Black London 05 - Soul Trade

rubbed his forehead. “Too good and pure for words, aren’t you?”
    “Talk,” Pete reminded him. Around them, the wraiths flitted, clustering over an old corner of the graveyard. Several of them converged on one grave, and Pete sighed as she sawa flash of silver spirit energy and felt rather than heard a spectral scream rake over her mind. Another poor ghost, caught up in the feeding frenzy.
    “This isn’t normal,” Donovan said. “You felt it in the village, how the Black stops flowing. All of this, with the wraiths and the creepy village and Hell, even the fog.” He swatted at a tendril of mist. “Do you know where we are?”
    “Herefordshire,”Pete said. “Village of Overton.”
    Donovan nodded. “Too right. And just over the border in Wales is where a lot of the airy-fairy types think Camelot used to lie.”
    “You are joking?” Pete said. “I mean, Camelot? That’s a story.” Morwenna’s idiotic story about the Merlin and the thousand-year cycle came back to her, but what were the odds that was anything except a load of crap, designed to makePete more willing to work with her?
    “You may have heard another story,” Donovan said. “Of a lady in the lake who gave a mage unimaginable power, the power to live for a thousand years, to return when the end of the world was near.”
    “Second verse, same as the first,” Pete said. “Have you got a theory about what’s going on here, at this moment, or do you want to spin me the same tale as MorwennaMorgenstern did back at the Prometheus Club?”
    “Herefordshire is riddled with holy wells,” Donovan said. “Pilgrims been coming since the lion-baiting days to drink from the water. Curative properties and all that.” He leaned forward, eyes bright with a fever light. Droplets of moisture hung from his skin, and he couldn’t keep his hands still. “But there’s another sort of lake that occurs, in thefabric of the Black. I think you’ve felt it before, when you and my boy ran up against Abbadon. All that old boy wanted was Hell on earth, but the principle is the same—a tear, a void in the Black leading to another place.”
    Pete thought of the white place, the bleeding sky, the feeling of endless nothing that was worse than any torture Belial and all his legions in Hell could dream up.
    “That’syour theory?” she said. “We’ve run into the magic porthole to nowhere?”
    “I think we’ve run into what could give a mage the power to unite the Black, at least for a short time,” Donovan said. “Power so thick it’s corrupting everything in range. But that’s only my theory, and I can’t check it with the higher ups.”
    “And why not?” Pete said. “Afraid they’ll think you’re as far around the bend asI do?” She didn’t trust Donovan, but she couldn’t come up with a better explanation for the creeping wrongness that was spreading across the hills and through the people of Overton.
    “No,” Donovan said, ducking his head sheepishly, not meeting Pete’s eyes. “I can’t check in because I can’t leave.”
    Pete felt as if the air were touching her bare skin, all at once, all over her body. The deep sortof cold she only felt when making contact with something from the Land of the Dead shot through her, deep down and straight to her core. “What do you mean, can’t?” she whispered.
    “I mean I walk to where the motorway should be, and I find myself back here,” Donovan said. “I try to make a call, and my mobile battery goes dead. I’ve walked tens of miles away from this bloody village and I alwaysend up right back here. It’s the void, wherever the worms come from—it’s fucking with the Black, and once you’re in it you don’t get out.”
    Pete felt panic rising on a tide of bile in her throat and swallowed hard to keep from screaming. “There’s got to be something you haven’t tried.”
    “I’ve tried locator spells, scrying—hell, I even broke into the pub and tried to dial out collect. I’m stuck.It’s all chaos and rude magic writhing around this place from the tear. Imagine what’ll happen if it spreads. It’ll infect the earth. Infect the spirit of anyone nearby. Allow all sorts of dark-dwelling monsters like the worms to run free.” Donovan rubbed a hand over his face, dislodging the mist. “It poisons everything, and it will just keep coming. Preston must have stumbled onto it, and thatidiot Crotherton couldn’t see that they weren’t dealing with a demon but with