Collared

by TA Moore

  The words rattled out of him, and for a second, it seemed as though it was all that was holding him up. He sighed and hung his head, preoccupied with wiping the mustard off his fingers on the stiff paper.

  “You don’t think I tried?” Jack braced his boot on the wall and leaned on his knee. “If you want rid of me, Harris, you need to tell me where the dead woman is now and where Ambrose lives.”

  Harris scratched his jaw and finally looked up at Jack. He shrugged. “She’ll be at the morgue. And I thought you and Ambrose had… ah… you know.”

  “He moved.”

  “After?” Harris asked as he raised his eyebrows. There was a flicker of old almost-cruel mockery in his tired eyes as Jack nodded. “Ouch. Look, I don’t know his address. I can check back at the station. Say I want to check in on him. That all?”

  Jack plucked the sandwich out of his hands. He ignored Harris’s startled “hey” and balled the sandwich up roughly in his hands. Red-stained grease dribbled out of it and smeared the pavement.

  “Get me into the morgue,” Jack threw back over his shoulder as he walked away. “Then we’re done.”

  He tossed the dripping sandwich into the metal can chained up next to the food van and pulled a fresh handkerchief out of his pocket to fastidiously wipe his hands.

  Harris caught him up with him, red-faced and white-eared with anger. He grabbed Jack’s shoulder and yanked him back onto his heels. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Harris demanded. “You’re not my wife. You don’t get to—”

  Someone screamed, high and shrill with horror. Then other lower voices joined in, full of stunned fucks.

  “Holy fuck!”

  “His hand. Jesus! His fucking hand!”

  Jack and Harris turned. The bony man in the truck grinned that fixed smile at them and raised his mutilated left hand. The fingers were chopped down to the knuckle.

  “Did you enjoy your sandwich?” he asked. “Sweat, blood, and tears goes into every one.”

  Harris retched and pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. The high color had seeped from his face and left him a greasy gray. A woman threw her half-eaten sandwich down and ran to shove her fingers down her throat and puke into the garbage can.

  “Lost your appetite?” Jack asked. The cruelty in that caught him by surprise, but maybe Harris wasn’t the only one tired of losing. He rubbed his hands on the handkerchief again and then handed the grease-stained linen to Harris. “You should probably deal with this before we go to the morgue.”

  Harris turned, retched sour bile into the gutter, and then fished his phone out of his pocket as he stood up.

  “I’ve given up on it going away,” he said miserably and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “All I want is to just not look at it. Why can’t I just do that?”

  “Sometimes they look at you,” Jack said. “Leave town, Harris. The boom won’t last.”

  THE PATHOLOGIST led the way into the morgue. Jack’s footsteps echoed loudly off the blue-green tiles as he followed down into the sunken lab. Harris had walked him in through the door and blustered his way into a viewing, but he wasn’t willing to go any farther. Jack hoped the big man would take his advice and leave town. There were things that had an independent interest in him now, and it wouldn’t get better.

  Craven County Morgue had started its life as a public swimming pool and then been repurposed after a train accident just outside of town filled the small local hospital with too many dead.

  More dead, the pathologist at the time had remarked in his notes, than seemed reasonable for a small passenger train on a little-used line.

  With no one to claim the dead, most of them were buried on the grounds. After that, no one in town much fancied a swim there, so the building was deeded over to the hospital. Before he died, the pathologist funded a small plaque to be set into stone in the makeshift unhallowed graveyard—We know where we put you. An odd turn of phrase, but a nice thought.

  The pathologist wheeled herself across the deep blue lane markers toward the long stretch of low silver cabinets on the far side of the room. They looked like filing cabinets, but with only two wide drawers in each.

  Doctor Maguire reached back to pull a clipboard out of the bag on the back of her wheelchair. After a quick check, she maneuvered herself to the side, stuck the brakes on, and hauled the drawer open. The cold came out with it, a chilly draft that eddied around Jack’s legs as though there were still water in the pool.

  “Ah, good, she’s still here,” Maguire said. She pushed her glasses up her nose and her pen into her hair and then twisted around to shoot a glance at Jack. “Do you need me to hold your hand? There was a pileup on the road out of town. Five dead so far. I’m swamped.”

  Jack stepped back out of her way. “I’ll be fine. Not my first corpse.”

  She snorted as she took the brake off the chair and headed toward the ramp out of the pool. “That sounds weird coming from someone who’s not a doctor. Let one of the techs know when you’re leaving. They’ll tidy her away.”

  The chair squeaked as she leaned and pushed her hands along the wheels in quick, brisk strokes to propel her up the ramp. Jack stepped forward to look at the body.

  She was definitely dead and probably Dale Kinney’s missing wife. Death had taken the definition from her nose and jaw, and the water had softened the skin on the bones, but underneath was the woman who’d smiled at her first husband as though he were the sun.

  Someone had opened her throat from ear to ear, a mirror of Dale’s injury. That would have been the final thing she felt. Without thinking about it, Jack crossed himself before he reached for the sheet that covered her from the collarbones down.

  “Fuck,” Jack muttered as he rocked back on his heels.

  Someone had laid…. Jack paused as he realized he didn’t know her name. He’d been so focused on the brass ring of his soul that he hadn’t even thought to ask. Now he didn’t know who to ask. Someone had laid the dead woman open from collarbone to ankle, a thorough filleting that had peeled her stomach open and pulled the meat of her thighs back from the bone. But what Harris meant were the pale ripe mushrooms that frilled the edges of the wounds like flowers and the bright capped toadstools that sprouted out of the deepest slice in the meat.

  Whatever had happened to her had been where Hell had fully bloomed—probably not the Badends, or Clem would have heard, at least, a whisper about something going down. It hadn’t been a ritual either—she wouldn’t have lived through having her stomach sliced open like that, and there was no good reason to cut a corpse’s throat. So someone had cut her open postmortem to….

  He blanked on why. Maybe it had just been brutality for brutality’s sake, a cultist whose rituals weren’t only dictated by the infernal’s hunger. Or they thought whatever she’d taken from Math had been inside her.

  One of the fat toadstools popped with a soft, distinct sigh and the red cap went flaccid as it spat spores into the air. Jack covered his mouth with his sleeve and stepped back. Clem’s powder hadn’t worked on him, but he didn’t want to risk that this would. The spores settled on cold, dead meat and quickly sprouted tiny white nodules.

  Jack took another step back. Maybe there was more to learn from the body. He had neither the tools nor the knowledge to pry it out from the bones. Some old habit raised his hand in benediction, although even the most generous interpretation of the rules would ban the dead woman from sacrament, since she was both dead and corrupted.

  Before he could finish the gesture, the hook between his shoulders yanked tightly, as though it were going to unhook his shoulder blades. Jack staggered into the stainless steel of one of the mortuary tables. It rattled under the impact and rolled away. He hit the ground with the sharp crack of kneecap on tile, and the pain of it jabbed up his thigh and into his groin.

  On the table Math wrapped himself around the corpse. The yellow ripples of exposed fat pulled back under the skin, and the stomach knit itself back together as shorn brown hair blanched i
nto curdled-milk-pale curls and a cock rested pale and heavy on a thick thigh. There had been a time when Jack had wondered what it meant if Math used a female vessel, even if he remade it into his own shape. In the end, though, it was as irrelevant to Math as whether it was a steer or a cow that made Jack’s boots.

  “Don’t bless my vessels,” Math said as he propped himself up on his elbow. He was naked, and Jack felt the breathless pull of last night’s pleasure in his gut. “It’s like putting down ant poison in your own ant farm.”

  He stretched. Despite the implausibility of it, he still wore Jack’s borrowed clothes, even though the original versions were probably sealed up in an evidence bag somewhere nearby. As he sat up, he looked down at Jack on the floor and licked his lips.

  “I like the kneeling, though,” he said. “I should put you on your knees more often.”

  Jack stubbornly forced himself back onto his feet. His back felt raw, as though his shoulder blades had sliced through his skin, but his cock still stirred with its usual disregard for common sense.

  “How did you…. You said you did a deal with Dale,” he said. “You didn’t mention his wife.”

  “Mallory.” Math smiled slyly when Jack didn’t hide his surprise quickly enough. “Contracts need signing, Jack, and a successful demon remembers debtors’ names.”

  “You should have told me that.”

  Something dangerous sparked in the back of Math’s black eyes. He raised a finger and wagged it at Jack in a mute warning that Jack had gone too far and reached the end of the leash that Math allowed him.

  Jack ignored it.

  “This isn’t a game, Math,” he said harshly. “There’s a little girl out there. With people who murdered her parents.”

  Math hopped off the table and stalked over to Jack. His bare feet slapped against the tiles with each step, and he grabbed Jack’s chin in coarse, cold fingers to tilt his head down.

  “Get back what was taken from me,” he said slowly, his voice dry as ashes, “and you won’t need to worry about the girl child.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Math kissed him with quicksilver tongue and lips that tasted like rubbing alcohol. “Maybe next time,” he mocked into the seam of Jack’s mouth. Then he kicked Jack’s feet from under him and put him back down on his knees. “What did you do in the Badends, Jack? Rumors are flying like nightjars, and my name is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. In case I wasn’t fucking clear, I wanted to keep a low profile.”

  The hard tiles were not kind on the knees. Jack wasn’t getting older, not anymore, but he wasn’t getting any younger either. He grabbed Math’s wrist and dug his fingers in as he pulled his chin free.

  “Do any of the rumors say you’re weak?” he asked.

  Math folded himself down in one smooth movement until he knelt with Jack, their knees pressed together and their eyes almost on a level. He left his wrist in Jack’s grip, fingers relaxed and muscles loose.

  “They say you faced down a bar full of demons with nothing but a whiskey bottle and a foul mouth.”

  Jack snorted. That was rich coming from a demon. They swore like profanity was their first language.

  “Do you feel the call to the priesthood again?” Math ran his hand up the inside of Jack’s thigh and traced the seam of his jeans all the way up to his cock. Math cupped it and squeezed. “Want to put this back under lock and key? Seal me away somewhere I can’t… tempt you?”

  Jack laughed with a crack of bleak humor. “I didn’t feel like a priest. I felt like my dad’s son, all bluff and bastard. But it got the job done.”

  Math’s smile was wild and bright and pleased. That ridiculous, reckless smile had made Jack do… everything.

  “You know where it is?”

  “Not yet. I know who does.”

  Math gave a delighted crow’s croak of laughter and leaned in toward Jack. He casually pulled his arm free, curled his hand around the nape of Jack’s neck, and stroked down the tight tendon in Jack’s throat with his thumb. In the chill of the morgue, his breath was warm against Jack’s jaw.

  “Is that why we’re in this corpse palace? Who?”

  Jack thought about Ambrose. He probably should have done more of that all along. He’d known Ambrose was in trouble, seen it in his nervous hands and sleep-bruised eyes, and he’d done nothing about it. Maybe there was nothing he could have done. Like Harris, some people just saw too much to go back. But he could have tried.

  Instead he’d fucked Ambrose because he needed something, and he ignored what Ambrose… not needed—because it would ruin him—but wanted. The motivation might have been different, but Ambrose had wanted to touch the Infernal just as much as Janey and her grabby hands on a demon’s street corner.

  Or Clem.

  “Let me deal with them,” he said.

  Math tilted his head to the side and tightened his fingers.

  “You don’t want me to hurt them?”

  “No.”

  “You care about them? This ‘who’ whose name you won’t tell me.”

  Jack shrugged. “I’m human. Still. I guess. We care about lots of things.”

  Math tightened his hold enough to pinch. “I’m not. I don’t,” he said, and Jack hated the clench of lust in his balls at the possessive rasp. “You’re mine, Jack. Signed and sealed.”

  “He’s my friend,” Jack said, but it wasn’t true, not really, and Math could smell the deceit on Jack’s breath. He narrowed his eyes, and Jack felt the itch of the contract scrape against his spine like something solid. He sucked in a quick, harsh breath and admitted the truth. “He’s my fault. I needed his help, and I didn’t help him back. Math, please? Let me deal with him. I know—I think—he’s involved, but I could be wrong. If I am, I don’t want to break him.”

  Math kissed him again. It was slow and thorough and drew blood as Math bit ownership into Jack’s lips with sharp teeth. Even the thought of the assembled dead behind their stainless steel doors couldn’t stop Jack’s cock getting hard.

  “If he tells us what I need to know, I’ll let you handle him,” Math promised finally. “If he doesn’t, I’ll reach under his fingernails, spool out his veins, and make him eat them.”

  Jack winced. It wasn’t that it ever slipped his mind what Math was, but some reminders were particularly effective. He cupped Math’s face in his hand.

  “He will,” he said. “He’s a good man.” Although Jack wasn’t really sure of that anymore.

  Math shrugged. “He’ll tell you.” He stood up, all fluid, boneless grace as though someone had just pulled a string attached to his skull, and strode toward the ramp out of the pool. “Or he’ll tell me. That’s his only real choice.”

  Jack scrambled up off the tiles with a great deal less grace. The bruises he’d collected over the day hurt, and the ache of his cock under tight jeans didn’t help.

  “I thought you wanted me to handle this myself.” Jack’s brain nudged him that he’d missed something, and he glanced up at the windows and the blue, daylight sky. “How are you even here? It’s not the Witching Hour, and the morgue is nowhere near Hell.”

  Math didn’t look back. His voice echoed off the high tiled walls as he said, “It’s always closer than you’d think. But Mallory brought Hell back with her.”

  Jack shuddered as he thought of the frilled mushrooms rooted in wet red meat and the eager, fruiting toadstools seeded generations in the tangle of guts. For lack of a better recourse, Jack grabbed a liter bottle of ethanol and doused the empty steel table and the crumpled ball of fabric with it. He didn’t know if it would do any good, but hopefully it wouldn’t hurt. The smell was sharp and heady—on the verge of familiar, just a few distillations away from the moonshine his dad used to drink when money was tight—and he grimaced as he tossed the empty bottle away and jogged after Math.

  As Jack fell into step next to him, Math glanced over at him. “You know there’s not enough disinfectant in the world to stop Hell’s bloom. Eventually we’ll take this town
and then another and then everything.”

  Jack shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Not today.”

  “Not today,” Math agreed. “But we can’t wait too long. We aren’t the only ones with an interest.”

  6

  THE PROBLEM with going to good people for help with Hell is that they’ve banked so many hours of good works in their souls. They don’t want to risk that for your much shittier soul. Ask a sinner to lend you a hand—we’ve got nothing to lose.

  JACK’S STOMACH sank as he turned onto the street mentioned in Harris’s text, and the last hope that he’d been wrong about Ambrose gave up and sank. It wasn’t as bad as Badends or even Kinney’s blighted neighborhood, but someone on this long avenue of old Queen Anne-style houses had dealings with Hell. The shadow of it lay along the street, in the pods of crows that expectantly lined rooftops, bikes that rusted against the sides of houses because the kids didn’t want to play outside anymore, and the dead trees that wilted—stricken—in the middle of lushly watered lawns. For Sale signs poked up on long white poles from a good five houses.

  And the abscess that generated the infection was the tall, thin, blue house on the corner that Harris had said to look for. The paint on the layered wood shingles was covered with dry raised blisters that wept black fluid down the side of the house. The round windows in the sharp-edged tower were filled with shadows, and a dead ring of grass spread out from the house.

  “You have to remember,” Math said in Jack’s ear, “we like good people. The evil are a pound a penny.”

  It was hard to tell, but Jack thought Math might have meant to be kind.

  They got off the bike and crossed the sidewalk to the low, rusted iron fence. It creaked like an injured dog as Jack pushed it open and it stuck in a crack in the pavement. Something skittered across the lawn, under the shadow of the half-dead shrubbery, and up a tree. It screeched at them from its safe perch until Math turned to look for it, and it shut up and retreated to avoid his black-eyed gaze.