Once, a crowd of monks passed, and every woman on the street backed up against the nearest wall, allowing them to pass.
“They can’t touch women,” Seth murmured. “Seems a hellish old lot in life, you ask me.”
“Hellish is a word some bastards use entirely too lightly,” Jack said, watching the monks wend their way down the road. They were the only ones who didn’t have to shove, elbow, and shout to make way.
Jack could think of worse lives.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Patpong Hospital resided in a squat brown building that smelled of sickly-sweet cleaning compounds and buzzed with a nervous system of flickering fluorescent tube lights. The air conditioning made an effort, but the black celluloid strips taped to the vent above the doorway into A&E barely fluttered when Jack passed beneath them.
Seth stomped down a narrow corridor past a nurse’s station crowned by a bouquet of wilted daisies, past rooms filled with patients in steel beds surrounded by white mosquito netting.
Jack thought of spirits, floating above their beds, white and lacy, while the ebb and flow of the Black plucked off pieces of their souls and tossed them on the current.
Seth turned through a swinging door marked in Thai. Jack didn’t have to read the language to know a NO ADMITTANCE sign when he saw one. The smell here was different—cloying, heavier. A smell that wasn’t pretending that life was still possible, just covering up the stench of death. The floor under Jack’s feet ran with cracks and water the color of mud dribbled into rusty drains.
One door sat off the narrow corridor, under a broken light that blinked arcane semaphore in shadow and bright. Morgues around the world were the same—silent, stinking, and filled up with the psychic energy of the dead.
“Be easy in here, yeah?” Seth said. “He’s a bit of a skittish bloke and you don’t speak the language anyway, so don’t go off shouting and pitching a temper fit like you do.”
“I’ll be polite as a vicar at a church picnic,” Jack promised.
In the morgue proper, Jack spied a body lying on the single steel table in the center of the room. He’d been around plenty of dead things—both recently deceased and long-rotted—but seeing the man on the table, half-covered by a sheet as if he were about to receive a shady massage instead of an autopsy, made him itch all over, under the skin. Jack didn’t like corpses, and neither did his stomach.
“Heya,” Seth shouted, knocking on the edge of the table. The man under the sheet jumped, limbs going akimbo at his ministrations.
“Christ,” Jack muttered, turning his back on the corpse.
“’Ey, you were the one who’s so keen to truck with these rotters,” Seth said. “Chin up, little camper. It’s not going to bite you.”
Jack cast a baleful eye at the corpse. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
A figure backed out of a small wash closet on the other side of the morgue. The space was spare, just a steel counter covered in surgical instruments and a black nylon doctor’s bag, the washroom, and a row of freezers near it. A hose dangled from the ceiling, fitted with a spray nozzle for washing bodies. The quiet drip-drop-plip of water and blood was the only sound, beyond the humming of the freezers.
“Jao,” Seth said, giving the small pathologist a nod. “Been keeping yourself well, mate?”
Jao looked from Seth to Jack. He fired of a rapid sentence of Thai and Seth spread his hands.
“No, no. He’s a friend. He’s one of us.”
Jack gestured at the dead man on the table. “Hell of a centerpiece, mate. Your work?”
Jao slipped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and picked up a scalpel and forceps, peeling back the skin of the man on the table. His cuts bifurcated tattoos, sutras and dragons tangled together in the hurried flurry that Jack recognized as prison ink.
“So?” he growled finally, hands never pausing as he lifted out a section of sternum that a Stryker saw had separated. “What you want?” Jao wore white at his temples and a scowl on his face like battle scars, and he glared up at Jack from under a thatch of black hair. He resembled more than anything a troll, something small and scuttling that lived under a bridge. Jack knew from hanging about Pete and her work with the Met that it happened when you spent your days prodding dead bodies.
“You had a bloke come in about two weeks ago,” Seth said. “Dead bloke, obviously. Farang who got himself pasted in a man vs. taxi spat. White, probably pale as this cunt right here.” Seth jerked his thumb at Jack.
“He was a singer,” Jack supplied. “And talented.”
“Talented, right.” Seth fingered his packet of Silk Cut, tapped out a fag. Jao curled his lip back.
“Ain’t no smoking in the surgery.”
Jack took the fag from Seth’s fingers and stuck it between his own lips, touching his finger to the end. “Brilliant. You see this dead bloke or not?”
“No,” Jao said instantly. He opened the nylon bag and pulled out a bunch of herbs. “We ain’t had nobody here like that.”
The herbs went under the dead man’s skin and Jao rummaged in his supplies until he found a wide-gauge needle and rough cotton thread.
“That’s hawthorn,” Jack said, puffing out a cloud of smoke and breaking off the burning tip of the fag, for later. “Recognize the leaves.” He poked at the pile of herbs in the dead man’s chest cavity. “Not a lot of hawthorn trees in this part of the world, eh, mate?”
Jao slapped his hand away. “Not for touching.”
“I’m really couldn’t give a flying fuck what you’re doing to this poor bastard,” Jack said. “Although according to Seth here, you people got a real problem with ghost sickness. Seems maybe you’re not so very skilled at your chosen discipline, Jao.”
Jao’s massive eyebrows drew together like a thorny hedgerow. “What you mean ‘you people’?”
“Skin traders,” Jack said evenly. “Necromancers. Liars.”
Seth rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Jack . . .”
“You recognized the description,” Jack said. Jao’s hand, moving the needle in and out of the seam of his Y-incision, burying the hawthorn in the dead man’s chest, missed and he stabbed himself in the thumb.
“You know who he was,” Jack told Jao. He snaked out his hand and snatched the hawthorn bundle from the corpse’s chest. “And now you’re going to tell me what happened to the body.”
Jao’s lip curled. “You think you can order me around?”
“Bet your lying arse, I do,” Jack said. “I’ve come too far and I’ve staked too much. What did you do with Hornby?”
Jao heaved a dramatic sigh and cast a look at Seth. “Don’t look to me,” Seth said. “I’m not his bloody keeper.”
Jao extended his hand to Jack. “Give it back.”
“Nope.” Jack twitched the hawthorn out of Jao’s reach. “Quid pro quo, mate. Where’s Hornby?”
Jao’s jaw muscle knotted under his skin, and his eyes blazed with the sick bruise-purple witchfire endemic to sorcerers. “I make your skin into a handbag, you miserable white bastard. I pull your teeth one by one and string them for conjure necklace . . .”
Jack held up the hawthorn twig. “Too much chatter. Not enough information.”
Jao’s lip pulled back in a sneer. Seth rubbed his forehead. “Jackie, I warned you. . . .”
“I’m waiting,” Jack intoned, pulling his lighter from his pocket and flipping the top. He held the flame just under the hawthorn. “I don’t hear an answer.”
“I can look up,” Jao muttered after a long moment when Jack wasn’t sure if Jao would cooperate or come after him with a scalpel. “Get my log book.” He shuffled over to the steel table and pulled a battered ledger from his bag, flicking over the pages with irritable twitches of his fingers. “Here,” he said finally. “Come here.”
Jack approached but stayed clear of arm’s reach. “You find him.”
In response, Jao spun around and lashed at him with a blood-coated scalpel. Jack slipped on the slick floor, went
down, lost the lighter and the hawthorn twig along with his balance. His elbow cracked the concrete and pain radiated from his arm into his chest, hot fingers of flame.
Before he could manage a fresh breath or to take inventory of his smashed bits, Jao lunged for him again, and Jack slid backwards, banging into the surgery table. The corpse shifted, and the whole thing toppled over.
“Seth!” he shouted. “Grab this crazy cunt!”
Nothing answered him except Jao’s hysterical gasping as he raised the scalpel and bore down on Jack. Jack whipped his gaze at the spot where Seth had last stood.
Seth had vanished.
Jao was screaming, face swollen and red as an overfilled balloon. As with the signs on the door, Jack didn’t need to speak a lick of Thai to know hysterical fear when he saw it.
The silver tooth of the scalpel struck. Jack raised his hand and spit out a word of power, throat contracting like there was a cord about his neck.
“Cosain!”
The shield hex didn’t stop Jao, since he was flesh and only tangentially magic, but it slowed him down. The blade slid neatly along the outside of Jack’s arm as the necromancer stumbled and fell over the toppled surgery table, into the embrace of the corpse. Pain sparked in Jack’s muscle and bone, warm blood dripping down his forearm onto the floor to join the dead man’s.
Jack’s hammering heart and blurred vision told him that he didn’t have more than thirty seconds before the blood loss and the blow put him out, and Jao was already up. Panicked and awkward as he was, he was faster than Jack on Jack’s best day.
“I’m not going back!” Jao shrieked. “Not into that mouth! No more!” He slashed at Jack, and Jack felt air part in front of his eyes as the scalpel missed his face by millimeters.
Jack considered that he was an all-right brawler, when the weapons were bottles, fists, or chains. He’d spent enough time in dodgy clubs populated with skinheads looking for a bruising to be fair with his fists. Against a crazed necromancer with a blade, though, he was rubbish.
Jao wouldn’t sit still long enough to be hit with any kind of paralysis hex, and a spell to steal breath or eyesight wasn’t the sort of thing you conjured empty-handed.
Jack had his sight, a flick knife, a pack of cigarettes, and the necklace Robbie had given him. No kit, no spell materials. Jack Winter, mage, had precisely shit.
Jao came for him again, his magic cutting a roiling wake through the Black, and Jack ducked his swing, nearly falling over the corpse. The corpse, lying still, waiting for its fate as the instrument of the necromancer’s black magic.
Or his.
Jack felt his lungs seize as the fags had their revenge, and he let himself fall back, landing next to the clammy sack of flesh on the floor. He clapped one palm on the corpse’s stiff leg, fixing on Jao as the panting necromancer poised over him for the killing blow.
Black oily power floated behind Jao’s gaze, like a burning slick of gasoline on a river. Jack opened his sight to the energies of the morgue, pulled all of the power into him that his body would allow.
When you cast a curse, second chances weren’t given. Curses worked in triads, the words of power, the energy of the mage, the conductor medium. All three balanced exactly, or the curse could snap back and do worse to you than you’d conjured, thrice.
Curses weren’t worth the trouble, by and large, when the same problems could be solved with a boot to the teeth or a cricket bat to the guts. But Jack had seen what they could do when they were applied properly, and he needed to stop Jao, for sure and for good.
He drew in his last bit of air, held it, and expelled it in a fury, putting all of his panic and rage behind it, pushing every ounce of his energy into the words of power while he grasped the corpse hard enough to leave a handprint on the dead man’s splotchy skin. “Cosbriste!”
The corpse jumped under him as its leg bone cracked, and Jao let out a scream. His left leg twisted under him as the curse sprang across the distance between Jack and the necromancer like a starving dog and sank its teeth into his soul. Jao’s leg bone snapped with a clean, crisp sound in the small room, and he dropped.
The scalpel tinkled out of his grasp and landed close to where Jack sat, fighting to pull his heart back under control as it thundered along fit to snap his ribs.
It always took a few seconds to realize you were still alive, when Death put out a hand and clapped it against your face, forced you to look it in the eye.
Seth came pelting through the door with a security man in a blue uniform, and stopped short at the scene before him. “Jackie boy, what the fuck is this?”
“Leg-breaker curse,” Jack said hoarsely. His feet slithered under him on the wet concrete, but he used the slimy tile wall and got to his feet. “What’s it look like, we danced a samba?”
The security guard asked Seth if things were all right, and Seth waved him off in Thai, pressing a few hundred bhat into the man’s hand before he shoved him out of the morgue. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in a ménage à trois,” Seth growled. He slammed the door and locked it. “He came after you like a fat schoolboy on a custard cake. Told you not to open your big mouth.”
Jack flipped Seth the bird. “Up yours.” Air passed across his extended arm with a sting. His cut was pumping blood, and the slash neatly bisected his tattoos. Jack grabbed a towel from the wash closet and wrapped it around himself, vines of crimson soaking through the cotton. “That cunt. If I get some sort of infection that makes bits of me fall off . . .”
“You need stitches,” Seth said. “I’m not mopping up after you again, Jackie.”
“After we find Hornby.” Jack took a deep breath through his nose. Willed his heart to stop pumping his life out of the gash Jao had left. Wrestled the magic in the room back under control. It was rough and ugly, like a waterfall from a polluted stream, as his power and the magic left over from the sobbing necromancer’s attack commingled.
He tied off the towel tight as he could stand it, and righted the surgical table with his good hand. “Get him up,” he told Seth, jerking his chin at Jao.
“Jack, he’s a good bloke,” Seth said. “He’s a scared bloke. Whatever’s happening here, it’s not his fault. . . .”
Jack pointed at the table. “Get him up and put him on the fucking table, McBride.” He didn’t have any spare panic now, just a tight black feeling in his chest. He was alive. He’d looked at the blade coming down and he was still standing. Jack didn’t think he’d ever become accustomed to the weightless, breathless feeling of still taking up space in the world when he should be on his way through the Bleak Gates.
Seth wrestled Jao’s limp form onto the table with a grunt. “Jack,” he said. “I’m asking you, properly now . . .”
Jack slammed his good hand down onto the metal next to Jao’s head. The clang echoed round the small room and Jao whimpered.
“Right,” Jack said. “I ask again: where’s Hornby’s fucking corpse?”
Jao’s throat worked. “I can’t . . .” he rasped. “I can’t . . . tell you . . . that.”
Jack turned his back, went to the instrument tray, picked up a rib spreader. “Five seconds and I loosen your jaw, mate. The old-fashioned way. No curses involved.”
“Jackie . . .” Seth looked at him askance. “This is a far cry from you, Winter.”
Jack put the rib spreader against Jao’s lips. “I’m a far cry from meself right now, Seth,” he said. “I’m a desperate man and this cunt is standing between me and my dead vocalist, so either hold him fucking still or walk out now.” He cranked the spreader one turn. “Where’s Hornby?”
“I can’t say it!” Jao screamed. “I can’t!”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Jack ratcheted spreader another turn. “Where’s Hornby?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Jao quavered, his voice distorted by the metal fingers in his mouth.
The pounding in Jack’s head increased to blackout levels, and his hands quivered. He knew the rage. He’d watched it belt him across
the mouth, pour whiskey down its throat, and kick him with steel-toed boots for fourteen years before he left Manchester.
And he wanted Jao to share the knowledge, wanted to crank the fucking rib spreader to the maximum and break the sneaky wanker’s jaw.
Instead, he leaned close to Jao’s ear, close enough to smell sweat and the last vestiges of cologne. “You should be,” he hissed.
“You should be,” Jao shouted. “You think you the worst thing to come through my door? You think I’ll tell you when he’s . . .”
Jao choked, and then his face went slack after a moment of struggle. Cloudy, bloody spiderweb drifted into the whites of his eyes, and his body slumped against the table, still.
Seth shoved two fingers against Jao’s sweaty neck. “He’s dead. You’ve fucking killed one of my best customers, Jack. Bloody cheers.”
Jack dropped the rib spreader. “That wasn’t me.”
Seth threw up his hands, like an aggravated mother. “Who the fuck was it, then? Darth fucking Vader?”
Jack wheeled and grabbed Jao’s kit bag, dumped out the necromancy supplies atop Jao’s surgical instruments. “By my guess,” he said, “whoever Jao was afraid enough of to take a slash at me.” Baggies of herbs, a tin of salt, a child’s knucklebones in a velvet sack, a silver dagger blunted on the edge, and a bit of lint fell onto the steel.
Jack slammed his fist into the table. The pain brought him back to himself, a bit, but the rage was still pumping through his veins like cold fire, racing his heart and splitting his skull. “Fuck. He doesn’t have a grimoire.” Jack pressed his hands over his face. He was smeared in blood, his eyes were gritty, and he wanted nothing more than to put his head down and sleep for roughly a decade, until the world made sense again. As much as it ever had.
“Who’s next?” he said instead, dropping his hands to look at Seth. “Who’s the next necromancer you know? One who might actually have some corpse-raising spells lying around instead of trying to cut me fucking throat?”
“Forget that, boy,” Seth said. “After what you just did? You aren’t in any shape to be working magic of this caliber. Can see it right in your face.”
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