I’m what’s called a money man, or a silent partner—I finance films, but I don’t need to get jerked off by having my name scroll up the screen.”

“Nice for you,” Jack said. He shoved his chair back and stood up. “I’ll just be finding my way home now.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re going home any time soon,” Sanford said. “There’s a cash bounty on your head over there in the UK—not to mention bragging rights as the one who offed Jack Winter.” He held out his hand. “Sit. I promise we have things in common and a lot to talk about.”

Standing wasn’t working out very well, so Jack sat back down. Vertigo rippled at the edges of his vision.

“The film business is just a job for me,” Sanford said. “I reinvest, and I’m a collector. I think under different circumstances you and I could have had a nice afternoon chatting about magic.”

Jack tipped his head back. The sun was coming up, and it sent jets of sickly green light refracting from the pool into his face. “What are we chatting about instead?”

Sanford tossed back the rest of his scotch. “I know that Belial’s been in contact with you. Slippery bastard, isn’t he?”

Jack lifted one eyebrow. “You and he pals, then?”

“Oh, not at all,” Sanford said. “Hate fucking demons. Never had a transaction with one that didn’t end in a big hassle for me and some fork-tongued son of a bitch trying to screw me out of what I was owed. Like dealing with studio execs, except demons have better manners.” He took a pack of gum from his pocket and shoved a wad into his mouth. “Quitting smoking,” he explained. “Belial is a moron,” Sanford continued. “A power-grubbing, shortsighted moron, and greedy even for a demon, which should tell you something.”

Jack laughed. Sanford was either insane or stupid, and he’d find out soon enough that demons had a way of finding out when humans mocked them.

“I know why he’s here,” Sanford said. “He wants what I want, and that means you and I want the same thing, and we can help each other.”

Jack rubbed his forehead. “No offense, mate, but when somebody offers me an out that’s too good to be true, it usually means something worse is just out of sight.”

Sanford laughed. “Cynical bastard, aren’t you?” He stood up. “Come with me, Jack.”

He led Jack back inside, past Alligator, who grinned and nodded at him. Despite the stuffy air of the house, Alligator was wrapped in a ribbed, shiny turtleneck that stretched nearly transparent over his pot belly.

“Again, sorry about them,” Sanford said. “But in my line, good security is worth its weight.”

“And what is your line, exactly?” Jack said.

Sanford stopped at a door with a keypad and punched in a long sequence. “I told you,” he said. “I’m a collector.”

The door revealed a set of stairs leading down, cut directly into the stone beneath the mansion. “Wine cellar,” Sanford said. “This house was one of the first built on this stretch of Sunset. Doug Fairbanks lived here at one point. Very nice address.”

“If you want a round of applause,” Jack said, “I’ll try to muster it up.”

Sanford flipped a big old-fashioned circuit, the kind used to fry a bloke in an electric chair. “I started collecting when I was twelve,” he said. “I was a dumb kid from Ohio, and a neighbor down the street died. My friends and I went poking around the yard sale, and I found a little box, a box full of bones.

“She was a witch,” Sanford continued, as lights flickered on, bulbs strung along the length of the stairs, “and they were children’s knucklebones.”

Another door was set into the rock at the bottom of the stairs, brand new brushed steel, locked with a keypad and a submarine-hatch wheel. “I don’t have much in the way of my own talents,” Sanford said. “But I knew those bones had power, and I wanted it. I started looking for more, going out for weeks at a time in this old rusted-out pickup, all over the Midwest, poking through barns, pawing through junk shops, talking my way into dying men’s bedrooms and dark secrets.”

Sanford punched in another code and spun the hatch open. “This is my life’s work. Not many people ever see it.”

The small room under the rock was crammed stiflingly full, wooden shelves running floor to ceiling, with a glass display case filling the center. A small reading table, chair, and lamp were shoved into a corner. Rather than the somber atmosphere of a museum, or the crammed comfort of Jack’s own flat, this place was full and filthy, dust piled inches thick on top of the cases, the scent of closed-up air and human sweat wafting in Jack’s face. He’d never been so reminded of a troll cave in his life.

Sanford hit another switch and lights bloomed from hidden alcoves. “What do you think?”

Jack sneezed. “Your maid’s not doing a bang-up job, is she?”

Sanford spread his hands. “Los Angeles is a nexus of power, Jack. It’s why when the lines were drawn, neither side claimed it. Nobody wanted to constantly defend their territory, so it became neutral ground. It draws these objects in like a tornado, and people, too. Los Angeles has serial killers and mass murderers like some cities have coffee shops and sports teams. I find them where I can, the relics and the memorabilia, and I keep them safe.” He sat at the desk and pulled a red cloth book to him. “Do you know the name Basil Locke?”

Jack examined the crammed shelves. Most of the objects whispered against his sight, and a few screamed. Sanford might be full of shit, but he was right about his collection. There was power here, bad mojo, enough of it to light up the Sunset Strip. “No,” he said. “Should I?”

“Movie star in the 1930s, mostly B pictures, crime stuff and screwball comedies,” said Sanford. “He never caught on the way Grant and Gable did. Birth name was Brian Chernik. Russian Jew, raised in England, fell in with a bad crowd.” Sanford shoved the book across the table. “Our old boy Basil kept a grimoire, detailing all his attempts to summon and control the forces of Hell.”

“Demons,” Jack said. Many of the things Sanford had collected seemed innocuous—costume jewelry, photographs of crime scenes and autopsies, one bloodstained woman’s pump—but they all vibrated, malignancy and terror bleeding through from the Black. The man knew the power of objects that had been in close proximity to death. “I’m guessing that ended well for him.”

“Better than you could’ve imagined,” said Sanford. “Locke found something else down there, something that could make a demon scream.”

Belial had certainly looked like he was pissing in his shorts. Jack left the shelves of bloody-minded objects and turned to Sanford. “All right,” he said. “You got my attention.”

“Hell wasn’t always the place for the Named and their legions,” Sanford said. “There were other things, older things. You’ve seen them.”

“I wouldn’t call brushing elbows with Nergal seeing,” Jack said. “In fact, I’d die happy if I never saw anything like him ever again.”

“The demons overthrew their makers, as is the way of all things,” Sanford said. “They couldn’t kill them, so they locked them away with the old gods. One slipped out here and there, and the demons hunted them and put them back—nothing anyone without a talent would notice as unusual. Wars and nuclear bombs and that sort of thing as cover.” He stroked the cover of the red book. “But your little stunt with Nergal cracked the door open, and now they’re out. They’re all out. Elvis has left the building.” He tapped the page. “Basil Locke was the one who first spoke to them, who realized that things other than demons could be called up from Hell.”

Jack looked at the scribbling and the diagrams contained in the loose pages of the red book, all of it with the distinct, manic edge of the deranged. He’d seen enough psychotic scribbling, both from his mother while she was on pills and from various mages who’d dipped a bit too deep into the pool of hallucinations and trance magic, to recognize crazy when he read it.

“How do I know this isn’t complete shit?” he asked Sanford. “And furthermore, what’s it got to do with me and Belial?”

“Belial thinks he can lock a lock that’s already been broken,” said Sanford. “He thinks if he’s the one to put this right by making you his hunting dog, he’ll move up the ladder in Hell. But he’s afraid of them, too, and we can use that.” He touched the sigil. “If we can get them on our side, Belial will never bother you or your wife again.”

“She’s not my wife,” Jack said reflexively. Sanford had to be munching on insanity for breakfast and shitting it out to think he could toe up to Belial using some nebulous spell to control the demon’s boogeyman.

“My mistake,” Sanford said. “But think of your child, at least. You really think Belial, or any other demon with ambitions, is going to let the child of the crow-mage grow up in peace?”

Jack shook his head. “I’ve already got that covered,” he said. Sanford was tanned and trustworthy, his graying hair and straight white grin making him appear as your kind uncle, to whom you could tell anything. Worse than a demon, because he was only a man, and still trying to cut a deal with things ten times worse than the population of the Pit. “My deal’s with Belial, mate,” he said. “Not with you.”

“Come on,” Sanford said. “I’m giving you the chance to slip this yoke once and for all. To never worry again about a demon troubling you and yours.”

“I get that, yeah, and it’d be grand,” Jack said. “But somehow, I think I’m missing your part of this. I don’t believe in altruism. Especially not from slimy gits like you.”

“Well, of course not,” Sanford said. “This isn’t the town of money for nothing, Jack. I’ll get what I want out of this, in addition to a warm fuzzy feeling.”

“And that would be?” Jack said. Sanford shut the book and drummed his fingers on the table.

“Belial,” he said. “Look, I’ve got every kind of damn thing in here—I have John Wayne Gacy’s paintings, I have Elizabeth Short’s hair, I have a guitar that belonged to Charlie Manson, and I have the dress Sharon Tate was wearing when his freaks cut her open. I’ve got objects of power, I’ve got mage’s grimoires, I’ve got a skull from a sorcerer who was killed by Vlad the Impaler. I have an original edition of Dracula, with blood spells written in the margins. But they’re things, Jack. And as I get older, things get less and less interesting to me.” He gestured at the blank back wall of the cellar. “I want a demon, a living demon, in chains. I want Belial. And if we find what Belial lost, what he fears, I’ll get him and you’ll get your peace.”

“You’re fucking nuts,” Jack said, before he could stop himself. “You think you can tie Belial down like some kind of pet?”

“I don’t plan to pet him,” Sanford said, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I plan to study him.”

“No,” Jack said. “No fucking way. I’ve seen what happens when men try and put one over on a demon, and I think I’ll just back away slowly and leave you to your little catacombs.”

“You could do that,” Sanford said. “Or you could watch while I let Gator and Parker murder your wife and unborn child, and guarantee that when they’re done, what Belial’s boogeyman did to those families will look like a flower arrangement.” He gave Jack the same slick smile, the let’s-make-a-deal smile. “Gator has certain … proclivities. Your wife is just his type.”

Jack didn’t realize he’d moved until he was there, hand around Sanford’s neck, slamming the man’s skull into the rock. He hadn’t had a blackout rage in a long while—heroin didn’t lend itself to much except nodding and jittering around looking for your next score. But here he was, slamming Sanford’s head into the rough wall until a smear of blood appeared, and he felt fucking fantastic about it.

“She’s not my wife,” he told the man. “And you leave her the hell out of this.”

A fist pounded against the other side of the door. “Sir!” Gator hollered. “You all right in there?”

Sanford laughed at him, as much as he could with Jack’s fist digging into his windpipe. “Security camera,” he said. “State of the art.”

“Sir!” Gator shouted. “We’re comin’ in.”

“You didn’t want her involved, you should have been there when Belial was whispering in her ear,” Sanford hissed. “But you weren’t. You let yourself get beat by something that crawls through the filth at the bottom of Hell and you left her alone. Now what are you going to do about it?”

The door groaned as it started to open, bolts and hinges protesting. Jack let Sanford go, feeling his heart throbbing and bile working its way up his throat. He hadn’t properly beaten the shit out of somebody in ages, and the wobbly, lightheaded rush had him flying.

Gator burst in, followed by Parker, and grabbed Jack by the arms, slamming him face first into the desk and scattering Sanford’s papers and Locke’s book like a flight of startled doves. “You piece of shit,” Gator snarled. “I knew I’d have trouble with you.”

Parker knotted his fingers in Jack’s hair and slammed his forehead against the edge of the desk, short and sharp. Jack saw the flashbulb, and felt the hot, spicy sting of blood in his eyes.

“That’s enough,” Sanford rasped. He rubbed his neck and fixed his collar. “Just a misunderstanding. Mr. Winter and I have it all worked out now.” He fixed Jack with his pale eyes. “Don’t we?”

Jack blinked the blood from his eyes. It’d stop, eventually, and leave him looking like he’d been doing battle in the arena. Sanford knew all about him and Pete, and could find him any time he pleased, that was clear. This whole summoning to his broken-down movie-star manse had been a display of might. We know where you live. He could accept Sanford’s insane plan and play along or he could run again, and know that Pete and the kid would never be safe. Crazy or not, Sanford was right—Belial might honor their deal, he might not, but somebody or something would always be just out of the light, waiting to step out and take their stab at the crow-mage and his offspring. It was why mages didn’t get married, didn’t reproduce if they could help it. Nobody would willingly dive into the Black, and nobody would put their kid in the way of demons and monsters.

But he had. Jack fucking Winter, father-to-be of the fucking year.

“Yeah, fine,” he told Sanford. “It’s sorted. You’ve got yourself a pet mage.”

Sanford grinned down at him. “My favorite kind. Get yourself cleaned up and get your baby mama on board. We’ve got work to do.”

CHAPTER 13

Sanford’s mansion was high on Sunset Boulevard, beyond even the homes of the movie stars and the techno-billionaires, in the oldest part of Los Angeles, where the old money and the old blood lived. Parker and Gator—Christ, he hadn’t been far off, after all—wrestled him back into the SUV, but Gator didn’t attempt to put a sack over his head again.

“Sorry I had to rough ya up,” Gator said when they were back in Hollywood, dirty palm trees drooping in the sun. “Mr. Sanford pays us to be on top of things. You understand.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack said. Gator opened the door and ushered him out onto the sidewalk near a sex shop, a video rental kiosk, and a pay phone covered in obscene graffiti. “Hey, mate,” Jack called as Gator took a seat up front next to the silent Parker. “I ever see you again, I’m going to kick your teeth so far down your throat, you’ll shit molars for a month.”

“You take care now,” Gator said, giving Jack another rotted-out grin. With his rough-carved face and bushy sideburns, it had the same effect as a grizzly bear in a wig and Elvis Presley sunglasses grinning at you.

The SUV squealed away from the curb, and Jack sighed. He magicked the pay phone into calling Pete’s mobile, and waited on the corner of Sunset and Vine until the Fury hove into sight. The clerk in the porn shop looked at him, looked at the NO LOITERING sign pasted on the window, examined Jack’s bloody face, and thought better of it, going back to his copy of Variety.

“Oh, good fucking night,” Pete said when she saw him. Jack smiled, and felt dried blood crackle on his face.

“You should see the other bloke. Not that I got any shots in, but trust me, he’s worse off—face could stop a fucking clock. Looks like zombie Elvis with a bit of Burt Reynolds after an eight-day coke bender thrown in.”

“Who in the hell were they?” Pete said. “You leap out of a moving car and when I look back you’re being muscled by two villains straight out of a cheap novel.”

Jack twisted his spine to and fro, the last kinks from Gator and Parker’s ministrations popping free. “I think that was this city’s version of taking a friendly meeting.” He got down on his hands and knees and examined under the Fury’s bumper. Nothing appeared to be amiss, not that he’d know if it was. Cars made about as much sense as the Starship Enterprise.

“You lose your spare change?” Pete said.

Jack brushed the road grit from his hands and popped the Fury’s trunk, getting the gear for changing a tire and thrusting it at Pete. “Lift this beast up. I need to look at the undercarriage.”

Pete rolled her eyes but she obliged, and Jack shimmied through the broken glass and trash in the gutter to stare at the Fury’s innards. He breathed on his fingertips to give himself a little light, and the blue fire of his ambient talent gathered around his fist.

In the stark witchfire light, the Fury’s undercarriage looked like the intestines of an iron animal, twisted, rusting, and leaking viscous oil. For all the beauty of its skin, it was a twisted mess on the inside.

The hex was hidden on the short side of the muffler, carved sharp and straight, silver metal clean against the grime surrounding it. It was a simple enough trick—just a source to bounce a spell off of, an echolocation widget within the Black. As long as the person on the other end was casting, they’d know exactly where the Fury was at any given time.

Jack slid out from under the Fury and got his kit bag. Pete had a paper mug of tea balanced on the dashboard, and he gestured at it.

“You mind?”

“No,” Pete said. “Tasted like shit, anyway.”

He used the tail of his shirt to grind the chalk fine on the hood of the car, and swept it into the cup. “Got a knife?” he asked Pete. One of her eyebrows went up, just a hair’s breadth.

“Depends. What are you planning on stabbing?”

“Myself,” Jack said. Using blood in spells wasn’t exactly the first resort of most mages. Blood tended to complicate things, to attract those that populated the fringe regions of the Black, and to bugger your spell up one side and down the other, until it either summoned a demon or made your liver explode. For quick and dirty hex work, though, blood got the job done.

Pete handed over a small pocket knife, and Jack sliced himself in the familiar path across his palm. You couldn’t cut too deep or too often, or scar tissue would make it impossible to get a good amount when you really needed it. He squeezed the runnels into the cup, and then ripped up the end of his shirt and wrapped it tight around his hand.

The clerk in the video shop now had a cordless phone in his hand, and was staring at Jack with something close to alarm. “Please,” Jack told him. “I hardly think this is the strangest shit you’ve seen working in this piss-hole.”

Jack mixed the chalk and blood with his finger, and shimmied back under the Fury. He didn’t have time to look up any specific, proper symbols to block a tracking spell, but half of magic was the willingness to fly by the hair of your arse, and hope that you landed on something soft. If you didn’t have the balls to work spells on the fly, you had no business setting foot in the Black.

He whispered a few persuasive words to the chalk mixture, and then smeared it liberally over the spell, filling the divots the carvings had left with his own blood. The metal hissed on contact, and a little smoke curled that smelled like the inside of a creamatory furnace filled with hair. The hex wouldn’t hold for long—once whoever was running the spell tried to find them and smacked a brick wall of Jack’s blood magic instead, his trick would cease to be clever. But it bought them a little time, and he hoped it was enough.

“Right,” he told Pete, standing up. His knees and his skull let him know that a) he was an old man and b) he was an old man who’d just gotten the shit kicked out of him by two large, efficient goons who had a passion for their work. He could deal with that later.

“Where to?” she said, when Jack slumped into the passenger side of the Fury.

“Venice,” he said. “Going to see a bloke about a car.”

CHAPTER 14

Shocking Jack not one iota, Sal’s garage was locked up tight, doors pulled and padlocked, and lights dark.

“He better not have done a fucking runner,” Jack told Pete. “If I have to chase him all over California, my mood’s not going to improve one bit.”

“Try not to be a complete cunt,” Pete said. “Maybe he didn’t know.”

“For a man who gets that much of a hard-on over a piece of metal and a combustion engine,” Jack said, “he knew. Probably etched that spell on himself. Unlike Mayhew, he doesn’t seem like a bloody idiot.”

“Just don’t burst in there and start causing mayhem and disaster,” Pete told him.

“When have I ever, personally and deliberately, caused mayhem and/or disaster?” Jack spread his hands. He felt justified—the mayhem usually wasn’t his fault, and disaster was inadvertent at best.

“Oh, do you really want me to answer that?” Pete said with wide-eyed false innocence. “Because we’ll be here for a bit.”

“Shut it,” Jack told her. He banged on the metal door with the flat of his fist. Seconds went by, then minutes. Sal didn’t materialize.

“There’s a back door,” Pete shouted. Jack picked his way through the rusted field of auto parts that surrounded the garage and tried the lock. Pete rubbed a hole in the grime and peered inside. “Don’t see anything.”

“He’s there,” Jack said. “Hiding, probably.” He would, if he were in the business of screwing over mages. Jack put his hand over the lock and it popped open. The back of the shop was dark and smelled of stale coffee and motor oil.

“Wait here,” he told Pete. “Keep an eye open.”

A door marked OFFICE hung open, and Jack heard muted music from behind it. Sal sat behind his desk, a revolver in one hand and a mostly empty bottle at his elbow. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

“Yeah, me,” Jack said. “You think I’d be good and gone by now?”

Sal shrugged. The revolver clunked against the desk. “It’s a .357 Magnum,” he said. “The most powerful handgun in the world. It’s a replica of the one they used in the Dirty Harry movies.”

Jack ignored his yammering. It seemed nobody in LA could tell reality if it bit them on ass.

“Who told you to put that spell on the car?” Jack said. “And I’m not going to believe it just happened to be there, on the special car you decided to give especially to me and Pete.”

Sal laughed and took a pull off the bottle. “You think I’m scared of you?”

“I think you’re pissing your shorts over something, yeah,” Jack said. “If not me, then I’d really like to know what.”

Sal raised the revolver. “Get out.”

Jack shook his head. “You don’t want to do that, mate. Believe it or not, I’m your friend in all this.”

“Friends, right,” Sal mumbled. “Got no fuckin’ friends left. Friends are leverage, Jack, you know? Friends can bleed if the sons of bitches can’t bleed you.”

Sal kept mumbling, but he dropped his eyes down to the bottle, and when the revolver dipped Jack grabbed it and punched Sal just under his left eye. Not hard enough to break his hand, or Sal’s cheekbone, but enough to get his attention.

Sal grunted, chair rolling backward, and his bottle teetered and smashed on the floor. A brown puddle bled slowly into the cracks in the concrete floor. “Well, shit,” Sal said. “Now look what you did.”

“You want your skull to keep its shape, you’re going to tell me whatever your scummy little part is in all this,” Jack said. He cracked the chambers of the revolver and emptied the bullets out before dropping it on the desk.

Sal grunted, and fished in his drawers for a pill bottle. He popped the cap and dry-swallowed a handful of small white caplets. “Said I’m not scared of you. What can you do?”

“It’s either Mayhew, Belial, or Sanford doing it,” Jack said. “So which curtain, Sal? Who wants me kept track of, and why?” He leaned across the desk and grabbed the greasy front of Sal’s uniform, lifting him halfway out of his chair. “As for what I can do … do you really want to find that out firsthand?”

Sal drove his fist into Jack’s gut, and his air went out of him, along with his balance. He went down, bouncing his chin off the edge of Sal’s desk and bloodying himself all over again. Sal grabbed the revolver, thick bourbon-numbed fingers fumbling with the bullets, sending copper slugs rolling in all directions.

A decade ago, Jack could’ve gotten his wind back, smashed Sal’s kneecap with his boot, and gotten on with the hard questions. One less trip to Hell, and he could’ve swallowed down the blood coating his tongue and stood up to trade lumps. But it wasn’t, and he hadn’t, so he struggled up as far as one elbow, sucking in air that felt like razor blades embedded in his lungs, before Sal aimed the gun at him.

“Adios, you fucking Limey cocksucker,” Sal said.

The office door creaked, and Jack expected Pete, and tried to yell. He had a vision of the slug in her chest, the red blossom growing on her skin, the exit wound spraying crimson mist over the hallway behind her.

“Salvatore,” a voice said. A man, not Pete. “You know better than that.”

Jack let himself fall back to the floor. The concrete was cool, and a flourescent tube buzzed above his head, throwing spider-legged shadows into every corner.

Sal’s face was wan, the boozy colors fled and a rime of blue in their place. His eyes were wide and black with panic, and the gun hung limp in his fist before slipping to the floor. “No,” he said. “No, I did what you asked.”

“Shooting Winter in the face isn’t part of the deal, friend,” said the man.

“He’s working for that demon!” Sal shouted. “The one who’s got his teeth in your ass. I was doing you a favor.”

“Belial can nip at my heels all he wants,” the man purred. “But he’s never going to bite down. He’s a spineless maggot like the rest. You know what I do with maggots, Sally? I squash ’em.”

Sal raised his hands, backed behind the desk, and sat down. “Whatever you say.”

The man extended a hand to Jack but kept his eyes on the mechanic. “It is whatever I say, Sally. Don’t forget that again.”

Jack didn’t take up the man’s offer. He was pleasant enough looking, what old ladies would describe as a nice young man. His slightly flat features were familiar, too, but Jack didn’t bother playing twenty questions with himself on where he knew the face from. He got up, knee and then foot. His head was swimming and his guts still roiled.

“You’re a tough guy, huh?” said the man.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jack said. “But who the fuck are you?”

The man spread his arms. “You don’t remember? That’s hurtful. I’m the man with the plan, Jack.”

Jack lifted one eyebrow. “Lots of stupid cunts have plans.”

The man laughed, displaying perfect movie star teeth. “Fair enough. I’m Don.” He held out his hand again. A small star sapphire ring glittered on his pinky finger, like an eye protruding from his flesh.

Jack found a whisper of familiarity in the voice as well, but couldn’t place it. It bothered him, but not as much as the rest of the mess.

Don retracted his hand when Jack didn’t take it. “Careful sort, huh?” He grinned wider, face almost in rigor mortis. “Don’t blame you, seeing as I’m the one you’ve been looking for.”

CHAPTER 15

Jack took a step back. A human reaction, to get as far away as you fucking could from predators and the unnatural. A reaction that made him look like a coward, and when Don laughed, it just felt all the worse.

“Don’t worry, Jack. I’m not here to make a steak and kidney pie out of you and the little woman,” he said. “Depending on how our conversation goes, we could be great friends.”

“I seriously fucking doubt that,” Jack said. “What’s your game, Don?”

“Survival.” Don shrugged. “Same as you, Jack. Same as Belial. Lions and zebras both dislike hyenas. Little motherfuckers will eat you clean and laugh while they’re doing it.”

“And three guesses, but I’ll only need one, you’re the hyena?” Jack said. Don shook his head.

“No, Jack,” he said. “I’m the fuckin’ big bad wolf.” He pulled a nail file out of his jacket and cleaned under each finger with a short motion. “But enough about me. Let’s repair to someplace a little more hospitable.”

“No, I think I like it here,” Jack said. Don shook his head.

“I don’t want to gut your lady friend out there from crotch to collar, but that doesn’t mean I won’t,” he said.

“You seem to know so much about me,” Jack said. “Then you know that threatening Pete is a royally bad fucking idea.”

“But effective,” Don said. “You don’t have soft spots, Jack, except for her. She’s going to get you killed one of these days.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh wait, she already has. How was your little vacation in the Pit, Jack? Did the dry air do wonders for you?”

“If you’re going to try and kill me, do it,” Jack said. “Otherwise, shut the fuck up and let me go about my business.”

“We’re not done,” Don said. He opened the office door, but instead of leading Jack back down the hallway, he went to the auto bay. The door was up and a sleek black car rumbled, headlights cutting cones of yellow on the dingy walls of Sal’s garage.

“Take a ride with me,” Don said. “I promise after it’s over, you’ll see things my way.”

Jack pointed to the back door. “Let me just tell Pete I’m going.”

“No,” Don said. “Now, or you can clean her insides off your outsides.” The door of the Lincoln swung open, and Don gestured Jack into the back seat. The car was old, upholstered in slick hide that shifted like oil in the low light. “She’s a big girl,” Don said. “I’m sure she can find something to occupy her time until we’re finished.”

Jack tightened his jaw, but he got into the car. Don needed him alive for something, at least for now. If he really wanted Belial off his scent, he could’ve just sliced Jack, or let Sal shoot him. And Pete would be well and truly pissed off that he’d left, but she’d get over it. Or she wouldn’t, which would probably make his life easier in the long run. Pete hating him was probably how it should go.

“Good move,” Don said when Jack settled back against the seat.

“Fuck off,” Jack told him.

The Lincoln didn’t have a driver, but it backed out of Sal’s garage and purred smoothly to the freeway. Don opened the center console between the seats and drew out a thin black cigar. “Care for?” he said to Jack.

“No, thanks,” Jack said. “I try to restrict my vices to things that’ll kill me slow.”

“You’re funny,” Don said. A cherry sprang to life on the end of his smoke. “Didn’t expect that.”

“What exactly did you expect?” Jack asked.

“I know a lot about you,” Don said. “Been keeping tabs on you, just like Belial. Enemy of my enemy and all that shit. Knew when my spell went dead that you’d head back to poor Sally back there and threaten to beat the piss out of him. Fortunately, Sal knows what side is the right side. He’s a good boy.”

“Belial is going to find you one way or the other,” Jack said. “Whether I’m helping him or not. He’s a vicious cunt, that one.”

“Belial is more concerned with keeping his little hardscrabble patch of Hell in his control than he is with me,” Don said. “I was away for a long time before he ever cared. Nergal made him look bad, is all. I’m older than him, and I’m meaner, but if he wants a stand-up fight, he’ll get one. And his little masters the Princes aren’t going to like the upset in Hell one bit when I give it.”

Don rolled down the window and let the smoke drift out, trailing behind them. The highways were empty, something Jack knew should never happen at this time of day, and the Lincoln traveled so fast he could feel the vibration of the road. “I’ve walked around the block, Jack. I know when to sit back and let the dogs and the rats fight it out. Whoever’s left, that’s who I’ll deal with.”

“So, what, you kidnapped me because you’re lonely and wanted to have a chat?” Jack asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Don said. “You don’t have the whole story, Jack. When you do, you’ll be on the right side.”

“And by right side, you mean your side,” Jack muttered. Don grinned at him.

“Of course.”

Jack stayed quiet at that. Don certainly wasn’t what he’d expected, in terms of a boogeyman who’d frighten a demon enough to go through the trouble of compelling Jack to hunt said boogeyman down. He wasn’t sure of Don’s nature just yet, but he didn’t ping his senses like a ghost or a demon, and he’d never stopped smiling since Jack had gotten in the car. That, more than Don’s purported reputation, worried him. You couldn’t trust somebody who was always cheerful. There was usually something wrong with them.

The Lincoln left the freeway and started to climb into the hills. The barren scrub blurred by so fast it was only a welter of green and brown, and the flashes of Los Angeles in the gaps came and went so quickly they could be a single frame of film.

“Let me guess: You’re going to tell it to me?” Jack said. That was the thing with demons and their ilk—they always wanted to blather at you, to make you understand how right they were, even as they burned and flayed and ate humans alive. Don wasn’t human, was certainly who Belial was searching for, but Jack couldn’t read much beyond that. He was a blank spot in the Black, something either so old or so strong that magic flowed around him like a stone in a river, leaving a void that shrieked against Jack’s sight.

“Going to try,” Don said, as the Lincoln cornered, spraying gravel behind it. “It’s not a happy story, but I have high hopes for the ending. I’m not one for a downer, just a slow fadeout before the credits roll. I like a twist. You?”

“I like knowing that my day won’t consist of listening to smarmy demons talk about themselves,” Jack muttered. “But so far it hasn’t worked out for me.”

Don lunged forward, leaving no space between Jack, himself, and the seat behind. Jack could feel springs pressing into his spine and his bones creaking from the pressure.

“I’m not a demon,” Don purred. “I don’t like being called what I’m not, Jack. It’s narrative falseness. It’s not fair to the audience.”

“Fine,” Jack said. He hated that his heart beat faster, that he could hear blood roaring in his ears almost to the exclusion of Don’s soft voice. He shouldn’t be afraid of flash gits like this any longer. Not after Hell. Not after everything that had come before it.

Don sat back and grinned. “Good. We’re here.”

Jack looked through the tinted glass. They were at the crest of a hill, a long gravel road in front of him that swooped down into a canyon. Nestled at the foot of the sunset-colored rock, a few gray buildings and a farmhouse with a distinct tilt to it baked in the California sun.

“I’ll bite,” Jack said. “Where’s here?”

Don snapped his fingers and the Lincoln’s doors sprang open, mental raven wings poised for flight. “Home sweet home.”

CHAPTER 16

Don’s boots crunched on the gravel. The heels and toes were silver and flashed in the sun, the stippled snakeskin in between crackling as he walked. “Close enough to the city that no white-knight types poke around,” he said. “Far enough to enjoy the beauty of nature.” He flicked the end of his cigar away. “Paradise on earth. Gotta hoof it from here. We take a few precautions, being Belial’s most wanted and all.”

Jack followed Don, the ripples in the Black growing stronger the closer he got to the farmstead.

“You like that?” Don said. “Farmer killed his wife and his daughter back in forty-eight or so. Killed two sheriff’s deputies when they came to see what happened. Found out later he had eight whores buried under the floor of his barn. Guess the wife put her nose where it didn’t belong. Sad when that happens.”

“Sad, yeah,” Jack said. “They charge you extra for the story?”

“Something like.” Don smiled. “Real estate around here isn’t what it used to be. Used to be, you couldn’t spit in Los Angeles without coming across a crime scene or a poor sad little murder-victim ghost.”

Jack watched a crow alight on the ridgepole of the barn, cawing once before it took flight again. Don curled his lip. “One of yours? Or your bitch hag checking up on you?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Jack said. Under his shirt, the markings of the Morrigan crawled over his skin, as if the wind had ruffled his feathers.

“Aw,” Don purred. “You and Mommy have a fight?”

“Would it make you feel better about your goatee looking like a stripper’s pubic hair if I said yes?” Jack snapped.

Don wagged his finger. “You’re not much fun to have at the party, Jack, and if you don’t cheer up, I might have to throw your ass out.”

A sagging porch wrapped the farmhouse, weighted down with mattress springs and a rusty icebox. The crow on the barn took flight, screeching. In the bowl of the earth, the heat pressed down against Jack’s skin, radiated from the dirt and from the near-white sky above. The Black here was seared and screaming, hot as an iron and dry as graveyard dust. There were other places that felt the same, but they were concentration camps and mass graves, the sites of enough pain and terror to leave an indelible echo through the layers of life, death, and magic. Jack had never seen so small a patch of earth so infected.

In the bare dirt yard between the barn and house, a small girl sat crosslegged, pushing two dolls together at the apex of their legs. The dolls’ faces were blackened and melted, and their hair had fused into thin spikes. She looked up at Jack with pure black eyes that were lidless and did not blink.

“She’s our little one,” Don said. “Not used to people yet. Still got the marks on her from where I cut her free.”

Jack stared back at the girl until she stuck her tongue out at him. “I see you,” she whispered. “You want this body? You want me to suck your cock? I see it. Don’t lie.”

Jack lifted his eyebrows at Don. “Got a mouth on her, doesn’t she?”

Don cradled the girl’s head against his thigh. “Is that any way to talk to our friend Jack, darlin’?”

“I saw it,” she pouted.

“Sure you did. You stay out here and play,” Don said. “Jack and I are going to have a little chat indoors.”

The girl stared at Jack for another moment with her insect eyes, then went back to smashing her melted dolls together. Human flesh could contain a lot of things, but he still didn’t have a sense of what Don and his creepy little bug child really were, under the skin. He could be patient and see what he could see. Don was playing a long game, trying to make him comfortable, and Jack was content to let him think he was as dumb as the rest of the human race and had nothing to fear from this place. The Black writhed inside his mind like a snake, hard to grasp and cold to the touch. He’d be hard-pressed to call up witchfire, never mind sling a hex if he had to. Effectively, he was stuck here for as long as it amused Don to keep him, but he didn’t have to let on that he knew.

Don mounted the steps of the farmhouse, rotted boards cracking under his boots. “Come on in,” he told Jack. “Meet the rest of the family.”

CHAPTER 17

Inside the farmhouse, all was darkness. Light leached from above, through broken spots in the roof, and hit a floor littered with trash and the skeletons of small animals. The stench was even heavier than the darkness, shoving fingers into Jack’s nostrils and down his throat. The house stank of rot, old food and older sweat, decades of filth baking in the heat. Even the offal tanks of the Pit hadn’t stunk this badly.

Jack pulled his shirt over his nose. At least his own sweat was familiar.

Don jabbed a push-button switch, and a single bulb flickered overhead, casting bird-wing shadows into all the corners. Stairs with most of the treads missing led up, and a hallway stretched ahead, so stacked with ancient newspapers and fruit crates that Jack could barely maneuver it sideways.

“Levi!” Don shouted. “You in here?”

“Back room,” a voice croaked, and Don jerked his head at Jack.

“Levi’s my brother. You’ll like him.”

“Will I?” Jack said. “He as convivial as you?”

“He’s a laugh riot.” Don slithered down the hall passage with the acumen of a snake. Jack dislodged a stack of ancient, moldy National Geographics. A rat hissed and scurried deeper into the holes its compatriots had chewed in the stacks of paper.

“For such a flash chap, you sure do love filth,” he told Don.

Don shrugged. “Humans notice dirt. For me, your whole world is dirt.”

“Suppose it is,” Jack muttered. The back room had been a kitchen, at some point, and pipes jutted from the wall where a stove and icebox had once stood. A deep sink crouched in one corner, with some thick, black, viscous substance dripping down the stained porcelain flanks and puddling on the floor.

A mechanized wheelchair, the kind old ladies drove around shopping centers, sat in front of a TV fizzing with static and occasionally showing flashes of a saggy and low-budget porn film. In the chair sat the largest man Jack had ever seen—he overflowed the bonds of the chair, and white stretch marks cut jagged canyons on the back of his shaved head. He breathed with a deep, wet wheeze, something rotten deep in his chest rattling with every puff of air.

“That him?” Levi gave a wet sniff. “He doesn’t smell so sweet.”

Jack decided that pointing out that the waves of stench rolling off Levi could fell a werewolf wasn’t his most prudent course of action. “Your reception is shit,” he said, pointing to the telly. Levi grunted, jabbing at a remote with fingers strained with bloat.

“Everything here is shit. Your world is a crapper waiting for somebody to flush the floating turds.”

“Come on, now,” Don said. “Can you really say that after where you were when I found you?”

Levi coughed, and the floor shook under his weight. He didn’t have a shirt on—Jack doubted any shirt in existence would actually keep the rolling hills of his stomach under wraps—and the hair on his chest was sparse and black, matted with sweat. Blemishes dotted his shoulders like a range of volcanoes. “You bring me what I want?” he croaked at Don.

Don fished a grease-spotted paper bag from his jacket and passed it into Levi’s waiting hands. The giant ripped it open and tore the wrapper from an In-N-Out Burger with his teeth. Two gulps, and it disappeared down his gullet. He unrolled the magazine also in the sack with greasy fingers, leaving thumbprints on the expanses of naked women in the glossy pages. What Pete called sad porn—junkie girls with empty eyes, tied and splayed, cut and displayed in ways that Jack supposed a bloke like Levi would find right up his alley.

“Got a funny look buying that,” Don told him. “You’d think those cunts who work in porn shops have something against the customer. As if I’d want to put it in her. Disease crawling all over the pussy in LA.” He turned to Jack. “You hear me? You getting any LA pussy, you wrap up. Fucking city’s a plague pit.”

“All right,” Jack said. The smell wasn’t making his stomach any easier to deal with, and he had a sneaking suspicion that if he vomited anywhere near Levi, the bloke would mistake it for dessert. “It’s been fun, gents, but if all you did was bring me out here to see the sewage main you live in, then I’m going to say thanks for the memories and make me way home.”

“Oh no,” Don said. “We’re getting down to business. I gotta take care of my brother, though. You understand.” He tilted his head. “Or maybe you don’t. Most people get close enough to spit on you tend to end up dead, don’t they, Jack?”

“You going to tell me something I don’t know?” Jack said. “Or is stating the obvious your particular gift?” He got Don’s play—he wanted Jack to know that he’d watched him, knew about him, saw all his dirty secrets and got off on them. He could revel in it all he wanted—Jack had enough dirty secrets to keep a team of Dons occupied for a year or two.

“Mouthy fuck, ain’t he?” Levi said. He shoved his hand down into the seat of the wheelchair, moving his fat aside, and came out with a packet of biscuits—or cookies, Jack supposed he called them. If he called them anything before he shoved them into his gullet. Levi burped, then tossed the empty packet aside and unfastened the top of his stained khakis. “Good job on the mag, brother. Choice snatch in there.”

“No fucking way in hell,” Jack said. Dealing with a demon who wanked off to holding a threat over his head was one thing, but watching his morbidly obese brother actually wank off was beyond the pale.

“That’s just Levi,” Don said. “We’re all slaves to our urges, in one way or another.” He gestured Jack ahead of him down another narrow hall, lined with doors. “My urge just happens to be a little bit less … obvious than Levi’s. And yours—well, you’ve got enough for both of us, don’t you, Jack?”

Don shouldered a door open. “I told you I’d explain what we are, and why we won’t go back. Why Belial can’t cage us.” A dirty pair of curtains, which Jack saw had once been littered with pink flowers and happy kittens, closed off the room at the end of the hall. Don gripped them and ripped them open. “A fucking visual is worth a thousand words, isn’t that right?”

After Levi and the girl in the yard, Jack figured that whatever else Don had to show him would be more shock and awe. He still stared though, still felt the sink in his stomach and the familiar sensation of his head being too full as his sight attempted to cope with the onslaught of psychic agony wrapped around the figure before him.

“This here is Teddy,” said Don. “Teddy as in teddy bear, as in won’t you be my. But he won’t. Teddy can’t be one of us, Jack.”

Jack heard Don absently, while the rest of him stared at the thing on the other side of the room. A child’s room—walls pale pink, painted with daisies in every color of the rainbow. A name—Claire, 1961—was carved above the shape of a headboard faded into the paint.

Against the wall, Teddy dangled, strapped into an upright harness like the type they used on movie mental patients. Hooks hammered into the ceiling held at least a dozen IV bags, the liquid inside green and black. Clusters of flies buzzed around Teddy’s face—at least, where his face would be if he’d had one.

Teddy’s neck formed a column of pale skin, and at the top a blank, bulbous protrusion twitched this way and that, as if trying to catch Jack’s scent. His body was a flat, flabby mass and out of it grew a multitude of limbs, some the size of a child’s arm and hand, some little more than angry, infected skin tags. In the center of Teddy’s mass, a round mouth rimmed with teeth twitched and sighed as the thing breathed.

Don stepped forward, checked the levels of the IV bags. “Shit,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Fucking Levi.” He kicked the door open, bellowing, “I fuckin’ told you to call me if he got low on anything! You think I can find this shit at the fuckin’ 7-11?”

Jack was surprised at the stillness after the door shut. Wind rattled the walls, throwing dust against the side of the farmhouse, but aside from the wheeze of air passing in and out of the thing’s mouth, it was absolutely silent.

“Holy shit,” Jack told Teddy. “I thought I’d seen ugly, but you, mate—you’re the clear winner.”

You’re not much to look at yourself.

The voice didn’t so much split his skull as jam a steel rod straight through his sight. Ghosts could talk along the psychic aether, and demons could worm their way into your dreams if you were vulnerable, but actual telepathy was rare, and mostly confined to Fae, a type of creature Jack stayed as far away from as he would a Phil Collins tribute concert in an old folk’s home.

“I don’t have vagina dentata growing out of me fucking stomach, so I think I’m a leg up on you,” Jack said. “Sorry, mate.”

You’re him, Teddy hissed. Winter. The man with the plan.

“If I’d made a plan, do you think I’d be standing here talking to you?” Jack asked. A shiver ran through Teddy’s flesh, causing his IV bags to dance and slosh.

I don’t know, Winter. Was your plan to take it up the ass from a demon, or was your plan to be smarter than Don?

“Belial and I have an understanding,” Jack said. “Can’t say the same for your man out there. He’s given me no fucking reason to trust him, or that great skin-sack of crap he calls a brother, or you. Never mind Miss Future Spree Killer out in the yard.”

Demons lie, Winter. Teddy’s mouth gaped and flexed, and a pair of twin tongues flicked in and out. You know it. Don doesn’t lie. Don is older than lies. Better. Don does the things we need done.

“Don know you’re jawing away to me spilling his secrets?” Jack said. If Teddy was talkative, Jack wasn’t going to stop him. He was just as inclined to trust a flesh-bag as he was Don, if not more. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d indeed seen Don before, and that the bloke was just taking the piss with all of the pomp and secrecy.

Don knows what he knows and I know what I know, and what I know could fill oceans and burn forests, Teddy said. But I’m not really here and neither are you. We’re on a road to nowhere, and a highway to hell, and I can’t drive fifty-five.

Jack massaged his forehead. “Well, this has deteriorated quickly.”

Don came back into the room, holding a fresh IV bag of green liquid. It looked like pond scum, but Teddy gave a relieved sigh when Don changed out the IV. “You boys getting on?” Don asked, brushing his hands against his coat.

“That thing isn’t any more a boy than I am a unicorn,” Jack said. “But yeah, we’re having a grand old time.”

Don pulled up a chair, white and upholstered with a cushion that had once been the same color as the walls. “Sit with me, Jack. Listen to what I have to tell you. After that, if you’re still with Belial, well … we can discuss it. I don’t coerce people, even humans. I believe in that free will you all love so much.”

Jack could spot a soft-soap, even one delivered in the skilled, sensitive tone Don employed, but he shrugged. “Talk.” Teddy cackled low in his brain.

Talking’s what Donny is good at. Talking himself into things, talking us out of our skins and into new toys. Talk talk talk. Open the door, it’s just the meter man.

“Hell is ancient,” Don said. “Hell is older than Death. Hell was the first piece carved from the Black, before even Death. When the Hag was still hatching from her egg and this world was just a speck of dust floating between stars, there was Hell.”

“And then the man upstairs said let there be light, booze, and porn?” Jack said. Don’s mouth twitched, and Jack sighed. Fanatics were never any fun, and fanatics who took themselves too seriously were akin to shoving razor blades under your eyeballs and blinking. Whatever stripe their faith, Jack found them tiresome.

“God’s a fairy tale for children and the childlike,” Don said. “The same as Satan. You know that, Jack. But before the demons everyone is so afraid of, there were other things.”

He gestured at Teddy. “Me and mine saw Hell as our own, a place where there was nothing except existence. Hunt, food, mate, sleep, eat. It was a good place. The fires warmed us and the rivers flowed with blood and the meat was slow and fat. But shit happens, as you people are so fond of saying.”

“Demons get fed up with you boys taking all the good bits for yourselves?” Jack guessed.

“The demons? Strike at us?” Don laughed. “Jack, we made the demons. We made some from mud, and some from flesh, but one among us lay with somebody—something—that was an abomination, and she birthed four sons.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. As far as creation stories went, this was one where he was sure he could guess the ending. “The Princes.”

“They created the six hundred and sixty-six Names,” Don said. “Made them in their image, not ours. Together, stronger than us. Legion. They murdered who they could, and the strongest of us, the four counterparts of the Princes, they locked away. Four of us plus one, the death-bringer who would just as soon devour Hell as he would their enemies.”

“Nergal,” Jack murmured. He could still feel the black presence in his mind, the endless, unfathomable hunger for the life of the Black, of Hell and everywhere in between.

“Nergal is a fucking dickhead, by the way,” Don said. “Whiny little bitch, all down the days we spent together in that place.” He grinned. “Can you guess what the twist is now, Jack?”

“Naughton broke Nergal out,” Jack said. “You slipped the gap, and here you are.”

“Oh, no,” Don said. “I got out long before those necrophiliac morons got their bright idea to spring the asshole. But my kin, yes. They came from the break. Reality is a pretty fragile thing, Jack. Bend it just a little and stress fractures appear. The Princes have kept us under lock and key for millennia—their masters, locked away, tortured, and violated like we were nothing. Well, we’re free now, like the old times. And we’re not going back.”

“Look, mate,” Jack said. “I got no issues with you doing … whatever it is you’re doing out here, personally, but I think you’re underestimating exactly how far up Belial’s arse you’ve gotten with this little escape routine. He doesn’t do well with losing.”

“The demons lost a long time ago,” Don said. “This business with the Morrigan and Nergal is just the knell sounding the end. Hell is fracturing, politics are king, and things like Belial are scrabbling for power. Time was, they feared our names. So did your kind—every pack of superstitious children has a name for us. They called us Shiva, or said we were a wolf that devoured the world. Four horsemen who ride forth on the last day.” Don grinned. “I always liked that one. Got great imagery. Probably why they stick it in so many movies. Point is, it’s our time again, and we’re riding hard.”

“I still don’t know what you expect me to do about all this,” Jack said. “I don’t have Belial’s ear. We’re not mates who go down to the pub. I can’t get him off your trail and stop Hell from throwing you back in the clink any more than I can make Belial do a Riverdance.”

“We want you, Jack,” Don said. “Because without you, none of this would’ve happened. My kind would still be cast into darkness. If you hadn’t been a good solider and helped the Morrigan wake up Nergal, we never could have found those fractures.” He leaned in. “And if you hadn’t visited us in Hell, we couldn’t have found you now. I want you to be with us, Jack. I want you to be my soldier, because together we can turn Belial into a smear on the pavement.”

Of course. The dreams—memories—that had woken up the moment he landed in LA. He’d seen the demon’s vast prison. And now the inmates had him over a barrel. Perfect.

Jack resisted telling Don that for a supposedly ancient creature, he was a bit of a fuckwit. Nothing could kill a demon. You could exorcise them, send them back to the Pit, but to actually destroy the essence of a demon was something he’d only seen once, and he didn’t care to repeat it. “And if I decide that I’d rather not play with your fucked-up little family?”

Don shrugged. “We can’t force you, Jack. Like I said, we owe you one. You joined the Morrigan, and you let Nergal free, and you made it possible for everything that came after.”

“I didn’t let Nergal do anything,” Jack snapped. He’d known, hadn’t he, that when the Morrigan offered to get him out of the Pit it was too good to be true? He’d taken the deal anyway, because anything was better than Hell. He let her wipe his mind and body clean, and then she’d simply vanished. Not for good—she never left him for good. But she’d left him not knowing what she’d done to him, and without any memory of Hell until now. How much worse could Don’s offer be than that?

“You’re a nexus for these things, Jack,” Don said. “Things that shake the foundations of the world. There’ve been other men like you, but none that I could get a face to face with.” His smile dropped. “You know, me being imprisoned in the dark by the ants who call Hell their own.”

“Suppose I was to do this,” Jack hedged. “What’s in it for me?”

“No more demons, of course,” Don said. “No more Hag dogging your steps. You’d be a free man, and all you’d have to do is help us be reborn.”

“You seem all right to me,” Jack said. Teddy groaned, and he felt his stomach flip again. “I mean, aside from Jabba over there.”

“We burn flesh fast,” Don said. “Teddy was supposed to be walking around like the rest of us, but like the song says, you can’t always get what you want. Teddy needs a second chance at a meatsuit, and Levi needs a permanent one. In case you hadn’t noticed, the rest of them can’t exactly cruise up and down Sunset looking for skins. You’d be our agent, in a way. Finding the correct sort of flesh.”

“Yeah, that’s where it falls down for me,” Jack said. “I don’t generally hold with rounding up humans for slaughter and possession.”

“Possession is a demon word,” Don said. “A word for the weak who can’t mold the flesh. We used to have bodies—strong, terrible, beautiful to behold. Now, we have to look like everyone else. We have to blend in. You people are like a virus, and we have to mimic you if we don’t want the pitchfork brigade at our door.”

Jack braced himself for Don’s convivality to die a sudden death. “And if I say no?”

“Then we wouldn’t be friends anymore,” Don said. “And that’d be a real disappointment.”

“I do hate to disappoint anyone,” Jack said, “but yeah—I don’t think I’m the man with the plan, Don. I’m not in it for you or for Belial—I’m in this life for myself. And I don’t respond well when things that crawled up out of Hell threaten it.”

He drew in a breath, held it. Waited for the surge of black magic that would signal that Don had well and truly ended their powwow.

“I’m disappointed, Jack,” Don said. “Very, very disappointed.”

Bad luck, pilgrim, Teddy hissed in his head. You were nice to talk to.

The blow Jack expected didn’t come. The Black didn’t surge and the screaming in his sight abruptly faded. His vision went white, and when he came to a wave of vertigo slammed into him and took him to one knee. “Fuck,” he hissed, feeling as if he’d been full-body slammed into a brick wall. A trickle of fresh blood worked its way out of his nose, and the cuts on his head smeared more blood across his forehead.

He swiped blood away from his eyes. He was in a men’s loo, a single bulb swinging in the draft from his passage. A warped metal mirror reflected his hollow-cheeked reflection, his hair streaked pink from the blood. Jack spun the rusty tap and splashed water on his face, cuts stinging.

“You look like shit.”

He turned sharply, but wasn’t entirely surprised to see Belial leaning against the cinder block wall, head haloed by Spanish gang tags. “Feel like it, too,” he said. “Why, you want to give me a makeover?”

“Sorry about the smash and grab,” Belial said. He pushed himself away from the wall and came to Jack, taking his chin in his hands and turning his head from side to side. Jack tried to pull away, but the demon’s pointed nails dug into his flesh, and Belial dipped his head and pressed his face into the crook of Jack’s neck, inhaling sharply. “Right,” he said. “Just had to check on you. Those blokes have a habit of crawling under your skin.” He stuck his fingers in his mouth and lapped Jack’s blood from under his nails.

Jack swiped at the spots where the demon had touched him. Being close to a citizen of the Pit was like plunging your hand into raw meat—slimy, cold, and unpleasant. “If you fancied me, you should’ve just said something,” he told Belial.

“You’ll have to tell me how old Abaddon is looking these days,” Belial said. “Fuck-ugly, I’ll wager.”

Don. What was it with these cunts and their precious nicknames? Gator had been bad enough. “Healthy, actually,” he said. “Wears flash suit and talks like a cowboy.”

“He always was a pretentious fuck,” Belial muttered. “He give you that speech about destiny and how he and his little band of cunt-faced circus children are the true rulers of Hell?”

“Something like that,” Jack said. “With more big words and dramatic gestures.” He kept an arm’s distance between himself and Belial. The demon was being downright chatty, and Jack didn’t trust that any more than he’d follow a rent boy down a dark alley in Tower Hamlets.

“It’s crap,” Belial announced. “They might’ve been there first, but we outnumbered them. Demons are the true citizens of Hell, and we always will be. Abbadon got loose, but a scrap of memory is all he’s ever going to be in the Black. Sooner or later, things will be back as they should be.”

Belial closed the distance between them faster than blinking, and Jack wondered why he’d even bothered to try and keep them apart. In a contest between mage and demon, the demon would always win. It was simple physics.

Belial slammed Jack into the mirror, and he felt the sink crack under his lower back, along with the associated column of fire blooming up his spine. His skull dented the reflective metal, and his vision doubled. The demon squeezed his throat, and Jack felt the last of his air flutter and die in his lungs.

“Let’s get one thing very fucking clear,” Belial hissed. His lips were so close to Jack’s ear that his breath sounded like the hot wind that never ceased howling across the Pit. “You try to fuck me, Winter, and I won’t care what kind of favored son of the Hag you are. I won’t care what kind of magic you and your little Weir can sling. I won’t care if Jesus Christ himself shows up riding a unicorn, backed up by Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I will end your fucking existence and that of everyone you care about, and your soul will spend the eternity until the Black and Hell both fall into the singularity under my tender loving care.” He let Jack down, and Jack’s knees decided it was a good plan to give out and send him tumbling to the floor amid the shards of the sink. Brown water from the ruptured pipes dribbled around him.

“Do we understand each other, crow-mage?” Belial hissed. “Abbadon has been in the dark for more years than even I can count. Yes, he escaped and managed to break the others out, but he’s not going to win. And you’re mostly certainly going to lose very fucking large if you try and fuck with me on this point.”

Jack laughed, which caused him to cough a little blood. He spat it at Belial’s shoe and missed. “He’s got you good and scared, doesn’t he? Never seen you with so much as a hair out of place, and look at you now.”

Belial’s black eyes were wide, and twin blood flowers had blossomed in his pale, waxy cheeks. Even his pristine suit was wrinkled and looked more like it had spent the night on a street corner than one of Hell’s posh palaces. “You watch your mouth, crow-mage. I doubt you’d be laughing at me if the Hag hadn’t scrubbed your memory all shiny-clean.”

Jack pulled himself to his feet. Belial didn’t know his memory was knitting itself back together, and he intended to keep it that way as long as possible. “For the record, I told Abbadon to go fuck himself, and I’m telling you the same thing. I’ve seen him and those things he hangs about with, and I’m not accustomed to admitting it, but they’re beyond me. You knew there was no way I could put those cunts back underground by myself. You’re just setting Pete up to fail. You probably think this is funny.”

“Trust me,” Belial snarled. “This is not my happy face.”

Jack kicked open the door, into the face of a very surprised bartender with a goatee. “Hey!” he said. “One guy in the john at a time. You two take it somewhere else.”

Belial twitched his cuffs and straightened his tie. “Gladly,” he said. “And might I remind you, Winter, you’re still on the hook, regardless of what you think. I wouldn’t be using you if I had a choice, believe me. Abbadon and his friends belong back in the darkness where we sent them, and you’re the man for the job, whether you know it or not. Get it done.”

“Fuck off,” Jack muttered, but Belial did his peculiar trick where you blinked and he’d simply gone.

“Listen, buddy,” the bloke said. “Either order a drink or get the fuck out, okay? I don’t need the George Michael action in the fucking bathrooms.”

“You’ve got pubic hair on your face,” Jack told him. “Might want to wash.”

The kid opened his mouth, but Jack shoved by him. He was in a dank bar, neon beer signs casting the only light. He reached behind the bar, grabbed the first bottle of strong whiskey he saw, and kicked open the swinging door to the street. He was back on Hollywood Boulevard—exactly where he’d started.

Jack sat down on the curb and opened the bottle, taking a long pull. Everything hurt. It was an unfortunate side effect of slagging off things that were higher in the food chain than you, and he’d accepted it.

The whiskey was shit, and it burned all the way down, lighting his already upset stomach aflame. Jack scanned up and down the pavement, until he caught a kid in a tracksuit and a do-rag nodding against the front of the hipster bar. He might be white, and old, and straightened out, but he still knew a dealer by scent.

“Oi,” he said to the kid. “Need to borrow your mobile.”

“Fuck you,” the kid said promptly. “Go suck cock and buy your own, old man.”

Jack set the bottle down—it was shit booze, but it was all he had. He wrapped one hand around the green-tinged gold necklaces at the kid’s throat, and the other around his balls. He’d had to do this entirely too often lately, he thought. “I’m just going to borrow it,” he said, adding a squeeze for emphasis.

“Fuck,” the kid hissed. “You crazy, fool? You know whose corner this is?”

“I’m sure he’s a terrifying gent, and that I’m well and truly fucked, but right now I need to make a fucking phone call and you’re standing in my way,” Jack said. “So you can either be a helpful lad or a soprano. I really don’t care at this point. Not having the best of days.”

The kid considered for a moment, and then shook his head, pulling a gleaming smart phone from his tracksuit. “You’re a fuckin’ crazy white dude, aren’t you?” he said.

“Been accused of it, yes,” Jack said, and dialed Pete.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “I thought you were dead. I’ve been driving circles around Los Angeles looking for your corpse.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said. “Need a lift, though, if you can manage it.”

“Is the car safe to drive now?” Pete asked. “I don’t fancy another go-round like at the garage. Where did you go, anyway? One moment you’re talking to that git Sal and the next he’s falling all over me, blubbering about ‘them’ taking you away.” She sighed. “Where are you?”

“Hollywood and Van Nuys,” Jack said. “Thanks, luv.”

“Fuck you,” Pete told him. “Only doing this so I don’t have to claim your body at the morgue. Damned inconvenient.”

Jack polished off more of the whiskey while he waited, undisturbed by the dealer once he handed the mobile back. How he was going to explain this royal mess to Pete, he didn’t know. Maybe he could drink enough to forgo explaining anything, but that would take a lot more than one bottle of paint thinner disguised as booze.

He wasn’t about to blame Pete for all this, even though it was tempting—she’d done what she’d thought necessary in the moment. When things like Nergal loomed on the horizon, people got scared and stupid, made decisions they didn’t think they’d ever live to regret, because they wouldn’t be living at all.

Abbadon had said that Jack had made it all possible. He’d made his own decision, when he was in hell and the Morrigan had come to him. He had certainly never thought he’d live to regret that one. And now the regret was all over him, under his skin.

Jack looked at his own hand gripping the whiskey bottle, at the black curlicues that terminated just short of his knuckles. It wasn’t ink—it was part of him, or part of the Morrigan that was in him. The thing that had only manifested as sight and Death dogging his steps tenaciously before now was visible, telling anyone who cared that Jack Winter was inexorably bound to the mistress of death and destruction.

He was pissed enough for there to be a warm buzz in his skull when the Fury rumbled to the curb, but at least it shut up the persistent circle-jerk of whispers inside his skull. All your fault. She’s not done with you. None of this is over.

“Jesus, Jack,” Pete said, jumping out of the car and crouching beside him.

“Not him,” Jack said. “Wager I could take on that bloke. Pacifistic and shit, wasn’t he?”

Pete took his arm and Jack let himself be pulled along and installed in the back seat. Between the thumping he’d taken and the whiskey, he was ready to fall asleep for a decade or two and wake up when everyone had a jetpack and nobody gave a fuck about Jack Winter.

“I’m not going to ask where you got off to or what happened,” Pete said as she put the car in gear. “But if you don’t want another bruise or two in the collection, you’re going to tell me once you stop stinking like a transient who sleeps outside a distillery.”

“Fair enough,” Jack mumbled. He tried not to drift off, tried to stall the dream that had to be coming by counting the turns the Fury made. “We can’t go back to Venice,” he said. “They know Mayhew.”

“I made arrangements,” Pete said. “You concentrate on not bleeding on the seats.”

“Figure this heap is ours now,” Jack said. “Seeing as Sal’s not on the side of angels.” This wasn’t his sight or a spell—this was just tired, a fatigue he never would have felt even five years ago.

“Thought there were no angels,” Pete said. Jack’s eyes fluttered closed, and he couldn’t prop them up any longer. He was going under, and he’d just have to hold his breath.

“Not in this world, luv,” he mumbled, before the hot, dry wind filled his lungs, and he was back in Hell.

CHAPTER 18

Belial kept a hand on his shoulder, almost constantly. He never spoke above a whisper, but Jack heard every word. Belial knew he would—his sight echoed, and his skull split and re-formed again and again as the demon hissed into his ear. They walked every inch of Hell, Jack’s bare feet blistering and rotting as cinder and offal worked their way in.

“I want you to see,” Belial whispered. “I want you to see what Hell is, Jack. The vast majesty of it. See it and know that from now until we all fall into a star, this is your home.”

He ran his sharp nails along the back of Jack’s neck. “This is your fate.”

The demon’s lips brushed his earlobe. “This is where you belong.”

Pete nudged him, and Jack saw an alley, brick buildings reaching to block out the bleached sky. Cars and people sounds moved past the mouth, but it was silent and shaded, much like the alley next to his flat at home.

Was it his home? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been unceremoniously chucked out of a city he’d once considered friendly. But London was different. London was the only spot where he could sleep, without dreams. The only spot he’d allowed roots to reach below the surface. He knew the Black there. Everywhere else was the Wild West.

“Come on,” Pete said. “Your creepy friend from the bar said we could lay low for a few days.”

“Sliver?” Jack got out of the Fury and tried lifting his arms. A dozen knives, from his skull to his knees, stabbed him for his trouble. He twisted the kinks from his back, trying not to gasp as his tender ribs vibrated.

“Yeah, him.” Pete grabbed her bag, his kit, and a disintegrating cardboard box from the trunk. “What’s wrong with his face?”

“For a wraith, nothing,” Jack said. “He’s an all right sort.”

Pete shouldered open a metal door marked FIRE EXIT ONLY. Considering that it was propped open with a cinder block, Jack figured the building either had a lot of fires, or had stopped worrying about the eventuality.

“We never have any normal friends,” she said.

“Normal’s overrated,” Jack said. The door swung shut and only a single bar of light illuminated the metal staircase, leading up and up. He smelled piss and stale air, and pulled Pete behind him. “Let me,” he said. The Black here was like smoke curls from a candle just snuffed—thin and ethereal, the boundaries of the daylight world worn to practically nothing.

On the one hand, Abbadon and his merry band of freaks would have a hard time finding them in the swirling hotspot of magic. On the other hand, anything could be lurking in the dark and his sight would only hear the static of the nexus.

“Fine,” Pete muttered, shoving the box at him. “Take this, then.”

Jack accepted the burden, and saw in the slice of sunlight that Pete was pale, with sweat beading on her forehead. “You all right, luv?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she said. “Only been vomiting more than that bloody child from The Exorcist. Had it with this fucking pregnancy, I’ll tell you that much. I want to climb in the TARDIS and fast-forward to when the kid is about eleven.” She set her jaw and followed Jack up the stairs. He tried not to listen to her sawing breath. Pregnant birds threw up. His mum had certainly never let him hear the end of it. Morning sickness out the arse, and what do I get? Ten fuckin’ hours of labor to pop out the world’s most ungrateful little cunt.

It didn’t mean anything, and fussing over Pete would just make her chuck something at his head. Maybe if he repeated it enough times in his own head he’d believe it. Pete would be all right. The kid would be all right. He just had to play the game a bit longer, and he’d no longer be in any danger of fucking either of them up.

And that was the way it should be. The way it had to be, unless he wanted to raise another Winter to get nicked by the cops, slam handfuls of smack, and drift through the Black as useless flotsam.

“Here,” Pete said. “Sixth floor. Said the key would be on the jamb.”

The hallway of the flat wasn’t much better—someone had made an attempt to cover the stained diamond-shaped tiles with green lino, but most of it had been ripped back up, leaving jagged continents. The wood paneling and sooty lamps had probably once been grand, but that had been decades, if not centuries, ago. The high ceiling merely served to create a smog layer inside, a miniature of the outdoors, made of cigarette smoke and stale stench from cooking oil.

A pair of junkies crouched by the elevator, a gated type with a hand-scribbled sign reading OUT OF ORDER. The pasteboard was yellowed and a variety of creative and obscene graffiti covered the black letters.

The girl, one half of her head shaved and one covered in blue dreadlocks, stretched out her hand. “Got any change, brother?”

“None you could spend in this country, sorry,” Jack told her.

“Oh, you’re British,” she said, and gave him a dreamy smile. “That’s cool.”

The boy nodded, skinny arms quivering as they wrapped around his knees. The bare flesh poking through his pants was scraped raw, concentric lines making hash marks in the skin. His arms were in the same condition. Ice could make you scratch that way, think there were insects and demons crawling in and out of your flesh.

“Down here.” Pete fitted a key into the last flat in the hall and stepped inside.

Jack paused on the threshold, but there were no hexes on the flat, just the swirling ankle-deep tide of the Black. He’d need to fix that.

The flat smelled of ammonia and stale fag smoke. A roach scuttled along the back of the kitchen sink, and the walls were the yellow of stained teeth. A broken shade let in a little light, but otherwise, except for a stained mattress, the single room was empty.

“Home sweet fucking home,” Jack muttered. Pete sat down on the mattress and put her head between her knees. Jack dropped the box and sat next to her.

“All right, luv?” he said. He weighed his risk, and then put a hand on the center of her back. Touching Pete was usually like putting your hand in something warm and sweet, a blissful hit of the best narcotic his brain could imagine. Now it was like grabbing a high-voltage wire with his bare hand. A rush of her talent fed into his and tried to convince him to expel the cloud of power as a hex or a spell that could blow a hole through the flat’s wall.

He hadn’t really touched her since the pregnancy—he’d brushed her hands, sure, or put his arm around her while they watched telly if she was in a good mood, but there hadn’t been any close contact, and he certainly hadn’t tried to fuck her. That would be a fast ticket to the A&E, considering Pete’s usual mood. He hadn’t expected to feel the touch of the Weir so strongly—stronger than it had ever been.

Stronger than before the Morrigan touched you, you mean, his treacherous inner voice whispered. Jack fucking hated the voice. It always told him the truth.

Pete surprised him by leaning her weight on his chest, nestling her head in the crook of his shoulder. “We ever going to make it back?” she said.

“Don’t know.” Jack didn’t have the heart to lie to her. She would’ve known, anyway. “Doesn’t look good,” he said.

“You going to tell me what happened now?” Pete said.

He should move his hand. Move it before Pete’s talent overwhelmed him, made him drunk on the rush of the Black through his brain, and he did something stupid. But she was warm, and small under his hand, and he could feel her ribs move when she breathed.

Jack kept his hand on Pete while he gave her the short version of meeting Abbadon. “Fucking nutter,” he finished. “Thinks he can take on Belial and the rest of Hell. Probably wants to grab his He-Man sword and go toe to toe with the Princes, stupid git.”

“Why is that so stupid?” Pete got up and ran water into her hand from the rusted tap. She swiped the sweat from her face and drank another fistful.

“Because he’s talking about destroying Hell?” Jack spread his hands. “Nobody can go up against demons, Pete. A demon, maybe. But not all of them. Besides the six hundred and sixty-six, there’s their legions. Berserkers, Phantoms, Fenris. Millions of them, Pete. It’s like a hobo shouting at taxis—funny to watch, but completely ineffective.”

“I don’t think you’d need to take on millions,” Pete shrugged. “Just the ones who control the millons. Even the Named would fall into line. They’re demons, Jack. You told me they follow the leader. They value the rank and file. If someone were to knock down the Princes, I bet all but a few would fall in.”

Jack massaged his forehead. If he was honest, he’d had the same thought. “Abbadon’s too crazy to be organized,” he said. “Too much time in solitary. His mind is porridge.”

“He was the first thing in Hell, Jack,” Pete said. “To be only one of four survivors, over countless millennia—he might be crazy, but he’s a hard man. If he was a human, he’d be the worst kind of bastard. Seen them time and again in the prisons when I was on the Met.”

“Even so,” Jack said. “’M not being his errand boy. I got enough of that with Belial.”

Pete sat back beside him, mattress bowing under her weight. Her shirt was loose—one of his; he recognized the faded SUSPECT DEVICE lettering across the front—and if he hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have been able to detect the slight swell of her stomach. It was there, though, and she let out a small sound as she sat back down.

“Can’t wait to swell up and have to visit the loo every ten seconds,” she said. “My mum was all, ‘childbirth is a miracle and a beautiful gift from the unicorn faeries,’ but all my sister could talk about was how big Mum’s feet got when she was ready to pop with me.”

“Your feet look fine to me,” Jack said. “You’re not your mum.”

“Thank fuck for small favors,” Pete muttered. She flipped open the top of the cardboard box. “So, Abbadon. You manage to figure out why he’s after these families?”

Jack had been actively trying not to think about that, but after seeing things like Teddy, he couldn’t very well ignore what his eyes and his logical mind were both shouting at him. “Got an idea, yeah.”

Pete pulled out the stack of files Jack had first seen on Mayhew’s desk. “Good, because I’ve gone over these fucking police reports ten times apiece and I still can’t see any reason behind the murders.”

“I think Abbadon and his pals are trying to grow themselves new bodies,” Jack said. “Saw one out at his little ranch of horrors that had gone wrong. Horribly wrong.”

“But they’re corporeal creatures,” Pete said. “Don’t they have flesh of their own?”

“I think they can’t pass out of Hell,” Jack said. “When they were born, there was no here. There was just Hell, and a void. At least if I understand his ramblings correctly.”

Abbadon’s flesh was working all right, but the others were falling apart. Teddy was the worst, but there was nothing normal about the way Levi’s and the girl’s flesh had reacted to the intrusion of something ancient and malicious beyond measure.

“The kids,” Pete said. Jack nodded.

“I don’t think either the Case baby or this recent one are dead,” he said. “I think they’re being used as vessels.”

Pete’s face went pale, and she swallowed hard. “Christ.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Not exactly an acceptable hobby.”

“To have something like that, randomly deciding to slaughter you to get at your kid…” Pete trailed off, and paged through the pictures again.

Jack patted himself down for fags and found his pack partially crushed in his pocket. He lit one, dragged. He didn’t want to tell Pete that he had a feeling the Cases’ and the Herreras’ slaughter wasn’t all that random. Ancient creatures of Hell didn’t simply latch on to you because they liked the cut of your jib.

Abbadon had escaped the great iron prison Jack had found while in Hell. Had escaped a full ten years before Nicholas Naughton had tried to awaken Nergal and sent the rest of the domino tiles flying.

Abbadon had had help. Nobody escaped Hell without it. Jack sure as fuck hadn’t.

“I need to see Mrs. Herrera’s body,” he said. “It’d still be on ice, yeah?”

“They keep unsolveds for as long as there’s room and they don’t go ripe, ’least they do back home,” Pete said. “I imagine she’d still be about. File said they had no family to claim the remains anyway.”

“Right,” Jack said. “Let me put up some hexes on this shithole, and then we’re going to go find out exactly what the fuck Belial has gotten me into.”

He dug through his kit bag and found chalk and a few of his dried baggies of herbs. He didn’t put much stock in kitchen witchery—that was the provenance of white magic, the sort of person who believed nailing a few twigs and a twist of colored thread above the doorjamb would keep out anything that meant you harm.

Only the Black could do that, and bending the Black to your will wasn’t something a white witch would ever truck with.

He chalked the barrier marks around the doorjamb and across the threshold, something to focus the hex. Protection hexes, good ones, took time, but Jack could pull a quick and dirty barrier together in a few heartbeats. That was important—if something was clawing at the other side of your door, speed trumped elegance every time.

He laid a line of salt from his ancient tin and followed it up with a line of herbs. He reached out, touched the electric swirl of the Black just beyond sight, and pulled it into the chalk, into the salt, tugging and weaving it into a crackling barrier across all the thresholds of the flat. A twinge in the front of his skull, and it was done. Anyone trying to come at him would get enough of a jolt to reconsider their life choices.

“Let’s get this done,” he told Pete. “I’m ready to be out of this miserable city.”

Pete collected her mobile and her bag, but before Jack could stow his kit, fists pounded on the door. Pete rolled her eyes. “Probably just some crackhead.”

Jack touched the door with splayed fingers, but nothing spiked his sight. “Yeah? What?”

“Hey, dude.” The female junkie’s voice was thin and papery through the water-stained door. “You got a place we could maybe piss? The gas station is like half a mile away.”

“Fuck off,” Pete said. “This isn’t a hotel.”

Jack sighed. “What’s the harm?” A girl couldn’t just find a convenient alley, like he had when he was a junkie. He could practically feel the grimy film that built up on your skin when you were concerned with showering maybe once or twice in a month. The stale taste in your mouth of fags and the bite of bile, because you hadn’t eaten in recent memory and didn’t want to. Your veins burned you from the inside out, burned out hunger and everything except the need to chase the fire, reignite it when it got low.

Pete threw up her hands. “Whatever. Just be quick.”

Jack undid the deadbolt and opened the door a crack. Saw the girl’s bloodshot eyes and rigid face, and tried to slam it again, but she thrust her steel-toed boot into the gap and then threw the door off its hinges with a boom.

He went down hard, the door landing on top of him. If it hadn’t been half-disintegrated with dry rot, it would’ve crushed his ribs, but instead the junkie girl landing on top of him finished that job. She crouched atop Jack and leaned down, nostrils flaring wide. She wore a piercing, a ring with a jewel bead that shimmered in the low light as she inhaled his scent.

Jack thrust against her with his whole weight, but she wrapped a hand around his neck. “You really think you can just run from me? You think Belial can protect you?” The voice was low and masculine, and as it twisted out of her narrow throat it sounded like a creature trapped far below ground.

Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Pete moving—she held a thin metal tube he recognized as her collapsible baton that she’d carried as a detective, and still kept in her bag for rough spots.

Jack looked back at the girl. Blood vessels had erupted across the surface of her eyes from the strain of Abbadon’s magic, and her breathing was sawing in and out of her throat. “What part of no don’t you understand, Donny boy?” he said. “I’m not interested in your jailbreak. I have to live in this world same as everyone else. Don’t particularly want to destroy it.”

“Then you’ll burn like the rest,” the girl hissed. “Like all the other sons of bitches who stood up to be counted against me.”

Pete raised her baton, but on the downswing the shape of the male junkie slammed into her, knocking Pete into the wall hard enough to leave indents in the stained plaster.

“Shit…” she gasped, as the boy straddled her, wrapping his fingers in her hair. He had a knife, a rusty little Swiss Army number like a boy playing at wilderness adventures would carry, but he jammed it into the fold of Pete’s jaw.

“Stay down, whore,” he rumbled. Levi. Jack would know the wet, smothered gasp of the voice anywhere.

“I’d hoped you’d be one of us,” Abbadon snarled, “but now you’re useless to me. Loose ends get cut, Winter. Your little demon boyfriend can’t protect you now.”

Jack felt the cool metal of Pete’s baton brush against his fingers, and he struggled under the door and the weight of the girl, batting it back toward Pete. Her fingers closed around it and she whipped it up and across the boy’s face. A welt of bruise blossomed up one cheek and Jack saw a tooth fly, borne on a spray of blood.

The girl turned her head for a split second, and Jack braced his hands against the blistered paint of the door and shoved. She tumbled off him, and Jack scrambled onto her back, grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head once into the floor, short and sharp.

The girl went still, but the boy was less tractable. Pete was up now, and hit him again with her baton, and again, until he fell, twitching and bleeding. Jack scrambled for his kit bag. Exorcisms, unlike barrier hexes, were not something he could perform on the fly, but it wasn’t like a demon had actually crawled inside the junkie. Levi was just riding him, using him like a puppet.

He flipped the top off his salt tin and dumped the full contents over the junkie’s body, watching the flakes turn pink as they stuck in the runnels of blood across the boy’s face. “Get the fuck out,” Jack snarled, and pushed, with his talent, as hard as he could. He contacted the expanse of Levi’s power—sticky, dark, endlessly hungry. A vast maw, a thing that could devour the world and never be sated.

Jack shoved, using the salt as his vessel, and thin green flames rose from the junkie’s body as the Black clashed with Levi’s talent. The junkie spasmed, then rolled on his side and vomited a thin stream of sticky bile laced with blood.

Jack grabbed Pete by the hand, slinging his kit bag with the other. Abbadon knew where they were, and his hexes had done precisely shit. Keep moving—that was the only way to defeat a predator. Run until your feet are bloody and then run some more.

“You all right?” he said. Pete was pale, the only spots of color high in her cheeks.

“I’m fine,” she said tightly. “Fucking go.”

They made the reverse journey down the stairs and into the Fury. Pete let out a small sound as she lowered herself into the seat, and Jack tossed his kit to the floor, taking her chin between his fingers. He knew that sound, had made it himself when he thought everyone, his mum and Kevin and the rest, had stopped listening. The sound came after beatings, after falls, after you’d swallowed the blood and the bruises had flowered fully on your skin.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Nothing,” Pete snapped. “Just took a hit from that fucking junkie, is all. I told you not to let them in.” She sucked in a breath, and passed a hand across her abdomen before shoving the key into the Fury’s ignition. “Stupid,” she told Jack. “So stupid.”

Jack couldn’t disagree with her as they drove away, but he at least had the comfort of knowing he was going to make Abbadon answer for this, and for everything else. Belial couldn’t threaten him and Abbadon couldn’t scare him, but now he’d fucked himself. Jack could take a beating, take a knife in his own back, but Pete was a different thing. Abbadon didn’t know that yet, but he would.

CHAPTER 19

By the time they pulled off the freeway at North Mission Road and took the turns that brought them to a complex of brick buildings that looked more like an old-fashioned movie studio than a mortuary, Pete had gotten some of her color back and she’d stopped wincing every time she took a breath. Jack felt his own chest unknot.

Pete parked in the visitor’s area and turned to him. “It’d take more than that to hurt me and the kid,” she said to Jack. “Don’t worry, all right?”

“Can’t make any promises,” Jack said. “I’m never going to not care if you’re getting hurt, Petunia. You know that.”

She winced at her full name. “You leave off calling me that. Know how much I bloody hate it.” She shoved the door open and perched a pair of sunglasses on her nose. “Tell you one thing, I’m not saddling this child with a name that’ll follow them through life, giving them endless shite. Been wondering even more lately what the hell my mum was thinking.”

“You given it any thought? A name, I mean, not your mum,” Jack said. The mortuary started at one of the brick buildings, with a peaked roof covered in red clay tiles, and continued in a modern gray box that told Jack in no uncertain terms via several signs that visitors were not allowed.

Pete shrugged. “I’m not much good at names. Figure I should stick my Da’s given name in there somewhere if it’s a boy. What about you? Your mum? Lawrence?”

“Lawrence, maybe,” Jack said. “My mum … are you mad? I’d never do that to a kid. Fucking bitch is dead and she’s going to stay that way, not live on forever saddling some poor offspring of mine with her name.”

“Well, excuse me very fucking much,” Pete muttered. “Just thought I’d ask.”

Jack was saved from having to think about what his mother’s reaction would be to him naming a living being after her by Detective Shavers, who came from the low gray building. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he told Jack. “I’m not happy about this.”

“You don’t have to be happy,” Jack said. “I’m not thrilled to see you either, mate.”

Pete jabbed him sharply in the ribs. “Thanks very much for setting this up,” she said.

“It’s not for you,” Shavers snapped. “I’ve had Ben calling me eight times a day, drunk off his ass, crying about the dead families. I can’t deal with this shit, Ms. Caldecott. Whatever you’ve stirred up in his head, look at the body, say what you have to say, and calm it back down.”

“I don’t think I can do much about Mayhew,” Pete said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not exactly a stable individual.”

“If you don’t fix this, I’m going to arrest you and throw you in county myself,” Shavers said. “And I will personally ensure that your boyfriend’s in there with you, in a cell with a roommate who has a thing for blonds. That clear enough for you?”

Jack thought that Shavers could do with a good pop in the mouth. Knock out a few of those film-star teeth, and see how he’d act then. Coppers were, at the root, mostly the same. There were a few, like Pete, who thought they were genuinely on the side of justice, if not always the side of Good, but most were like Shavers—little men, with a little bit of power, using it to the hilt to fuck up everyone else’s day.

Shavers led them into the morgue proper and got them visitor’s badges, the kind given to families identifying the corpses of their loved ones. The only other person with the same colored badge as Jack was a sobbing Mexican woman with gray hair wrapped in an orange scarf. A morgue worker stood by her, not close enough to get grabbed, but close enough to look uncomfortable.

Shavers showed them the way to the cold room, then pulled out his mobile and left.

Pete opened the refrigerator door, as small and square as the reliquary for a person’s ashes. Mrs. Herrera was naked, covered in a plastic sheet. Blue around the edges, her eyes were shut, but nobody would ever mistake her for being asleep.

Jack got out a pair of rubber gloves. Who knew what kind of shit the morgue workers did with the unclaimed bodies? Nothing he wanted all over his skin. He took the sheet off and looked Mrs. Herrera over. She’d been in good shape when she was alive. The gaping cavity in her abdomen had been sewn up with rough stiches, and she could have been a trophy wife recovering from a tummy tuck. Her breasts were natural, flat brown nipples and not much volume, as far as tits in Los Angeles went.

Jack checked her arms, the inside of her thighs. No track marks and no tattoos. In the parlance of the Black, that made her practically a nun. Ink and smack were the two most common things to go under the skin if you had a talent.

He gestured to Pete. “Help me roll her.”

Pete didn’t flinch—she had ten times the experience with stiffs that he did. “You looking for anything special?”

“Don’t know,” Jack muttered, running his fingers lightly down Mrs. Herrera’s spine. It could have been random. Abbadon could have seen a pregnant woman at the market, at the cinema, anywhere at all. He moved among humans like a shark, and he could have happened on her by chance.

He couldn’t believe that, though. Not really. Abbadon was smart, and people weren’t all the same. One could be possessed as easily as breathing, while the next would fight to their dying heartbeat against psychic invasion, killing themselves and wearing Abbadon down to a nub. A fugitive from Hell couldn’t afford to take a chance like that. He’d chosen the children for a reason.

Jack found what he was looking for under the fold of Mrs. Herrera’s buttock. She had an arse toned in life by the sort of workout that came with private gyms and trainers named Sven, but the small shadow was a flaw, the sort of flaw a woman like her wouldn’t allow.

Pete got a pen light from a tray of instruments and shone it on the mark. “What the hell is that?”

Jack used his thumb and forefinger to spread the skin tight, touching the raised ridges with his other hand. The slightest bit of power was still there, mostly faded by death. No blood, no life.

“A brand,” he said. Seeing the simple lines, in the shape of a twinned cross surrounded by a broken triangle, stirred a memory that he’d just as soon forget. Another pretty girl, skinnier and paler, but beautiful nonetheless. Hollow, lifeless eyes. Skinny fingers that wrapped around his wrist and left marks when he yanked himself free.

Her name had been Fiona Hannigan, and she was dead now, but she’d been into the same shit as Mrs. Herrera.

“I can see it’s a brand,” Pete said. “You look as if you’ve swallowed a mouthful of embalming fluid. What’s it mean?”

“It means she was part of a sect,” Jack said. “Not a sect, really—like a club. It’s a calling card for sex magic. She was one of the cattle. One of the conduits they used for ritual.” He threw the sheet back on Mrs. Herrera. He didn’t need to look at the brand any longer.

A baby conceived during a ritual, already tainted by black magic, would be the perfect flesh for something like Abbadon. Jack honestly wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

Pete was chewing on her lip, a gesture that she reverted to when she was nervous or going over some particularly nasty truth. “You said one of them went wrong,” she said. “One of the things riding with Abbadon.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Fucking disgusting. Looks like a twat with teeth. Think it was the Herrera baby, poor soul. Abbadon took the Case child for his own flesh, and fuck knows where he found bodies for the other two. They’re not working out much better, I can tell you that.”

“And I can tell you they’re not finished,” Pete said. “You can’t go against the Princes a man down.”

She was right. Pete was usually right. That was the maddening thing about her. Jack shoved a hand through his hair. It was still stiff with blood. He needed to wash, needed a drink. Needed to get out of this city, where there was nothing but a black hole of pain and misery to fall into, until you smacked the bottom and came apart like a doll.

“There can’t be too many cabals of fuck-mages, even in a city like this,” he said.

“We can’t let that thing get its hands on another kid,” Pete said. “Nor slice up another family like they’re a fucking fruit cocktail.” She stripped off her gloves and threw them in the biohazard bin.

“Don’t worry,” Jack told her. “I know somebody who’ll know exactly where we can find ourselves a pregnant sorcerer.”

CHAPTER 20

Sanford practically bounded down the drive when Jack rang at his gate, Gator and Parker in tow. “Jack! You have some good news for me?”

“Not even a droplet of piss for you,” Jack told him. Parker grunted, and Sanford blinked.

“Then, pardon me, but what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Got a proposition for you,” Jack said. This had to go just right. If he slagged Sanford off, that great cunt Parker looked like he’d be all too happy to leave him stone dead in a canyon somewhere, food for the coyotes that Jack could hear yipping even now in the hills behind Sanford’s house.

“For me.” Sanford cracked his knuckles. “This should be good, considering how I believe I told you exactly what I needed from you, and the consequences if that didn’t happen.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack said. “You really know so much about me, you’ll know that following orders from gits in slick suits isn’t exactly my forte.”

Sanford rubbed a thumb across his forehead. “Shall we take this somewhere more conducive to negotiation?” he said. “You look like a man who could use a drink. Possibly a flea bath.”

This time, there were no pleasantries by the pool. Sanford took Jack to a study, full of film tear sheets from pictures Jack had never heard of, a set of fake fencing swords and the rubber head of a swamp monster hanging on the walls. “Basil was quite a collector,” Sanford said. “Somewhat notorious for stealing from his sets, actually. Have you seen any of his films?”

“Can’t say I’m a movie buff,” Jack said.

“Right, you were in that band,” Sanford said. “Probably thought you were too cool for cheesy old B pictures. Anyway, I recommend My Soul Condemned. Nasty little noir picture, better than most of the crap Basil was featured in.”

He poured scotch from a decanter into a crystal tumbler and Jack drank, but it was cheap stuff that lit a fire all the way down. The fuck you scotch, reserved for guests you really wanted to shove into the pool and hold there until they stopped twitching.

“Now,” Sanford said, lighting a cigar from an inlaid box on his massive desk. “Why don’t you tell me what’s got you in such a lather?”

Jack told Sanford about Abbadon. Watched his face for any sign of a twitch of guilt, but Sanford was better at the game than that. He smoked, he drank, he smiled and made conciliatory faces in all the right spots.

“Well, that’s certainly an exciting story,” he told Jack when Jack finished. “But I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

“You want Abbadon on your side,” Jack said. “So you can poke and prod Belial for the rest of his miserable existence. You can’t hope to hold him on your own, but with some of Abbadon’s magic, you’ll have the pet demon you’ve always wanted.” He steepled his fingers. “You tell me where the local sorcerers meet to fuck each other’s brains out, I guarantee I can deliver you Abbadon.”

He didn’t make a habit of hooking men like Sanford together with creatures like Abbadon, but Sanford didn’t know that. He thought threatening Pete and the kid would keep Jack in line, and Jack was content to let him go right on thinking it. Besides, he needed Sanford, at least for a little bit longer. Then it might be amusing to watch Abbadon chew the prick up and shit him out.

“Interesting,” Sanford said. “And what’s the upshot for you?”

“You leave Pete alone,” Jack said. “Call off your pet sociopaths and let her go about her life.”

Sanford rolled his eyes. “What a predictable twist,” he said. “I’d never sell a picture with a line like that.”

Jack held Sanford’s eyes. “Good thing this is real life, then.” He leaned forward and set the empty tumbler on the edge of Sanford’s desk. Sanford didn’t flinch, but he wasn’t acting like Jack had brought him the wrong sort of coffee any longer, either. The temptation to get what he wanted was going to rule him. Jack leaned back in his chair. “So? You know any place like what I’m talking about?”

Sanford exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You fuck me in the ass over this, Jack…” He leaned forward and stubbed out his cigar, one vicious movement that rattled the ashtray. “I’m not going to need to hurt Pete and your kid. You’ll wish you were dead either way.”

“Story of my fuckin’ life,” Jack said. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

CHAPTER 21

Sanford and Jack rode in an old Lincoln limousine, a great rolling coffin of iron and chrome. Parker drove and Gator stayed behind, a development that clearly infuriated him, veins bulging out of his bull neck. “I don’t trust that Limey fuck, sir,” he told Sanford.

“That’s all right,” Sanford said, giving Jack a mild smile. “Neither do I.”

Parker stayed quiet, guiding them down from the heights of Sunset Boulevard and back into the maze of downtown.

“It’s a real shame what’s happening down here,” Sanford said. “Used to be a high-class neighborhood back before the crash. Now it’s full of spics and crackheads, and all of these old buildings are crumbling.” He gestured at an Art Deco cinema, marquee lit up to advertise a live performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. “The Million Dollar Theater. Back in old Basil’s day, all the premieres were there. Swank spot.” He pointed to a brick building across the street, a nondescript four-story box surrounded by tourists with cameras. “They filmed Blade Runner in there, the Bradbury Building. Crazy ironwork. I’d’ve loved to get a shooting permit for a feature I did a few years ago, but it’s all rented by the LAPD now and they’re real assholes unless you have a buddy on the force.”

The limo pulled to the curb, putting an end to Sanford’s rambling before Jack had to choke him with his own shoelaces. The man loved the sound of his chatter like few Jack had ever met before. That was fine—the more Sanford talked, the less he had to.

Parker opened the door, but let it swing back at soon as Sanford was out. It clipped Jack in the knee, and he cursed. Parker’s lips twitched with the thinnest ghost of a smile before Sanford went to a metal door sandwiched between a convenience mart and a shop selling quincenera dresses and hit the buzzer.

“Let me do the talking in here,” Sanford said. “I have a relationship with these people. You’re an outsider, and they don’t like that. Me bringing you at all is putting my whole reputation at risk.”

“I’ll do me best not to use the wrong fork or spit on the carpet,” Jack said. Worrying about offending sex magicians was like being concerned with hurting a hobo’s feelings—you could spare the worry, but why bother? Sex magic spoke to a particular kind of ego, worse than the usual sort of cunt who turned to black magic. None of the sorcerers Jack had run across were much better than pimps with a little bit of talent and just enough charm to lure damaged boys and girls into their games for power. He supposed there might be some who used fucking as a genuine focus, a form of power-raising that was consensual and at least in the gray area between outright black magic and the white stuff that everyday sorts associated with witchcraft, but he hadn’t met them. The more depraved the sex, the more pain the subject was in, the less they wanted it, the bigger the entity you could attract. And the sorts of things attracted to blood, sex, and suffering weren’t cuddly and inclined to sit down and have a cup of tea.

He couldn’t worry about that now. He wasn’t on a mission of mercy. He was here to find a pregnant sorcerer, warn her that something was coming to slice her like a Sunday roast, and get the fuck out. Let Sanford and Belial and Abbadon duke it out. He was finished with being batted back and forth like a toy mouse. LA couldn’t be in his rear view soon enough.

The buzzer rang, echoing through the rusted speaker, and Parker held the door for Sanford. He began to let it go on Jack again, and Jack stared into his blank dark eyes. “Do it and I’m putting your head through.”

“You threatened to kick our teeth in, too,” Parker murmured. “Promises, promises.”

Jack followed Sanford up a narrow staircase, threadbare Persian carpets muffling his boots. The walls were stamped tin, painted over with blood red that pooled and dripped at the floor. A single bare bulb flickered above Jack’s head, giving Sanford an entirely undeserved halo as he crested the landing in front of Jack.

Sanford knocked at another door and looked at Parker when a deadbolt clacked. “We’ll be out in a few minutes. Just hang out.”

Parker grunted, and glared at Jack with hostility naked as a spitting electrical wire. Jack patted him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, mate. You’ll have time to work on your tan.”

The door swung open, and a small woman looked Jack up and down. “You didn’t call ahead for a visitor,” she told Sanford.

“Come on, Anna,” he said. “You know I’m a good boy.”

One of her painted eyebrows went up. “Hmph,” she said, but stepped aside. She was pudgy, in the way that short women seemed to grow outward, not up, and wore a black silk dressing gown and heels. She didn’t have the hollowed-out stare of most sex sorcerers’ fuckmates. A madam, Jack decided, somebody who wasn’t to the taste of whatever entity this sorcerer was feeding in exchange for power.

“We don’t have any more recordings for you,” she told Sanford. “Next ritual is at the new moon. You’re welcome to attend, as always.”

“Hold up,” Jack said to Sanford. “You use their rituals for spank material?” He shook his head. “Got to hand you that one, mate. You’re sicker than I thought.”

“Please,” Sanford said. “Shut the fuck up. Did I not make myself clear?”

Jack ignored him and looked at Anna. “Where’s your loo?”

“Down the hallway, second door,” she said. Jack started walking without another word.

Sanford was somebody who liked the wheedling almost as much as the result. They could be here until Christmas while he danced around with Anna and her fellow perverts, trying to couch his question in the most honeyed terms. Tell a sorcerer an ancient entity from the blackest part of the Pit was after one of their flock, and they’d probably welcome it with open arms. Sanford had to avoid that at all costs if he wanted his prize of a living, breathing pet demon than he didn’t have to share with anyone.

Jack had no such compunctions. He’d kick down every door in this shitty warren of flats if he had to. He opened the loo door loudly, running water and flushing the toilet, and then slipped out and down the hallway.

He thought it might have been offices at one point, in the past when men wore hats and women all had blood-red lips and low, husky cigarette purrs. The wavy glass door showed shadows, and moans and sobs came from behind a few. Jack tried those first.

A boy who couldn’t have been much older than Sliver glared up at him. His bare torso was covered with thin welts, and a black halo of makeup had collected under his eyes. “Get the fuck out,” he said, swiping the runnels on his cheeks.

“Sorry,” Jack said.

“Don’t be sorry, get out!” the kid snapped. “I’m off duty, all right? Find somebody else to fuck with.”

“Can I help you?”

Jack turned to tell whoever it was to fuck off, but instead found himself face to face with a pleasant-looking blond girl whose stomach under her Killers T-shirt was swollen round as a sport ball.

“Yeah,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think you can.”

“Excuse me,” the boy said loudly. “Can you two have your girl talk somewhere other than my room?”

“Calm down, Travis,” the girl said. “Nobody wants to be in your room.” She ushered Jack out and shut the door. “Sorry about him. He’s new.”

“He always that cheerful?” Jack asked her.

“Usually he’s pretty good about new people,” the girl said. “But he had a rough night. The indoctrination can be tough.” She gave Jack a serene smile. “The first time I let the power inside me, I puked my guts out. But Anna helped me, and now look.” She ran her hands over her stomach.

“A veritable bundle of joy,” Jack said. “Anna, she’s like your mum?”

“Oh, no.” The girl shook her head. “Anna leads the rituals. She’s the one who shares the power with us, and who showed me how I can use my body to communicate with it.” She gave a small shiver. “Anna’s so much more than a mother.”

A female sex magician. Well, he’d heard of stranger things. Jack took the girl by the arm. “What’s your name?” Her talent was barely a flutter, just enough that she’d feel disconnected from the daylight world, a vague feeling of unease she could never identify. It made her a thick piece of juicy meat to people like Anna.

“Kim,” she said. “My ritual name is…”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Jack said. He turned them around and aimed them at the glowing red sign showing the exceptionally stupid where they should go in case there was a fire. “You’re the only pregnant one here, yeah?”

“Yes, for now…” Kim twisted in his hand. “You’re hurting me.”

“We’re going,” Jack said. “Come with me.”

“No!” Kim said, jerking free. “I’m not a whore, dude. If you’re here for a ritual, then talk to Anna. You can’t just drag me off to fuck any time you want.”

“Listen, you brainwashed twit,” Jack said. “If you don’t leave this place right now, then you are going to end up dead and your child is going to be a vessel for something so horrible your tiny mind can’t comprehend. Look at my face and see if I’m lying to you.”

Kim stared at him, catching her lip between her teeth. “My baby?” she said. “Anna wouldn’t hurt my baby. Children are a gift, a product of the most sacred kind of union…”

“What utter shit have they been feeding you?” Jack said. She was letting him walk her, at least, and he shoved the door open with his free arm.

A klaxon began whooping, and Jack resisted the urge to ram his head into the wall. “Listen to me, Kim. Your little circle-jerk here has been targeted by a predator who is much bigger and hungrier than your Anna. She might think she’s struck a bargain with him, but she can’t stop what he wants to do with your kid and any others who come into the fold. Nothing can. If you care about the kid at all, you’ll come with me now.”

Kim swallowed hard, lacing her fingers across her stomach. “Who are you?”

At the far end of the hall, Anna and Sanford appeared, Parker in tow. “Stop him!” Anna shrieked. “He’s got a girl with him!”

“I’m Jack,” Jack told Kim. “Nice to meet you. Now kindly get yourself together and fucking run.”

Parker reached under his coat, hand coming up. Anna raised her hands, and Jack saw purple witchfire crackle around her fists. “Fuck,” he muttered, throwing a shield hex to bounce Anna’s spell back at her. His head throbbed, and Anna’s power jittered through the light sockets and across the walls, throwing sparks.

Kim stared at Anna, then back at him. “You’re crazy,” she whispered.

Jack watched Parker bring up his pistol, work the slide. The hex might hold; it might not. Bullets were iron projectiles, and they were decent at punching through spells even when the mage throwing them wasn’t beat to shite and working on half power. “Look,” he said to Kim. “You’ve got no reason to trust me, but I don’t want anything from you. I’ve got a kid of my own, and I know you’d die before you let anything happen to yours. I’m just here to see that you don’t have to.”

Kim looked back at him and didn’t say anything else, just started moving, down the stairs, as fast as she could with her extra weight.

Jack slammed the fire door, twisted the deadbolt, and, for good measure, sent a burning curse into the lock that turned the works to slag. It wouldn’t hold a sorcerer like Anna for long, but it’d give them what he hoped was enough of a head start.

“Are you some kind of psycho?” Kim asked as they reached the bottom level. Jack worked his lock-pick charm on the padlock and chain keeping the door to the next building shut, then hustled Kim through.

“There’s some debate about that,” he said. “But right now, I’m the sanest person you know.”

A shadow loomed up in front of him, and Jack didn’t have time to move before Parker slammed a fist into his face. “Bad luck, pretty boy,” he told Jack, taking Kim by the arm and pulling her behind him. “The bitch doesn’t belong to you.”

“I doubt she belongs to you either,” Jack said. “Unless you’re the proud father.”

Kim’s eyes went wide at the idea. “I don’t know this asshole!” she exclaimed.

“Not someone you want to know, either,” Jack said. His cheekbone felt flat and numb—Parker hit like a hammer. Trying to hit back would just end with him in an emergency ward pissing into a tube.

He hit with a curse instead, the leg-locker flinging Parker to one side of the tunnel and chipping a dent out of the cinder block wall. Jack grabbed Kim’s hand and jerked her along. She couldn’t run very well, more of a waddle, but Jack jerked her up the steps and burst into the foyer of the building next door, coming face to face with a surprised Japanese man holding a long-lensed camera.

“’Scuse me,” Jack said. After the claustrophobia of Anna’s lair, the light made him squint.

Kim pressed close to him. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Who was that guy?”

“An arsehole,” Jack said. “Somebody who doesn’t have your kid’s best interest in mind.”

“Excuse me.” A heavyset woman in a blue blazer tapped Jack on the shoulder. “The lower level is strictly off limits to visitors.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Jack said. Sunlight dappled the red tiled floor, and a spike of pain went through his forehead when he looked up. He was surrounded by cold iron—run under the water of a free-flowing stream—iron rails, iron decoration, iron elevators running up and down on iron chains. The entire building was seamed with iron, a box designed to kill anything magic that crossed its threshold.

“Well,” Jack muttered to himself. “Shit.”

Kim blanched, putting one hand on her stomach and one on her mouth. “Oh my god. This place sucks.”

A tour group, consisting of a pod of tanned twenty-somethings chattering in German, entered the lobby, and Jack pulled Kim into the midst of the crowd. He couldn’t throw hexes in here, but nobody could find them from the outside, either. Sanford and Parker could watch the street, but with the steady flow of tourists and bored-looking office workers that Jack guessed were cops, he’d have to spot them first. A little luck, and he could have Kim on a bus back to Bum Fun, Kansas, or wherever the hell she’d come to this city from by nightfall.

“This is the Bradbury Building,” intoned the tour guide. “Built in 1934.” A translator repeated, and the Germans cooed appreciatively.

Parker burst out of the cellar door, and the security guard started for him. He hit her, one jab straight into the throat, and she collapsed to her knees on the tile, choking.

“Dammit,” Jack muttered. There went his plan to slip out unnoticed when the Germans returned to the filth, noise, and vomiting hobos of downtown LA.

Parker made a beeline for them, and Jack did what came naturally, ran like hell, up the stairs and past a cord blocking the unwashed masses from the second floor. He pelted down the landing, and against a normal bloke he and Kim would have had a head start. Parker, however, eschewed the stairs entirely, leaping straight from the lobby to the first balcony, landing on a floor with a crash that cracked tiles. His knobby muscles rippled under his black shirt and he dropped into a crouch, nostrils flaring at Jack as he used his body to make a barrier between him and Kim.

“Holy shit,” she squeaked from behind him.

A demon would never be able to form-shift amid all this iron, which left Jack with several distinctly unpleasant possibilities as to what, exactly, Parker was. Not a werewolf—the enchantment would have been obvious during all the contact they’d had, in the form of Parker kicking the hell out of him.

Something organic, something in the blood. Something that was causing black claws to erupt from Parker’s hands and his teeth to overshoot the bounds of his mouth.

He crouched on his haunches and hissed at Jack, the back of his coat splitting to allow two long, leathery wings to erupt, covered in effluvia from his shift from ugly man to fuck-ugly bat-creature.

“Freeze!” One of the cops—anyone anywhere could tell he was one, rumpled suit and cheap shoes and all—aimed his pistol at Parker’s back. When Parker let out a screech, the copper fired. Two rounds caught Parker between the shoulder blades. He jerked and turned on the man, closing the space and his teeth around the copper’s throat. A spray of arterial blood hit the wall and washed the tiles. Jack shoved Kim.

“Move your arse.” There was a second landing, a set of stairs near the rear door of the building. They had to move, before Parker realized he’d lost track of them. Before Sanford showed up. Before the LAPD decided to ventilate his torso just for the fun of it.

Parker gave a great flap of wings, and with a screech leaped over Jack and Kim and landed in front of them. Kim let out a moan. “What the fuck is he?”

Parker’s ears had elongated, and a patch of ugly, wire-brush fur had grown across his face like the world’s most unfortunate set of mutton chops.

“I said the bitch wasn’t yours,” he hissed. “She’s going to whelp, and the kid is Abbadon’s. You promised the boss Abbadon. This is the quickest way and fair’s fair, Winter.”

“Fuck off, bat boy,” Jack told him. “Go back to sucking on diseased goats.” He moved a step to the right, experimentally, and Parker matched his move. Jack pulled Kim close, so he could feel her swollen stomach against his back. “When I move you run like fuck for those stairs and don’t stop until you’re in broad daylight. Find a cop in a uniform and stick to them like glue.”

Kim shook her head, her eyes going wide. “No…”

“Don’t give it a thought, luv,” Jack told her. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He let go of her hand and put his attention on Parker. Try to avoid a stand-up fight, and fate saw that you got exactly that. Bitch that she was. “About the teeth-kicking,” Jack said to Parker. “Now seems as good a time as any.”

Parker grinned at him. “Big words for a little man.”

“Words at all coming from your ugly mug,” Jack told him. “Amazing, really.” He cocked his head, put the weight on the balls of his feet. Prepared himself to take the hit. He was used to that, at least. Sometimes you just had to take it, taste the blood, spit out your ruined teeth, and get on. “Tell me,” he said to Parker. “Are you mean because you’re ugly? Or are you ugly because your mum sucked the cock of a rabid werewolf and vomited you out afterward?”

Parker launched at him. Kim screamed, but she ran, caroming off the wall, digging her feet in and heading for the stairs.

Jack went over on his back, slamming into the rail with Parker on top of him. The lobby below was in chaos, some tourists screaming, some snapping away with their cameras. The coppers were rushing about, but after what had happened to their mate, none seemed anxious to get close to Jack and Parker.

Parker’s breath smelled like a sewer in the height of summer and was as hot as an oven on Jack’s face as Parker snapped his black teeth. Jack threw up his arm, and Parker clamped down on his leather, and through it to flesh. The pain took a moment to come, but it did, hot as coals and deep as marrow. The only bright spot was that it wasn’t his neck.

Jack jammed his boots into Parker’s belly, the steel toes meeting soft flesh, and shoved with all his strength. Something gave out in his back, but Parker went flying over his head, slamming into the cage that blocked the elevator shaft. The car was on the top floor, and he fell, hitting the bottom of the shaft with a scream.

Getting his feet under him was a trial. Jack felt the sting of cold air on his arm, and saw a half-moon of bloody, rent flesh under his shredded leather. He could deal with it later. If there was a later.

The elevator shaft rattled, and Jack went to the edge. Parker was climbing. One wing was twisted and broken, leaking brackish-colored fluid, but his claws still worked, and he scaled the shaft, snarling and screeching with each movement.

Jack shot a glance over his shoulder. Kim was nowhere to be seen. Good. One less thing he had to worry about.

“You son of a bitch,” Parker rasped. He wasn’t moving fast, but like a high tide, he’d inevitably reach Jack. “You fucked up now. You should’ve killed me.”

Jack looked upward into the lift shaft. The car hung above his head, near the peaked roof of the shaft. It was suspended from the three landings of the building like a cage, and the chains that raised and lowered the car rattled as Parker climbed.

Jack tried a hex, even though the answering echo of emptiness told him that in this place, the Black did not exist.

Parker’s claws grabbed at his boot, but they couldn’t get through the steel and pin him in place. Jack wrapped his arm through the chain and kicked with his free foot, cracking Parker in his elongated jaw. Parker slipped a little, but kept his hold.

Jack tried the curse again, as reflex more than anything. Magic was his armor, his sword, all he had. He wasn’t strong, and wits alone weren’t going to take a pissed-off chupacabra off his arse.

The cold started in his fingertips, as if he’d gone outside on a snowy day in Manchester and forgotten his gloves. It spread up his arms, down his back, deep into his chest, and around his heart. His blood roared through his ears like a freight train. Parker stopped struggling, his rheumy yellow animal eyes going wide.

Jack watched the ink of the tattoos, the Morrigan’s marks, shift and wriggle under his skin, giving birth to new shapes that moved with a life of their own. Feathers sprouted on his skin, covering every inch of him from scalp to sole.

The word sprang to his lips unbidden, the cold spreading to his mind and killing the panic and the scrabbling fear, everything except the dead-eyed logic that lived in the lizard part of his brain.

“Aithinne.”

The cables holding the lift car glowed, and turned to slag, in the space of a breath. Parker jerked his head up, but the iron car fell too fast, and it took him to the bottom of the shaft, pinning him under its crushing iron weight.

Jack fell back on the tiles, slamming his bad arm hard and starting the flow of blood afresh.

The cold retreated, and when he came back to himself he picked his arse up off the floor and ran. The chaos inside the Bradbury Building served him well, and he ducked across 4th Avenue and into the lobby of the Million Dollar Theater as a herd of cop cars screeched to a stop, jamming up traffic and starting a cavalcade of horns.

He caught a flash of blond hair and saw Kim peeking at him from the women’s loo. “I didn’t know where else to go,” she said.

“You’re all right, luv,” Jack said. Kim pointed at his arm.

“Your jacket is all torn up.”

“Arm, too,” Jack said. He looked down. Time to assess the damage, see if he’d make it as far as somebody who’d stitch him without asking too many questions.

His arm was smooth and bloodless. A thin line of scars, narrow and square as standing stones, was all that remained to show his arm had once been torn to hamburger.

Kim leaned in to examine his arm, and then shrugged. “Seems all right to me.”

“It does, at that,” Jack told her. He could think about it later. Figure out how it had happened later. Decide what the fuck had gone on back in the Bradbury Building with Parker. Later. All later.

He guided Kim to the back exit and out onto the street. The safehouse Sliver had given Pete was out of the question—Abbadon had found it and walked through his hexes without a second thought.

“You got a mobile?” he asked Kim. She tilted her head at him, pale brows drawn together. “A mobile phone,” Jack snapped. “You got one?”

“Oh, yeah.” Kim passed him a bright pink hunk of plastic, the screen displaying a photo of herself and another, equally blond and vacant-eyed girl with their cheeks pressed together. Jack handed it back.

“I can’t work something that doesn’t have buttons. Dial the number I give you.”

Kim did as he said and Jack explained, in as few words as he could and with as little detail as possible, where to find them.

Pete arrived about half an hour later, and Jack put Kim in the back seat of the Fury. Pete looked her over and cocked one eyebrow at him.

“I know,” he told her. “Just … don’t make a big deal of it, all right?”

“Bigger deal is where we’re going to hole up,” Pete said. “Considering this bastard apparently has a live feed of where you are at all times.”

“There’s a couple of motels on Sunset,” Kim piped up. “My girlfriends and I used to crash there. Nobody pays attention to who’s in and out, and if you slip the night clerk a fifty he’ll say he hasn’t seen you.”

“Fine,” Pete said. She turned the Fury toward Hollywood, and dealt with the clerk at the Sunrise Motel while Jack took Kim to her room.

“Why’re you doing this?” Kim said. “You’re just going to piss them off, you know. And then I’ll be right back where I started.”

“You wouldn’t have come with me if you believed that,” Jack said. “You know Sanford and those gits back there want to take your kid and you know what would happen when they did. You’re not like them, at least not all the way.”

Kim sat on the bed, rotating her spine so it popped. “Fuckin’ kid weighs a ton,” she said. “They don’t tell you when you get pregnant it’s like having that thing from Alien growing inside you. Making everything swell up, making you puke nonstop, kicking you in the ribs all night.”

Pete came in and shut the door. “This place is about as lovely as a sewage treatment plant in Aberdeen,” she said, “but I don’t think anyone human followed us. Most of these people wouldn’t know if Jesus Christ himself was riding down Sunset on a pony at the head of a zombie parade.”

“Is she your wife?” Kim said.

“No,” Jack said, in concert with Pete. Pete shot him a look, then turned her attention to Kim.

“You must be hungry, luv. What can I bring you?”

“I like burgers,” Kim said. “Burgers and chili fries.”

“I’ll be back,” Pete said. Jack followed her to the door and caught her hand.

“You sure about this?” he said. Pete gave him a smile.

“I’ll be fine. Can’t hide in a shitty motel forever, can we? The girl’s got to eat, and so do I.” She turned her hand in his, and squeezed, before lifting his arm to examine it. “What happened to your jacket?”

“Something thought it was tasty,” Jack said. Pete stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Take it off. You look homeless.” She left, and Jack locked the door after her and went about chalking a hex. Not that it would do shit against Abbadon, but it was familiar and he needed something to do.

Kim spoke from the bed. “She really loves you.”

“Don’t know about that,” Jack said. “Tolerates, maybe.”

Kim folded her hands over her stomach and swung her feet up on the bed. “Put the TV on. I don’t want to hear the hooker in the next room faking her way to twenty bucks.”

Jack turned the telly to a news program and sat next to Kim. “Got some experience with that?”

She sniffed. “That obvious?”

“People like Anna prey on people on the game, and junkies, and runaways. Lost souls. I doubt it was your fault.”

“I had a kid,” Kim said quietly. “Before this one. I was seventeen. He was born addicted to meth.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“When this happened, I was clean and I was living at Anna’s,” Kim said. “Getting fucked by her kinky friends wasn’t so bad. She fed us and we weren’t prisoners. Place to live. It wasn’t rape. More than I can say for when I was hooking.”

“Did you really think you could raise your kid in that place and everything would turn out fine?” Jack asked.

“I don’t fucking know,” Kim muttered. “I don’t even know who the father is, but I do know the baby’s going to be healthy this time and I’ll take it from there.”

“Until Abbadon takes it from you and uses it as a vessel for one of his pals,” Jack said. “He screwed up with the last child. He won’t take that chance with you.”

Kim sniffed again, and in the light of the TV Jack saw wet lines on her face. “What am I supposed to do?” she demanded. “If it’s not that, they’ll still take the kid. That guy you came with, Sanford. He told Anna when I got it in me he wanted to adopt it. Legal and everything. I thought it’d be great—he’s rich, and he could give the kid stuff I couldn’t.” Kim started to sob in earnest, her shoulders fluttering like wings. “When I found out … what he wanted it for … I knew this wouldn’t be any different than my other boy. But you don’t ask a man like Harlan Sanford questions. You just give him what he wants.”

Jack peered through the curtains. Concentric cigarette burns let in the lights of the boulevard, the endless line of cars, and the hard diamond glitter of the Hollywood Hills beyond. “That you do,” he murmured.

“Hey, where’s your woman?” Kim said. “I’m fucking starving.”

“Excellent question,” Jack said. A burger shack sat diagonally across the parking lot from the motel, and he peered through the curtains again. Pete’s small, thin shadow was nowhere to be found.

“Stay here,” he told Kim, stepping onto the landing and shutting the door behind him. “Pete?” he called.

The parking lot was empty, mostly full of rusted-out cars and a few caravans, their windows covered with tattered curtains. “Pete!” he shouted, leaning over the rail to check the breezeway below.

“Hey!” A door banged open, and a shirtless bloke with a gut leaned out, glaring at Jack over piggy cheeks. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled.

Jack pointed a finger at him. “Go back in your room.” He felt a wave of the Black batter against him, and knew from the man’s expression that his eyes were flaring ghost blue.

The door slammed, and Jack started down the stairs. He’d panicked reflexively, and his heart was thumping fast enough that he could’ve just taken a snort of speed. “Pete!” he shouted. The motel sign in the window of the reception office glowed blue, telling him there was VACANCY … CLEAN ROOMS … AIR CONDITIONING. The sign flickered as he passed.

He jogged across the lot to the burger shack. The interior was lit with harsh bulbs that washed out all the color, from the faded food pictures hanging above the counter to the teenager swiping a mop half-heartedly across the gray floors. He looked up when Jack banged the door open. “Fryer’s off. We’re closing in ten minutes.”

“You see a woman in here?” Jack asked. His heartbeat had taken on a rhythm, a drum line of panic. No, no, no, no … “Black hair, leather jacket, about so big?” He held out his hand to Pete’s height.

The boy shrugged. “Nah, man. Nobody like that.”

“Maybe I can help.” Jack was only half-surprised to see Gator step out of the shadows of the corridor to the loo.

“Where is she?” he said. He pulled the Black to him, felt his talent flare in his mind. He’d burn Gator where he stood if that was what it took, and he wouldn’t feel one iota of regret.

“She’s fine,” Gator said. “You know, it didn’t have to be this way. Y’all made it real difficult for us to do what needs to be done.” He shook his head. “Mr. Sanford’s real upset with the two of you. He had me put Miss Caldecott up in one of his properties as insurance.”

“Insurance for what?” His hands were sweating, and he was numb, but not with the unearthly cold he’d felt when he’d killed Parker. This was fury, and he recognized it. Rage and Jack were old friends, drinking partners, had spent long evenings together when he was younger and more foolish. It gifted him with broken bones and busted teeth and stints in lockup, but rage was a good friend to have when you were looking at someone like Gator who’d just kidnapped your pregnant girlfriend.

“For Mr. Sanford,” Gator said. “He has to make sure you won’t get crazy and go off on him.”

The door creaked again, and Sanford entered. He took a seat in the first booth by the door, and gestured Jack into the bench opposite. “I apologize for the hardball, Jack,” he said.

Jack sat. He couldn’t think of a better response. Well, he could burn Gator’s face off and kick Sanford until even his own mother wouldn’t recognize his corpse, but that wouldn’t help Pete. He had to stay calm, for Pete. Get Sanford to tell him what he’d done with her. Play the game and not panic, not react like every bit of him was screaming to. For once, he could keep it together long enough to actually be the one who made things right again.

“Isn’t this nice?” Sanford said. He gestured at Gator, who slipped the teenager a few bills.

“Get that fryer goin’, boy. Bacon cheeseburgers all around, and make me up a batch of those cheese fries. Extra cheese.”

The teenager looked at the three of them in turn, and then shrugged and went behind the counter, hitting switches to turn on the lights and the cookers.

“In Hollywood we call this a sit-down, Jack,” Sanford said. “A meeting between opposing parties to find a mutually beneficial outcome.”

“Where is she, Sanford?” Jack splayed his palms flat on the table. If he could keep his eyes on them, he could stay calm long enough to figure a way out of this. The ends of his tattoos curled around the base of his thumbs, crept between the webbing of his fingers. The fury of the Morrigan wasn’t going to do one fucking bit of good now. Pete depended on him not slagging Sanford off. She depended on him being clever, which didn’t come naturally. Smashing someone in the face was much more instinctive.

“She’s fine,” Sanford said. “You think I’d manhandle a pregnant woman? You really have a low opinion of your fellow man, Jack.”

“Things like you aren’t men,” Jack said. “A man wouldn’t take a woman’s baby to be used as a piece of fucking Tupperware for something like Abbadon.”

“You really think that child would’ve had any kind of life with somebody like Kim in a place like Anna’s?” Sanford nodded his thanks to the teenager as he set down baskets of burgers and fries. “She was a junkie and a streetwalking whore when Anna found her. That’s not a mother, Jack. That’s a bitch who drops a litter.”

He took a bite of his burger and licked his fingers. “You should try this. They know how to do meat right here.”

Gator took a fistful of cheese fries and shoved them into his mouth. “Sure do. Just like home.”

“In a way, Jack,” Sanford said. “You owe me one. You knocked off Parker without so much as a sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack said. “You let your pet monster off the chain, Sanford, and I put it down. You want to have a moment of silence? Maybe light a candle? Didn’t know the two of you were so close.”

Gator grabbed him by the back of his neck, slammed his head into the plastic tabletop, and held it there. Jack could smell the chili powder and grease on his fingertips. “He was my friend, asswipe.”

“Gator.” Sanford ticked his finger back and forth like a metronome. One, two, three. “That’s enough.”

“You and me ain’t finished, boy,” Gator whispered in Jack’s ear. “Sooner or later, I’m gonna get you alone, and then the pain’s going to come.”

“Looking forward to it, darling,” Jack grunted.

“Let him up,” Sanford ordered. “Now.”

“Sure, boss,” Gator said, and Jack straightened up, rubbing feeling back into his cheek.

“Now’s the part where you threaten again to kill Pete if I don’t help you, right?” Jack folded his arms. “Get on with it, then.”

“That threat never went away,” Sanford said. “But allow me to motivate you, rather than try more useless scare tactics. Abbadon knows you screwed him. He knows you tried to take his vessel away, and he won’t stop until he finds you. You think a couple of bespelled junkies are the extent of his reach? They’re not. Not by a long shot.”

Jack gave voice to the whirlpool that had been brewing in his head since he’d found Kim. “What’re you up to, Sanford? You know an awful lot about Abbadon for somebody who’s only heard about him this morning. From me. Always a little breadcrumb when I got off the trail. Always a convenient helping hand.”

He stood up, shoving his elbow into Gator’s gut on purpose. “Fuck you and your game, Sanford. Either you tell me what you’re really on about or I’m walking. I’ll figure out where Pete is on my own, and you know what’ll happen to you when I do.”

Gator bared his teeth, gold gleaming almost black under the harsh light. “Maybe, but you know we’ll mess her up ’forehand.”

Jack turned his eyes on him. “You lay one finger on Pete and it’ll be the last thing you live to regret. Make no mistake.”

Sanford spread his hands. “This is all completely unnecessary posturing on your part, Jack. Fact is, if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t have helped me.”

“And now?” Jack said.

Sanford grinned, that maddening grin with vast emptiness behind it. “Now I suppose it doesn’t make a difference. You needed persuading, and I persuaded you, and nobody needs to gnash their teeth over it. Do as I ask and Pete will be sound as a pound. That is the expression, correct?”

Jack found that rather debatable, personally, but he just nodded. Information over reaction. Calm over chaos. That was how Pete would do it. Pete would protect herself, and him, and Kim. She’d get to the bottom of it and find out what Sanford and Abbadon were really up to.

“Fine. You got me,” Jack said. Sanford clapped his hands together and then wiped them with a wad of paper.

“Excellent. Gator, pay up and go get the whore. We can’t have her running around in her condition.”

Gator pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and shoved it at the teenager. “You did good, kid. Never saw nothing, right?”

“Y-yes, sir,” the kid stammered. “Have a good night, sir.”

Sanford escorted Jack to the same black SUV, but this time they both sat in the back seat. Presently, Gator came back, prehistoric brow set in a frown. “Whore’s not there.”

“Fuck,” Sanford muttered, passing a hand over his face. “Abbadon can deal with her, then. Women are a pain in the ass, Jack. Don’t let that one you’ve gotten saddled with tell you any different.”

Gator drove, but they didn’t go to Sanford’s house. They drove far to the east, past the outlying bits of Los Angeles, past Riverside and Thousand Oaks and into the high desert, until Jack could look down the mountains behind him and see Los Angeles spread out like a handful of broken glass under a streetlamp, gleaming and shattered into a thousand fragments.

“Bright lights,” Sanford said. “Blinding, really. Hard to see what’s staring at you from the dark outside.”

“I know what is,” Jack said. “So where the fuck are we going?”

“To the truth,” Sanford said, as the car slowed and they turned up a long drive, lined with the wispy, dancing forms of cypress trees. “About me, Abbadon, and all of it. What you wanted, isn’t it?”

Jack looked up the drive to the dark shadow of the house beyond. The Black was thick here, almost thick enough to touch, springing from the center of the roof and swirling across his senses in a tsunami.

“Not really,” he told Sanford, but he got out of the car, gravel crunching under his boots, and walked toward the deep well of the Black anyway.