Dark Days bl-6

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “I serve no Queen,” the Fae snarled. “My King follows the path of war and conquest, and so that is the path I follow.” He pointed at Declan. “Now stand aside. My blade still wants for blood.”

  Jack didn’t feel anything—not the cold water rushing past his ankles; not the cold, foreign magic of the Fae assassin; not the panic-stricken heartbeat driving the blood through his ears at a thousand miles an hour. At the stage where he knew he was about to either die or do something so monumentally stupid he’d wish he were dead, his brain shut down all the but the essentials.

  So.

  He could hex the Fae, but some of them resisted magic. The bean sidhe who’d tried to kill him wouldn’t be dented by anything less than an incendiary hex, and down here he’d suck out all the oxygen and crisp-fry Pete, Declan, and himself along with the Fae.

  He could try to take the knife, but the only way that would work out would be when the Fae voluntarily planted it in his spleen.

  Everything snapped back—Declan’s screaming, the freezing water, the cold magic rolling off the Fae.

  Jack looked at Pete, who spared him only a glance, stun gun still pointed at the Fae. “Don’t use that on him, luv,” he said softly. “Shooting him wouldn’t do a bit of good.”

  Pete caught his meaning as he lifted his feet from the water, bracing on a narrow ledge above the spill. She was brilliant like that. He was damn glad she was there.

  “Declan,” he said, making sure to shift his body between the Fae and his new psychic mate, “might want to get those feet out of the water.”

  Declan curled himself into an even tighter ball, and as the Fae lifted his hand to use his knife again, Pete pointed the stun gun down and shot into the water.

  The leads sparked, and the entire gun blew up with a pop, shards of plastic flying in every direction. Acrid chemical smoke filled the tunnel as the Fae was lifted off his feet by the charge and went flying backward, smashing against the bricks, his blade falling into the water.

  Jack slung the hex before the Fae could recover, the leg locker making the creature go stiff, snarling like a dog who wanted to chew his leg off.

  Making sure to keep his distance, Jack came over and looked down at the creature. He didn’t look so tough after ten thousand volts had run through him, but still, the black eyes, the veiny face, and the pointed teeth would be enough to make anyone keep their distance.

  “Right,” Jack said. “Either I leave that hex on and by the time I’m far enough away for you to slip it, you drown, or you tell me what I want to know.”

  The Fae spat at him, a black glob of saliva hitting Jack’s pantleg.

  “I’ll take that as a sign you’re happy to chat,” Jack said. “Why’re you trying to kill me?”

  The Fae’s lip curled. “I wouldn’t dirty my blade. You consort with demons.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your ruler is consorting with the king bastard of all Hellspawn,” Jack said. “So that sort of makes us even. Except not at all, because you just murdered three mages.”

  “I follow orders,” the Fae said.

  “And Legion ordered you to kill me?” Jack snapped. “Warning you, mate, I’m getting bored, and leaving you to drown would alleviate that pretty quickly.”

  “Legion ordered me to kill all remaining members of the Fiach Dubh I could locate,” the Fae grumbled. “He left orders to leave you and the Weir alive. That’s the only reason I didn’t stick a blade in your lovely bride back there.”

  Jack shut his eyes for a brief second, trying not to slam the Fae’s head inside out against the bricks. “Of course not. Because he used me to find them and wanted me to know it.”

  The Fae gave him a nasty, razor-edged grin. “That sounds about right.”

  Pete came to his shoulder. “I think we need to get Declan away from this bastard before he has a stroke.”

  “But I have so much more to tell you,” the Fae purred. “How you led me right to your old order. How that old man, Wallace, put up such a fight when we came for him. His blood will be in the plaster and wood of that pub forever. Fitting, if you think about it…”

  “You listen to me.” Jack’s voice didn’t shake, and he was glad of that, because he wanted to make sure the message got through. “You tell Legion that there is nothing I will not do to see him dead at my feet. Nothing he can leverage against me, because if it comes down to me or him, I’ll ride the both of us straight down to Hell.”

  “He’s counting on it,” the Fae said, starting to laugh again. “He wants you alive, you stupid sack of meat. He wants you to be a witness to his glory, to watch every last thing you care about burn. And you will, mark my words. Your crow brothers, your loves, your daughter…”

  Pete’s boot connected with the side of the Fae’s head, snapping it to the side. He slumped. She stood back, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Prop him up so he doesn’t drown if you like. I don’t give a fuck.”

  She turned around to help Declan, and Jack nudged the Fae with his toe until he sat upright again. “More than you deserve, you bastard,” he said. The Fae moaned, and Jack bent over, so his lips almost touched the creature’s ears. “If you get out of here, you tell Legion I’m coming for him,” Jack whispered. “No more games and empty threats. Him or me.”

  “Jack!” Pete called. Declan sagged against her, but he looked a bit less green around the gills, and he accepted Jack’s arm when he offered it.

  Pete scouted ahead, but they made it to the piers without further incident. Jack found Declan some dry clothes in a crane operator’s shed, while Pete sat with him, her hand over his, listening as he rocked back and forth, a few tears dribbling down his pale cheeks.

  “We should get on the ferry back to the UK,” Jack told Pete. “Just in case any more visitors from fairyland show their faces.”

  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.”

  CHAPTER 25

  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 t
he 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.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “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.”