Devil's Business

CHAPTER 22

There was silence when Jack approached the house, except for his boots on the gravel drive and the click of Gator’s lighter as he lit one of his brown, wormlike fags. No birds, no coyotes, not even wind disturbed the space around the house.

Places like this were rare, places where the Black exerted such perfect control over the environment of the daylight world. Usually they were concentration camps, mass graves, sites of massacre or cold-blooded murder. Jack had backpacked in Belgium and stood in the perfect stillness of the Ardennes Forest, watched the green- and gray-uniformed spirits flit among the trees, and heard the absolute stillness of the Black, which had absorbed the deaths of thousands on the soft, spongy ground.

Sanford at his shoulder made him jump. He tried to disguise it as working the kinks from his neck, but Sanford’s grin told him he hadn’t managed it. “Aren’t you going to ask me where we are?”

Jack shrugged. “Wouldn’t want to rob you of tour-guiding.”

“You know,” Sanford said, starting for the front steps, broad as three bodies laid end to end, “that whole smartass defense mechanism isn’t fooling anyone.” He looked back at Jack, his eyes pools in the low light. “Everyone is afraid of something, Jack. Even you.”

Gator shoved Jack from behind. “Move it, peckerwood.”

The doors opened at Sanford’s approach, and he shoved them wide. “You said you wanted the truth, Jack. So come in.”

Jack looked up out of habit. Nothing was carved into the doorframe, and no hexes hung in place, but the psychic void inside would be enough to deter all but the most ignorant of mages. Which placed him squarely there, he supposed. Jack Winter, tilting at windmills and leaping off cliffs.

The foyer was laid out in tiles that rang under his heels. Dead leaves skittered in the corners when the door shut. A fountain dominated the center, a nymph being swallowed by a many-eyed, tentacled sea beast. The nymph had long lines of rust traveling down her breasts and the apex of her thighs, water long gone.

“Nice place,” he said. Sanford flipped an old push-button switch and a single bulb in the chandelier above flickered to life.

“It gets the job done,” he said. “Built by an orange farmer in the twenties. Howard Hughes stayed here. And Basil Locke bought it in 1939.”

Gator was still in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, and Sanford snapped his fingers at him. “For fuck’s sake, nothing is going to bite you. Get in here.”

Jack watched the big man’s back stiffen. Maybe Gator wasn’t as colossal a moron as he appeared. If Jack had a choice, he wouldn’t be here either. While Sanford puttered around, he went over the list. Pete wouldn’t be here—he would’ve felt her, if she was anywhere on the grounds. She wouldn’t be at Sanford’s house. Too obvious for a man who loved a twist ending. That left a myriad of places Jack hadn’t guessed at yet, which meant he had to go along with Sanford a little longer. He just hoped he didn’t lose his temper and stave the bastard’s face in before he made sure Pete was safe.

“Locke made a couple of films overseas,” Sanford said. He walked, turning on lights as he went, until they stood in a vast atrium that overlooked the view of Los Angeles, far in the distance. “Genre stuff, nothing that the international audience was interested in. But he met a nice young man named Heinrich Himmler in Germany, in 1938. What a Russian-born lapsed Jew was doing partying with fledgling Nazis, I couldn’t tell you, but he picked up some interesting theories. Did you know that both Himmler and Hitler were deeply involved with the Thule?”

“Everybody knows that,” Jack said. “It’s not exactly a state secret.”

“The Nazis didn’t understand the Black,” Sanford said. “Didn’t understand that to use magic you had to have your frequency tuned in the first place. Have the knack. But Locke did. And when he came back, he bought this mansion. Spent more and more time up here. After 1942, he never made another film. He died here, in obscurity, with massive debts. A couple of studio heads kicked in and bought the place out of pity, used it for a few location shoots, but as you can tell…” He gestured around the empty room. A single ratty sofa, the kind of plaid that always seemed to be stained with beer and cum no matter how clean it was, sat in one corner, its arms chewed by rats.

“Not exactly a comforting sort of air to the place,” Jack said.

“Film crews suffered a rash of unexplained deaths, a wing caught fire in the seventies and burned some no-name actress,” Sanford said. “After the fire, the estate came looking for investors, and they contacted me.” He grinned, walking to the windows. Outside, a swimming pool full of dead branches and a foot or so of stinking sewer-tinged water glowed with oily life. “I knew right away what had gone on here.”

Something to rend the Black so thoroughly it was a dead vortex across all his senses. Jack tried to keep his expression neutral. Sanford didn’t have a talent, was nothing more than a groupie. What he actually knew about magic would probably be a wild guess, at best.

“Locke didn’t just collect esoteric shit,” Sanford said. “He found something much better. Something tangible.” He pressed his palms against the glass. “He found a way to pass through just like light through a window.”

Jack and Sanford turned as one when the front doors swung open again and a shadow rolled across the foyer, causing the light bulb to explode.

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Abbadon said, standing in the doorway. “It sounds so much better when you just say it out loud.”

Jack could scream all he wanted inside his own head, that Sanford had fucked him and that Abbadon was going to take what he wanted out of his hide. Reacting, though, wasn’t going to do any good. He could always go through the window, if he didn’t mind shedding a little blood, but then where the fuck would he go? Miles from anywhere, in terrain he didn’t know, he might as well smear himself in marinade and leave himself for the coyotes.

Sanford’s jaw ticked when Abbadon approached. “Took you long enough,” he said.

Abbadon shrugged. “Jackie-boy isn’t going anywhere. He loves his little sperm receptacle too much to misbehave.” He reached out and patted Jack on the cheek. “That someone like you could actually love something, even a useless whore like that, is kind of sweet. Almost gives you faith in humanity or some shit.”

“Can we please get this moving?” Sanford said. “Tell him what needs to happen and get a move on.”

Abbadon sighed and gave Jack a conspiratorial look. “Humans. Always got their dicks out, waving them around. Fucking pain in the ass, am I right?”

“I’d like to know,” Jack said. “Since I’m apparently to be terrorized into helping you with whatever it is.”

“Like Bill Shakespeare over there was saying,” Abbadon said. “Old Basil Locke found a way to pass between the veils. Not just from Black to daylight—any stupid fuck can do that if they’ve got a little talent or are tripping hard enough. He found a way to cross back and forth.” Abbadon grinned at Jack, showing his full row of teeth. “Basil Locke found a portal to Hell.”

CHAPTER 23

Jack felt his lip curl. “You’re pulling my bloody leg.”

Abbadon shrugged. “Believe it or not. I do.” He looked to Sanford. “He does.” He approached Jack and put a finger under his chin. “And you do too. Deep down in that rotten little human soul of yours.”

Jack slapped the hand away. “I do believe I can do without you feeling me up.”

“Touchy.” Abbadon held up his hands. “I’ll make this simple. Locke did find a way to open a gate between Hell and here, but he could never manage it. The spirit and the flesh and all that crap. But I’m not human. I’m going to do it, and you’re going to help me.”

“And why, pray tell,” Jack said, “would I ever help you with something like that? I have to live in this world, mate. I don’t fancy a giant gaping maw into Mordor in the middle of southern California.”

“Because you don’t give a fuck about this world.” Abbadon drew close. “But you do give a fuck about sweet little Petunia, and as I believe Harlan here has already stated, we’re all prepared to take turns doing unspeakable things to her if you don’t follow what I’m about to tell you to the letter.”

Abbadon knew he had him—this was just twisting the knife in. Making him say the words, to know they’d bent Jack over properly. “Pete doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he said. “Of course I’ll do what you want. You know I will.”

“You’re wrong about that, you know,” Sanford said. He snapped his fingers at Gator. “Go get the bags.” He faced Jack again. “Petunia isn’t some poor little waif caught up in all this. She made that deal with Belial. She’s the one who caught the eye of the Hecate. Hell, Jack, if it wasn’t for her, you’d be dead in some tip with a needle still dangling out of your arm, and the world would be a better place.”

Jack shrugged. “Probably. But then who would be around to listen to you jabber on?”

Sanford grinned. “In this town, you can pay people to listen to you. What I need from you is a little more complicated. Abbadon and I have been chatting—have been ever since I had that crime scene tranced when I heard you were in town sniffing around the old murders, so you’re right—I did lie to you, shine you on when you came to me with your grand plan to spy on the fuck mages, and for that I apologize. But it was a lie of necessity, for the greater good. Not that you’d understand.”

Gator returned with a leather case, dropped it, and retreated to the corner of the room. Sanford opened it and gestured Jack over. “Locke’s ritual is pretty complete. But to open a gate, you need a key. A blood key, and it can’t just be any old blood.” He grinned. “Demon blood. And there’s one particular demon that’s very attached to you. When you fell into my lap, and brought Don with you, it was perfect. I couldn’t have pitched a better serve.”

Belial. Of course. That collector bullshit would be a fine cover to trap and use your very own demon. If you were stupid enough to open a portal to Hell, you were certainly the type who’d think a demon would sit still for a flaying.

“Let me ask you a question,” Jack said. “What exactly do you think is going to happen when you drain Belial and open this Hell-hole, and about ten thousand of his closest friends come pouring out to make sushi from your liver?”

“They’re not going to do shit,” Abbadon said. “I belong in Hell, and Hell is where I stay. The Princes won’t stand against me when they see what I’ve become.”

“Become a great twat, you mean,” Jack muttered.

Sanford thrust chalk into his hands. “Belial comes when you call. Get him here and we’ll consider your part in this done.”

“We’ll even overlook that little stunt you pulled at the ranch,” Abbadon said. “And you can go on to have babies, get old, and die, secure in the knowledge that you helped put right one of the greatest travesties of this age or any other.”

Jack knelt and started to chalk a circle into the floor. Sanford would just hand him over to Abbadon if he didn’t, and Abbadon would just find new and inventive ways to torture him. “Let me ask you a question,” he said to Abbadon. “You ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?”

“It was all I had for so long,” Abbadon said. “Can’t be too picky.”

The marks to summon a demon weren’t particularly different from the marks to call anything—a ghost, a hex, whatever you wanted. Jack let his hands work the familiar symbols while he devoted his brainpower to thinking over the clusterfuck he’d walked into. Pete wasn’t who Sanford and Abbadon were really interested in—she was leverage, and they’d leave her be until Jack kicked up a fuss about doing what they needed done. Basil Locke’s door into Hell sounded like a fairy tale on the surface, but all good fairy tales had a grain of truth.

If Abbadon did open a doorway into Hell from the daylight world, what would spill out? He was insane to think he could stand against the Princes and all of their legions, but there were more than a few citizens of Hell who’d welcome the chance to turn the world into their own private resort.

Sanford checked his watch. “You almost done there? I heard you were supposed to be good at this.”

“D’you want it fast, or d’you want it right?” Jack sat back on his heels, chalk dust gritty on his fingertips.

Abbadon sniffed. “Quit stalling, Winter. What do you care if Belial bites it, anyway? He did to you exactly what he did to me—locked you away in Hell and put his claws into you so deep you can never escape.”

The freak had a point, even if Jack was loath to admit it. Belial was a snake. A different breed of snake than Abbadon, but they shared common blood. Wasn’t it Belial’s fault he was in this situation? Or Pete’s fault.

Pete had done what she’d done out of desperation. Belial had taken advantage of her. Snakes were good at finding the vulnerable underbelly.

Of course, if Pete hadn’t been trying to keep him out of Hell in the first place, she’d never have had to make a deal with a demon. So it’s all your fault, Winter. As usual.

He stood and tossed the chalk away. “There. Can I go now, headmaster?”

“Stay,” Abbadon purred. “Stay and see what’s going to happen. Trust me, Jack—you’re going to want to be able to say ‘I was there.’” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, nails digging through the leather. “Do it.”

Jack felt a tremor run through him, the same heart-stopping cold that had gripped him when he’d killed Parker, but he shook it off. “Belial,” he said. “Demon of Hell. I call upon you to appear.”

The words weren’t really important, but Jack figured it couldn’t hurt to give Abbadon a show. For a long moment, nothing happened at all. The Black remained a void. Jack didn’t know if his talent would even work in this place, this dead spot that sucked all the magic around it in like a hungry, dying star, but then he felt the slithering of a presence shifting into his sensory plane, the velvety sensation of a demon’s talent against his sight.

Belial didn’t shimmer or appear in a puff of smoke—you blinked and there he was. He caught sight of Abbadon and lowered his head. “Fuck me.”

Abbadon clapped his hands together. “Haven’t even started yet. Trust me, when I fuck you—you know it.”

Belial looked over at Jack. “Did I tell you, crow-mage, or did I tell you?”

“You did,” Jack agreed. “Fact is, I don’t owe you shit. You were never going to let Pete out of that bargain she made, and you’re never going to leave us be.”

Belial shook his head. “Ye of little faith, Jack. Have I ever welshed on a deal? Have I ever tried to bend you over?” His voice rose. “No. Because I’m not like that thing over there. I’m not an animal.”

Abbadon stepped to Belial, mindful of the chalk, and cracked him across the face. “That’s enough out of you, shit for brains.”

Belial ran his tongue over his bloody teeth, and spat. “So what’s the plan, dogfuck? Going to poke me with sticks and feel better about your sorry-arse lot in life?”

“Better,” Abbadon said, and snapped his fingers at Sanford and Jack. “Get it down.”

Sanford went to a pulley system anchored in the wall and unhooked the rope, snarling at Jack. “Help me.”

Jack gripped the rope. He was close enough. He could throw a hex on Sanford and be out of here before anyone had time to get across the room to him. Except Abbadon didn’t need to touch him to fuck him up. And running now would only help him, not Pete and not the kid. Nor Kim, and Kim’s spawn. Abbadon still needed a new body.

He watched the iron chandelier lower to just above waist height, one of those flat black affairs shaped like a wagon wheel. Small pyramid points rose from the iron rods, and chains dangled from between the spaces for candles.

Abbadon grabbed Belial by the back of the neck. “See that, demon? Get a good look, because that’s your final resting place.”

“It’s cute how you think this is actually going to all work out for you,” Belial said. “Like you won’t get torn apart by the dogs of Hell the moment I get out of here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Abbadon pushed Belial down, face first onto the metal rack. Jack couldn’t help wincing when he heard the iron spikes bite into flesh. Belial let out a soft grunt, but that was all. Tough bastard, Jack thought. Were it him, he’d be screaming.

“Lift,” Abbadon said. “Hang ’im high.”

“Great flick,” Sanford said. “Gary Cooper is the man.”

“Harlan, shut the fuck up,” Abbadon said. “Nobody cares, nobody’s interested. Just shut up and hoist this fucker.”

Sanford muttered, but he tugged at the rope, and Jack helped him raise Belial back to ceiling height. The demon didn’t make a sound, just stared impassively as his blood droplets painted a mosaic on the floor.

Why didn’t he fight? Jack shot Belial a sidelong glance. Why didn’t he break out, throw down with Abbadon, whip it out and see who was bigger once and for all?

This place was poison for magic. Maybe it was poison for demons as well. That had been Basil Locke’s big secret—turning a patch of ground into a dead zone for creatures that could rip his face off, and use it to build his doorway.

He had to hand it to Locke, smart bastard. Not that it was going to help him, or Belial, one fucking ounce.

Abbadon stepped back and looked to Sanford. “Now we wait for the piggy to bleed out, and then we knock on Hell’s back door and see who’s home.”

“I know that,” Sanford said, spine straightening. “I’m the one who found Locke’s work, after all.”

“’Course you did,” Abbadon said. He pointed at Gator. “Your boy there is looking a little green. Need to send him to the nurse’s office?”

“Ignore him,” Sanford said. “He’s a pussy without his big boyfriend around.”

Abbadon knelt and smeared Belial’s blood into a rough circle. There was a lot of it, more than a human could lose and still be walking and talking. “It’s all physics,” Abbadon told Belial. “You think you’re floating in a soap bubble, impenetrable by anyone except your filthy blood. But all you have to do is twist the magic, use it to tether yourself to Hell. And then you can pass straight through, you and anyone else. Locke was a genius, when you think about it.”

“He was a crazy bastard,” Belial said. His voice was soft, softer than Jack had ever heard it, and there was a definite knife edge of pain. “If you could open a doorway, don’t you think he’d have done? What, he just left this precious gift for you shiftless gits?” He gritted his teeth as more blood poured out. “You can bleed me dry, Abbadon, but in the end you’re going back to Hell, and back to the same spot we put you, because that’s the way of things. The natural order has moved on. You’re a relic, and you’re…”

He gave a scream as Abbadon dipped his finger into the demon’s blood. It fizzed and boiled, and Belial’s skin rippled with boils before quieting. Pink foam leaked from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

“Tell me what I am again,” Abbadon said. “I dare you, fuckstick.”

“Enough,” Sanford said. “Now that we have the circle there come the words, and then the key to open the door.” He gestured. “Gator, get over here.”

Jack perked up. Finally, an opening. Sanford was smart, but his hard men weren’t, and nothing was more dangerous than a dumb, pissed-off thug. “Wouldn’t do it,” he said.

Abbadon and Sanford both glared at him. “Shut up,” Sanford said. “You’ve done your bit. You be a good boy and maybe I’ll drive you home with your virtue intact.”

“Really, mate,” Jack continued, locking eyes with Gator. “You didn’t seriously think that you were going to skip out of here with all your fingers and toes. Not once the men started appearing from thin air and the blood magic began.”

Gator looked at him, back to Sanford. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Think about it. Key? That’s human sacrifice, mate. That’s you.” Jack folded his arms. “You’re not leaving here alive, Gator. Neither of us are.”

“Be quiet,” Abbadon hissed. “It doesn’t matter. What’s he going to do, shoot me?”

Gator’s mouth dropped open, revealing a plethora of cavities behind his gold grin. “You motherfuckers!” he spat. “After everything I done for you. All the shit that I cleaned up for you, Harlan…”

“Oh, good lord,” Sanford said. “You’re replaceable, Gator. Parker was the one I was upset over losing. You’re an overweight kiddie-fiddler with delusions of Satanism from Assrape, Louisiana. You think I can’t find another one of you—a dozen—any time I wanted?”

Gator pulled his gun, which was all the distraction Jack had hoped for. Gator was panicked, and his shots went wide, picking holes out of the wall of windows, but he turned tail and ran, still shooting, shots spanging wildly off the plaster and tile, until his gun clicked empty and he simply fled.

Sanford stared after him. “Well, shit,” he said.

“No matter,” Abbadon said. He looked at Jack. “What exactly did you hope to accomplish with that, Jackie?” He raised a hand. “Never mind. I didn’t have my heart set on that fat fuck.” Abbadon looked at Sanford, and Jack thought that really, a man as smart as Harlan Sanford should have seen this coming.

Still, he screamed and tried to run, just like they all did. Abbadon grabbed him, shoved him over the line of the blood circle, and thrust a fist into his back. Sanford choked, a little blood sprayed from between his lips, and his eyes bulged. Abbadon let him drop, the gaping wound in his back wide as a cannon shot.

“Now,” Abbadon said. “Now the veil is lifted. Now I return to my rightful place, and leave this stinking world behind. By the blood of my enemies, I open the doorway between the two worlds, the way back to the land of my birth and my blood.”

Abbadon held up his own wrist, and a void appeared, dribbling his own blood into the circle. “The doorway opens. I am released.”

“You forgot something,” Jack told him. He knelt on the floor, smearing the small spot into a symbol. The demon blood caused feedback all through his body, into his sight, but he ignored it.

“What’s that?” Abbadon said.

Jack licked the crimson spots from his fingers and stood. “You’re not the only clever bastard who can do blood magic.”

Banishment was much more difficult than summoning. To call something to you was simple—demons wanted to be called, wanted you to be desperate enough to need them. Getting rid of them once they had a foothold was much harder. Something like Abbadon, vastly powerful and strong-willed, would be impossible with his own blood, but with Belial’s, it was like hitting the bastard with a tank.

Abbadon screamed, just once, and then vanished, leaving only a pop of air in his place. Belial grinned down at Jack. “If I ever had doubts about you, boy … no longer.” He flexed his wrists, starting a fresh spatter of blood. “Care to get me down from here?”

“Piss off,” Jack told him. “You can rot there for all I care.”

“You should care,” Belial said.

Jack stopped on his way out and looked back. Belial was grinning. Somebody in his position, demon or not, shouldn’t grin. It meant he knew something Jack didn’t, which was never the situation he wanted to be in. “Yeah?” he said. “Why? Out of the goodness of my heart?”

“Please,” Belial said. “You’ve got less goodness in that shriveled lump of coal than I have appreciation for the music of Hall and Oates. No, Jack, you should care because that Sanford bloke wasn’t talking bollocks.” He shifted, trying to extricate himself from the spikes, and then grimaced. “Come on, get me down. Even I can’t poof my way out of a cold iron torture rack.”

“Poof being the operative word,” Jack muttered. He could keep walking and leave Belial to think about things, or he could cut him down and have a demon in his debt. Not a difficult choice.

The chandelier was heavy, and Belial crashed to the ground. “Fuck me,” he said, extricating himself from the spikes. “You’re not much of a big strong sort, are you?”

His white shirt was stained with continents of blood, and his natty suit was shredded across the thighs, arms, and chest. The demon straightened his tie. “Obliged, Jack. You always were a stand-up sort in a pinch.” He gestured at the circle. “You mind? I am rather indisposed at the moment.”

Jack scuffed his boot across the chalk and blood, and Belial stepped out, letting out a long breath. “Can’t wait to see the back of this place. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Jack told him. He bent down beside Sanford, who was still sucking air despite the hole in his guts. “Where is she?” he asked.

Sanford wheezed, what might have been a laugh before Abbadon had rearranged his innards. “Really? She’s … all you want?”

Jack plunged his hand into Sanford’s wound, grabbed a handful of something soft and warm, and squeezed it. Sanford howled, body jerking. “Where’s Pete?” Jack said. “You’re on the way out, mate. You don’t get to make the rules.”

“No,” Sanford croaked. “I know where I’m going. Same place you are. See you around…” He gurgled, and died, without further comment.

“Shit.” Jack straightened up and swiped Sanford’s blood and guts onto his denim. “They still have her,” he told Belial.

“I’m sure this is a cause for alarm in your small rodent brain,” Belial said. “But Abbadon is going to come roaring back here like a freight train any moment, and he’s not going to be in a charming mood. Might I suggest we not be here?”

“Fine,” Jack said. “Do your Star Trek trick, then, and shift us out.”

Belial coughed and swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “When I’m healthy, moving through space-time isn’t easy with a human in tow. I’m barely standing, you git. I’m not going to perform tricks.”

Jack sighed. “There’s a car outside, but I can’t drive and that bloke I ran off had the keys.”

“Capital.” Belial coughed again. “What do humans do in this situation, then? Call for a taxi?”

“I usually call Pete,” Jack said. “But Sanford has her. And now that he’s dead, fuck knows what’ll happen.” Couldn’t think about that now. Had to stay calm, had to stay clever, if he ever wanted to see her again.

“She’s a lot smarter than you,” Belial said. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned.”

The night outside was warm, and a wind brushed across Jack’s face and moved the trees along the drive. Belial inhaled. “I’m not going to last much longer up here. Unless you want a dead demon on your hands, Jack—and before you ask, yes, I can kick just like your kind can—then we need to be gone from this place.”

Jack spread his arms. “And where do you suggest we go?”

Belial smiled. “Where poor little lost Abbadon wants to go. Home.”

CHAPTER 24

He had to be mad, Jack decided. That was the only explanation for allowing Belial to talk him into going back to the place he’d tried with everything he had to avoid, had agreed to let the Morrigan change him to escape.

He was changed. That was a fact he couldn’t ignore anymore. The scene with Parker proved it, and more than that, the new life he felt crawling under his skin. The Morrigan had what she wanted. She had him, body and soul, because he owed her his life. If it wasn’t for her, he’d still be languishing in Hell.

His vision cleared, like coming back from a sharp blow to the head, and he saw that he and Belial stood in a street, slimy cobbles under their feet and orange gaslights spitting pollution into the air.

“Where are we?” he said.

“Hell, of course,” Belial said, and coughed up a few droplets of black blood onto his rumpled shirt.

“Not any part of Hell I’ve seen,” Jack muttered. “Looks more like Sweeney Todd’s back garden.”

“You don’t let the prisoners walk into the warden’s sitting room and put their boots on his furniture,” Belial said. “The souls in Hell are in torment, Jack. The demons live here.”

He mounted the steps to a narrow stone house with a door shaped like a keyhole that swung open at his approach. “Well, come in,” he said. “You stand out there on the street, you’re liable to end up as an attraction at the next Carnival of Souls.”

Jack followed Belial up the steps. If he’d been told that he’d be following a demon into his nest, that the demon would be the one inviting him in, he’d have laughed in the teller’s face, and then probably hit them for good measure, to knock some sense back into them.

“All of you live in snug little houses, then?” Jack said. Belial mounted the stairs and Jack followed. The house inside was done in shades of black and red, all very smooth and masculine, the sort of flat a banker or a lawyer in the City would own.

“Some live in houses,” Belial said. “Some live in abbatoirs and some prefer to float in a void of nothing, listening to the screams of souls when they’re in their private space.” He shrugged. “Takes all kinds.” He opened a wardrobe and took out a clean shirt and tie, shedding the ruined pair.

Jack wandered to the window, looking over the chimney pots of the street to the great black towers of Hell, billowing smoke in the distance. The Princes lived there, was the rumor, watched over their domain of ruined souls, high and inscrutable, just like the fictional God Jack’s mum had tried to frighten him with.

He watched Belial, too, in the reflection. The demon had twin black marks down his back, curved like scythe blades, but the wounds he’d suffered at Abbadon’s hands had already faded. “This isn’t my real body,” Belial said. “I figured I shouldn’t overload you with all the sights at once.”

“Didn’t think you’d choose a pasty little midget voluntarily,” Jack said. Belial put on his fresh shirt and twitched his cuffs.

“They aren’t wings, either.” He turned to Jack and showed his pointed teeth. “Saw you peeking.”

“I wouldn’t care if they were,” Jack said.

“No angels,” Belial said. “No God.”

“Amen,” Jack said.

“I’m one of the Named,” Belial said. “We all have the mark on us, the mark of creation. Given by that bastard Abbadon, in point of fact, but that’s all it is.”

“Got to sting,” Jack said. “Bloke who made you, who you fucked up the arse and locked away, is free and waving the bird in your faces.”

“Abbadon isn’t going to be free for long,” Belial said softly. He tied his tie and went to a black lacquer box on the chest, pulling out a ruby stickpin and affixing it. “That’s better,” he said with a sigh. “Now, let’s see if we can’t do something about you.”

“Me?” Jack shied away when Belial reached for him. “Fuck off. ’M not your makeover project.”

“If you’re going to an audience at the Triumverate,” Belial said, “then you need to be dressed as something other than a hobo.”

Jack felt his eyebrows go up, while his guts dropped through Belial’s posh blood-colored carpet. “Excuse me?”

Belial slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a lucky man, Jack Winter. You’re going to be the first living bloke in over five hundred years to meet the Princes of Hell.”

CHAPTER 25

The Hell that Belial led Jack through was nothing like the dreams he’d had. This Hell was a mass of corridors made of stone and iron, veiled in steam. Machines clanked from far below his feet, and noxious yellow smoke poured from crooked chimneys that bent in over the street like arthritic fingers.

“Can I ask you something?” Jack stopped, patting himself down and finding that his fags had made the journey along with the rest of him.

“You can ask,” Belial said, pushing open an iron gate and leading them down an alley. “Can’t promise I’ll answer.”

Jack lit his fag with the tip of his finger. His talent, at least part of it, was still at work. That was good. If he had to shoot his way out, his guns were still loaded. “This isn’t some black hole deal, right? Go to Narnia and come back a hundred years later?”

Belial laughed. “When you go to Narnia, time in the real world stays exactly the same, first off,” he said. “You’re thinking of fairyland or some rot. Second, no. You’re not going to walk out of Hell and find everyone zipping about on jetpacks.”

“So why keep me here?” Jack said. “You’re looking back to your usual reptilian self. You don’t need me.”

“I don’t think you understand the unique position you’ve put yourself in,” Belial said. “First, you slag off the four ancients who’ve escaped from Hell into your plane, and then you get mixed up with the one human bastard crazy enough to help them open Locke’s door back down to the Pit. Nobody in Hell is taking their eyes off you, Jack. Not for a second. Where this ride stops, not even the Princes know.”

He led them up a staircase into a long square, lined with more of the noxious gas lamps, which ended in a long flight up steps going into the tallest of the towers Jack had seen from his flat. The square was deserted, piles of ash lighter than snow blowing to and fro across the cobbles.

“You can’t expect me to believe that a bloke who made terrible movies and got his jollies with Nazis actually found a way to cross back and forth from Hell,” Jack said. “Bit of a complex way to get a laugh.”

“Wasn’t for a laugh,” Belial said. “Now, when you go before the Triumverate, let me do the talking. I know it’s hard for you to keep that great gob shut, but trust me, if you want to continue to be alive when you leave Hell this time, do it.”

“Trust you?” Jack said. “There’s a laugh.”

Belial shot him an irate glare. “Have I done one thing since those fuckwits grabbed me to make you think you can’t trust me? The enemy of my enemy, Jack. That’s you. Now move your arse, they’re waiting.”

Jack followed Belial to a set of metal doors, the kind you’d find in a mental hospital or a prison. A demon sat in front of it at a metal desk, tapping his fingers against a clipboard. A red phone sat at his elbow, the sort you could use to summon Batman. A single light blinked atop it.

The demon himself was a bat-eared horror, long teeth pressing his black lips into a distorted shape. He wore a black uniform and peaked cap, and looked up at Belial’s approach. “General,” he said. “You’re expected.”

“I know that,” Belial said. The demon looked Jack over.

“Go in,” he said, and then spat on the floor beside Jack’s boot, an acidic gob that sizzled when it hit the lino. “They’ve been waiting for you.”

“Scavenger,” Belial muttered as he pushed open the door. “One of Azeroth’s boys. Disgusting little shits. They roost all over the City and crap on everything.”

The demon picked up the red phone as the doors shut and barked something in a hissing, screeching language that caused Jack’s eye to twitch. Mercifully, the doors slammed, and he found himself in a low room, light tubes flickering overhead.

“This is the Triumverate?” he said.

Belial straightened his tie and made sure his cufflinks were perfectly aligned. “You were expecting Lucifer’s golden throne?”

“Well, no, but…” Jack looked down at the cracked lino, the brick walls painted a dozen times, bubbling with paint the color of pus. “This looks like the dole office my mum’s boyfriend used to drag me into to con the case worker out of extra fag money.”

“Just stand there and try not to say anything stupid,” Belial muttered. “Even if that is a practically impossible task for you.”

The tubes at the far end of the room snapped to life, and Jack saw a long low table, and behind it three figures. The one in the center gestured. “Step forward.”

Belial jabbed Jack in the small of his back, and he moved. There was no Black here, no way to get a read on what was sitting in front of him. He’d just have to smile and hope for the best.

“Jack Winter.” Belial cleared his throat. “The Triumverate, the Princes of Hell—Beelzebub, Azrael, and Baal. Gentlemen, this is…”

“We know the crow-mage, Belial,” the one on the left snapped. Jack guessed that was Beelzebub. Belial ducked his head.

“Of course, sir.”

“I suppose you think you’re very clever.” Azrael’s voice sounded like bodies being dragged over gravel. The Princes’ faces were in shadow, which didn’t lessen the feeling that Jack was being weighed, judged, and readied for his sentence.

“Most of the time, yeah,” he said. “I get by.”

Belial choked slightly beside him. “For fuck’s sake, shut up,” he grunted.

“You were tasked by Belial to return the four prisoners to their catacomb,” said the last. Baal was a tall, thin shadow, wearing an all-black suit in contrast to Belial’s snappy white number. “You failed.”

“My fault,” said Belial. “I asked the crow-mage for assistance and I expected too much of him. He’s only human.”

“We’re aware of what he is,” Azrael snapped. “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re a fuck-up and a miserable little snake, Belial.”

“Calm down,” Baal said. “Nothing to be gained by shouting.”

“This has gone on too long already,” Beelzebub snarled. “The ancients have found Locke’s books. They came close enough thanks to your stupidity, and I’ll have assurances they won’t come so close again one way or the other.”

“I can put it right,” Belial said. “I know things that Abbadon doesn’t. He doesn’t understand humans the way I do.”

“If you knew so much,” Azrael grunted, “he never would have broken from the catacombs in the first place.”

“That’s not fair, sir,” Belial started. “Nergal…”

“Nergal is not your concern at this time,” said Baal. “You fucked up, Belial. You spend far too much time in the daylight world, among the human meat, and it’s affected your perceptions. You’re fat and slow. Your obsession with the crow-mage has brought you here, and it’s time for consequences.”

Jack looked to Belial, and he saw a bead of moisture work its way down the demon’s temple. Belial was pissing himself in fear. That could be bad or good for Jack. Jack looked back at the Triumverate. They leaned in, shadowed heads bowed, and then Azrael stood up.

“Crow-mage, stay. Belial, you are relieved.”

“No,” Belial cried. “No, sir, give me a chance…”

The doors banged open, and a pair of demons wearing the same black uniforms and jackboots as the one in the hall came in. These were tall, with bulging foreheads and chests their black tunics barely contained. Fenris. Jack had seen them before. They were the big, hungry bastards of the demon world, hunters and trackers that would just as soon leave teethmarks on your tibia as look at you.

“Shit,” Belial muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Things not going as you expected, snake?” Jack muttered.

“Does this bloody look like it’s going well?” Belial hissed. “You don’t get a warning in your file, Jack. The Princes are going to liquidate me. I got one chance to bring Abbadon back and thanks to you and your insistence that you know better it’s fucked backward and sideways.”

The Fenris gripped Belial by the arms, their crimson lips pulling back to reveal rows of fangs.

“Wait,” Jack said to the Princes.

Beelzebub tapped one finger on the table. His nails were pure white, curved like a cat’s claws. “You’re speaking for yourself now, crow-mage?”

“Way I see it,” Jack said. “You lot got egg on your faces when Nick Naughton got as far as calling up Nergal. It was so important that he stayed under wraps, you’d make sure of it. Same with Basil Locke and his ruddy portal or whatever it is. You three think you’re untouchable, and now somebody’s shown you you’re not. Got to sting the ego, just a bit.”

Azrael leaned over the table, and Jack saw white eyes, a long pale face, the sort of face that belonged to a thing that had lived in the dark for a long while, navigating by touch and sound. “Do you want to die today, crow-mage?”

“If you want to get the Morrigan and her kind down on your arse, then be my guest.” Jack folded his arms. His stomach was quavering and his heart was thudding hard against his ribs, hard enough that the fat veins in his neck throbbed. He didn’t know if the threat of the Morrigan was enough to dissuade the Princes from turning him into a wall ornament, but it had been enough for Belial to void their bargain for his soul, so it had to count for something. Just what the something was, he wouldn’t let himself think about until he was someplace other than Hell.

“Belial’s not wrong,” Jack kept on. Azrael listened, flat nostrils flaring away from his skeletal face. Jack looked at the Fenris, standing implacable behind them. He’d never tangled with a Fenris. Run the fuck away from one, sure. But taken one in a stand-up fight? He’d be shredded.

“Belial has failed,” Baal said. “He’s no longer of any use to us.”

“I think you’re wrong there,” Jack said. “Because Abbadon still needs a demon to open Locke’s doorway, and you know what they say.” He spread his hands. “Better the devil you know.”

Azrael cocked his head. “What are you proposing, crow-mage? You may be the Morrigan’s pet, but a pet can still be a nuisance.” He smiled, revealing a toothless mouth with a long, serpentine blue tongue. “Choose your next words very, very carefully.”

“Let us go back upstairs,” Jack said. “Abbadon will come after Belial, you get Abbadon and his backup singers, and then you can do whatever you want with the lot of them.”

“And I suppose in exchange for this, you go free,” Beelzebub said. “We’re not idiots, Winter. Idiots don’t stay in these seats while all below them are scheming for their heads.”

“Never said you were, darling,” Jack said. The room was cold but he was as soaked as Belial was, his T-shirt sticking to his skin like cold, clammy hands.

“So what do you want?” Azrael rasped. “Nothing is free, crow-mage. What’s your bargain?”

“Leave me and Pete and our kid the fuck alone from now on,” Jack said. “No demons sniffing around. No Belial trying to collect on whatever debts he thinks we owe. Point of fact, if I see one fucking bloke stinking of sulfur darkening my doorway from now until the day I die, I’m walking out right now and I’ll see you all when you’re roasting on Abbadon’s victory fire with a spit shoved up your arse.”

Baal started to laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. It was the sound, Jack decided, of several small animals in excruciating pain. “Oh, I like him,” he purred. “He’s got some swinging brass ones, doesn’t he?”

“You’d be better off showing some of that,” Azrael told Belial. “Why should we think that you can send Abbadon back from whence he came, crow-mage, when a Named demon of Hell can’t manage the task?”

“Put Nergal’s lights out, didn’t I?” Jack said. “And from what I’ve heard, Abbadon is a fluffy pup in comparison. A veritable ray of fuckin’ sunshine.” He wasn’t, but the only chance for Pete was for Jack to get out of Hell, and the only way he was doing that was by talking. Talking was the one thing he was always good at—he could talk that dole woman out of extra cash, his friends out of their shitty drugs, girls he fancied out of their knickers. Talking was the only skill he could always rely on, the source of and solution to most of his problems.

He waited, watching the Princes, feeling his blood flow in and out of the chambers of his heart. If these were the last moments of his life, they were shit. He wasn’t sentimental. There wasn’t anything he wished he’d said, but he would’ve liked to see Pete again, to know that she was safe from Abbadon and from everyone else.

The Princes separated their heads and stared at Jack, three sets of black snake eyes, measuring the weight of his soul. “He’s got a point,” Beelzebub told his companions. “None of ours have managed anything better. We could waste legions chasing this fuckwit.”

“If you do this and if you and the moron here survive the task,” Baal said, “then your debt with Hell will be considered void, crow-mage. We’ll gladly leave you to your fate. But only if.”

“And Pete, and the baby,” Jack reminded them. “They’re out. Out of the life for good.”

“If you insist,” Beelzebub sighed. “I’ll never understand your attachment to other humans, but so be it. We have no interest in your whore or your spawn.”

“And watch your language, while you’re at it,” Jack said. “Before I come over that table and knock your teeth back a step.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Belial muttered. “Always have to push it, don’t you?”

Beelzebub stood to his full height, which Jack had to admit was impressive. “I’m a Prince of Hell, boy,” he rumbled. “And you’d do well to remember that. While you’re at it, you leave this place at my whim, because it amuses me to watch you struggle through the shit and mud of the human world. Now go, and do as you’ve promised, or you’ll be standing in front of me again and I’ll take every one of those ill-considered words out of your miserable, clammy hide.”

“Got it,” Jack said. The Fenris moved back as he turned, pulling Belial with him, and made for the door.

“Are you insane?” Belial asked when they were in the hall.

“You know, a ‘Thanks, Jack, for saving my arse when you didn’t have to’ would be in order here,” Jack said.

“What do I have to thank you for?” Belial snapped. “You’re planning to offer me up to Abbadon on a plate.”

“Like you didn’t do the same to me just a day ago,” Jack said. “Don’t play wounded hero with me, demon. You’d bend me over soon as you got the chance in there.”

Belial curled his fists, and then uncurled them, taking a deep breath. “Fucking Azrael,” he said. “He’s been trying to shove me out for centuries, get me booted to some backwater like the Well of Sorrows. Can’t stand that I bring in more soul traffic than his little legions of dead men.”

“I get it, he’s not on your Christmas card list,” Jack said. “Now are you going to take us topside or not?”

“Not like I have a choice,” Belial snarled.

“Nope,” Jack told him. “How are you liking that shoe on the other foot, by the way?”

“I’m going to pull your intestines out through your arse for this,” Belial muttered.

“You won’t,” Jack said, “because I saved your arse, and now, for once, you owe me something.” He snapped his fingers in the demon’s face. He wouldn’t be able to get away with that much longer, and he was going to savor it while he still held something over Belial’s head. “Fetch, boy. Go bring me a monster.”

CHAPTER 26

The air of Los Angeles was almost palatable after the constant burnt-hair stink of Hell, and Jack inhaled deeply. “Good to be back, eh?” he said.

Belial sat on the curb and scrubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes. “Centuries of devotion, of bringing them souls, and they hang me out to dry. Those fucking bastards.”

Jack sat down next to him, lit a fag, and offered one to the demon. Belial took it and sucked on it viciously, until the cherry flared bright orange. “Cheer up,” Jack said. “All you have to do is lock Abbadon back up and you’re in their good graces.”

“You don’t understand,” Belial said. “Abbadon and his kind are a threat to the Princes, and a threat to the Princes means scorched earth. Anyone responsible for their breakout is going to be a cinder when this is over, including me.”

“Fuck me, you’re a cheerful one, aren’t you?” Jack said. He’d never come across a maudlin demon and decided he definitely didn’t like it. Seeing Belial slumped like a City trader who’d just been sacked wasn’t right. It was like seeing a wolf who’d been hit by a car—you could discern the shape of the predator it had once been, but it was as broken and bloody as the next sad thing lying in the gutter.

“Abbadon’s been free too long,” Belial said. “Always knew if he ever broke out, there was no putting him back.”

“This might be an odd thought for your sort,” Jack said. “But why not try giving him the old sorry we fucked up, here’s a patch of Hell and a lovely potted palm to make amends?”

“Because Abbadon doesn’t understand peace,” Belial snapped. “He thinks Hell is his to rule, and after he’s done burning it down he’ll move on to the Black and everything outside it.” He blew a long stream of smoke into the air. “Abbadon is the closest you’ll come to Armageddon, Jack. He’s the end. The end of me, the end of people like you, the end of a world balanced on a knife-edge. It’s a hard balance, and sometimes it cuts you, but we’ve all been able to coexist since the beginning. Abbadon and his ilk have no interest in coexisting. They just want to consume, and make the world their own. He’s the metaphysical cockroach. Whatever we throw at him, he’ll survive.”

“You can step on a roach with a great bloody boot,” Jack said. “That works for me.”

“Azrael was right about one thing,” Belial said. “I do wish I was human sometimes. That endless optimism and idiotic hope, even when things are clearly fucked. I like it.”

“So glad you approve,” Jack said. “And might I remind you, you had some grand secret plan to get Abbadon back where he belongs. If we can’t squash him, we can at least put him back in his roach motel. That’s got to be better than moaning about how it’s the end of all things.”

“The doorway ritual isn’t complete,” Belial said. “I got a good look when that great pig’s arse Sanford had me hanging like a decorative mobile. Wouldn’t have worked even if he’d bled me dry. That means Locke left something out of his notes, and I have an idea of where that bit might be.”

Jack felt himself start to smile. Basil Locke hadn’t been such a fuckwit after all. Fascist, quite possibly, but not an idiot. If Jack had carved a back door into Hell, he sure as fuck would have hidden the specs where nobody could get clever and decide to recreate his work. “Do share this wisdom,” he told Belial.

“Locke was obsessed with an actress named Lucinda Lanchester,” he said. “Nobody you’ve ever heard of. She played nightclub singers, gangsters’ molls, the sister in the farces who takes the pratfalls.”

“You’re starting to sound like Sanford,” Jack told him. “So old Basil had a hard-on for a no-name actress. Wouldn’t be the first.”

“Lucinda Lanchester happened to sell her soul to me in exchange for being in pictures,” Belial said. “Sad for her, she didn’t specify what pictures, and she never climbed off the B-roll. Locke wooed her, bought her extravagant presents, practically bankrupted himself. Then he knocked her up and she and the baby both kicked it during the birth. That was when he went to Germany and made friends with Himmler. Who wouldn’t have had any talent for magic if it had crawled up his arse and fallen asleep, by the by.”

“So you think Locke told this Lucinda girl whatever his great secret was,” Jack said.

“I checked in with her from time to time, as I do with all my bargains,” Belial said. “The last time she wasn’t making any sense—well, less sense than she usually did. She had a love for little white pills of all varieties, poor thing. But she was ranting how she wasn’t afraid of me, how she had a secret that would make her the mistress of any demon who tried for her soul. Obviously it was bollocks, as I collected not two months later, but now I wonder. I wonder what Locke told her to put her in such a state.”

“Unless you have a hand for necromancy, I don’t think we’re finding out,” Jack said. Belial grinned, and it was the familiar grin Jack knew, the sign the demon knew something the rest of the world at large did not. He’d always hated that look.

“I don’t need a bone-rattler to recall a soul that I own,” he said. “Although I don’t fancy going down to the catacombs of Hell just now. No, all we need is her corpse, and I wager we’ll have our answer.”

“And I suppose you know right where she’s buried,” Jack said.

“Haven’t the faintest,” Belial said. “I don’t care what happens to the body once I have my property. I leave the flesh and bone to the necrophiliacs.”

“Movie star dies tragically, gotta be something on where they put her bones down,” Jack said. “Got a mobile? We can check online.”

“She’s something of a cult figure since she died,” Belial said. “Vandals dug her body up twice in the sixties and stole bits, so they moved her and now the grave’s unmarked. No idea where she’s at now.”

“Good job you have me,” Jack said. “Otherwise you’d be lost.”

“Don’t tell me you know where Lucinda finally rested herself,” Belial scoffed. “You barely know what day of the week it is, Winter.”

“It’s Thursday,” Jack said. “And I don’t, but I know someone who will.”

CHAPTER 27

The shop was locked and shuttered when Jack and Belial climbed out of the taxi, but Jack banged on the grate until a light came on. The dark-haired, death-tinged shop girl appeared, glaring out at them, holding an old-fashioned shotgun in her fists. “What do you want?” she mouthed through the door.

“Sorry to bother you, luv,” Jack said. “Need to ask you something.”

She unlocked the door and pointed the shotgun toward Belial’s chest. “You can come in. The diablo waits outside.”

Belial bared his teeth at her. “Trust me, sweetheart—I am far from the worst thing in this miserable little hole of yours.”

“Fuck you, pendejo,” she snapped, and tugged Jack inside. “Why are you mixing it up with demons?” she demanded. “Sliver told me you were all right.”

“I’m not mixing anything,” Jack said. “I need him, and for the moment, he needs me. And we both need something from you.”

“Oh yeah?” She propped the shotgun behind the counter and led Jack through the beaded curtain into a snug back room. A small flat telly blasted Spanish-language news and a glass of tequila sat on the arm of a ratty vinyl overstuffed chair. “Ask,” the girl said, and offered Jack an empty jelly glass and a tequila bottle.

He poured a stiff shot. The tequila was fire mixed with turpentine, and it burned on the way down, spreading the fire through his guts and numbing his tongue. “Need to know where an old-timey sorceress is buried. Figured you’d be in the know.”

The girl shrugged. “Maybe, what’s her name?”

“Lucinda Lanchester,” Jack said. The tequila was steadying everything, bringing it back into focus. He wondered when he’d last slept. He couldn’t remember. The world vibrated at the edges—nothing to do with his sight, but with the throbbing in his skull. More tequila. That’d help.

“I’m supposed to know about some white bitch who kicked the bucket sixty years ago?” The girl snorted. “No way, man. You want my advice, leave the dead where they are and stop having demons for your homies. That’ll make your life a lot easier.”

Jack set the glass down. “Please,” he said. “This isn’t for my own amusement. Sliver told me you knew things. And I know what you are. We can both tell that Death is coming, that the Black is out of order. If you really don’t know Lucinda, I’ll turn and walk out. But don’t brush me off and play like we don’t both know what you are.”

The girl sighed, and then clicked off the television and pointed through a curtain made from a faded floral bed sheet. “Go in there. Don’t touch anything.”

Jack ducked through the curtain. He was expecting a workroom or a sex dungeon, but not a tiny backroom crowded almost to bursting with an altar. Candle wax had congealed to stalagmites down the front and sides, and bowls of candy, bullets, and rosary beads were arranged at the foot of a statue of skeletal creature. More bottles of tequila crowded her feet, bourbon, every kind of liquor you could pick up cheaply and by the quart at the local market.

“They call her La Flaca,” the girl said at his shoulder. “The skinny girl.” She kissed her fingertips and pressed them to the statue’s feet.

“Santa Muerte,” Jack said. “Ran into some of your lot down in Mexico City about ten years ago. Not very friendly.”

“Not to nosy outsiders, no,” the girl said. She folded her arms and looked at him, eyes boring in. Jack dropped his eyes to the beads around her neck and the crucifix riding between her cleavage. She had a gimlet stare, even for an avatar of Death. Her eyes were the Morrigan’s eyes, black and animal and ancient. “Don’t let me down, man,” La Flaca said. “I know you follow Death. Might be the Eurotrash white-boy version of Death, but we’re headed to the same place. Down the dark highway. That’s the only reason I’m considering this.”

Jack pulled back his sleeve and showed her the markings. “I’ve been involved with my own skinny bitch for quite some time,” he said. “So yeah, I know what you’re on about.”

La Flaca pointed at the altar. “Give something to Santa Muerte. Ask your question, but unless you have an offering, I don’t answer.”

“Seriously?” Jack said. He looked into the face of the skeleton icon. It was cheap plaster, the features blurred and painted crookedly. Santa Muerte’s robes were polyester, singed at the edges from the dozens of candles that cast the room’s only pools of light. He looked back at her living counterpart. “What do you want from me, a kiss? A lock of my hair?”

The girl smacked him in the back of the head. “A little respect, for starters. Santa Muerte answers all requests. You just have to know how to ask her.”

Jack looked into the girl’s black eyes, back to the statue’s crooked plaster face. “I don’t have anything to offer you. Or anyone.”

The girl took out a pocket knife and offered it to Jack. “You have what we all have.” A small clay bowl between Santa Muerte’s toes held a sticky red-black liquid, evidence of who’d come here before Jack.

“I never got your name,” he told the girl as he took the knife and folded the blade open.

“I have a lot of them,” she said. “Ana’s good as any, and you’re Jack Winter, the crow-mage.”

“That obvious, is it?” The knife didn’t hurt much—he’d cut himself enough times on purpose to know you just squeezed your fist around the blade and tugged a bit. If the steel was sharp, it would do the job for you.

The dribble became a rivulet, and Jack worked his fist a few times, sending a stream of droplets into the bowl to combine with the other blood. La Flaca folded her hands.

“Pray with me,” she said.

Jack swiped his cut palm against his jeans. “Not much for praying. You got a plaster?”

The girl sighed and passed him a rag draped over the only piece of furniture in the room, an old kitchen chair. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”

Jack started to reply, but out of the corner of his eye, the statue moved. He blinked and looked again, putting it down to the flickering flames all around the edges of his vision, but no. The skinny girl’s arm, holding its long scythe, was definitely lifting, and the cheap robes wrapping the plaster were ruffling in a breeze.

The candle flames flickered and went out wholesale, filling the room with cloying beeswax smoke. Jack coughed and waved it away from his face. In the blur, the girl and the statue became one, the girl’s face growing and skeletonizing, the statue beginning to move, to take on skin and flesh and life.

You want something? The statue was grinning at him, the painted mouth slipping crookedly off the plaster hunks. There was no way the thing was moving and yet it was, pointing and talking at him.

“As a matter of fact,” Jack said. “Yeah, there’s something you can tell me.”

Nothing’s free, crow-mage, the statue hissed. What you got for me?

“I gave you blood,” Jack said. “That’s enough.”

Can’t live by blood alone, the statue said, and coughed a laugh. Got something else I want, crow-mage?

“Might as well ask, then,” Jack said. The statue was changing, growing details, the limbs moving as the skeletal feet picked their way delicately over the bowls and candle wax.

Got any smokes? The statue grinned at him.

Jack fished in his pocket and brought out his half-squashed pack of Parliaments. “Need a light?”

Nope. The cherry flared and the skeleton sucked in smoke. It billowed out from between her ribs, and she sighed. That’s the good shit.

Jack had seen stranger things than a cheap Mexican saint statue sit up and cadge a fag, but the smoke was getting thicker, making him dizzy, and he sat hard in the scarred kitchen chair. “You feel like answering a question for me?”

You can always ask La Flaca, the statue hissed. But you might not like what she has to spit back at you.

“I’ll take my chances,” Jack said. Things crawled in the shadow behind the statue, things with snakes’ bodies and women’s faces, and they leered at Jack in the low light.

Then shoot, brother, said the statue. A friend of the Hag’s is a friend of mine, you know.

One of the snakes wound its way around Jack’s wrist, pushing his sleeve back and exposing the Morrigan’s marks.

“I need to know where Lucinda Lanchester is buried,” Jack said. “Her body was moved and it’s apparently a big secret now.”

Poor little lost Lucy, the statue purred. Rolled the bone dice with a bad man and came up snake-eyes.

“It’s important,” Jack said. “If we don’t find her I can promise your city isn’t going to be around much longer.”

What do you care about the living? the statue asked. You’re one of the dead, crow-mage. The walking dead, but dead all the same.

“None of your business, you hollowed-out bitch,” Jack said. “How about that?”

You think once the four are back underground that everything will come up roses? the statue said. You think you’ll save the world and stand in the sun?

“Don’t care about that,” Jack said. “I care about a self-righteous prick not getting to play with the entire world like he’s having a tantrum in a sandbox.”

You can keep fooling yourself, amigo, said the statue. But sooner or later you’re going to see it. You have death inside you. It’s in your bones and it’s in your blood, and sooner or later death will take you for her own. You can’t fight death. We’re the end of all lines, the last stop on that dark highway, and sooner or later you’ll take that exit, crow-mage. Your kind always do.

“If you’re not going to help me you can save the bullshit for some gang-banger who’s impressed with it,” Jack said. “I know what the Morrigan wants from me. It’s the same thing she’s always wanted, and my answer is the same, too: you death-cunts can fuck off. The lot of you.”

The snakes were thick around his ankles now, worming their way up his legs, spilling over the altar. The statue cackled, plaster teeth clacking and raining dust down on the heaving backs of her serpents.

I can see why she chose you, Jack. She dropped the end of the cigarette and went back to her repose on the altar. Little lost Lucy is buried behind Paramount, looking at the lake.

The statue froze again, and Jack came back to himself. He wasn’t sitting, but on the floor, and the girl crouched beside him, wearing human skin once again. “What did you see?” she said.

“Snakes,” Jack muttered. The scent of incense and the taste of tequila in his throat mixed, and he retched, bile running in rivulets across the dirty, wax-covered floor. “You put something in my fucking drink.”

“It’s nothing I wouldn’t give my grandmother,” Ana said. “Just a little encouragement to help you see. You’re a stubborn boy. You wouldn’t look unless you had help taking the ride.”

“That wasn’t a ride,” Jack said. He sat up, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. His tongue and throat still burned. “That was dragged behind a fucking lorry. What was that shit?”

“It’ll wear off soon,” Ana said. “What did she say to you? La Flaca?”

“A lot of bollocks,” Jack muttered. “Riddles, just like the bitch I usually deal with. What is it about death that makes you such a cryptic slag?”

“This body and La Flaca aren’t exactly talking,” the girl said. “Santa Muerte lives in all of us. Once, this body was a girl named Ana from Juarez. But I’ve been living here for a while. It’s comfortable. There’s a lot of death here, a lot of souls drifting on the Santa Anas.” She smoothed her hands over her skirt. “Anyway, I’ve seen her movies. Lucinda. They’re shit. What do you want with her?”

“‘Lucy is buried behind Paramount, looking at the lake,’” Jack grumbled. “How is that in any way useful? I ask you.”

Ana, or the thing that had once been Ana, cocked an eyebrow. “Paramount, the studio? In Hollywood?”

“Dunno,” Jack muttered. “Guess so.”

“There’s a cemetery behind Paramount,” Ana said. “The Hollywood Forever. And there’s a big man-made lake inside, which is usually full of garbage and goose shit. It stinks. Douglas Fairbanks has a huge crypt on this island in the middle. Bigger than this fucking apartment.”

“This town seriously has a boneyard calling itself ‘Hollywood Forever’?” Jack said. Standing was a risky proposition, but he managed, by clawing hand over hand along the faded wallpaper.

“Hey, man,” Ana said. “This is LA.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. “I sincerely hope I never see you or Little Miss Skeletor again, but I suppose that’d be too much to ask.”

“You can avoid her,” Ana said. “But she’s waiting for you at the end of the road. For all of us. Sooner or later you’re gonna take that last ride.”

“Cheers, luv,” Jack said, and ducked through the twin sets of curtains to the front of the shop. The last thing he saw before the door swung shut was Santa Muerte, grinning her frozen grin.

CHAPTER 28

“Took you bloody long enough,” Belial said. “You’re going to cost me my weight in car fare.” He examined Jack under the dome light of the taxi. “You look like shit.”

“Just drive.” Jack ignored him. He felt like shit—hammered, flattened shit. His head throbbed, and all of the bumps and blows he’d taken in the past days were catching up with him. He needed a drink, some sleep, or preferably a hit of smack. But that wasn’t an option, not until they’d found Abbadon, and by extension found Pete, so he told the cabbie to take them to Hollywood and put his head back against the seat, watching the neon and palm trees and faces pass by.

Hollywood Forever sat on a quiet stretch of Santa Monica, nearly deserted after dark. The cemetery was closed, but Belial walked straight ahead, across the car park and past the chapel.

In the dark, the cemetery was full of stone spirits, white mausoleums and graves scattered across flawless green lawns. Cemeteries in London were wild, overgrown, crowded to the brim with the dead. Too little land and too many bodies. Here, the dead went on forever.

“By the pond,” Jack told Belial. He smelled it before he saw it—goose shit and algae, just as Ana had said. The Fairbanks mausoleum loomed over the water, reflecting its own ghost into the dank water.

Belial walked from tomb to tomb until he stopped at a small flat-roofed Egyptian box, then kicked his foot against the iron door. “This one.”

Jack examined the unassuming tomb. The grass was mowed, but all of the flowers placed on the steps were dead, and somebody had graffitied the ironwork on the doors. “You sure? I don’t really fancy getting pinched for cracking open some random bird’s final rest.”

“Haven Carstairs.” Belial pointed at the brass nameplate bolted to the granite, rust rivulets running down the face of the tomb. “One of her characters. Gangster boyfriend shoots her to death after she finds Jesus behind the settee or some rot. On-screen death scene. Decent stuff.”

“Great.” Jack rattled the doors. “Locked, too.”

“Your particular talent, isn’t it?” Belial said. “I’m a demon, not a petty thief.”

“You lot are useless, you know that?” Jack said. “Amazed you don’t just get flattened by a bus.”

“I’ve been walking this earth a lot longer than you and I’ll be walking it often,” said Belial. “Open the fucking tomb, will you? I haven’t got all night.”

Jack placed his hand over the lock and let his talent flow into it. After his time in Hell and in the void of Locke’s mansion, it felt like cool water filling the space behind his eyes to feel the Black again. It was strong here, a dark vein of power running under the cemetery, fed by both the restless dead and the living of Los Angeles.

The lock popped open and Jack shoved the door wide.

Lucinda’s coffin was encased in cement, which had cracked across the top. Cobwebs drifted back and forth in the draft from the door, but otherwise the tomb was undisturbed. Belial pushed a chunk of concrete off the coffin with a clatter and swiped the dust from the nameplate with his sleeve.

Lucinda Carpenter

Beloved Daughter

1919–1939

“Lanchester was a stage name,” Belial said. “She was from Waukegan. Not really surprised she cut a deal. Miserable place.”

“I have seen Bride of Frankenstein,” Jack said. “’M not a complete tit.”

Belial grabbed one end of the coffin by its pallbearer handle and tugged. “Come on, Winter. Help me get this dead bitch out and about.”

The coffin was heavy, in the way that old things were heavy, and landed on the floor of the tomb with a crash. Jack felt something spasm in his back and let his end go. “Try not to alert the entire city, yeah? I can’t exactly nip back to the Pit when the cops show up.”

“You’re a great nanny,” Belial said. “I remember the days when you had balls.” He grinned, and Jack could see the gleam of his teeth as the demon went about prying open the coffin. “The dad-to-be bit softened you up, has it? Made you all gooey on the inside? I tell you, the thought of a little Winter toddling about got me excited, rightly enough. Imagining what your blood and the Weir’s will do together is one of my favorite daydreams.”

Jack moved without thinking, moved because the cold was in his blood again, and slammed Belial into the broken concrete, holding him there with fingers clasped around his windpipe. “You shut your fucking mouth or it’ll be the last thing you live to regret saying,” he whispered. On the backs of his hands, the Morrigan’s marks writhed, and where he touched Belial, the demon’s skin went pasty and blue, like he’d contracted a bad case of frostbite.

“You need a good wank, mate,” Belial croaked. “You are wound way too tightly for your own good.”

“You and I have our thing,” Jack said. “But you leave Pete out of it.” He let go of Belial and shook off the cold. It was what he imagined being possessed felt like—an alien presence inside his skin, moving and talking for him.

“What you have is an unhealthy obsession with that woman,” Belial said. He straightened out his suit and rubbed his neck. “She’s not a saint, you know.”

“She’s as close as I’m ever going to get,” Jack said. “So if you want my help, stay fucking quiet.”

“Fine,” Belial said. “You talk too much anyway.”

Jack ignored him. Belial was only doing what he did best—getting under a man’s skin and prodding all of his weak spots. It was the instinct of all demons. He just wished Belial wasn’t so fucking good at it.

The coffin was old, not airtight, and the lid wasn’t hard to break off. Lucinda Lanchester was little more than a skeleton with brown leather skin stretched over it, nibbled by rodents. Belial wrinkled his nose.

“At least she’s old enough that she doesn’t stink. Small mercies.”

Jack lifted up the remnants of the silk dress Lucinda had been buried in, which came apart in his hands. He felt under the skeleton, through the dust of the flowers that had been laid in the coffin, and felt nothing. He looked back at Belial. “Any time you want to jump in here, mate. Any time.”

“You’re doing a splendid job,” Belial said. “Really.”

Jack patted down the lining of the coffin, which had been pink at one point, but was now faded to a sad urine color. If he hadn’t been prodding he would have missed it—a small crackle against the wooden side of the coffin. He ripped it away and saw a single square of paper folded and taped to the side.

Belial snatched it before Jack could get a look. “Oi,” he said. “Didn’t anyone teach you not to be grabby?”

“Likely the same person who failed to teach you,” Belial said. He unfolded the paper carefully, mindful of his pointed nails, and then grinned. “Oh, this is a laugh.”

Jack yanked the paper back. A sigil took up the center, of the page. None he’d seen before but not head-twistingly complicated, the sigil was surrounded by numbers and symbols. Jack had quit going to school long before he learned any of them. Math was never his shining glory.

“What the fuck was Locke on about?” he said. Belial chuckled.

“Abbadon said it was physics, didn’t he? Magical math. Expressing the door to Hell in numbers and sigils. That’s clever, that is.” He held out his hand. “Give it here. For safekeeping.”

“Fuck off,” Jack said. “I give you this and you’re going to skip straight back to the Princes and act like the good little scent hound.”

“I’m not that predictable.” Belial snatched for the paper again. “Come on now, Winter. Don’t be a cock.”

Jack folded the paper and tucked it inside his jacket. “Or maybe I was wrong,” he said to Belial. “Maybe you’ll hold on to it and use it with the Princes to leverage yourself. Get yourself a room in that tower and a nice little legion of your own to command.”

Belial’s lip curled. “Now you’re thinking like a demon, Winter. Always said you had it in you.”

“Either way,” Jack said. “We’re holding on to this until Abbadon and his merry band shows.”

Belial stepped out of the tomb, onto the grass, and folded his arms. “You really think I couldn’t take it from you if I wanted it?”

“You really think I know you wouldn’t have already tried if you could?” Jack said. “The Princes hung you out, mate. You’re not on your home turf, and you’re pissing yourself because Abbadon can play footie with your head as long as we’re in the daylight world. So just simmer down.”

Belial set his jaw, but he sat down on the steps of Lucinda’s tomb and looked at the lake. “This place is a laugh,” he said. “You’d think Roman emperors were lying in state.”

“Close,” Jack said. “Film stars. Rock stars. Basically the same thing in America.”

“You wouldn’t believe how many bargains I’ve wrought with the stiffs in this place,” Belial said. “Me and others.”

“I would,” Jack said. “Would explain most of cinema for the past twenty years.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Belial said. “I used to try to bargain with the ones who actually had some talent, but there’s only so many Connerys. The rest are Luncindas and Lockes.”

Jack watched the lamplight on the lake. If Abbadon came, he couldn’t rely on Belial. To defend Locke’s secret, yes. Him, no. He was expendable, and Belial would probably enjoy watching him twitch while Abbadon ripped his guts out.

“This is your fault, you know,” Belial said. Jack turned on him.

“Yeah? How is possible Hell wrought on earth my fault, exactly?”

“If I had never made that bargain with you, back when you were lying there bleeding out lo these many years ago, then we wouldn’t be here.” Belial sighed. “What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You fucking stoned?” Jack said. “I wasn’t exactly specific. I was dying, and I was looking for anyone. You just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“No,” Belial said quietly. “I wasn’t.”

Jack felt a cold in him that had nothing to do with his talent or his tattoos. He hadn’t called any one demon, that day fourteen years earlier. Hadn’t even expected it to work. It was a last gasp. He was dying, he’d drawn a summoning mark in his own blood, sent out the call to any bottom-feeder who bargained souls from the boot of his car. And instead Belial had come, one of the Named, and cut him a sweetheart deal. Thirteen years of life in exchange for his soul. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned that a decade of that would be spent in a smack haze, sleeping on floors and hustling for cash, but demons weren’t famous for specifics. He’d lived, and Belial had saved him. That was all it was.

“So what?” Jack said at last. He lit a fag, the one thing that could reliably calm tremors in his hands and disguise fear as something else. “You just hung around waiting for some ghost to rip my lungs out during an exorcism and swooped in for the kill?”

“Think it through, Winter,” Belial said. He shoved a hand through his hair, and in the low light the lines of his face were stark. The demon looked tired, if such a thing were possible, and worn down in the way of long-term addicts on the arse end of a bender. “A Named demon doesn’t show his face because you scribble something in your own blood and flop about like a fish, calling down every elemental and scum-sucker in the greater London area.”

“Just spit it out.” Jack blew smoke. “Whatever you’re alluding too, quit the foreplay and plunge it in.”

“I had my eye on you,” Belial said. “It was like a gift. The crow-mage, dying and begging for my help. Taking a favored son from that bitch of a Hag, well. That’s a thing most of us soul-traders dream of.”

“Didn’t manage to keep me for long,” Jack said. “Bet your bosses loved that one.”

“You’re always going to be in Hell, Winter,” Belial said. “One way or the other. You’re bound to Death as surely as you’re bound to your own skin. You’ll be back. It’s just a matter of time.”

“It’s over, remember?” Jack snapped. “Nergal’s gone. The war is over. The Morrigan doesn’t have a claim on me any more than you do.”

Belial barked a laugh. “Boy, look at yourself. That cunt’s fingerprints are all over you. And if you think Nergal was her last volley, you’re a fucking idiot. That was an opening salvo. The Morrigan will never stop trying to bring her armies to the daylight world. She’s the endless cycle—war, birth, and death. You can’t stop those things, Jack, any more than you can stop the sun from rising.”

“So what?” Jack said. “I’m supposed to be scared about something that might go on, decades from now? I think I’ll save myself for Abbadon.”

“I’m saying that when the Hag comes back for you,” Belial said, “Hell might not be such a bad alternative after all.” He grinned. “We’d love to have you.”

“Isn’t that sweet?” Abbadon purred from behind Jack, close enough to feel his breath. “You two kissed and made up.”

Jack threw himself down the steps just ahead of Abbadon, rolling to the side as the beast’s foot came down. He didn’t appear any larger than he had at Locke’s ranch, but his psychic presence was infinitely larger, and Jack felt the power suck the air from his lungs.

“Heya, Belial,” Abbadon said. “Boy, you clean up nice. You have to tell me where you get those suits.”

“Just you?” Belial said. He was pale and sweating, but he stood ramrod straight. “Where’s your brood? You leave the kids at home?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Abbadon said. “They’re amusing themselves with Jack’s baby mama. I figured I could handle two of the three Stooges on my own.”

Jack lifted his head. There was blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten down, tasting like acid and pennies. “Pete?”

“Her.” Abbadon nodded. “Although we’ve got to think up a new name for her. Pete is just confusing.”

Jack hauled himself to his feet. The cold didn’t come this time, just the rage, hot and blood-pounding and familiar. “I swear, if you’ve touched her…”

“Oh, save it,” Abbadon said. “We’re not going to use your little crumpet to re-enact Last House on the Left. What good is a body if it’s fucked up beyond repair?”

Belial stood, then came at Abbadon from behind, but Abbadon turned, and the shadow of his power moved, and Belial went flying into the lake. He landed with a shallow crunch, then lay still amid the sloshing reeds.

“So, Jack,” Abbadon said. “My offer stands. Quit being a bitch about all this and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We could use a fucked-up critter like you. You and those freaky death powers will be real useful once things are different around here.”

Jack smacked the hand off his shoulder. “Where’s Pete?”

Abbadon wagged a finger under Jack’s nose. “That’d be telling. Say you’ll help and I might give you a clue. It’ll be a little fun for us. Or, you know, I could torture you into a pile of meat to tell me how you really open Locke’s gateway.”

Jack pulled the paper from his jacket. In that moment, if he were honest, he didn’t give a fuck what Abbadon did with it. Didn’t care if the hot, dry wind swept up from Locke’s doorway and blew away the entire world. It was a mad feeling, the sort that made people smash their cars into bridge abutments, beat their wives to death, or douse their children in kerosene and light a match. All that mattered was Pete.

“Here.” He threw it in the grass between them. “Have fun in Hell, you piece of shit. Now tell me where Pete is.”

Abbadon grinned at him. “Not the deal. You want to set the terms, you should have held out a little longer.” He bent to pluck the paper square from the grass, and Jack lifted his boot and drove the steel toe hard as he could into Abbadon’s gut. The body Abbadon had picked out wasn’t big as far as things went, and he folded around Jack’s foot, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

“So it’s like that.”

“Yeah.” Jack snatched the paper back up and shoved it in his jacket. “You can try to do whatever you want to me, Abbadon, but you’re not getting this. Where’s Pete?”

Abbadon got to his feet, brushing grass and dirt from his front. “I told you. Safe and sound and with my kind. I have to say, she’s way too good for you. Regulation hottie, too. How did you manage that?”

Jack called up the leg-locker hex silently, and when Abbadon went down, banged his forehead into the steps of Lucinda Lanchester’s tomb. “I was in a band.”

Abbadon started to laugh, the blood dribbling down his forehead and across his mangled nose like dark fingers. “All right, Jack. All right, we’ll do it your way.” He shoved Jack off and stood. Jack hit the ground and realized that this might be the last shit plan he didn’t think through. He hadn’t gotten beyond pissing Abbadon off, making him tell where Pete was, and then kicking the blue hell out of him in return.

Abbadon’s shoe pressed into his chest, and Jack felt a rib creak and then give. He didn’t have enough air to make any sound, so that was a blessing. It was difficult to feel hard when Hellspawn was crushing your ribcage. “You fucked up,” Abbadon told him. “I wanted to be friends, but now I’m just going to pull out your spine and shove it up your ass. You’re a worm, like all the rest.”

He moved his foot, but Jack did not make measurable progress toward sitting up. His chest was on fire, and his body had given his commands up for a bad job. Clearly, he didn’t have their best interest in mind, and he was no longer in charge.

Jack stared as Abbadon grew large, eclipsing the lamppost, the Fairbanks mausoleum, everything. He lengthened and his eyes went black, his teeth grew and his hands formed into scaly masses, tipped with claws.

“You wanted to see, Jack,” Abbadon hissed. “So behold the dragon.”

“Fuck me,” Jack whispered, because it was all he had the air for. “You do love the sound of your own fucking voice.”

Abbadon’s body curled between the tombs, and he leaned down so that Jack could smell the fetid breath pouring from between his underslung jaws. “You cost me a good body. I’m going to take yours apart slowly, now.”

A claw lanced into his arm, down to the bone, and Jack ground his teeth together. Even if he could scream, he wouldn’t give Abbadon the satisfaction of hearing.

Abbadon held him down with his claws and ran a long, black tongue across Jack’s face. “This is my real face,” he hissed. “What do you think of it, Jack?”

“I think your mum beat you every day with the ugly stick, and then kicked you down the stairs,” Jack grunted.

Abbadon snarled and snapped his jaws. “Funny man to the last, eh? See how funny you think it is when I make you eat your own guts.”

Jack saw a shadow rise behind Abbadon, and the creature screamed as something latched on to his back. Jack sailed through the air as Abbadon’s claw slipped from his flesh, then landed with a crash against the gates of Lucinda’s tomb.

The thing striking at Abbadon wasn’t as large, but it was lithe and black, a wingspan behind it blotting out the sky. Black smoke roiled around the body, obscuring the details, and Jack smelled the scent of Hell, the burnt ash crowding his throat and sucking out what little breath he could draw.

“You may have come first,” Belial snarled. “But you never grew beyond a petulant child, and it’s time somebody showed you where you belonged.”

“Finally, you grow some balls,” Abbadon said. He and Belial circled each other, the ground shaking under Jack’s feet. He heard Belial scream as Abbadon turned on him, wrapping him in serpentine coils, snapping at his exposed neck.

Belial’s form shimmered and writhed in Abbadon’s grip. Abbadon put his claws through Belial’s wing, tearing at the membranes, causing a spray of oily black liquid. Jack winced as he heard a bone crack, and Belial crumpled.

“We should have gotten it on a long time ago, demon,” Abbadon said. “In a stand-up fight, you’d never break me, and you knew it.”

“Fuck you,” Belial gasped, as Abbadon dug his talons into Belial’s belly. Jack saw the meaty sheen of intestines, then rolled onto his back.

Stand up, Winter. You’re dead if you don’t get your arse up.

Belial’s blood stank of sulfur, and Jack felt the memory of the hot wind of Hell race across his senses.

“Oh, we’ll get to that,” Abbadon purred. “Because now you’re going to be my bitch, demon, and you’re going to know exactly what it felt like for all that time, alone in the dark with ghosts for company.”

Jack levered himself up on the smooth marble of Lucinda’s tomb. He didn’t owe Belial shite. He could creep away now and hopefully find Pete before the rest of Abbadon’s kind killed her or worse. Or he could never find her. Abbadon alone had nearly turned him into paste. The other three would swat him like a bug.

The memory of standing at the edge of the chasm, of hearing the faintest whisper, came back strong amid the screams and the smell of blood. Abbadon’s family had marked him, had marked him while he was in Hell.

Hello, Jack. Teddy’s voice, or perhaps Levi’s. It didn’t matter. When they’d gone free, they’d told Abbadon about him, and Abbadon had known the crow-mage would be the one to use for his mad schemes.

He was a game piece, just like he was to Belial. And he was fucking sick of it, Jack decided, sick to the core. Belial, at least, had always been upfront that he was using Jack. And having a demon who owed you one would go a long way toward taking the edge off Abbadon’s brood. Having a demon who owed him might be what saved Pete’s life.

Jack cast around. His talent was useless against Abbadon, that much was clear. He should have wised up and punched the bastard in the nose ages ago. The front of Lucinda’s tomb was destroyed, the stained glass in the door shattered, and the iron gate hung akimbo.

Belial screamed again, and Abbadon laughed. He had his snout in the wound now, and Jack heard the snap of teeth. Good. He’d be distracted.

Jack kicked at the gate until it came loose. The panel was about five feet tall but narrow, sharp latticework at the top covered over with green corrosion. He hefted it. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do.

Abbadon didn’t look up as he approached, which was probably a check in the plus column, since Jack couldn’t be certain he was walking a straight line. Once this was over, he decided passing out face down in the nice, soft grass would be the ideal finale to the evening.

Jack raised the gate and stepped to the side, aiming it for Abbadon’s soft underbelly. He drove the latticework in far as it would go, jerked the iron back and forth, twisted. He wanted the bastard’s guts to rain down, to cover the ground with blood and make it so nothing would ever grow there again.

Abbadon reared back, and his swipe narrowly missed taking off the top of Jack’s skull. The wound around the iron began to corrode, black spreading across Abbadon’s flesh, lemon-colored pus dripping out. Abbadon convulsed once, shrieked, and then Belial reached up and twisted Abbadon’s scaly neck halfway round.

The snap resounded off the marble tombs, and Abbadon slumped, unmoving.

“Fuck, he’s heavy,” Belial grunted. “Get him off me, will you?”

Jack gripped Belial’s arm and eased him out from under Abbadon’s unmoving bulk. “Got some bad news for you, mate,” he said, looking into Belial’s pointed face, shredded wings spread underneath him. “You’re ugly as fuck.”

Belial bared his teeth. “Told you that you couldn’t handle the sight of me.”

Jack took quick stock. Belial’s wings were a wreck, and blood was dribbling from his mouth and ears. Abbadon had torn a chunk out of his guts, and Jack caught the stench of a rent bowel.

“I’ll be all right,” Belial said. “Eventually. But I have to go, Jack.”

“Oh no,” Jack said. “You owe me now, you bastard. You’d be a big pile of demon meat if I hadn’t stabbed that bastard.” He looked at Abbadon’s corpse. “He is dead, right?”

“Dead as I can make him,” Belial gritted. “If I stay here, I’m going the same way.”

“Pete…” Jack started.

“Pete is an arrow in your heel,” Belial cut him off. “Sooner or later, Jack, that woman is going to be the end of you. Drop your losses and move on.”

Jack let Belial’s head down. That was a demon. Do everything right and they still found a way to fuck you. “That’ll be it for me, then,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen today, and Abbadon doesn’t get to keep her.”

Belial laughed, though it turned to a phlegmy cough that caused a fresh flow of blood from his lips. “You’re an idiot, Jack Winter. Good luck.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Fuck you, too. Thanks for your help.”

“I’ve helped you more than you know, Winter,” Belial said. “Not my fault you don’t want to hear the truth.”

“Telling you,” Jack said. “Never had much use for the truth, me.”

“That’s why you’re going to see me again,” Belial whispered. “And why you’ll never really be free of Hell.”

“Today I am,” Jack said. “So shove it up your arse, mate. I’ve got three more Hellspawn to kill tonight.”

CHAPTER 29

Walking was the hardest thing in the world. His ribs screamed with every step, and his arm was a free-flowing canyon of blood and missing flesh. Jack tore off his shirt and wrapped the wound as tight as he could stand. Stanching the blood helped a little, but he was still the walking dead.

He managed to flag down a taxi on Santa Monica, managed to mumble out the address of Sliver’s pub in Venice, and then mercifully passed out.

The dream boiled up at him, and this time it was as vivid as a memory. He stood barefoot on glass sand that pierced his flesh and left crimson footprints as he and Belial walked across an endless desert under a white sky. The City was far behind, and the only interruptions on the horizon were the black skeletons of dead trees. From each tree hung a bottle, blue glass, clinking gently in the endless wind. Inside each bottle was a wisp of white smoke.

“Souls,” Belial said. “Souls so corrupted they don’t even have bodies any more.”

Jack was naked, and the sand blew and swirled around him, digging into the flayed spots on his flesh, turning the blood on his face sticky, and stinging his eyes. “You bring me out here for this?” he said. His voice was little more than another whisper of air. Screaming for hours didn’t leave you with much lung power.

“No,” Belial said. He pointed to where the world dropped away, and Jack went to the edge of a canyon, iron sides held together with rivets the size of his fist.

He heard the screaming, from far below. Heard the bellowing of a massive body in unbearable pain. The sides of the canyon quivered, flakes of rust coming loose and falling into the void.

“You think you’re here forever?” Belial said. “I’m showing you it could be much worse.”

It was hard to think how. Belial’s torments were endless and creative. Jack didn’t understand how his body could keep taking punishment. The small bit of his mind that hadn’t shut down told him that he’d go completely around the bend soon, and then he’d belong to Belial. He’d forget his own name, that he’d ever been alive, and everything about his life before. Pete, everything.

Had she buried him? Was she even still thinking of him?

“Prince Azrael tortures these four endlessly,” Belial said. “As punishment for daring to stand against the demons. You don’t always have to be this pathetic smear of shit you are now, Jack.”

Jack turned his head with effort. Below his feet, the ground shook and the screaming reached a fever pitch. “What?”

“Eventually, you’ll give up on what you remember of your life,” Belial said. “And then you might be useful to Hell, Jack. Nobody would own you here. Not the smack, not your sight, and not the Morrigan.”

“No,” Jack mumbled. “Just you.”

Belial’s claws grazed the back of his neck. “For now. But someday, I have a feeling you and I could be great friends.”

That small part of Jack that had recognized he was sliding downhill fast spoke. “I’d rather be down in that pit with Azrael.”

Belial’s lip twisted down. “So be it,” he said. “You’ll break, Winter. Sooner or later they all do.”

Something cold and wet hit him in the face and slithered down his throat. Jack choked and swiped at his lips.

“Jeez, man,” Sliver said. “You scared the hell out of me.”

He knelt beside Jack, holding an empty pitcher with a few ice cubes lingering in the bottom. Jack watched rivulets of pink trickle across the white tile floor and slip away down a drain. He was soaked from chest to head, but he was awake. “You should see the other bloke,” he said.

Sliver set the pitcher aside and sat him up. “Funny. You want to tell me why you fall out of a cab in front of my bar, mumbling crazy shit, and then pass out on me in my back room?”

“Long story,” Jack said. “Someday I’ll tell you all about it, and you’ll be amazed.” He tried to stand, but his feet went out from under him, and he fell back to the tile.

“Dude,” Sliver said. “You need to settle. You’re fucked up.”

“I’ll be all right,” Jack said. “Just need to rest for a moment…”

He wasn’t all right. Blood loss had made a black border around his vision, and his ribs were on fire.

“I’ll get somebody,” Sliver said. “Just hang in there, all right?”

He left, and Jack passed in and out of consciousness for what could have been hours or weeks. The single bare bulb in the pub’s back room swung back and forth, light and dark. Usually, this was when the Morrigan would show her face, when he was in the shadow land between the daylight world and the Land of the Dead. But she knew she had him now. There was no reason to attend his last hours when he’d be delivered to her at the end.

He couldn’t help Pete. He couldn’t even help himself.

“Shit,” somebody said. “This guy is hamburger. Why the hell didn’t you take him to a hospital?”

“Like I could explain this to somebody in a hospital,” Sliver snapped. “I thought you said you could help him.”

“Look,” the second voice said, “this guy is beyond help.” Chubby fingers gouged against Jack’s neck. “His pulse is barely even there.”

“Do what you can.” A desperate edge crept into Sliver’s voice. “I can’t have a dead fucking body in my bar, Mayhew.”

“Really, you of all people are more equipped to deal with a corpse than most,” Mayhew said.

“Fuck you,” Sliver said. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Clear my tab, and I’ll see if I can keep him breathing,” Mayhew said.

“Are you shitting me? You owe me four hundred bucks.”

Mayhew’s fingers went away. “Hey, you want to put this fucker out with the trash after last call, you can argue with me. You want my help and expertise, clear my fucking tab.”

“Fine.” Shiver sighed. “I think his ribs are busted. He keeps making these wheezes when he tries to breathe.”

A cold stethoscope pressed against Jack’s chest, and Mayhew made a disapproving sound. “He’s got fluid in his lungs. Probably internal bleeding.” Jack’s leather was stripped away, and a bandage went around his ribs. The pain intensified tenfold, and he cried out.

“Good sign,” Mayhew said. He peeled back Jack’s eyelid and Jack was blinded by a pocket torch. “Hello in there,” Mayhew said, and Jack swiped at the light.

“Fuck off.”

“Listen,” Mayhew said. “You’ve got cracked ribs and a nasty head wound. Probably a concussion too. I’m going to give you something for the pain, but you need to stay still, all right?”

“No needles,” Jack said. “No drugs.”

Mayhew ignored him, fitting a sterile needle onto a syringe and drawing from a bottle of clear liquid that proclaimed SALINAS VET SUPPLY across the label in broad letters.

“No…” Jack tried. If he was doped, he had no chance. Pete would die, the baby would die. Hell, he’d probably die in the bargain, since Mayhew seemed to have learned first aid while drunk and standing on his head.

The needle slid in, small and cold, and the cold soon spread across all his limbs. Jack felt his heartbeat slow down, and he drifted on the opiate tide, the familiar fuzzy sensation of the high unfurling its wings and lifting him toward the ceiling.

He looked down, at the top of Sliver’s head and Mayhew’s orange Hawaiian shirt.

“I think you gave him too much,” Sliver said. Mayhew zipped up his case and shoved the rest of his supplies back into a duffel bag.

“You want to do this?”

Sliver shook his head. Mayhew stood up and brushed off his knees. “I’ll hang out in the front. Call me if anything changes.”

“Don’t you dare drink all the good shit,” Sliver called after him, and then crouched beside Jack’s body again. From this vantage, he really did look like shit. His face was gray, and the dried blood and the cut on his forehead made him look like some kind of film zombie. His bare chest, wrapped in bandages, was covered in old bruises and new cuts from where Abbadon had flung him into the tomb.

He’d come close to dying before—and had, when Belial took him. He knew the detachment, the gentle untethering of soul from flesh. But he couldn’t die, not now. Pete needed him. More importantly, he needed her. The only kindness if he kicked now would be to the kid. Better to have a dead father you could idolize than a living one who was shit.

“You don’t have to let it end like this, you know.”

Jack looked up at the shadows near the ceiling, cast by the swaying bulb. “Oh,” he said. “Now you show up.” He wasn’t sure if he was really speaking, or just echoing his thoughts, but the crow woman glided down from the ceiling and put her hands on either side of his face.

“You have the ability to make this stop right now, Jack. You have the means to help the little Weir. If you really want to.”

Jack looked down at his body. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m already dead. We’re just waiting out the formalities now.”

The Morrigan dug her claws into his cheeks. She could be extraordinarily beautiful, pale skin and eyes like drowning pools, long hair drifting on spectral wind, body encased in a diaphanous black shroud. And then her face could change, could become the face of the crow woman, or the Hag, and she was the most terrifying thing he’d ever clapped eyes on.

“I gave you the gift, Jack. I pulled you back from the Bleak Gates, and all you’ve done is deny me. I’m getting very tired of it, Jack. I won’t save you this time. Either you save yourself and use what I gave you, or you’ll never see your little Weir again.”

She pressed her lips against his, and her teeth sliced into his lip, their blood mingling. “You’re mine, Jack. You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. Now do what you know you want to. Take control of this.”

She retreated, and Jack had to wonder if she’d ever been there. It wouldn’t be even close to the first time he’d hallucinated the Morrigan. Bad enough when she actually did visit him.

He felt the cold, even from the vantage point of his stoned dream. It started in his hands again, and as he watched his body he saw his tattoos begin to writhe. He could try to hold it back, try to deny that the Morrigan had changed him, made him into what he’d tried not to be ever since he’d seen her the first time, back when she was just the lady in black who dogged his dreams night after night, when he finally drifted off after his mum and Kevin had stopped fighting or fucking in the other room.

He could try, but he didn’t want to any more. He wasn’t going to let Pete die. He wasn’t going to let Abbadon steal her. And if that meant giving in to the Morrigan, than so be it. She’d changed him. Without her he’d be dead. Whatever he dealt with later, well. He’d cross that bridge when he got there.

He didn’t fight the cold this time, like he had when he’d killed Parker. He embraced it, let it rush through him like a freight train, and felt the Black spasm as his soul reeled back from the Land of the Dead.

Waking up felt like knives, or like he’d just been smacked with a defibrillator. He bolted upright, the cold expelling from his lungs in a rush of air, and then he promptly vomited, even though there was nothing in his stomach except a little bile.

“Fuck!” Sliver bellowed. “What the fuck, man!”

Jack felt himself jerked sharply to one side as his ribs snapped back into place. Vague, dull pain in his guts told him that whatever blood had been leaking was sealed. Even his forehead was smooth when he touched it.

His tattoos came to rest in a new configuration, no longer aimless swirls but feathers, boldly up each arm and reaching across his back and chest. Sliver stared, unblinking. “You, uh … you okay, man?”

Jack stood. The painkiller was gone along with the pain, but he had a new sense of detachment now, and it was nothing to do with the Morrigan or the Black or anything except the fact that Abbadon, that bastard, had taken Pete. “Never better,” he said to Sliver. He grabbed a T-shirt off a shelf, advertising the pub, and shrugged into it. It was too large by half, but it covered him and that was all that mattered.

Jack banged the door to the pub open, garnering a stare from everyone in the place. Sliver’s tinny sound system, pumping out the Marshall Tucker Band, was the only sound. Jack walked over to Mayhew, took away the whiskey bottle the fat arse was cradling like a baby, and took a long pull. The whiskey felt good, warmed him up a bit, and Jack slammed the bottle back down and pointed his finger in Mayhew’s face.

“You need to get me a gun.”

CHAPTER 30

Mayhew’s gun wasn’t nearly as large or penislike as Jack would have expected. It was a small Sig-Sauer, or so Mayhew told him. Jack had never found much use for guns. That was Pete’s department. She was the one who could take aim and shoot.

“You know how to use one of these?” Mayhew asked. Jack took it, ejected the clip, checked the chamber, and then slid the clip home again and flipped the safety off. Pete had made him learn that much. Almost like she’d known one day he’d be on the other end of the rescue, being the knight on the steed. He’d already slain a dragon. How difficult could this be?

“Guess you do,” Mayhew said. “You got any idea where she is?”

“That’s your department, isn’t it?” Jack said. “Come on, Mayhew. Prove you’re something more than a sad old drunk.”

Mayhew shook his head immediately. “Oh no. I don’t mess with this shit. Scrying for what tagged you is going to get me a melted brain and a bed at Cedars.”

“County nuthouse, is more like it,” Sliver muttered. Mayhew flushed, but he still shook his head.

“This is your mess, man.”

“Listen,” Jack said. “It’s been ten years. The thing that killed Mrs. Case and stole her baby to ride in its skin is right here, and his friends have got Pete. You brought her here—you owe her, even if you don’t give a fuck about me. And you owe the Cases, and the Herreras, and all the other dozens of unfortunate souls who got in Abbadon’s way.”

Mayhew drummed his fingers on the bar, then poured himself a shot of something clear and knocked it back. “Fine. I’m going to need something of hers.”

Jack sent Sliver to retrieve Pete’s Stiff Little Fingers shirt from her bag, then handed it to Mayhew. “It’s her favorite,” he said. “Don’t ruin it.”

Mayhew spread the shirt out on the bar, took another shot.

“Oi,” Jack said. “Don’t get pissed. We need you able to perform.”

“Being hammered is how I perform,” Mayhew said. “So shut the fuck up and let me do this, all right?”

Jack watched Mayhew pass his hands back and forth across the shirt, watched his eyes roll back in his head. Seeing somebody in a trance was always a bit unnerving—their eyes went white, and they tended to twitch and drool. It was why Jack had never put himself under in front of an audience. Simply wasn’t dignified.

Mayhew’s eyes crawled with black, and a tendril, then a second, of black smoke leaked from his mouth and nostrils. He exhaled, and the smoke formed a miasma above his head, drifting in lazy circles.

“I see her…” Mayhew rasped, and more smoke trickled from his mouth.

“Okay, that is just weird,” Sliver said. “And I say that as a wraith and a bartender.”

“Shut it,” Jack said, as Mayhew shoved back from the bar and walked stiff-legged for the door. “He got that beast of a car still?”

“Far as I know,” Sliver said. Jack snatched Mayhew’s keys and tossed them to Sliver.

“Then you’re driving.”

The old him, the him who didn’t have the marks, who hadn’t healed himself and been through the fight with Abbadon, would have doubted himself and the wisdom of following Mayhew into the jaws of the beast, but he didn’t. Abbadon could be as cryptic as he liked, but there was only one place in the daylight world where his brood would feel really safe.

Jack had strength now, had focus, had the tunnel vision that would mow down anything that got in his way. He realized, in the same small part of his brain that had known he was on the way out, that he was dangerous. Off the track, spinning toward a confrontation he had no hope of winning.

“Where is he going?” Sliver asked as they left the bar.

“Drive,” Jack told him, climbing into the passenger side of Mayhew’s car. “He’ll tell us where to go.”

Mayhew guided them onto the freeway with guttural grunts, and they headed north of downtown. Like Jack thought, there was only one place they could be going.

The journey toward Abbadon’s ranch passed by in slices of headlamp illuminating road signs leading to places Jack had never heard of. Folsom. Lodi. Barstow. Desolate names for desolate towns, off the map of where he had to go tonight.

Mayhew came back to himself by degrees and sat up, choking. “The ranch…” he rasped. “The dead…”

“It’s all right, mate,” Jack said. “We got the gist.”

Sliver turned to look at them in the light of the dash. “No offense, but I’m not toeing off against whatever it is that has you two spooked. I’ll be the getaway driver, but you’re on your own.”

“No,” Jack said, trying to settle back against the seat. His skin was vibrating, and his mind was as clear as if he’d just taken a hit of pure crystal. “These bastards are mine.”

“Listen,” Mayhew said after a time, when the radio had faded to nothing but static, country music, and late-night preachers telling them how the world would end, “I know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye…”

“You tried your best to fuck me,” Jack said. “But don’t worry, Benji. I’m not going to test your manhood tonight.”

The turn for the ranch loomed up in the cone of the Buick’s headlights and Jack tapped Sliver on the arm. “Just there. Park on this side of the ridge and stay out of sight.”

Mayhew leaned out his window as Jack walked away, boots crunching on the gravel. “What are you going to do?”

A single window was lit in the ranch house, and Jack saw the blue glow of a television through the tattered curtains. He lifted the Sig from his waistband and felt the weight in his hand. It was solid and real, probably the last piece of iron he’d ever touch.

“I’m going to kill every one of those sons of bitches,” he said, then started toward the ranch house.

The void in the Black still existed, but it didn’t cause a spike in his brain. That was Jack before, the Jack who was weak, who felt things and wanted heroin and wished for all of the sights and sounds of the Black to just stop from time to time, so he could rest. This Jack knew there could be no rest until he’d done what he came for.

If he couldn’t use his talent, he’d gamble that Levi and the others couldn’t either. Abbadon was clearly the bright bulb of the group. The others were simply insects attracted to the light.

He mounted the steps, mindful of the loose boards. This part had to go just right, because there were no second chances, and plenty of regrets waiting if he fucked up.

Trying the door, he found the knob locked tight.

He leaned back against the porch rail, bracing himself. Levi would be by the television, and he was too much of a fat fuck to move quickly. Teddy was immobile. That left the little girl as his primary problem—not that he was discounting her. Not that she was actually a little girl.

Jack swung his boot at the door, smashing it so that it banged against the farmhouse wall and tore a chunk from the rotting plaster.

“Hello, you bastards!” he bellowed. “Daddy’s come home at last!”

There was no sound, only the burble of a TV game show from Levi’s room. Jack lifted the Sig and fired a shot into the ceiling, causing more plaster to rain down. “Come on!” he screamed. “You wanted it, so let’s get dirty! Show your ugly fucking faces, cunts!”

A shadow appeared at the top step, and resolved itself into the little girl. She’d traded in her shorts and tee for a dress, blue with small pink sprigs of flowers. Blood streaked the front. Whatever little girl had originally worn that dress was long gone. “Will you keep it down?” she said. “Some of us are trying to get our rest.”

Jack raised the pistol, drew a bead, and fired. His shot went far wide and shattered an old-style lamp bolted to the wall of the upstairs hallway. He was a crap shot, but he didn’t let it bother him. The gun served its purpose.

The little girl didn’t even flinch. “Abbadon said you’d come. With or without him. He told us what to do.”

“Did he, now?” Jack said. The old him would be pissing himself. This him was calculating lines and angles, force and velocity. The Morrigan’s marks didn’t change the fact he was a shit shot, but they were keeping his panic at bay. “Did he happen to tell you to let me have my girlfriend and walk out of here?”

“He said if he didn’t come home we were to kill whoever walked through that door,” the girl said. “Bad luck for you, nasty man.”

She launched herself at Jack, knifelike claws and teeth bared, the black hair she’d kept braided into a rope at her back turning into a riot of bodies, tiny mouths and sharp, lava-glass blades. Jack brought the gun up, swiped it across the side of her head, and knocked her into the banister and then to the hall floor.

She snapped at him, and he whipped her with the gun barrel again, causing a trio of her black blade teeth to fly free.

The girl cowered, howling, and then launched at him again. Jack slipped his hand inside his leather and used it to wrap his fist around her living, writhing hair. He yanked. The girl screamed.

“Doesn’t feel good, does it?” Jack said. “Perhaps if you were a bit nicer, we wouldn’t have to go through this.”

“What are you going to do to me?” she whined. “I’m only a baby. Compared to the rest, I haven’t even done anything really terrible. I’m just a child, and I like to play with things. Live things.” She blinked at him. “Is that so wrong?”

“I’m not going to debate with you, luv,” Jack said. “If it makes you feel better, chalk it up to wrong place, wrong time.” He mimicked Belial’s move at the graveyard and jerked her head to the left by her braid. It was a clean break, quick and fast, her neck going just a bit too far and the gleam of bloodlust fading from her eyes. She wouldn’t wake up quickly here, not on this ground that twisted and corrupted talent and the Black almost beyond recognition.

Jack picked up the pistol and stepped over the body, into the back room.

Levi looked up at him, docile face quivering around the edges. “You.”

“Not the fucking tooth fairy,” Jack agreed. “Where’s Pete?”

Levi narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t over, you know. You can’t kill things like us. You can’t kill your future, Jack. Sooner or later your little world is going to get devoured, just like the one before it and the one before that. I’m the one doing the devouring. I am the leviathan, and I eat the world.”

Jack put the pistol barrel against Levi’s temple and pressed it in just a bit, until it left a depression in his fatty flesh. “You know what the problem is with all of you ancient types? All the gods and demons and whatever the fuck you are?”

Levi’s labored breathing increased, sounding a bit like a small saw inside his chest. “You can’t kill me. You can’t…”

“The problem is you talk too fucking much,” Jack said, then squeezed the trigger.

There wasn’t as much gore as films had led him to believe. A little blood and a few bits of skull and brain covered the fuzzy telly screen, but the rest matted in Levi’s hair as he slumped sideways in his scooter chair.

Jack left him there and stepped down the hall. Only Teddy left. The best and the worst of the four. Something that could get inside your head didn’t leave you with a lot of options. You couldn’t shoot something that could convince you that you were holding a teddy bear rather than a pistol. You couldn’t reason with something that wanted more than anything to live.

He pushed the door open gently. A child’s mobile lamp sat in the corner, projecting images of carousel horses and clowns onto the stained walls. Teddy still hung in state, hooked up to his IVs and machines.

Pete crouched at his feet, and she looked up at him. He wasn’t the cold Jack in that moment, the Jack who had it all figured out. He dropped the pistol and crouched beside her, cupping her face in his hands. “Have they hurt you?”

Pete shook her head mutely. Her face was streaked with grime and twin rivulets where tears had cut through, but her eyes were dry. “I feel so fucking stupid,” she muttered. “Didn’t even see the bastards who snatched me.”

Jack wrapped his arms around her. She let him, pressing her face against his leather. “You’re all right,” he said.

“I am,” Pete said. She gave a small gasp, just an intake of air. “The baby…”

Jack felt the cold grow in him again. Of course. The baby. The fucking baby. How could he not have seen it? Kim had never been Abbadon’s real plan, not since he and Pete had landed on their patch.

“What did they do to the baby?” he said.

Nothing yet. Teddy’s voice sliced into him, and it still hurt. It bypassed his sight and cut straight to the part of his brain where his talent lived, hollowed it out and echoed there. Abbadon had plans, though. Great plans, and they’re in motion, and you can’t stop them. A thin giggle punctuated the sentence.

Jack looked up at Teddy. “Don’t think I won’t waste you in just a moment, you piece of shit.”

“Abbadon said…” Pete sucked in a breath and steadied her voice. “He said that the baby was his now … that he’d done something … to me.” She dug her fingers into Jack’s wrists. “I can feel it. I can feel what he put in my kid, Jack. It’s going to be his. I’m going to be just like those stupid cows that he sliced apart.”

She’s right, you know, Teddy purred. Don never was happy with that raggedy meat bag he was riding. He had big plans. Big plans to live forever in that brave new world he was gonna open up.

Kim hadn’t been carrying a body for Teddy. Pete hadn’t been snatched as leverage. Sanford had never intended to give her back. He’d traded Pete to Abbadon in exchange for his help with Locke’s doorway. A brand new infant body, with talented blood pumping through it to sustain Abbadon’s power. A body that wouldn’t burn out like a regular meatbag, as Teddy had put it. A body that he could ride forever, while he ushered the fires of Hell into downtown LA.

“I’ve got some news for you,” Jack told Teddy. “Abbadon is dead. He’s gone. This baby isn’t his and it isn’t going to be.”

He’s not dead, Teddy said. You know how many times Azrael did him in, down there in the Pit? Only for the fun of it? Thousands. We can’t cease to exist, Jack. Not forever. We’re the beginning and the end.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. “The Alpha and the fucking Omega. He’s still not getting my kid.”

“He already has,” Pete whispered. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t even shaking. The world could end and Pete would hold it together. “I can feel it, Jack. We were alone a long time, and he put his mark on the baby, the same as he did those other poor children, who got turned into things like…” She pointed at Teddy, gulping back a sob. “Like him.”

There’s a process. Teddy chuckled. A seed to be planted. The child will be Abbadon. Poetic, if you think about it. The phoenix and the ashes.

“You shut up,” Jack told him. He pulled Pete to her feet. “They didn’t touch you, yeah? Didn’t hurt you?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Jack, no,” Pete said. “Nobody molested me, and honestly, when they snatched me that was the least of my worries.” She laced her hands across her stomach. “That thing is right. He did a ritual, and his magic was so strong. When this kid is born, it’s going to become Abbadon. There’s no help for it.” Her tears did start then, and she bit her lip savagely, causing a trickle of blood. “You’re going to have to do it. I don’t think I can.”

Jack stared at Pete. Her stomach was barely showing—he thought she might have put on a stone, at worst. In all of his ramblings about the kid, he’d never imagined there not being a kid at all. Head so far up your own arse you never even realized what Abbadon really wanted, the new Jack whispered. That Jack was pragmatic. He saw the whole picture. Abbadon couldn’t be allowed near the daylight world, never again. Pete was resilient. She could have more children, when she was ready, with someone who wouldn’t be a complete cock-up as a parent. And he’d keep the first evil the universe had known at bay for a bit longer, and could go through life knowing he hadn’t contributed to anyone else’s fucking up.

It made sense. In every way that mattered.

Jack dropped his hands to his side. He was hot now, the air in Teddy’s room stuffy and stinking of a hospital ward, and massively tired. He could curl up between the IV stands and sleep for a week.

“I can’t.”

Pete let out a single, desperate sob. “You have to…”

“No,” Jack said. “No, we’re going to make this right, all right?” He grabbed Pete’s shoulders, and squeezed hard enough that she whimpered. “All right?”

She licked the blood from her lip, and finally met his eyes. Don’t be scared, he prayed. He needed one of them to not be scared, because the new Jack had deserted him, along with the cold singlemindedness, and he was only himself again, shit plans and shit luck and all.

“All right,” Pete said softly. “Fuck him, anyway. Who the hell does he think he is?”

Jack pulled her against him, felt the hard swell of her stomach against his torso, and nothing else mattered. “A bastard,” he said in her ear.

“The worst sort of cunt,” Pete said. “I fucking hate this, Jack. It’s never going to be over, is it? This kid is like a beacon for all the shit and evil of the Black, and it’s all going to come down on the poor thing.”

Jack pressed his face into Pete’s neck, into the curve behind her ear. “Worry about it when you need to worry, luv. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He brushed his lips over her forehead, tasted the sweat there. “Either of you.”

Pete’s mouth curled down. “Promise?”

“On my fucking life,” Jack said.

This is all very touching, Teddy said. But you’re not leaving here.

“No,” Jack told him. He pulled the paper he’d taken from Lucinda’s coffin from his pocket. It was wrinkled and smeared in blood, but legible. “You are,” Jack said.

From the next room, he heard stirring and skittering through the walls. Levi and the girl were awake. He turned to Pete. “We don’t have a lot of time. No time, really.”

She nodded. “What do you need from me?”

Jack handed her the gun. It was a relief to get rid of the thing, if he was honest. “Shoot anything that comes through that door right in the fucking face, and that includes adorable little girls.”

“Right,” Pete said. Jack pulled out his knife and she cocked her eyebrow. “And what are you going to do?”

She gave a small gasp when Jack jammed the knife into Teddy’s neck. It wasn’t demon blood, but it would do.

Teddy screamed. This isn’t going to save you, Jack. Not you or your whore or your brat.

“Let me tell you something,” Jack said. “She is not a whore. She’s a good woman and I don’t deserve her, and that attitude of yours is exactly why you’re hanging from a wall in this shit-trap.” He twisted the knife in deep, and felt Teddy’s heart give its last misshapen tremble. “Try to be less of a twat in your next life, yeah?”

He drew Locke’s sigil in the blood pooling on the warped floorboards. He stood in the center of it and recited the words that Sanford had intoned, although he liked to think he sounded like less of a pretentious gobshite while doing it. As a last thought, he picked up a discarded bottle of cheap Mexican beer—probably Levi’s doing—and tucked it inside his jacket.

He’d thought a portal straight to Hell would be more dramatic, but instead a thin line of white smoke rose from the circle, and the sigil fell away. The real world started to ash away little by little as the physical laws of space bent, burned up, and blew away.

Jack grabbed Pete by the hand and pulled her into the circle. The Black here was strong. He was the Black, inside Locke’s doorway, atoms spread from one end of the universe to the other. Pete’s Weir talent flowed through him, except this time it wasn’t an onrushing storm, a flood that could drown him. Here they were two halves, and they fit together. Weir and mage, floating on the time stream of magic, outside the realm of anything usual.

Jack put one hand on Pete’s stomach, used the Weir to widen his sight. His skull didn’t hurt—it merely felt as if the top had come off and an avalanche of foreign sensation had poured in.

The child was vague—not really thoughts so much as impulses, impulses of hunger and curiosity and fright. It wasn’t formed yet, didn’t really exist in the psychic space.

Abbadon’s magic rode it like a caul over its psychic presence, like an oil spill in cool water. He’d slipped inside Pete’s talent, inside her physical body, and planted a seed amid the psychic DNA of his child so that when it formed, it would form in his image.

Jack drew the darkness out, drew out the spark of Abbadon that still lived, inside Pete.

He saw the glass sands of Hell and smelled the hot wind. It wasn’t a dream, now. He was here, could taste the ashes, hear the screams and the clink of the soul bottles, smell the acrid roast of human flesh borne on the air.

Pete stared, turning in a slow circle. “This is Hell.”

“You are smart, luv,” Jack said. “I do love that about you.”

Pete pointed over his shoulder. “Another time, Jack.”

Abbadon stood there. He wasn’t the dragon that Jack had faced in the graveyard, not the slick-faced human. He was a shadow, all teeth and screams. “You think you’re so fucking smart,” he snarled.

“Smarter than you,” Jack said. “You decided to use my fucking child as your next ride into the daylight world. Not your brightest move, mate. Not even on a slow day.”

“You think you put me in Hell and I’ll stay?” Abbadon snapped. “I got out of this place once, Jack. I can do it again.”

“About that,” Jack said. “See, I don’t peg old Nergal as the generous sort. He may have weakened the bars, but I think you had help crawling out the first time. Whether it was a general, or one of the Princes, or a rat you trained to gnaw through the bars—it doesn’t matter. Belial knows your tricks now. I think this time, you’ll stay right where I put you.”

He pulled the bottle from his coat and held it up to Abbadon. “You’re bound, by the laws of Hell and by my will, Abbadon. Bound to stay in this place, until Hell ends or you do. So fuck off, and leave us alone.”

Abbadon’s shadow flickered once, twice, like faulty film, and then he disappeared, a curl of black smoke at the bottom of a manky bottle, sharing space with a half-centimeter of beer and two dead fag-ends.

Jack shook the bottle a bit, watched the smoke swirl. “Reckon he’s very angry?”

“Who bloody cares?” Pete said. “Trying to get at my kid. Twat.”

“You said it, luv,” Jack said. He walked to where the world dropped off, at the edge of the iron ravine. “Oi!” he shouted. “The prodigal son returns. Enjoy it, you coldblooded sons of bitches.”

Pete caught his arm. “Let me,” she said. Jack handed her the bottle. Just a sad scrap of soul. Just like everyone, no matter how evil or how much they wanted to stay alive, ended up eventually.

“Go on,” he said.

Pete cocked her arm back and flung the bottle hard as she could. It arced out over the ravine and flashed in the harsh white light before it fell from sight and disappeared.

She looked up at Jack. “That’s done, then?”

Jack looked down into the ravine. “For now.” Without Abbadon, Belial and his ilk would make short work of the other three. Jack stepped back, let go of the threads of Locke’s gateway spell, and watched as the daylight world slowly blended back together, and the laws of physics righted themselves.

Pete grimaced. “Awful. Feel like I’m going to puke now.”

“I’ll join you,” Jack said. Nothing else stirred in the farmhouse. Teddy’s corpse hung silently, bloodless and still. In the hallway, the little girl lay staring at the water-spot continents on the ceiling, unblinking.

Pete flinched. “Christ, she was creepy, wasn’t she?”

Jack shivered. “Adorable ones usually are.”

Outside, he saw a line of light on the horizon. It was nearly dawn. Pete sat down on the steps, inhaling a deep breath of air. “Don’t suppose we’ve got a ride out of here.”

“I came with that twat Mayhew and with Sliver,” Jack said. “But I imagine after that light show, Sliver got smart and fucked off back to Angel City. And Mayhew is just fucking useless.”

“He really was a twat,” Pete said. “I’m sorry, you know. You told me it was bad business and I went anyway.”

“Luv, if you lined up all the bad business I’ve followed up on in me life, you’d circle the earth,” Jack said. “Possibly twice.” He tapped a fag out of his pack and offered the last to Pete.

“I’m pregnant, you tit,” she said. “What exactly am I supposed to do with that?”

Jack touched his finger to the end of the fag. It took a few tries, in this zone where the Black twisted back on itself, but he got the fag lit and took a long drag. “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, Pete,” he said. Once it was out, it seemed silly he hadn’t said it sooner. Nothing caught on fire. No one slapped him. The sun was up, and he heard some sort of wild bird scream, off in the brush.

“You think I do?” she said.

Jack watched the end of his fag, smoke curling. “I’m not going to be a decent sort of father,” he said. “I’ll try, yeah, but I’ll cock up, and you were right. This kid has no idea what it’s in for. Everyone will want it, both sides. And if it has a talent … I can’t quit, Pete. I can try, but it’ll always find me, so it’s best if I just bow out now, because I can’t be what you need or want.”

“It’s a girl,” Pete said. “I had a new ultrasound right before we left the UK.” She exhaled, as if she’d just confessed something. “So not an it. A girl.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Jack said. Christ, a girl. This was going to be even worse than he’d imagined. He didn’t know what the fuck he’d do with a baby girl.

“I didn’t know if I should,” Pete said. “Didn’t think you’d be sticking around.”

“About that,” Jack said. “It’s pretty fucking clear that I need to. For the kid.”

“I don’t want you to stick around because of some cockeyed obligation,” Pete said. “I can stay with Lawrence, with Ian Mosswood. Hell, even with my mum and the fucking Order. They can keep her safe.”

“Why not?” Jack snapped. Suddenly he was fed up. Through dancing. If he stepped on feet, so be it, but he was too tired to be subtle any longer. “Why can’t I be obligated to stay around? ’S more than my fucking father ever offered.”

“Because I don’t want you to hate me,” Pete said softly. “Jack, I don’t want you retired, but I don’t want you gone, either. You were gone for so long, and when you were in Hell … but I won’t trap you. I won’t be that woman. I just fucking won’t.”

The sunrises in California were magnificent. Jack had heard somewhere that it was from all the pollution. A pink rind of cloud sat below the glowing half-orb, white flashes chasing away the velvety night sky, while the moon and stars clung, far off beyond the mountains.

“You’re not,” he said at last. He could be scared—could be fucking terrified—but that didn’t mean he had to run. “I can’t see hating you, luv,” he said. “Thought I did, for a long while, but I don’t, and I won’t, and I won’t be my fucking cunt of a father, either. I’ll be there for the girl, until you won’t have me.”

Pete placed her hand over his knee, gave a squeeze. Her touch set off a series of aches and pains, and Jack grimaced.

“You all right?” Pete said.

“I’m old, luv,” Jack said. “This baby is going to run me fucking ragged, I hope you know.”

Pete leaned her head against his shoulder. “I think you’ll manage. We will, somehow.”

Jack sat quietly with Pete for some time, while the sun rose. He could tell her later about the Morrigan’s marks, her visitation, the strange new thing living under his skin. About the Princes of Hell and how Belial had picked him, all those years ago, to be one of their legion. About how the slow fracture and dissolution of the Black hadn’t stopped with Nergal, would never stop, and things back in London would likely never be all right for the crow-mage and the Weir again. He could tell her all that later, Jack thought as he slipped his arm around Pete’s thin shoulders.

He had the time.