Black London 05 - Soul Trade

always.”
    “Ah, yes,” Belial said. “Always so ready to rush into the fire, aren’t you, Petunia? Always so ready to die a bloody, heroic, pointless death. It’s not an attractive habit, you know. I much prefer your Jack’s inclination toward inveterate cowardice. He’s going to far outlive you if this keeps up.” His red tongue flicked again. “Tell me, doyou think he’ll fare well as a single daddy?”
    “Fuck you,” Pete snapped. “You had a few inches with me, but that’s it. Get lost. I didn’t summon you, so just go away and bother some other poor sod.”
    She got up and stormed back outside, slamming the door after her. Her heart was thudding and her breath was short, as if she’d just run a long, long way.
    After far too short a time for Pete to feelany semblance of calm, the door creaked open again. Belial’s thin white hand, tipped with black nails, extended a blank pack of cigarettes and shook it. “Not very smart,” he said as Pete grabbed one and lit it, inhaling viciously. “Taking favors from a demon.”
    “You’ve never done a favor for me in your life,” Pete retorted. “You just keep me around because it amuses you to see me suffer.”
    Belialtsked. “That right there proves you don’t get it. You and I have a far more beneficial relationship, Pete, and you know it. Now do you want to hear why I traipsed up from the Pit or not?”
    The fag tasted sour, like burnt rubber on the back of her tongue. Her throat wasn’t used to the harshness, and whatever noxious unfiltered thing Belial was smoking made her gag. She threw it down and stampedon it. “What you said back there, about me needing to be a hero. Isn’t true. I just want to stay alive and keep Jack and Lily safe. I just want to get out of here and go home.”
    “Then hear me out,” Belial said. “And instead of kicking and screaming against what’s happening, use your head. Unlike the crow-mage, you do have a brain. ’S why I’ve always preferred dealing with you.”
    Pete shiveredat the thought that she was the preferred company of a demon. How sick was that? “Don’t see why,” she said. “Jack’s got far more to offer.”
    “And he gives it so easily,” Belial scoffed. “What’s the saying—never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent? Jack has his uses, Petunia, but when it comes to the bargain I know if I can get over on you, I’m doing my job.”
    “Is your job todayto annoy the piss out of me?” Pete said. “Because you’re blabbing circles and not saying anything useful.”
    “Demons exist to keep humans in check,” Belial said. “To feed on their baser impulses. We’re the carrion eaters of the Black, Petunia. We keep sin, stupidity, and evil from spreading too far. I thought you’d have figured that out by now.”
    “You have ten seconds before I well and truly leave,”Pete said. “You got something useful to tell me about how to get rid of this void in the Black?”
    “Think about it, Petunia.” Belial’s voice was dark and silky as the mist, and his fag smoke smelled like crematory ash.
    “Think about what?” she sighed.
    “Everything,” Belial said. “Your whole sad little human life.”
    “Right, then,” Pete said. “I’ve had my quota of riddles for, well, ever, so I’mdone now, thank you.”
    “You act like everything that happens is some mystical hand of fate,” said Belial, and the playful tone was gone from his voice. It was harsh and commanding, befitting a Prince of Hell. “Like all you’re trying to do is make the world safe for the queen to sit in Buckingham Palace, the punters to drink in the pubs, and that sad waste of skin Jack Winter to stumble from onedisaster to the next.” Belial held up his hands to preempt Pete’s wringing his neck, or so she supposed. “How many times can you save him before you accept that you’re a bigger piece of this than Jack ever was, Pete?” He turned his black, black eyes on Pete, and she stopped breathing. The demon was arresting, even in his human form, enough to stop a person’s heart for a split second.
    “You’rethe last of your kind,” Belial whispered, reaching out to brush his pointed nails down Pete’s cheek. Mere contact triggered visions in her, of vast plains of shimmering sand covered with crucifixtions like pins in a pinboard, of a vast city with triple smokestacks spewing waste from crematory furnaces into the sky, of the bone fields that stretched on forever, bleached white