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Pete snatched the cut-glass candy dish Jack used as an ashtray off the wardrobe and began beating away the beasts, some of which looked like many-legged octopods, some just gaping mouths with three or four eyes supported by flimsy nets of tissue. She was nearly free when a pair of crushingly strong arms wrapped around her torso and lifted her off the ground.
"It didn't work, Mr. Winter," said Gerry the maître d', now attired in a black sweater and slacks, a watchcap covering the sheen of his bald head. He appeared from out of the loo, the long kitchen knife in his hand catching light like the tooth of a great wolf. "I
Jack gaped at him, looking more outraged that his hex had failed than at the fact his hotel room was full of bog-spawned horrors. "I
"The creature," Pete managed, although the person holding her was doing it tightly enough to crack ribs. "The dead thing, in the bath. I
"Oh, you have got to be jerking me!" Jack shouted. "The bloody hell is wrong with you freaks? Drink too much swamp water on the job?"
A small five-legged octopod with a sucker mouth crawled up Pete's leg, and she kicked it away. It gave a high squeak as it bounced off the opposite wall. The man holding her grabbed her hair with one hand and jerked her neck back almost to breaking. "I'll thank ye to leave my creatures alone, miss."
"Donovan?" Pete rasped.
He gri
"Let go of her," Jack said, his eyes narrowing to fiery slits. "You've made me ask you twice now, and I'm all out of patience for it."
"You're coming along quietly," said Gerry. "Or my servant is going to snap your wife's neck. We'd hate for an accident to occur on hotel grounds, but some things are simply unavoidable."
"It's all right, Jack," said Pete. An involuntary tear worked out of her eye when Donovan twisted her neck. "Just go with him."
Jack looked from her to Gerry, then slowly lowered his hands. The witchfire nickered out of existence. "You've got me," he muttered quietly. "I'll do anything you sodding want. Just don't hurt her."
Pete slumped. Jack wasn't supposed to surrender—he was supposed to bloody get away and help her escape when the opportunity presented. Noble gestures were so contrary that she almost started crying again.
"Unfortunately," said Gerry with a wide smile. "I'm not sure I can fulfill that promise, Mr. Winter. You and the missus make a pair, you see." He jerked his head at Donovan. "Get her to the boat."
DONOVAN AND GERRY TOOK THEM THROUGH A BASEMENT service door that backed onto a canal filled with garbage and brown sludge that looked more like intestinal distress than water. A pole launch bumped gently against a pier made of old plastic drums sealed with tar.
Pete fell on her knees in the aft of the launch when Donovan shoved her. "Not so chatty now, are ye?"
"I'll set a badger on your bollocks," Pete muttered. Donovan kicked her and she felt something give, low down near her stomach. She bit the insides of her cheeks. She wouldn't get Donovan off by yelling.
"Knock that off," Gerry commanded as he wrestled Jack into the launch. "You remember what happened last time you bruised the sacrifices, surely."
Donovan grunted, and Jack raised his eyebrows. "So you two are the silly gits playing doctor with creatures of the Black. Have to say I'm a bit let down."
"Shut up," Gerry said. "This is older and larger than you, mage, and I don't expect you to understand." He pushed Jack down next to Pete, and cast off the line. Donovan poled the skiff into the cha
"You all right?" Jack muttered without moving his mouth too much. Pete sucked in a breath. A dull shiv of pain slid between her broken bones.
"Hurt, but I can run for it if I need to."
"Quiet, you two," Donovan warned.
"Go bugger yourself," said Jack loudly. "If you hurt us, you'll be stuck sacrificing that bloody overcooked roast you served me last night." To Pete, he murmured, "Sorry."
Pete blinked. Never mind creatures in the suite and the thick dark magic that lived in the air around Blackpool—Jack apologizing was truly a phenomenon. "You are?"
"Should have listened to you," he said. "This is a dodgy place."
"Yeah, and the time for guilt has cruised past like a missed bus," Pete said. "So what are we going to do?"
The launch drifted through co
"We wait, for now," said Jack. "Until we get where we're going. I want to see what these sods are on about."
"That's a terrible plan," Pete hissed. "We need to swim for it. Where we're going to is an untimely death!"
"No…" said Jack slowly, his head swiveling as the skiff began to slow. Pete struggled up and followed his eyes. Jack tilted his head. "That's where we're going."
Something massive and hunched rose out of the water, taller than the windbroken trees along the shore. It was stone and moss, slimy and shining as if it had just woken from under the mud. Columns held a crooked roofpiece made of insectoid carapaces and steps covered in algae led to the round opening, jagged pieces of broken stone lining it like rotted teeth.
The skiff bumped against the bottom stones and Donovan hauled her up, nearly dislocating her arm.
"Any tricks from ye," he told Jack, "and she breaks like a matchstick."
"I'll enjoy feeding you your still-beating heart, you bastard," Jack said pleasantly as Gerry pushed him out of the boat.
"Hear that, Do
It was a temple. That was the best way Pete could describe it. The stones were massive and hand cut, carved with curling tentacles and lidless eyes and the great humped backs of creatures rolling through deep waves. Gaseous fumes tinged the air of the single open chamber yellow. The temple wasn't Roman and it wasn't Celtic or Saxon—the place was slightly out of focus, as if built by something with an idea of human shapes but no practice.
Moss and algae covered almost every surface and Pete slipped, going down hard. Donovan dragged her the rest of the way by her scruff, locking her next to Jack into the neck cuff and a pair of iron shackles, chains bolted to a collapsing column.
Jack winced. "Iron's cold," he said by way of explanation.
"You better have a bloody good plan," Pete whispered. Witch-light flamed up in alcoves along the walls, and Pete saw the chamber was larger than it appeared, stretching to a massive fallen-in piece of the floor leaking bubbling marsh water. Tiny waves sloshed at her bare feet.
"Trust me, I'll be thinking of one right quickly," said Jack. "Interesting place, though. Appears to be some kind of death cult, chaos worshippers."
"Two pathetic sods without girlfriends," Pete muttered. "Not much of a cult."
Gerry hit a bronze gong mounted near the edge of the water pit, and with a low moan and a shuffling of feet a row of robed figures shuffled in. Their tattered black garments bore the tridach mark. Pete recognized the doorman from the hotel, and a friendly clerk at the petrol station where she and Jack had stopped on their way into the city.
"Bugger all. Look at them."
"Patience," Jack sighed. "I'm sure they'll eventually free us for the sacrifice, and then you can kick them, and I'll send up a little smoke, and we'll be off in the bloody boat."