Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

“Oh, I thought I’d donate it to the British Museum and take a nice little break on my taxes while simultaneously swelling with generosity toward my fellow man,” Belial said. “I’m going to kill Legion, you little twit. What do you think?”

“You really think the Princes will welcome you back with open arms if you’re the one to off him?” Jack said.

Belial curled his lip at Jack. “Let me think about this: yes. Yes, I do. I wager they’ll be so grateful, in fact, that when this is all over there will only be one Prince of Hell. Who will be me, in case that was too cryptic for your small mammal brain.”

“You’re an idiot,” Jack said. “But fine, here.” He passed over the box, despite Pete’s murmur of protest. “Now that I’ve bought and paid for it, I do want my ride back to London.”

Belial gave him a wide grin as he stuck the box in the inside pocket of his suit coat. “Anything for a satisfied customer.”

They emerged into London near the pavilion opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum. Pete sat down heavily on the carved steps, and Jack’s body decided that sounded like a wonderful idea and followed suit. He didn’t fight it.

Belial took the box from his jacket and used it to give Jack a salute. “I do like you, Jack. Much as I like anything made of meat. I’ll be in touch. Knowing a Prince is going to be a good thing in the long run. You’ll see.”

He turned and walked away into the shadows, and Pete nudged Jack. “You’re not even going to try to hex him?”

“First off, any hex I can sling is going to bounce right off that beast’s scaly hide,” Jack said. He could barely keep his eyes open, and his leg had started hurting in earnest, each beat of his heart sending a fresh throb of molten fire through his thigh. “Second, I’m too tired to go after him for a petty squabble.”

Pete snorted. “I almost died, and he stole the blade from you. That’s not exactly petty.”

“I’m truly sorry for what you had to do,” Jack said. “But as to the second part…” He reached into Pete’s jacket and drew forth the blade, which looked smaller and older, less threatening, out in the fading sunlight of the real world.

Pete’s mouth opened, then shut again, and she managed a grin. “Dammit, Jack Winter. Just when I think I’ve seen all your tricks.”

“That one’s nothing special,” Jack said. “Seth and I practiced lift and drop about ten thousand times when he took me in. Bought me dinner and a roof over my head more than a few times when things were thin.”

“And now it’s got us a way to kill Legion,” Pete said. She looked down at his leg and grimaced. “After we get that looked at, of course.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said, although the pain in his leg insisted differently. “Just run by a pharmacy with me and grab some first aid, then we need to find out where Legion is and how we can get to him.”

Pete stood. She was already steadier, and her color was coming back. Jack was glad that at least one of them didn’t look like they were two steps from kicking off. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

Jack clambered up and tried to reply, but his leg sent such an electric charge through him that his chest seized up and his words came out as a moan.

He tried to tell Pete he was fine, some disinfectant and a pressure bandage would make him right as rain, but that blackness came up again, the one that had nothing to do with his sight, and he passed out before he hit the pavement.

Usually when his sight was so bothered, Jack dreamed—vivid, terrible dreams informed by the psychic residue of whatever space he was in when he blacked out. This time, though, he had a real dream. Seth had taken him to his summer cottage when he was fifteen, the night before his birthday.

“Thought we might spend the weekend here, and I could show you a few hexes,” he said. “You don’t need to spend your birthday listening to Wallace yell at the news channel.”

It was August, and the green lay over the countryside like a fog, making everything appear smeared and unreal, bringing the heavy scent of cut grass and sheep manure, tinged with the nearby ocean spray, to his nostrils.

Seth looked at Jack sideways while he regarded the mage’s small tumbledown cottage. “You ever had a proper birthday before?”

“Once,” he said. “When I was five, me mum got a clown.”

“Christ, that’s horrible,” Seth said. “Had I known, I would have bought you a few sessions on the couch as a gift for this particular anniversary.”

Jack watched as one crow, and then another, landed on the ridgeline of Seth’s thatched roof. “I think I’m way beyond that,” he said, getting out of the car. Seth did as well, also watching the birds. Nothing escaped his gaze. He took the cigarette from behind his ear, making it disappear in his right hand and reappear in his left.

Jack remembered thinking that was odd. Seth only did his sleight of hand tricks when he was nervous.

“Listen, kiddo,” he said. “You’re going to hear this sooner or later, so I’m just going to tell you. One day soon, you’re going to hear some things about yourself that are going to be hard to take. I don’t want you to get upset, though. I want you to know how I saw you when we met, and know that won’t change.”

Jack watched another crow join the two staring at him. They seemed awfully tame, but he’d spent his entire life in cities, surrounded by nothing but pigeons. What did he know about wild birds?

Seth thumped the top of the car. “You listening to me, boyo?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. He could hear the sea roaring at the foot of the cliffs beyond Seth’s front yard. It was the only sound aside from their voices. He’d never been anywhere so quiet.

“You’re a good lad,” Seth said. “Whatever happens, don’t you go and forget that.”

The crows took flight, screaming, and Seth didn’t move until they were out of sight, black dots on the gray sky that eventually faded away into nothing.

The light of the sky turned into the bare bulb of a hanging lamp glowering down at him, and Jack squinted into it. “If this is the afterlife, the ambience is shit,” he said to whomever might be listening.

Pete’s face slid into his vision, slightly blurred at the edges. Jack took inventory of his parts and felt slow and dopey, the warm caress of opiates warming his bloodstream.

“I’m sorry,” Pete said. Her voice was full of vibration, and it came to him as if through a pane of wavy glass, distorted and high. “You were screaming. They had to give you a shot.”

“They?” Jack said. His throat was sore when he talked, and he could barely make out his own words.

“Relax, Mr. Winter,” said Morwenna Morgenstern, coming to stand next to Pete. “You’re in good hands.”

“Fuck me,” Jack groaned at the sight of her. “Pete, what’d you do?”

“Called some people who could help,” she said. “Now, relax. They didn’t undress you or anything. They’re just giving us a safe place to fix you up.”

Even in his excessively drugged state, Jack picked up the signal. The Prometheans hadn’t searched him. They didn’t have the blade.

That helped the screaming inside his mind quiet down a bit. To come this far, only to be foiled by the Dudley Do-Rights of the Black, would sting more than any betrayal from Belial.

Which made him remember that he owed Belial a kick in the balls, and he tried to sit up and get off the table.

“Whoa, whoa,” Morwenna said, shoving him back down. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere, Mr. Winter.” She turned away, out of Jack’s line of sight. “Victor, we need another shot over here! Now.”