Black London 05 - Soul Trade

“Disappointing. But then again, most of what Jackie’s chosen to do with his life is disappointing.”
    Pete stayed quiet. Her stomach flipped, and she wondered how long she had, this close to the soul well, before she became another one of the shamblingvillagers. She wondered what had become of the hikers and the birdwatchers who’d come too close to this place. Worms? Or did they simply go mad and fall down a ravine somewhere to die?
    “To the oldest of the old ones, to the things before men and the time before time,” Morwenna said. For the first time since Pete had met her, she spoke reverently and quietly, none of her usual arrogance in herposture.
    “We bring you this gift,” Morwenna said, voice just above a whisper. “The soul of a mage, to do with as you will.”
    She reached out and started to place her hand on the soul well. Pete looked at Jack. She had to time it just right, so no one had a chance to react.
    “You know how you said letting her win was a bad idea?” she whispered to Jack.
    He stared at her. Beyond him, Pete saw whiteshapes encroaching through the mist—worms, called back by the energy she could feel rising around her even now, strong enough to drown everyone in its path.
    “For once, you were right,” Pete said, and shoved Donovan hard, knocking him aside.
    “I am open to receive you!” Morwenna cried. “Come to me with all the power of the Merlin!”
    Donovan grabbed for Pete, but she dove toward Morwenna and knockedthe woman out of the way, closing her own fist over the soul cage.
    All at once, the rising energy disappeared. Everything stopped, sound and breath and air. Pete thought she heard Margaret scream, and then she was in the void, inside the soul well, and the white nothingness had consumed her.

 
    27.
    The raven alighted on a tree above Pete. It was gray and long dead, just a husk barely able to support the bird’s weight.
    I did tell you, it said.
    “I’m not letting Morwenna use this place,” Pete said. “She’ll cover England in worms and zombies, and she’ll think she’s doing it for the greater good. So I’m shutting the well.”
    No  … the raven started. You don’t know what could happen …
    The soul well wasn’t a physical drop, not really. It rushed up at her, a vortex of mist, full of shapes and screams. She was on a white plane with a gray tree, nowhere, among the stars. She was spread out across a thousand light years and compressed down to a single point, all at once.
    “The worst thing that can happen is that I die,” she said. “But this thing started, and it’s got to have an end.”

    It started because of what the crow-mage did, the raven sighed. It will not end, not simply because you want it to.
    “There’s one sure way I know to drain power out of a place,” she told the raven.
    No! The bird let out a distressed cry. You know that will be the end of you …
    “Then I’ll end,” Pete said. “I told you, nothing lives forever.”
    When she’d made the decision to lie to Jack the nightbefore, to stop Morwenna, the shadow had been in the back of her mind, the whisper that it might come to this. But she couldn’t hesitate. As much as Belial might insist otherwise, she couldn’t do anything else. Couldn’t risk her daughter growing up in a world ruled by the white nothing.
    Or by Morwenna Morgenstern.
    If she did this, if she gave in to the howling energies around her, that wouldbe that. The end, a period as final as her father’s lung cancer or a bullet fired from a gun.
    If she did this, Lily would never know her. Jack would never be the same.
    But if their world was this, the white place full of nothing but wasteland and misery, then it wouldn’t matter anyway. If she did this, her daughter would grow up in a world that allowed light and good dreams next to all the shadowsand black magic swirling around her. Jack would get to remember her as strong, standing beside him, rather than wrung out, spent, and given up.
    So she didn’t hesitate, but instead stepped forward until even the tiny white slice of world faded away, and there was nothing but her, alone in the in-between.
    It was nothing like the last time she’d visited, when she’d tried to hold Jack’s soul backfrom crossing into the Land of the Dead. She stood in front of the flat where her family had lived when she was a tiny kid, and everything looked very normal.
    A shape opened the door and stepped out, and Pete saw the elegant woman in black,