Jack moved his hand from her, and shook his head. “At least now I’ll have a little time to try and explain it to you.”
Pete heard the shriek of scavengers, and Carver snapped his head up. “If your Hag wants me, crow-mage, you better take me now. Otherwise you and I will be standing on this bridge until the Black burns down around us.”
Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pete. I hope you can forgive me.”
He put his hand on Carver, and the spirit flickered. The power rose around Pete like the ions in the air before a lightning storm.
“No,” Pete said. “No, Jack…” Before she could say anything else, there was a sharp tug in her chest, as if she’d been slapped with the business end of a cricket bat. Her head went light, and her vision screwed. “I’m not ready!” she shouted at Mosswood. “Damn it, Ian, not yet!”
Things went black, the slow swirling black of suffocation, and then Pete’s eyes snapped open and air rushed into her lungs. She saw the ceiling of her flat and smelled tobacco and incense. The honks and rattles and shouts of living London reached her ears. She lurched sideways and vomited, gasping until there was nothing left. Sticky black bile crept across the floorboards.
“All right.” Mosswood shoved her hair out of the way. “You’re all right, Pete.”
His hand on her skin started a feverish fire and Pete retched again, feeling the battered sensation of pulled muscles in her abdomen.
“You hang on,” Mosswood said. “I haven’t finished with Jack yet.”
Jack … Jack watching her with those icy eyes that were not his own, Jack stealing Gerard Carver’s soul.
Mosswood moved away from her and crouched by Jack’s head, touching a finger to his brow and murmuring a few words. When he was finished, he blew out the black candle at the head of the circle.
Pete forced herself up, hands and knees, then only knees, and then, using the sofa as a pulley system, to her feet. The flat swayed and pulsed around her as the remnants of the psychotropic danced through her system like ice water and hot coals at once.
“You shouldn’t be up,” Mosswood said sharply. “I haven’t opened the circle yet. Anything could have come back.”
Now that she was awake, it seemed so utterly simple to Pete. Jack hadn’t come back for her. He’d come back at the behest of the Morrigan. He’d never intended to help her stop Naughton’s murdering. He’d just used her to get to Carver, from the moment he’d pulled her out of the pit at the club.
She’d been a fool.
Jack came awake when Mosswood removed his hand, choking and letting some of the black stuff dribble down his chin. “Feel as if I’ve been hit by a fucking lorry,” he gasped.
Mosswood said something to him, but Pete couldn’t make out the words. She felt like kicked shit, her cracked rib still throbbed, and her head was muzzy from the orchid, but she couldn’t be in the same room with Jack any longer.
“Pete?” She felt his shadow drop over her, and she smacked Jack’s hands from her.
“Don’t you fucking touch me.”
“Can I explain, Pete?” he said, swaying when she shoved him back. “Can you at least give me that?”
“You’ve explained enough, I think,” Pete said. She pointed to the door. “I’d like to leave now.”
“Petunia,” Jack said, low. “She would have sent me back. She would have given me back to Belial and this was all she asked. As long as it’s not Naughton doing the ritual…”
“No,” Pete said. “It’s not. It’s the Morrigan, Jack. I’d ask you who exactly that ritual is supposed to call, but it doesn’t even matter. All she wants is death. And you’re helping her do it.”
“Helping to keep you safe,” Jack mumbled. “If I’m in Hell, I can’t be with you, Pete. I can’t protect you from what’s coming.”
“Fuck me,” Pete said. “You really have changed.” She wanted to smash her fists into him, scream at him for lying to her. Not that Jack had made a habit of the truth, but to do it so casually, so smoothly, as if she were just another mark in the crowd at a conjure show. “You used to know I didn’t need your fucking protection. I needed you, Jack. Not … not whatever you are.”
“You want to tell me I’m weak,” Jack said. “Go right the fuck ahead. I am weak. But don’t tell me you don’t understand why I did it.”
“Ollie’s going to die,” Pete said. “I might die, you might die—the whole fucking Black is going to collapse in on itself if that bitch goes through with Naughton’s ritual, and you’re licking her bloody boot.” Pete jabbed her finger into Jack’s chest. “I don’t think you’re weak, Jack. I think you’re a pussy.”
He snatched her hand, pressing it against her and shoving Pete backward into the wall. Her head knocked the plaster, and dust and paint chips rained down. “You don’t fucking know,” Jack snarled. “You haven’t been to Hell.”
“Then tell me,” Pete whispered. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
Jack dropped his head to her shoulder, nuzzling his lips into her neck. “It’s constant screaming. It’s your life, over and over and over again, until you can’t take it for one more second. He broke me, Pete. He shattered every bone in my body. He flayed my skin off by inches. And when he’d gotten tired of hearing me scream, he put me together with thread and stuffing, and he started all over again.”
Jack let her go and stood back, passing his hands over his face. “You think this is the first time the old gods have gotten their back up? I’ll do what the Morrigan has been chasing me for since I was fourteen fucking years old, and things will carry on much as they have.”
“You don’t believe that,” Pete said. “You would never have believed something like that, Jack.”
“Doing a hitch in Hell makes you believe a lot of things you never thought were possible,” Jack said. “There’s no room for showy heroics in this story, Pete. We’re giving Carver to the Hag, and Naughton can deal with her. Heath will probably be all right. And if he’s not, I’m bloody sorry, but that’s how things must be.”
All at once, hearing it from his lips, Pete’s confusion and grief hardened and tempered into rage. She cocked her fist back and slammed it into Jack’s jaw, hard and sharp, following through with all her weight.
Jack stumbled, his legs buckling. “You cunt!” he shouted. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“I’m not the cunt in this conversation,” Pete snarled. “Not by a long way.”
Jack struggled up to his feet. He’d already sprouted a bruise. “I did what I had to do, Pete. That’s all I can ever say about it. I know it wasn’t right. I fucking know that. But I had to. For me, for you. I could have stood the pain, but knowing you were alone—that, I couldn’t let stand. So yes, I’m the servant of the crow. And I’m not sorry.”
She wanted to draw back from the expression on his face, the cold, inhuman flatness in his eyes, but she steeled herself and moved nearer. “Just give me Carver. We can find a way—”
“I told you no,” Jack said. “Now will you listen this time, or do I have to slap a hex on you?”
“Don’t bother,” Pete told him. “I’m leaving.” She jerked the door open to find a gang of black suits and pale faces that crowded her back into the room. “No sudden moves,” said one, whom she recognized from the back room of Naughton’s vile club.
Three all together, like all bad things, and they moved straight for Jack. “Fuck me,” Jack muttered, backpedaling. “Boys, let’s talk about this, shall we?”
“Mr. Naughton says you’re out of time,” the one closest to Pete told her. “Do you have what we want?”
Pete jerked her chin at Jack. “He does.”
“Oh, yes. Lovely,” Jack said. “This is a terrible idea, mates. Trust me on that.”
“Don’t think so,” said the hulking one. “You’ve fucked with the big dog, my son, and now he’s going to bite your arse. Come along.”
Pete checked the sitting area, but Mosswood had gone, through some inscrutable method
of his own. One less problem, but one less body for backup when things inevitably got ugly. She eased open the door of the entry table, scrabbling for the heavy torch she kept there for emergencies, but one of Naughton’s men saw, threw her to the ground, and stepped hard on her injured hand. Pete felt small bones go and let out a scream.
“Naughty, naughty,” the necromancer told her, and tilted his thin face toward Jack. “What do you say, Winter? You’ll come quietly for your little slice of heaven here?”
“She’s not worth it to me,” Jack said, and if Pete could’ve flinched any harder, she would have. Jack had a hard face, always, the kind of mask everyone who’d grown up poor and smacked around in a dirty factory town manufactured. But it had been just that, a mask. Not like it was at that moment. “You’re not going to coerce me, gents,” Jack said, “and you’re not going to scare me by roughing up some poor girl half your size, so why don’t you just toddle on home?”
The big one raised a hand. “How about instead we hex you and drag you back there boots-first?” He didn’t wait for Jack’s response before he threw the hex. Jack batted it aside and cracks blossomed in the plaster walls of the flat. The necromancer didn’t play about—the next thing he flung wasn’t a simple hex but a curse that turned the air to ozone and filled Pete’s nostrils with the scent of burnt rubber.
Jack went down hard, and the necromancer’s next effort bounced off a shield hex that rippled into being before his body. The feedback screamed through Pete’s skull, and she knew it would be ten times worse for Jack, letting his talent flow and his sight absorb magic unchecked.
The necromancer hit again, and again, and the entire flat shook. The high windows exploded, and in the kitchen Pete heard glasses and plates popping like firecrackers. Sharp-edged snow rained down to pepper her bare skin.
“You want me?” Jack sneered at the necromancers. “You want that sad little excuse for a soul cage for your boss? Come and get me.” He stepped back, slung his leg over the sill of the shatttered window, and dropped from view.
The trio of necromancers rushed to the window while Pete stared. “Fuck me,” said the one who’d stomped her hand. “Four stories straight down.”
“Demons juiced him,” said the big one. “ ’Least that’s what I heard.”
“Nah,” said the rat-faced one. “Heard he bedded down with the crow woman, got his powers the old, bloody way, like fucking Cù Chulainn or some shite.”
The rat-faced necromancer jerked his thumb at Pete. “What about her?”
“Pick her up and take her with us,” the big one said. “Let Mr. Naughton decide what to do.”
CHAPTER 31
Nick Naughton stroked his thumb over Pete’s cheek. She flexed her hands, the broken one knifing up her forearm. Naughton’s thugs had tied her well, with plastic zip ties that bit into her wrists. “I suppose you think you’ve very clever, playing the holdout game, waiting for your mage to save your arse.”
“Fuck off,” Pete said. She wasn’t in the mood for creativity, and Naughton didn’t deserve it anyway.
Naughton heaved a sigh. “Sean, get those off and hold her up.”
Sean, the hulking necromancer, looked at Naughton with wide eyes. “What if she, yanno, sucks all me talent out of me head? She’s a Weir.”
“She weights a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, you great frilly girl,” Naughton sighed. “And it’s not as if she’s a bloody superhero.”
Sean cut the plastic with his flick knife and hauled Pete up, pinning her arms behind her back.
“So, Petunia,” Naughton said. His thumb stroked her lips. Being touched by him was like being touched by something drowned and dead—slimy, with the scent of damp, mossy places that had never seen the light of day. “What are we going to do about you?”
“You could let Ollie and me go,” she suggested.
“It’s good to keep your sense of humor.” Naughton’s hand dropped to her clavicle, the tips of his fingers skating under her collar. “But you and I have a mutual goal now—we both want what the crow-mage took from us. Why don’t you stop treating me as an enemy and go convince him to hand it over. Use your winning smile, and tell him nobody else will get hurt.” He grinned. “I mean, that part’s a lie. I rather like hurting people. But it sounds better that way.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Pete told him. “Carver. The reliquary. Why you tried to sacrifice him.”
“We succeeded in sacrificing Carver,” Naughton said. “That arse McCorkle thought he could rob me, and some unfortunate circumstances—they buggered the ritual, not the sacrifice. Well, to be more precise, one circumstance buggered the ritual. His name was Henry, and Henry is no longer with us. Isn’t that right, Sean?”
Sean gulped. Naughton patted Pete’s cheek. “You have nothing more than some thirdhand Babylonian legends and muttered rumors from a few mages scared of their own shadow. You don’t know, Miss Caldecott. You don’t even comprehend the scope of what’s coming up through the layers of the worlds below ours. What changes he will bring with him. But if you want to survive long enough to take a gander, then you’re going to do as I ask.”
“Or I could tell you to shove your poncey new world order right in your arse,” Pete said. Naughton considered.
“I suppose you could.”
“I think I am.”
“And I think you simply don’t understand the gravity of our situation,” Naughton said. “Perhaps you and I should go somewhere and have a more private chat.”
“The serpent winds the world,” Pete said, blurting out Morningstar’s prophecy. Anything to stop Naughton touching her. “The serpent. Whatever it is, that’s what you’re calling. That’s what the reliquary belonged to. That’s what the soul cage is for. It’s not a spirit at all.”
Naughton narrowed his eyes at her and was quiet long enough to let Pete know she’d touched some kind of nerve. He snapped his fingers like a pistol shot. “Sean.”
“Yes, guv?”
“Take Miss Caldecott into the kitchen. She’s so eager to see her fat friend, put her in with him.”
“Right.” Sean snatched Pete by the arm. “Come on, then.” He dragged her to the walk-in, thrust her inside, and slammed the door. Pete heard a chain clatter through the handle on the other side.
She patted herself down for her lighter and flicked it open. “Ollie?”
“Pete?” She felt a hand swat her, and then close around her arm as the flame flared to life. Ollie’s face was drawn and covered in stubble, but he looked healthy, and he grabbed her and gave her a hard squeeze. “Was beginning to think you forgot about me.”
“Never,” Pete said, thumping him on the back. “Who’d be around to eat half of my curry and harangue me that magic isn’t real if I let you kick off?”
Ollie’d been untied, but the spindleback chair was still the only furniture in the old freezer. The rest was full of boxes, musty and old as the hills, and Heath settled on the ground, his back against them. “Fuck me. Been sleeping on this floor for a decade, feels like.”
Pete took a seat next to him, careful to keep the lighter from the rat-gnawed cardboard. “I’m sorry. I really hoped this would be a rescue.”
He patted her knee. “Shit rescue, but it’s all right, Caldecott. Sooner or later that stiff bastard Patel will notice I’m not around for him to shout questions at, and he’ll send some plods looking for me.”
“We might not last that long,” Pete said. “Not that Naughton’s going to off us, but London might not be in the same shape by the time Patel catches on.”
“Fuck me, you’re a ray of bloody sunshine, aren’t you?” Ollie grumbled.
Pete fingered her pack of Parliaments and found it was empty. “They been treating you all right?”
“Aside from cramming me in this rat-infested shit trap? It’s been like a weekend in Blackpool,” Ollie said. “At least the takeaway that cunt-faced wanker Sean brings in isn’t too dodgy.”
“Sounds better than my day thus far
.” Pete flung the empty pack into a corner.
“What about your boy Winter?” Ollie said. “Setting aside for a moment his trick act of showing up alive. Any chance he’ll be making a grand entrance?”
The mention of Jack forced a few tears from Pete’s eyes, unexpected and hot as fresh blood. “Jack and I aren’t together right now, Ollie. Not about all this.”
“Always said that bloke was miles beneath you.” Ollie sniffed. “You two have a falling out?”
“He’s a fucking liar,” Pete said. “I don’t want to talk about Jack, Ollie.” She shut the lighter since it was just the two of them and some junk in the dark, not worth wasting fluid on.
“Should we plot and scheme on how to bust out, then?” Ollie asked. “Or do you want to tell me what ridiculous bit of Doctor Who shenanigans that pasty lot out there is up to?”
“Necromancers,” Pete said. “Summoning something inhuman and horrible, likely. Sacrificial rites toward same. Cryptic prophecies. That sort of thing.” She could keep herself together for Ollie, but being shut up in the freezer was already making her twitch. Especially since she knew neither Felix Patel nor Jack would find them in time. That Jack would not come at all, until he’d done what the Morrigan demanded of him.
Pete wasn’t angry with him any longer. She simply felt like the greatest idiot in all of England for trusting Jack in the first place. He’d nearly gotten her killed when she was sixteen. He’d let her think he was dead once before. He’d lied about his deal with Belial, until the demon snatched him from under her nose. Jack Winter had never given her a single reason to trust him. And yet, her chest was still tight when she thought about the casual way he’d turned on her this time. The last time, Pete vowed.
“Necromancers,” Ollie said at last. “You know, Caldecott, eighteen months ago I would have put you in for a psychiatrist and a few weeks in the country. Now, I really don’t have a better explanation for all this crap.” Boxes rustled in the dark as he fidgeted. “Things are bad all over. Murders are up. The schizophrenics are screaming even stranger shite than usual when we get called out. You don’t have to be bloody magic to see that something’s slid out of tilt in this city.”
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