Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
Now, though, it served his purpose. He kicked in the back door, which was rotten, the latch hanging by a few splinters, and stepped inside. One thin body wrapped in an overcoat slumbered in the back hall, and Jack surprised a prostitute and a blobby, sweaty john in the front room.
“Never mind,” he said, seeing the look of outrage on the man’s face. “Just looking for the loo.”
He climbed the creaking steps as far as he could go and found the skeleton of an armchair in an upstairs bedroom that looked toward the river and the council estate towers to the north.
More than anything, Jack wanted to grab Belial by the neck and shake him until there was no life left. The demon must have known what he was doing, making Jack use his talent to find the demon that had Belial’s knickers in such a twist. Belial probably thought it would be funny.
Jack shut his eyes. He had been fighting against his talent for so long that there was a moment, just a heartbeat or two, when there was nothing. Quiet reigned inside his head, and all he could hear was the tick and click of the wobbly house settling and the soft sounds of the girl and her client through the floor.
Then, like plunging into freezing water, the sight washed over him. It felt like biting a live wire, and Jack’s eyes flew open. The room was the same trashy wreck, washed now with the shimmering silver of the world that lived beyond physical sight, open only to the dead and those who could touch them.
A small boy, not more than ten, sat on the floor pushing a toy car back and forth. The marks on his neck were in the shape of fingers, and the veins in his eyes had burst, making them appear black in Jack’s washed-out vision. “I was good,” the ghost announced. “I didn’t tell. Why did he hurt me if I didn’t tell?”
“I don’t know, mate,” Jack said. “And I’m sorry. Nobody should get a shite deal like that.”
“I was good,” the ghost repeated in a singsong as he pushed his car across the ruined carpet. “I was good, I was good.”
Jack tried to blink the sad little spirit away. At least he wasn’t a hungry ghost, or a poltergeist, those dead who hadn’t taken the news of their demise well. An angry spirit could shred you like a turbine, and Jack had more than enough of those encounters under his belt. Now, he was after the memory Belial had planted in his subconscious.
He looked at the room again, seeing slices of what the place had been like decades before, hearing the wail of air raid sirens from the Blitz, the clatter of carriages on the street below, the tinkle of a piano from a long-ago party.
Psychic echoes existed in dozens, if not hundreds of layers in any place with more than a few years’ history, but now they kept Jack from what he was really after—the itch that the demon had planted in his brain.
Using his talent was like feeling along a wall in the dark, fingers rubbing over the echoes of the building. He felt the static of the spirits floating in his orbit, and something else, something shimmering among the many layers of psychic residue.
Jack pushed his talent toward the shimmering object that hung before his vision, grazing it like you’d test a hot pan before you picked it up.
Contact was all it took, though, and the demon’s memory unfurled like a poisonous flower. The room fell away, and Jack tried to ignore the pain in his skull and the heartbeat threatening to crack his breastbone. His talent was far too much for a human body to contain, and he’d always known it could simply clock him out with a heart attack or an aneurysm if he pushed too hard.
The visions of the future would end him sooner than that, though, so he bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood and kept his eyes open.
He no longer saw the tip, but a street deep in the City in Hell. A long black car, belching smoke from its exhaust pipes and sporting a goat-skull hood ornament, idled outside the sort of storefront church that Jack had seen by the dozens on his last trip to America. The blue neon hanging from the window was some sort of demonic sigil rather than a cross, but otherwise the feel was the same.
Outside, a variety of lesser demons crouched. Some were missing eyes or limbs; others held themselves and rocked back and forth while they cried softly.
They weren’t human, but Jack had seen plenty exactly like them on the streets of London. Desperate, broken, looking for solace in a made-up story gussied up with faith. When you had no hope left, faith was a strong drug. Jack felt sorry for the poor bastards, whatever this place was.
Belial stepped from the car wearing his usual black suit and white shirt, his ruby tie pin glowing in the blue light from the storefront. The demon didn’t go inside, just stood in the street and waited.
The sad bastards populating the pavement shrank back from him, and a few hopped or limped back into the shadows.
“I know you’re in there.” Belial’s voice could have cut glass. Jack didn’t think he’d ever seen the demon in such a full rage, and he was indescribably grateful it wasn’t directed at him. Whoever was in that church, Jack figured they’d have a puddle to clean up when this was all over.
“Do you?” A voice floated out from the church. “What else do you know, Belial?”
Belial’s jaw clenched, and Jack saw the muscles in his face jump. “That you don’t want me coming in after you,” the demon said.
The figure that emerged from the church looked entirely human. Jack didn’t know what he’d expected, exactly, but not that. The demons of the legions weren’t generally very pretty, ranging from the enormous Fenris to tiny imps that were little more than soot-smears. The two-legged, ten-fingered act, though … that was reserved for the Named.
“I suppose I don’t,” the new face said. “You aren’t famous for minimizing collateral damage, Belial. I’d hate for my flock to be injured.”
“Cut the shit,” Belial said. “You think it’s funny, stirring up the Fenris and getting them to betray Baal? You think convincing the Named that I’m behind it is some kind of bloody joke?”
There it was, then. The demon had gotten under Belial’s skin, and the Prince was looking for a little payback. Jack didn’t know why he was surprised. He thought Belial’s head might actually explode if the demon tried to tell the whole truth about anything.
“No,” said the other demon. “I don’t think anything about this is funny, Belial. And what Baal chooses to believe is his own business. Now the question you really should be asking is, why are you being distracted by a puny little rebellion in Hell?”
Snarling came from all around them, and in the shadows, Jack saw Fenris move. Nasty creatures, at least half a head taller than a man, they had long snouts and jaws, wolf’s teeth, and clawed hands made for ripping and tearing.
Belial’s eyes narrowed until all Jack saw was black, and his own lips peeled back from his shark’s teeth. “Is this your idea of an ambush, boy? It’s adorable.”
“You’re so preoccupied with holding on to that Triumvirate seat tooth and claw that you don’t see I’ve already won,” the demon said. His delivery was soft and hypnotic, and Jack recognized the particular cadence of an effective cult leader. “I’ve won the human world, Belial, and you’re too stupid to realize it.”
The Fenris approached, their heavy feet cracking the worn pavement, until they surrounded Belial and his car.
“And how exactly did you manage that?” Belial asked. Jack was sure, as he watched the memory, that he was the only one who saw a single transparent bead of sweat work its way down the demon’s temple.
The demon took something out of the pocket of his baggy trousers and held it up. It was a flat piece of metal, the size of a ruler, with a broken end. It looked like any old scrap you could pick up off the ground, and the only way Jack knew things had gone sideways was that Belial’s body got wire-tight.
“Where did you get that?”
“From the vaults, of course,” said the demon. “They’re really not all that impregnable, Belial. All it takes is enough of the rank and file who believe that something like this belongs in the right hands, and doors have a way of opening themselves.”
Belial took a breath in and out, smoothing a hand over his tie. Jack waited, watching the whole tension-strung scene play out, and thought,
It figures
. Jack had something from the vaults, but Belial had only told him half the story. He’d sent Jack flying in blind, and for once, Jack didn’t know why. Belial clearly knew this was serious. What possible motive could he have to not tell Jack his rogue demon possessed an artifact that had a Prince of Hell piss-scared?
“You don’t know how to use that,” he said. “None of us do. And if you try, you’re going to end things.”
“That’s what you’d like to tell yourself,” said the demon. “But I know how to use this, Belial. I, a rank-and-file member, have bested you. I’ve gone to the human world. I’ve set things in motion. I’ve destroyed your credibility, because you’re the only Prince who could possibly have the stones to stop me. And now…”
Belial started to laugh. “And now you kill me? You have any idea how many times I’ve heard that line from pissants like you?”
The demon shook his head. The Fenris snarled, their breath misting in the cool air.
“Now I leave you here,” the demon said. “To see what focusing only on your pride has wrought. Enjoy ruling what’s left of Hell, Belial. It won’t be around much longer.”
The demon withdrew into the church, and the Fenris followed, forming a protective barrier that even Belial would have to be a nutter to try to penetrate.
Silence reigned again, except for Belial’s own hard, rasping breaths as the street went still, bathed in blue.
Jack came out of his psychic wormhole with a start, finding himself on the floor, grit and glass shards clinging to the side of his face.
He choked and spat out a little bile, and he felt a wet dribble work its way from his nose over his upper lip.
“Fuck you, Belial,” he muttered. His body felt like he’d tangled with a lycanthrope and lost badly, but he forced himself up. His skull was throbbing so hard that bright light collected at the corners of his vision.
Jack couldn’t decide what was worse—the post-sight migraine his talent left him as a gift, or the fact that Belial had only told him half the story.
Headache
, he thought. Thinking that for once he was getting the straight truth out of a demon was just foolishness on his part.
And there was the object the demon had stolen from the vaults. Jack had only seen Belial afraid once, when he’d realized that Abbadon, one of the primordial beings in Hell, had escaped his prison and was about to turn Earth into his own private amusement park.
Abbadon could have easily killed Belial. He almost had, in fact; Jack had seen the fight between the leather tosser and Belial in his true, demonic body. It wasn’t something you forgot. But more than that, Jack remembered the fear in the demon’s eyes. What he’d seen then was nothing compared to now.
Whoever this demon was, whatever he’d taken, Belial hadn’t been kidding. This was the last act, the end of the line. And he’d trusted Jack to stop the curtain from falling.
Which makes Belial an idiot
, Jack thought as he stumbled down the rickety stairs and out into the fresh air,
and me an even bigger one for agreeing to do it.
Margaret was playing with Lily on the floor of the sitting room when Jack made it home, and she gave him a smile before pointing out to their fire stairs. “Pete is slagged at you,” she said.
“Yeah, I figured that bit out on my own, thanks,” he said. He stopped to give Lily a kiss on the top of her head before he opened the window and stuck his head out. “Luv?”
“Go away.” Pete had a cigarette in her hand, which told Jack exactly how black a mood she was in. She’d been much more successful at quitting than he had after she got pregnant, and now she only smoked when she was truly angry, dragging viciously so the tip of her Parliament looked like a tiny forest fire.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a hell of a day. Can I at least explain?”
“You know, we haven’t had a fantastic day here, either,” Pete snapped. “Starting with you cutting yourself and then running out of the hospital like you should be fitted for the rubber room. I had to do a lot of fucking tap-dancing to convince the doctor and the nurses you weren’t a psychopath, I’ll tell you.”
“I was going to tell you what happened after they fixed me up,” Jack said. He felt the tight, wounded expression on Pete’s face and felt it in his gut. He’d almost lost her more than once by keeping things secret—his deal with Belial, the fact that the Morrigan was after him now more than ever—and he’d be damned if it would happen this time.
He told Pete straight through, not leaving anything out, from his cut hand to the fact that his dreams weren’t dreams at all, to the side trip to Belial’s neck of the woods.
“Jesus,” Pete said when he’d finished.
“He’d be useful right about now, what with the levitating and the rising from the dead,” Jack said, “but yeah, things are fucked.”
“So this demon managed to fuck up Hell with a few Fenris and something he nicked from the Princes, and Belial has no idea where he is?” Pete asked. “Fantastic outlook for the rest of us, innit?”
“Oh yeah,” Jack agreed. “’M filled with hope, myself.”
Pete stubbed out her fag and rolled the butt between her fingers, her brow crinkling. “Maybe it’s not that bad. Who do we know who has their nose in everyone’s business and could definitely tell us if there was some kind of rogue demon cult operating on British soil?”
Jack cast a look through the window at Margaret. “Pete, no,” he said, the very thought of her suggestion making him want to beat his head against the wall.
“It’s going to be the fastest way,” she said. “Otherwise, we’re just going to run around in the dark until somebody tries to destroy the world and—oh wait, that’s already happening.”
Jack scrubbed his hands over his face. He was exhausted, wanted nothing more than to knock back a shot of whiskey and shut his eyes for an hour or sixty, but he knew Pete was right. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll put on me best arse-kissing suit, and you and I will go have a talk with the Prometheus Club.”