Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
Letting go of Jack, he began to laugh, a sound that didn’t match the movement of his lips, that sounded more like wind screaming down a tube tunnel than any sound produced by a human mouth.
“All right, all right,” he said. “So that was a bit dramatic, but seriously, Jack … I am the thing that the demons fear. I’m the thing they kept locked up beside what I took from them. And now, they’ve fucked up and I’m free. I’ve got the humans, the Fae, and soon there won’t even
be
a Hell any longer to stand against me. So tell me, Jack, what grand plan do you have?”
“I don’t believe you, first of all,” Jack said. “A few stray Fae doesn’t mean you’ve got any sort of influence.”
Legion shrugged. “All right,” he said. “See for yourself.”
Jack felt the top-of-the-rollercoaster sensation again, and when he opened his eyes they were in the woods he’d seen from the turret, grass wet under his boots and Legion grinning at him like he’d just pulled two naked succubi out of a hat.
“Told you that was my best one,” he said.
Jack ignored him. His senses prickled at the encroachment of something that cut a wide swath through the Black—not quite the hammer fall of a demon’s magic, but something bigger and badder than him all the same.
He swallowed the dry lump that grew in his throat as six Fae stepped from the trees—not creatures, but actual Fae, tall and black-eyed, with blue veins creeping under their pale skin. They regarded Jack as he stared at them. He’d never been this close to a Fae, by choice, and he decided it had been a smart decision. They felt like being covered in snakes, like cold water pouring down his throat and burning every last bit of air from his lungs.
“Jack,” the demon purred. “These lovely, very pale fellows would like to show you the error of your assumption. Interested?”
“All right,” Jack said. “So you and the Fae are cozy. How long you think that’ll last when they find out you’re gunning for top chair in Hell?”
Legion began to laugh again, slinging his arm around Jack and walking with him down the slope back toward the monastery.
“Jack, I don’t care about Hell. I hate that place and I’d gladly see it burn. Hell gave me the means to come here, to this place, and what did I see? More misery. More suffering. More creatures stranded where they shouldn’t be. Begs the question … why?”
Just tag him and use the key,
Jack’s mind screamed at him, but Legion’s fingers clamped down on his shoulder, so hard he felt the bone creak.
“I swear if you reach for that pig-sticker Belial kitted you up with I’ll rip your arm off and feed you the fingers one by one before I mail the rest of you to your wife,” Legion hissed. “There’s so much misery in this world, Jack. All the worlds. I’m going to take it all away.”
Jack dug in his heels. He believed that Legion would hurt him, but he wasn’t going to be led around like a toy poodle. “If I had a tenner for every speech from every twat who had plans for the apocalypse, I’d have enough for a holiday in Spain with a personal bikini-clad waitress to pour sangria directly into my mouth and then change my daughter’s diapers, so why don’t you just get it all out of your system and then we can get on with what you really want.”
Legion blinked at him. All of his reflexes were slightly out of sync, Jack realized, like he was being remote-controlled. “But that is what I want,” the demon said. “And it’s what I’m going to do. You know and I know that the Black has been rattled to its core. Hell is cracking. One more shake, and the whole thing is going to fall over in a pile. I aim to be the thing that flattens it all. Then there will be no more Black. No more daylight. No more Hell. All together, Jack. Just like we are here.”
“I’m sure you know that if the barriers come down, everything will collapse under its own weight like an overloaded footie stadium.”
“I’m counting on that bit, yes,” Legion purred. “Jack, I appreciate your moxie. I love the human spirit and all the stupid shit it makes you lot do. But rest assured, this will happen. I’ve spent a lot of time moving about, setting this up just so, so the person who would try and ruin it for me, well … let’s just say it would be regrettable for this person to have a wife or a baby daughter that I could access.”
Jack had sworn he was going to stay calm. He was going to play this right, use what his visions had given him to his advantage and not let fear take over. He hadn’t considered rage, though, and it threw a wrench into the entire thing.
He moved for Legion, and the demon blinked out of existence, coming back with a shimmer a few dozens yards away, laughing that nails-on-metal laugh again.
Jack looked down at his palm, the key clutched in it, rough sides biting into his hand and causing dark blood to well up.
“That’s good,” Legion said. “Use that rage, Jack. I know you won’t, but I’ll offer to let you come along with me. Stand on this side of the equation for a change, the side without the bloodshed and heartbreak. You don’t have any friends in the Black and precious few out of it. You have nothing to lose if everyone is forced to live in the same miserable pit of existence.”
“You think you’re special?” Jack had landed in mud and could taste earth and grit on his tongue. He spat them out. “You think you’re unlike anything the world has seen before? I’ve got news for you, Legion.” Jack pulled himself to his feet. Maybe this was it—this was the great arse-kicking he’d seen himself take. Well, so be it. He wasn’t going to just stand here and let the maniac bang on about ripping the universe a new arse.
“You’re nothing,” Jack ground out. “You’re a petty little demon with a god complex, and I’ve seen a dozen of you in my lifetime. My
human
lifetime. That should tell you exactly how often somebody gets that bright idea down in the Pit. If you want a dick-measuring contest with the Princes, then have at it. But you leave the rest of us alone, because if you keep up this nonsense, collecting followers and making life hard for humanity in general, then I am going to put an end to you, and you won’t end up in one of Belial’s cozy little torture chambers.”
Jack took a step toward Legion, even though it was probably the exact opposite of an appropriate reaction, which was to run the fuck away, fast as he could. He never had much common sense when he got really angry, which is why he only got really angry about once a decade or so. He could see blue fire at the edges of his vision, as his magic gathered and he didn’t give a rat’s arse in that moment whether or not he walked away. If this shit-stain moved on him, they were both going to bleed.
“You’ll just be dead,” he snarled at the demon. “Dead as every other twit who rolled the dice with the apocalypse and lost. Don’t fuck with me, Legion, because I’m not like other humans. I am capable of making your life exceedingly fucking difficult, and if you cross me or my family my last breath will be spent shoving you face-first through the Bleak Gates and into the Land of the Dead.”
Legion blinked again, and had him by the throat. Pete would have been furious, Jack thought, letting his anger get a leg up like that. Making him sloppy and grandiose instead of clever, which was what the situation called for. Any twit could shout and wave his arms. Nobody was going to stop a mad demon by cursing him out.
“Oh, I like you, Jack,” Legion said. “I think I’ll keep you alive just long enough to see what becomes of this world you love so much. And then, once I’ve systematically broken you and everyone you care about, you’ll die hearing the screams of your family.” The demon tightened his grip, and as he did his skin rippled and changed. Jack caught a glimpse of the face behind the mild mask the demon wore. It was all sharp edges, the chitinous shell of an insect, with eyes that were gold and depthless, twin suns that you couldn’t look at without burning.
“But not yet,” Legion whispered, lips brushing Jack’s ear. “We both still have our work to do.”
Jack opened his mouth—to scream or curse more, he wasn’t sure—but gravity kicked him in the ribs again and he stood at a service station on the motorway, a group of coach tourists staring at him with frowns.
“
Konnichiwa,
” he said, waving them off.
He made his way around the back of the service center, pulling a stray piece of chalk out of the pocket of his homeless getup. Belial glared at him after Jack had blinked and the demon had shown up, straightening his tie.
“What now? Can’t you just phone, like a normal person?”
“I found Legion,” Jack managed. His hand was on fire, the gash deeper than he’d initially thought. The key rested in his pocket, still humming with the power of the Gates. He’d been so close. So close, and he’d fucked it up.
That was a better lie than admitting Legion was never going to let him get close in the first place. A sucker punch from Jack and a quick trip back to Hell had never been in the cards.
“Well, I don’t hear a celebration going on downstairs,” Belial said. “So I’m guessing he handed you your arse and sent you on your way.”
“We need to talk,” Jack told him. “That thing he stole, the bit that puts space and time in a blender—he’s gotten very fucking proficient with it. He has bigger plans than Hell, and I think he’s fully capable of executing them. He’s insane, Belial. You lot are going to need a bigger boat.”
Belial grimaced. “I was afraid of this. That’s what comes of nobody bothering to find out how the one piece of junk we have lying around that could really do some damage actually works. Always too afraid of it getting into the wrong hands.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Jack said. “It’s in the wrong fucking hands. Has been for some time. He’s claiming that he used it to set up Nergal, Abbadon’s jail break, all of it. Could he be telling even the slightest bit of truth, Belial?” Saying it out loud made Jack’s throat constrict. That much power was beyond anything any living creature was supposed to carry. Even Abbadon, the first citizen of Hell, the thing that predated demons by millennia, hadn’t carried that much juice.
“He could be,” Belial said after a silence that was entirely too long for him to be speaking the truth when it ended. “He could also be fucking with your head. He’s rather good at that.”
“You gave me a rock and a pat on the back, and that’s not going to do it anymore,” Jack said. He fished the key out of his pocket and held it up. “We need to see the Princes.”
Belial shook his head, but Jack chopped the air with his hand. “No excuses. No fucking gatekeepers. Take me there or I’m using this and showing up in their parlor myself. Going to start shouting and putting my feet all over the furniture.”
“I hate you sometimes, you know that?” Belial growled, grabbing Jack’s arm.
“I hate you all the time,” Jack said as the walls of the world fell away. “So we’re even.”
There were no frills this time, no buttering him up before they bent him over. Belial stormed ahead of Jack into the meeting room, the Princes sitting at the round bone table with their heads bent.
Baal looked up, eyes narrowing. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Belial shot Jack a black look. “This was your idea, princess. Speak up.”
Jack wondered what his life was coming to when speaking to Baal and Beelzebub didn’t rank as the most likely to make him piss himself in the course of a day.
He told them about Legion, about his visions. He laid everything out, feeling the eyes of two of the oldest demons in Hell boring into him as he did. It was the same feeling as when he’d go with his mum and watch her beg for yet another extension on their rent from the council when he was a boy. The feeling of knowing that the whole performance was getting booed before you even began.
“Tell me, crow-mage.” Beelzebub folded his delicate, multi-jointed fingers. “What makes you think you’re such an expert on this Legion problem?”
“I dunno,” Jack said. “Maybe because you set me up as your hard man and used me to track him down, and now my arse is on the line while you’re sitting tucked up here in your magical pitchfork palace?”
Belial coughed, letting him know he’d gone too far, but Jack rolled on. He was beyond caring what the Princes might do to him. They’d ceased to be the boogeyman under his bed long ago.
“Look,” Jack said. “According to him, he’s lined up at least one of the rulers of Faerie on his side. He’s got enough mages to turn all of London into tinder. He’s got zombies, lycanthropes, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. What more do you need to realize that this entire thing is fucked and you need to take drastic action?”
Baal flared his nostrils. “If what you say is true, that drastic action could provoke a war with Faerie. Or with the human necromancers. Hell’s numbers are diminished, as Legion counts so many among his followers. Would you see Hell fall, crow-mage? Is your game revenge for what was done to you at Belial’s hand?”
The demon cleared his throat at Jack’s shoulder. “Baal, I assure you…”
“Shut up, Belial,” Baal snapped. “The offensive was your plan, and it hasn’t worked. Now it’s down to us. The fact is, Legion commands the artificer, and so we are at a disadvantage. If you were not so young you would see that.”
“Nice name for something that can flip the cosmos like a pancake,” Jack said. “Why on earth would you even leave something like that lying around?”
“Azrael was the only one who knew of it,” Baal sighed. “He had many secrets. This one, he shared with the wrong demon.”
“Yeah, about that,” Jack said. “Who
is
Legion? I mean, I heard the stories. But who is he, really? How can a regular bloke grab the one thing in all of Hell guaranteed to twist the Triumvirate’s panties and run off with it?”
“Because they all trusted Azrael to keep them safe from the bad men,” Belial said, acid eating at each word. “But when Daddy turned out to be a twat who’d fiddle while Abbadon and his pals turned us into sausage meat, they were left scrambling, and now they’re a bit red in the face.”
Beelzebub shot to his feet, chair knocking backward. “You never did know when to just
shut up,
did you?”
“Oi!” Jack stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The sound cut through the small space, taking the wind out of Beelzebub’s sails. “Look, you don’t want to tell me who Legion really is, fine. Guarantee I’ll find out before this is all over. The point is, he’s got this artificer, he’s using it to reenact the plot of every shit episode of
Doctor Who
there is, and we need to do something about it.” He folded his arms and bestowed the Princes with the same look he gave Margaret when she was being a brat. “So what’s that going to be? Because the dragging him to Hell bit is off the table, I’ll tell you right now. No way am I getting within spitting distance of that bastard again.”