Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business

“I had my eye on you,” Belial said. “It was like a gift. The crow-mage, dying and begging for my help. Taking a favored son from that bitch of a Hag, well. That’s a thing most of us soul-traders dream of.”

“Didn’t manage to keep me for long,” Jack said. “Bet your bosses loved that one.”

“You’re always going to be in Hell, Winter,” Belial said. “One way or the other. You’re bound to Death as surely as you’re bound to your own skin. You’ll be back. It’s just a matter of time.”

“It’s over, remember?” Jack snapped. “Nergal’s gone. The war is over. The Morrigan doesn’t have a claim on me any more than you do.”

Belial barked a laugh. “Boy, look at yourself. That cunt’s fingerprints are all over you. And if you think Nergal was her last volley, you’re a fucking idiot. That was an opening salvo. The Morrigan will never stop trying to bring her armies to the daylight world. She’s the endless cycle—war, birth, and death. You can’t stop those things, Jack, any more than you can stop the sun from rising.”

“So what?” Jack said. “I’m supposed to be scared about something that might go on, decades from now? I think I’ll save myself for Abbadon.”

“I’m saying that when the Hag comes back for you,” Belial said, “Hell might not be such a bad alternative after all.” He grinned. “We’d love to have you.”

“Isn’t that sweet?” Abbadon purred from behind Jack, close enough to feel his breath. “You two kissed and made up.”

Jack threw himself down the steps just ahead of Abbadon, rolling to the side as the beast’s foot came down. He didn’t appear any larger than he had at Locke’s ranch, but his psychic presence was infinitely larger, and Jack felt the power suck the air from his lungs.

“Heya, Belial,” Abbadon said. “Boy, you clean up nice. You have to tell me where you get those suits.”

“Just you?” Belial said. He was pale and sweating, but he stood ramrod straight. “Where’s your brood? You leave the kids at home?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Abbadon said. “They’re amusing themselves with Jack’s baby mama. I figured I could handle two of the three Stooges on my own.”

Jack lifted his head. There was blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten down, tasting like acid and pennies. “Pete?”

“Her.” Abbadon nodded. “Although we’ve got to think up a new name for her. Pete is just confusing.”

Jack hauled himself to his feet. The cold didn’t come this time, just the rage, hot and blood-pounding and familiar. “I swear, if you’ve touched her…”

“Oh, save it,” Abbadon said. “We’re not going to use your little crumpet to re-enact Last House on the Left. What good is a body if it’s fucked up beyond repair?”

Belial stood, then came at Abbadon from behind, but Abbadon turned, and the shadow of his power moved, and Belial went flying into the lake. He landed with a shallow crunch, then lay still amid the sloshing reeds.

“So, Jack,” Abbadon said. “My offer stands. Quit being a bitch about all this and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We could use a fucked-up critter like you. You and those freaky death powers will be real useful once things are different around here.”

Jack smacked the hand off his shoulder. “Where’s Pete?”

Abbadon wagged a finger under Jack’s nose. “That’d be telling. Say you’ll help and I might give you a clue. It’ll be a little fun for us. Or, you know, I could torture you into a pile of meat to tell me how you really open Locke’s gateway.”

Jack pulled the paper from his jacket. In that moment, if he were honest, he didn’t give a fuck what Abbadon did with it. Didn’t care if the hot, dry wind swept up from Locke’s doorway and blew away the entire world. It was a mad feeling, the sort that made people smash their cars into bridge abutments, beat their wives to death, or douse their children in kerosene and light a match. All that mattered was Pete.

“Here.” He threw it in the grass between them. “Have fun in Hell, you piece of shit. Now tell me where Pete is.”

Abbadon grinned at him. “Not the deal. You want to set the terms, you should have held out a little longer.” He bent to pluck the paper square from the grass, and Jack lifted his boot and drove the steel toe hard as he could into Abbadon’s gut. The body Abbadon had picked out wasn’t big as far as things went, and he folded around Jack’s foot, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

“So it’s like that.”

“Yeah.” Jack snatched the paper back up and shoved it in his jacket. “You can try to do whatever you want to me, Abbadon, but you’re not getting this. Where’s Pete?”

Abbadon got to his feet, brushing grass and dirt from his front. “I told you. Safe and sound and with my kind. I have to say, she’s way too good for you. Regulation hottie, too. How did you manage that?”

Jack called up the leg-locker hex silently, and when Abbadon went down, banged his forehead into the steps of Lucinda Lanchester’s tomb. “I was in a band.”

Abbadon started to laugh, the blood dribbling down his forehead and across his mangled nose like dark fingers. “All right, Jack. All right, we’ll do it your way.” He shoved Jack off and stood. Jack hit the ground and realized that this might be the last shit plan he didn’t think through. He hadn’t gotten beyond pissing Abbadon off, making him tell where Pete was, and then kicking the blue hell out of him in return.

Abbadon’s shoe pressed into his chest, and Jack felt a rib creak and then give. He didn’t have enough air to make any sound, so that was a blessing. It was difficult to feel hard when Hellspawn was crushing your ribcage. “You fucked up,” Abbadon told him. “I wanted to be friends, but now I’m just going to pull out your spine and shove it up your ass. You’re a worm, like all the rest.”

He moved his foot, but Jack did not make measurable progress toward sitting up. His chest was on fire, and his body had given his commands up for a bad job. Clearly, he didn’t have their best interest in mind, and he was no longer in charge.

Jack stared as Abbadon grew large, eclipsing the lamppost, the Fairbanks mausoleum, everything. He lengthened and his eyes went black, his teeth grew and his hands formed into scaly masses, tipped with claws.

“ You wanted to see, Jack, ” Abbadon hissed. “ So behold the dragon. ”

“Fuck me,” Jack whispered, because it was all he had the air for. “You do love the sound of your own fucking voice.”

Abbadon’s body curled between the tombs, and he leaned down so that Jack could smell the fetid breath pouring from between his underslung jaws. “ You cost me a good body. I’m going to take yours apart slowly, now. ”

A claw lanced into his arm, down to the bone, and Jack ground his teeth together. Even if he could scream, he wouldn’t give Abbadon the satisfaction of hearing.

Abbadon held him down with his claws and ran a long, black tongue across Jack’s face. “ This is my real face, ” he hissed. “ What do you think of it, Jack? ”

“I think your mum beat you every day with the ugly stick, and then kicked you down the stairs,” Jack grunted.

Abbadon snarled and snapped his jaws. “ Funny man to the last, eh? See how funny you think it is when I make you eat your own guts. ”

Jack saw a shadow rise behind Abbadon, and the creature screamed as something latched on to his back. Jack sailed through the air as Abbadon’s claw slipped from his flesh, then landed with a crash against the gates of Lucinda’s tomb.

The thing striking at Abbadon wasn’t as large, but it was lithe and black, a wingspan behind it blotting out the sky. Black smoke roiled around the body, obscuring the details, and Jack smelled the scent of Hell, the burnt ash crowding his throat and sucking out what little breath he could draw.