Black London 05 - Soul Trade

to the lifespanof a Fae, or a demon, or a thing like the Morrigan.
    But she was here now, and she needed to wake up before Donovan’s zeal to see what she saw blew out the circuits of her mind for good.
    The stones piled in a cairn over the well were sharp, lava glass, nothing that could be dug out of the earth of Herefordshire. Pete stretched out her fingers, touched them, and felt the feedback of power. Shesensed a vast space, full of white vapors, gibbous bodies, sharp edges. Emptiness, more complete than anything she’d experienced. And always, a screaming. Echoing endlessly, because the place was as infinite as the pain it induced.
    Biting down on her lip, Pete closed her fist around the rock and gave a sharp tug. There was no pain for a long moment, even though blood flowed freely. Then she heardvoices. She felt someone shaking her and the sharp, hot sting of broken skin on her fingers.
    “Come on, luv, wake up!” Jack’s rough hands slapped her lightly on the cheek. “What did you do to her?” he demanded.
    “I told you, she’ll be all right,” Donovan said. “No worse than taking a couple of sleeping pills.”
    “This is clearly not the same thing,” Jack snarled.
    “Instead of second-guessing me,why don’t you say thank you?” Donovan growled. “We got what we needed without any bloodshed. Your little tartlet came through.”
    Morwenna gave a slight twitch of her head. “I wish you wouldn’t make it so theatrical, Donovan. Eyes rolling back in the head and all.”
    Margaret stared at her as well, and Pete guessed she’d been babbling like some kind of streetcorner nutter. “I’m sorry, luv,” shesaid quietly, “but it’s for the best. Need to keep you safe, don’t I?” She turned on Morwenna, putting steel in her voice even though her head throbbed so from Donovan’s invasion that she was seeing double. “A bargain’s a bargain. Get her out of here, now.”
    “I’m sorry,” Morwenna said with a shrug. “But as I’m sure you’ve guessed, deception is a necessary part of this endeavor. We can’t have anywitnesses to what we’re attempting.”
    She gestured to Victor. “Please dispose of the girl. The rest of you, fan out through the village. Start looking for what Preston took from me.”
    “No!” Margaret cried, jumping behind Pete. Jack gave a snarl.
    “This is what you’re about, you slag? Murdering kids?”
    “I’m about saving England,” Morwenna snapped. “What do you think will happen if the soul wellis not controlled? If it is not channeled into a mage? It will spread, Jack, and what’s happened in Overton will look like a low-budget zombie film compared to what’s coming.”
    Pete felt the whirling in her head redouble. The immediate panic of Morwenna’s order lapped up against the sinking in her gut when she realized that the soul cage was still in her jacket pocket. In the jacket that Margaretwas currently wearing.
    “Victor!” Morwenna snapped as a complement of Prometheans started down the side streets of the village. “Are you deaf?”
    Victor drew back, frowning. “I don’t kill children. I’m not an assassin.”
    “You are precisely what I tell you to be, Victor,” she hissed. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
    Margaret started to shake behind Pete, and Jack moved in, gripping her arm. “Pete…”he said, low. “Do something.”
    “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” she hissed as Morwenna went to Victor and shook him by the lapels of his expensive suit.
    “Do as I say!” she shouted. “She’s one girl! Take care of it.”
    Victor drew back, wresting himself from her grip. “No. It’s not going to happen, Morwenna. Find someone else.”
    “Idiot,” she spat at Victor, then turned on her heel toward Peteand Jack. “Donovan,” Morwenna snapped, and Pete’s heart skipped in time with the sound of him checking the chamber on his pistol.
    “Sorry, Jackie,” he said. “We all do things we don’t want to because we must.”
    “For the greater good?” Jack growled at his father. “Or just because you’ve bought into the lies this bitch has fed you?”
    “I’m beginning to sense that you can’t or won’t see the biggerpicture,” Donovan said. He aimed the pistol between Margaret’s eyes, and the girl let out a strangled little cry that Pete mirrored involuntarily.
    From the corner of her eye, Pete saw the shadow descend, gliding above the rooftops before it turned on the breeze and bore directly toward her. She