Bone Gods

can’t be with you, Pete. I can’t protect you from what’s coming.”
    “Fuck me,” Pete said. “You really have changed.” She wanted to smash her fists into him, scream at him for lying to her. Not that Jack had made a habit of the truth, but to do it so casually, so smoothly, as if she were just another mark in the crowd at a conjure show. “You used to know I didn’t need your fucking protection. I needed you , Jack. Not … not whatever you are.”
    “You want to tell me I’m weak,” Jack said. “Go right the fuck ahead. I am weak. But don’t tell me you don’t understand why I did it.”
    “Ollie’s going to die,” Pete said. “I might die, you might die—the whole fucking Black is going to collapse in on itself if that bitch goes through with Naughton’s ritual, and you’re licking her bloody boot.” Pete jabbed her finger into Jack’s chest. “I don’t think you’re weak, Jack. I think you’re a pussy.”
    He snatched her hand, pressing it against her and shoving Pete backward into the wall. Her head knocked the plaster, and dust and paint chips rained down. “You don’t fucking know ,” Jack snarled. “You haven’t been to Hell.”
    “Then tell me,” Pete whispered. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
    Jack dropped his head to her shoulder, nuzzling his lips into her neck. “It’s constant screaming. It’s your life, over and over and over again, until you can’t take it for one more second. He broke me, Pete. He shattered every bone in my body. He flayed my skin off by inches. And when he’d gotten tired of hearing me scream, he put me together with thread and stuffing, and he started all over again.”
    Jack let her go and stood back, passing his hands over his face. “You think this is the first time the old gods have gotten their back up? I’ll do what the Morrigan has been chasing me for since I was fourteen fucking years old, and things will carry on much as they have.”
    “You don’t believe that,” Pete said. “You would never have believed something like that, Jack.”
    “Doing a hitch in Hell makes you believe a lot of things you never thought were possible,” Jack said. “There’s no room for showy heroics in this story, Pete. We’re giving Carver to the Hag, and Naughton can deal with her. Heath will probably be all right. And if he’s not, I’m bloody sorry, but that’s how things must be.”
    All at once, hearing it from his lips, Pete’s confusion and grief hardened and tempered into rage. She cocked her fist back and slammed it into Jack’s jaw, hard and sharp, following through with all her weight.
    Jack stumbled, his legs buckling. “You cunt!” he shouted. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
    “I’m not the cunt in this conversation,” Pete snarled. “Not by a long way.”
    Jack struggled up to his feet. He’d already sprouted a bruise. “I did what I had to do, Pete. That’s all I can ever say about it. I know it wasn’t right. I fucking know that. But I had to. For me, for you. I could have stood the pain, but knowing you were alone—that, I couldn’t let stand. So yes, I’m the servant of the crow. And I’m not sorry.”
    She wanted to draw back from the expression on his face, the cold, inhuman flatness in his eyes, but she steeled herself and moved nearer. “Just give me Carver. We can find a way—”
    “I told you no,” Jack said. “Now will you listen this time, or do I have to slap a hex on you?”
    “Don’t bother,” Pete told him. “I’m leaving.” She jerked the door open to find a gang of black suits and pale faces that crowded her back into the room. “No sudden moves,” said one, whom she recognized from the back room of Naughton’s vile club.
    Three all together, like all bad things, and they moved straight for Jack. “Fuck me,” Jack muttered, backpedaling. “Boys, let’s talk about this, shall we?”
    “Mr. Naughton says you’re out of time,” the one closest to Pete told her. “Do you have what we want?”
    Pete jerked her chin at Jack. “He does.”
    “Oh, yes. Lovely,” Jack said. “This is a terrible idea, mates. Trust me on that.”
    “Don’t think so,” said the hulking one. “You’ve fucked with the big dog, my son, and now he’s going to bite your arse. Come along.”
    Pete checked the sitting area, but Mosswood had gone, through some inscrutable method of his own. One less problem, but one less body for backup when things inevitably got ugly. She eased