Danny, Eli, and Jack found themselves cuffed and loaded into the back of a police wagon. They had a brief glimpse of the dog, still perched on the corner; it watched them pass with ears pinned back, but didn’t move from its spot.
Then, the wagon doors slammed shut.
Outside, there was a brief exchange of words between Landry and his fellow officers. He would drive the wagon alone; the other two were dismissed.
Something had gone out of Jack the moment they left the saloon. He sat huddled on the bench, head bowed, cuffed hands hanging limply between his knees.
“Hey.” Eli, sat next to him, nudged him with an elbow. “You all right?”
The police wagon jolted into motion.
“Do you remember what I said?” Jack’s voice was barely a murmur. He didn’t lift his head. “About blood, and sex, and old magic?”
“You said it would weaken the binding spell,” Eli recalled. He glanced back the way they’d come, at the rapidly-shrinking silhouette of Union Hall. “Is that what happened?”
Jack nodded.
Danny, sitting across from them, stared at Jack with a look of disbelief. “That’s what you’re like without it?”
Jack didn’t answer.
“Well,” Eli said, too brightly in the dark quiet space. “Thanks for coming to help.”
“For all the good it did,” Jack replied.
Long minutes passed in silence. The sound of Saintstown’s night traffic faded.
Apprehension crawled up Eli’s spine. “We should be at the police station by now.”
Danny sat up and twisted to look out the barred window. “Fuck.”
The wagon was headed for the edge of town, where nothing awaited them but half-constructed buildings and empty lots.
The wagon rolled to a stop. The doors opened.
“Mr. Sinclair,” Landry said. “I have your package.”
Pressed up next to each other as they were, Eli felt a terrified shiver rattle through Jack’s frame as Nathaniel Sinclair stepped into view.
He was younger than expected, looking less like a sorcerer and more like an academic: well-dressed, but rumpled and ungainly. Scanning the interior of the police wagon, he barely noticed Danny and Eli. The moment he laid eyes on Jack, he turned and nodded to someone they couldn’t see.
Quinn stepped into view, sporting a black eye, and regarded the occupants of the wagon with a sour expression. With an irritated sniff, he stepped forward, grabbed Jack by the arm, and dragged him from the wagon.
Jack fought his grip, twisting around to thrust one hand back into the wagon—the hand with the bandage on it. There was a pleading look in his eyes.
With a desperate lunge, Danny leapt from the police wagon and seized Jack’s hand. Her nails pressed down through the thick bandage, digging for the wound beneath—
Jack hissed in a sharp breath, and his eyes went wide. A faint dampness spread beneath Danny’s fingers.
Sinclair said a word.
It rang incomprehensibly through the air, a name that the mortal mind refused to process as anything but noise. Jack twitched violently at the end of an unseen leash and went limp in Quinn’s hands.
Landry stepped forward and grabbed Danny by the scruff, dragging her away from Jack.
Sinclair barely glanced at Danny. “Kill them both.”
Landry stiffened; for a brief moment, it seemed as if the uniform was the only thing holding him up. “What?”
“You heard him,” Quinn said. Jack hung helpless and compliant in his arms. “Earn your money, Officer.”
Sinclair turned and strode back to his own carriage, Quinn dragging Jack along behind.
With slow, hesitant motions, Landry drew his gun.
“Wait!” Eli scrambled down from the wagon, cuffed hands held out in front of him. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
Landry shoved Danny into him, tumbling them both to the ground.
“Never liked you anyway,” Landry muttered, to no one in particular. He took a halting step forward. “Nothing but street scum. Won’t be missed.”
Sinclair’s carriage was gone. They were in a vacant lot, nothing but construction sites on all sides. It was the middle of the night; nobody would hear the gunshots.
“Landry,” Eli said. “You’ve known us for years.”
“Yeah,” Landry replied, swallowing thickly.
He leveled the gun at Eli’s head.
There was a blur of motion behind him, and then Landry was airborne, tumbling through the dirt at the far end of the lot.
In his place stood Faulkner’s bodyguard, glaring down at them with an irritated expression.
“Wait here,” he growled, and turned to advance on Landry.
Landry, meanwhile, had managed to keep hold of his gun.
Two gunshots echoed across the lot. Both bullets punched through the left side of the bodyguard’s chest and out the other side, leaving wounds big enough to shove a marble through.
The bodyguard’s stride barely slowed. He kicked the gun away, then circled around to haul Landry to his knees, twisting one of his arms up behind his back.
He held Landry there, kneeling in the dirt, as Mr. Faulkner made his way out of the shadows and across the lot.
“Officer Landry,” Faulkner said. “Good evening.”
“Fuck you, Faulkner,” Landry spat. “Even you can’t lay hands on police.”
“I’m well aware,” Faulkner replied. “And I have to say, your associates in the department were unpleasantly surprised to hear about your business with Mr. Sinclair. I assume you intended to keep their usual cut for yourself.”
Blood drained from Landry’s face.
“The word’s gone out, Officer: it’s open season. If something unfortunate happens to you, the department won’t retaliate. Bill Massey, in particular, was quite pleased to hear that. Apparently, you humiliated him quite badly at Union Hall.” He bent down, looming over Landry. “As a professional favor, I supplied Massey with your home address.”
He straightened and nodded to the bodyguard, who released his hold. Landry staggered to his feet.
Faulkner checked his watch. “The last train out of Saintstown is in less than an hour, Officer. I’d hurry, if I were you.”
Without another word, Landry bolted.
Faulkner’s attention turned to Danny and Eli. “I told you two to stay out of trouble.”
“Sinclair has Jack,” Eli replied in a frantic rush. “We—we have to do something, we can’t just—”
Danny interrupted, her voice cold and intent: “Tell us where he is.”
Sinclair’s grand house on Silver Hill echoed in its emptiness.
Dust sheets covered most of the house’s sparse furniture. Trunks and crates, many of them yet to be unpacked, lay scattered throughout its halls. There were no children here, no family to warm the cavernous rooms; only Nathaniel Sinclair, and those who worked for him.
The northwest corner of the house rose into a turret, a mimicry of a castle tower from a fairy tale. They dragged the nameless thing up to the turret’s attic room; Sinclair had to use the Name two more times to keep it compliant.
The usual restraints had already been installed: a set of manacles, padded to prevent the drawing of blood and chained to a ring in the floor. The chain was just barely long enough to allow the nameless thing to stand.
They took one look at the blood smeared across its teeth and added a muzzle.
Then Sinclair was gone, back to his studies, leaving two men behind to guard his demon familiar.
Rage and fear and grief roiled in the nameless thing’s chest. It didn’t dare think about Danny and Eli—only about the last gift they had given.
The bandage that swathed its hand was thick; no-one had yet realized the wound beneath was once again bleeding.
It started with fear. Sinclair’s men found their hearts pounding every time they approached the attic room. Those guarding the demon twitched and looked over their shoulders, certain something horrible lurked just out of sight.
Then came the anger.
The servants started to argue. Fights broke out over trivial disagreements. Some were sent to far corners of the estate to keep them from brawling; others were dismissed for the night.
By midnight, only Quinn could be relied upon to guard the demon’s cage.
He sat in a comfortable armchair against the wall with a newspaper, positioned to watch both the captive and the trap door that served as the room’s only entrance.
The nameless thing watched him for long, intent hours. Even if there was no hope for escape, it would torment its captors until the end of days.
Then, in the small hours of the morning, there was a faint creak. The trap door opened barely a finger’s width, and a familiar pair of eyes peered through.
The nameless thing’s heart leapt. It glanced at Quinn, but his attention was still on the newspaper. For now.
He startled, nearly knocking the lamp over, as a clanging rattle shattered the silence of the attic.
Quinn glared at the nameless thing as, with deliberate motions, it looped the chain around its hands and pulled again, harder this time. Once more, the sound of metal on metal—the chain clattering against the ring in the floor—echoed through the attic.
He slapped the newspaper down on the arm of the chair and crossed the room with heavy footsteps, dropping into a crouch before the nameless thing.
Quinn hooked his fingers through the straps of the muzzle and yanked sharply upward, wrenching the neck beneath into a painful arch.
“You may have forgotten some things while you were away.” Quinn’s voice was quiet, lecturing. “Let me remind you. Don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you. Keep this up, and I’ll throttle you until I can be guaranteed some peace and quiet.” He twisted its head back even further. “Understand?”
It glanced briefly over Quinn’s shoulder, then back with a look of dark satisfaction.
Quinn’s expression fell into weary resignation. “Oh, not—”
Then Danny put her elbow into his temple, and he dropped unconscious to the floor.
Danny kicked Quinn aside and knelt, fumbling at the straps of the muzzle. “Piece of shit—hold still—”
Eli hauled himself up through the trap door and set his attention on the cuffs, reaching into his jacket for his lock picks.
The muzzle finally came loose, and Danny threw it across the room with vicious disgust. The nameless thing slumped, resting its face against her shoulder, as Eli worked on the cuffs.
The locks clicked, one after the other, and Eli worked the cuffs loose. Freed hands fumbled for both of Eli’s.
“You came,” it rasped.
“‘Course we did,” Danny replied.
They sat like that for a while, the nameless thing trembling faintly between them.
“Come on.” Eli stood and helped it to its feet. “We need to go.”
Danny led the way down the ladder, then through silent rooms to the mansion’s grand staircase. Just ahead of them waited the mansion’s double front doors, and freedom.
From somewhere in the house came the faint sound of someone chanting. Ice spread through the nameless thing’s veins, and pain flared in its chest.
Sinclair was casting a spell, unaware that his demon familiar was loose and on the verge of escape.
Its legs buckled, then gave out, sending it down the stairs in a helpless tumble. The impact of each step was a dull distraction compared to the crushing, clutching pain that seized every nerve in its body. It landed on its back at the foot of the grand staircase, a sound of wretched agony ripping from its throat.
There were voices overhead, faint and far away.
It writhed, spine contorting, burning and freezing and cut to pieces by razor wire that wound tighter and tighter and—
“Listen to me.” Gentle hands—Eli’s hands—grabbed the nameless thing’s wrists and lifted them to its face. It blinked, struggling to focus on the sigils that flared red across its skin. “See this? This is not your name.” He squeezed the hands in his. “Your name is Jack. You’re Jack. Right, Danny?”
Danny hesitated, confused, but said, “Uh, right.” At Eli’s urging, she continued, “You hate coffee. Or maybe just Hodge’s coffee. You fight even dirtier than I do. You’re the spookiest son of a bitch I ever met.”
“You’re our friend.” Eli’s grip tightened. “Our friend Jack. Aren’t you?”
Like the breath of quiet between lightning and thunder came a moment of peace, free from pain.
“I am.”
Jack smiled, and collapsed with relief to the floor.
Danny and Eli fussed overhead, exchanging brief, frantic glances and half-sentences. Eli started to tug him up off the floor. “Come on, the door’s right—”
The deafening crack of a gunshot echoed through the front hall. Something warm splattered across Jack’s face.
Eli’s brows furrowed together in confusion. He blinked, then looked down.
There was a hole in his chest.
Danny screamed, a howl of rage and terror.
Eli crumpled to the floor.
Sinclair stood between the open doors that led from the front hall to the rest of the house. There was a gun in his outstretched hand.
Burning fury flooded into Jack’s limbs; he rolled to his feet and crossed the room in the space of a breath. Sinclair spoke the Name, but its influence washed over him like a faint breeze.
He hit Sinclair with all his reclaimed strength. Ribs snapped under the impact.
Sinclair brought the gun to bear, but Jack grabbed his hand and twisted. Delicate bones crunched in his grip, and the gun dropped uselessly to the floor.
Sinclair screamed. Jack thrust the fingers of his free hand down Sinclair’s throat; the noise dissolved into a choking, gagging wheeze. He shoved, bearing them both down to the floor.
“Do you know what it’s like?” Jack whispered. Sinclair’s feet kicked fruitlessly against the floor as Jack pulled on his lower jaw, forcing his mouth open wider and wider. “To be weak, helpless, while someone hurts you because they can?”
Sinclair’s only possible reply was a terrified moan. His unbroken hand clawed at Jack’s wrist.
Jack’s lips widened into a vicious grin. “Let me show you.”
He dug his fingers into the base of Sinclair’s hateful tongue, nails tearing slowly into soft flesh. Sinclair howled, gagging on blood.
“Jack!”
Jack went still.
Behind him, Danny struggled to lift a barely-conscious Eli from the floor.
“Eli needs a doctor,” she said. “If I try to drag him out by myself I’ll just hurt him worse.”
Jack snarled down at Sinclair, struggling beneath him.
“Jack,” Danny said again, softer now. “Please.”
Jack’s shoulders slumped. He pulled his fingers from Sinclair’s throat.
Then he stood, turned his back on Sinclair, and crossed the hall to where Danny and Eli lay.
With Jack supporting Eli’s other side, Danny led the way down the front steps and out of the house.
Neither of them looked back.
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