Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods

“Don’t come in.”

Pete glanced around the cell-sized space, and saw that every inch of wall and floor, save a small spot for Jack to sit, was painted with ritual symbols. He’d started in marker, black ink jagged and done in shaking hands, and as the symbols flowed toward the center of the floor, they became blood, sticky and gleaming from long exposure to the air.

“Fuck me,” Pete said. “What have you done?”

“Don’t come inside,” Jack said. “Don’t come any closer.”

“You’d hurt me?” Pete said. She stuck an arm out and caught the doorframe. The Black flowing through the writing on the cell walls was like being smacked across the face, and left her skull ringing.

“They’re not for you,” Jack said. “Now go away.”

Pete took a step inside instead, and when nothing happened, sat next to Jack on the clear patch of floor, drawing her own legs up. “Been here long, then?”

“I was going to go and start the ritual and give the raven woman Carver,” Jack said. “Then I went back by the flat to get a few things. You were gone.” He put his forehead on the knobby points of his knees. “Didn’t know if you’d chucked me or Naughton had taken you. But I turned around and I checked into hospital. Figured some anti-psychotics would keep the sight down, thick steel walls. I fucked everyone I know to do this thing and I couldn’t even follow through on that.”

Pete realized that now that she was inside the cell, the Black had gone softer, as if they were behind thick stone walls muting a rush of traffic on the other side.

“I’m a waste,” Jack said. “Eventually she’ll find me, and I won’t go back to Hell. I’ll go to the Underworld, and then even Nicholas fucking Naughton can’t fetch me back.” He breathed deeply, back quivering. “Then it’ll be done.”

“Yeah, well,” Pete told him, lifting his face so she could look at him. “I’m not about lying down and dying, so you better snap the fuck out of it and get on with helping me.”

Jack put his hand over Pete’s, and tangled his fingers tight enough to bruise her. “What the fuck,” he snarled, “ever made you have such blind faith in me?”

“I don’t,” Pete said. “I have no faith in you, Jack. That’s over, and that’s between you and me.” She removed her hand from him. “Now, you promised Carver to the Morrigan?”

“You know I did,” Jack mumbled.

Pete stood, smudging her foot in a wide circle across as many of the symbols as she could. “Then I think it’s time we give her what she wants.”

Jack started to shout at Pete, scrambling up and trying to grab her, but she twisted away from him and smeared at the walls with her hands, ink and blood coating her palms.

He screamed at her, but Pete soon lost the sound amid the wild rushing of wings, hundreds of wings and thousands of feathers, wind across an endless, empty place as the Black convulsed and shifted around them.

She’d seen the Morrigan before, once, when she’d appeared to take Algernon Treadwell’s soul back to the Underworld. Just a glimpse, and that had been enough. The raven woman had feathers for hair and black coals for eyes. Her skin was the skin of a corpse and her fingers dipped to run down Jack’s spine.

I knew you’d come, she whispered, and Jack let out a quiet sob.

“He’s not the one you’re dealing with,” Pete told her. The Morrigan turned her eyes on Pete, and staring at her, Pete felt her talent writhe, filled with the same empty, sharp feeling as when she’d come to the hospital for the last time—not to say goodbye to Connor, but to collect his things after the nurses had cleaned out his bed and packed them up.

The room, devoid of oxygen machines and heart monitors, the crisp pink spread and all of the flowers she and his friends from the Met had brought thrown away. Empty. Nothing.

You think you’re a hero, the Morrigan whispered. A bright soul that will outshine the dark. She put her clawed hands on either side of Pete’s face, and brought their lips so close they nearly brushed, sharing the air. The dark is greater than all of you. And I’ve lived in it for so long, Weir. It’s time the rest of you do as well.

“I know I’m not a hero,” Pete said. “But I wasn’t stupid enough to come alone.”

Belial stepped from the doorway and raised a hand. “Why, look at you. Out in the daylight and everything. Mind your tan.”

The Morrigan hissed, baring her teeth. Her canines were sharp as needles. Belial answered with his shark’s grin. “I like things the way they are,” he said. “The dead should stay dead. So why don’t you hop on your broomstick and leave the world as it is?”

Pete crouched next to Jack, pulling him to his feet. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going.”

The Morrigan turned on them, and Pete put her body between the raven woman and Jack. This changes nothing, the Morrigan snarled. You think I fear a maggot feasting on the flesh of lost souls? I am death. I am the maiden of war and the bride of blood since Nergal’s dragon first crept forth from the old places, the lost places. You won’t stop me.

Belial moved, but the Morrigan was quicker, and she raised her arms. Behind her, Pete saw the great wings rise, the wings that carried souls to the Underworld, and death from it.

The demon flew back into the corridor and slammed the wall. The body he rode let off a small wheeze, and Belial curled into a ball, blood coming from between his lips. Fat drops landed on the gray tile.

The Morrigan stretched out her hand to Jack. Give him to me. Or you go back to how I found you, alone and in Hell. And I will take your Weir to the Bleak Gates, and I will ensure she never sees the daylight world again, until everything goes to ashes.

Jack grabbed his skull, moaning, and then quickly as he’d convulsed, he went limp. Pete saw the symbols on the walls of the cell blur, fall away as the Black pushed through. Gerard Carver’s spirit stood before her, and behind him Pete saw the London of the in-between, burnt and blacked, its back broken.

The shadow she’d seen with the Hecate unfurled, and she became aware the Morrigan was speaking, and that this wasn’t the Black, but somewhere else. Older, buried down deep before the first human or thing that would become human had ever drawn breath.

Son of Nergal, serpent of the world. Eater of death and life, darkness and day, be free. The Morrigan didn’t raise her hands, or even chant. Her lips barely moved as she watched, reverent.

The dragon wasn’t a dragon in the sense of scales, but a shadow that wrapped London around and around, spilling forth from the place Gerard Carver’s ghost connected the hospital cell with. Pete felt it unfurl, saw that it was a prison, this place where the dragon had lain, and heard it scream as it came barreling toward Gerard Carver.

Pete tried to reach for Jack, but she wasn’t near him any longer, wasn’t anywhere. The dragon came, and it swallowed Carver, jerked as the soul cage tugged at it, pulling it down and holding over the burning city, as the spotlights roaming the sky winked out one by one.

Go, child, the Morrigan whispered to it. You have come to me, and because you have come, I offer you the chance to be free.

The dragon howled again, and the Morrigan passed her hand across Jack’s face. He will lead the way. And you will lead the dead, the armies of the Underworld, and the Black will be clean and new. She stroked his hair, ran her claws through it, and Jack shivered under her touch, leaning into it. None of the throbbing masses. None of the filth and sweat and blood. Clean and cold and free of what troubles you. You, crow-mage. You brought this dawn, and I thank you.