Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business

“ I gave you the gift, Jack. I pulled you back from the Bleak Gates, and all you’ve done is deny me. I’m getting very tired of it, Jack. I won’t save you this time. Either you save yourself and use what I gave you, or you’ll never see your little Weir again. ”

She pressed her lips against his, and her teeth sliced into his lip, their blood mingling. “ You’re mine, Jack. You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. Now do what you know you want to. Take control of this. ”

She retreated, and Jack had to wonder if she’d ever been there. It wouldn’t be even close to the first time he’d hallucinated the Morrigan. Bad enough when she actually did visit him.

He felt the cold, even from the vantage point of his stoned dream. It started in his hands again, and as he watched his body he saw his tattoos begin to writhe. He could try to hold it back, try to deny that the Morrigan had changed him, made him into what he’d tried not to be ever since he’d seen her the first time, back when she was just the lady in black who dogged his dreams night after night, when he finally drifted off after his mum and Kevin had stopped fighting or fucking in the other room.

He could try, but he didn’t want to any more. He wasn’t going to let Pete die. He wasn’t going to let Abbadon steal her. And if that meant giving in to the Morrigan, than so be it. She’d changed him. Without her he’d be dead. Whatever he dealt with later, well. He’d cross that bridge when he got there.

He didn’t fight the cold this time, like he had when he’d killed Parker. He embraced it, let it rush through him like a freight train, and felt the Black spasm as his soul reeled back from the Land of the Dead.

Waking up felt like knives, or like he’d just been smacked with a defibrillator. He bolted upright, the cold expelling from his lungs in a rush of air, and then he promptly vomited, even though there was nothing in his stomach except a little bile.

“Fuck!” Sliver bellowed. “What the fuck, man!”

Jack felt himself jerked sharply to one side as his ribs snapped back into place. Vague, dull pain in his guts told him that whatever blood had been leaking was sealed. Even his forehead was smooth when he touched it.

His tattoos came to rest in a new configuration, no longer aimless swirls but feathers, boldly up each arm and reaching across his back and chest. Sliver stared, unblinking. “You, uh … you okay, man?”

Jack stood. The painkiller was gone along with the pain, but he had a new sense of detachment now, and it was nothing to do with the Morrigan or the Black or anything except the fact that Abbadon, that bastard, had taken Pete. “Never better,” he said to Sliver. He grabbed a T-shirt off a shelf, advertising the pub, and shrugged into it. It was too large by half, but it covered him and that was all that mattered.

Jack banged the door to the pub open, garnering a stare from everyone in the place. Sliver’s tinny sound system, pumping out the Marshall Tucker Band, was the only sound. Jack walked over to Mayhew, took away the whiskey bottle the fat arse was cradling like a baby, and took a long pull. The whiskey felt good, warmed him up a bit, and Jack slammed the bottle back down and pointed his finger in Mayhew’s face.

“You need to get me a gun.”

Mayhew’s gun wasn’t nearly as large or penislike as Jack would have expected. It was a small Sig-Sauer, or so Mayhew told him. Jack had never found much use for guns. That was Pete’s department. She was the one who could take aim and shoot.

“You know how to use one of these?” Mayhew asked. Jack took it, ejected the clip, checked the chamber, and then slid the clip home again and flipped the safety off. Pete had made him learn that much. Almost like she’d known one day he’d be on the other end of the rescue, being the knight on the steed. He’d already slain a dragon. How difficult could this be?

“Guess you do,” Mayhew said. “You got any idea where she is?”

“That’s your department, isn’t it?” Jack said. “Come on, Mayhew. Prove you’re something more than a sad old drunk.”

Mayhew shook his head immediately. “Oh no. I don’t mess with this shit. Scrying for what tagged you is going to get me a melted brain and a bed at Cedars.”

“County nuthouse, is more like it,” Sliver muttered. Mayhew flushed, but he still shook his head.

“This is your mess, man.”

“Listen,” Jack said. “It’s been ten years. The thing that killed Mrs. Case and stole her baby to ride in its skin is right here , and his friends have got Pete. You brought her here—you owe her, even if you don’t give a fuck about me. And you owe the Cases, and the Herreras, and all the other dozens of unfortunate souls who got in Abbadon’s way.”

Mayhew drummed his fingers on the bar, then poured himself a shot of something clear and knocked it back. “Fine. I’m going to need something of hers.”

Jack sent Sliver to retrieve Pete’s Stiff Little Fingers shirt from her bag, then handed it to Mayhew. “It’s her favorite,” he said. “Don’t ruin it.”

Mayhew spread the shirt out on the bar, took another shot.

“Oi,” Jack said. “Don’t get pissed. We need you able to perform.”

“Being hammered is how I perform,” Mayhew said. “So shut the fuck up and let me do this, all right?”

Jack watched Mayhew pass his hands back and forth across the shirt, watched his eyes roll back in his head. Seeing somebody in a trance was always a bit unnerving—their eyes went white, and they tended to twitch and drool. It was why Jack had never put himself under in front of an audience. Simply wasn’t dignified.

Mayhew’s eyes crawled with black, and a tendril, then a second, of black smoke leaked from his mouth and nostrils. He exhaled, and the smoke formed a miasma above his head, drifting in lazy circles.

“I see her…” Mayhew rasped, and more smoke trickled from his mouth.

“Okay, that is just weird,” Sliver said. “And I say that as a wraith and a bartender.”

“Shut it,” Jack said, as Mayhew shoved back from the bar and walked stiff-legged for the door. “He got that beast of a car still?”

“Far as I know,” Sliver said. Jack snatched Mayhew’s keys and tossed them to Sliver.

“Then you’re driving.”

The old him, the him who didn’t have the marks, who hadn’t healed himself and been through the fight with Abbadon, would have doubted himself and the wisdom of following Mayhew into the jaws of the beast, but he didn’t. Abbadon could be as cryptic as he liked, but there was only one place in the daylight world where his brood would feel really safe.

Jack had strength now, had focus, had the tunnel vision that would mow down anything that got in his way. He realized, in the same small part of his brain that had known he was on the way out, that he was dangerous. Off the track, spinning toward a confrontation he had no hope of winning.

“Where is he going?” Sliver asked as they left the bar.

“Drive,” Jack told him, climbing into the passenger side of Mayhew’s car. “He’ll tell us where to go.”

Mayhew guided them onto the freeway with guttural grunts, and they headed north of downtown. Like Jack thought, there was only one place they could be going.

The journey toward Abbadon’s ranch passed by in slices of headlamp illuminating road signs leading to places Jack had never heard of. Folsom. Lodi. Barstow. Desolate names for desolate towns, off the map of where he had to go tonight.

Mayhew came back to himself by degrees and sat up, choking. “The ranch…” he rasped. “The dead…”

“It’s all right, mate,” Jack said. “We got the gist.”