sorcerer, warn her that something was coming to slice her like a Sunday roast, and get the fuck out. Let Sanford and Belial and Abbadon duke it out. He was finished with being batted back and forth like a toy mouse. LA couldn’t be in his rear view soon enough.
The buzzer rang, echoing through the rusted speaker, and Parker held the door for Sanford. He began to let it go on Jack again, and Jack stared into his blank dark eyes. “Do it and I’m putting your head through.”
“You threatened to kick our teeth in, too,” Parker murmured. “Promises, promises.”
Jack followed Sanford up a narrow staircase, threadbare Persian carpets muffling his boots. The walls were stamped tin, painted over with blood red that pooled and dripped at the floor. A single bare bulb flickered above Jack’s head, giving Sanford an entirely undeserved halo as he crested the landing in front of Jack.
Sanford knocked at another door and looked at Parker when a deadbolt clacked. “We’ll be out in a few minutes. Just hang out.”
Parker grunted, and glared at Jack with hostility naked as a spitting electrical wire. Jack patted him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, mate. You’ll have time to work on your tan.”
The door swung open, and a small woman looked Jack up and down. “You didn’t call ahead for a visitor,” she told Sanford.
“Come on, Anna,” he said. “You know I’m a good boy.”
One of her painted eyebrows went up. “Hmph,” she said, but stepped aside. She was pudgy, in the way that short women seemed to grow outward, not up, and wore a black silk dressing gown and heels. She didn’t have the hollowed-out stare of most sex sorcerers’ fuckmates. A madam, Jack decided, somebody who wasn’t to the taste of whatever entity this sorcerer was feeding in exchange for power.
“We don’t have any more recordings for you,” she told Sanford. “Next ritual is at the new moon. You’re welcome to attend, as always.”
“Hold up,” Jack said to Sanford. “You use their rituals for spank material?” He shook his head. “Got to hand you that one, mate. You’re sicker than I thought.”
“Please,” Sanford said. “Shut the fuck up. Did I not make myself clear?”
Jack ignored him and looked at Anna. “Where’s your loo?”
“Down the hallway, second door,” she said. Jack started walking without another word.
Sanford was somebody who liked the wheedling almost as much as the result. They could be here until Christmas while he danced around with Anna and her fellow perverts, trying to couch his question in the most honeyed terms. Tell a sorcerer an ancient entity from the blackest part of the Pit was after one of their flock, and they’d probably welcome it with open arms. Sanford had to avoid that at all costs if he wanted his prize of a living, breathing pet demon than he didn’t have to share with anyone.
Jack had no such compunctions. He’d kick down every door in this shitty warren of flats if he had to. He opened the loo door loudly, running water and flushing the toilet, and then slipped out and down the hallway.
He thought it might have been offices at one point, in the past when men wore hats and women all had blood-red lips and low, husky cigarette purrs. The wavy glass door showed shadows, and moans and sobs came from behind a few. Jack tried those first.
A boy who couldn’t have been much older than Sliver glared up at him. His bare torso was covered with thin welts, and a black halo of makeup had collected under his eyes. “Get the fuck out,” he said, swiping the runnels on his cheeks.
“Sorry,” Jack said.
“Don’t be sorry, get out!” the kid snapped. “I’m off duty, all right? Find somebody else to fuck with.”
“Can I help you?”
Jack turned to tell whoever it was to fuck off, but instead found himself face to face with a pleasant-looking blond girl whose stomach under her Killers T-shirt was swollen round as a sport ball.
“Yeah,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think you can.”
“Excuse me,” the boy said loudly. “Can you two have your girl talk somewhere other than my room?”
“Calm down, Travis,” the girl said. “Nobody wants to be in your room.” She ushered Jack out and shut the door. “Sorry about him. He’s new.”
“He always that cheerful?” Jack asked her.
“Usually he’s pretty good about new people,” the girl said. “But he had a rough night. The indoctrination can be tough.” She gave Jack a serene smile. “The first time I let the power inside me, I puked my guts out. But Anna helped me, and now look.” She ran her hands over her stomach.
“A veritable bundle of joy,” Jack said. “Anna, she’s like your mum?”
“Oh, no.” The girl shook her head. “Anna leads the rituals. She’s the one who shares the power with us, and who showed me how I can use my body to communicate with it.” She gave a small shiver. “Anna’s so much more than a mother.”
A female sex magician. Well, he’d heard of stranger things. Jack took the girl by the arm. “What’s your name?” Her talent was barely a flutter, just enough that she’d feel disconnected from the daylight world, a vague feeling of unease she could never identify. It made her a thick piece of juicy meat to people like Anna.
“Kim,” she said. “My ritual name is…”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Jack said. He turned them around and aimed them at the glowing red sign showing the exceptionally stupid where they should go in case there was a fire. “You’re the only pregnant one here, yeah?”
“Yes, for now…” Kim twisted in his hand. “You’re hurting me.”
“We’re going,” Jack said. “Come with me.”
“No!” Kim said, jerking free. “I’m not a whore, dude. If you’re here for a ritual, then talk to Anna. You can’t just drag me off to fuck any time you want.”
“Listen, you brainwashed twit,” Jack said. “If you don’t leave this place right now, then you are going to end up dead and your child is going to be a vessel for something so horrible your tiny mind can’t comprehend. Look at my face and see if I’m lying to you.”
Kim stared at him, catching her lip between her teeth. “My baby?” she said. “Anna wouldn’t hurt my baby. Children are a gift, a product of the most sacred kind of union…”
“What utter shit have they been feeding you?” Jack said. She was letting him walk her, at least, and he shoved the door open with his free arm.
A klaxon began whooping, and Jack resisted the urge to ram his head into the wall. “Listen to me, Kim. Your little circle-jerk here has been targeted by a predator who is much bigger and hungrier than your Anna. She might think she’s struck a bargain with him, but she can’t stop what he wants to do with your kid and any others who come into the fold. Nothing can. If you care about the kid at all, you’ll come with me now.”
Kim swallowed hard, lacing her fingers across her stomach. “Who are you?”
At the far end of the hall, Anna and Sanford appeared, Parker in tow. “Stop him!” Anna shrieked. “He’s got a girl with him!”
“I’m Jack,” Jack told Kim. “Nice to meet you. Now kindly get yourself together and fucking run.”
Parker reached under his coat, hand coming up. Anna raised her hands, and Jack saw purple witchfire crackle around her fists. “Fuck,” he muttered, throwing a shield hex to bounce Anna’s spell back at her. His head throbbed, and Anna’s power jittered through the light sockets and across the walls, throwing sparks.
Kim stared at Anna, then back at him. “You’re crazy,” she whispered.
Jack watched Parker bring up his pistol, work the slide. The hex might hold; it might not. Bullets were iron projectiles, and they were decent at punching through spells even when the mage throwing them wasn’t beat to shite and working on half power. “Look,” he said to Kim. “You’ve got no reason to trust me, but I don’t want anything from you. I’ve got a kid of my own, and I know you’d die before you let anything happen to yours. I’m just here to see that you don’t have to.”
Kim looked back at him and didn’t say anything else, just started moving, down the stairs, as fast as she could with her extra weight.
Jack slammed the fire door, twisted the deadbolt, and, for good measure, sent a burning curse into the lock that turned the works to slag. It wouldn’t hold a sorcerer like Anna for long, but it’d give them what he hoped was enough of a head start.
“Are you some kind of psycho?” Kim asked as they reached the bottom level. Jack worked his lock-pick charm on the padlock and chain keeping the door to the next building shut, then hustled Kim through.
“There’s some debate about that,” he said. “But right now, I’m the sanest person you know.”
