“Just spit it out.” Jack blew smoke. “Whatever you’re alluding too, quit the foreplay and plunge it in.”
“I had my eye on you,” Belial said. “It was like a gift. The crow-mage, dying and begging for my help. Taking a favored son from that bitch of a Hag, well. That’s a thing most of us soul-traders dream of.”
“Didn’t manage to keep me for long,” Jack said. “Bet your bosses loved that one.”
“You’re always going to be in Hell, Winter,” Belial said. “One way or the other. You’re bound to Death as surely as you’re bound to your own skin. You’ll be back. It’s just a matter of time.”
“It’s over, remember?” Jack snapped. “Nergal’s gone. The war is over. The Morrigan doesn’t have a claim on me any more than you do.”
Belial barked a laugh. “Boy, look at yourself. That cunt’s fingerprints are all over you. And if you think Nergal was her last volley, you’re a fucking idiot. That was an opening salvo. The Morrigan will never stop trying to bring her armies to the daylight world. She’s the endless cycle—war, birth, and death. You can’t stop those things, Jack, any more than you can stop the sun from rising.”
“So what?” Jack said. “I’m supposed to be scared about something that might go on, decades from now? I think I’ll save myself for Abbadon.”
“I’m saying that when the Hag comes back for you,” Belial said, “Hell might not be such a bad alternative after all.” He grinned. “We’d love to have you.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Abbadon purred from behind Jack, close enough to feel his breath. “You two kissed and made up.”
Jack threw himself down the steps just ahead of Abbadon, rolling to the side as the beast’s foot came down. He didn’t appear any larger than he had at Locke’s ranch, but his psychic presence was infinitely larger, and Jack felt the power suck the air from his lungs.
“Heya, Belial,” Abbadon said. “Boy, you clean up nice. You have to tell me where you get those suits.”
“Just you?” Belial said. He was pale and sweating, but he stood ramrod straight. “Where’s your brood? You leave the kids at home?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Abbadon said. “They’re amusing themselves with Jack’s baby mama. I figured I could handle two of the three Stooges on my own.”
Jack lifted his head. There was blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten down, tasting like acid and pennies. “Pete?”
“Her.” Abbadon nodded. “Although we’ve got to think up a new name for her. Pete is just confusing.”
Jack hauled himself to his feet. The cold didn’t come this time, just the rage, hot and blood-pounding and familiar. “I swear, if you’ve touched her…”
“Oh, save it,” Abbadon said. “We’re not going to use your little crumpet to re-enact Last House on the Left. What good is a body if it’s fucked up beyond repair?”
Belial stood, then came at Abbadon from behind, but Abbadon turned, and the shadow of his power moved, and Belial went flying into the lake. He landed with a shallow crunch, then lay still amid the sloshing reeds.
“So, Jack,” Abbadon said. “My offer stands. Quit being a bitch about all this and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We could use a fucked-up critter like you. You and those freaky death powers will be real useful once things are different around here.”
Jack smacked the hand off his shoulder. “Where’s Pete?”
Abbadon wagged a finger under Jack’s nose. “That’d be telling. Say you’ll help and I might give you a clue. It’ll be a little fun for us. Or, you know, I could torture you into a pile of meat to tell me how you really open Locke’s gateway.”
Jack pulled the paper from his jacket. In that moment, if he were honest, he didn’t give a fuck what Abbadon did with it. Didn’t care if the hot, dry wind swept up from Locke’s doorway and blew away the entire world. It was a mad feeling, the sort that made people smash their cars into bridge abutments, beat their wives to death, or douse their children in kerosene and light a match. All that mattered was Pete.
“Here.” He threw it in the grass between them. “Have fun in Hell, you piece of shit. Now tell me where Pete is.”
Abbadon grinned at him. “Not the deal. You want to set the terms, you should have held out a little longer.” He bent to pluck the paper square from the grass, and Jack lifted his boot and drove the steel toe hard as he could into Abbadon’s gut. The body Abbadon had picked out wasn’t big as far as things went, and he folded around Jack’s foot, spitting out a mouthful of blood.
“So it’s like that.”
“Yeah.” Jack snatched the paper back up and shoved it in his jacket. “You can try to do whatever you want to me, Abbadon, but you’re not getting this. Where’s Pete?”
Abbadon got to his feet, brushing grass and dirt from his front. “I told you. Safe and sound and with my kind. I have to say, she’s way too good for you. Regulation hottie, too. How did you manage that?”
Jack called up the leg-locker hex silently, and when Abbadon went down, banged his forehead into the steps of Lucinda Lanchester’s tomb. “I was in a band.”
Abbadon started to laugh, the blood dribbling down his forehead and across his mangled nose like dark fingers. “All right, Jack. All right, we’ll do it your way.” He shoved Jack off and stood. Jack hit the ground and realized that this might be the last shit plan he didn’t think through. He hadn’t gotten beyond pissing Abbadon off, making him tell where Pete was, and then kicking the blue hell out of him in return.
Abbadon’s shoe pressed into his chest, and Jack felt a rib creak and then give. He didn’t have enough air to make any sound, so that was a blessing. It was difficult to feel hard when Hellspawn was crushing your ribcage. “You fucked up,” Abbadon told him. “I wanted to be friends, but now I’m just going to pull out your spine and shove it up your ass. You’re a worm, like all the rest.”
He moved his foot, but Jack did not make measurable progress toward sitting up. His chest was on fire, and his body had given his commands up for a bad job. Clearly, he didn’t have their best interest in mind, and he was no longer in charge.
Jack stared as Abbadon grew large, eclipsing the lamppost, the Fairbanks mausoleum, everything. He lengthened and his eyes went black, his teeth grew and his hands formed into scaly masses, tipped with claws.
“You wanted to see, Jack,” Abbadon hissed. “So behold the dragon.”
“Fuck me,” Jack whispered, because it was all he had the air for. “You do love the sound of your own fucking voice.”
Abbadon’s body curled between the tombs, and he leaned down so that Jack could smell the fetid breath pouring from between his underslung jaws. “You cost me a good body. I’m going to take yours apart slowly, now.”
A claw lanced into his arm, down to the bone, and Jack ground his teeth together. Even if he could scream, he wouldn’t give Abbadon the satisfaction of hearing.
Abbadon held him down with his claws and ran a long, black tongue across Jack’s face. “This is my real face,” he hissed. “What do you think of it, Jack?”
“I think your mum beat you every day with the ugly stick, and then kicked you down the stairs,” Jack grunted.
Abbadon snarled and snapped his jaws. “Funny man to the last, eh? See how funny you think it is when I make you eat your own guts.”
Jack saw a shadow rise behind Abbadon, and the creature screamed as something latched on to his back. Jack sailed through the air as Abbadon’s claw slipped from his flesh, then landed with a crash against the gates of Lucinda’s tomb.
The thing striking at Abbadon wasn’t as large, but it was lithe and black, a wingspan behind it blotting out the sky. Black smoke roiled around the body, obscuring the details, and Jack smelled the scent of Hell, the burnt ash crowding his throat and sucking out what little breath he could draw.
“You may have come first,” Belial snarled. “But you never grew beyond a petulant child, and it’s time somebody showed you wh
ere you belonged.”
“Finally, you grow some balls,” Abbadon said. He and Belial circled each other, the ground shaking under Jack’s feet. He heard Belial scream as Abbadon turned on him, wrapping him in serpentine coils, snapping at his exposed neck.
Belial’s form shimmered and writhed in Abbadon’s grip. Abbadon put his claws through Belial’s wing, tearing at the membranes, causing a spray of oily black liquid. Jack winced as he heard a bone crack, and Belial crumpled.
“We should have gotten it on a long time ago, demon,” Abbadon said. “In a stand-up fight, you’d never break me, and you knew it.”
“Fuck you,” Belial gasped, as Abbadon dug his talons into Belial’s belly. Jack saw the meaty sheen of intestines, then rolled onto his back.
Stand up, Winter. You’re dead if you don’t get your arse up.
Belial’s blood stank of sulfur, and Jack felt the memory of the hot wind of Hell race across his senses.
“Oh, we’ll get to that,” Abbadon purred. “Because now you’re going to be my bitch, demon, and you’re going to know exactly what it felt like for all that time, alone in the dark with ghosts for company.”
Jack levered himself up on the smooth marble of Lucinda’s tomb. He didn’t owe Belial shite. He could creep away now and hopefully find Pete before the rest of Abbadon’s kind killed her or worse. Or he could never find her. Abbadon alone had nearly turned him into paste. The other three would swat him like a bug.
The memory of standing at the edge of the chasm, of hearing the faintest whisper, came back strong amid the screams and the smell of blood. Abbadon’s family had marked him, had marked him while he was in Hell.
Hello, Jack. Teddy’s voice, or perhaps Levi’s. It didn’t matter. When they’d gone free, they’d told Abbadon about him, and Abbadon had known the crow-mage would be the one to use for his mad schemes.
He was a game piece, just like he was to Belial. And he was fucking sick of it, Jack decided, sick to the core. Belial, at least, had always been upfront that he was using Jack. And having a demon who owed you one would go a long way toward taking the edge off Abbadon’s brood. Having a demon who owed him might be what saved Pete’s life.
Jack cast around. His talent was useless against Abbadon, that much was clear. He should have wised up and punched the bastard in the nose ages ago. The front of Lucinda’s tomb was destroyed, the stained glass in the door shattered, and the iron gate hung akimbo.
Belial screamed again, and Abbadon laughed. He had his snout in the wound now, and Jack heard the snap of teeth. Good. He’d be distracted.
Jack kicked at the gate until it came loose. The panel was about five feet tall but narrow, sharp latticework at the top covered over with green corrosion. He hefted it. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do.
Abbadon didn’t look up as he approached, which was probably a check in the plus column, since Jack couldn’t be certain he was walking a straight line. Once this was over, he decided passing out face down in the nice, soft grass would be the ideal finale to the evening.
Jack raised the gate and stepped to the side, aiming it for Abbadon’s soft underbelly. He drove the latticework in far as it would go, jerked the iron back and forth, twisted. He wanted the bastard’s guts to rain down, to cover the ground with blood and make it so nothing would ever grow there again.
Abbadon reared back, and his swipe narrowly missed taking off the top of Jack’s skull. The wound around the iron began to corrode, black spreading across Abbadon’s flesh, lemon-colored pus dripping out. Abbadon convulsed once, shrieked, and then Belial reached up and twisted Abbadon’s scaly neck halfway round.
The snap resounded off the marble tombs, and Abbadon slumped, unmoving.
“Fuck, he’s heavy,” Belial grunted. “Get him off me, will you?”
Jack gripped Belial’s arm and eased him out from under Abbadon’s unmoving bulk. “Got some bad news for you, mate,” he said, looking into Belial’s pointed face, shredded wings spread underneath him. “You’re ugly as fuck.”
Belial bared his teeth. “Told you that you couldn’t handle the sight of me.”
Jack took quick stock. Belial’s wings were a wreck, and blood was dribbling from his mouth and ears. Abbadon had torn a chunk out of his guts, and Jack caught the stench of a rent bowel.
“I’ll be all right,” Belial said. “Eventually. But I have to go, Jack.”
“Oh no,” Jack said. “You owe me now, you bastard. You’d be a big pile of demon meat if I hadn’t stabbed that bastard.” He looked at Abbadon’s corpse. “He is dead, right?”
“Dead as I can make him,” Belial gritted. “If I stay here, I’m going the same way.”
“Pete…” Jack started.
“Pete is an arrow in your heel,” Belial cut him off. “Sooner or later, Jack, that woman is going to be the end of you. Drop your losses and move on.”
Jack let Belial’s head down. That was a demon. Do everything right and they still found a way to fuck you. “That’ll be it for me, then,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen today, and Abbadon doesn’t get to keep her.”
Belial laughed, though it turned to a phlegmy cough that caused a fresh flow of blood from his lips. “You’re an idiot, Jack Winter. Good luck.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Fuck you, too. Thanks for your help.”
“I’ve helped you more than you know, Winter,” Belial said. “Not my fault you don’t want to hear the truth.”
“Telling you,” Jack said. “Never had much use for the truth, me.”
“That’s why you’re going to see me again,” Belial whispered. “And why you’ll never really be free of Hell.”
“Today I am,” Jack said. “So shove it up your arse, mate. I’ve got three more Hellspawn to kill tonight.”
CHAPTER 29
Walking was the hardest thing in the world. His ribs screamed with every step, and his arm was a free-flowing canyon of blood and missing flesh. Jack tore off his shirt and wrapped the wound as tight as he could stand. Stanching the blood helped a little, but he was still the walking dead.
He managed to flag down a taxi on Santa Monica, managed to mumble out the address of Sliver’s pub in Venice, and then mercifully passed out.
The dream boiled up at him, and this time it was as vivid as a memory. He stood barefoot on glass sand that pierced his flesh and left crimson footprints as he and Belial walked across an endless desert under a white sky. The City was far behind, and the only interruptions on the horizon were the black skeletons of dead trees. From each tree hung a bottle, blue glass, clinking gently in the endless wind. Inside each bottle was a wisp of white smoke.
“Souls,” Belial said. “Souls so corrupted they don’t even have bodies any more.”
Jack was naked, and the sand blew and swirled around him, digging into the flayed spots on his flesh, turning the blood on his face sticky, and stinging his eyes. “You bring me out here for this?” he said. His voice was little more than another whisper of air. Screaming for hours didn’t leave you with much lung power.
“No,” Belial said. He pointed to where the world dropped away, and Jack went to the edge of a canyon, iron sides held together with rivets the size of his fist.
He heard the screaming, from far below. Heard the bellowing of a massive body in unbearable pain. The sides of the canyon quivered, flakes of rust coming loose and falling into the void.
“You think you’re here forever?” Belial said. “I’m showing you it could be much worse.”
It was hard to think how. Belial’s torments were endless and creative. Jack didn’t understand how his body could keep taking punishment. The small bit of his mind that hadn’t shut down told him that he’d go completely around the bend soon, and then he’d belong to Belial. He’d forget his own name, that he’d ever been alive, and everything about his life before. Pete, everything.
Had she buried him? Was she even still thinking of him?
“Prince Azrael tortures these four endlessly,” Belia
l said. “As punishment for daring to stand against the demons. You don’t always have to be this pathetic smear of shit you are now, Jack.”
Jack turned his head with effort. Below his feet, the ground shook and the screaming reached a fever pitch. “What?”
“Eventually, you’ll give up on what you remember of your life,” Belial said. “And then you might be useful to Hell, Jack. Nobody would own you here. Not the smack, not your sight, and not the Morrigan.”
“No,” Jack mumbled. “Just you.”
Belial’s claws grazed the back of his neck. “For now. But someday, I have a feeling you and I could be great friends.”
That small part of Jack that had recognized he was sliding downhill fast spoke. “I’d rather be down in that pit with Azrael.”
Belial’s lip twisted down. “So be it,” he said. “You’ll break, Winter. Sooner or later they all do.”
Something cold and wet hit him in the face and slithered down his throat. Jack choked and swiped at his lips.
“Jeez, man,” Sliver said. “You scared the hell out of me.”
He knelt beside Jack, holding an empty pitcher with a few ice cubes lingering in the bottom. Jack watched rivulets of pink trickle across the white tile floor and slip away down a drain. He was soaked from chest to head, but he was awake. “You should see the other bloke,” he said.
Sliver set the pitcher aside and sat him up. “Funny. You want to tell me why you fall out of a cab in front of my bar, mumbling crazy shit, and then pass out on me in my back room?”
“Long story,” Jack said. “Someday I’ll tell you all about it, and you’ll be amazed.” He tried to stand, but his feet went out from under him, and he fell back to the tile.
“Dude,” Sliver said. “You need to settle. You’re fucked up.”
“I’ll be all right,” Jack said. “Just need to rest for a moment…”
He wasn’t all right. Blood loss had made a black border around his vision, and his ribs were on fire.
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