what it was like before the demons came.”
“I expect when humans trod it it was a graveyard, and then the dirt underneath a graveyard, and then nothing at all,” Jack said. “That much, I do know. Demons fill up the spaces that people can’t or won’t see. They crawl into gaps left by fear and desire and make themselves at home.”
“We should pay respects to Areshko,” Ava said. “Before she gets suspicious.”
“Yes, yes, by all means.” Jack flipped a hand. “Lead the way, Jeeves. And once we’ve doffed our top hats to the demon lady, fetch us a spot of Earl Grey.”
“Your posh accent is atrocious,” Ava told him. “Stick to what you are, Manc.”
Jack’s mouth quirked. “Most Yanks can’t be bothered to tell the difference.”
Ava leaned up and kissed his cheek, feather-light and quick. “I’m not most.”
They descended to the level of the floor, winding among the mausoleums. Jack frowned. “People down here seem awfully dead.”
“We’re in a giant tomb,” Ava said. “You’re surprised?”
“No …” Jack whipped his head around as something moaned from behind the closest stone wall. “I mean ‘dead’ quite literally.” He watched a hunched figure still wearing a few scraps of hair and skin scuttle from one shadow to the next. “I hate to tell you, Ava, but you’ve got a zombie problem.”
She snorted. “Not everyone sees things the way you do, Jack. Areshko uses them for cheap muscle and labor.”
Jack rubbed his nose. “Smell a bit. Could be right nasty if they think you’re threatening their mistress.”
“Zombies are easy,” Ava said. “Stab them in the head or light them on fire. One of the first things Daniel taught me.”
“How nice for you,” Jack said. “I wish I had my own personal Mister Fucking Miyagi.”
“Jealous?” Ava’s hand skimmed across his arse and gave a light slap.
“Just hoping that when you have Areshko’s angry zombie armada on your tail, you’re as confident,” said Jack.
“Do your part and there won’t be any drama like that. Fuck around and I’ll make sure I leave you to be a chew toy.”
Jack sighed. If she wasn’t so bloody attractive, he would have thrown in his lot by now, geas or no. Zombies put a lid on any bloke’s libido.
The light grew stronger and the dark spots fewer, as they came to a much older ruin—a pagan place, Jack guessed, something that had sat on the land long before there was an England or a Scotland behind Hadrian’s Wall. Candle flames filled the glassless windows, and the tiny graveyard next to the chapel showed its teeth, the stones worn down to nubs amid mummified nettles and vines.
“This is where she holds court,” said Ava. “I’m a human. I’m not allowed inside.”
“You’re about as human as I am,” Jack muttered, raising his hand to bang on the scarred oak door.
Ava’s face twisted in surprise, like he’d slapped her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you can either accept you have a talent for sorcery, or pretend you’re not touched by the Black, like that Daniel wanker seems to have trained you to,” Jack said. “Trust me, Ava, the first way is easier.”
“You have no idea about me,” she said. “You have no idea who or what I am.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Jack reminded her.
The door of the chapel popped open, and a small scavenger demon, a carrion eater of some kind, shoved its pointed head out, its large, lidless eyes rolling over Jack and Ava. “Yeah?” it squalled, a long tongue flicking over its chapped lips.
“Be careful,” Ava told Jack. Her face, for the first time, was flat and her posture heavy.
Jack looked down his nose at the scavenger. “Areshko. I need to see her.”
“Yeah!” the demon shrieked, and hopped away on bird feet, its leathery wings fluttering like a curtain at the wrong time to show a multitude of piercings and an unfortunate PVC onesie.
Here were zombies and the things that ate them. It wasn’t a city, Jack thought, it was an abattoir. For who, he wasn’t sure yet. Hopefully not him, or Ava. She wasn’t bad—devious, damaged, perhaps deranged, but she wasn’t one of the dark things slipping along the underside of the Black. Just a lost girl, like a hundred others he’d seen.
Jack knew lost when he saw it. Until the Fiach Dubh had found him, he was as lost as Ava still appeared.
She tugged at his jacket. “Tell Areshko who you are. Tell her that you have someone who wishes to be graced by her. Use those words.” Ava’s whisper sounded like a ghost.
Jack rolled his eyes. “I’m not a virgin at bullshit, Ava.” He shoved the door wide open and stepped into the chapel. Rich honeyed light spilled from all directions, from hundreds upon thousands of candles set into every crevice and crack of the stone.
Ava’s face, pale and narrow, watched him until the door rumbled shut.
“Who comes?” The voice was cool as the light was sensual, a hint of a foreign land much, much farther than a channel away. It rolled over him, cool and sweet like rain.
“It’s Jack Winter.” He coughed. “And I’ve brought someone who wants to be … er … graced by you.” Ceremonial words were as much a part of being a mage as the magic under his skin, but they always struck Jack as faintly antique and ridiculous. He felt awkward in a way he never did just sitting still with the magic.
Areshko sat forward from her seat in the front of the chapel, near the altar. It was a Victorian high-backed chair, the red velvet worn away to the pink of skin, the wood carved with flowers and fancies of nymphs.
The chair wasn’t that striking. The demon woman seated in it was. She had skin pale as a corpse, but covered in blue—blue tattoos that swirled over every inch, eyelids, lips, tongue, the tops of her thin breasts that pushed against a corset made from the ribcage of some poor creature that hadn’t been quick enough to avoid having its flesh picked clean.
“Come closer,” the demon said. Jack started forward, wishing he had Gavin, Rich, and Dix arrayed in that loose triangle formation that had served him well when he’d lived on the street and had to fight something larger and nastier than himself.
“Just yourself, though. The one who wishes grace will not show her face?” The demon’s flat nostrils flared.
Jack bowed his head. “I’m sorry … er … lady. She thought it would be better if we didn’t disturb you.”
The carrion demon peeked out from behind the throne and squawked at them in its own language. “Piss off, then,” Jack said, “if I upset you so.”
Areshko’s teeth snapped together. “Mind yourself.”
“I apologize if I’ve offended you.” Jack didn’t mean a word of it, but he was pragmatic, when the thing across from you could rip out your larynx and pick her teeth with it. “I’ll go.”
The demon pointed at him. “I know you, Winter man.” Her voice dropped to a purr. “They call you the crow-mage. You are the one who sees the dead and the dark.”
“Right,” Jack murmured, keeping his gaze on hers, like you did with angry dogs. She had pure-white eyes, as those who’d looked too closely at what they oughtn’t and come away perfectly blind had. Lawrence’s grandmother Winifred, in Jamaica, was blind, but she could smell a storm or a liar for miles. Jack sent her marzipans at Christmas every year.
“Come, Jack Winter,” Areshko said. “I don’t bite, except in the right places.”
Jack stepped closer, not within range of her finely wrought, bone-thin arms, but definitely within range of a hex. Trust in baby steps, if demons had such a concept. “So, my companion … she can come in? And let the gracing begin?”
“Of course.” Her lips pulled back. Her teeth were blue. Jack saw with a start that the white marks weren’t skin—the white marks were the tattoos—burns, rather. The blue of the demon was everything else.
Jack whistled against his teeth. “Ava, luv. The lady of the house says come along in.”
Ava stepped through the door and bowed her head low. “My lady Areshko. I am honored.”
“Come, child.” The demon extended her hand, curled her fingers, long nails clicking. “Do not stand on ceremony if you seek my grace so heartbrokenly.”
Ava folded her hands and walked forward, head bowed, like a little girl taking first Communion. Jack had dated a Catholic girl the year after he had left Manchester, liked her enough to sit through a mass or three. The ceremony was comforting. Powerless, but comforting, and comfort counted more for ordinary people.
“My lady Areshko,” she repeated, “I’ve come a very, very long way to receive your blessing. Might I approach?”
“How do I know you are not an agent of the demon of Edinburgh?” Areshko tilted her head, flirting with a smile.
Ava twitched. Her mask didn’t slip, but it wasn’t perfect. Jack eyed the door, calculated how long it would take one skinny, too-tall punk singer to run for it.
“I’m not working for Nazaraphael,” Ava whispered.
Areshko spat a curse when she heard the name. “That snake in a tree, that foul torturer. May the Triumvirate pick over his bones.”
Jack held up his hands. “Easy. You know me, yeah? Jack. No one here has any love for that ponce in the suit. You have my word.” That, at least, was something he didn’t have to lie about.
Areshko took a shuddering breath, and stilled. Her hair was wound in thick braids, at least ten, smoke-colored and wire-thick. “Very well. The word of the crow-mage. Words written in blood.”
“Touch me?” Ava said plaintively. “Hold me in your embrace, Lady? Your touch brings wonder. I’ve heard it all the way across the ocean.”
Before Jack could tell her that she was laying it on a little thick, at least to his taste, Ava dropped to her knees at Areshko’s feet. Jack saw her knife hand drop as she spread her arms. “Please.”
The demon tensed, her long white nails curling against the wood. The chair creaked and Jack thought for a moment she was going to open Ava like a Christmas goose with the force of her gaze. Her long sweeping forehead and curious face, nearly alien with its planes and points, finally relaxed.
“Of course, child,” she said at last. Her skirts rustled. They were paper, hundreds of vellum pages sewn together with the same thick thread Jack had seen at funeral homes.
Jack allowed himself a smile thin as a razor blade. “Go ahead, Ava luv. This is what you’ve been waiting for.”
Ava shot him a dirty look. “I accept your grace,” she told Areshko. “I accept the stillness of your blessing.”
Areshko stretched out her hand, laid it on Ava’s forehead. A great shudder ran through Ava, one she played to the hilt, as though the feeling of Areshko was more than the last, longest climax she’d shared with Jack during the night in the hostel. Her hand dipped. It came up. The blade flicked free like a tongue of flame in the candlelight.
“Now accept death, you bitch,” Ava hissed. She swung the knife, a smooth and economical movement that Jack recognized. He’d met blokes who could work a knife, gangsters. Russians mostly. Ava put them to shame.
Areshko was still faster.
She opened her mouth and Jack felt a great weight settle on him, a blinding, oppressive echo inside his head, like he’d just stepped out of airlock doors into hard space.
Ava shrieked as Areshko reached down, her mouth gaping impossibly wide. Jack saw white, bright. He saw leaping licks of flame, and he heard himself scream, the sound rip raw from his throat, as his sight locked on Areshko’s power.
He saw it all—white cities, white fire. Great white wings made of metal and feather and flame. He knew that his brain was boiling in his skull and his eyes were bleeding, bursting, but he could not look away.
The sight would not allow it.
Areshko opened herself wider still, and then Ava was gone, just blinked out, like she’d never existed. The great sucking void subsided until Jack was on his knees, blood dribbling from his nose. He was crying blood tears. Everything ached, like he’d been battered by a wave of the Black itself.
Ava’s scream snuffed out quickly as she vanished. Jack reached for the spot where she’d been, but there was just the heavy air of Catacomb City.
