Street Magic

stated, disappointment pulling at his face. His witchfire flared with a snap and he patted Pete down, taking away her mobile, the keys to the Mini, and anything else that might constitute a weapon.
    "Jack will come for me," said Pete with a thrust of her chin. "And when he does I—far from a damsel, thank you—am personally going to make you sorry for this entire night and the rest of your wasted life." She could lie convincingly to everyone—it was her own doubts that were the problem. Jack
wasn't
here and the Black wasn't snapping and hissing in the way that meant he was near.
    "You tell yourself anything you like, girl," said the sorcerer, tossing her things into the weeds. "But the fact remains, you're all alone." He turned Pete so they were pressed back to front, his arm across her throat. "Look there."
    Over the humped, half-collapsed roof of the closest mausoleum, Pete could see torchlight, and hear low voices in the sort of contemplative chant that should accompany confession and absolution.
    "That," hissed the sorcerer, his hand sliding up and down Pete's throat, stroking her skin and leaving a trail of shivers. "
That
is magic's future. Not Jack Winter. Not the old ways or the old gods. It's men, taking what they want. What our master started, we'll finish."
    "They might," said a Manchester drawl from Pete's back. "But you? All you'll be getting is a concussion and some pretty new bruises."
    Jack raised a burial urn over his head and smashed the sorcerer's skull with it, ash and bone fragments raining around Pete. The sorcerer staggered and went to the ground, raising his hand, his magic gathering.
    "Don't," Jack snarled. "If you value the bits that make you a man, don't."
    Pete jumped away from the sorcerer as he made a grab for her, his teeth bared in fury. She stomped on his outstretched hand, eliciting a howl.
    Before she could find something to tie the sorcerer up with, Jack stepped in and snapped his head backward with a jackboot to the face. "The next time you touch Pete, I kill you where you stand," he said.
    Trembling in Pete's hands and everywhere reminded her that she was still in the cemetery, that Treadwell was there, sending tendrils of ice across the Black.
    Jack came to her, his chest rising and falling in time with the waves of fire in his eyes, and the icy whispers quieted when he got close enough to touch.
    He took Pete's chin in his hand, turned her face side to side, brushed her cheek with his thumb. "You still got all your fingers and toes, then?"
    Pete jerked her head away. "What the bloody hell took you so long?"
    "I
did
have to bargain for a means of transport that'd get me here before they carved your eyes out, didn't I?" Jack said. "And let me tell you, riding with the dullahan is not something a bloke ever gets used to. The smell alone—"
    "Treadwell is over there, beyond the tomb," Pete broke in. "Jack, Mosswood told me that the only way to exorcise him—"
    "The coffin nail, I know." Jack waved the notion away. "I want you to stay with me, do you understand?"
    "Oh, like you stayed with me in the pub?" Pete followed him between the gravestones, Jack marking a straight line, not even attempting to hide his advance. "Answer me!" she demanded. "How could you let them snatch me? I don't like being the damsel in distress, Jack. It's bloody demeaning."
    Jack stopped walking, heaving a dramatic sigh. "Treadwell wanted to play with me, and he wanted to make me suffer. I could sit around wringing my hands and waiting for his flunkies to bring back sliced-off bits of Pete, or I could let him think he'd gotten one over and meet him head-on." He grinned. "So relax, Pete. You weren't a damsel. You were bait."
    Pete slapped him, so hard he rocked back on his heels. Jack rubbed his jaw. "Are you quite finished?" he asked.
    "Now I am." Pete nodded. "Do something like this again and I'll rip your sodding balls off."
    "Received loud and clear," Jack agreed. He started walking again. "Hello, you bastards!" he bellowed. "Here I am! The crow-mage, come walking to your doorstep!"
    The sorcerers of the Arkanum appeared, some blending out from the shadows, some stepping out from hiding spots. "Winter," one hissed, teeth flashing under the sodium lights.
    "Ready, luv?" Jack said to her, barely a rumble in his chest.
    "It's Petunia." Pete gripped Jack's hand firmly, a slow spread of warmth passing up her arm.
    Jack looked at her in askance as the sorcerers conjured red witchfire, a circle of bloody