Bone Gods

a moment and then the smirk bloomed into that infuriating grin. He ensnared her in his embrace again and pulled her against him hard enough to make her cracked rib scream. “Fuck, it’s good to see you,” he said against her hair. “Really bloody good.”
    “Sod you, Jack Winter,” Pete responded, shoving at him until he took a hard step back from her force and nearly fell. “You don’t get to ramble back here smiling as if you’ve just landed from holiday.”
    “Fair enough,” Jack said. “But let’s move the heartfelt speech of righteous indignation elsewhere. This isn’t the place for nice girls like you, Petunia.” He gestured at the pit, floor slick with black, shimmering blood. “Point of fact, it’s not the place for naughty boys like me, either.”
    “If you think,” Pete started, “that you can just reappear from the bloody dead and start ordering me about, you’ve got another fucking thing coming, Jack. In fact…”
    He grabbed her hard by the shoulders, and Pete felt the pinpoints where his fingers would leave round bruises under her clothes. Jack’s mouth closed over hers, hard and warm, depositing the taste of whiskey on her lips. Pete sought his tongue through no accord of her own, her fingernails digging into the warm, tattooed skin of his forearms as she gripped him. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel. Nothing except him.
    “What the … what the fuck is going on? What was that?” she demanded, when she trusted herself to make whole sentences again.
    “It’s an orgy,” Jack said, tugging her past the bar and down a back hall that led to a closed door and a pair of loos that stank of bleach. “A blood orgy. You know, like sex ’cept with smashing faces instead of fucking?” He patted down his pockets, drew out a fag, and touched his finger to the end. Smoke curled up to tangle in the rancid air of Motor. “About that …” He gave her that smile again, tongue flicking across his bottom lip. “Told you. It’s good to see you.”
    “How did you even know where I was?” Pete said. She desperately wanted a cigarette of her own, but her pack was smashed, just tobacco and shredded paper, after her encounter with the pit. She tossed it away.
    “Followed you,” Jack said. “And I have to say, I was a bit disappointed you didn’t spot me. Though you’ve been busy. It’s understandable.”
    Pete cast an eye back toward the club. The violence was slowing down, going to ground, bodies twitching and choking out on their own fluids and internal bleeds. A few figures intertwined, their grunts audible above the noise of the music.
    “It’s a cantrip,” Jack said. “Musty Babylonian chanting to get you in the mood. Sounds like cats fucking in an echo chamber, don’t it?”
    “You followed me?” Pete put her eyes back on him. She could scarcely believe it was really happening, that he was here, in front of her, as if she’d wished him there. Without meaning to, she put out a hand and squeezed him on the shoulder. He was solid, there. More solid than she remembered, really. Jack had always erred to skinny and mean rather than meaty. “For how long?” she said.
    He shrugged, ash falling off the end of his fag. “Couple of days, I suppose. Which reminds me, I own Lawrence a smack right in the teeth for letting you anywhere near the Antiquarians.”
    “ Days ?” Pete felt the heat in her breast rise again. “I’ll fetch you a smack. Jack, I thought you were fucking dead. ”
    His face closed up, all of the lines she remembered coming into relief. He shrugged off her hand. “I was dead, Pete. For a nice long while. Now I’m not. Do we need to make more of it than that?”
    “Jack…” Pete ground her fingers into her temples. The howling, pulsing music was creeping into her, up through her feet, making her pulsate with it everywhere that hurt. “Jack, you can’t just be dead and then here …”
    Jack picked up her hand again, put it against his face, and pulled her close with his free arm, pressing them together from her waist to her breasts. “And yet, I am. You can put me off if you want.” He put his mouth against her neck, breath hot when he spoke. “You’re right. I’ve been a cunt.”
    His skin, where it touched hers, bare to bare, closed a current that Pete’s body had ached for since the first time Jack had touched her, back when she hadn’t known any man could touch her like that. “No,” she managed. “I’m giving you