“Nergal is not your concern at this time,” said Baal. “You fucked up, Belial. You spend far too much time in the daylight world, among the human meat, and it’s affected your perceptions. You’re fat and slow. Your obsession with the crow-mage has brought you here, and it’s time for consequences.”
Jack looked to Belial, and he saw a bead of moisture work its way down the demon’s temple. Belial was pissing himself in fear. That could be bad or good for Jack. Jack looked back at the Triumverate. They leaned in, shadowed heads bowed, and then Azrael stood up.
“Crow-mage, stay. Belial, you are relieved.”
“No,” Belial cried. “No, sir, give me a chance…”
The doors banged open, and a pair of demons wearing the same black uniforms and jackboots as the one in the hall came in. These were tall, with bulging foreheads and chests their black tunics barely contained. Fenris. Jack had seen them before. They were the big, hungry bastards of the demon world, hunters and trackers that would just as soon leave teethmarks on your tibia as look at you.
“Shit,” Belial muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Things not going as you expected, snake?” Jack muttered.
“Does this bloody look like it’s going well?” Belial hissed. “You don’t get a warning in your file, Jack. The Princes are going to liquidate me. I got one chance to bring Abbadon back and thanks to you and your insistence that you know better it’s fucked backward and sideways.”
The Fenris gripped Belial by the arms, their crimson lips pulling back to reveal rows of fangs.
“Wait,” Jack said to the Princes.
Beelzebub tapped one finger on the table. His nails were pure white, curved like a cat’s claws. “You’re speaking for yourself now, crow-mage?”
“Way I see it,” Jack said. “You lot got egg on your faces when Nick Naughton got as far as calling up Nergal. It was so important that he stayed under wraps, you’d make sure of it. Same with Basil Locke and his ruddy portal or whatever it is.
Azrael leaned over the table, and Jack saw white eyes, a long pale face, the sort of face that belonged to a thing that had lived in the dark for a long while, navigating by touch and sound. “Do you want to die today, crow- mage?”
“If you want to get the Morrigan and her kind down on your arse, then be my guest.” Jack folded his arms. His stomach was quavering and his heart was thudding hard against his ribs, hard enough that the fat veins in his neck throbbed. He didn’t know if the threat of the Morrigan was enough to dissuade the Princes from turning him into a wall ornament, but it had been enough for Belial to void their bargain for his soul, so it had to count for something. Just what the something was, he wouldn’t let himself think about until he was someplace other than Hell.
“Belial’s not wrong,” Jack kept on. Azrael listened, flat nostrils flaring away from his skeletal face. Jack looked at the Fenris, standing implacable behind them. He’d never tangled with a Fenris. Run the fuck away from one, sure. But taken one in a stand-up fight? He’d be shredded.
“Belial has failed,” Baal said. “He’s no longer of any use to us.”
“I think you’re wrong there,” Jack said. “Because Abbadon still needs a demon to open Locke’s doorway, and you know what they say.” He spread his hands. “Better the devil you know.”
Azrael cocked his head. “What are you proposing, crow-mage? You may be the Morrigan’s pet, but a pet can still be a nuisance.” He smiled, revealing a toothless mouth with a long, serpentine blue tongue. “Choose your next words very, very carefully.”
“Let us go back upstairs,” Jack said. “Abbadon will come after Belial, you get Abbadon and his backup singers, and then you can do whatever you want with the lot of them.”
“And I suppose in exchange for this, you go free,” Beelzebub said. “We’re not idiots, Winter. Idiots don’t stay in these seats while all below them are scheming for their heads.”
“Never said you were, darling,” Jack said. The room was cold but he was as soaked as Belial was, his T-shirt sticking to his skin like cold, clammy hands.
“So what do you want?” Azrael rasped. “Nothing is free, crow-mage. What’s your bargain?”
“Leave me and Pete and our kid the fuck alone from now on,” Jack said. “No demons sniffing around. No Belial trying to collect on whatever debts he thinks we owe. Point of fact, if I see one fucking bloke stinking of sulfur darkening my doorway from now until the day I die, I’m walking out right now and I’ll see you all when you’re roasting on Abbadon’s victory fire with a spit shoved up your arse.”
Baal started to laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. It was the sound, Jack decided, of several small animals in excruciating pain. “Oh, I like him,” he purred. “He’s got some swinging brass ones, doesn’t he?”
“You’d be better off showing some of that,” Azrael told Belial. “Why should we think that you can send Abbadon back from whence he came, crow-mage, when a Named demon of Hell can’t manage the task?”
“Put Nergal’s lights out, didn’t I?” Jack said. “And from what I’ve heard, Abbadon is a fluffy pup in comparison. A veritable ray of fuckin’ sunshine.” He wasn’t, but the only chance for Pete was for Jack to get out of Hell, and the only way he was doing that was by talking. Talking was the one thing he was always good at—he could talk that dole woman out of extra cash, his friends out of their shitty drugs, girls he fancied out of their knickers. Talking was the only skill he could always rely on, the source of and solution to most of his problems.
He waited, watching the Princes, feeling his blood flow in and out of the chambers of his heart. If these were the last moments of his life, they were shit. He wasn’t sentimental. There wasn’t anything he wished he’d said, but he would’ve liked to see Pete again, to know that she was safe from Abbadon and from everyone else.
The Princes separated their heads and stared at Jack, three sets of black snake eyes, measuring the weight of his soul. “He’s got a point,” Beelzebub told his companions. “None of ours have managed anything better. We could waste legions chasing this fuckwit.”
“If you do this and
“And Pete, and the baby,” Jack reminded them. “They’re out. Out of the life for good.”
“If you insist,” Beelzebub sighed. “I’ll never understand your attachment to other humans, but so be it. We have no interest in your whore or your spawn.”
“And watch your language, while you’re at it,” Jack said. “Before I come over that table and knock your teeth back a step.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Belial muttered. “Always have to push it, don’t you?”
Beelzebub stood to his full height, which Jack had to admit was impressive. “I’m a Prince of Hell, boy,” he rumbled. “And you’d do well to remember that. While you’re at it, you leave this place at my whim, because it amuses me to watch you struggle through the shit and mud of the human world. Now go, and do as you’ve promised, or you’ll be standing in front of me again and I’ll take every one of those ill-considered words out of your miserable, clammy hide.”
“Got it,” Jack said. The Fenris moved back as he turned, pulling Belial with him, and made for the door.
“Are you insane?” Belial asked when they were in the hall.
“You know, a ‘Thanks, Jack, for saving my arse when you didn’t have to’ would be in order here,” Jack said.
“What do I have to thank you for?” Belial snapped. “You’re planning to offer me up to Abbadon on a plate.”
“Like you didn’t do the same to me just a day ago,” Jack said. “Don’t play wounded hero with me, demon. You’d bend me over soon as you got the chance in there.”
Belial curled his fists, and then uncurled them, taking a deep breath. “Fucking Azrael,” he said. “He’s been trying to shove me out for centuries, get me booted to some backwater like the Well of Sorrows. Can’t stand that I bring in more soul traffic than his little legions of dead men.”
“I get it, he’s not on your Christmas card list,” Jack said. “Now are you going to take us topside or not?”
“Not like I have a choice,” Belial snarled.
“Nope,” Jack told him. “How are you liking that shoe on the other foot, by the way?”
“I’m going to pull your intestines out through your arse for this,” Belial muttered.
“You won’t,” Jack said, “because I saved your arse, and now, for once, you owe me something.” He snapped
