Bone Gods
bong.
“Naughty,” he said, and kept his hand on her breastbone, pinning her as if she weighed no more than an insect on a display card.
“There’s absolutely no need for this,” Pete said. “Please. I’ll never bother you again. Just let Ollie be.”
“No, don’t think I will,” Naughton said. He squeezed Ollie’s swollen jaw between his thumb and forefinger, forcing a whimper from Heath. “This fat bastard is being remarkably uncooperative. I think he fancies himself a hard man.” Naughton let go of Ollie and backhanded him on the bruised side of his face, reopening a cut under Ollie’s eye with his thick silver ring. “That right, hard man?”
Ollie sucked dried blood between his teeth. “Your mum seemed to think I was a hard man when I bent her over,” he said, tongue thick from the earlier beating Pete could read all over his face.
She bucked against the suit’s hand, but he pressed down harder, so she couldn’t do anything except breathe with ease. “There’s no need for that!” she shouted at Naughton. “You’ve no quarrel with him.”
“I beg to differ,” Naughton said. “I’ve got quite a persistent quarrel with Inspector Heath, seeing as how he’s repeatedly refused my very simple and reasonable request.” He moved his gaze between Pete and Jack. “However, your intrusion does give me an idea.”
Pete looked to Jack as well. He stood very still, a pillar of black cloth and pale skin, hand loose at his side. He didn’t return her look, just drilled his glacial eyes into Naughton as if he wanted very badly to slice off his face and make it into a hat. She was on her own as the rational half, then. That really wasn’t any great leap from when Jack had been alive. With her. She’d think over the proper phrasing later. Pete put her attention back on Naughton. “Can’t wait to be dazzled with your brilliance, Nicky.”
“You’d get a lot further in this life if you at least pretended not to loathe the entirety of the human race,” he told her. Naughton removed a cloth rag from his jacket and wiped Ollie’s blood from his ring. “I’m proposing that I pass the recalcitrant inspector’s task to you, and he will stay here, receiving my hospitality, until such a time as I’m satisfied.”
Naughton was a reptile. Not in the sense that Pete would have gladly kicked him in the teeth and called him a bloody snake if she got the chance, but in that he had cold blood and cold nerves, the kind of sociopathic politeness endemic to gangsters and professional soldiers. He was a camouflaged monster, walking and wearing a man’s clothes, buying groceries and smiling at pretty girls, until the skin shed, and the dead eyes and venom-filled mouth underneath showed themselves. All that did was make Pete more likely to acquiesce to him, not less. Naughton was a legitimately scary bastard. Pete didn’t make a habit of getting on the wrong side of those, especially not when they had her best friend tied to a chair. “Fine,” she told Naughton. She lifted her hands and pointed at the suit. “I’m agreeing to be civil. Could you possibly ask your Pomeranian here to quit groping me?”
Naughton waved his hand and the suit stepped back, giving her a smile that revealed that he had the sort of hobbies where teeth were knocked from his head with regularity. “Gerard Carver,” he said. “We want him back.”
“Back?” Pete said. “Isn’t that more your department, Nicky?”
“His corpse,” Naughton said. “Gerard Carver’s immortal soul can be chewed, swallowed, and shat out the arse of Dagon for all I care. But his corpse, I would very much like returned.”
“I’m sure you’ve already thought this through,” Pete said, hoping that Naughton wasn’t even further around the bend than she’d guessed. “But can’t you, er … retrieve Carver yourself? ’S not like the Wapping mortuary has a posse of ninjas guarding the door.”
“I’d like to,” Naughton said. “But I can’t.” He patted Heath on the cheek. “Do be quick, Petunia. I think the inspector’s already rather homesick.”
“Why do you want Carver now?” Pete said. “He already fucked you and got himself made dead. Seems a bit moot.”
Naughton twisted his ring. “I’m not finished with him,” he told Pete. “That will be all,” he said to the suits, and they hustled Pete and Jack back through the crush of fucking, fighting bodies and out the front door. It slammed behind Pete, and the
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