Devil's Business

force and velocity. The Morrigan’s marks didn’t change the fact he was a shit shot, but they were keeping his panic at bay. “Did he happen to tell you to let me have my girlfriend and walk out of here?”

“He said if he didn’t come home we were to kill whoever walked through that door,” the girl said. “Bad luck for you, nasty man.”

She launched herself at Jack, knifelike claws and teeth bared, the black hair she’d kept braided into a rope at her back turning into a riot of bodies, tiny mouths and sharp, lava-glass blades. Jack brought the gun up, swiped it across the side of her head, and knocked her into the banister and then to the hall floor.

She snapped at him, and he whipped her with the gun barrel again, causing a trio of her black blade teeth to fly free.

The girl cowered, howling, and then launched at him again. Jack slipped his hand inside his leather and used it to wrap his fist around her living, writhing hair. He yanked. The girl screamed.

“Doesn’t feel good, does it?” Jack said. “Perhaps if you were a bit nicer, we wouldn’t have to go through this.”

“What are you going to do to me?” she whined. “I’m only a baby. Compared to the rest, I haven’t even done anything really terrible. I’m just a child, and I like to play with things. Live things.” She blinked at him. “Is that so wrong?”

“I’m not going to debate with you, luv,” Jack said. “If it makes you feel better, chalk it up to wrong place, wrong time.” He mimicked Belial’s move at the graveyard and jerked her head to the left by her braid. It was a clean break, quick and fast, her neck going just a bit too far and the gleam of bloodlust fading from her eyes. She wouldn’t wake up quickly here, not on this ground that twisted and corrupted talent and the Black almost beyond recognition.

Jack picked up the pistol and stepped over the body, into the back room.

Levi looked up at him, docile face quivering around the edges. “You.”

“Not the fucking tooth fairy,” Jack agreed. “Where’s Pete?”

Levi narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t over, you know. You can’t kill things like us. You can’t kill your future, Jack. Sooner or later your little world is going to get devoured, just like the one before it and the one before that. I’m the one doing the devouring. I am the leviathan, and I eat the world.”

Jack put the pistol barrel against Levi’s temple and pressed it in just a bit, until it left a depression in his fatty flesh. “You know what the problem is with all of you ancient types? All the gods and demons and whatever the fuck you are?”

Levi’s labored breathing increased, sounding a bit like a small saw inside his chest. “You can’t kill me. You can’t…”

“The problem is you talk too fucking much,” Jack said, then squeezed the trigger.

There wasn’t as much gore as films had led him to believe. A little blood and a few bits of skull and brain covered the fuzzy telly screen, but the rest matted in Levi’s hair as he slumped sideways in his scooter chair.

Jack left him there and stepped down the hall. Only Teddy left. The best and the worst of the four. Something that could get inside your head didn’t leave you with a lot of options. You couldn’t shoot something that could convince you that you were holding a teddy bear rather than a pistol. You couldn’t reason with something that wanted more than anything to live.

He pushed the door open gently. A child’s mobile lamp sat in the corner, projecting images of carousel horses and clowns onto the stained walls. Teddy still hung in state, hooked up to his IVs and machines.

Pete crouched at his feet, and she looked up at him. He wasn’t the cold Jack in that moment, the Jack who had it all figured out. He dropped the pistol and crouched beside her, cupping her face in his hands. “Have they hurt you?”

Pete shook her head mutely. Her face was streaked with grime and twin rivulets where tears had cut through, but her eyes were dry. “I feel so fucking stupid,” she muttered. “Didn’t even see the bastards who snatched me.”

Jack wrapped his arms around her. She let him, pressing her face against his leather. “You’re all right,” he said.

“I am,” Pete said. She gave a small gasp, just an intake of air. “The baby…”

Jack felt the cold grow in him again. Of course. The baby. The fucking baby. How could he not have seen it? Kim had never been Abbadon’s real plan, not since he and Pete had landed on their patch.

“What did they do to the baby?” he said.

Nothing yet. Teddy’s voice sliced into him, and it still hurt. It bypassed his sight and cut straight to the part of his brain where his talent lived, hollowed it out and echoed there. Abbadon had plans, though. Great plans, and they’re in motion, and you can’t stop them. A thin giggle punctuated the sentence.

Jack looked up at Teddy. “Don’t think I won’t waste you in just a moment, you piece of shit.”

“Abbadon said…” Pete sucked in a breath and steadied her voice. “He said that the baby was his now … that he’d done something … to me.” She dug her fingers into Jack’s wrists. “I can feel it. I can feel what he put in my kid, Jack. It’s going to be his. I’m going to be just like those stupid cows that he sliced apart.”

She’s right, you know, Teddy purred. Don never was happy with that raggedy meat bag he was riding. He had big plans. Big plans to live forever in that brave new world he was gonna open up.

Kim hadn’t been carrying a body for Teddy. Pete hadn’t been snatched as leverage. Sanford had never intended to give her back. He’d traded Pete to Abbadon in exchange for his help with Locke’s doorway. A brand new infant body, with talented blood pumping through it to sustain Abbadon’s power. A body that wouldn’t burn out like a regular meatbag, as Teddy had put it. A body that he could ride forever, while he ushered the fires of Hell into downtown LA.

“I’ve got some news for you,” Jack told Teddy. “Abbadon is dead. He’s gone. This baby isn’t his and it isn’t going to be.”

He’s not dead, Teddy said. You know how many times Azrael did him in, down there in the Pit? Only for the fun of it? Thousands. We can’t cease to exist, Jack. Not forever. We’re the beginning and the end.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. “The Alpha and the fucking Omega. He’s still not getting my kid.”

“He already has,” Pete whispered. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t even shaking. The world could end and Pete would hold it together. “I can feel it, Jack. We were alone a long time, and he put his mark on the baby, the same as he did those other poor children, who got turned into things like…” She pointed at Teddy, gulping back a sob. “Like him.”

There’s a process. Teddy chuckled. A seed to be planted. The child will be Abbadon. Poetic, if you think about it. The phoenix and the ashes.

“You shut up,” Jack told him. He pulled Pete to her feet. “They didn’t touch you, yeah? Didn’t hurt you?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Jack, no,” Pete said. “Nobody molested me, and honestly, when they snatched me that was the least of my worries.” She laced her hands across her stomach. “That thing is right. He did a ritual, and his magic was so strong. When this kid is born, it’s going to become Abbadon. There’s no help for it.” Her tears did start then, and she bit her lip savagely, causing a trickle of blood. “You’re going to have to do it. I don’t think I can.”

Jack stared at Pete. Her stomach was barely showing—he thought she might have put on a stone, at worst. In all of his ramblings about the kid, he’d never imagined there not being a kid at all. Head so far up your own arse you never even realized what Abbadon really wanted, the new Jack whispered. That Jack was pragmatic. He saw the whole picture. Abbadon couldn’t be allowed near the daylight world, never again. Pete was resilient. She could have more children, when she was ready, with someone who wouldn’t be a complete cock-up as a parent. And he’d keep the first evil the universe had known at bay for a bit longer, and could go through life knowing he hadn’t contributed to anyone else’s fucking up.

It made sense. In every way that mattered.

Jack dropped his hands to his side. He was hot now, the air in Teddy’s room stuffy and stinking of a hospital ward, and massively tired. He could curl up between the IV stands and sleep for a week.

“I can’t.”