Bone Gods

said sadly. The offspring of the plague god can tread anywhere it wishes. It will shatter the gateways. Nothing is older or stronger than death, Petunia, and the Morrigan is death’s maiden.
    “But in the Black…” Pete started. The Hecate shook her head.
    There will be no Black, and no daylight world. They will bleed, until all of the crossroads are in flames, and when we are all gone to cinders, I wager the demons will caper up from Hell to chew on our bones. She gave Pete a humorless smile. Crafty little creatures, demons. The only true survivors in this wretched world.
    “So what can I do?” Pete said quietly. “What will keep this … thing locked up?”
    The owl woman sadly stroked a hand over Pete’s head where she crouched, her hand warm against Pete’s damp, bloody skin. There is nothing to be done now. If the dragon were still imprisoned, perhaps. But he is awake, and soon he will be free. Death comes for us all, Pete. Even gods.
    “I won’t lie down,” Pete told her. “I know I didn’t do what you asked of me, but I can still stop Jack. Somewhere, he’s still got to be Jack.”
    Hell changes a man , the Hecate said. It molds him into the worst obscenity of himself. He leaves shreds of his soul even if he is raised up again. The demon who claimed him is in him forever.
    “You have to let me try,” Pete said. “I can get Jack. And if I can get Jack I’ll have the dragon’s soul cage, and we can keep Nergal from running roughshod over everything.” Maybe. If Jack hadn’t abandoned her completely.
    The Hecate touched Pete’s cheek, and then shook her head. You are so young, even for a human.
    “Please,” Pete said, because it had worked once before. She never begged—begging was for the weak, Connor had taught his daughters. Hell, asking was for the weak most of the time. Real coppers—who smoked and drank and lived off their hunches and smacked a suspect in the gob if it’d get things moving—didn’t ask anyone for anything. They didn’t ask if it was all right to go on and die with less than six months’ notice, and they didn’t ask to go out and make things right.
    You cannot do what is necessary , the Hecate sighed. And so you’ll stay here. Until the storm passes or I do.
    She began to walk down the hill to the motorway, and Pete rushed the words out.
    “I’ll do it.”
    The Hecate turned around and blinked once, slowly. She cocked her head and for a moment she was an owl, all downy feathers and silent wings. You will do what, Weir?
    “It’s Jack or the whole bloody world, right?” Pete said. “I’m not a fucking idealist. I’ll do it. Let me out and I’ll do it.”
    She held her breath, held every bit of herself absolutely still, and waited. A halfway decent Met detective could spot a liar, but Pete knew that she was an accomplished one, and also that the Hecate was about as far removed from human as England was from the moon.
    If she’d really thought Jack would go through with ripping the Black to shreds, she wouldn’t have lied. But it was Jack— had to still be Jack, somewhere deep inside the new skin Hell had hardened onto his old one. She’d pulled him back from the Bleak Gates. Pulling the man from the Morrigan’s shadow couldn’t be so much different. Yeah, Caldecott, and a fucking complement of unicorns might march up and down outside Buckingham Palace when you do.
    Very well , the Hecate said. Dispose of Winter and return the soul of Gerard Carver to my auspices and I will consider you in good standing.
    Pete laughed, short and sharp. “You were just rattling my cage. Put me in the in-between and let me sweat a bit.” She tapped the Hecate on her breastbone. “I think you’re more human than you let on.”
    The Hecate looked at her for a long moment before she blinked. Return to the world, Petunia Caldecott. Remember your vow. And do not disobey me again.
    “Bloody gods,” Pete said as she spun back into her body, still flopped on its side on Naughton’s freezer floor.

CHAPTER 32
    Ollie fussed over her until Pete managed to assure him, via repeated insistence and finally swatting at his hand, that she was all right.
    “You were screamin’ to wake the dead,” Ollie said.
    “Trust me, Ollie,” Pete told him. “The dead don’t need any help on that score.”
    “Scared the piss out of me,” Ollie muttered. “I know we’re in a bad way but don’t do that again if you can help it, yeah?”
    In a bizarre way, the pain and the psychic