Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
“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.”