Bone Gods

lost soul riding the steam and neon of London back to the underworld.
    So what are you going to do about it, then? That was Jack, all smirk and permanent halo of smoke. Not like you to just fuck off and moan about your sorry lot, luv.
    Pete hunched into her jacket inside the bus shelter. This late, it’d be nearly an hour before she could catch a night bus.
    She didn’t have Jack’s talent, nor his twenty-five years of living, breathing, and dreaming the Black, but she had his books and she had Lawrence. She could moan forever, knocking about the Black like the sad old bastard who wants to sit beside you in pubs and talk about the war, or she could admit she’d cocked up, climb back on top of the problem, and start over. She could still find the why and who of Gerard Carver’s last ritual. Fuck it, if she found that, she’d likely find who killed McCorkle.
    It all seemed like a brilliant plan, until the thing in Pete’s pocket began to whisper, rushing tides of the Black cascading over her mind, as if she were hearing snatches of esoteric radio out the windows of the few passing cars.
    Pete cast her eyes into the small patch of unlit park across the street. A darker piece of nighttime stood among the bare oaks. It was the same thin figure that had tried to accost her at the mortuary. Eyes gleamed in the dark, picking up the streetlamps.
    The figure smirked at her across Coldharbour Lane, standing perfectly still for a moment before he took a step toward her, then another. Pete looked up and down the street. This late, she could hear the thump of bass from a club a few blocks down, but there was nobody else on the pavement. The bus shelter didn’t offer any protection and the alleyway beyond even less.
    The figure picked up speed, long, loping strides closing the distance between them with frightening alacrity. Pete felt the thing in her pocket prickle, coming alive at the onslaught of the figure.
    Necromancers could call a lot of things—poltergeists, zombies, and worse. Pete decided she wasn’t going to wait until the thing made it across the street to find out exactly what it was, although the loping, bowlegged stride and the long, narrow sliver of face she could see under the streetlamps bore out her theory that it wasn’t a human thing.
    Pete ran straight toward it, dodging at the last moment and causing the thing to stumble and wheel about. It hissed, and she heard the scrape of claws on asphalt as it chased her. The Black was rising, filling the empty spaces around her as Pete bore for the park, the musty stench of something long dead breathing in her face.
    The park across the street bore stern warnings that it was closed from dusk till dawn, but she grabbed the rusty iron gate and heaved herself over. Metal bit into her hand, but she kept running.
    The thing vaulted the gate on spindly legs, closing fast, and Pete bore down. She’d been smoking too much and running too little, and her lungs scissored with every breath, but she ran. Magic dogged her every step, the moon slicing light and shadow out of the ground. The green space ended in someone’s garden wall, and she scrambled up, feeling wetness on her palm as it scraped across brick. The thing chasing her landed on top of the wall, crouched like a spider for a moment as it roved to catch her in its gaze, and then gave a hiss like an enormous kettle as it sprang back to the ground and kept chasing.
    Pete burst from between the narrow buildings onto Atlantic Road, feet nearly going on the uneven pavement. The vista there was even more deserted, National Rail tracks bordering the street on one side and dark windows on the other. Fingers, or perhaps claws, snatched at the back of her jacket; she didn’t look back to find out. A newsagent a few doors down was still lit, and she poured her last ounce of oxygen on.
    She made it halfway across Atlantic Road, and then thing caught her, wrapping too-long fingers around her thigh and pulling her off balance. Pete fell and rolled once, the thing on top of her, its hand going around her neck.
    It hissed at her, and Pete had the feeling it was talking to her, or perhaps cursing, in its own language. The hair on its head was matted, stitched into place with red thread, and Pete saw why it couldn’t speak—its blue, swollen lips were stitched as well.
    Zombie. Of course. Just her bloody luck. Zombies were like poltergeists, except where poltergeists were dead things, stripped down to anger and cruelty and