Bone Gods

of the apocalypse if his dead gods come out ahead.”
    “It’s almost tempting to let Nergal chew him and spit him out,” Belial said. “But if Nergal returns, there won’t really be much left for me to enjoy in this world or any other, so how about you find Winter so I can gently persuade him to stop being a twat?”
    Pete dug her thumbs into the corners of her eyes. “Give me a minute, all right?”
    Belial shrugged, leaning against the column next to her. “Sure. Just stand here as long as you like. Nergal will wait patiently while you pull your shit together.”
    Pete saw a tightness in Belial’s frame she’d never witnessed before. She’d hated him, sure he’d tricked Jack somehow, sure that the pleasure he took in pulling Jack into Hell was entirely sadistic. Now she was sure of nothing. Jack could have bargained with the demon freely, could have known exactly what he was getting into. And Belial wasn’t human. The bargain was sacred to a demon. Belial had never actually broken his bargain with Jack. He’d tortured him, yes, but only after he’d given Jack his allotted thirteen years.
    Pete decided she really must be beyond exhaustion. She was considering trusting a demon. “You’re really piss-scared of Nergal, aren’t you?” she said. “He’s got your cage good and rattled.”
    “Like you’re any different,” Belial said. For once his tone wasn’t the slick sneer that made Pete want to fetch him a smack. “You’re scared, because you’ve got sense. Nergal’s been around since the beginning of before the beginning. He’s a force, a thing. Mesopotamians named him, made him the god of all ills. The Christians gave him a starring role and cribbed all the best bits for the devil. That’s a PG-rated version of what he really is, though.”
    Belial watched a pigeon land on the column above. “I’ve seen him, in the plague pits and the camps. In the mass graves and the suicide bombings. Plagues don’t have to be microscopic, Petunia. Black magic and violence and suffering and murder. Those are plagues of the soul, and they’re Nergal’s favorite kind, because there’s no cure. The ancients got him nearly right,” Belial said. “The adversary. The bringer of ill wind.”
    “Sounds like a barrel of laughs.” Pete lifted herself away from the column. “I don’t know where Jack is and I don’t know how to find him. The one place he’d go that I know about, he won’t be there now.” Lawrence would never allow Jack back into the fold now. He was a good friend, but he had limits.
    “I’m sorry Winter broke your heart,” Belial said. “But you’re the one who called me, and I’m holding up my end of the bargain.” Belial put his hand over Pete’s. “He fucked you. Get over it. Screw your head on and stop him from being the weak little cunt I always knew him to be.”
    “Don’t play with me,” Pete said, slapping his hand away. “You’re not sorry. You’re prince of a race of serial killers. You don’t care how I’m feeling any more than you’d care about a cockroach crawling into the path of a lorry.”
    “I don’t feel,” Belial said. “But I understand. I understand loss and desire. It’s the fabric of the bargains we make. It’s what knits a human soul together—pain, too, and agony, and ecstasy, and love. It’s such a fragile thing. You shouldn’t work, but you do. I suppose I’m interested in how it came to this, you being here with me and Winter being gone.”
    “Like you’re interested in the cinema,” Pete said.
    Belial nodded. “Has there been a Bond flick on? I do like that new bloke they’ve got doing the part.”
    “We can go to my flat and I can see if I can figure out where he might have gone to ground,” Pete said.
    “Won’t work, but all right,” Belial said.
    “Then don’t come,” Pete snapped, “because it’s the only idea I’ve got.”
    Belial followed her after a moment. They walked in silence. The only other humans in evidence were the street cleaners and the trashmen, going about their business in their neon slickers.
    The area around Naughton’s club wasn’t made for daytime, and the street was gray and depressing in the light of the sun, weathered storefronts and pitted streets choked with garbage that sluiced away under the hissing hoses of the street cleaners. Pete realized they were being followed as they passed the entrance to the Tate and turned along the river, but she waited until they’d gone nearly a