Pete nodded. “Way out. Out past coming back, I think.”
Ollie grunted. “How bad is it going to be?”
“Bad,” Pete said softly. “Worse than the bombs. Worse than the fires, maybe. It’s a fundamental shifting, if we all just sit back and let it happen. If we do, I don’t think we’re going to crawl out of our safe little holes to the same world.”
“Full-tilt zombie robot apocalypse.” Ollie snorted. “And me without my freeze-dried rations, machete, and girl in a leather bikini.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Pete asked him. “For not just riding the tide and waiting to see where everything comes down once the storm’s gone?”
“Somebody’s got to be on the side of the angels,” Ollie said. “And I think you’re a good pick, Caldecott. More than you credit yourself with.”
Pete let herself slide down until she was on her back on the floor, staring at the sliver of light through the exhaust port in the freezer’s ceiling. “That makes one of us thinking that, I suppose.”
A shadow flicked across the port, and she sat up. The owl landed, its passage causing the vent fan to spin, casting slices of light and shadow across Pete and Ollie.
I warned you, the Hecate whispered, as the owl tilted its head and stared down at her with glowing yellow eyes, perfectly round and fathomless as the sun.
“Just what I bloody needed,” Pete muttered. Ollie shifted in the dark, and Pete knew he was probably looking at her with suspicion.
“What are you on about?”
Kill the crow-mage, the owl whispered. I told you what you must do and you steadfastly ignored me. Now you’ve reaped the fruits of the poisoned tree. You should have cut it down and salted the earth.
“Sod you,” Pete told it. “I don’t run about stabbing people in the back.” She massaged her throbbing forehead, the proximity of the thing sending bright stabs of pain through the Black. “There’s got to be another way now.”
You don’t believe that, said the Hecate. But it doesn’t matter. You failed, Weir. You allowed the Hag an opening to release her army, not just into the Black, but into the daylight world. Death is walking because of you, Petunia Caldecott. Are you pleased?
“ ’Course I’m not fucking pleased!” Pete shouted at it. Ollie started, but she could explain her seemingly abrupt descent into chattering at birds later.
And neither am I, the Hecate said. The owl spread its wings. This is the end of all things, Weir. Now all that is left to me is punishment. Not recourse. Not bargaining. Not mercy. The Hag has banished those things as she encroaches. All I can look forward to is blood.
The air crackled around Pete, and every inch of her skin prickled. She heard Ollie say, “What in the—” before blackness dropped across Pete’s eyes and the worst pain she’d ever felt gripped her. It felt as if her consciousness and body were being yanked in opposite directions at roughly the speed of a bullet train, and that iron hooks had pinned themselves into her brain, spiking deep down into her talent. She heard herself scream, or maybe it was just the scream of wind past her ears, and then as quickly as the feeling had started, it stopped, and white light burned out Pete’s eyesight.
Blinking furiously, tears sliding over her cheeks, she reached out for anything, anything at all, but there was nothing but cool wind and wet droplets plastering her skin. Her knees buckled and falling down seemed like an extraordinarily good idea, so Pete did, landing on something soft that smelled of green and dirt.
Do you recognize this place? The Hecate, no longer the owl but the girl with the long, narrow face and the yellow eyes, placed her hand on the nape of Pete’s neck, pulling her close.
Pete, for her part, gulped and tried to assess whether she was still alive, and if alive, whether she had all her bits attached. “What did you do to me?”
Crossed you, said the Hecate. Through the gateways. You’re with me now, Pete. To do with as I see fit. Her slender fingers and their blunt nails tightened. Now, do you know what you see?
Pete tried to focus her eyes, tears drying cold on her cheeks and leaving salt trails like nerveless scar tissue. She sat with her legs akimbo at the top of a green hillock, looking down on a white clapboard cottage with a leaning chimney, surrounded by an untidy garden and a path that led down to a dirt road. Far away, over the humps of the blindingly green hills on the other side of the valley, Pete could glimpse the sea.
Pete knew the place. She hadn’t been in nearly fifteen years, but she knew it well enough to be able to pick out every missing brick in the garden path and avoid them.
Well? The Hecate stared at her. The wind running off the water ruffled her straight brown hair, spun it around her face like a spider’s web.
“It’s my grandmother’s house,” Pete said. Her throat was raw from screaming and her voice came out a rasp that blended with the breeze and the shriek of gulls overhead.
Very good, the Hecate told her. She gripped Pete’s arm. She was even smaller than Pete, but her fingers were like iron and she hauled Pete to her feet as easily as you’d toss an empty chip sack into the bin.
“I don’t understand,” Pete said. It couldn’t be anything good. Some part of her had always known that when she went to the thin spaces, not by design but by death, this was what she’d see. The ramshackle little house and the endless verdancy of Ireland, bound on all sides by salt and sea.
The Hag has her patron, said the Hecate, and I had mine. And she has failed me. So here you will stay, Petunia Caldecott. Not alive and not dead. At the crossroads of all worlds, buried for your sins until I see fit to release you. Or until the world burns down around you. It’s a toss-up at this point, I think.
“Wait!” Pete said as the Hecate started to walk away. “That’s it? I don’t turn to murder because you snap your fingers and so you just leave me here to rot?”
Not to rot, said the Hecate. Your body will be in what your friends will call a coma, and your soul will be here. Some day they may reunite, but by then you’ll be quite mad. She lifted her face to the weak sun peering through the wispy lace curtains of mist that floated across the hillside. Perhaps you and the gulls will learn to speak to one another, in the creaks and croaks of your ruined throat.
The Hecate turned away again, and Pete raced after her up the hill, feet sinking into the mucky peat. “Fuck you, you glassy-eyed bitch! You don’t own me! And if it was so important that Jack and Naughton not get Carver, you should’ve left me there to get him back!”
Pete could see only one of her glowing eyes and the razor edge of her child’s profile as the Hecate glared at her. You still don’t understand. Even on the brink of death, you maintain that the world will go on. And I do own you, Petunia. As the Hag owns Jack Winter, and as his dead god owns Nicholas Naughton, you are an avatar. You are one of the touched, the people who in the past would be saints and madmen.
“So then tell me what I’ve missed!” Pete shouted. “Give me a chance to fix it, if I’m your bloody chosen child!”
There is no chosen one, the Hecate hissed. There are the touched, and you are replaceable. I owe you nothing.
“Oh yeah?” Pete folded her arms. “Then why are you so angry?”
The Hecate sighed. The wind kicked up and raked fingers through Pete’s hair and over her chilled skin. Because you are a good person, Petunia Caldecott, and you should not have let the Hag and her general with his dead man’s eyes drag you into the mud.
“Just tell me what’s coming,” Pete said. “And I’ll find a way to stop it. Don’t just leave me here. I’m listening now. Please.” She refused to believe the wetness on her face was more tears. “I was wrong,” Pete whispered. “Tell me what’s going to happen.”
The Hecate came back to her. She placed her palm against Pete’s cheek and stared into her eyes. It was such a human, mothering gesture that Pete nearly recoiled. Gentleness should not come from a being that didn’t even understand the concept of compassion.
You really want to see what I see? the He
cate whispered. You truly desire?
Pete nodded wordlessly. The Hecate turned her around to look down the other side of the valley, where the ground sloped inland to eventually end in the motorway that lead into Galway proper.
There are triads in the Black, and there are triads before the Black, life and birth and death, stretching back to the beginning. At one time we were separate, and at one time we stood joined.
Below Pete, clouds blacker than any soot crawled across the valley, and crimson droplets spattered against the back of her hands and her cheeks. She swiped at them, the blood leaving streaky tracks.
Still, the Hecate ordered her. It’s a memory of the land, Petunia. It can’t touch you. Gods were born and gods died, and their corpses and their afterbirth became grave things. Other things, the Hecate whispered in her ear. The earth rippled under Pete’s boots, and from far below she heard a scream, expressed more as an earthquake than a sound.
They spilled their blood on the earth, and they gave their seed to heroes, and some of us birthed mages and monsters and some of us birthed your dreams, the Hecate said. Pete saw the clouds descend toward the ground, a clinging black mist that withered wherever it touched. A fat white sheep grazing the hillside tried to escape and was instantly reduced to a pile of bloated entrails.
Only one gave death, rather than birth. Pete saw a figure step out of the fog, not a spirit but a whole man, clad in black, fingers extraordinarily long, with black, oil-fed flames dancing across his black, fathomless eyes.
He killed what he touched. The ground where he stood turned to salt, and the cities he visited turned to ashes. The Hecate’s voice was no longer a reverent whisper, but scornful. She bit off each word and spat it at the figure. We spilled his blood, but we did not know what we’d done. When we cut him down, stopped his march across the face of the Black toward the living world, he gave us his revenge—a child.
The ground rattled again, and Pete lost her footing, going hard onto her hands and knees. A stone cut her palm, and the figure in the valley swiveled, elongated nostrils flaring. Pete met its eyes and clapped her bloody hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. It was like pressing hot needles into her brain, directly through her eye sockets. The thing below wasn’t simply wreathed in black magic—he was the source of it. The ground zero of the wave of malice that coated the valley, turning it into an abattoir for anything living.
The god of plague giving birth to the one thing that no god or demon could slay. The Hecate removed her hand from Pete. Irony is not lost on gods, Petunia. And the men trying to free the child from its bonds do not realize what will happen if it becomes so.
Pete stayed where she was, sitting back on her heels, trying to quell the wave of nausea and pain. The clouds rolled past, and the bloody rain dried on her skin, and it was as if nothing had happened to the valley at all.
And the Hag, said the Hecate, is no better. She is power hungry, and she will use the child to spread the armies of Death to the daylight world. And then, because she is arrogant and grasping, she will inevitably lose control, and the child will become as his father. She smoothed her hands over her dress. Nergal was slain before the world, but he has tried to return before. If the Morrigan weakens the Black, he will succeed.
“So that’s his name,” Pete said softly. “I wondered.”
A name, the Hecate said. There are many more for what he is.
“Can’t you stop her?” Pete said. “The Morrigan? You’re stronger. You walk the gateways.”
If the dragon crawls up out of its prison, I will perish, the Hecate said sadly. The offspring of the plague god can tread anywhere it wishes. It will shatter the gateways. Nothing is older or stronger than death, Petunia, and the Morrigan is death’s maiden.
“But in the Black…” Pete started. The Hecate shook her head.
There will be no Black, and no daylight world. They will bleed, until all of the crossroads are in flames, and when we are all gone to cinders, I wager the demons will caper up from Hell to chew on our bones. She gave Pete a humorless smile. Crafty little creatures, demons. The only true survivors in this wretched world.
“So what can I do?” Pete said quietly. “What will keep this … thing locked up?”
The owl woman sadly stroked a hand over Pete’s head where she crouched, her hand warm against Pete’s damp, bloody skin. There is nothing to be done now. If the dragon were still imprisoned, perhaps. But he is awake, and soon he will be free. Death comes for us all, Pete. Even gods.
“I won’t lie down,” Pete told her. “I know I didn’t do what you asked of me, but I can still stop Jack. Somewhere, he’s still got to be Jack.”
Hell changes a man, the Hecate said. It molds him into the worst obscenity of himself. He leaves shreds of his soul even if he is raised up again. The demon who claimed him is in him forever.
“You have to let me try,” Pete said. “I can get Jack. And if I can get Jack I’ll have the dragon’s soul cage, and we can keep Nergal from running roughshod over everything.” Maybe. If Jack hadn’t abandoned her completely.
The Hecate touched Pete’s cheek, and then shook her head. You are so young, even for a human.
“Please,” Pete said, because it had worked once before. She never begged—begging was for the weak, Connor had taught his daughters. Hell, asking was for the weak most of the time. Real coppers—who smoked and drank and lived off their hunches and smacked a suspect in the gob if it’d get things moving—didn’t ask anyone for anything. They didn’t ask if it was all right to go on and die with less than six months’ notice, and they didn’t ask to go out and make things right.
You cannot do what is necessary, the Hecate sighed. And so you’ll stay here. Until the storm passes or I do.
She began to walk down the hill to the motorway, and Pete rushed the words out.
“I’ll do it.”
The Hecate turned around and blinked once, slowly. She cocked her head and for a moment she was an owl, all downy feathers and silent wings. You will do what, Weir?
“It’s Jack or the whole bloody world, right?” Pete said. “I’m not a fucking idealist. I’ll do it. Let me out and I’ll do it.”
She held her breath, held every bit of herself absolutely still, and waited. A halfway decent Met detective could spot a liar, but Pete knew that she was an accomplished one, and also that the Hecate was about as far removed from human as England was from the moon.
If she’d really thought Jack would go through with ripping the Black to shreds, she wouldn’t have lied. But it was Jack—had to still be Jack, somewhere deep inside the new skin Hell had hardened onto his old one. She’d pulled him back from the Bleak Gates. Pulling the man from the Morrigan’s shadow couldn’t be so much different. Yeah, Caldecott, and a fucking complement of unicorns might march up and down outside Buckingham Palace when you do.
Very well, the Hecate said. Dispose of Winter and return the soul of Gerard Carver to my auspices and I will consider you in good standing.
Pete laughed, short and sharp. “You were just rattling my cage. Put me in the in-between and let me sweat a bit.” She tapped the Hecate on her breastbone. “I think you’re more human than you let on.”
The Hecate looked at her for a long moment before she blinked. Return to the world, Petunia Caldecott. Remember your vow. And do not disobey me again.
“Bloody gods,” Pete said as she spun back into her body, still flopped on its side on Naughton’s freezer floor.
CHAPTER 32
Ollie fussed over her until Pete managed to assure him, via repeated insistence and finally swatting at his hand, that she was all right.
“You were screamin’ to wake the dead,” Ollie said.
“Trust me, Ollie,” Pete told him. “The dead don’t need any help on that score.”
“Scared the piss out of me,” Ollie muttered. “I know we’re in a bad way but don’t do that again if you can help it, yeah?”
In a bizarre way, the pain and the psychic bombardment
had cleared Pete’s head. She was past the point of no return—in that zone beyond exhausted where everything becomes tunnel visions and knife edges. She’d lied to the Hecate, she hadn’t delivered to Naughton, and she’d trusted the one person in the Black who could fuck her over properly the way no other could. Not to mention that Felix Patel would probably find a way to pin McCorkle’s murder and Ollie’s situation on her if he were given half a chance. If Pete were in Patel’s shoes, she’d arrest her too.
“I’m fucked,” Pete said out loud. “Properly.”
“Your sunny optimism never fails to gird my loins and strengthen my bloody spirit, you know,” Ollie said. “Don’t unravel on me now, Caldecott.”
“I’ve got bloody nothing in my hand,” Pete said. “Except I either go out and murder someone in cold blood or we stay here until the Met digs up our skeletons in a few decades and we become a mystery program on Channel 1.”
“Jesus,” Ollie said. “And there you go reassuring me.”
“I’m sorry,” Pete sighed. She stood up and paced to each wall, just to have something to do. “I just needed to say that to someone, before I screamed some more.”
“You know something?” Ollie said. “I hated you the first time I clapped eyes on you.”
“Is this your idea of helpful?” Pete said. She had to get the fuck out of this freezer and find Jack. At least try to talk him out of handing Carver over, if he hadn’t already.
“You were just some snot-nosed DC who had a famous da, clearly years too green for CID,” Ollie said. “And you remember what the first thing you said to me was when I reluctantly rolled meself over to shake your hand?”
“ ‘You’ve got kidney pie on your shirt,’ ” Pete muttered, glad it was dark so Ollie couldn’t see her flush. She had been green, barely twenty-six and well aware that everyone in the CID room at Holborn had been staring a hole in her.
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