Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days

Glad he hadn’t managed to eat anything, as his shoes would be wearing it now, Jack considered that this was pretty much where everything had started. On a sidewalk, sick and out of prospects, when a man named Seth McBride had plucked him up and told him that he wasn’t mad or bad or dangerous to know. He was talented, meant for something bigger.

Something bigger turned out to be the Morrigan, and what Jack was meant for was to usher in her rule. After that, Seth and his ilk hadn’t been so enthusiastic, and Jack was on his own again. Besides Pete, nobody before or since had the nerve to get close enough to him to be hurt.

“That’s not entirely true.”

Jack looked down at the snakeskin shoe that reflected his own face back dozens of times in the shiny hide. He looked up at the pale black-nailed finger proffering a cigarette.

“Stop reading my thoughts,” he told Belial. “It’s tacky.”

“And not very illuminating,” the demon agreed, sticking the fag between his own lips and lighting it.

“We’re done,” Jack said. “Remember? Square accounts and all.”

“I did tell you that there’s something brewing in Hell.” Belial exhaled. “And that I’m asking—nicely, even—for your help.”

Jack narrowed his eyes as the demon leaned against the wall next to him. “You’re a Prince of Hell, mate. Why the fuck do you need my help?”

The demon smiled. Jack hated it when demons tried to mimic emotion. The only thing that could put a genuine smile on Belial’s face was the pain and suffering of others. Jack’s had filled that slot more than once.

“You know that expression, ‘only human’?” he said. “Well, I’m not that, but apparently I’m not perfect either, Jack. Because when I floated my opinion to the other Princes that things have gone off the rails, I was unceremoniously told to fuck off. As if I were a junior partner.”

It was Jack’s turn to laugh. He didn’t like Belial—hated him, even, but he liked seeing the obsequious bastard squirm. “I take it ruling the roost isn’t as easy as you thought.”

“I’m right. ” Belial glared at Jack. “There’s a bloke come up through the ranks, got everyone all stirred up, and he’s created a right bit of chaos in the Pit that could have been avoided if we’d just liquidated the little shitbird when I suggested it.”

“And pardon me, but why should I care?” Jack said. “I hate you, Belial, did you forget that?”

“Your hate is not nearly equal to the contempt I hold for you, be sure,” the demon said. He scratched out his cigarette against the brick wall. “This world of yours is shit,” he said. “But for as long as anyone can recall, it’s all been spinning around as it is. Hell, the Black, this, the Land of the Dead, all stitched together by the in-between places, and aside from the occasional primordial demon jailbreak, quite nice, really.”

Jack felt unease squirm in his chest. Belial was chatty, but he usually only talked about either himself, or how thoroughly he was going to fuck over the victim of his attentions. Having a conversation like they were equals was much, much worse than feeling like Belial was about to drop his boot on Jack’s head. It was unnatural. Demons were predators, and mages were conditioned to avoid them at all costs.

“Get to the point,” Jack said. “I have to walk all the way back to Tower Hamlets before my wife has a fit and bans me not only from sex, our bed, and anything enjoyable for the next six months, but the flat as well.”

“I said it to dear Petunia,” Belial said, “and I’ll say it to you. Nice as this little juggling act is, we’ve too many balls in the air. Everything that’s happened since I met you lo these many years ago, Jackie … it’s all been leading to this.” Belial stood up and faced Jack. His smile was oddly small and calm, no hint of superiority. “It’s the beginning of the end, and if something isn’t done, then when the end has come and the end has passed us by, we’re not going to be on top. This other tosser is.”

Jack started to tell him to fuck off, but Belial held up his hand. “You are the only one who knows firsthand what it would mean if this balance of Hell and magic and the mundane fell out of balance, Jack. You’ve seen the precursors, and you saw what almost happened when those moronic cultists who had little Maggie Smythe tried to slice into Purgatory.”

Jack wished fiercely that he’d taken the cigarette when the demon had offered. “Fine, the end is nigh. What am I supposed to do, march about with a sign hanging off me neck?”

“Help me stop it, of course,” Belial said. “Because old-fashioned as it might be, I like things the way they are. I don’t relish the apocalypse. I’m a contented creature, Jack, and this bastard has threatened to upset all that. So I’m asking. Not cutting a deal. Asking you. Help me put the brakes on this long skid we’re on into armageddon. If you do…” Belial’s smile was bitter this time. “I owe you a favor.”

That made Jack pause. Vision or not, Belial was talking about the end, the big show, the falling of all the walls that kept the Black apart from the daylight, and the dead from walking the earth as the living did. Like most things Belial said, it was a load of crap, but a favor from a demon?

Jack had a feeling, if something big enough to send this vision to him was coming, that might come in handy.

And because Jack didn’t believe in ignoring the obvious, he thought Belial’s shit-stirrer would probably have some part in kicking things off.

Jack shivered at the thought of a world without the Black and the daylight—just one world, rampant with all of the darkness and evil that sprang from magic, and the human suffering and wickedness on the other. No buffers, no barriers, nothing to keep the world sane.

“Fine,” he said to Belial. “But that favor? It’s going to be the biggest you ever do.”

The army evacuated Whitechapel at dawn, convoys of trucks miles long rolling down Whitechapel Road, spreading through Tower Hamlets ahead of the fires and the looters.

The corpses weren’t all human, or even mostly. Scavengers from across the river had made it to the Docklands in the night, and Jack had been listening to the screams of people too stupid or unlucky to make it inside before the legions of Hell fell upon them.

They were mostly scavengers, carrion feeders or elementals that crawled inside human hosts and left the street littered with corpses.

The trucks didn’t care. They crunched over flesh and skulls, the long dead and the ones that were still warm.

By the time Jack held the door open for Pete and Lily and Margaret, it was chaos all around. Trucks were on fire, the army had taken cover anywhere they could, and the streets were filled with mobs of panicked civilians and looters all struggling to run from the demons.

Pete tried to turn with the baby and go back inside, but a flaming bottle shattered against the building, and flames sprouted so close Jack could feel the heat singe his eyebrows.

Magaret screamed, and he grabbed her hand while Pete shielded Lily, and they ran down the alley where they’d kept Pete’s Mini Cooper. The car had been looted weeks ago, was just a spray-painted corpse now, no glass, no tires, and no engine.

Gunfire chattered from the road. The army hadn’t figured out yet that bullets didn’t do much good against things that weren’t human. Jack hoped, at least, that they’d put a dent in the looters.

“Where are we going to go?” Pete panted. “If we can’t evacuate, we’re fucked.”

“If we go back that way, we’re fucked,” Jack said. Margaret’s grip on his hand was so tight that he could feel his fingers going numb. “Maybe we can try to get to a tube station. At least we’ll be off the streets.”