Jack could see how someone as power hungry as Belial could get used to this, and how any threat would be like a gun held to his head. He was also starting to wonder if their problems were even connected, or if Belial had manipulated him again into doing the demon’s scut work like he had with Abbadon.
Then again, Abbadon had almost ended the world as Jack knew it, so he followed Belial up and up, through lifts and steps until they finally came out to the top of the spire, the noxious wind stealing Jack’s breath and hearing.
Belial pointed down toward the City spread out before Jack like a dissected corpse. “Look!” he shouted above the wailing wind.
Jack had been to the City before, and while it had been full of smoke and chaos and suffering then, now it looked as if it were actually burning, the figures on the elevated streets and tracks and into the open sewers below churning in a panicked mass.
It was a lot like his vision, Jack realized. People—or demons—with their lives reduced to destruction and misery struggling to survive just long enough to get away.
Gazing down at the broad avenue leading up to the spire, hundreds of feet below, Jack saw a mass of demons, elementals, and even the damned frothing outside the gates of the palace. Vehicles and shops were burning, and even from here he could hear the crunch of bone and the screams of pain as the crowd tore into both one another and the black-suited thugs arrayed in a line before the gates. The guards were Baal’s troops, the Fenris, bone-breakers who were probably having the time of their lives.
Belial took Jack’s arm again and guided him inside, down the lifts, and back to Belial’s flat. The demon stalked across the empty space and poured out two glasses of ruby-red liquid from a black decanter. “Drink?”
Jack eyed the liquid. It moved in a suspicious, oily manner remniscent of spoiled salad dressing. “You think I’m stupid?”
Belial lifted one dark eyebrow. “You really want me to answer that?”
Jack waved the glass off. Belial shrugged and sipped from it. “Your loss.”
“I know you’re never going to give me a straight answer without that babbling brook of bullshit you relish so dearly,” Jack said. “So I’m just going to guess this bloke who has your knickers in a twist started that riot down there?”
He watched Belial, but the demon had a good poker face even for a resident of the Pit. He just drank his drink, staring unblinkingly back at Jack. Jack sighed. “I’m further going to guess he’s someone who didn’t take kindly to you plopping yourself down in the vacant seat on the Triumvirate.” The ruling body of Hell had been unchanged for millennia, until Belial had stuck his upwardly mobile nose into it. The demon who’d once been a bottom-feeding soul-scrounger was now one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Jack had to admit that he was impressed with Belial’s acumen. Say what you wanted about the bastard, but he knew how to step on you to get up the ladder.
Belial sucked his teeth, his ruby tongue flicking over his pale lips. “Maybe.”
“You take out the oldest Prince, and his loyalists bash your windows in?” Jack said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what’d you expect? A gift basket?”
Belial gave a smile that wasn’t directed at Jack, but at the chaos below. “Those aren’t Azrael’s boys.”
Jack shrugged. “No offense, but it’s hard to tell you bastards apart.”
“Some are, of course,” Belial said. “He commanded more legions than anyone. But there are the Egregors—that’s Dagon—and every other kind of fuckwit follower you could name.” He turned that smile on Jack now, and Jack felt the chill in his gut that would never go away, as his warm, beating human heart let him know that no matter how slick and mannered Belial’s demeanor, he was a predator and Jack was a meat sack.
“This isn’t a little upset that can be solved with a few thousand bodies and somebody’s head served up at the dinner table,” Belial said. “This is just a slice. It’s everywhere in Hell, Jack. Do you think anything that’s happened in the last year would have been allowed if everything was fine and dandy?”
Jack shrugged. “Considering the way you lot blather on about the end times, I figured you weren’t too worried.”
That was a lie. Things upstairs had been fucked for a long time. Old gods wandered with impunity; the original demon, Abbadon, escaped his prison to try to kickstart the apocalypse; slices of Purgatory, the one spot uncontrollable by demon, man, or force of nature, seeped into the daylight world and nearly sucked all of England into a plane filled with wild magic and ancient entities starving for human flesh.
“Hell used to rule all,” Belial said. He didn’t sound angry, or even boastful. “The Princes and the Named would never allow anything—in the Black, the daylight world, or anywhere else—to happen without weighing the impact. And if it didn’t serve our interests, it wasn’t allowed. That’s gone now. And it’s not just outside the Pit, it’s at our doorstep.” He pointed at the crowd. “Half of Baal’s Fenris have gone rogue. The damned everywhere have started turning on the Named who rule them. And the Named … they’re all too busy figuring out how they’re going to axe me from my seat to pay the slightest fucking bit of attention. Not to mention that those two soft-headed shite-for-brains I sit on the Triumvirate with think the way to make all this unseemly upset go away is to cut this fucker a deal.” He knocked back the drink and handed it to a stooped, bat-winged creature who appeared with a tray.
“Still not getting how your problem controlling your people translates to the end of my world,” Jack said. “And frankly, if this is a demon-on-demon problem, I couldn’t care less. You lot have always been squabblers.”
Belial braced himself on the railing. “We can’t rule from the shadows any longer, it’s true,” he said. “And the world is going to end, sooner rather than later. But if Hell falls, Jack … it will be so much worse than even I can imagine. Hell is the one constant of existence, from as far back as anything has a memory. If the realm collapses, then everything will. Every plane will blend into one, and then everything will go dark.”
“Waiting to hear what you think I can do to stop this,” Jack said. He knew Belial was right, of course—if too much magic was allowed to bleed into the daylight world from the Black, or too much of the Land of the Dead was allowed to bleed into the living, and you got things like … well, exactly like what had been going on for the last year. If Hell ceased to be Hell, that didn’t even bear thinking about.
“Everything you see before you is the result of soft-headed fanaticism,” Belial said. “The result of one demon—not even a Named, mind you—who has somehow convinced an astounding swath of idiots that he will be the one ruler of the Pit. That the Triumvirate was never meant to rule, and that the Princes, me especially, need to be skinned alive.”
“Welcome to my world,” Jack said. “Every one has its share of zealots.”
“I don’t know how he’s turning these people to his side,” Belial said. “Named, legions, everyone. But I’m going to find out, with your help. And then I’m going to make a tartare out of his balls in the public square, and all of this is going to stop.”
“Again,” Jack said, “this bloke sounds rather more muscular than what somebody walking around in a human body, with bones and internal organs and whatnot, would be smart to tangle with.”
“That’s the trick,” Belial said. “He’s hiding out on Earth, and sometime in the near future, something he does while hiding there sets off those nasty little clips that have been playing in your head. But I don’t know what, and in order to find out I need someone he won’t see coming. It can’t be a demon, and for a human, you’re pretty useful.”
He grabbed Jack and dug his nails into Jack’s palm, drawing a little blood. Jack started to protest, but his mind filled with images, like photographs falling down into a chaotic pile, and his tongue tasted of burning penny. He felt vomit boil up into his throat and tried to scream, but the onslaught stopped as quickly as it had begun.
Belial wiped his finge
rs on the lapel of his suit. “Like that? I can transfer memories via blood now. Perks of being a Prince.”
“Fuck you,” Jack groaned, clutching his forehead.
“Lucky you have that second sight,” Belial said. “Only works on psychics. Normal blokes would have beans on toast for brain if I did that.”
“I feel so special,” Jack grumbled.
“Everything my spies have been able to gather about where he’s hiding is there,” Belial said. “I need you to find him, and I need you to use your particular talent for being a sneaky cunt to help me smack this bastard back to the Middle Ages before whatever he’s got planned goes down, and he flips the switch on the end of everything.”
“If he figures out that I’m spying on him and turns me into a leather jacket?” Jack said. “I have a wife and kid, you know.”
Belial shrugged. “I suggest you don’t let him figure it out,” he said. “Because I don’t think I need to spell out what’ll happen to your lovely wife and darling daughter if this fuckwit manages to bring down Hell.”
He didn’t. Odd as it was to know his survival depended on a race of creatures as despicable as demons, in a place as dark and dingy as Hell, Jack didn’t argue that Belial had a point.
But that didn’t mean he was going to his mission with a smile on his face.
“If you want me to tangle with the demonic version of Jerry Falwell, I’ll need something to defend myself with besides my good looks and charm,” he said.
Belial inclined his head. “Of course. This way to the armory.”
Jack cast one more look out over the city before they went inside. Thunderheads had built up over the desert, and they rushed in on the screaming winds, bathing the street below in rain, sending rioters scurrying for cover and washing the black blood into the gutters.
CHAPTER 8
Belial led him deeper into the palace than Jack had ever wanted to go. The whole place was like slices of different centuries stacked as high as the low black and red clouds that constantly roiled above the City. One floor was as opulent as an art deco hotel, one floor was the dirty lino and buzzing light tubes of a dole office, one floor was the sterile white of a laboratory. Belial brought him to one of the white floors, through a door that recoiled soundlessly into the floor.
Inside a narrow room, Jack saw a variety of objects on glass pedestals. Weapons, chunks of stone carved in demonic languages, books, an eyeball that blinked at him from its nest of flesh and severed optic nerve.
Belial stopped next to one of the cases and pressed his thumb against the pad. Within lay a flat black disc that looked like lava rock, with a hole in the center for a strap or chain.
“You’re one of the only living men ever to see this place,” Belial said. “The Princes’ vaults are secret, even from the Named.”
Jack shivered. He could feel the black energy creeping off most of the things under those glass domes, and he didn’t want to get any closer than he had to. “The armory is only a small part of the vaults,” Belial said. “But this is all you’ll need.”
He handed Jack the disc. It was oddly light and sat flat in his palm, not giving off any particular sting of magic, demon-spawned or otherwise.
“This is cute and all,” Jack said, “but are you sure I couldn’t have a knife or a gun or something? Even that eyeball would be better for shock value.”
“If you touched the Allfather’s Eye, your tiny little dish sponge of a brain would come straight out your nose,” Belial said. “That’s not for you, boyo. This will ensure that once you’ve found our little self-proclaimed Messiah, you can bring him straight home for a spanking.”
Belial folded Jack’s fingers around the disc, and Jack fought not to pull away. Belial’s skin was cold and dry like a snake’s, none of the warmth Jack associated with a living thing. “The first demons carved the gates of Hell from living rock,” Belial said. “And they bound the rock with spells to make it indestructible. Any man who possesses a piece of those gates may pass in and out of Hell freely.”
The demon let go of him, and Jack sucked in a deep breath, ordering himself not to throw up on the spotless white floor. Belial swiped his thumb over the dome again and gave Jack one of those grins that would have made the shark from Jaws weep. “You’ve got the keys to the kingdom now, Jackie. Don’t make me regret giving them to you.”
CHAPTER 9
The first thing Jack did when he returned to London was find a pay phone and call Pete. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that I worried you, and I’m all right.” He paused, flinching a little. “You going to scream at me?”
“Just get home,” Pete sighed after a moment. “I can’t even begin to express how sick I was when you went running out of there, but I hope you feel bad.”
“You have no idea,” Jack said. The memory Belial had given him rested in his mind like a splinter in his foot, aching and sharp and causing his vision to blur. “I’ll be home soon,” he said, and hung up.
When he was still shooting up, Jack had frequented the south side of the river, crappy little shooting galleries from Southwark to Peckham. He didn’t need smack, but he needed privacy, a place where he could behave like a freak without anyone caring.
The last time he’d let his sight have free rein, he was much younger, living in Dublin, and the things he’d seen had driven him to try for suicide rather than keep seeing the parade of dead that were drawn by his talent.
This has to be different, Jack thought as he walked from the Queen’s Road station to Rye Lane. Peckham had been a tip for as long as he’d been in London, but this was a city where you could never really fight the creeping disease of gentrification. Where there’d once been fly-tips and vacant lots there were now wine bars and shops selling precious little trinkets for you, your flat, or your pet. The street-level folk were recent immigrants or working-class, and the gangs and yobs had been pushed back onto the borders of the council estates that rose like drab monuments to a bygone London, though one less than the ancient London of the Tower or Newgate Prison.
Jack left the shopping high street and moved toward those estates, the ones that had once made North Peckham the British equivalent of Watts or Cabrini-Green. Posh folks—the ones who weren’t quite posh enough to afford flats in that thin belt of yuppie paradise north of the Thames but south of the sooty gray expanse of North London—hadn’t ventured here yet, and broken-out windows and bums stared at Jack as he walked.
He cut down a narrow walkway between two townhouse flats, both just brick husks but gamely plastered with estate agent’s listing signs. Two bedrooms, an en suite, and three junkies living in your kitchen, Jack thought. Just the sort of “colorful” venue some twat from the City would snap up in another six months or so.
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.
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