There’s not much more to be said
It’s the top of the end.
—Bob Dylan
25.
After they all ran until Margaret’s short legs and Jack’s abused lungs couldn’t take it any more, Pete found a small cottage tucked into the hills, locked up long enough that leaves had piled against the front door and moss had grown on the sills.
“Thank Christ for posh twats and their vacation cottages,” she said, peering in the window.
“Odd person to thank,” Jack said. He was still breathing hard and heavy, and Pete didn’t know if it was from the running or the burden of Donovan stabbing him in the kidney when his back was turned.
“Let’s get inside,” she said, as mumbles and moans echoed through the fog. “Hills are lousy with folks gone George Romero.”
Jack got the door open with a few words, and Pete locked it again when they were all inside and slid the ancient sofa in front of it. She pulled a chair close to the fireplace and put Margaret in it, wrapping a blanket around her thin shoulders. “You all right, luv?”
She shook her head without a word, and Pete sighed. Stupid question. Margaret might never be all right again.
Jack opened the damper and piled some wood in the grate, muttering “Aithinne” to get it going.
“Thought we were fucking dead,” Margaret said at last.
“Not yet,” Pete said, trying to paste on a cheerful face. Margaret’s baleful expression told her she’d failed miserably.
“Can’t say I’m surprised every last one of those Prometheus Club cunts was holding out on us,” Jack said. “But I do think a fucking-over as deep and thorough as this one is pretty impressive. Once they manage to harness the soul well, we might as well just throw open the door and welcome the apocalypse.”
“I thought you said that ritual was bunk,” Pete said, casting a meaningful look at Margaret.
“’Course it’s not bunk,” Jack said. “That Morgenstern bitch knows what she’s doing, much as I hate to pay her any kind of compliment. All she needs to get things kicking off is that soul cage.”
“Speaking of,” Pete said, feeling in the pocket of her jacket. “I’m so sorry I made you responsible for this, Margaret. I never meant to.”
In the low firelight the soul cage danced, as if the interior were alive and moving, trying to find any egress to the larger world. “Who d’you think it is?” Pete said, turning it in her hands.
“Crotherton, probably,” Jack said. “He seems like a patsy type, all Dudley Do-Right and noble.”
“Preston gave me this,” Pete said. “Out of everyone, he trusted me, and I walked right back into Morwenna’s grasp and practically gift-wrapped the thing for her.”
“All that tells you is that he had shite for brains,” Jack said. “Probably so buggered from being close to the soul well he didn’t know his own name.”
“He tried to warn me,” Pete said. The soul cage’s energy writhed, turning colors under her grasp. She imagined poor Jeremy Crotherton, just looking for his friend, getting a whack on the head and a horrific end as worm food in that awful cellar. Add the indignity of having Morwenna Morgenstern suck out his soul, and it was a crap day all around.
“And you didn’t listen because he came across as a crazy fuck,” Jack said. “Blame isn’t needed at this late stage, Pete. A plan would be nice, though.”
Pete found a blanket for herself and wrapped up in it, inhaling the musty odor of mothballs and damp. “You want me to plan a full frontal assault on a bunch of mages who’ve already got us beat? I can do it, but it’s not going to end any way except with us dead.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Margaret muttered. In the low light, Pete saw that dirt streaked on her face and her T-shirt was torn, things she’d missed in the frantic escape. “We’re dead anyway.”
“Luv, don’t talk that way,” Pete sighed. “Jack and I are going to find a way to get you out of here.”
“And go where?” Margaret whispered. Pete saw a shadow flick in front of the windows, and away. A shiver ran through Margaret, though the cottage was almost stuffy as the fire blazed. “My parents are out there. All the people are out there. We’re the last normal ones. Where’m I supposed to go?”
“She’s got a point,” Jack muttered. “We’re either target practice for the Prommies or worm food. I don’t exactly relish either choice.”
“You want a plan, you could try being the least bit helpful,” Pete snapped. “I’m not the one who’s been running with mages his entire life. What happens if Morwenna gets hold of the soul cage she made?”
Jack sighed, but he played along. “Likely she’s channeling the power of Purgatory through her, giving herself regular old Hulk powers like that stupid, stupid story about the Merlin. And you need a soul to do that—something agonized, in enough pain to lure in the things capable of taking up residence in you and lending you the sort of power Morwenna is after.” He poked at the fire. “Mage soul is the only kind that will do, and the more pain Crotherton was in when he died, the better it’ll work.”
“So very well, then,” Pete said, thinking of the stricken terror frozen on Crotherton’s face when she’d found his body in the cellar.
“Like gangbusters,” Jack agreed. “She wants to be top of the heap, and if we give her that thing she will be.”
Pete looked from Jack to Margaret. She thought of their friends in London. Lily. Everything she knew, engulfed in this endless fog. Every face that was familiar, white-eyed with a worm looking out. Or worse, simply shambling about, chewing on the neighbors and waiting to die.
“Fine,” she told Jack. “I couldn’t care less if Morwenna gets what she wants out of this.”
He blinked at her, and Pete spread her hands. “Do you? Let the Prometheans and the old gods fight it out. I don’t care. I care about us surviving until the next sunrise.” She hefted the soul cage and gave Jack a smile. It wasn’t much of one, wan and exhausted as she was, but she did try. “This is the last bargaining chip we have. Morwenna gets us away from here, she can have it and then we’re done with her and I no longer give a fuck what her plan is.”
“They’re not going to do anything in the dark,” Jack pointed out. “Give you a few hours to realize this is a bad fucking plan.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Pete said. “We’re not going to beat her, Jack. Maybe a year ago I’d have been inclined to try, but things are different now.”
She prayed he wouldn’t argue with her anymore. She was too tired to keep trying to convince Jack that the attack plan wasn’t always the best plan.
“Never thought I’d see the day when fucking Prometheans beat me,” he grumbled.
“In the morning we’ll make the exchange,” Pete said. “And we’ll be alive, Jack. That’s the best deal I can think of. Only your pride is keeping you from seeing that.”
“I’m tired,” he snapped, and stretched out on the floor, rolling away from her.
Pete watched the fire for a long time, trying to believe the lie she’d told Jack, and Margaret, and herself, and not having any luck.
26.
When what passed for morning crept through the fog, and the villagers had retreated to whatever dank holes they crawled into to hide from the daylight, Pete, Jack, and Margaret walked the path Pete’d followed twice now, one asleep and once in memory.
The black rocks poked up all around them, but Pete saw tire tracks in the grass now, and a cluster of figures at the top of the hill.
Silver shapes flitted about, too, a pale counterpoint to the ravens that perched in a loose ring on rocks and twisted trees, and the occasional bloated corpse.
“Shit,” Jack muttered, scrubbing his thumb across his forehead. “He’s brought those fucking monsters with him.”
“Let me handle this,” Pete murmured. “Keep Margaret safe. That’s your job.”
“Pete…” he started, but she cut him off with a look, and then raised her voice toward the Prometheans.
“If you want your precious little rock back, you’re going to call off your low-rent Dementors and speak to me, Donovan!” Pete bellowed.
Faster than she’d give his a man his age credit for moving, he appeared from the clot of the ground, trailed hotly by Morwenna. They slowed, and the wraiths withdrew as he got close to Pete. Donovan sneered through the scratches and bandages on his face. “You’re like a cockroach, aren’t you?”
Pete pulled the soul cage from her pocket. “I believe you’re looking for this.”
Donovan’s eyes lit up, and he snatched for the soul cage, but Pete whipped it out of reach. “Ah-ah. You promise us safe passage out of here—a real promise, this time, and then we’ll talk.”
“How about I let my friends here drink you dry and take it from your corpse?” Donovan snapped.
Pete dropped the soul cage to the ground and positioned her boot over it. “I’ll smash this thing to bits before they even get a drop.”
Morwenna gave an involuntary cry, and Pete pinned her with her worst glare. “I want out of here, Morwenna. I didn’t ask to be any part of this, and I’m done. You do what you want with the soul cage, but before you get it, you do what I say for once.”
Morwenna pursed her lips, as if all this were a minor annoyance. Donovan, on the other hand, looked ready to pop.
“I’m going to clean your mind out, you little bitch,” he snarled. “Give it over, or the last thing you’ll remember will be your daughter dying in your arms, over and over again.”
“You so much as breathe on her and I’ll kill you,” Jack snarled. “I was ready to let you go—not forgive you, but at least get on with me life—but you just made my shit list all over again, boyo.” He toed up to Donovan, and Pete realized with a start that Jack was taller than his father, by a good few inches, and when he was angry he blew Donovan out of the water in terms of the hard man act. “I would like nothing better than to wring the life from your carcass by inches for every miserable fucking day of me life since you left but especially for this one, so please—fucking talk to my wife again.”
“Enough!” Morwenna shouted. She extended her hand to Pete. “I’ll take you out of here after I finish the ritual.”
“Not good enough.” Pete shook her head. “Now or never.”
“Then I might as well just have Victor shoot you—if he has the stones,” she tossed at Victor over her shoulder, “because I’m not leaving until I get what I came for. You can either leave with me at that time or not at all.”
Pete felt a grimace of pure irritation at how thoroughly Morwenna could take control of a situtation, but she moved her boot. Donovan swooped in and scooped up the soul cage, shoving her back so she would have gone on her arse in the mud if Jack hadn’t been there to catch her.
Morwenna nodded. “Good. Victor, take them up the hill and keep them quiet while we do what needs doing.”
Victor prodded all three of them into a loose knot at the edge of the black rocks. Pete watched the cairn rise from the mist. The pull was so strong she could feel it like a second heartbeat, and it was clear Morwenna was wallowing in it like a pig in a sty as she placed the soul cage at the apex of the black rocks.
Most rituals weren’t all chanting and incense, wearing robes and scribing ancient symbols. All you really needed for a ritual was a little chalk, some talent, and an intent.
The Prometheans moved into a circle, leaving Morwenna at the center. Donovan smirked at Pete over his shoulder.
“Can’t say I ever pegged you as a quitter, sweetheart,” he told her. “Disappointing. But then again, most of what Jackie’s chosen to do with his life is disappointing.”
Pete stayed quiet. Her stomach flipped, and she wondered how long she had, this close to the soul well, before she became another one of the shambling villagers. She wondered what had become of the hikers and the birdwatchers who’d come too close to this place. Worms? Or did they simply go mad and fall down a ravine somewhere to die?
“To the oldest of the old ones, to the things before men and the time before time,” Morwenna said. For the first time since Pete had met her, she spoke reverently and quietly, none of her usual arrogance in her posture.
“We bring you this gift,” Morwenna said, voice just above a whisper. “The soul of a mage, to do with as you will.”
She reached out and started to place her hand on the soul well. Pete looked at Jack. She had to time it just right, so no one had a chance to react.
“You know how you said letting her win was a bad idea?” she whispered to Jack.
He stared at her. Beyond him, Pete saw white shapes encroaching through the mist—worms, called back by the energy she could feel rising around her even now, strong enough to drown everyone in its path.
“For once, you were right,” Pete said, and shoved Donovan hard, knocking him aside.
“I am open to receive you!” Morwenna cried. “Come to me with all the power of the Merlin!”
Donovan grabbed for Pete, but she dove toward Morwenna and knocked the woman out of the way, closing her own fist over the soul cage.
All at once, the rising energy disappeared. Everything stopped, sound and breath and air. Pete thought she heard Margaret scream, and then she was in the void, inside the soul well, and the white nothingness had consumed her.
27.
The raven alighted on a tree above Pete. It was gray and long dead, just a husk barely able to support the bird’s weight.
I did tell you, it said.
“I’m not letting Morwenna use this place,” Pete said. “She’ll cover England in worms and zombies, and she’ll think she’s doing it for the greater good. So I’m shutting the well.”
No … the raven started. You don’t know what could happen …
The soul well wasn’t a physical drop, not really. It rushed up at her, a vortex of mist, full of shapes and screams. She was on a white plane with a gray tree, nowhere, among the stars. She was spread out across a thousand light years and compressed down to a single point, all at once.
“The worst thing that can happen is that I die,” she said. “But this thing started, and it’s got to have an end.”
It started because of what the crow-mage did, the raven sighed. It will not end, not simply because you want it to.
“There’s one sure way I know to drain power out of a place,” she told the raven.
No! The bird let out a distressed cry. You know that will be the end of you …
“Then I’ll end,” Pete said. “I told you, nothing lives forever.”
When she’d made the decision to lie to Jack the night before, to stop Morwenna, the shadow had been in the back of her mind, the whisper that it might come to this. But she couldn’t hesitate. As much as Belial might insist otherwise, she couldn’t do anything else. Couldn’t risk her daughter growing up in a world ruled by the white nothing.
Or by Morwenna Morgenstern.
If she did this, if she gave in to the howling energies around her, that would be that. The end, a period as final as her father’s lung cancer or a bullet fired from a gun.
If she did this, Lily would never know her. Jack would never be the same.
But if their world was this, the white place full of nothing but wasteland and misery, then it wouldn’t matter anyway. If she did this, her daughter would grow up in a world that allowed light and good dreams next to all the shadows and black magic swirling around her. Jack would get to remember her as strong, standing beside him, rather than wrung out, spent, and given up.
So she didn’t hesitate, but instead stepped forward until even the tiny white slice of world faded away, and there was nothing but her, alone in the in-between.
It was nothing like the last time she’d visited, when she’d tried to hold Jack’s soul back from crossing into the Land of the Dead. She stood in front of the flat where her
family had lived when she was a tiny kid, and everything looked very normal.
A shape opened the door and stepped out, and Pete saw the elegant woman in black, feathers for hair and obsidian eyes.
“You again,” the Morrigan sighed. “Can’t get rid of you, can I?” She grinned, blood dribbling from her pointed teeth. “Besides, I thought you belonged to my sister.”
“The Hecate washed her hands of me,” Pete said. “Wouldn’t do what she wanted.”
“She’s mercurial, that one,” said the Morrigan. “What a marvelous word, mercurial. Like mercury. Ever-changing, never still. Much like me.”
“Not the word I’d use,” said Pete.
The Morrigan laughed. “Here you are, trapped in Purgatory, faced with the gods, and you’ve still got a mouth.” She moved to Pete and stroked her cheek. “How rare you are, Pete.”
“I’m not trying to trifle with you,” Pete said. “I’m trying to shut the door that’s been opened from here to the daylight world.”
“Yeah,” the Morrigan said. “And I come here, at great personal risk, to tell you there’s only one way to do that.”
“I already know the price,” Pete sighed. “I’m not afraid of dying.”
The Morrigan shook her head. “You’re afraid of leaving him behind, though. Your Jack.” She made a spiteful sound. “You’re not the one he’s meant for, Petunia. I am. And I’ll have him, make no mistake.”
“Then why not just let me die, any number of times you could have?” Pete snarled. “Why keep fucking up my life, instead of just ending it? You’ve made it clear you have that power.” She jabbed her finger into the Morrigan’s chest. All her fear was gone now. When she had decided this was the end of the line, her fear had released her.
Nothing the Morrigan could do now would make anything worse.
“If I killed you, Jack would never help me,” the Morrigan said. “He’d spend eternity in Hell first, and you know it.” She spread her arms and feathers bloomed, wings forming from her fingers. Her eyes turned yellow, and the feathers spread over the rest of her body, covering her face as it elongated. “But if you’re lost in a noble fight I help you with, only to just barely let victory slip away, then Jack owes me his allegiance. And I’ll have it, Pete. Make no mistake.”
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