Collared

by TA Moore

  He focused on a tree that still, in spite of all the Aprons could do, had a few green leaves sprouting on it. There was a chance that—as big as the wolf was—he could keep ahead of it in the thick shrub.

  Six feet away—five… four…. Something grabbed the back of Jack’s jacket and yanked. His feet went out from under him, and he crashed to the ground. A booted paw with claws poking out through once-expensive leather trainers kicked Jack in the side.

  “I’ll take the little bitch,” the wolf slurred as he reached down and closed his fist around Jack’s head. He squeezed, and Jack felt the loud, painful pulse of blood in his ears over the creak of bone. “Then I can go through the mirror. I won’t need a human skin then.”

  Jack barely heard the blast over the pain in his head. He saw what was left of the wolf’s head spray over his chest. Its teeth scattered like dice and bounced off the hard, blighted ground. For a moment Jack just stared blankly, and then, just in time, he realized what would fall next. He rolled, tucked awkwardly to protect Tracy, and the headless, heavy body of the wolf clipped his shoulder as it crashed to the dirt.

  He glanced from it to Ambrose, who stood with a shotgun braced against his shoulder. Bruises stippled the sides of Ambrose’s face, and the leather apron he wore was ragged and singed. Jack pushed himself clumsily to his feet.

  “Whose side are you on now?” Jack asked.

  Ambrose looked hurt as he lowered the gun. “I killed him. I saved you.”

  “Why?” Jack asked sharply. “So you can be the one to go through the mirror?”

  A muscle twitched in Ambrose’s jaw, and he flicked the gun around. The barrel had to scorch his hand, but he clutched it as he extended it to Jack.

  “I’m already through the mirror, Jack,” he said bitterly. “If you don’t trust me, I can’t blame you. I got it… everything… wrong, and it wasn’t even for the right reasons. I love you, but we can’t stay here.”

  Jack glanced at the gun and grimaced. “I can’t hit the broadside of a barn. Keep it. We need to get back to the car.”

  Ambrose flipped the gun around again and gripped the stock. They headed into the trees, and the ground was uneven and untrustworthy in the dark. It slowed them down to a nervous jog.

  Jack glanced down at Tracy. “You okay, kid?”

  Her eyes were still screwed shut despite the tears in the dirt on her face. “I think there’s a slug in my hair,” she sniffled. “I can feel it.”

  Jack picked the bit of wolf off of her scalp. “It’s just a leaf,” he lied.

  She whined and clutched him tighter.

  In the dark it was hard to tell if they were headed in the right direction. Downhill, Jack told himself as he staggered and tripped over thick roots. As long as he was headed down, they’d get to the road.

  They ran through thin dead trees until their legs hurt and Jack’s shoulder was soaked from Tracy’s sobs. The screams behind them faded, but the normal sounds of the woods didn’t leak back in.

  “I wanna go home,” Tracy whimpered.

  Ambrose shot one of the haints who’d gotten bored of the Aprons and come in search of easier prey. She screamed through a perfect face as her flayed, stingray-splayed body dissolved in a red mist. The parched, skeletal trees sucked the liquid in as though it were water.

  “We should be at the road by now.” Ambrose panted as he cracked the shotgun open to reload. “I’ve come up and down this hill a dozen times. More. It never takes this long. We’ve taken a wrong turn.”

  “Just keep going,” Jack said. “Unless you have any idea where we should go?”

  Ambrose looked around, exhaled raggedly, and ran.

  Finally the trees thinned ahead of them, and dark, thick foliage sprouted to what faint light there was from the stars. Ambrose gave a relieved sigh and pushed his jog into a limping run.

  Jack hesitated. He reached up and plucked one of the leaves from the tree. It was thick and leathery to the touch, and its thick veins pumped wet liquid over his fingers.

  “What is it?” Tracy asked. He looked down into eyes that were so pale a blue they looked like water.

  Dale Kinney had been Black Irish. Under the glaze of death, Mallory had hazel eyes.

  “Just a leaf,” Jack said as he dropped the leaf and forced himself into a run. “Ambrose, wait. Ambrose.”

  Ahead of him Ambrose looked back, his shaggy hair tossed in a foul wind, but he didn’t stop.

  “Ben!”

  That did it. Ambrose stumbled to a stop just a few feet from the edge of the trees and turned back, so at least he didn’t see it coming.

  A black briar, thorned with pale hollow needles, stabbed through his back and out of his stomach. It curled around him and yanked him backward, out of the trees.

  Tracy gave a shrill, terrified scream and pounded on Jack’s shoulders with her one good fist. “I don’t like it here,” she wailed. “I don’t. I wanna go.”

  He hugged her tighter. “I don’t either. But hey, I’ve still got a plan.”

  She didn’t look more convinced than the first time he’d told her, but she nodded shakily. Jack put her down on her feet and held her hand as they walked toward the light—torchlight, not headlights.

  Zachary had lost one of his beady rat eyes, and the haints had clawed away enough skin to uncover his hidden chin. He still smirked as he stood on a large polished disk of black stone. A huge gray creature lurked behind him—mostly a horse but with the jaws and feet of a dog—as blood dripped sticky and infected down its back legs from its shorn, never-to-heal sac.

  Bits of haint were caught in its jaws.

  “Looking for someone?” Zachary asked. He had to hold his bottom lip in place when he spoke. A crook of his finger dragged Ambrose into view, the vine wrapped around him red-thorned as it pulsed and sucked out his blood. “Give me the girl. I’ll give you the detective.”

  Tracy started to step forward, but Jack tightened his grip and pulled her back. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Zachary clenched his hands into fists and huffed down his nose. It took him a second to gain enough control to actually speak.

  “How do you expect to stop me?” he asked as he limped forward. One hand gestured to the castrated demon-steed behind him. “I could get the niver, Hell’s own steed, to kill you. Command the trees to take her.”

  A briar whipped and gave Tracy’s braid a cruel yank. It made her yelp and shrink closer to Jack.

  “If you think I harbor unclean lust,” Zachary said, “you can unburden yourself of the fear now. The price to command the niver is considered… steep.”

  He reached down and lifted his apron. Jack covered Tracy’s eyes just in time. Blood and pulp was all that was left between Zachary’s legs. The sharp teeth marks of the niver were raked into his thighs and up onto his stomach.

  “So give her to me,” he demanded as he dropped the leather again. “Her father sold her to me—a dowry of silver for his own child.”

  “He didn’t,” Tracy screamed. “My daddy didn’t!”

  “No,” Jack said. “He didn’t.”

  Zachary spat and nearly lost that loose bit of lip with the gesture. “So he changed his mind. A qualm struck the Candleman. He probably realized the power she has. You think I haven’t heard of you, Jack? Jack in the jacket, always there to stick his nose in. So you know the rules well enough to understand that seller’s remorse gets you nowhere in Hell.”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t tell him the truth.”

  Zachary winked roguishly with his empty eye socket. “I didn’t tell him the girl had power. I didn’t tell him I was going to kill him anyhow. But I told him no lies.”

  “A good defense,” Jack said as he lifted his wrist to his mouth. “Except Dale Kinney isn’t her father.”

  Jack wished he didn’t knit back together so quickly. It would have been convenient if he just had to pick off a scab. Instead he had to bite down into the meat of his thumb until his fingers went numb and blood filled his mouth.
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br />   He spat it on the ground. One of the briars snaked over to dip into it and recoiled.

  “Was he, Math?” Jack asked.

  That was all it took. Zachary and his family had single-handedly done something that usually took a midsized town generations of horror to achieve—they’d rotted their way right down to Hell. The black disk rippled under Zachary’s feet as Math climbed up out of it.

  He’d discarded his human face. There was no need for it there. Gray horns curled back heavily from his temples, the ends buried in salt-pale curls, and his lips were the same color. Smoke trailed from the ends of his blackened fingers. But he still wore Jack’s clothes, and the cuffs of the jeans were still caught under his bare feet.

  Tracy tightened her hand on Jack’s and whispered a startled, familiar, “oh.”

  “Took you long enough,” Math said as he looked over at Jack. His smile was just as sharp and cruel as always. “I started to worry you were dull.”

  Zachary spluttered some incantation, but he struggled with it as he tried to hold his lip in place between gestures. Math let him finish and then caught him by the throat. He pressed a sharp, smoke-edged nail against Zachary’s raw lip and stitched it closed with scabs of seared cautery.

  “Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Math told him as he let him drop. “Do you really think we’d tell you something that would compel any of us here? Or me anywhere?”

  Zachary staggered back. He scrabbed at his lips with bloody fingers and tore the scabs and most of the meat of his lips off.

  “Kill him,” he screamed at the niver. “Rip him apart.”

  The niver lunged forward with a rough, metallic screech, his massive jaws gaped open all the way back to his ears. Zachary mustn’t have had much faith in it, because he ran, and he was right not to. The niver twisted at the last second and rubbed around Math like an affectionate cat, and Math slapped its bloody hide with one hand.

  “You can feed a dog treats,” Math taunted as Zachary disappeared into the trees. “He’ll always come back to his master.”

  He snapped his fingers. The briar whip dropped Ambrose, who flopped bonelessly against the black stone. Only a low groan betrayed he was still alive. It took a second, but then the briar whiplashed Zachary back into the clearing, dangled from a bloody noose around his ankles.

  Jack covered Tracy’s eyes again as the leather apron flopped down.

  “Who told you about my daughter?” Math asked. He touched his finger to the raw wound and blood sizzled like fat on a skillet. “Who betrayed me?”

  “I didn’t know,” Zachary whined, “not that she was your bastard. My family has been loyal for centuries, my lord. We brought the mirror here, we guarded it, we fed it. All I wanted was our reward, what we were promised—to be like you. I was told some demon had given the child power, that they’d hidden it down in her marrow like her bones were a bank.”

  Another nerve end sizzled, and Zachary howled.

  “Not what I asked.”

  Zachary made a wet, broken sound. “I can’t tell you,” he whined. “They’re greater than you, more terrible.”

  Math smiled. “But not here.”

  He snapped his fingers, and the vine let go. Zachary struggled back to his feet. He backed up, one clumsy step after the other, and then ran again. This time Math didn’t follow him. He stroked the niver, its gray hide burned black under his touch, and looked down at Ambrose.

  Jack crouched down on one knee and turned Tracy to face him. “Tracy, can you stay here for me? Just for five minutes. I’ll be back.”

  Her big blue eyes flicked between him and Math. “I dreamed him sometimes. Is he really my daddy?”

  Jack gave her braid a gentle tug. The bauble on the end matched the one he’d found around the Candleman’s ledger. “He’s why you’re so good at magic. He’s that part’s daddy, and he cares about you very much. Can you stay here for me?”

  She licked her lips and tugged at his hand until he leaned closer. “I… I think I went toilet,” she whispered. Fresh tears squeezed out her eyes as she clutched at the familiar, understandable horror of wetting herself as though she weren’t a big girl.

  Jack stripped his jacket off and tied it around her waist. It dragged on the ground behind her. “There. I’ll be back.”

  She gave him a solemn look and stuck the end of her braid in her mouth. “I know,” she said around it. “You promised.”

  Jack left her there and limped over to Ambrose. The ugly apron had been torn off, and without it, Ambrose looked almost like the man Jack used to know.

  “Ben,” he said as he pushed his hands over the sucking wound. Why he didn’t know—there was a matching injury on the back. “Just hold on. I can—”

  “I love you,” Ambrose said almost pleasantly. He smiled wanly at whatever he saw on Jack’s face. “It’s okay. I just… I wanted to say it. I don’t want… I don’t want to be just the traitor.”

  He reached down and squeezed Jack’s hand as he pushed it away from his stomach. Blood welled out in two great gouts, and Ambrose’s eyes fluttered as he passed out again.

  “Ahhh,” Math said. “How sad.”

  “Don’t,” Jack said. He stood up and looked at Math, who was still shorter than Jack. “Save him. Please?”

  Math curled his lip. “Because you love him? Does he make you feel… soft.”

  He poked a sharp finger Jack’s crotch. It burned—not with heat, but with a bitter chill. Jack flinched back from it but held his ground.

  If Jack could have loved Ambrose, he would have. He’d tried to harder than he wanted to admit. Maybe he could have tried harder, but it still wouldn’t have made a difference. His soul had been Math’s for decades, but Jack’s heart had been his since the first time they’d seen each other. Guilt could bite deeper than grief.

  “Because if he dies now—an oathbreaker twice over, a coward—he’s damned,” Jack said. “He was my friend. I want him to have a chance. Please.”

  Math looked away for a second and then back. “Nothing is free,” he warned.

  Jack raised his chin. “You can keep my soul.” At Math’s raised eyebrow, he dragged a wry smile from somewhere. “I wouldn’t know what to do with one now anyhow.”

  There was a pause as Math considered it. Finally he shrugged and kneeled down gracefully next to Ambrose’s body.

  “It seems that Jack forgives you,” he said as he tapped a finger against Ambrose’s temple to jolt him back to life. The faint peace that had settled on Ambrose’s face faded as he stared up into Math’s bright, cruel face. “I do not.”

  Math thrust a long finger into the open wound. It sizzled and smoked, the smell of burned meat foul even in that foul place. Ambrose couldn’t even make a noise. He writhed, his heels battered against the back stone, and his throat was swollen with a scream that never made it out.

  Eventually he passed out again, and Math let him sleep.

  “He’s alive,” he defended himself when Jack glared at him. “He’ll stay that way now until I change my mind.”

  “You could have been….”

  “Kind?” Math mocked. He reached out and hooked his finger in Jack’s T-shirt to pull him close. His kiss surprised Jack with how gentle it was. “Stay away from your warlock. I don’t care who you fuck, but I won’t share you with someone who loves you.”

  That would probably be best for Ambrose. His addiction to the Infernal and his… feelings… for Jack were probably more connected than he’d like to admit.

  “Salvation is easier to find away from the damned,” Jack admitted.

  Math smirked and kissed him again. This time he sucked the spilled blood from Jack’s lip and added more as he chewed a bruise onto the tender skin.

  “I have business to attend to with our new friend,” he said as he finally leaned back. “Take my daughter and your friend home. I’ll see you later.”

  Jack would have protested at being cast as the little woman, but Math was already gone. So was Hell.

  Ja
ck, Ambrose, and Tracy were back at the road, next to Ambrose’s car.

  Epilogue

  NO ONE wants to go to Hell. Not even the Devil.

  THE CANDLEMAN had been buried three days before. It had been, by all accounts, a nice ceremony, if empty. The fate of Dale Kinney’s soul had already been decided. His brother had attended—and reopened the diner that had reverted to him—but his daughter hadn’t. Officially she was still missing.

  Jack didn’t know what to do with her yet. He couldn’t just hand her over to the authorities—a demon child with a knack for the Infernal—but she was still too human for Hell. God knew, it was bad enough she was stuck with Jack for now. His parental examples had been… lacking.

  She held Jack’s hand as they looked at the grave. Her other hand was in a neat white cast. She didn’t let anyone write on it.

  “He wasn’t really my dad,” she said. “Is it okay to be sad?”

  “I think so,” he said. “He raised you. He loved you. Just because he wasn’t the only one who made you, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t your dad. It’s always sad when someone who loves you dies.”

  She nodded solemnly. “I’ll be sad, then.”

  “I’ll leave you with him for a minute,” Jack offered. “I’ll be over by the angel.”

  Tracy nodded, and Jack wandered away to the hooded angel that brooded over an ivy-cracked tomb. He leaned back against it and tiredly rubbed his eyes.

  “Does she ever ask about me?” Math asked.

  Jack flinched and banged his shoulder against the angel’s wing. He gave Math an annoyed look as the demon leaned against the tomb next to him.

  “It’s been a month,” he said. “She’s asked everything. I have fuck-all answers.”

  Math shrugged. “The little warlock was very afraid of someone. It took a while to make him more afraid of me.” He put his arm around Jack’s waist and leaned against him as though he wanted to warm up. “What do you need to know?”