Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

“No, but that’s never stopped me before,” Jack told her. Pete went out, and he looked around the flat one more time, acutely aware that it might be the last time he did so, then he shut the door behind him.

The warehouse Ollie sent them to had been used as an illegal casino by the Russians, and Jack felt a heavy stone settle in his guts as the Mini crunched over gravel to the wide oversized doors.

“Of course,” he murmured, looking up at the broken-down four-story building.

“Something wrong?” Pete said. “Ollie said attorneys and the city are still fighting over this place after the seizure, and they’re too cheap to send a detail around to check on it. Quiet, out of the way … I thought it was what you wanted.”

“No,” Jack said, climbing out of the Mini and trying to work the stiffness out of his wounded leg. “It’s perfect.”

The warehouse looked just as it had in his vision, except that the sun wasn’t yet up. It was close, though. Close to the time when Legion would stride to the roof and bring everything crashing down.

Jack started for the door. “We need to move,” he said to Pete. “Legion’s going to make his play soon.”

Pete didn’t question him. She pulled the ragged yellow Met tape off the door. The padlock had already been clipped by hoodies looking for a place to loot or shoot up in, and the interior loading bay blossomed with graffiti.

Jack hopped onto the platform and surveyed the vast interior space. The floor was rough boards covered in decades of dust, and light beamed in from lacy holes in glass skylights. A few crates and boxes had tumbled on their sides, spilling their straw innards, but the contents were gone. In the far corner of the warehouse, a pair of dirty mattresses and a craps table turned on its side didn’t bear closer inspection.

Jack set down his kit bag and turned in a slow circle. Plenty of iron to keep out interference, and plenty of space to keep himself at arm’s length from Legion.

“All right,” he said to Pete. “Let’s get started.”

They chalked a wide circle, at least twenty feet in circumference. He needed to be able to move in any direction without breaking the lines. Jack sprinkled salt as an extra bit of electric fence, then set all the barrier sigils he knew around the edges. He held off sketching the symbol Belial had planted in his mind. No need to start the party early.

“None of these barriers will do fuck-all, likely” he told Pete. “So stay sharp. Won’t be easy to contain him.”

Pete sat on her heels, brushing chalk dust from her palms. “It’s no fun if it’s easy. We need anything else?”

Jack looked back toward the double doors. “Just some herbs and one particular extra I asked Mosswood to bring.”

Pete stepped carefully, so as not to disturb the chalk and salt line, and went to her own bag, taking out her collapsible metal baton. “Brought my own extras,” she said. “Just in case Legion decides he wants to make this physical.”

Jack thought about his tenderized state he’d seen in his vision. “I think that’s a distinct possibility.”

He jumped when the booming knock sounded at the door, his heart giving a painful thud. He was doing all right hiding his nerves from Pete, but he was doing a shit job of making himself believe he didn’t have them.

“I hope you know you’ve gone insane,” Mosswood said when Jack peered through the gap in the door.

“You would be far from the first to think that,” Jack said. Mosswood passed over a canvas-wrapped package, and then a glass vial carefully cushioned inside a small box.

“I know what these herbs are for, so I’m going to skip the foreplay of You don’t know what you’re doing and Are you bloody stupid ? and just say that I hope I’m wrong. I hope you come out of this in one piece.”

Jack felt the electric shock of his fear and his own gnawing doubts subside a bit. “Thanks, Ian. That actually means something coming from you.”

“I’ll say goodbye,” Mosswood said. “And though it’s probably futile, I’ll hope it’s not for the last time.”

“Oh, come on,” Jack said, giving Mosswood’s tweed-clad shoulder a slap. “How many times have you seen the world end, Ian? This is nothing.”

“Even so,” Mosswood said sadly. “I think my time here among mortals is at an end. I will be going home, Jack. If we pass one another in the mist some day, I probably won’t know your name. Fae-lands have that effect.” He pressed his hand briefly on Jack’s shoulder. “We were good friends, but that is past, and as Hartley says, ‘The past is a foreign country.’”

Jack felt a sharp, sudden sensation just behind his eyes. He would be sad when the Green Man was gone, he realized. Sad in the way you’re sad to lose a favorite teacher or a really top-notch bartender. “Well, they also say ‘Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,’” he said, pushing down the prickle. Moping around was a luxury he didn’t have right now. Later, he could think about exactly what Legion had taken from him—his fellow crow brothers, Mosswood, his own sense of security—but now he had to kick the bastard’s arse.

“Very poetic,” Mosswood said. “Dostoyevsky?”

“Cinderella,” Jack said. “The band, not the princess. You take care of yourself, Mosswood.”

The Green Man nodded and backed away, and Jack shut the door. He gave Pete the herbs to start burning, and he turned the vial in his hands.

“Do I want to know?” Pete said.

“It’s blood,” Jack said. “I somehow doubt Legion has a handy little call button like Hrathetoth, and blood is the most powerful conductor there is for ritual.”

Pete wrinkled her nose at the vial. “Please tell me that’s not human.”

“No,” Jack said. “Demon.” He uncorked the vial and poured the sticky black substance into the metal bowl he kept in his kit, placing it at the center of the circle. “And before you ask, I don’t know where Mosswood got it, and I know enough not to pry.”

“You know, there was a time when this sort of thing would make my skin crawl,” Pete said. “How things change, eh?”

Jack rolled his shoulders and his neck. It had been a while since he’d been in a stand-up fight, but he had no illusion that this summoning would be anything but. No room to be clever, no way to cut and run. Either he or Legion wouldn’t be leaving this circle.

He was going to prove his vision wrong, or he was going to die trying.

Looking over at Pete, standing just outside the circle, stun gun at the ready, he gave her a smile. “It’ll be all right,” he said.

“Liar,” she said.

Jack turned back into the center of the circle, pulling on the deep well of the Black that lay beneath London. It rushed up at him faster than it ever had before. The barriers were thin everywhere, thin as wet paper, and the tide of magic rushed up and covered him. Witchfire blossomed not just from his body but all around the warehouse, sparking off every surface and racing between the rafters like lightning jumping from cloud to cloud.

He touched the Morrigan’s blade once more for reassurance, and then started talking.

Words didn’t matter so much as intent with magic. Keep it simple, Seth always said. Simple is best. That way there’s no mistaking your intention to perform some feat of power.

Jack usually came up with a little phrase, something designed to tickle the frequencies of whatever or whoever he was trying to cast or summon for or against. This time, though, he only had one intent. Only needed one word.

“Legion,” he whispered. “Legion, Legion, Legion…”

He took all the power, all of the witchfire running off him like a flood, and he dipped deep down into the well, pushing the power into the circle, through the demon’s blood. That was his link to Legion. That was what made him strong.