Black London 05 - Soul Trade

tosomething living inside the bodies of three children she’d tried and failed to save. Ignore that this was a nightmare she’d had more than once.
    This bastard was going to learn Pete Caldecott was made of sterner stuff than falling apart when faced with living nightmares.
    Her foot bumped against something else yielding, and she glanced down to see Dexter Killigan lying face down on the cellarfloor. A tray lay just north of his outstretched hand, and a shattered plate next to it. Flies had already massed on the raw meat the plate had carried, and maggots wriggled under the lighter’s glare.
    This time she wasn’t surprised at the corpse. The poor sod was likely much happier wherever he was than he had been here, serving the whim of something he had to know wasn’t actually his Bridget.

    Pete looked back up at the three figures and frowned her most disappointed and motherly frown. “I don’t know what kind of fuckwit takes over children’s bodies, but it wasn’t your smartest move. You’re small and fragile. Easily handled.”
    Bridget laughed. It was low, rough. Her throat distended as she spoke, as if something were trying to claw its way free of her skin. “Jeremy thought so, too.Big boy that he was. He actually tried to exorcise us.”
    The others laughed, bullfrog throats throbbing, and Pete fought to keep from turning around and running until she was out of air. “I can’t do that,” Pete said. “But what’s waiting for you upstairs sure can.”
    “The crow-mage doesn’t scare us,” Bridget snarled. “ You don’t scare us.”
    Pete stepped over Dexter’s body, holding the lighter withinsnuffing distance of Bridget’s face. “You don’t scare me either,” she said. “So I guess we’re even.”
    “Lies,” Patrick hissed, turning the upper half of his body to face Pete. She winced as she heard his vertebrae crack, spine unhinging. Even if she and Jack pulled off an exorcism, these poor kids weren’t going to be long for the world. And maybe that’s for the best, she thought.
    “We scare youall right,” said Diana. “You used to be the fearless one, but everything scares you now. You think about her every waking moment. Your blood given form. Your Lily.”
    Bridget started laughing again. “She has dreams about Lily being like us. Dreams about the demons who want to possess her.”
    Pete didn’t usually give in to temper—that was Jack’s problem, not hers. She could hold herself togetherpast the point of screaming. But not this time. This time, she wasn’t even aware she was moving until she’d dropped the lighter and wrapped her hands around Bridget Killigan’s throat in the dark. Until the laughter choked to a stop. Until their talents clashed.
    “ Don’t you ever, ” Pete snarled, in a voice so grating and enraged she couldn’t believe it sprang from her, “ use your filthy Hell-spawnedmouth to say my daughter’s name. ”
    Not even her voice—Connor’s voice, as if he were reaching out to lend her every last ounce of rage she could pour into the words.
    Bridget gave a choking gasp, but she was still laughing. “There’s your first mistake, Weir,” she croaked. “We’re not from Hell.”
    Pete started, but she couldn’t have let go if she tried. She was lost in the demon’s power, as her talentopened up and drank it down. The Weir was hungry, denied the power of the hex, and now it wasn’t letting go until it had its fill.
    “Stop … stop…” Bridget vomited up bile, the green of the bottom of a pond. Pete felt her palms burn, nerves screaming as if she’d thrust them into an oven, but she couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go, until the thing grinning at her from Bridget Killigan’s face burned,too.
    As the Black surged around them, a tidal wave smashing on rocks, the shape of the thing inside Bridget—the true thing, which gave life and speech to the little girl’s body—began to show itself. It was cold and slithering, a thing that dwelled in the dark of the earth, driven by a hunger only sated by wholly consuming its hosts. They would sicken and die, withered husks of what they had been.Bridget was such a host—entirely hollow, left to be filled by this presence, this thing that wormed its way through vast empty expanses Pete only caught a glimpse of, ashy gray earth topped by a sky the color of pus and blood, triple suns oozing endlessly from one side to the other. Three children were enough for the thing and its companions, three of