Devil's Business

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Abbadon screamed, just once, and then vanished, leaving only a pop of air in his place. Belial grinned down at Jack. “If I ever had doubts about you, boy … no longer.” He flexed his wrists, starting a fresh spatter of blood. “Care to get me down from here?”

  “Piss off,” Jack told him. “You can rot there for all I care.”

  “You should care,” Belial said.

  Jack stopped on his way out and looked back. Belial was grinning. Somebody in his position, demon or not, shouldn’t grin. It meant he knew something Jack didn’t, which was never the situation he wanted to be in. “Yeah?” he said. “Why? Out of the goodness of my heart?”

  “Please,” Belial said. “You’ve got less goodness in that shriveled lump of coal than I have appreciation for the music of Hall and Oates. No, Jack, you should care because that Sanford bloke wasn’t talking bollocks.” He shifted, trying to extricate himself from the spikes, and then grimaced. “Come on, get me down. Even I can’t poof my way out of a cold iron torture rack.”

  “Poof being the operative word,” Jack muttered. He could keep walking and leave Belial to think about things, or he could cut him down and have a demon in his debt. Not a difficult choice.

  The chandelier was heavy, and Belial crashed to the ground. “Fuck me,” he said, extricating himself from the spikes. “You’re not much of a big strong sort, are you?”

  His white shirt was stained with continents of blood, and his natty suit was shredded across the thighs, arms, and chest. The demon straightened his tie. “Obliged, Jack. You always were a stand-up sort in a pinch.” He gestured at the circle. “You mind? I am rather indisposed at the moment.”

  Jack scuffed his boot across the chalk and blood, and Belial stepped out, letting out a long breath. “Can’t wait to see the back of this place. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Jack told him. He bent down beside Sanford, who was still sucking air despite the hole in his guts. “Where is she?” he asked.

  Sanford wheezed, what might have been a laugh before Abbadon had rearranged his innards. “Really? She’s … all you want?”

  Jack plunged his hand into Sanford’s wound, grabbed a handful of something soft and warm, and squeezed it. Sanford howled, body jerking. “Where’s Pete?” Jack said. “You’re on the way out, mate. You don’t get to make the rules.”

  “No,” Sanford croaked. “I know where I’m going. Same place you are. See you around…” He gurgled, and died, without further comment.

  “Shit.” Jack straightened up and swiped Sanford’s blood and guts onto his denim. “They still have her,” he told Belial.

  “I’m sure this is a cause for alarm in your small rodent brain,” Belial said. “But Abbadon is going to come roaring back here like a freight train any moment, and he’s not going to be in a charming mood. Might I suggest we not be here?”

  “Fine,” Jack said. “Do your Star Trek trick, then, and shift us out.”

  Belial coughed and swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “When I’m healthy, moving through space-time isn’t easy with a human in tow. I’m barely standing, you git. I’m not going to perform tricks.”

  Jack sighed. “There’s a car outside, but I can’t drive and that bloke I ran off had the keys.”

  “Capital.” Belial coughed again. “What do humans do in this situation, then? Call for a taxi?”

  “I usually call Pete,” Jack said. “But Sanford has her. And now that he’s dead, fuck knows what’ll happen.” Couldn’t think about that now. Had to stay calm, had to stay clever, if he ever wanted to see her again.

  “She’s a lot smarter than you,” Belial said. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned.”

  The night outside was warm, and a wind brushed across Jack’s face and moved the trees along the drive. Belial inhaled. “I’m not going to last much longer up here. Unless you want a dead demon on your hands, Jack—and before you ask, yes, I can kick just like your kind can—then we need to be gone from this place.”

  Jack spread his arms. “And where do you suggest we go?”

  Belial smiled. “Where poor little lost Abbadon wants to go. Home.”

  CHAPTER 24

  He had to be mad, Jack decided. That was the only explanation for allowing Belial to talk him into going back to the place he’d tried with everything he had to avoid, had agreed to let the Morrigan change him to escape.

  He was changed. That was a fact he couldn’t ignore anymore. The scene with Parker proved it, and more than that, the new life he felt crawling under his skin. The Morrigan had what she wanted. She had him, body and soul, because he owed her his life. If it wasn’t for her, he’d still be languishing in Hell.

  His vision cleared, like coming back from a sharp blow to the head, and he saw that he and Belial stood in a street, slimy cobbles under their feet and orange gaslights spitting pollution into the air.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  “Hell, of course,” Belial said, and coughed up a few droplets of black blood onto his rumpled shirt.

  “Not any part of Hell I’ve seen,” Jack muttered. “Looks more like Sweeney Todd’s back garden.”

  “You don’t let the prisoners walk into the warden’s sitting room and put their boots on his furniture,” Belial said. “The souls in Hell are in torment, Jack. The demons live here.”

  He mounted the steps to a narrow stone house with a door shaped like a keyhole that swung open at his approach. “Well, come in,” he said. “You stand out there on the street, you’re liable to end up as an attraction at the next Carnival of Souls.”

  Jack followed Belial up the steps. If he’d been told that he’d be following a demon into his nest, that the demon would be the one inviting him in, he’d have laughed in the teller’s face, and then probably hit them for good measure, to knock some sense back into them.

  “All of you live in snug little houses, then?” Jack said. Belial mounted the stairs and Jack followed. The house inside was done in shades of black and red, all very smooth and masculine, the sort of flat a banker or a lawyer in the City would own.

  “Some live in houses,” Belial said. “Some live in abbatoirs and some prefer to float in a void of nothing, listening to the screams of souls when they’re in their private space.” He shrugged. “Takes all kinds.” He opened a wardrobe and took out a clean shirt and tie, shedding the ruined pair.

  Jack wandered to the window, looking over the chimney pots of the street to the great black towers of Hell, billowing smoke in the distance. The Princes lived there, was the rumor, watched over their domain of ruined souls, high and inscrutable, just like the fictional God Jack’s mum had tried to frighten him with.

  He watched Belial, too, in the reflection. The demon had twin black marks down his back, curved like scythe blades, but the wounds he’d suffered at Abbadon’s hands had already faded. “This isn’t my real body,” Belial said. “I figured I shouldn’t overload you with all the sights at once.”

  “Didn’t think you’d choose a pasty little midget voluntarily,” Jack said. Belial put on his fresh shirt and twitched his cuffs.

  “They aren’t wings, either.” He turned to Jack and showed his pointed teeth. “Saw you peeking.”

  “I wouldn’t care if they were,” Jack said.

  “No angels,” Belial said. “No God.”

  “Amen,” Jack said.

  “I’m one of the Named,” Belial said. “We all have the mark on us, the mark of creation. Given by that bastard Abbadon, in point of fact, but that’s all it is.”

  “Got to sting,” Jack said. “Bloke who made you, who you fucked up the arse and locked away, is free and waving the bird in your faces.”

  “Abbadon isn’t going to be free for long,” Belial said softly. He tied his tie and went to a black lacquer box on the chest, pulling out a ruby stickpin and affixing it. “That’s better,” he said with a sigh. “Now, let’s see if we can’t do something about you.”

  “Me?” Jack shied away when Belial reached for hi
m. “Fuck off. ’M not your makeover project.”

  “If you’re going to an audience at the Triumverate,” Belial said, “then you need to be dressed as something other than a hobo.”

  Jack felt his eyebrows go up, while his guts dropped through Belial’s posh blood-colored carpet. “Excuse me?”

  Belial slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a lucky man, Jack Winter. You’re going to be the first living bloke in over five hundred years to meet the Princes of Hell.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The Hell that Belial led Jack through was nothing like the dreams he’d had. This Hell was a mass of corridors made of stone and iron, veiled in steam. Machines clanked from far below his feet, and noxious yellow smoke poured from crooked chimneys that bent in over the street like arthritic fingers.

  “Can I ask you something?” Jack stopped, patting himself down and finding that his fags had made the journey along with the rest of him.

  “You can ask,” Belial said, pushing open an iron gate and leading them down an alley. “Can’t promise I’ll answer.”

  Jack lit his fag with the tip of his finger. His talent, at least part of it, was still at work. That was good. If he had to shoot his way out, his guns were still loaded. “This isn’t some black hole deal, right? Go to Narnia and come back a hundred years later?”

  Belial laughed. “When you go to Narnia, time in the real world stays exactly the same, first off,” he said. “You’re thinking of fairyland or some rot. Second, no. You’re not going to walk out of Hell and find everyone zipping about on jetpacks.”

  “So why keep me here?” Jack said. “You’re looking back to your usual reptilian self. You don’t need me.”

  “I don’t think you understand the unique position you’ve put yourself in,” Belial said. “First, you slag off the four ancients who’ve escaped from Hell into your plane, and then you get mixed up with the one human bastard crazy enough to help them open Locke’s door back down to the Pit. Nobody in Hell is taking their eyes off you, Jack. Not for a second. Where this ride stops, not even the Princes know.”

  He led them up a staircase into a long square, lined with more of the noxious gas lamps, which ended in a long flight up steps going into the tallest of the towers Jack had seen from his flat. The square was deserted, piles of ash lighter than snow blowing to and fro across the cobbles.

  “You can’t expect me to believe that a bloke who made terrible movies and got his jollies with Nazis actually found a way to cross back and forth from Hell,” Jack said. “Bit of a complex way to get a laugh.”

  “Wasn’t for a laugh,” Belial said. “Now, when you go before the Triumverate, let me do the talking. I know it’s hard for you to keep that great gob shut, but trust me, if you want to continue to be alive when you leave Hell this time, do it.”

  “Trust you?” Jack said. “There’s a laugh.”

  Belial shot him an irate glare. “Have I done one thing since those fuckwits grabbed me to make you think you can’t trust me? The enemy of my enemy, Jack. That’s you. Now move your arse, they’re waiting.”

  Jack followed Belial to a set of metal doors, the kind you’d find in a mental hospital or a prison. A demon sat in front of it at a metal desk, tapping his fingers against a clipboard. A red phone sat at his elbow, the sort you could use to summon Batman. A single light blinked atop it.

  The demon himself was a bat-eared horror, long teeth pressing his black lips into a distorted shape. He wore a black uniform and peaked cap, and looked up at Belial’s approach. “General,” he said. “You’re expected.”

  “I know that,” Belial said. The demon looked Jack over.

  “Go in,” he said, and then spat on the floor beside Jack’s boot, an acidic gob that sizzled when it hit the lino. “They’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Scavenger,” Belial muttered as he pushed open the door. “One of Azeroth’s boys. Disgusting little shits. They roost all over the City and crap on everything.”

  The demon picked up the red phone as the doors shut and barked something in a hissing, screeching language that caused Jack’s eye to twitch. Mercifully, the doors slammed, and he found himself in a low room, light tubes flickering overhead.

  “This is the Triumverate?” he said.

  Belial straightened his tie and made sure his cufflinks were perfectly aligned. “You were expecting Lucifer’s golden throne?”

  “Well, no, but…” Jack looked down at the cracked lino, the brick walls painted a dozen times, bubbling with paint the color of pus. “This looks like the dole office my mum’s boyfriend used to drag me into to con the case worker out of extra fag money.”

  “Just stand there and try not to say anything stupid,” Belial muttered. “Even if that is a practically impossible task for you.”

  The tubes at the far end of the room snapped to life, and Jack saw a long low table, and behind it three figures. The one in the center gestured. “Step forward.”

  Belial jabbed Jack in the small of his back, and he moved. There was no Black here, no way to get a read on what was sitting in front of him. He’d just have to smile and hope for the best.

  “Jack Winter.” Belial cleared his throat. “The Triumverate, the Princes of Hell—Beelzebub, Azrael, and Baal. Gentlemen, this is…”

  “We know the crow-mage, Belial,” the one on the left snapped. Jack guessed that was Beelzebub. Belial ducked his head.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I suppose you think you’re very clever.” Azrael’s voice sounded like bodies being dragged over gravel. The Princes’ faces were in shadow, which didn’t lessen the feeling that Jack was being weighed, judged, and readied for his sentence.

  “Most of the time, yeah,” he said. “I get by.”

  Belial choked slightly beside him. “For fuck’s sake, shut up,” he grunted.

  “You were tasked by Belial to return the four prisoners to their catacomb,” said the last. Baal was a tall, thin shadow, wearing an all-black suit in contrast to Belial’s snappy white number. “You failed.”

  “My fault,” said Belial. “I asked the crow-mage for assistance and I expected too much of him. He’s only human.”

  “We’re aware of what he is,” Azrael snapped. “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re a fuck-up and a miserable little snake, Belial.”

  “Calm down,” Baal said. “Nothing to be gained by shouting.”

  “This has gone on too long already,” Beelzebub snarled. “The ancients have found Locke’s books. They came close enough thanks to your stupidity, and I’ll have assurances they won’t come so close again one way or the other.”

  “I can put it right,” Belial said. “I know things that Abbadon doesn’t. He doesn’t understand humans the way I do.”

  “If you knew so much,” Azrael grunted, “he never would have broken from the catacombs in the first place.”

  “That’s not fair, sir,” Belial started. “Nergal…”

  “Nergal is not your concern at this time,” said Baal. “You fucked up, Belial. You spend far too much time in the daylight world, among the human meat, and it’s affected your perceptions. You’re fat and slow. Your obsession with the crow-mage has brought you here, and it’s time for consequences.”

  Jack looked to Belial, and he saw a bead of moisture work its way down the demon’s temple. Belial was pissing himself in fear. That could be bad or good for Jack. Jack looked back at the Triumverate. They leaned in, shadowed heads bowed, and then Azrael stood up.

  “Crow-mage, stay. Belial, you are relieved.”

  “No,” Belial cried. “No, sir, give me a chance…”

  The doors banged open, and a pair of demons wearing the same black uniforms and jackboots as the one in the hall came in. These were tall, with bulging foreheads and chests their black tunics barely contained. Fenris. Jack had seen them before. They were the big, hungry bastards of the demon world, hunters and trackers that would just as soon leave teethmarks on your tibia as look at you.

  “
Shit,” Belial muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Things not going as you expected, snake?” Jack muttered.

  “Does this bloody look like it’s going well?” Belial hissed. “You don’t get a warning in your file, Jack. The Princes are going to liquidate me. I got one chance to bring Abbadon back and thanks to you and your insistence that you know better it’s fucked backward and sideways.”

  The Fenris gripped Belial by the arms, their crimson lips pulling back to reveal rows of fangs.

  “Wait,” Jack said to the Princes.

  Beelzebub tapped one finger on the table. His nails were pure white, curved like a cat’s claws. “You’re speaking for yourself now, crow-mage?”

  “Way I see it,” Jack said. “You lot got egg on your faces when Nick Naughton got as far as calling up Nergal. It was so important that he stayed under wraps, you’d make sure of it. Same with Basil Locke and his ruddy portal or whatever it is. You three think you’re untouchable, and now somebody’s shown you you’re not. Got to sting the ego, just a bit.”

  Azrael leaned over the table, and Jack saw white eyes, a long pale face, the sort of face that belonged to a thing that had lived in the dark for a long while, navigating by touch and sound. “Do you want to die today, crow-mage?”

  “If you want to get the Morrigan and her kind down on your arse, then be my guest.” Jack folded his arms. His stomach was quavering and his heart was thudding hard against his ribs, hard enough that the fat veins in his neck throbbed. He didn’t know if the threat of the Morrigan was enough to dissuade the Princes from turning him into a wall ornament, but it had been enough for Belial to void their bargain for his soul, so it had to count for something. Just what the something was, he wouldn’t let himself think about until he was someplace other than Hell.