Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

She stopped in front of the last door in the row, the iron blistered with rust and green fingers of oxidization. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’ll never be afraid again. So don’t worry about me, all right?”

Jack couldn’t look at her. “I can’t help it,” he managed. “I am afraid, Pete. Why do you think I made that deal with Belial?”

“You bought your plot,” Pete said. “Big fucking deal. You were the one who taught me how to not be afraid, Jack. Of anything. You’re not brave because you don’t have any fear. You’re brave because you do what needs to be done.”

She rapped her knuckles against the iron. “Now get this door open, because if you don’t, we’re both getting up close and personal with the Land of the Dead.”

Jack exhaled. It felt as if he had a load of stones in his pocket, and somebody had just reached in and snatched out the heaviest one. Just a small piece, but now he felt like whatever happened next, he could probably come out the other side without breaking down into the sort of mess who’d sell his soul and scramble over everyone else in the world to save his own life.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “No problem, luv.” He dropped the crutch and put his hands on the door. The lock was pretty rudimentary—he guessed the real power of the room came from whatever hexes Azrael had put in place.

No time to worry about that now; the hexes wouldn’t reach out and bite him. Pete was counting on him. Jack pressed his fingers against the lock. Locks had never been difficult for him, even when he’d had a go at picking them the old-fashioned way, without any magic.

The lock clicked, and the door swung open a few inches, the waft of air shut in for a thousand years dry and stale in his face.

Jack flinched for a split second, waiting for whoever Azrael had screwed over to come screaming out of the vault and rip his face off.

Pete moved past him, the white witchfire rising from her skin again. “Come on!” she rasped. “I’m going to nuke whatever’s in here—you better get the blade.”

Jack flipped his lighter open. He didn’t want to risk any conjuring this close to Pete and her runaway talent. The small flame illuminated the stone table where the wooden box lay, covered in a millennium of dust and the webbing of a creature that Jack didn’t care to imagine.

His light also caught the bones embedded in the walls—whether they were here for burial or more of Azrael’s victims, he guessed he’d never know.

“Jack!” Pete’s voice held the kind of sharp urgency reserved for diffusing bombs, or going into labor. “Get out,” she said.

Jack started to shake his head as he grabbed the box and stuffed it into his coat. “I’m not leaving you here.”

Pete stared at him, the white overtaking her eyes again. “Get … out…,” she groaned, her voice echoing off the walls of the vault. “We can’t both turn to ash down here, so go. ”

She was right. Pete was always right. One of them had to make it out of here, for Lily and Margaret, so they would have a world to go back to.

“I love you,” he said, running for the door. Pete managed a thin, pain-filled smile.

“I know.”

Jack bolted from the vault, slamming the door behind him. The iron was thick. It had blocked out everything but darkness for a thousand years, but it couldn’t block out Pete’s screams.

Jack had never been one to pray, even when he was a small boy and his mother had dragged him off to church every Sunday to look good for the neighbors, until the vicar kindly suggested that until she could stop taking hits off a gin flask during the service, the Winter family should probably just stay home.

What was the point? There was nothing out there that would help him out of the goodness of their heart. The gods weren’t altruistic—they were the most selfish, scheming ones of all. There was no magical sky grandfather who would swoop in and make everything all right if he really, really wanted it. Faith was for people who didn’t know better. It was for the small boy he’d been, keeping the faith that someday his life would be more than a council flat, a mother who only made it to the bathroom half the time when chasing her gin with a handful of benzos made her puke her guts up, and a mind full of dead people only he could see, who wouldn’t stop talking no matter what he did.

Faith was bullshit of the highest order.

But he still covered his head as the ground shook and dust rained down, and he let himself believe, for just a moment, that Pete was all right. If he was going to have faith in anyone, Pete made more sense than any fairy tale humans made up to feel better about not being able to see what was waiting out there in the dark beyond the campfire.

The miniature earthquake trailed off, and Jack watched the door, which had come loose and hung crookedly off its hinges. Blood rushed through his ears, but after a moment the door fell and drowned it out with a clang , narrowly missing the toes of his boots.

Pete supported herself against the wall, her thin arm shaking. “Did you get it?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse from screaming, and she was as pale as a corpse, but she straightened up and swiped the dust off her cheeks, leaving dark runnels from her sweat and tears.

Jack pulled the box from his coat. “Got it,” he said. “Are you…”

Pete waved her hands. “Later. They must have felt that from their head to their arse—we have to go. Now.”

Jack didn’t say anything, but he did reach out and shoulder her weight, even though his leg twinged like he’d taken to it with a cattle prod. “You know the way back?” he said.

Pete nodded. Her hair was lank with sweat, but her breathing had calmed down and she was no longer emanating magic like a loose high-tension cable, snapping sparks at anyone unfortunate enough to get close.

“Wait,” she said as they started to move. “Check the box. Make sure Belial’s not fucking with us.”

Jack pulled out the box with his free hand and flipped the latch, his stomach doing a somersault. It could so easily be empty. Then he’d be right back where he was when the whole mess started.

The blade sat on a nest of black straw, a film of dried blood still resting in the groove. The broken edge shimmered as Jack tilted the box for Pete to see. “Looks like you could stab someone with it,” he said.

Pete nodded. “Good. I’ve got someone in mind.”

Jack had half expected Belial to be gone when they reached the main vault doors, but the demon was leaning against the doors, examining his nails. The only sign he’d even been a part of the break-in was the trickle of blood staining the cuff of his shirt.

“You two don’t know the meaning of the word subtle , do you?” he drawled when they limped into sight. “Discretion is a foreign fucking country.”

“Shut up,” Jack said, giving Belial a glare that he hoped would make the demon’s head explode in a puff of smoke. “Just shut up and get us out of here.”

Belial twitched at his tie and his cuffs, making sure his tie pin was straightened just so.

“Hey!” Jack shouted, loud enough to rattle his own eardrums. “You do realize that when the Princes get down here, they’re going to find you as well?”

Belial rolled his eyes upward, tapping one finger against his teeth. “Give me the blade, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “I knew it. I knew you had some other angle.”

Belial shrugged. “I said I’d help you get the blade. I didn’t mention anything about free rides back to London.”

“What do you think you’re going to do with the blade?” Pete spoke up. She still clung to Jack, one hand on his ribs inside his coat, one around his waist. He tightened his grip on her in response, trying to signal in a small way that somehow, this would be all right.