Black London 05 - Soul Trade

them escaping that miserable place to comehere, to this breathing and fertile and verdant place.
    Not from Hell.
    Not a demon.
    Shit, Pete thought, even as Patrick and Diana set up keening screams to go along with Bridget’s wail.
    “Your name,” she bellowed at Bridget. “Tell me your name or I’ll burn you out of her!”
    “You can’t finish us off!” Bridget screamed, though by rights Pete’s grip should have crushed her vocal cords. It didn’tmatter any longer. Bridget Killigan was dead, had probably been dead the moment this crawling, slithering madness had taken up residence in her flesh.
    Pete put her face as close as she dared to Bridget’s ear, as the Weir howled at the power it drank down.
    “Watch me.”
    “We are not of earth, not of Hell,” Bridget hissed back, and Patrick and Diana took up the chant. “Not of the Black, not of magic.We are the nothing, the endless.”
    Bridget stared at Pete, white eyes bulging and turning slowly crimson as tiny veins popped one by one. “We are the end.”
    Pete loosened her grip a fraction at that, but the Weir had taken hold now and there was no letting go until it had its fill of this strange power that felt as old as the earth and rock itself. Pete’s talent flashed that endless white place,that desperate scrabbling, the emptiness of being completely alone in the universe.
    The Weir didn’t care what it showed Pete, though. It just wanted power, and Pete heard herself scream as the pain that followed the euphoria rushed up at her and hit like a freight lorry.
    All three children screamed along with her, but before Pete could finish draining the thing riding Bridget, heavy arms grabbedher from behind and yanked her away, tossing her into the wall. Earth clods rained down on Pete’s head, and she went to her knees, the cloying power of the thing inside Bridget coursing through her. It was like drowning in shallow mud, cold and unyielding and so, so hungry.
    She managed to roll and get a look at the shape looming above her, just before Dexter Killigan’s boot hit her in the face.Lightning struck inside her skull, and she tasted dirt and blood when she hit the floor.
    The power was still there, still scrabbling to be let out, but the more imminent danger helped Pete get a handle on her talent, if only for a few seconds.
    “Kill her, Dexter,” Diana said, voice flat. “Kick her ’til her brains come out.”
    Pete rolled away from Dexter, curling around her vital organs, whilehe loped after her. There was a black indent in the side of his head. Old blood had dried on his cheek and around his eye, and the flesh around the wound had festered to the color of old moss. He was a little fresher than Crotherton, but not by much. Dexter Killigan shouldn’t be up and walking around, never mind kicking seven kinds of Hell out of her. Should and were rarely intersected in theBlack, though, so Pete concentrated on not getting beaten to death by a zombie. She could figure out how Dexter Killigan had joined the ranks of the recently alive once she’d gotten out of the cellar.
    And once she’d figured out what the thing riding Bridget had been.
    Dexter lunged for her again, and Pete grabbed his ankle and yanked as hard as she could. Dexter stumbled off balance, crashinginto the dirt wall, and Pete made it to her feet and made a beeline for the ladder. Her skull rang, and everything blurred at the edges as if she were underwater. Splinters bit into her palms, and she felt the wet sting of the blood she was leaving behind.
    She screamed again when she crashed into Jack coming down, and he caught her, looking past her at Dexter, the children, and Jeremy Crotherton’sshroud, which was starting to twitch and ripple as the corpse within moved of its own accord.
    “Don’t let them go!” Bridget snarled. “Kill them, Daddy! Kill them for me.”
    Jack’s eyes went wide. “The fuck is all this, then?”
    Dexter managed to grab at Pete again, but she knocked him off balance and he went down, scrabbling in the dirt for her legs, snarling and baring his teeth. “Zombie, you bloodyidiot. What’s it look like?”
    “That’s not a zombie,” Jack said. His eyes were as wide as a child who’s just discovered that Santa Claus is real, and he eats brains. “Zombies are bespelled, red thread and voodoo and shit, not … this. ”
    “Call ’em whatever you want,” Pete gasped, kicking at Dexter. “They’re the walking fucking dead, and I’d like to get out of