Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
“Of course not…,” Jack started, but Pete held up her hand.
“I’m not going to die in my bed, either, because if I’ve learned one thing from being with you, it’s that we’re all just specks compared to what’s out there in the universe. And seeing what that thing had to show me confirmed it. I bought that cemetery plot because I was afraid, Jack. I was afraid that I’d see death coming and have no way to stop it, just like my father.”
Jack liked to think he’d learned to keep his mouth shut at the right times over his tenure living with Pete, so he focused on walking without falling over, limping heavily as they moved down a low hall lit with a string of hissing, fizzing Edison bulbs. The iron doors looked familiar, and he hoped they were close.
“I figured out that it’s not about dying,” Pete said. “It’s about living with the time we have, doing what we can to look at ourselves in the mirror, and not being afraid. I made myself look at my death, Jack. I’ve done it a dozen times, and this is the closest I’ve come.”
She stopped in front of the last door in the row, the iron blistered with rust and green fingers of oxidization. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’ll never be afraid again. So don’t worry about me, all right?”
Jack couldn’t look at her. “I can’t help it,” he managed. “I
am
afraid, Pete. Why do you think I made that deal with Belial?”
“You bought your plot,” Pete said. “Big fucking deal. You were the one who taught me how to not be afraid, Jack. Of anything. You’re not brave because you don’t have any fear. You’re brave because you do what needs to be done.”
She rapped her knuckles against the iron. “Now get this door open, because if you don’t, we’re both getting up close and personal with the Land of the Dead.”
Jack exhaled. It felt as if he had a load of stones in his pocket, and somebody had just reached in and snatched out the heaviest one. Just a small piece, but now he felt like whatever happened next, he could probably come out the other side without breaking down into the sort of mess who’d sell his soul and scramble over everyone else in the world to save his own life.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “No problem, luv.” He dropped the crutch and put his hands on the door. The lock was pretty rudimentary—he guessed the real power of the room came from whatever hexes Azrael had put in place.
No time to worry about that now; the hexes wouldn’t reach out and bite him. Pete was counting on him. Jack pressed his fingers against the lock. Locks had never been difficult for him, even when he’d had a go at picking them the old-fashioned way, without any magic.
The lock clicked, and the door swung open a few inches, the waft of air shut in for a thousand years dry and stale in his face.
Jack flinched for a split second, waiting for whoever Azrael had screwed over to come screaming out of the vault and rip his face off.
Pete moved past him, the white witchfire rising from her skin again. “Come on!” she rasped. “I’m going to nuke whatever’s in here—you better get the blade.”
Jack flipped his lighter open. He didn’t want to risk any conjuring this close to Pete and her runaway talent. The small flame illuminated the stone table where the wooden box lay, covered in a millennium of dust and the webbing of a creature that Jack didn’t care to imagine.
His light also caught the bones embedded in the walls—whether they were here for burial or more of Azrael’s victims, he guessed he’d never know.
“Jack!” Pete’s voice held the kind of sharp urgency reserved for diffusing bombs, or going into labor. “Get out,” she said.
Jack started to shake his head as he grabbed the box and stuffed it into his coat. “I’m not leaving you here.”
Pete stared at him, the white overtaking her eyes again. “Get … out…,” she groaned, her voice echoing off the walls of the vault. “We can’t both turn to ash down here, so
go.
”
She was right. Pete was always right. One of them had to make it out of here, for Lily and Margaret, so they would have a world to go back to.
“I love you,” he said, running for the door. Pete managed a thin, pain-filled smile.
“I know.”
Jack bolted from the vault, slamming the door behind him. The iron was thick. It had blocked out everything but darkness for a thousand years, but it couldn’t block out Pete’s screams.
Jack had never been one to pray, even when he was a small boy and his mother had dragged him off to church every Sunday to look good for the neighbors, until the vicar kindly suggested that until she could stop taking hits off a gin flask during the service, the Winter family should probably just stay home.
What was the point? There was nothing out there that would help him out of the goodness of their heart. The gods weren’t altruistic—they were the most selfish, scheming ones of all. There was no magical sky grandfather who would swoop in and make everything all right if he really, really wanted it. Faith was for people who didn’t know better. It was for the small boy he’d been, keeping the faith that someday his life would be more than a council flat, a mother who only made it to the bathroom half the time when chasing her gin with a handful of benzos made her puke her guts up, and a mind full of dead people only he could see, who wouldn’t stop talking no matter what he did.
Faith was bullshit of the highest order.
But he still covered his head as the ground shook and dust rained down, and he let himself believe, for just a moment, that Pete was all right. If he was going to have faith in anyone, Pete made more sense than any fairy tale humans made up to feel better about not being able to see what was waiting out there in the dark beyond the campfire.
The miniature earthquake trailed off, and Jack watched the door, which had come loose and hung crookedly off its hinges. Blood rushed through his ears, but after a moment the door fell and drowned it out with a
clang
, narrowly missing the toes of his boots.
Pete supported herself against the wall, her thin arm shaking. “Did you get it?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse from screaming, and she was as pale as a corpse, but she straightened up and swiped the dust off her cheeks, leaving dark runnels from her sweat and tears.
Jack pulled the box from his coat. “Got it,” he said. “Are you…”
Pete waved her hands. “Later. They must have felt that from their head to their arse—we have to go. Now.”
Jack didn’t say anything, but he did reach out and shoulder her weight, even though his leg twinged like he’d taken to it with a cattle prod. “You know the way back?” he said.
Pete nodded. Her hair was lank with sweat, but her breathing had calmed down and she was no longer emanating magic like a loose high-tension cable, snapping sparks at anyone unfortunate enough to get close.
“Wait,” she said as they started to move. “Check the box. Make sure Belial’s not fucking with us.”
Jack pulled out the box with his free hand and flipped the latch, his stomach doing a somersault. It could so easily be empty. Then he’d be right back where he was when the whole mess started.
The blade sat on a nest of black straw, a film of dried blood still resting in the groove. The broken edge shimmered as Jack tilted the box for Pete to see. “Looks like you could stab someone with it,” he said.
Pete nodded. “Good. I’ve got someone in mind.”
Jack had half expected Belial to be gone when they reached the main vault doors, but the demon was leaning against the doors, examining his nails. The only sign he’d even been a part of the break-in was the trickle of blood staining the cuff of his shirt.
“You two don’t know the meaning of the word
subtle
, do you?” he drawled when they limped into sight. “Discretion is a foreign fucking country.”
“Shut up,” Jack said, giving Belial a glare that he hoped would make the demon’s head explode in a puff of smoke. “Just shut up and get us out of here.”
Belial twitched at his tie and his cuffs, making sure his tie pin was straightened just so.
“Hey!” Jack shouted, loud enough to rattle his own eardrums. “You do realize that when the Princes get down here, they’re going to find you as well?”
Belial rolled his eyes upward, tapping one finger against his teeth. “Give me the blade, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “I knew it. I knew you had some other angle.”
Belial shrugged. “I said I’d help you get the blade. I didn’t mention anything about free rides back to London.”
“What do you think you’re going to do with the blade?” Pete spoke up. She still clung to Jack, one hand on his ribs inside his coat, one around his waist. He tightened his grip on her in response, trying to signal in a small way that somehow, this would be all right.
“Oh, I thought I’d donate it to the British Museum and take a nice little break on my taxes while simultaneously swelling with generosity toward my fellow man,” Belial said. “I’m going to kill Legion, you little twit. What do you think?”
“You really think the Princes will welcome you back with open arms if you’re the one to off him?” Jack said.
Belial curled his lip at Jack. “Let me think about this: yes. Yes, I do. I wager they’ll be so grateful, in fact, that when this is all over there will only be one Prince of Hell. Who will be me, in case that was too cryptic for your small mammal brain.”
“You’re an idiot,” Jack said. “But fine, here.” He passed over the box, despite Pete’s murmur of protest. “Now that I’ve bought and paid for it, I
do
want my ride back to London.”
Belial gave him a wide grin as he stuck the box in the inside pocket of his suit coat. “Anything for a satisfied customer.”
They emerged into London near the pavilion opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum. Pete sat down heavily on the carved steps, and Jack’s body decided that sounded like a wonderful idea and followed suit. He didn’t fight it.
Belial took the box from his jacket and used it to give Jack a salute. “I do like you, Jack. Much as I like anything made of meat. I’ll be in touch. Knowing a Prince is going to be a good thing in the long run. You’ll see.”
He turned and walked away into the shadows, and Pete nudged Jack. “You’re not even going to try to hex him?”
“First off, any hex I can sling is going to bounce right off that beast’s scaly hide,” Jack said. He could barely keep his eyes open, and his leg had started hurting in earnest, each beat of his heart sending a fresh throb of molten fire through his thigh. “Second, I’m too tired to go after him for a petty squabble.”
Pete snorted. “I almost died, and he stole the blade from you. That’s not exactly petty.”
“I’m truly sorry for what you had to do,” Jack said. “But as to the second part…” He reached into Pete’s jacket and drew forth the blade, which looked smaller and older, less threatening, out in the fading sunlight of the real world.
Pete’s mouth opened, then shut again, and she managed a grin. “Dammit, Jack Winter. Just when I think I’ve seen all your tricks.”
“That one’s nothing special,” Jack said. “Seth and I practiced lift and drop about ten thousand times when he took me in. Bought me dinner and a roof over my head more than a few times when things were thin.”
“And now it’s got us a way to kill Legion,” Pete said. She looked down at his leg and grimaced. “After we get that looked at, of course.”
“I’m fine,” Jack said, although the pain in his leg insisted differently. “Just run by a pharmacy with me and grab some first aid, then we need to find out where Legion is and how we can get to him.”
Pete stood. She was already steadier, and her color was coming back. Jack was glad that at least one of them didn’t look like they were two steps from kicking off. “I don’t believe you,” she said.
Jack clambered up and tried to reply, but his leg sent such an electric charge through him that his chest seized up and his words came out as a moan.
He tried to tell Pete he was fine, some disinfectant and a pressure bandage would make him right as rain, but that blackness came up again, the one that had nothing to do with his sight, and he passed out before he hit the pavement.
Usually when his sight was so bothered, Jack dreamed—vivid, terrible dreams informed by the psychic residue of whatever space he was in when he blacked out. This time, though, he had a real dream. Seth had taken him to his summer cottage when he was fifteen, the night before his birthday.
“Thought we might spend the weekend here, and I could show you a few hexes,” he said. “You don’t need to spend your birthday listening to Wallace yell at the news channel.”
It was August, and the green lay over the countryside like a fog, making everything appear smeared and unreal, bringing the heavy scent of cut grass and sheep manure, tinged with the nearby ocean spray, to his nostrils.
Seth looked at Jack sideways while he regarded the mage’s small tumbledown cottage. “You ever had a proper birthday before?”
“Once,” he said. “When I was five, me mum got a clown.”
“Christ, that’s horrible,” Seth said. “Had I known, I would have bought you a few sessions on the couch as a gift for this particular anniversary.”
Jack watched as one crow, and then another, landed on the ridgeline of Seth’s thatched roof. “I think I’m way beyond that,” he said, getting out of the car. Seth did as well, also watching the birds. Nothing escaped his gaze. He took the cigarette from behind his ear, making it disappear in his right hand and reappear in his left.
Jack remembered thinking that was odd. Seth only did his sleight of hand tricks when he was nervous.
“Listen, kiddo,” he said. “You’re going to hear this sooner or later, so I’m just going to tell you. One day soon, you’re going to hear some things about yourself that are going to be hard to take. I don’t want you to get upset, though. I want you to know how I saw you when we met, and know that won’t change.”
Jack watched another crow join the two staring at him. They seemed awfully tame, but he’d spent his entire life in cities, surrounded by nothing but pigeons. What did he know about wild birds?