Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
Pete called Ollie Heath, her old partner in the Met, and had him take charge of Declan. Until this was over, sectioning was the safest place for the poor nutter, Jack thought.
“All right,” he said when it was just the two of them. “You were the police. What makes for a successful robbery?”
“Not getting caught, for a start, which we most certainly will,” Pete said. Jack found the whiskey bottle and poured them both a glass.
“At least try to pretend for a second we have any hope of doing this,” he said. It had to work. Or it had to kill him. He’d decided after that first encounter with Legion that he wouldn’t end up like the Jack in his vision, alone and half insane, searching for his stolen daughter and mourning his dead wife.
“Okay, good heists usually have a couple of components,” Pete said, rolling her glass between her hands. “A front man, a driver, and an expert. You know, safe cracker, expert in stolen Nazi art, that sort of thing. Somebody to pin down what’s of real value, get it, and get out. The front man handles the rough stuff, and the driver is self explanatory.”
“We’ve none of those things,” Jack said. “What now?”
Pete shrugged. “You get caught, do a hitch in prison, mend your evil ways. Except, wait, this is Hell, and we’re robbing a vault full of demonic artifacts, not the corner off-license, so we’ll probably all roast for eternity with pokers up our arses.”
“The Fenris are no joke, but they’re not hard to manage,” Jack said. “They really just want to be let off the chain. If we gave them something to direct all that pent-up demon rage at…”
“I pity the bloke, but all right,” Pete said. “A distraction. Belial provides the Hellspawn blood, and I find the blade. All that’s left is getting out of there.”
“I guess we’re relying on Belial for that, too,” Jack said. “And before you chime in, no, I don’t like it either, but I have to trust that he wants to live more than he wants to watch the Princes peel off my skin.”
Pete drained her glass, giving him a look over the rim that said she knew he was full of it, that they couldn’t trust anyone, including Belial, but she had the grace not to call him out on it to his face. “Distraction, then. Somehow I doubt setting off a few firecrackers outside the front door is going to do the trick with these types.”
Jack went to his shelf of grimoires and ran his hand over the spines, the smooth slither of old leather and vellum worn shiny with time familiar as his own fingerprint. “Used to be so simple,” he said. “Summon what you need, sling a few hexes, and you were riding high.”
“Yeah, I remember the first time you summoned a demon around me,” Pete said. “Worst fucking experience of my life.”
“You did almost burn down my flat,” Jack reminded her. “Not a walk in the park for me, either.” That day had been when he’d known for sure. That Pete was the Weir, that she could destroy him and everything around her, and that he had to stay by her, because without him they were both going to end up dead inside the year.
He pulled one of his go-to grimoires off the shelf. “That gives me an idea, actually.”
“Burning down the flat?” Pete said. “You almost did that enough by leaving the kettle on and your fucking cigarettes burning on every flat surface, thanks.”
Jack flipped the pages. The grimoire had come across Seth’s desk at the bookshop, and even though it was full of useful—and no doubt valuable—information for summoning and hexing, he’d handed it over to Jack. Of course, most of it was written in Sumerian, so that had been Seth’s own version of a little joke.
“Do we have any ketchup?” he asked Pete. She frowned at him.
“That’s your bright idea? Condiments?”
Jack dropped the grimoire on their ottoman, open to the relevant page, and hunted up some fresh chalk, salt, and a few herbs to speed things along. That was all you needed for most spells, and if you had the talent to back it up, you didn’t need anything at all except a few words of power. The more elements you mixed in, the higher the chance of fucking up and having whatever you were trying to conjure snap back and slap you in the face.
“I’m surprised you don’t remember,” he said, digging through their ancient icebox for the nearly empty bottle.
Pete watched him as he chalked out the proper signs inside the circle, sprinkled some salt for extra hold, and dumped a puddle of ketchup on the sitting room floor, and then she gave a dry laugh. “Him? Seriously?”
“Honestly, I’ve never been sure if it’s him, her, or other,” Jack said. He lit the herbs, which snapped and fizzed.
“Hrathetoth!” Jack snapped, and the little demon emerged out of the smoke, blinking its large gold eyes at him.
“Crow-mage!” it squealed. “Never again you call me! I warned you!”
“Calm down and stuff your face,” Jack said. “Then you and I need to talk.”
This was a risk. Hrathetoth might have been small and furry, with a tail longer than its body, but it was still a Named demon, and if it was among the number loyal to Legion, it would go running straight back to him.
The demon wiped the last of the ketchup off its face and pricked its pointed ears, furry black tufts bristling out of them like an antenna array. “Talk, talk, talk,” it groused. “All the meat sausages do is talk.”
“Yeah, and you’re going to listen to me,” Jack said. “I summoned you and gave you an offering, so it won’t kill you.”
“Not you,” Hrathetoth cooed. “But when the rain comes, umbrella keeps you from getting wet. And when it’s dark, too late for talking. Shhhh.” Hrathetoth stuck one of its small webbed fingers to its lips. “If he hears the talk, out come our tongues!”
“So I take it you’re not a fan of Legion,” Jack said.
“Muddy man. Leaving his footprints all over the nice clean world.” Hrathetoth sniffed.
“I don’t deny he’s slimy,” Jack said. “How’d you like to help get rid of him?”
“Not slimy, greasy,” Hrathetoth said. “Greasy like a meat sausage. You, too. All of you.” He wrinkled his button nose at Jack. “Meat goes bad if it stays too long. We’ll throw this one out, yes yes?”
“Well, that was easy,” Pete said from outside the circle. Hrathetoth hopped to face her.
“Hello, pretty black hole,” he said. “I can’t look at you. You make my brain feel tingly.”
Pete gave Jack a look, eyebrow arching to its maximum disapproval. “Really?” she said. “This is your big idea?”
“Listen,” Jack said to Hrathetoth, “all you have to do is go to the Princes’ vaults and keep a couple of Fenris busy long enough for me to liberate something inside. Think you can do that?”
Hrathetoth thumped its tail against the floor like a heartbeat, and then grinned, revealing a truly impressive array of needlelike teeth in three straight rows. “Fenris stink almost as bad. Wet doggies, tiny brains.” It stuck out its paw. “I’ll help the crow-mage. Shake!”
“You must be insane,” Jack said. “I’m not touching you.”
“Shake or no deal, meat puppet!” Hrathetoth shrieked. The sound pierced Jack’s eardrums like an air horn, and Pete winced.
“For the love of all that’s holy, just shake the thing’s paw. Hand. Whatever.” Pete said. Jack sighed, but he took Hrathetoth’s paw between his fingers and shook it. The shock of magic felt like taking a stun gun to the chest. The demon was small, but it had power boiling through it all the same. Jack just hoped it would be enough to keep the Fenris from ripping him, Pete, and Belial to shreds.
“Hooray!” Hrathetoth shrieked. “Blood and guts and guts and blood! See you soon!”
“Can’t wait,” Jack muttered. He rubbed out the chalk line. “Return no more until you are called, et cetera.” A noxious puff of smoke rolled across the flat, and when Jack’s eyes stopped tearing Hrathetoth was gone.
Pete slumped back on the sofa. “Have I mentioned yet today that I despise demons?”
“Get it out of your system,” Jack said, getting a rag to wipe up the ketchup. “Because we’re going right down the Yellow Brick Road into their home sweet home.”
There was no adequate way to prepare someone for a visit to Hell, so Jack didn’t even try. Pete had seen things that few mages even dreamed of—places like the Land of the Dead, the white nothing comprising the slivers of space between the worlds, a purgatory where things lived that most people couldn’t even have nightmares about. She’d seen things through the eyes of the Morrigan and the Hecate, had even brushed up face to face with Nergal. Jack figured she was a lot better prepared to handle Hell than he had ever been.
Still, her expression when Belial brought them to the waiting room outside the vault wasn’t pleased.
“What in the holy fuck,” she said, “is that
smell
?”
“Crematory furnaces,” Jack said. “They feed the damned into them, burn them to ash, and mix it with blood to feed the elementals.”
Pete paled, breathing through her mouth. “I am never eating a hamburger ever again.”
Belial took a deep breath. “Smells like fresh air to me, sweetheart.”
The demon tried to hide it, but Jack saw the beads of sweat working down from his hairline, staining the collar of his pristine white shirt. If they were caught, he and Pete would merely be dead meat. Belial would be at the mercy of the Princes, and Legion, for the rest of his demonic lifespan.
Belial glared at him. “You feeling sentimental, Jackie?”
Jack shook his head, gazing around a corner down the long hall leading to the vault. It was the same featureless steel bulkhead as the inside, the only hint that this wasn’t some boring bunker back in the daylight world the three Fenris standing guard over the vault door.
“Where’s your distraction, crow-mage?” Belial grumbled. “About time to start throwing fireballs, don’t you think?”
Jack gave Belial a wounded look. “Come on. I
am
capable of being subtle sometimes.” He was starting to feel the sweat creeping over his own flesh. It was Hell, it was hot, and they had about three more heartbeats before the Fenris realized they weren’t supposed to be hanging around and ate them for an early lunch.
“Do something, Jack,” Belial snarled in his ear, “or I’m going to.”
Jack was about to turn around, clock Belial in the jaw, and make a run for it when a pop sounded at the far end of the tunnel and one of the Fenris cried out, swatting at his eyes.
Hrathetoth appeared in midair, bouncing from the head of one Fenris to the next, digging its claws into their eyeballs, yanking their hair out by the roots and peeling their skin off in strips.
Three more pops sounded, and Jack saw a trio of smaller, furrier, toothier versions of Hrathetoth appear, setting on the Fenris like piranhas on a prime cut of filet mignon.
“Look at that,” he said to Pete. “He brought friends.”
“He really hates sausage, I guess,” Pete muttered.
The tiny demons took off running, climbing the walls, skittering along the ceiling, laughing and cackling in their demonic dialect. Jack didn’t speak it, but he could tell by the way the Fenris reacted that Hrathetoth had called their parentage, and quite probably their genitalia, into question.
The Fenris pounded after Hrathetoth and its friends, completely ignoring Pete, Jack, and Belial. Jack plastered himself against the tunnel wall until they passed, then hurried to the main doors.
“Big, scary, and dumb as posts,” Belial said when he caught up with him. “You have to love Baal’s best and brightest.”
“Blood.” Jack pointed at the row of three spikes set into the doors at chest level. Belial bared his teeth.
“I’m aware of my part in this.” He rolled up his sleeve and pressed his forearm into the spikes. “You know, you could be a little more grateful. I am spilling my blood for anyone who cares to collect it.”
“You’d also sell me to the Princes in a heartbeat if we get caught, so cut out the martyr song,” Jack said. “I’ve heard it before, and it’s second verse, same as the first.”
The doors groaned open. Jack heard the Fenris howling in the distance, and his chest didn’t unknot until the vault doors had sealed behind them.
“You two have fun,” Belial said, rolling his sleeve down. The punctures had already healed to black spots, Belial’s blood bubbling against his pale shark-belly skin. “I’ll be right here when you’re through.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “How do I know you’re not directing me right into a booby trap?”
“One, because we want the same thing, and if we don’t get it we’re all fucked right up the arse with a pole the size of the O2 Arena,” Belial said. “And two, you don’t. Your choice is to trust me, and get this done, or not trust me like you always have before, and watch things get progressively worse until you’re in shit up to your ears. Again, as always.”
Pete plucked at Jack’s sleeve, which was good, because the rage was coming on again and he was finding it difficult not to take a swing at Belial. Not because the demon was wrong, but because he was right. Belial was a survivor, and Jack had a decent hunch they were on the same side, but he also remembered Belial’s face when Jack had been his prisoner, tortured beyond all endurance.
Belial had enjoyed that. It was a truth Jack could never quite slip away from, no matter how much history had built up between him and the demon since then.
Because it meant he’d never fully put his trust in the demon, no matter how desperate the circumstances.
“Fine,” he said. “But if you try to fuck us, Belial, when I have the blade I’m finding you and using you as a practice run for Legion.”
“I never tire of these little chats we share,” Belial said. “They make me positively glow inside.”
Pete tugged at Jack again, sharper. “Come on,” she said. “Clock’s running.”
Jack turned around. It was the only thing he could do—turn his back on the demon and hope he didn’t end up with a knife in it. He followed Pete down the narrow hall inside the vault, but he still felt the demon’s eyes on his back, and he knew if he turned around he’d see Belial’s mocking grin.
Jack didn’t waste time trying to get the case holding the eye open, just picked up a scarred metal mace hanging on the wall in a weapons array and smashed through the glass. Pete gave him a crooked smile.