Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

“Legion,” he said. “Come here, you bastard. You and I haven’t finished yet.”

When he called up demons, there was always a moment of contact, a sense of presence when you’d latched on to the other side of the equation, wherever the demon happened to be. Demons weren’t human, and they felt a certain way. He could almost see their outlines wrought on the very fabric of the Black, their own personal magic signature that granted them enough power to flatten any human mage, but also made it possible to pull their body and magic into summoning circles.

But with Legion, there was nothing.

No spark, no sense of tapping into the demon’s feed. The Black was on, roaring through Jack like a turbine pushing on full power, screaming through the summoning circle so that the herbs withered into ash and the blood in the metal bowl started to boil before the vessel melted into slag and sent liquid metal and demon blood running across the wood floor.

“What’s wrong?” Pete shouted, and Jack realized he was pulling down so much power he’d kicked up his very own whirlwind, the witchfire racing in a cyclone around the warehouse, whipping Pete’s hair and Jack’s coat but leaving the salt and the summoning tools untouched.

“I don’t know!” he shouted back. “I’ve never had this happen with a demon before!”

“That’s because I’m not a demon,” Legion said. His shadow loomed up, his body filling Jack’s vision, and then Jack was flying through the air, feeling wind and grit on his face before he smashed through the crates and hit a steel girder holding up the wall behind it.

Jack’s field of vision turned into a flashbulb, and Pete screamed, but Legion ignored her and started for Jack, crossing the circle with no more trouble than a human would have stepping off a curb.

Jack felt a hammer blow land on his chest when he tried to breathe. One of his lungs was done for, and he’d felt ribs give way when he’d hit the girder.

“Well done, Jack,” Legion said. “Made some rookie mistakes, though.”

Breathing was agony, a thousand razor blades scraping against his breastbone, but Jack managed to get out a sentence. “Like … what?”

Legion crouched down and knotted his fingers in Jack’s hair, tugging Jack to face him with a sharp sting to his scalp. “If you wanted to summon me, you should have used human blood.”

Jack felt as if he’d been hit all over again. He didn’t bother trying to talk anymore. His face was clearly telling a story, because Legion started to laugh. “That a bit hard to swallow? Imagine how I must have felt.”

He lifted Jack up by the hair until Jack stood. Legion pressed him against the wall, one hand pressing down on Jack’s collarbone until it gave a crack.

Jack found the air for sound, then, and he screamed until it echoed off the rafters. His entire world was red, and black started to spiral up as Legion kept laughing. “Imagine my life in Azrael’s torture vault, all that magic, that new wild magic he plucked out of this miserable mud-pit you call a world, and nothing to use it on. Imagine knowing that you are not a demon, that you are new. That you are an abomination. That things like the Morrigan wished to enslave me. Imagine how lonely that was.”

He spun abruptly, dropping Jack to the ground again, and Jack curled around himself just like he was seven fucking years old again and trying to defend himself against his mum’s boyfriends’ boots and fists.

“I’ll thank you not to insult my intelligence by trying to sneak up on me, Ms. Caldecott,” Legion snarled.

Pete stood a few feet from Legion, brandishing her baton. “Leave him be.”

“I don’t want to harm him.” Legion spread his hands. “I asked your husband to join me, Petunia. I don’t want to harm anyone. I just want them all to have the chance I never did. Equal footing. No more demons above mages, mages above humans…”

“You know what?” Pete said. “I could not give less of a shit what you want, mate.”

She swung and Legion held up his hands, baton glancing off his forearm. They bit into his flesh. He laughed and laughed until it was all Jack could hear beyond the erratic thumping of his own heartbeat.

Legion jerked the baton from Pete’s grip, and then advanced on her. Pete backpedaled, tried to get out of his way, but Legion had speed that no human could match and he grabbed her, tossing her like she weighed less than a suitcase. She landed at the edge of the loading dock and slid over the edge, disappearing from Jack’s view.

Legion turned back to Jack. “Alone at last.”

Jack tried to get up, but any movement started the agony afresh. He didn’t even care that Legion was in front of him anymore. He just had to make sure that Pete was all right.

“Relax, Jack,” Legion said. “I didn’t kill her. I want her to see this, just like you.”

He grabbed Jack by his ankle and dragged him to a wire-frame lift, tugging the door shut after them. The ride to the rooftop was an agony of bumps and jostles that told Jack he had at least three broken bones and some truly spectacular internal injuries that were probably hemorrhaging even as Legion hummed, stopping the lift at the roof and dragging Jack outside.

Gravel scraped at his cuts, but he was done fighting. His body wouldn’t sustain any more punishment.

He was at Legion’s mercy.

Legion reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out the small orb Jack had seen in his vision. “Azrael made so many things,” Legion sighed. “I’d like to think I was the best, but this … this truly is it.”

He stepped up onto the low ledge at the edge of the roof. The sun was up, and London turned gold under the rising rays. Legion was a black smudge, a shadow against the light that made Jack screw up his eyes. He hoped the demon would keep talking until he could stop feeling like he was going to vomit or pass out, and think of something actually useful.

“This made it all worthwhile,” Legion said softly. “I was in the dark for so long, but this let me go everywhere. I saw so many things. I saw what I had to do to lead me to this moment. Weaken every foundation just enough that the whole thing would topple.”

He looked back at Jack, a smile curving his lips. “What’s that little rhyme? Ashes, ashes?”

“We all fall down,” Jack croaked.

Legion nodded. “That’s it. I have to say, I’m glad you’re taking this so well, Jack. Humans have a survival instinct that borders on the idiotic. They fight against the inevitable even when everything has already reached terminal velocity.”

“I’m not fighting,” Jack said.

“Rejoicing, then?” Legion said. “Brave new world, Jack. You’re going to be a part of history, one of the few humans there when all of the worlds became one.”

Jack shook his head. His vision swam in concert with the movements. “Distracting you,” he managed. Legion’s smarmy grin smoothed out into the flat nonexpression Jack had come to recognize as the default of the deeply psychopathic.

“What?”

Jack flipped Legion the bird with his good hand. “ Sciotha. ” Usually a leg-locker was enough to knock someone down, get their attention, and take the wind out of their sails. The Black was so vast and so tumultuous here, though, that the hex slammed into Legion with the force of a lorry, knocking him off the edge of the roof. Jack heard the crunch of his body hitting the gravel.

“Fuck,” he muttered, and tried unsuccessfully to stand. The gravel was too slippery, and he was too beaten to do much more than flip himself into a sitting position. The wound on his leg had started to bleed again, and he was so lightheaded from the pain that every sound and sensation felt like being bounced around the inside of a giant tin can.