Black London 05 - Soul Trade

Weir. It’s practically commonplace.”
    She’d never get used to the dreams. Weirs had the power to dream the truth, which also made them a handy conduit for any entity that wanted to speakits piece to the daylight world.
    “ The warning remains, ” the raven said. “ The Morrigan will not be denied. She is death, she is—”
    “She is eternal,” Pete said. “Second verse, same as the first. Here’s a tip—if you want me to pay attention to anything that raggedy old crow has to say, tell her to change her fucking record.”
    The raven twitched, and then abruptly it took flight, a black shadow flickingacross the sun, gone in the blink of an eye. Pete exhaled. Fucking gods and monsters were all the same, thinking they could just tune in on you any time they liked.
    The train window, rimed with a thin layer of raindrops, cracked in a spider web pattern directly in front of Pete’s face, with a force that pasted her back in her seat. This time, when Pete looked, it wasn’t a raven staring back ather, but the glowing gold eyes of the Morrigan herself. Her face was pale, chased with black veins, and her hair was feathery and black, flying around her head as wind and rain lashed the train car.
    Pete felt the vibration of the Black down to her bones as the Morrigan manifested herself, placing one taloned hand against the glass, leaving deep furrows as they screeched across the cracks she’dmade.
    Jack can’t deny me, she hissed. What makes you think you can?
    “I helped you,” Pete said. She was quivering, and there was no hiding it, but she wasn’t going to start having a fit. “I helped you put Nergal down. And you got what you wanted—you left your mark on Jack.”
    What I wanted was my birthright, the Morrigan screeched. Lightning split the nearest tree, and Pete was momentarily blinded.When she could see again the Morrigan was inside the train car, standing before her. Her dress was a tattered shroud, stained with the blood of a hundred dead, and black blood dribbled from her lips when she spoke.
    You denied me my war, Weir. The march on the daylight world that my army will have, at the end of all things. You think you’ve saved your pathetic little slice of the cosmos, but you’vemerely granted it a stay of execution.
    Cold took over Pete’s body inch by inch—not the chill of outside air, but the final cold of death, as her body shut down and her heart ceased to beat. She could see her breath when she whispered, “You might have Jack, but you’ll never have me. You’ll never have the end of my world that you want. Not while I’m alive.”
    The Morrigan snarled. “Then perhapswe should do something about that, since you’re Hell-bent on being the heroine of this story.”
    She reached for Pete, bloody talons wrapping around her throat, searing Pete with her cold touch, talons ripping through her skin, into her jugular vein. Pete felt hot blood gush forth, and the last thought she had was that she wouldn’t even have time to scream, wouldn’t have time to tell Lily one lasttime that she loved her …
    She woke up with a thrash and a scream, and Jack turned to stare at her, taking off his padded headphones and narrowing his eyes. From his MP3 player, Pete heard the strains of the Runaways.
    “Sorry,” she said. Her heart thudded so violently that her breastbone ached. “Bad dream.”
    Jack grimaced. “That sounded like a little more than a nightmare.”
    People were staring,and Pete shrank back into her seat, looking out again at the low gray land passing all around them.
    “You really can’t tell me anything else about these Prometheus Club bastards?” she asked. Jack huffed at her abrupt change of subject, but there was no way in any Hell that Pete was telling him what she’d seen.
    The Morrigan could try to scare her, but she could only reach Pete in her dreams. Inthe daylight world, at least for now, she was powerless.
    Jack shifted in his seat, and Pete caught sight of the tattoos along his wrist. She wondered just how long the Morrigan would remain in her dreams.
    She realized she was glad for the more pressing problem of the geas. The Morrigan able to reach into the larger world via Jack was a horror that didn’t bear contemplation.
    “I’m not holdingout on you, if that’s what you mean to say,” Jack said. “Nobody knows about the club except the members of the club, and nobody knows the members.” He shoved his MP3 player back into his bag and leaned his head