Bone Gods

and on like dominoes until Morningstar got what he wanted. Fanatics, be they dressed in street rags or thousand-pound suits, operated in much the same way.
    Besides, she’d promised Ollie, and now she’d also put the Order of Malleus onto him, unknowingly. She couldn’t very well back away now, even if she wanted nothing more.
    “I haven’t seen anything like those marks on your dead man for a long time,” Mosswood said, quieter than his usual acerbic, professorial tones. “And for a Green Man, a long time is a very long time indeed.”
    Pete went for a third fag but found herself empty. “Shit. Spit it out, Ian. You immortal types never just spit it out.”
    “You’re very impatient, even for a human,” Mosswood said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
    “I’ve got a piss-poor temper, too,” Pete said. “Get on with it.”
    Mosswood looked up at the sky, hazy and dark gold from the lamps of London, starless as the inside of a coffin lid. “They’re very old, very powerful necromantic symbols, Pete. The magic they represent is the vilest the human mind can conceive, and I would not wish to meet the person attempting to use it face to face, if I were you.”
    Pete considered. Necromancy was not something people who wanted to live long, healthful lives got themselves involved with. More like people who wanted to live short, bloody lives and rise back up to feast on the family cat. “Attempted?” she asked Mosswood.
    He blew a smoke ring. “If they’d succeeded, I wager London would look a bit like the set of a cheap zombie film now.”
    “But you don’t know?” Pete said. “I mean, what specifically they were trying to do, by killing Carver?” Other than get rid of a mole reporting their moves to his little club of god-botherers.
    The Green Knight curled his lip back, showing his teeth. “I don’t and never have dabbled in flesh-crafting, Pete. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. And neither do you, if you want to keep on breathing.”
    “Well, haven’t got a bloody choice, do I?” Pete said. Mosswood tapped out his pipe, and then carefully put it back in his jacket. He faced her, and put his hands on her shoulders. Pete saw the rush of green, great trees with roots down to the bottom of the world, trembling green buds passing into dry dead leaves that fell and rotted and gave birth to new shoots when they touched, the sting of electrostatic transference that allowed her talent, should she allow it, to siphon his power down like it was her own blood.
    That was Mosswood. Life and sex and death. A druid like Jack respected his kind above all else. Except one. “You do have a choice, whether you think of it that way or not,” Mosswood said. “I know what you’re doing, keeping calm and carrying on, but in this case you mustn’t. You’re too valuable to necromancers, especially ones virulent as this. You and your particular quirk of talent.”
    “Jack wouldn’t walk,” Pete said. Jack never walked away, even when he knew better. Pete could at least give him that, prove that he’d taught her well now that he wasn’t standing beside her any longer.
    “My dear,” Mosswood sighed. “Jack isn’t here any longer. He belongs to Belial now, and if he were here, he’d say the same as I am.”
    Pete smacked his hands off her. “As if I’d forgotten that, you fucking bastard.” It wasn’t a memory like her memories of Juniper, but more like a series of grainy snapshots that flicked in front of her mind impossibly fast, too fast to ever be stopped and put away, with the other nightmares. The snowy white of the demon’s pointed smile. The black, endless depths of its eyes as it dragged Jack to Hell. The snap and thump against her heart of two worlds vastly far apart shutting off from one another when they’d gone, leaving her standing in wet morning dew, smelling black smoke. Alone, as only those who’d seen and touched real evil, war zones and terrorist bombs and demon’s smiles, could be.
    Mosswood didn’t reply, just went inside, door slapping closed behind him. Pete stayed, until the dizziness of memory and the sickness of seeing Belial’s face faded enough for her to go back through the layers of hidden London to the one where it was still daylight, find the Mini, and drive home.

CHAPTER 6
    The long, honey light of sunset had cast long shadows by the time Pete made it back to Whitechapel and parked in the alley next to Number forty-six. Jack’s flat sat on top of