Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
“I’ll thank you not to insult my intelligence by trying to sneak up on me, Ms. Caldecott,” Legion snarled.
Pete stood a few feet from Legion, brandishing her baton. “Leave him be.”
“I don’t want to harm him.” Legion spread his hands. “I asked your husband to join me, Petunia. I don’t want to harm anyone. I just want them all to have the chance I never did. Equal footing. No more demons above mages, mages above humans…”
“You know what?” Pete said. “I could not give less of a shit what you want, mate.”
She swung and Legion held up his hands, baton glancing off his forearm. They bit into his flesh. He laughed and laughed until it was all Jack could hear beyond the erratic thumping of his own heartbeat.
Legion jerked the baton from Pete’s grip, and then advanced on her. Pete backpedaled, tried to get out of his way, but Legion had speed that no human could match and he grabbed her, tossing her like she weighed less than a suitcase. She landed at the edge of the loading dock and slid over the edge, disappearing from Jack’s view.
Legion turned back to Jack. “Alone at last.”
Jack tried to get up, but any movement started the agony afresh. He didn’t even care that Legion was in front of him anymore. He just had to make sure that Pete was all right.
“Relax, Jack,” Legion said. “I didn’t kill her. I want her to see this, just like you.”
He grabbed Jack by his ankle and dragged him to a wire-frame lift, tugging the door shut after them. The ride to the rooftop was an agony of bumps and jostles that told Jack he had at least three broken bones and some truly spectacular internal injuries that were probably hemorrhaging even as Legion hummed, stopping the lift at the roof and dragging Jack outside.
Gravel scraped at his cuts, but he was done fighting. His body wouldn’t sustain any more punishment.
He was at Legion’s mercy.
Legion reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out the small orb Jack had seen in his vision. “Azrael made so many things,” Legion sighed. “I’d like to think I was the best, but this … this truly is it.”
He stepped up onto the low ledge at the edge of the roof. The sun was up, and London turned gold under the rising rays. Legion was a black smudge, a shadow against the light that made Jack screw up his eyes. He hoped the demon would keep talking until he could stop feeling like he was going to vomit or pass out, and think of something actually useful.
“This made it all worthwhile,” Legion said softly. “I was in the dark for so long, but this let me go everywhere. I saw so many things. I saw what I had to do to lead me to this moment. Weaken every foundation just enough that the whole thing would topple.”
He looked back at Jack, a smile curving his lips. “What’s that little rhyme? Ashes, ashes?”
“We all fall down,” Jack croaked.
Legion nodded. “That’s it. I have to say, I’m glad you’re taking this so well, Jack. Humans have a survival instinct that borders on the idiotic. They fight against the inevitable even when everything has already reached terminal velocity.”
“I’m not fighting,” Jack said.
“Rejoicing, then?” Legion said. “Brave new world, Jack. You’re going to be a part of history, one of the few humans there when all of the worlds became one.”
Jack shook his head. His vision swam in concert with the movements. “Distracting you,” he managed. Legion’s smarmy grin smoothed out into the flat nonexpression Jack had come to recognize as the default of the deeply psychopathic.
“What?”
Jack flipped Legion the bird with his good hand. “
Sciotha.
” Usually a leg-locker was enough to knock someone down, get their attention, and take the wind out of their sails. The Black was so vast and so tumultuous here, though, that the hex slammed into Legion with the force of a lorry, knocking him off the edge of the roof. Jack heard the crunch of his body hitting the gravel.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and tried unsuccessfully to stand. The gravel was too slippery, and he was too beaten to do much more than flip himself into a sitting position. The wound on his leg had started to bleed again, and he was so lightheaded from the pain that every sound and sensation felt like being bounced around the inside of a giant tin can.
He tried to put his scrambled thoughts in some kind of coherent order. Legion’s ramblings aside, he needed to find Pete, make sure she was all right, and get them the fuck away from here. He’d failed in what he’d intended to do, but Legion had been right about one thing—he planned to survive.
The plan seemed like a good one until a form crashed onto the roof, and Legion strode toward him, brushing brick dust and debris off his clothes. “I did
not
fucking appreciate that,” he snarled, grabbing a fistful of Jack’s shirt and pulling their faces so close he could see almost nothing but Legion’s eyes.
“You know,” Legion breathed, “I can go anywhere with Azrael’s machine. Time, space, future, past … all of it is open to me. I think when I’m done ripping down these walls I’ll go back to your sad little childhood home and kill your mother. And then I’ll kill you, you little shit, but not before you watch your guts fall out into your hands.”
Jack stared at him. He’d never seen so much rage contained in a living body, never felt such malevolent black magic rolling off a creature. Human, demon, or whatever Legion claimed he was, he was the worst thing Jack had ever laid eyes on.
“You’re full of shit,” he rasped. Legion blinked, and then bared his teeth.
“Are you stupid, or do you just have a death wish?”
“I’m going to die either way,” Jack said. He fumbled inside his coat with his good arm, hoping that Legion was too enraged to notice anything but his squirming. “I might as well say what I think—all that nonsense about tearing down walls and balance is crap. You’re just kicking over your toys because you’re mad at Daddy. Isn’t that right?”
Legion snarled, a bone-deep sound that was definitely animal rather than human. “I am going to enjoy holding your heart in my hand, Jack,” he said.
Jack whipped the Morrigan’s blade up and into Legion’s chest, aiming under the breastbone and for his vital organs. “Promises, promises,” he said.
Legion grabbed his wrist in a crushing grip, looking down at the blade in Jack’s fist. “You sneaky little bastard,” he said. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.” He ripped the blade from Jack’s grasp and shoved Jack down, onto his back so that he could see the sky. Dark thunderheads rolled across the skyline of London, and Legion whipped his head around as the sound of a million wings beat the air louder than thunder.
“Cavalry’s here,” Jack said. Talking was getting difficult again. Legion looked back at him, his grin wider than ever.
“All that you’ve accomplished, Jack, is that now I get to kill you twice.” Legion raised the blade and with an economical movement drove it straight down into Jack’s chest, planting it to the hilt.
He stood, looking up at the sky, and shook out his coat. “Gotta run. Armageddon time.”
Legion hopped over the lip of the roof and disappeared. Jack couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink, could only stare at the sky as the darkness rolled in.
The thing that surprised Jack most about dying again was the cold. All his pain vanished and he felt nothing. His body was just an object, abused and discarded, and he was behind the eyes but not a resident.
Ravens and crows soared overhead, so numerous that they blacked out the sun, and behind them Jack felt a pulse that vibrated through the Black all the way up to the sky. Not a ripple or a tear, like he’d felt when Nergal and Abbadon had tried to break through or open doorways between places that were too large to sustain.
This was a fundamental fracture, something that made him feel as if half of the power that he relied on as part of his talent, part of
him,
had disappeared. A skip in the record, a break in the transmission, a void filled with nothing but static.
The ravens had obscured everything, and Jack’s vision was filled with roaring blackness. He couldn’t breathe much at all any longer.
He’d thought the end of the line had come before, so it wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected it. Really, from the moment Belial pulled him in, he’d half expected to end up dead.
Then, as his vision started to swim toward that final blackness, Pete was there. Her expression was frantic, and she grabbed at him, checking his pulse and breath and touching the knife but not pulling it from his chest.
“No, Jack,” she said, her face shattering from horror into an agonized sob. “No … not this…”
“I’m sorry,” Jack managed. “I wanted…”
Pete shook her head. “Don’t talk.” She was pulling out her mobile, calling for 999, cursing and throwing the mobile to the ground as the operator squawked that all circuits were busy.
Jack fumbled for her hand, managed to grab at her wrist. “Pete, listen,” he said. “I don’t have long.”
The rush of wings crescendoed and he saw her, standing behind Pete, her raven feathers gleaming blue-black and slick in the sunlight.
Poor Jack. Poor dead Jack,
the Morrigan sighed. Pete paid her no attention, and Jack kept his hand on her wrist.
She can’t see me,
the Morrigan said.
Not this time. I told you that it would be this, Jack. That at last, there would be a day when you could no longer refuse me.
Pete was crying, holding his hand, tears sliding down her face as she pressed her cheek to his.
“I’m fine with dying,” Jack said to the Morrigan. His voice sounded fine again, which told him he’d slipped into that place where he was closer to the Land of the Dead than life. His soul was only tangentially attached to his body. One way or another, he’d belong to the Morrigan soon.
Ah, but dying would accomplish nothing,
the Morrigan purred.
If you accept your place at my side, you will have what brought you to death today.
Jack blinked at her. His vision was no longer clouded, and though his body had shut down, his talent was alive and burning with power as another shudder passed through the Black. Beyond the Morrigan, he saw a plume of smoke rise from the center of London. He was too late. Legion had kicked over the first domino, and there was nothing to reverse it. “Spit it out,” he said. “I’m not coming over to you on some vague promise.”
Come to me, Jack.
The Morrigan held out her clawed hand.
Come to me. Lead my army of the dead, and you will have the prize you most desire. I will feast on Legion’s beating heart, and he will no longer exist as anything but a memory.
She, too, looked back toward the city, and at the vortex of ravens circling overhead.
But you must choose. Now. This world you love so much, where your wife and your child can live on, or you. One of the unshackled dead, drifting for eternity through a ruined universe that is nothing but a memory of life.
Jack lifted his head. “Swear to me,” he said. “Swear to me that Legion will die and I’ll go with you willingly. You’ll have what you’ve wanted all these years.”
I have wanted you far longer than years, Jack,
the Morrigan said.
You were always my child. The living man touched by Death. But yes—join me and Legion’s death will be yours, to bring to him in any fashion you desire.
“And Pete,” Jack said, looking back at Pete as she held his body and shook with sobs. “She and Lily and Margaret will be safe?”
The Morrigan nodded, her yellow eyes aglow with anticipation.
She will be watched until her time of death, and taken into my bosom as my most favored citizen.
Jack thought about Seth walking away from him. The mage had known something he hadn’t. Jack could run, but he was always meant to end up right here.
There was no point in fighting it. He belonged to the Morrigan. He had always been a walking dead man, ever since he first saw the Morrigan on the altar twenty years ago. He could pretend things could be different, but Seth couldn’t change it. Not even dying and going to Hell could change this.
This was the end, the period on his sentence. And this time, there was no way to pretend he was going to live out the life he’d pretended he could have.
Jack looked up at Pete, reached up with the last of his air to touch her cheek. “It will be all right,” he said. “I promise I’ll see you again.”
Pete choked, but she put her hand over his. “You don’t get to go leaving me,” she managed, squeezing his fingers as tight as she could. “That’s not on, I hope you know.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack whispered. He gave her hand a squeeze in return. “You’re stronger than I ever was, Pete. Don’t change that.”
Pete lowered his hand gently to his chest, and put her hand against his cheek. “I love you, Jack Winter.”
Jack gave her a smile as the ravens landed all around them, and the Morrigan advanced, and he could see that Pete saw her now, but she raised her chin and refused to show any fear. “I love you,” she repeated, looking only at Jack.
He stood and joined the Morrigan, the ravens surrounding them. He looked back at Pete and gave her a nod. “I know, luv.”
The ravens surrounded him, the Morrigan’s feathers blending with the flock, the darkness sweeping in, and Jack found himself surprised that death didn’t feel like coldness, like hotness, like pain, like a release. Death didn’t feel like anything. He just felt his connection to Pete sever as the Black spasmed for a third time, and then everything was gone.
The cloud of ravens lifted to reveal that they stood over the Thames, the scrollwork of Blackfriars Bridge dividing the river from the sky.
Jack looked down at himself. His tattoos were gone, his skin unblemished for the first time since he’d gotten ink from a shady friend of one of his bandmates who wanted someone to practice on. His scars were gone, the wound in his leg, and instead of being planted in his chest, the Morrigan’s blade rested in his hand.
She looked at him. “I’m a woman of my word.”
Her voice didn’t rasp and echo. It sounded more like a stone being dropped into a deep well, hollow and inhuman, just as her face and eyes were. The blood still dribbled from her mouth, but Jack only half noticed it.