Black 01 - Street Magic

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Treadwell screamed defiance, but even as he howled he was pulled backward, away from Pete. The raven woman seized him, raked her talons through Treadwell, stared him in the face.

  "Your circle has closed, Algernon. So it must be for us all."

  He tried to scream, but the ravens fell on Treadwell, lifted him up and took away his eyes and his tongue and carried him through the bleak gates of iron and sorrow, the signpost to Purgatory atop their spires.

  I will find another. Treadwell sighed, the last tremor of his existence in the Black. I will find another who lives for power and cares not, and then I will come to claim you, Weir.

  "Piss off, wanker," Pete told him. "I'm not afraid of you."

  Treadwell's mouth gaped wide in wordless agony and then the raven woman cawed and the gates slammed shut with a clang that sent blackness into Pete's bones. The magic faded, the vision along with it, and she felt damp grass under her knees and palms, night dew soaking her trousers and cuffs.

  Jack grabbed her, held her, looked into her eyes. "Pete. Oh, bloody hell, Pete, you're all right?"

  "Yes." Pete tested her voice, found it raspy, as though she'd been out in a cold day for too long. "I mean, no. Bloody hell, Jack, I'm stabbed." She hacked out a cough and saw a few droplets of blood fly forth to land on the wilted grass. "Oh… that's not very good…"

  "Come on." Jack helped her up as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour. "Got to get you to a hospital. And me, too—sodding sorcerers jabbed me well and good. Probably get lockjaw."

  "He's gone," Pete murmured. "Treadwell. Back… back into the bleak gates. I sent him away… to the raven woman, and she took him…"

  Jack looked down at her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Un-bound exorcism is a nice trick, Petunia. Only met a handful that could manage it without a circle."

  "Treadwell made me mad," Pete said. "And don't sodding call me 'Petunia.' Just because… I shared a confidence… doesn't make it a bloody invitation."

  "Glad to see near death hasn't softened you," Jack said. "I'd be disappointed if nearly losing your soul to a hungry ghost was all it took."

  The neat visitor's hut came into view a few hundred meters down the path.

  "Jack…" Pete ground her feet to a stop, causing them both to stumble. "I touched magic. I… I used it. What does that mean? What's going to happen?"

  Jack wrapped his arm more tightly around her shoulders and didn't answer for too long, time enough to choose what not to say, but Pete didn't care any longer, just cared that he was there, next to her, solid and corporeal and Jack.

  "It means just what I thought all along, luv—you're strong. No matter what any toerag psychiatrist says, you've got a talent. And a temper."

  "I tried so hard not to…" Pete started to cry, and choked it back with a breath that made her hack more blood, in turn.

  "Pete." Jack held her, rocked her. "It doesn't mean the end of your life, luv. May seem that way, but you'll still pay your electric and go to work and eat greasy takeaway when you're too tired to cook supper. You're not cursed. You've got magic, and people will try to abuse it, but you're in control of it. You're holding it in your hands."

  Pete swallowed and managed to nod. "I suppose I am."

  Jack lifted her chin and looked in her eyes. "Oi. You believe me, don't you?"

  Pete started walking again, arm around Jack's waist. She let herself lean on him, and he stumbled a bit so she let him lean on her.

  "Of course I do."

  EPILOGUE

  The Streets

  "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

  Chapter Forty-six

  The sky spat rain as winter took hold, and Pete crouched inside her slicker, trying to hoist her umbrella over Jack's much higher head while still gaining the benefit of coverage.

  "Give it up, luv," he said, taking it from her and handing it to a hobo nodding near a tube vent.

  "I'm cold," Pete protested, her teeth chattering. "If I catch pneumonia and die I'll rattle around your flat for the rest of your life, throwing vases across the room and making the telly explode."

  "First of all," Jack said, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, "that's a poltergeist. You'd be a shade. Second of all, I don't own a telly."

  "That bit about me dying didn't faze you at all, eh?" Pete asked. Jack shrugged.

  "You haven't yet, luv."

  Pete checked her wristwatch. "I should go. I have my last postsurgery checkup in an hour."

  "Going to have a nice Frankenstein scar, are you?" Jack asked.

  Pete unbuttoned her slicker and pulled up her jumper to show the slightly jagged line of stitches on her stomach, like an elongated Z. Jack winced. "You stuck yourself a good one, didn't you?"

  "I had to be sure I'd make it over to you," Pete said. "I don't think a light scratch would have exactly done it."

  "I should get you a taxi," Jack said, stepping to the curb. Pete pulled him back.

  "I'll manage on the tube—I've made it a whole week without getting so dizzy I fall over."

  They paused at the entrance to the Metropolitan line. Finally Pete said, "It's all right. I know you don't like hospitals." She didn't mention that thanks to her injury-fueled journey into Jack's nightmares, she knew exactly why he didn't care for them.

  "Meet you at the Mayfair afterward." The Mayfair Arms was the pub around the corner from Pete's doctor's surgery. She nodded.

  "We'll have a bite of supper. Jack, there's something I need to ask you, now that things have settled…"

  Jack's eyes unfocused and he looked past her, down the stairs of the tube. "Oh, bugger all…"

  Pete was spun around and into a portly gentleman wielding a briefcase as Jack shoved past her and took the stairs into the tube two at a time. Pete blinked the rain out of her eyes. "Bloody hell. Sorry. Sorry," she apologized to the man.

  "Those louts should be arrested," the man huffed. Pete took off after Jack as quickly as her healing incision would allow. She'd been at her desk in MIT ever since she'd been released from the hospital three weeks ago, and it was driving her mad. Newell refused to tell her when she might be back on duty as an active inspector. Her only comfort was that he seemed to believe her story of following the kidnap suspects to Highgate and getting stabbed in the ensuing struggle. Ollie, bless him, had covered his end and made no mention of Jack in his reports.

  "Jack!" she shouted over the rumble of late-afternoon commuters packing the station. His blond head bobbed behind a pillar, headed for the tracks.

  Pete caught up with him just as his feet crossed the safety line and his arms reached out in a scooping motion, to pull an invisible phantom back from the spitting rails.

  The shriek of the train's horn blinded Pete to everything else, and she snatched Jack by the collar of his coat and deliberately fell backward, praying her weight would be enough to hold him.

  The train blew hot dragon's breath in her face as the brakes locked and it squealed to a stop. The sound mingled with a few screams from waiting passengers who had witnessed Jack's attempted swan dive.

  "It's fine!" Pete shouted above the echoes of the train. She dug out her warrant card and flashed it to the four corners, keeping one knee firmly planted on Jack's arm as he struggled under her. "Metropolitan Police. I have the situation under control."

  Missing a train was worse than a man almost landing on the tracks to most of the commuters around Pete, and they moved on, whispering among themselves.

  "The girl… she went right over the edge… she burned up on the rails…" Jack's eyes were mostly white, and he twitched restlessly as if in a fever dream.

  "What girl?" Pete demanded. "Jack, there was nobody going over the edge but you."

  He blinked at her, and then sagged. "Fucking hell, Pete, I'm sorry."

  Pete slumped when she realized that Jack had not, in fact, gone any madder than he already was. Her knife wound hurt
a great deal from the fall. "Your sight."

  He nodded, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. They were their natural color when he took his hands away. "I saw her clear as day. Pretty little blond thing, couldn't have been more than fifteen. She went down those steps with such purpose… I knew what she was about, just had to be in time to stop her…"

  Pete got to her feet with some difficulty and offered Jack an arm. He took it, and kept leaning on her. "I can't do this, Pete. I maintained while we were trying to find Treadwell but I can't anymore. I'm very sorry."

  Hearing Jack speak in a defeated tone wasn't normal—it was tilt-the-sun-the-wrong-way odd, in fact. Pete looked up at him. "No, Jack."

  "You should go on to your appointment," he said. "I'm going to take care of this problem. I'll be at home if you're looking for me." He grinned without humor. "Though I don't suppose you would."

  "If you go get a fix," Pete said. "Enjoy it. It will be the last time."

  Jack laughed, not a pleasant sound, knife-edged with desperation. "Going to chain me up in your cellar and take my demons out, Pete?"

  "No," Pete said. "You and I are going to do what you should have done at the start of all this, and find a way to hold back your sight without sticking death up your arm twice a day."

  "Can't be done," said Jack. He shook his head, speaking more, but Pete's train pulled into the station and drowned him out. She inserted herself into the line of boarding passengers, looking back at Jack as he walked away.

  "Use a clean sharp!" she shouted after him, drawing any number of odd looks.

  "Can't be done, Petunia!" he yelled again, without looking at her. "You can't ride in on the white steed and pull me back from the dragon's jaws!"

  Pete glared at the back of Jack's head as the train moved out of the station. "Just watch me."

  Chapter Forty-seven

  It was nearly eight by the time Pete arrived at Jack's flat, long dark. Her wound was pleasantly numb after the shot of painkillers Dr. Abouhd had given her, clucking over the recent inflammation.

  She tried the door and found it unlocked, as usual. The flat was dark and still except for the rotten ice-cold spittle of rain brushing against the high windows.

  "Jack?" Pete said softly, fearing the worst. He grunted and turned on a low lamp with a red shade, a new addition since the last time she'd been. He had a new, marginally less tatty sofa with lion's feet, and a matching chair as well. "Been shopping?" It was the most inoffensive thing Pete could think to say.

  Jack grunted again. "Downstairs neighbor died. Mrs. Ramamurthy. Nicked them before her ruddy son and his ruddy MP3 player blaring ruddy techno music could sell it off." His eyes were hooded and dreamy, and his voice had that underwater quality of deep sleep.

  "How long ago did you take the hit?" Pete asked.

  "Not long…" Jack murmured. "Forgot how bloody sweet it tastes."

  "Then you'll have a good memory to tide you through yet another long and painful withdrawal," Pete said pleasantly. Jack moaned.

  "Sodding sadist."

  "And enjoying every minute of it, make no mistake," Pete said. She patted his leg. "I'll put the kettle on and get started."

  "With what?" Jack demanded, throwing an arm dramatically over his eyes as Pete switched on the wall sconces.

  "Jack, you have eight billion bloody books in this place—one of them has got to have something to help hold back the sight."

  "You think I haven't checked?" Jack demanded. His petulance was a relief, much closer to normal.

  "I think that I am going to check to satisfy myself," Pete said. "And that you are going to help me."

  Jack moaned and sank back on the sofa again.

  Pete put the kettle on and went to the wall of books. They were in no discernable order she could see, the volumes in languages she could read few and far between. Wasn't this a brilliant bloody idea?

  "Have you thought about tattooing?" she said a good time later, after Jack was sitting upright and had poured three mugs of hot tea and a glass of whisky into himself.

  Jack shrugged. "Got a few. Tattoos protect you from the physical, though, hexes and the like. The sight is a doorway between this land and the land of the dead."

  "What if you, I don't know, forced your will into them or something?" Pete asked. "To hold back the sight?"

  "I can't hold it back to begin with," Jack said. "Magic tattoos—can't believe I'm bloody considering this, by the way. I sound like a New Age git. Bespelled tattoos aren't unheard of, but it takes an enormous charge to make the magic stick, here in this world, under the skin." He downed the dregs of his tea. "Much as it pains me to admit it, more power than I have."

  "Not more power than I have," Pete said, but Jack was already shaking his head.

  "No, Pete. You don't know how to control yourself, even if it did work. You could melt the flesh off me bones."

  "I don't see any difference between that chance and the chance you take that your sodding smack dealer slipped you a bad hit because he was running low on protection money this month," Pete said, folding her arms. Jack recognized the posture and threw up his hands.

  "Forget it! Not going to happen, Pete."

  She sank down, holding the old dusty book that outlined symbols of protection, where she'd gotten the idea for the tattoos. "Do you want to keep on this way, Jack? Do you like being an addict, or a madman?" She took a deep breath. "Tell me now. Please. Before I break my heart against you again."

  "Course I don't," Jack muttered after a long moment. "But there is no other way, Pete. I can either wander the streets not knowing what's real and what the sight is showing me, or I can poison myself and keep a grip on what little life I have left. I choose that. So hate me if you want. It'd be better if you left now, I think."

  He lit a cigarette and moved to go into his bedroom.

  "If the tattoos don't work," Pete said, "you haven't lost anything. And it's not like you have a needle phobia."

  Jack's eyebrows went up. "There you go, morbid again."

  "You're a bad influence on me," said Pete. "Jack," she said impulsively, when his back was turned. "We were interrupted this afternoon, but there's really something I need to ask you about the cemetery, about what happened…"

  He sighed. "Don't tell me that sodding Inspector Heath has been after you with more questions about 'What really happened.'" He made finger quotes around the phrase.

  "No, it's not that," said Pete. "Ollie's taken care of it. It's about… it's something I saw, when I was in-between with you. When you were standing in front of that headstone, you were… well… sort of glowing and the glow was… unpleasant."

  "Aural echo," said Jack. "My spirit and magic outside my body. Not unusual for mages caught in-between."

  "I know what an aura is," said Pete impatiently. "MG was always on about auras. This was different." Thinking about the inky flames that covered Jack's spirit being, the raven shape so similar to the woman who had watched Pete receive the heart, made her skin crawl, the way the animal mind backs away from something utterly alien.

  "What did you see, Pete? All of it. You're hiding something."

  "The woman… the one who took Treadwell back to the land of the dead. She spoke to him like she knew him."

  Jack got up, paced a few steps, came back to the sofa. "The raven woman, you called her when you woke up."

  Pete nodded. "She was. Black feathers for hair. Cruel bird's eyes, staring right through me." She waited for Jack's scoffing, but it didn't come. "What is it?"

  "Nothing," Jack muttered finally. "Probably nothing. But Treadwell did have help to stay for so long and her being there, so close… it just crawls my skin is all."

  Pete came and sat next to him. "Who was she?"

  "She was exactly who you said she was," Jack murmured. "The raven woman. The Goddess of the Morrigan. Death's walker in the Black."

  "Does me seeing her mean some horrible omen?" Pete guessed. Jack shook his head.

  "She won't be bothering you
again, Pete. She came for Treadwell because you called her. You spoke to her with the magic of a Weir, and she took back a spirit that had more than outstayed his welcome. More than that… I don't know. She's a treacherous companion, the raven woman."

  "Let's work it out, then," said Pete. "Let's summon, or read books, or ask Mosswood…"

  Jack held up a hand. "Pete. One lesson you learn quickly if you live any length of time with magic is that you leave the old gods to their old ways, and don't meddle." He worried the fringe on the arm of the sofa. "The Morrigan is the patron of the Fiach Dubh, the sort of magic I learned to work in. I'm not afraid of you seeing her, but I sure as bloody fuck-all wouldn't go looking for her to have a spot of tea. Unless you've got some reason to be concerned you've offended her, Pete… we're letting go of it."

  "Have you always had that shadow over you, the crow?" Pete said. "Because of her?"

  Jack nodded. "Yes. It's what I am—the crow-mage. Can't change that. Not something you volunteer for."

  "If you're sure it's all right…" Pete murmured, pushing down half-formed suspicions that croaked underneath her thoughts, about Treadwell and his screams and the Morrigan and her multitude of black shadow-crows. She stood, collected more books to give her hands something to do. She wouldn't tell Jack about her dreams. The shrouded man. The bird's heart, and the merciless gaze of the Morrigan. How Pete still saw it against the backs of her eyes when she shut them, inhuman and indescribably ancient. Because Jack would worry more than he already was, and she was trying to protect him, wasn't she?

  "What about you, Jack? What I saw in your nightmare, the black around your spirit-form? Don't tell me that was right and natural as well, because it wasn't. I felt it, and it was rotten and evil."

  Jack came and put his hands on her shoulders, sliding them down to grip her arms. "Pete. I'm going to ask you something and I want you to do it, with no questions, and no argument. Understand?"