Caitlin Kittredge: Soul Trade

Not for the first time that night, she cursed Jack and his stubborn refusal to do anything that wasn’t exactly in line with what he wanted.

Wolcott spoke again in a rush, voice rattling like the dead leaves all around. “I seen this shape hunched on the ground, and he were mumbling, over and over. It were Bible talk, I don’t know. I never did pay attention in church.”

“‘Behold, I am coming soon. I have my reward with me and I shall give to everyone according to what he has done,’” Pete said. That had been Mickey Martin’s favorite passage to quote in his letters to the various tabloids and one-sheets of the day.

Wolcott’s nose wrinkled. “Yeah, that. Street-corner nutter ramblings, I thought.”

“It’s Revelation,” Pete said. “The handbook of all street-corner nutters.”

“You some kind of brain, then?” Wolcott asked, clearly glad to have the subject diverted from what she’d seen.

“No,” Pete said. “Just a very poor sort of Catholic.”

“Was about to ask,” said Wolcott. “Don’t see many Catholics mucking about with the dark arts.”

“You saw the man and then what?” Pete prompted, deciding that the lecture on black magic versus exorcism could wait for another day.

“I told him the churchyard was closed and he’d have to move along,” said Wolcott, “and then he just … he looked at me, and I can’t describe it. Had dead black eyes, bleeding onto his face. Such deep holes. Felt like I was falling, and then the cold was all around, and he…” Wolcott swallowed, her voice trembling along with the rising energies of the Black.

Pete scratched at the back of her neck. The feelings picking at the part of her mind connected to magic were bloody active, even for a graveyard. Then again, not all graveyards boasted their very own serial killer.

“He came for me,” Wolcott said. “Straight through the headstones, like he were made of smoke. And he grabbed for me, his hand went through my stab vest, and it was as if…” She shuddered. “He knew me. Could see every wicked thing I’d done, and was going to burn me up from the inside.”

“I know it must have been terrible for you,” Pete said. “If it makes you feel better—six other people have had the same thing happen over the last six months.”

“Shit,” Wolcott muttered, but her shoulders relaxed a fraction. Pete figured knowing it wasn’t just her might help settle Wolcott’s nerves—not that it did much for her own tingling hands and jumping heart. The churchyard had been silent for decades until the first terrified woman had called 999 from the pub across the road, and Pete had an idea why Mickey Martin was up and about again—when she and Jack had stopped the primordial demon, Nergal, from ripping his way into the daylight world, it had rippled out and touched everything in the city. Every ghost, every lesser demon, every scrap and snip of magic-having life in London had felt the effects. And now they were awake, and hungry.

At least Pete could put Mickey Martin in his place. The larger aftermath of Nergal and his brethren would just have to sort itself out.

“You’re nicer about it than my DCI, but you still probably think I’m crazy,” Wolcott mumbled, leaning against the monument. “Everybody else does.”

“ Crazy ’s not the word I’d use,” Pete said. Wolcott, too, represented a problem—when the Black echoed like a rung bell as Nergal and the other four primordial demons tried to break out of the prison the Princes of Hell had erected for them millennia ago, all of the citizens of both daylight London and the Black beneath with the slightest bit of sensitivity got a jolt like grabbing a high-tension cable.

For psychics like Jack it meant more sleepless nights, more waking visions, and more barrages from the dead and the living alike. For people like Wolcott, who would have never known she possessed the slightest bit of talent under normal circumstances, it led to nights like this.

It wasn’t Pete’s problem. Her problem was Mickey Martin and his recently reacquired hobby of murdering those he considered wicked.

“You don’t seem so looney,” Wolcott observed. “From what they say around the station, I was expecting Stevie Nicks.”

“I thought I’d leave my scarves and tarot at home, yeah,” Pete agreed. She ignored the implication that apparently the longer she was gone from the Met, the more of a moony-eyed hippie type she became in common legend.

“Never liked stakeouts,” Wolcott said. “Bloody boredom sets in quick, don’t it?” She scraped a fingernail against the moss on the monument. “How’d you cope, when you was a DI?”

Pete’s head started to throb, though she didn’t know if it was from a lack of coffee, the cold, or Wolcott’s persistent questions. She shouldn’t be mad at the PC—Wolcott was just trying to distract herself from her nerves.

She did the same, counting headstones, listening to the faint thump of music from the far-off pub, feeling the droplets of fog collect on her face and hair. The whispers of the graveyard had stilled, and even the mist held its place, covering the ground, the headstones, and the dead beneath. For a moment, it was as if the entire city of London held its breath—no music, no cars, no trains, not even the heartbeat of the rushing Thames.

Then the pain in Pete’s head spiked, and she knew the silence had only been a lull, not a finale.

From the stone behind Wolcott, the shadows began to seep and merge, moving of their own accord, against the light that gleamed from the vestry windows and the streetlamps beyond the confines of the churchyard. The monument gave birth to a dripping black shape that wavered from cohesive to vapor and back again, sliding through the pocked limestone like oil through water.

“Wolcott!” Pete shouted, but it was too late. The thing had Brandi by the throat and engulfed her, pouring into her eyes and nostrils and down her open gullet, choking her scream before it had a chance to be born.

“Shit,” Pete said, only able to watch as the ghost of Mickey Martin poured itself like black, oily water into a brand-new body. She’d only met a few ghosts that could do that, and none of them had anyone’s best interest in mind. Exorcisms were hard enough when you were only dealing with a vapor.

And yet, Pete thought as Brandi’s eyes clouded over with silver and she let out a choked moan, her limbs jerking and spasming as the ghost took control, it didn’t feel like a ghost. Pete wasn’t a psychic—that was Jack’s game—but ghosts felt like electricity, like lightning striking too close for comfort, like every ion in the room was awake and slamming against her skin. This was cold, and black, and bottomless, giving no sense that the thing inside Brandi Wolcott had ever been alive, never mind human.

The one thought pounding through her head over and over was that Jack would never have let this happen. He’d have known something was off, and been ready for this thing that was not a ghost.

Pete sidestepped as Brandi came for her, acrylic fingernails catching and ripping at the front of Pete’s overcoat. Jack would never have let this happen, but he wasn’t here, so she was just going to have to make do with her own wits. They’d served her well enough for thirty-one odd years; they’d do for a few more minutes.

Brandi came for her again. She was as fast and mean as a PCP addict, an inhuman sight with black energy spilling out of her eyes and her mouth, her face twisted in a grimace of perpetual agony.

Pete amended that. If she managed to survive the next few minutes, then she could figure out how to end this.

A headstone caught Pete at the knees and she fell, feeling her left arm twist under her, the ugly crunch of bone on stone resonating over Brandi’s ragged breathing and Pete’s own heartbeat.