Soul Trade (21 page)

When she pulled abreast of Donovan, he touched her on the shoulder. “I think they’ll be in dreamland for a few minutes more,” he said. “But let’s not hang around to find out, yeah?”

The men, including Mr. Leroy and Mr. Dumbershall, stared into the distance, nodding their heads and smiling
as if listening to music only they could hear. Pete herself felt wonderful—of course they’d make it back to the graveyard. Of course things would be all right. Donovan was here, and he had everything taken care of. She couldn’t believe, in that moment, that she’d ever doubted him. He was Jack’s blood, after all, and she trusted Jack implicitly.

The feeling of bliss and the lightness in her head
lasted precisely until the end of the Leroys’ walk. Outside, a crowd had gathered, villagers and travelers, including the hippies who’d been asking questions and the big brute who Bridget had chased off.

Everything came crashing down, and a wave of nausea rolled over Pete. Margaret made a small, strangled sound. Carrie gasped and stopped short.

Pete looked back at Donovan, whose face went slack.
“Shit,” he said softly.

“Took the word out of my mouth,” Pete said.

Donovan’s breathing was shallow, and he backed up a step, nearly knocking into Pete. “I can’t do this many,” he murmured. “You and I could run for it, but Mumsy and the brat are deadweight.”

He looked Pete in the eye. “A Prospero would leave them.”

“Thank fuck for all of us I’m not a coward like you, then,” Pete growled. “Now
grab hold of your balls and do what you can.”

Donovan, hands shaking, drew himself up. Pete felt the Black wriggle around them, as if the skin of the world were a living thing, and the crowd parted, just enough for them to get through single file.

“Move your arse,” Donovan said through clenched teeth. “This ain’t lasting long.”

“You first,” Pete told Margaret, pushing the girl ahead of her.
Margaret swiveled back, hesitating.

“Miss Carrie?”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Carrie whispered. Donovan shoved past her and followed Margaret, hustling her by the arm. Pete decided that when they were somewhere without this strange, staring horde of hostile villagers, she was going to give him a good smack. Or possibly a kiss, if he actually managed to keep the crowd from rioting before they
reached the graveyard.

The mob had grown exponentially even as they stood in the Leroys’ yard, hundreds upon hundreds of vacant-eyed people staring as one at Pete, Donovan, and Margaret. Carrie brought up the rear, shuddering every time she brushed arms with someone in the crowd.

Pete could see the rear of the mass of people, the stragglers wandering down the road toward them as if they’d woken
from a dream and were still disoriented, when she heard a low exhalation of breath behind her and the big brute who’d nearly disrupted the gathering turned and fixed his gaze on Carrie Leroy.

“Run,” Pete said, but it was already too late. She watched as the brute grabbed Carrie and dragged her down to the ground. The people around him moaned quietly, and then they too turned, staring down at
her, lips parted and crimson, dehydrated tongues flicking between their teeth.

Carrie Leroy only got out one scream, as Pete watched, her stomach tumbling into infinity. One scream, as the brute clamped down on her throat and the blood welled up, red and thick and steaming against the cool air.

Pete started back, out of reflex, into the moaning horde, who closed on Carrie with a speed belied
by their stupor. Cloth ripped, and with it flesh; teeth flashed and chins became stained with blood. Pete found herself against a wall of warm, moving, heaving bodies, each of them fighting to draw closer to Carrie, where she lay on the ground, thrashing and croaking out the last breaths of her life. No matter how Pete hit at them, how many she threw aside, there was another body in front of her,
and she felt hands rake through her hair and teeth snap against her fingers.

“Miss Caldecott!” Margaret grabbed her by the arms and hauled her backward, her strength greater than what Pete would have expected from a skinny teenage girl.

“No!” Pete screamed, and she was shocked at how loudly her voice resonated off the houses around them. “I can’t just leave her there!”

Margaret’s face was streaked
with grime and tears, but she tugged harder at Pete. “Nothing to do for her now,” she said, barely audible through her sobs. “Please, Pete. Please just come.”

Pete saw that their avenue was rapidly closing, and she turned and followed Margaret. Because the girl was right—there was nothing else she could do.

Donovan stopped a dozen yards ahead and gestured at them wildly. “The fuck you doing?
Trying to fight off a mob with your bare hands? Get to running!”

Behind them, the bulk of the crowd still clustered around Carrie’s body, but the outliers had focused their attention on Pete and were moving after her. Pete grabbed tightly to Margaret’s hand. “Don’t look behind you,” she said. “Don’t look anywhere but straight ahead, and don’t stop running until I tell you.”

Margaret was fast,
and she didn’t have a problem keeping pace with Pete and Donovan. Pete ran until she felt like her lungs would explode, but her distance and stride were definitely easier since she’d kicked fags. Maybe all that nonsense in zombie movies had something to it. If only she could solve this problem by putting a few bullets in the skulls of the undead and calling it a job well done.

The graveyard was
uphill from the village, and Donovan started to flag before they’d gotten halfway. The villagers, on the other hand, had only gained speed, and they were moaning and crying now, their voices echoing off the surrounding hills, creating a drone of hunger and pain that was all Pete could hear besides her own thudding heart.

When Donovan stumbled and fell, Pete fought the urge to shout at him and
instead let go of Margaret’s hand. “Keep running,” she said. “Straight into the graveyard, and into the biggest tomb. Jack’s there. He’ll take care of you.”

Margaret hesitated, and Pete gave her a none too gentle shove. The time for coddling was long past. “Go!” she shouted. “Fast as you can!”

She ran back to Donovan, giving the lead villager a shove backward and causing him to tumble while
she pulled Jack’s father up with her other arm. “Move,” she snarled at him. “If you die out here before Jack gets to kick you in the teeth for all those miserable years you weren’t around, I’ll find a necromancer to raise you up and kick your arse myself.”

Donovan ran, panting, his face a dangerous shade of cardiac-arrest crimson. “Bossy little bitch on top of it all. Hate to tell you this, luv,
but you’re a tailor-made Prospero.”

Pete felt hands snatch at her hair and the back of her jacket, but then they were through the graveyard fence and the crowd clustered outside, moaning and pawing at one another as they fought not to get pushed through the iron. One of the wraiths drifted over, its mouth opening into a fathomless maw, and quicker than a hawk strike, it snatched one of the punters
from the front of the crowed, wrapping him in silvery tendrils. The rest of the crowd drew back.

The punter thrashed and screamed until he went still, skin taking on a blue cast and frost growing on his eyebrows and in his hair. A black shape writhed inside the wraith’s silvery body, then disspated like ink in water.

Pete looked next to her, to where Donovan stood, eyes intent and lips moving.
“Power of persuasion, luv,” he said, and turned to head for the mausoleum.

Pete watched the figures fade into the mist until a wraith brushed by her, and she hurried after Donovan.

20.

Inside the mausoleum, Margaret crouched next to Jack, brushing hair back from his forehead. “I think he’s sick,” she told Pete when she came in.

“He’ll live.” Donovan slumped, sucking in a deep breath. “And so will you, thanks to us. Hope you’re grateful.”

“Will you shut your gob for ten seconds?” Pete said, crouching beside Margaret. “You all right, luv?”

Margaret nodded. Her face
was streaked with dirt, the river tracks of tears cutting through, but she took a deep breath, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m all right. I feel bad for poor Miss Carrie, though. She only ever tried to help me, ever since my da brought us to this stupid place.”

“I do, too,” Pete said, stroking Margaret’s hair. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, luv.”

Margaret shrugged. “It’s all right.
I’m with you lot now.”

Pete wondered what exactly the Smythes had done to their daughter in the intervening years to make her this flat and closed off. She’d want to murder them a lot more if she didn’t think the mob outside would take care of the pair soon enough. Not that mindless living zombie would be a great leap for either Philip or Norma Smythe.

Pete stripped off her jacket and wrapped
it around Margaret, who sank into it with a sigh. “Thanks. It’s so cold here. Never gets any warmer.”

“Stay put, luv, all right?” Pete said, guiding her to the small prayer bench under the stained glass window. “Don’t go outside, whatever you do.”

“You kidding?” Margaret said. “I’m not going anywhere with those things about.”

“Smart girl,” Pete said, patting her leg. She looked back at Jack,
still prone on the ground. Donovan was bent from the waist, looking him over.

“So far, I can’t say I’m very impressed,” he said. “Your reputation is a lot worse than your reality, son.”

“Up yours,” Jack grumbled, and Donovan chuckled, the round low sound echoing in the tomb.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “That’s the Jack Winter I was expecting to meet.” He poked at Jack with his toe. “You
could stand to have a little more spine, Jackie. Maybe that’s my fault, leaving you to be raised by your mum.”

Jack’s cheeks colored, and he started to lever himself up, but fell back with a groan, pressing his hands over his eyes.

“I never wanted to leave you,” Donovan said, “but I was foolish. I thought you had my blood, and you’d manage to grow some stones on your own. Guess I was wrong.”

Pete felt her stomach clench, a sensation that was all too familiar to her. It felt good to have a target for her rage, though. She could gather all the pain and confusion and fear of the past few days and turn it on Donovan. She grabbed him by the arm and jerked him away from Jack. “Outside,” she snapped when he started to protest. “No more spewing your crap in front of Jack.”

Donovan followed
her out, stumbling slightly when she pulled him down the steps. “My son might be into the kinky stuff, but don’t think I won’t smack you if you get too touchy-feely.”

“I would love to see you try that with me,” Pete told him. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not Jack’s mum. I hit back.”

Donovan rocked back on his heels. “Oh, calm your self-righteous little soul. I never raised my hand to Hannah.
I’m not in the habit of knocking women around. Or abandoning my children, though I don’t expect you to believe me.”

“Good, because I think that’s a load of bollocks,” Pete said. “You admitted to me your entire talent is based around lying. Got to tell you, Donovan—I’m not your biggest fan.”

He spat an impatient sigh and then pressed his hands together, as if she were a small child who was being
willfully obtuse. “I don’t have to explain myself, but would it help you to know I tried to take Jack with me when I had to leave Manchester and Hannah pitched such a fit I backed off? She threatened to have the council round, and then the police. And I wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow back then. Would I have been any use to Jack in prison?”

“Here’s a thought—you could have stayed put
and fucking raised your kid,” Pete said. “But that’s hard work and I get the feeling you’re allergic.”

“I told you, I was stupid,” Donovan said. “I was doing a lot of work back then for a gangster named Harold Combs—Hatchet Harry, to his mates—and being the pet mind-bender of a man who chopped people’s thumbs off for fun had gotten me into hot water. There were threats.”

“Imagine that,” Pete
said. She folded her arms, but at least Donovan wasn’t trying to shine her on with his talent. He looked tired, as if the words put a weight on him with each sentence he spoke.

“Before you come at me again with those terrier teeth, by the time I made it back to Manchester Jackie had lit out, and the next I heard, he was in shit up to his arse with the
Fiach Dubh.
Now, you might have the juice
to toe up against the crow brothers, but I’d learned my lesson. Jack was fine, and he didn’t need me.”

“He wasn’t fine,” Pete said softly. She thought about the first time she’d seen Jack after he’d vanished on her when she was sixteen, thirty pounds lighter, hollow eyed, haunted. “He was killing himself as fast as he could.”

How much of that could Donovan had prevented, if he’d just shown up?
How many nights spent sleeping in doorways, how many doses of skag, how many years of a black hole inside her where Jack should be?

“I can’t change the past,” Donovan said. “Not even the gods themselves can do that. But now we’re all in trouble, and for once I can be on my son’s side when he needs me. I’m sorry you don’t like my methods, but I’m doing what I can.”

Pete felt the fight drain out
of her. The rage swirled away like the mist around them, drifted up among the wraiths and was lost. “Don’t think I don’t know that you tried to lay the sodding mojo on me back there,” she said as a parting shot. “And don’t think this has changed my opinion of you. I think you’re a piece of shit, and I’ll be watching you every second until we get out of this horrid place.”

“Fair enough,” Donovan
said. “You think what you like, dearie.”

“I always do,” Pete said, and they glared at each other for a moment until she decided she’d played the hard act enough and dropped her arms down, sitting on the steps of the tomb. “So what now? You’ve been here, what’s your bright idea for getting past the zombie horde?”

“They’re not…” Donovan started, but Pete flipped up her hand.

“Whatever. Talk.”

Donovan heaved a sigh and sat next to her, patting his pockets. “Got a cigarette?”

Pete shook her head. “I’m off them since I had the baby.”