Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
Pete frowned. “What about Declan? We can’t just leave him here.”
Jack looked down at the psychic, who sniffed and shook his head. “It’s all right. I’ll just wait here until they gut me like a pig. Or like a fish, now. I always wanted to live near the ocean. It sings to me. Quiets down the sight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack said. “Just come with us, and we’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Moira,” Declan said, rubbing his temples. “Moira could tell me what was real and what wasn’t. Now what will I do?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Jack said. “Look, I don’t have any answers, Declan. My bright idea was to get blitzed on heroin to keep the sight at bay. But I know what you’re going through, and Pete and I just want to help you.”
“Liar,” Declan said. “You want me to tell you how to keep the storm away. Well, I don’t have an umbrella. We’re all going to die. Except you. You’ll be alive, your body, but you’re just as dead as the rest of us, once he takes his place.”
“You can doomsay all you like if you just get on the bloody ferry,” Jack said. “Come on, mate. Humor me.”
“If you ride on the storm, if you don’t hide, then you can fly,” Declan whispered. “Let the wings lift you. Don’t rip out the feathers. Put the blood in the air, blood he can use to water the earth of his new world, his new graveyard, ashes of the dead raining down on your tongue.”
Pete looked up at him, and Jack couldn’t meet her eyes. “What is he saying?”
Jack felt a headache spike behind his eyes, and he rubbed his forehead viciously. “Nothing. It’s nothing that can help.” He was not taking up the mantle of the Morrigan. Because if he did, he wouldn’t stop the end—he would be directly responsible for it. A different apocalypse was still an apocalypse, wasn’t it?
“Ashes, ashes,” Declan singsonged sadly. “We all fall down.”
The ferry ride was almost nine hours, but if it meant a reprieve from the threat of a Fae attack, Jack would have gladly made the crossing of the Irish Sea in a leaky rowboat.
Pete managed to get Declan to quiet down and sleep with the application of hot tea laced with one of the Valium pills Jack kept on him in case he got beaten up or had to put himself under—trance states were remarkably easy when you had the best opiates the black market had to offer.
Pete offered Jack a paper cup of black coffee, and shoved it into his hands when he tried to wave it off. “You need it. You feel awake now, but the adrenaline is going to wear off and you’ll crash.”
Jack emptied the cup down his throat. His stomach growled at the influx of bitterness, but it couldn’t make him feel any worse than he already did. “Legion used me to get to them. He had them slaughtered just to make a point.”
“He’s
trying
to get to you,” Pete said. “If he’s trying to get to you, it means you can actually hurt him. You have something, and he’s doing his damndest to put you off the scent.”
“By killing four innocent people?” Jack said. “That’s a hell of a distraction.” He didn’t think Legion was afraid. He thought the demon was having fun, batting him around with his paw before he went in for the kill.
“I’m sorry about them,” Pete said. “Really. I know they helped you a lot when you were younger.”
“Yeah, it was a long time ago,” Jack muttered. “I don’t even recognize the order anymore. They didn’t used to be that fatalistic. Two fingers up at the rest of the world was more their style.”
“End times make a lot of folks doom and gloom,” Pete said. “I saw it all the time when I was with the Met. Any time something in the world got bad—economy, elections, terrorists, volcanoes—the nutters would come out of the woodwork, shooting up their corner off-license and putting their heads in the oven. Thinking about the future drives some people over the edge.”
“Try
seeing
the future,” Jack muttered. Pete jerked her thumb at Declan.
“If you end up like that, please don’t expect me to wipe up your drool and change your diapers.”
“Luv, don’t be silly,” Jack said. “You know you’d never get me to wear a diaper.”
Pete reached out and patted his knee. “You’ll figure it out. You do have your clever moments.”
Jack let the silence fall. Pete was good at calming people down, getting them to focus on the moment and think things through. She’d spent a good chunk of her adult life meeting people on the worst day of theirs, getting them to describe their attackers, talk about the moments when they thought they might die. Her greatest gift, though, was knowing when to be quiet and let people work things through for themselves.
He tried to think like Pete. He had no allies, nobody who would help him. There was no way to simply deport Legion back to the Pit. So why was the demon even bothering with him, other than pure spite? Even Belial had walked away from him as a bad job when the Princes turned on them.
Jack stared up at the buzzing light fixture above his head. “I’ll be back,” he told Pete, standing and fumbling in his pocket for a piece of chalk.
She pointed at the salt-streaked windows. Morning sun turned the horizon gold, but the waves of the Irish Sea were still deep gray.
“Where are you going? We’re in the middle of the fucking ocean.”
Jack pushed open the door to the car deck. “Just going to get some air.”
He went up the steps rather than down, ignoring the CREW ONLY sign painted on the heavy watertight door. The top deck of the ferry was small, damp, and freezing. Wind slicked his hair back against his skull and wrung tears from the corner of his eyes as soon as he stepped out.
Jack ignored the elements as best he could—it was poor form to conduct summonings where just anyone could pop in. Besides, he wanted Belial off-balance and listening when he said what he had to say.
A wash of spray passed over the deck, filling Jack’s eyes with salt, and when he swiped at them Belial stood in front of him, arms folded. The rolling of the ship didn’t move him in the slightest, and his black eyes bored into Jack with all the force and intensity of a hurricane.
“You know, twice is pushing it,” Belial said. “Three times in less than a week, I’m thinking you
want
me to kick your arse from here to Liverpool and back.”
“They do say the third time’s the charm,” Jack said. Belial scowled.
“They can kiss my lily white arse. What do you want from me, Jack? I don’t have any more bright shiny favors to do you, no more deals to make. I told you I’m out.”
“I know,” Jack said. “And I wanted to say, for my part in it, I’m sorry.” In all his life, he never would have imagined he’d be standing in front of the demon who’d taken his soul, apologizing. Then again, he’d never imagined that he’d ever have the upper hand with Belial, either.
Belial gave a weary sigh. “I’m not going to kiss your bum and make it all better. Stop bothering me. I just want to spend what little time this miserable human world has left in peace, and preferably very drunk.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Jack said. “You and I both know that Legion is only one demon, one pissant with a big mouth and a bigger ego. You had an idea how to get rid of him when you brought me into this, and I know you, Belial. You always have a plan B.”
Belial sat down on a container of life vests and sighed. “He’s a lot more than that, Jack. Fuck me, I don’t know
what
he is. I’m not even certain he’s a demon; he’s got a demon’s name, but you and I both know there’s no way an elemental could pull off this kind of thing. And the ancients are locked down—they only made a finite number of those, fortunately.”
“Whatever he is—demon, old god, unicorn,” Jack said. “You’re a survivor, Belial. Survivors always cover their own, and they always know everyone’s weak spot. You knew mine. You knew I was a coward and that I’d do anything to stay alive and out of Hell. You manipulated me for close to ten years with that. So what’s Legion’s sticking point?”
“You said it,” Belial said. “He’s as arrogant and vain as Lucifer supposedly was. Thinks the sun sets and the moon rises out of his bum. He thinks he’s unkillable, and I’ve been around long enough to know that’s just not true.”
Jack felt for the first time in days like there wasn’t a hundred pound weight sitting on his chest. “And?”
“And there’s plenty of things in the vaults back home that will kill things in ways that keep them dead,” Belial said. “Azrael supposedly had a blade taken from the Morrigan herself—the hand of death. I’d imagine that’ll put down anything that draws breath.”
“Azrael had a lot of toys, didn’t he?” Jack muttered.
“It’s beside the point,” Belial said. “I can’t go back there, and even if I could, I wouldn’t even know where in the vaults to look. Azrael wasn’t exactly the warm, welcoming type even before he started making backroom deals with things like Abbadon.”
“He must’ve talked to someone,” Jack said. Belial shrugged.
“Azrael didn’t have a fondness for human conversation like I do. He did, however, have a fondness for torture and classical music, so there’s that.”
“There is something in those vaults that could find the blade,” Jack said, remembering the things creeping about in the cases that Belial had shown him. “That eye.”
“To use the Allfather’s Eye requires a capacity for magic that even I don’t have,” Belial said. “And forget you, scarecrow. You’d turn into tinder if you so much as touched that thing.”
Jack rubbed out the chalk line with his foot. “Then it’s a good job I know somebody who can handle it just fine.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Pete said. She, Jack, and Belial were gathered in an empty sleeping cabin, the demon sitting on the bed, tapping one toe of his pointed leather shoe against the deck, Jack facing him, and Pete blocking the door. He didn’t miss the signal there. She wasn’t happy with either of them, and they weren’t getting out of this.
“I wish I was, but I’ve tried everything else, including this one’s asinine plan to stab Legion with a bit of stone like we’re back in the caveman days,” Jack said. Belial gave him a grunt and bestowed another baleful glare.
“I fail to understand, then, why he’s here,” Pete said. “In fact, I really don’t know why he’s here, since I still owe him a kick in the teeth for involving us in this in the first place.”
“My dear, you’re a human being living in the world,” Belial said. “Once Legion is done cementing his base,
that
will make you involved.”
“From what I saw,” Jack said, “we don’t have very much more time before he spins his little globe one last time and drops the barriers between the Black and everything else. It was still spring in my vision. Trees were still green. You know, the ones that hadn’t been burned down.”
Pete passed her hands over her face. “If we live through this, I’m going to slap the both of you into next week,” she said to Belial. “Just so we’re clear.”
“If we live through this, I’m going to be back in Hell, far from the grating sound of your voice,” Belial grumbled. “But do your worst, by all means.”
“Oi,” Jack said. This new Belial kept throwing him off—he could almost forget for a few moments at a time that Belial was a demon, a predator, and that made him even more dangerous. “You speak to her like that,
I’ll
feed you your own teeth.”
“Are we going through with this idiotic plan or not?” Belial snapped. “Because I tell you, I’d much rather go back to what I was doing when your chicken scratch got me here. It was brunette. Her name was Candi, with an
I
.”
“You’re so charming I may vomit,” Pete said. “I’ll be sure to aim for your shoes if I do.”
“Just tell Pete what you told me,” Jack said. He would never say out loud that the demon was right—this was a desperate idea, the last gasp of his attempt to avert what he’d seen in his vision. Then again, if it didn’t work, they were fucked anyway. Might as well go down, as Bon Jovi said, in a blaze of glory.
“The Princes won’t let me stroll into the vault, so the first problem is that it’s guarded by a fuckton of Fenris, who’d like nothing more than to rip my legs off and make them into appetizers,” Belial said. “Then, you need a blood key.”
“Is that what it sounds like?” Pete said, wrinkling her nose.
Belial nodded at her. “A Named demon’s blood. If anything goes wrong, we’re locked in the vault for good. Once we get access to the eye, the girl wonder here will have to keep it from melting her face off long enough to scry for the location of the blade. Then it’s a simple matter of somehow getting out of there before the wrath of 665 of my brethren rains down on your head.”
“Well, once we get through the hard bits, I’m sure it’ll be no trick at all to have Scotty beam us back to the
Enterprise
,” Jack said. Belial huffed.
“If I’m going to get it from both sides I’m leaving right now.”
“You’re sure this blade can really kill Legion?” Pete asked Belial, even though she looked at Jack when she asked it.
“I’m sure of nothing except that I have a hangover and you two are the most irritating human beings I’ve run across in a thousand years of existence,” Belial said. “So shall we kick on, or are the two of you going to live out your short remaining days annoying each other to death?”
Pete spread her hands. “I’m ready. What do you need from me?”
Jack rubbed his chin. Now that there was a direction, something for him to focus on other than the pounding in his head from his visions and his brush with the Fae, he was starting to think again. That had always been his only asset—cleverness. Cleverness had gotten him out of Manchester, cleverness had told him that going with Seth was the right move, and cleverness kept him one step ahead of the Morrigan, even now.
He could be clever one more time. That was going to be the easy part.
“You’ve got your part down,” he told Pete. “I don’t want to tax your talent if you’re going to be handling an artifact with as much voltage as that thing in the vaults.”
“Consider me a tour guide,” said Belial. “Even if I wanted to do the heavy lifting, I don’t exactly have a full bag of tricks these days. A demon exiled from his home is about as useful as a bum pissing in the gutter while it’s raining.” He stood, straightening his tie. “Have fun, kiddies. Give me a shout when our little Wild Bunch is ready to ride.”