Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

“You don’t know how to use that,” he said. “None of us do. And if you try, you’re going to end things.”

“That’s what you’d like to tell yourself,” said the demon. “But I know how to use this, Belial. I, a rank-and-file member, have bested you. I’ve gone to the human world. I’ve set things in motion. I’ve destroyed your credibility, because you’re the only Prince who could possibly have the stones to stop me. And now…”

Belial started to laugh. “And now you kill me? You have any idea how many times I’ve heard that line from pissants like you?”

The demon shook his head. The Fenris snarled, their breath misting in the cool air.

“Now I leave you here,” the demon said. “To see what focusing only on your pride has wrought. Enjoy ruling what’s left of Hell, Belial. It won’t be around much longer.”

The demon withdrew into the church, and the Fenris followed, forming a protective barrier that even Belial would have to be a nutter to try to penetrate.

Silence reigned again, except for Belial’s own hard, rasping breaths as the street went still, bathed in blue.

Jack came out of his psychic wormhole with a start, finding himself on the floor, grit and glass shards clinging to the side of his face.

He choked and spat out a little bile, and he felt a wet dribble work its way from his nose over his upper lip.

“Fuck you, Belial,” he muttered. His body felt like he’d tangled with a lycanthrope and lost badly, but he forced himself up. His skull was throbbing so hard that bright light collected at the corners of his vision.

Jack couldn’t decide what was worse—the post-sight migraine his talent left him as a gift, or the fact that Belial had only told him half the story. Headache , he thought. Thinking that for once he was getting the straight truth out of a demon was just foolishness on his part.

And there was the object the demon had stolen from the vaults. Jack had only seen Belial afraid once, when he’d realized that Abbadon, one of the primordial beings in Hell, had escaped his prison and was about to turn Earth into his own private amusement park.

Abbadon could have easily killed Belial. He almost had, in fact; Jack had seen the fight between the leather tosser and Belial in his true, demonic body. It wasn’t something you forgot. But more than that, Jack remembered the fear in the demon’s eyes. What he’d seen then was nothing compared to now.

Whoever this demon was, whatever he’d taken, Belial hadn’t been kidding. This was the last act, the end of the line. And he’d trusted Jack to stop the curtain from falling.

Which makes Belial an idiot , Jack thought as he stumbled down the rickety stairs and out into the fresh air, and me an even bigger one for agreeing to do it.

Margaret was playing with Lily on the floor of the sitting room when Jack made it home, and she gave him a smile before pointing out to their fire stairs. “Pete is slagged at you,” she said.

“Yeah, I figured that bit out on my own, thanks,” he said. He stopped to give Lily a kiss on the top of her head before he opened the window and stuck his head out. “Luv?”

“Go away.” Pete had a cigarette in her hand, which told Jack exactly how black a mood she was in. She’d been much more successful at quitting than he had after she got pregnant, and now she only smoked when she was truly angry, dragging viciously so the tip of her Parliament looked like a tiny forest fire.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a hell of a day. Can I at least explain?”

“You know, we haven’t had a fantastic day here, either,” Pete snapped. “Starting with you cutting yourself and then running out of the hospital like you should be fitted for the rubber room. I had to do a lot of fucking tap-dancing to convince the doctor and the nurses you weren’t a psychopath, I’ll tell you.”

“I was going to tell you what happened after they fixed me up,” Jack said. He felt the tight, wounded expression on Pete’s face and felt it in his gut. He’d almost lost her more than once by keeping things secret—his deal with Belial, the fact that the Morrigan was after him now more than ever—and he’d be damned if it would happen this time.

He told Pete straight through, not leaving anything out, from his cut hand to the fact that his dreams weren’t dreams at all, to the side trip to Belial’s neck of the woods.

“Jesus,” Pete said when he’d finished.

“He’d be useful right about now, what with the levitating and the rising from the dead,” Jack said, “but yeah, things are fucked.”

“So this demon managed to fuck up Hell with a few Fenris and something he nicked from the Princes, and Belial has no idea where he is?” Pete asked. “Fantastic outlook for the rest of us, innit?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack agreed. “’M filled with hope, myself.”

Pete stubbed out her fag and rolled the butt between her fingers, her brow crinkling. “Maybe it’s not that bad. Who do we know who has their nose in everyone’s business and could definitely tell us if there was some kind of rogue demon cult operating on British soil?”

Jack cast a look through the window at Margaret. “Pete, no,” he said, the very thought of her suggestion making him want to beat his head against the wall.

“It’s going to be the fastest way,” she said. “Otherwise, we’re just going to run around in the dark until somebody tries to destroy the world and—oh wait, that’s already happening.”

Jack scrubbed his hands over his face. He was exhausted, wanted nothing more than to knock back a shot of whiskey and shut his eyes for an hour or sixty, but he knew Pete was right. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll put on me best arse-kissing suit, and you and I will go have a talk with the Prometheus Club.”

Jack could think of few things more unpleasant than the Prometheus Club, but breaking the news to Margaret came close.

“Come with me, luv,” he said. “Need to run down to the shop.”

When they were on the street, Jack let Margaret lead the way, stopping here and there to examine jewelry in the street stalls, before she cocked her head and looked up at Jack. “You didn’t really bring me out here to pick up some tea and fags, did you?”

Jack shook his head. “Can’t put much past you, can I?”

Magaret picked up a fake purse from one of the stalls and turned it over in her hands. “You know, my dad was in jail for most of my life, and when he did come back my parents almost got me killed because they were fuckwits.”

Jack figured he probably should have told Margaret that those were her parents, and for all their mistakes they did the best they could. But he wasn’t that sort of parent himself, so he just nodded.

“You and Pete are the only people who ever made me feel as if things might be all right,” Margaret said. “Like, you don’t care that I’m weird or that my real parents are freaks. You’re good to me.” She put the purse back and faced Jack. “So I figure whatever it is you want from me, you can ask it. I want to help you, Jack. You’re not like my dad.”

“You want to be careful agreeing to help me like that,” Jack said. “Good kids like you have a tendency to wind up dead when they get mixed up with bad people like me.”

“You’re not bad.” Margaret crinkled her nose as if the very notion was ridiculous. “You’re a bit rough and mean, sure, but you’re good. Everyone can see it.”

“Luv, if everyone could see that, I’d have been punched out a lot less in my youth,” Jack said, giving her shoulder a nudge. Margaret wasn’t one of those girls who flitted and darted, smiled at everything and giggled when she was nervous. She was so serious he sometimes wondered if on the inside, she was a brittle old pensioner. She had a thousand-yard stare that could back down a demon. She reminded Jack of himself at that age, when he was just starting to realize that not everyone could speak to the dead, conjure hexes, or feel the inexorable tide pulsing under the skin of everything that was safe, normal, and daylight.