Caitlin Kittredge: Dark Days

“Bit severe, isn’t it?” he said. “Sort of reminds me of a monastery by way of a gay nightclub.”

“You implying something?” Belial asked, standing next to Jack so their reflections overlapped.

Jack turned his head. He didn’t like the demon that close. “You working up the courage to tell me something?”

Belial flashed him that grin and slapped him on the shoulder. “Get it all out of your system now. The Princes aren’t nearly as tolerant of that sewage pit you call a mouth.”

“You know,” Jack said, brushing Belial’s grip off him, “you’re one of them now. Still getting used to that heavy crown?”

“I include myself in that statement,” Belial said. “Now shut up and stay close.”

The first and only time Jack had stood before the Triumvirate, he’d seen them in a dull sort of corporate office, which fit his imagining of the Princes as a stodgy bunch of bureaucrats obsessed with bargains and rules and divvying up Hell so they all got an equal slice of the pie.

This time, Belial led him through smooth black hallways, arched at the top, which looked as if they’d been carved by the passage of some great serpent rather than any tool.

The room he opened the black double doors to was smaller than Jack had expected—too small for comfort. The remaining duo of Princes sat on either side of a long table inlaid with the bones of a winged creature, floating in clear resin like a fossil chipped out of the ground. The walls held a selection of paintings depicting medieval tortures, in graphic and colorful detail.

Jack sucked in a breath to dispel the tightness in his chest. They needed him, for whatever reason, he told himself. And he needed them, for the time being, if they were going to call a halt to the event sending him nervous breakdowns through the frequencies of the Black.

“I’ll never understand your proclivity for running to the humans whenever something goes wrong, Belial,” said the Prince on the right. Baal, Jack remembered, a bloke who did an even more piss-poor job with his human form than Belial. Baal had snake’s eyes and sallow skin spotted with sores. His tongue was twice as long and thin as a man’s, which gave his voice a curious sibilance. Bald, he resembled something that lived in the dark and popped out at night to eat unwitting household pets.

“You don’t understand a lot of things.” Belial took his seat at the head of the table. “You still think this can all be smoothed over.”

“He’s just an elemental, for fuck’s sake,” said the other Prince, Beelzebub. Where Baal couldn’t be bothered to look human, Beelzebub looked almost too human, slick and blond as a film star, and about as plastic. Belial at least looked like he had blood pumping through his veins. Beelzebub resembled one of those dolls that came to life and tried to carve up your family with a chainsaw.

“Wait, wait,” Jack said. Belial slitted his eyes, and Jack ignored the demon’s poisonous look. Belial may have managed to oust Azrael, the oldest of the three Princes, but he was still the same tosser who’d made Jack’s life a pain in the arse for over a decade. “This problem of yours is an elemental demon? Not even one of you Named fuckwits?”

“He is one of the legion, yes,” Baal hissed. “Is there a problem, skin sack?”

“No,” Jack said, spreading his hands. “No problem. Impressed, actually, that one of your office drones managed to get you three in such a tizzy.”

“Do yourself a favor, Mr. Winter, and stop talking before I turn your tongue into an appetizer,” said Beelzebub. “For fuck’s sake, Belial, do you think it’s funny to torture us with breathers?”

Jack kept his mouth shut. Baal was creepy and Belial was irritating, but he’d always had the sense that Beelzebub might actually be unbalanced. For a demon, that was saying something.

“You two knobs know full well how far his influence has spread into the Black and the daylight,” Belial said. “Face it—we’re demons. We need a man on the ground if we’re going to nip this in the bud.”

“Maybe we should give him something,” Beelzebub said. “A token concession so he’ll stop all this nonsense in Hell. Maybe something like … Europe.”

Belial’s fist hit the table, and the resin cracked. “We are not,” the demon snarled, “giving one fucking inch to something that crawled out of the ashes and the mud and challenged the rule of the Named. He’s spitting in your eye, Beelzebub. If your head wasn’t so far up your own colon perhaps you’d have noticed.”

“Listen, you upstart prick…” Beelzebub began, but Baal opened his mouth and let out a long hiss that landed in Jack’s ears like scalding water.

“Enough.” Baal’s tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air. “This matter will not conclude if we are eating one another’s entrails like the carrion birds above this city. It will only turn out in our favor if we can all agree.”

“Excuse me.” Jack held up a finger, and thought by the intensity of the glares turned on him that it might not have been his brightest idea ever. Still, he had their attention now, so there was nothing to do but press on. “This is all fantastic,” he said. “Believe me, I love watching you two gentlemen rake Belial’s pale hide over the coals, but I’m not in your little loop. You maybe want to bring me up to speed, since you’re asking for my help?”

“Are you going to shut him up or am I?” Beelzebub snarled at Belial. “You know, you may have gotten Azrael in the back when he was weak, but I know what you are, Belial. You’re as much of a bottom-feeder as our little problem is.”

Belial pushed his chair back, the screech making Jack flinch, and came around the table to grab him by the arm. “Couldn’t just keep your gob stopped, could you?” he snarled.

Jack didn’t argue as Belial dragged him out of the room. “Tough crowd, those two,” he said. “You’d almost think they were plotting your death behind your back or summat.”

“Of course they are,” Belial said. “And if I get the chance, I’ll throw both of them off the top of this building and take the whole pie for myself. That’s how it works down here, Jack. And now you made me look weak in there.”

Jack wrestled himself from the demon’s grip. “I didn’t do shite to you, Belial. You wanted me to dance, but you didn’t tell me the steps. So either you fill me in on all the lines, not just the alarmist crap about the end of days, or I’m going home.”

He held his breath, feeling his blood throbbing against his neck and his temples. Bluffing with a demon was something he never would have concieved of a few years ago. Back then, Belial owned his soul and scared Jack shitless. Now, though, he’d seen that there was so much worse out there than demons, even one with as much power behind him as Belial.

Belial sighed. “Come with me,” he said, leading them back through the smooth halls, past occasional white-uniformed servants who pressed their bodies against the wall when Belial passed. They were all sorts of common demons—berserkers, scavengers, others that Jack had never clapped eyes on—but they all shrank back from Belial like he was contagious.

Jack could see how someone as power hungry as Belial could get used to this, and how any threat would be like a gun held to his head. He was also starting to wonder if their problems were even connected, or if Belial had manipulated him again into doing the demon’s scut work like he had with Abbadon.

Then again, Abbadon had almost ended the world as Jack knew it, so he followed Belial up and up, through lifts and steps until they finally came out to the top of the spire, the noxious wind stealing Jack’s breath and hearing.