Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
The Scot gave him a thin smile, a smile that told Jack he’d just confirmed something. “I thought you might not be one of us.”
“I was,” Jack said. “Long time ago.”
The Scot nodded, sticking the fag between his lips and extending one of his plate-sized hands. “Barry.”
“Jack.”
No prickle when they shook. Barry was as ordinary as they came.
“You a reporter?” Barry asked. “Or a blogger?”
Jack snorted. “Do I look like I blog?”
Barry shrugged. “Never can tell. I read ’em all myself. Library’s on the Internet, I go in there when it rains and do the BBC breaking news, Huffington Post, that sort of thing. Keep myself informed. Check in with my old unit occasionally.”
Jack cocked his head. “Falklands? Had some mates who had brothers and whatnot involved in that.”
“You can’t have been very old,” Barry said. “But yes, I was there. Came back, suddenly didn’t have much of a taste for my semi-detached and a thank-you from Her Majesty.”
“She’s not very popular in the patch where I grew up, either,” Jack said. He swung a glance out at the street again. A white bus, of the sort used to cart seniors to and fro from activities, was parked near the corner, but not moving.
“Listen,” Jack said. “You know anything about a van, been coming around picking folks up, promising them a place to live and meals and whatnot?”
Like he’d triggered a trap, Barry’s genial expression shut off, and a dark anger filled his eyes.
“I think you best move along, boy,” he said.
“Look,” Jack held up his hands. “I’m not press and I’m not police. I just really, really need to speak to whoever’s filling those vans.”
Barry regarded him for a long moment, and Jack felt his heart throb. If he couldn’t find Legion’s gatekeepers, then he was back to square one, just a face and a bullshit name.
“That’s them,” he said, jerking his thumb at the bus as it started to move, curb-crawling toward the line of homeless people. “But you don’t want to go with them,” he said. “Blokes get on, and they never come back.”
“And I’m guessing you don’t believe it’s because they have a great new life at a compound in the country?” Jack said.
The bus pulled to a stop. It was brand new, shiny, driven by a shaven-headed bloke in a leather coat very much like the one Jack had relunctantly left at home. He’d needed to blend in, and he felt naked without it.
“I’ve seen enough God-botherers to know when someone’s just bending your ear and when they’re a cult,” Barry said. “And mark my words, Jack, these blokes are the sort who’ll have you in trainers and matching outfits before a fortnight’s out.”
“Oi.” The shaven-headed drone glared at Barry, taking a thin black police baton like the one Pete carried from his pocket. “Shut your face or I’ll give you something to cry about, Nancy.”
Barry ignored him, still staring at Jack. “Good luck, son,” he said. “You’re gonna need it.”
The bald drone went down the line, picking out Jack and a pudgy kid still wearing the vestiges of his life before he’d hit the street—brand-name windcheater, good sneakers, prescription glasses that weren’t third-hand, scratched, or broken. The kid sucked nervously on a lip piercing, and Jack leaned over to him. “You should probably stay out of this.”
“Fuck off,” the kid snarled. “You take your share, gramps, and leave some for the rest of us. I’m not going to piss off just because some towheaded rent boy doesn’t like it.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Fine, you ruddy little ASBO. Suit yourself.” If Margaret ever reached the stage where she talked like that, he was going to lose his mind.
“You two,” the drone said. “You interested in taking a trip to a place with a bed and some food? In exchange, all you have to do is listen to a speech from the leader of the commune, Mr. Larry Lovecraft.” The drone had said the line so many times it sounded like a draggy tape recording.
“You have no idea how interested I am,” Jack said. He climbed in the bus after the kid, who practically bowled him over to be the first one up the steps.
Just a normal kid, even if he was an arse. A few scraps of latent talent, nothing he’d ever notice unless he got smacked on the forehead with a hex. Walking right into Legion’s maw just because living on the streets was much rougher than it seemed on telly, and he wanted an out that didn’t involve crawling back to his home life.
The coach lurched, and Jack felt sick. Legion was like a bird of prey, high on his wire, picking off the vulnerable. Thinning the herd before the real culling started.
Closing his eyes and steadying his breath, Jack told himself to stay calm. He felt the piece of the Gate in his pocket, resting against his hip. In a perfect world, he’d get close and snatch Legion, and the both of them would be back in the Pit before the lunch hour.
Oh, didn’t he tell you? You’re mortal. That’s an express ride with no return ticket.
Jack leaned his forehead against the glass, hoping the cool vibration of the coach would still the memory of his latest vision. Demons lied, and Legion was clearly a champion at it.
Or Belial could be jerking his chain even harder than he’d thought, still lying to him. Either situtation was possible.
As the coach picked up speed and entered the M25, Jack decided he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Right now, he was going to find Legion and do his bit to put things back where they belonged.
Or he was headed into the country to die trying.
The coach hummed on for several hours, past Oxford, closer to Birmingham than London before it pulled off the motorway onto a B road, and from there onto something that Jack thought might have last been used to herd medieval sheep.
After what seemed like an eternity of potholes at war with both the coach’s suspension and Jack’s spine, they rolled to a stop in front of a low pile of stones and a slate roof that Jack supposed could have passed for a monastery at some point in the distant past.
A group of men in threadbare clothes loitered in front of the main doors, and not far off a generator buzzed, delivering power via a thick orange cable fed through a shattered window.
The whole place looked like a before shot on one of those posh makeover shows that Pete liked to watch sometimes, when she was trying to turn her brain off for sleep. Beside him, the kid sniffed.
“Looks fucking haunted.”
“We should be so lucky,” Jack muttered.
The bald bloke gave him a shove. “Move along. You’ll be taken for a shower and delousing and then we’ll see about a bed.”
Jack decided to just go along—the more concrete information he could give to Belial, the better. The kid was busy goggling at everything as they passed room after room filled with decades of dust, junk, and mildew, and Jack was busy taking inventory of the sad sacks floating about the place.
There were mages, and he caught a few markings of orders like the Stygian Brothers—black magic to the core. The usual mix of shapeshifters and other dark-dwelling creatures of the Black. Even a few zombies stood around, one staring out the window at a far-off field dotted with the modern relatives of the sheep who’d made the road, the other in an alcove off the long hallway banging his head repeatedly against a wall.
They came into a thin, high room that Jack supposed had been the chapel at one point, and he started as a gray shape drifted down from above the altar. The
bean-sidhe
glared at him, her eyes as black and glassy as rock chips, before drifting away, the blood dribbling from her mouth leaving cold, hissing droplets on the stone floor.
If Legion was taking in Fae creatures, particularly nasty attack dogs like those, this was a serious coup against Hell indeed. Fae stayed away from the rest of them, whether they checked the human, demon, or “other” box. Pete had dealt with them once, just one of their many ruling bodies, and that once had been enough for her.
Jack didn’t like Fae, didn’t trust them. They were alien in a way demons weren’t. You couldn’t suss out their motives—and on a personal level, it had been a pack of
bean-sidhe
that a vengeful sorcerer had once sent to kill him.
Fae rulers kept a tight hold over their subjects—Mosswood was one of the few who’d managed to carve a life for himself outside their realm. If Legion had the power to attract followers even at the risk of what their rulers would do, Jack decided he was going to start having second thoughts pretty fucking quickly about meeting him.
A large room that Jack guessed had once been some sort of stable attached to the monastery proper held a cistern and a collection of makeshift hose showers that dribbled cold water, contributing to the damp stench rolling out from the falling-down space.
“Take your clothes off,” said the drone, and Jack looked over at a trio of naked men who were having their heads shaved at the other end of the room.
“Fun as this looks,” he said to the bald bloke, “I think I’ll just see Legion now.”
The drone blinked at him. “Eh?”
“Larry, Love Doctor, whatever he’s calling himself here,” Jack said. “I admit that I’m not really ready to don the mouse ears and be part of the club, mate. I told a little white lie so I could talk to your fearless leader. I know, it was awful of me, but there you have it. Probably best I’m not indoctrinated. I have a terrible problem following orders, and I look like shite in a jump suit.”
The drone reached for the police baton again, but the same lilting voice Jack remembered from his vision stopped him.
“It’s all right, Terrance.”
Jack expected his first glimpse of the demon to be worse, somehow. He thought there should be some recognition, at least—this was the bastard who haunted his dreams, after all.
But there was nothing but a flat sense of disappointment. Legion’s human body was small and ordinary, and his voice had an almost teenage cast.
“Mr. Winter did come here to talk to me,” the demon said. “I invited him.”
Jack watched the gears that ran Terrance’s brain-box grind and smoke for a moment, and then he jerked his thumb at the kid. “What about this one?”
Legion came over, looking the fat kid up and down. Legion wasn’t much bigger than Pete, in height or frame, but that started the first inkling of fear in Jack. The less care demons put into making their human forms large and scary, the more punch they usually packed. Belial was a prime example—that bastard was practically a midget, and he had enough magic to flatten London and put up a new Wizarding World of Harry Potter in its place, if he felt like it.
“Clean him up and put him to work feeding people,” Legion said, inhaling a sharp whiff of the boy’s scent. The kid recoiled.
Good lad,
Jack thought.
Finally got that survival instinct working. Too bad it’ll do you fuck-all good in this place.
“Come with me, Jack,” Legion said. He clapped Jack on the shoulder, but Jack had a lot of practice not flinching. It took all the fun out of it for bullies if you didn’t react.
“After you, Larry,” was all he said, knocking the demon’s small, soft white hand off him.
“Oh, come on now,” Legion said. “Is that any way to treat a new friend?”
“You and I aren’t friends,” Jack said, giving the demon a sharp smile. “So let’s just have that understood right at minute one, shall we? Save both of us a lot of tears shed into our pints later on.”
Legion didn’t alter his expression in the slightest. The face was a mask, Jack realized, even more than Belial’s was. Absolutely no relationship to what was going on beneath the surface. The perfect poker face.
“Have it your way, Jack,” was all he said before he opened the door to the monastery and ushered Jack in.
“After you,” Jack said. If Legion thought Jack would show his back, the fresh air in the country had driven him stark raving mad.
Legion pulled a pout. “Jack. You don’t trust me.”
Jack tilted his head. He was having a damn hard time watching this plastic life-sized doll being ridden hard by a demon whose true form he couldn’t get a handle on, but he was going to keep this nice and civil until the screaming started if it killed him. Abbadon hadn’t rattled him, the Princes hadn’t made him shake—he was damned if some little pipsqueak with an ill-fitting human suit was going to get him there.
“Should I, Larry?” he said at last.
Legion grinned wide, so wide that the skin of his face creaked. “Probably not.”
The key weighed in Jack’s pocket, but he left it alone. Legion wasn’t stupid, and neither was he. “You want to do this right here, in front of the true believers?”
Legion winked at him, and Jack felt a yank in his guts, like he’d missed a step and started to fall. When he blinked, they stood in a small turret room overlooking the fields and the grounds, the figures below them moving around, pushing wheelbarrows, trimming bushes, or carting loads of laundry to and from an outbuilding.
“Neat trick,” Jack said.
“One of my best,” Legion said. “’Course, I got a lot more I could show you if you slag me off, Jack.”
“Belial told me about your little
Doctor Who
gadget,” Jack said. “So cut out the stage show. If you want to impress me … well, you can’t.”
“Poor Belial.” Legion sat on the sill and looked down at the people below. “He believes in the Princes as much as those creatures down there believe in me. How disappointed was he when he had to tell you I’d yanked the most precious artifact in Hell’s vaults out from under his nose?”
“No so much disappointed as gunning for your balls,” Jack said. “I’d watch it with him, were I you. Belial’s trickier than he seems.”
“To you maybe,” Legion said. “You’re human.”
“And what are you?” Jack asked. If he was going to get a hold on Legion, it was going to have to happen soon. “A demon with delusions of grandeur? Because I know the whole Legion thing is bunk, mate. I’m not some starry-eyed nincompoop fresh off a turnip lorry.”
He knew he’d made a tactical error the minute the words left his lips. Legion closed the distance and shoved him into the wall, the plaster cracking under Jack’s skull. “I
am
Legion,” the demon hissed. “I am the undoing of this world.”