Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

He sputtered as Jack closed the distance between them, knocking the device out of the way and slashing the blade down. The device dropped, but Legion flowed backward.

He was fast, but Jack could see now. He could use his sight the way he had always been meant to—he was dead, and it couldn’t harm him or drive him insane. It could always be on, searching for the dead and for the true face of the living. The soul that dwelled within the flesh, the thing that the Morrigan came for when the flesh gave out.

He had never seen a soul before. Demons didn’t have them, and by the time a soul became a ghost, it was so corrupted and in so much pain it was unrecognizable.

Legion’s soul looked like him, naked and painted with ancient woad, hair slicked with mud, eyes pure black and impossibly large in his face. He was alien, but he was alive.

He laughed, but Jack barely saw Legion’s body any more. This was how the Morrigan saw the world, he realized. Saw the ordinary people as pinpoints, and the bright souls of things like Legion as beacons.

Jack wondered, just for a moment, what his own soul had looked like.

Legion snarled, and then screamed, as Jack grabbed him. He felt much stronger than he had in life. All of the aches and twinges he’d acquired had vanished, and he felt better than he had that night when he was eighteen, when he’d first climbed onto the altar with no idea of what lay before him.

“You can’t stop me!” Legion howled. “I am this world’s reckoning! I do not destroy, but I will create, and there’s not a damn thing you can do, crow-mage! You hear me?”

Jack jammed the blade deep into Legion’s soul, pinning it to his flesh, and it glowed for a moment before it exploded into ambient magic that ran all around the plaza, hitting off metal, causing people’s mobiles to melt and the army’s tanks to give off showers of sparks as their electronics blew.

“Second verse, same as the first,” Jack said as he pulled the knife out. Legion’s soul was gone, destroyed. His body was just an object. “Change the record, mate. Honestly.”

Jack threw the blade aside and scrambled for the device as soon as he was sure Legion was dead. The Black was convulsing, shuddering, and with each pulse more and more magic poured into the daylight world. People were starting to notice him, which in and of itself said just how much magic had already leaked out and taken over a realm that had no defense against it.

It was a radiation leak that was going to contaminate a fuck of a lot of people if he didn’t do something. “Help me!” he yelled at the staring bystanders, pointing at the device. “I need that thing if I’m going to stop this!”

A foot came down on the object and crushed it just as Jack had it in his hands. The Morrigan tilted her head, looking down at the shards.

“Azrael thought he could remake the stars,” she said. “Hang them in the sky any way he pleased. Legion may have set it to destroy rather than create, but it is the same. It is not something I will allow.”

Jack felt as if a thousand-pound weight had dropped on him. All at once, he smelled the smoke again, heard the screams, saw exactly what was happening. What he was too late to stop. Had always been too late to stop.

“You bitch,” he ground at the Morrigan. “You knew this would happen.”

“Once the Black has fractured, it will proceed, whether we will it or not,” the Morrigan said.

“And let me guess.” Jack tasted bitter chemical smoke and blood against his teeth from where he’d slammed into Legion. “Now I’ll lead your army of the dead, and overtake this broken place that used to be a world.”

The Morrigan looked up at the sky. Crows circled above Buckingham Palace, but they were not the sweeping cloud of darkness he’d seen before Legion had killed him.

“No,” she said. “This is not Legion’s world. This is something new, something that you and I did not foresee.”

Jack dropped to his knees. He’d failed. He was dead. London was burning. Pete was alone, and she and Lily were in danger.

“This is not a day of death,” the Morrigan said. “It’s life, Jack. Legion was correct—this is creation. Ashes are a beginning, you know. What grows out of them is the strongest of all.”

Jack didn’t lift his head. He was dead. He felt nothing, and he was glad. He had no air, no life, no blood.

Blood.

He tasted blood.

Jack snapped his gaze back to the Morrigan. “You tricked me!” he shouted. She spread her arms, her feather cloak flowing, her blood-coated smile wider than ever.

“I am Death, Jack. I choose my instruments wisely. You were dead, and as my avatar you used your blade as only my avatar could to end Legion’s plans to terrorize this new life, this beginning.” She came to him, and she lifted him as gently as anyone had ever touched him, her talons on either side of his face. “Life has its day, Jack. I learned that the hard way. You and I have another meeting, a long time from now, when we will spend eternity together.” She pressed her lips to his forehead, leaving a cool imprint of blood and magic. “Go back, Jack. You are alive, and with the living is where you stay.”

His own banishment hex, used on more ghosts than he could count, said back to him was like a jolt to the heart. He gasped, fire filling his chest as his lungs sprang back to life.

Spasms threw him onto his back, and his heart sputtered like a defective motor while his nerve endings danced.

When he opened his eyes, the Morrigan had gone and Pete was kneeling over him.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “What the fuck are you doing here? How’d you find me?”

“I followed you,” Pete said, as if he were a very specific sort of idiot. “You got up and started walking like a zombie, and I followed you here. I saw you kill Legion.”

Jack grabbed Pete and pulled her down, kissing her hard enough to bruise their lips. He tasted a tinge of her blood on his tongue. He wrapped his arms around her and didn’t let her pull away until his heartbeat had decreased to a level where he didn’t feel like it was about to explode.

When he did, he saw the Morrigan standing at the edge of the crowd, now being pushed back by a contingent of riot police clearing a path for ambulances.

Life has its day, she whispered, but so does Death, and when that day comes, the two of us shall conclude our twined destinies . Until then, Jack … rise from the ashes, and live out your time.

Pete flagged down an ambulance for them, and when Jack looked again, the Morrigan had vanished.

The paramedics cut away his shirt and attached a heart monitor, but Jack felt fine. Even the ever-present throb of his sight was quiet for the moment. Pete drew back, her fingers passing across his chest with the lightest touch.

“Your tattoos are gone. Your scars…”

Jack sat up, looking down at his arms. He’d gotten a clean slate once before, but it hadn’t lasted long. His arms were bare, pale, and dusted with dark hair. He touched his face and didn’t feel the scar on his cheek. Even his knee felt fit.

“I’m a new man, luv,” he said. “From the ashes, and all that.”

“Yeah, well,” Pete said, helping him onto the gurney. “You’re still going to the hospital.”

Jack nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”

He watched the chaos retreat as the ambulance drove away. The Black was everywhere now, no longer a hum and a tide but like the air around them, touching his skin, his mind, his talent. It was one with the daylight now, and the world was still here.

That’s what’s important, Jack told himself as the ambulance bumped through the streets in the old part of London.

Until that last day came, the world would be there. And so would he.