Ava was gone. Jack blinked away the blood, as his eyes stung.
Areshko stood from her throne, no longer a beautiful demon but a hateful thing pregnant with power. “Don’t weep for your companion, child. She could come back to you.”
Jack shied away from her hand. “I don’t deal.”
“I am not a demon who deals,” Areshko said. “Hell frowns on bargains that are not overseen.”
“I know the Triumvirate’s law well enough,” Jack snapped. “I ought to. I’ve seen what it’s done to a score of mates—to a girl who wanted nothing more than fair play for what you took off her.” Ava was gone. The geas no longer sunk claws into him. It left a score of bleeding holes.
“A human gives up a soul willingly,” said the demon. “What happened to old friends is not my concern.” She reached forward, quicker than a viper, and grabbed Jack by his neck, pulling him down and pressing her other hand over the center of his forehead, the spot where the sight looked outwards. “What concerns me is what I can give you, what you will do, to keep this transgression private.”
For just a moment, everything stopped—the wash of the Black in his mind, the whispers of the spirits that clung to the catacombs, the restless stirring of magic that breathed from the air and the dead, and the demon herself.
It was perfectly blank. Jack felt wet on his face, and realized he was crying real tears, silent and cold against the chilly underground air. Ava was gone and he was sane and the demon’s embrace was the sweetest thing he could ever imagine.
“You see what I can do?” Areshko said. She released him and everything rushed back with a snap, like opening the window of your silent bedroom to morning traffic—the misery of the city, the ache of the sight, the small cold place that whispered
“I can make your life very pleasant, crow-mage, and all you must do in return for my silence and my favor is stay. Stay here. Stay hidden.”
Jack stumbled, feeling drunk, or as if he’d just taken a jackboot to the head. “How … How can you …” It had been so cool, so calm, so … empty. To not see was the greatest peace he could have imagined.
“You have a talent, I have a talent,” Areshko said. “And if you spurn it, I will spread the news far and wide that you brought a viper into my house.”
“I can’t stay here,” Jack whispered. “I don’t belong with the dead …”
“Ah, and there is the dilemma,” Areshko whispered.
“Die above, or live below? How to escape the trap? That is your talent, mage. Escaping traps. But not this trap, I fear.”
Jack suddenly wanted Ava very, very badly. She and he could have done something, gotten away now that everything was wrong. But he was alone.
“Do you accept my terms? Your continued presence for your sight?” Areshko’s blue tongue flicked out.
Ava was devious, but Jack considered himself more of a talented liar. “You got yourself a bargain,” he said, taking a step toward the chapel door.
Areshko smiled. It was terrifying, nearly slitting her face in half and revealing an extra row of teeth. “Then your secret is mine as my blessing is yours, Jack Winter.”
She held out her hand. “Come here.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “That’s likely.” He stepped back again, and then spun and broke for the door, bones crunching under his boots. He clawed at the chapel door, bloodying his fingers. The fucking thing weighed a thousand pounds …
“I am Areshko.” The demon inclined her head. “Now, what made you think that such a base deception would be effective?”
Jack spread himself against the door, panting. “Hopes and dreams, mostly.”
Areshko rose. He could hear her skirt moving. She moved in the space between them, until her fingers were on the back of his neck. When she touched him, everything around Jack went dead. He was alone, as a normal person would be, except for the hot breath of the demon on his neck.
Her nails tore at his shirt. “Traitor.” Areskho lapped up the blood she’d drawn. “Deceiver.” Jack screamed as she lashed him with her nails again. “Liar.” Areshko shoved him against the door hard enough for Jack to see stars.
“You thought you were clever,” Areshko said. “But you’re human, and I am demon. You stand no chance.”
Areshko kept touching him, whispering to him, tasting his blood. Jack stopped screaming after a time, went still as the corpses around him, and waited for it to be over.
When Jack came back to himself, he was looking up at a stone ceiling, in a snug, warm space, on something soft.
He hurt. Like he’d hurt only a few times before, as when he’d met a skinhead with a pipe, alone. That had been two days in hospital and a few permanent markings. This felt worse. His shoulder was stitched, rudely, and his deeper cuts smeared with iodine, but the pain still coursed all through him.
Jack coughed, his tongue thick and his lips cracked. “Anyone there? Anyone who doesn’t want to kill me?”
The door swung open and the candles guttered. Jack sensed he wasn’t alone in the mausoleum—smelled it, really, a fresh and dense scent rather than desiccated and dry like everything else in the catacomb.
He tried to pull something to him, magic or anything, but all that responded was a weak trickle of power.
“Relax,” said a girl standing in the shadow of the door. Where Ava was robust, she was skinny, and where Ava was sultry, she was pale and thin as parchment. “I’m not here to hurt you,” she said.
“Drawn by my good looks and charm?” Jack tried to smile, found it split his head in new and agonizing ways. “You aren’t the first, darling, and I doubt you’ll be the last.”
She didn’t crack a smile, just set down a metal lockbox and popped it open, pulling out plasters and syringes and a bottle of antiseptic. She moved like she was used to it, her heroin-thin arms and hands moving like moths in the light. Glowing white skin showed through her cut-up shirt—something Jack himself would have worn ten years ago, when he was still shaving half of his head and putting fags out on his arm for kicks.
“I know who you are, Jack, and I know why you came and what Areshko told me to do with you.” She slashed a thumb across her throat.
“You’re me executioner?” Jack wished for a fag. “Guess I could be looking at worse things when I kick.”
“I’m not under Areshko’s thumb,” the girl countered. “We have a business partnership.” She tapped a menthol out of her pack and stuck it between Jack’s lips, lit it with a cheap disposable lighter. Then she picked up one of her syringes. “Nicotine and painkillers,” she murmured, and then laughed to herself.
Jack pulled his arm away and blew smoke out his nose. “I don’t fancy needles, luv.”
“Don’t be a bloody baby,” she said, and jabbed him with it. A moment later Jack was under a warm morphine ocean, and everything seemed softer and far more pleasant.
“So, you’re in bed with Areshko,” he murmured, trailing a hand lazily over the scratches that had appeared everywhere, shallow wounds that felt like briars in his skin. “Is that literally and figuratively?”
The girl didn’t flinch. Her eyes were burning from under her black fringe, accented by makeup that was both angrily and inexpertly applied. “It’s neither. She ordered me to murder you if you woke up.”
“So?” Jack cocked his eyebrow. “Going to smother me, or euthanize me? You’ve got enough in those sharps for an OD.”
“I’m not going to fucking kill you, Jack,” she snapped in irritation. “Subtlety’s not your strong suit, is it?”
Jack exhaled. The smoke was ghost blue in the dense air. “I don’t make a habit of it, no.”
The girl jutted out her chin like a small, defiant cat. “I’m no demon’s prozzie. I have a talent and I get paid for it, but I draw the line at assassination. I’m not some chav with a shank and a hard-on for blood.”
“What’s your name?” Jack said. “You know mine. It’s an unfair exchange this side of the Black if I don’t have yours.”
“Nina,” she said, “My name’s Nina, and I think it’s time that you and I got out of here, Jack Winter.” She finished his bandages, laid the rest of the fags by his bed, and slipped from his room like the shadow of a crow’s wing passing across the sun.
Nina came back as more and more candlelight blossomed through the catacombs, patches and glades and gardens of gold amid the bony fingers of the broken tombs and the hollow eyes of the ossuary walls. Jack watched it from the small arrow-slit in the wall of his prison—the door was locked and no amount of fussing on his part could budge the ancient tumblers.
Not that his hands were too steady—bloodied, ragged, and drugged as they were.
“There’s a celebration tonight,” she said. “On account of you being Areshko’s new chew toy, I imagine.” She handed Jack a tray with a suspicious bowl of stew and a cup of water. Jack ate it anyway, his stomach pitching against the morphine.
Nina sat on the edge of his bed. “Areshko has strong hexes on all of her boundaries, so making a run for it is out of the question. Got any bright ideas in that area? You’re supposed to be clever.”
“Sure, I’ll just wave my wand, twitch my robe, and do a lap on me broomstick while I’m at it.” Jack leaned back against the stone of the mausoleum. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Nina leaned forward and put her wrist against his forehead. Her fingers ruffled his hair. Jack felt a chill down his spine. “No fever,” she said. “You’re healing up. Tough bastard, aren’t you?”
“Worse things to be.” Jack said.
Nina’s mouth quirked. “It’s almost fate, you know. If I believed in a stupid thing like that. I’ve been down here for a long time.”
“You’re not more than twenty-two if you’re a day,” Jack said. “How long can it have been?”
“Long enough for me to turn pale as Princess Diana.” Nina tossed her head. “My dad’s from Pakistan. I’m not supposed to be Snow bloody White.” She got up and stood in the doorway, watching. “Areshko told me it would be one job.”
“And she tackled you and jammed her nails into your flesh when you tried to go topside?” Jack guessed.
Nina nodded. “She’ll keep me here until I die. It’s what she does. She is the Hunger. She consumes.”
“I saw,” Jack muttered, sitting up. Between the drugs and the food, he felt like the tail end of a drunk, rather than the beginning of death. “Ava’s gone,” he said.
Nina cocked her eyebrow. “That demon-hunter bird who dragged you in here? She’s not dead.”
“I’m pretty sure that when a demon vaporizes you with the sheer force of her rage, you’re dead.” Jack passed a hand over his face. He needed a bath, and a shave.
“Areshko …” Nina sighed. “Look. We both want something, yeah? I want out of here and you want your girlfriend back.”
“I suppose, yeah,” Jack muttered. Ava had tricked him, nearly gotten him killed, but she hadn’t bored him.
“I saw your look.” Nina smiled. “You cared for her.”
“She was … a bit of a crazy bint, really,” Jack said. “But innocent, in a way. Too many innocent people burn in the Black.”
“You’ll have her back,” said Nina. “Areshko didn’t kill her.”
“How can you be so sure?” Jack said.
“Because the last demon hunter come down here, she kept alive for a good long time. Until he was sorry he’d ever been born.”
Jack flinched. “That’s a demon for you.”
