Chapter One #2
Hill took a deep breath, regretted it as the smell hit the back of his throat with an afternote of boiled cabbage, and started down the stairs. The wood creaked under his weight, and the cold bag of murdered animal bumped against his leg with each step.
Ten years ago Greg had murdered Hill’s dad, and then he married the widow to keep her onside. Except there was no proof, nothing but an overheard conversation and the man’s general character. Take that and everything else Greg had ever been suspected of to court and see how far the case would go.
No.
Hill reached the bottom of the stairs and started to prepare the space.
He unfolded one of the ground sheets and spread it out on the floor, anchored at the corners with old cans of paint.
Then he got a pocket knife out of his back pocket and sliced the bag open so he could empty the contents into the pot.
The bloodied jackrabbit slid out of the plastic in a limp tangle of limbs and ears. Hill had caught it himself, out in the woods with a snare that Greg had shown him how to make.
Back when he was still Uncle Greg and he brought his Christmas presents to Thanksgiving, and Hill hadn’t understood why he made Dad nervous.
The original ritual requested a hare, but outside of Europe records showed this substitution was close enough.
He checked his watch again. Two minutes. He waited somewhat patiently for them to tick over into the next day. As it turned midnight, he got to work.
Hill had thought the butchery would be easier. The animal’s skin was tougher to carve through than he’d expected, his wrists sore and palms blistered by the time he finished. He was sweating under his hoodie despite the chill that seeped out of the walls.
Hopefully the next part would be easier.
He put the remnants of the carcass, hide and bone, into the plastic bag, bundled it up, and set it to the side. Once it was out of the way, he swallowed hard and then leaned over the pot of thick blood and organs.
The smell of it had a similar base to the basement reek.
For some reason that thought sent a chill through him. It wasn’t like he didn’t know, or to be accurate, strongly suspect, the source of that smell. Both chemically and metaphysically. The meaty reality of it, though, was somehow still daunting.
You don’t have to do this.
Hill knew that. He was still going to do it.
He spat into the pot. It landed on top of…something dark and clotted…and floated there.
“Listen to my prayer,” Hill said. He had learned the words by heart, until he could have said them in his sleep if he wanted to.
Somehow, tonight when it mattered, they tried to slide away from him.
He had to strain to find the word that fit the shape his mouth wanted to make.
“Hear me. Answer me. The threats of the wicked bring suffering on me, set violence and strife on the streets of the City.”
The blood in the pot stirred, greasy bubbles roiling the surface. It made the smell worse.
“They—”
Was that right? It felt like there was a gap, something that had slipped away. Fear grabbed at Hill’s tongue. That would not be good. That would be—
Hill talked over the swell of panic that tried to choke him, the words forced out through stiff lips. Getting the invocation wrong would be a problem; not finishing would be worse. He tightened his grip on his pocketknife.
He gritted his teeth, steeled himself as best he could, and stabbed the knife through the palm of his hand.
The blade carved through his skin easier than through the jackrabbit’s hide.
Hot red reaction washed over him as the pain separated itself into distinct layers: the cut, the bruise, the scrape of metal on bone.
That was the most disorienting bit, Hill thought with unexpected clarity. Nothing was meant to go around touching bone.
“Let death take my enemies by surprise. Bring their dead up to the living,” he choked out. “Call them from decay, from the chains of sin.”
He shoved his bloody hand down into the pot.
There was more blood in it than made any sense, considering the size of a jackrabbit.
His arm sank into it until it was above his elbow.
It was so cold it scalded him as it soaked through his sleeve.
He gasped in shock and then squeezed his eyes shut tight as he used that breath to force the rest of the words out.
“But as for me, I trust in you,” he said. “Davy Jones.”
And something, down in that cold boiled stew of blood and lung and liver, grabbed his arm.
It didn’t feel like a hand. Too wet and long and…wriggly.
Hill recoiled. It was stupid, after everything he’d done and planned to get here, but he couldn’t help himself. His stifled yell and lurch backward was instinct, hard-wired into his marrow.
It just didn’t do much good.
Whatever was down there tightened its grip on him. Hill winced as he felt his wrist bones creak and ache. The cold dulled the pain, but not enough. He clenched his teeth and pulled. It felt like trying to pull a mastodon out of a tar pit.
One-handed.
He could feel the tendons and muscles in his shoulder strain and fray as his arm took the strain. The pain crawled up his neck, through his jaw, and into his skull. It wasn’t like he had a choice, though.
Pull it out of the grave, or he went in.
Hill dragged it out. Strings of dirty, matted hair broke through the surface of the blood first. He grimaced and braced himself for the memento mori decay of a spirit more than ten years in dirt and concrete.
He expected rot, grease, and naked, stained bones.
There might have been guilt.
Davy Jones broke through the barrier between the grave and the living with a gasp, clots of blood dripping from his stubbled jaw and sandy hair. His skin had gray undertones, the spray of freckles over his nose like flecks of ink, but was intact and smooth over the sharp bones of his face.
The only injury was a thumbprint smudge of bruising at his hairline, just off-center from his nose.
His eyes were wild and black, edge to edge.
Lust was not a reaction Hill had expected to have to worry about. Did it count as necrophilia, he wondered distractedly, or since there was no carcass involved, was it still just necromancy?
Blood splashed Hill’s face, cool and sticky thick, as something pale and boneless writhed up out of the pot. He tasted old salt and metal on his lips. Before he could spit it out, the pale…limb?…wrapped around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss.
Davy’s cold tongue darted into his mouth—it tasted like fresh blood, after all this time, and dirt—and Hill’s breath caught in his throat. He wasn’t sure if it was from attraction or the wet noose of muscle and skin wrapped around his neck.
This wasn’t…
He tried to grab at the spirit’s hair, tangled and clotted with blood, but another pale whip of flesh snapped up out of the bloody mixture to grab his wrist. Slow, dark hunger twisted uneasily under Hill’s skin, and his focus scattered at the departure from what he’d expected.
First-hand accounts of what happened after the rite was complete were rare. Those who survived it rarely wanted to talk about it. Those who didn’t were even more retiring on the subject. The scraps that did exist mentioned the spirit’s rage and unpredictability, not…this.
What they had all agreed on, though, Hill reminded himself grimly, was that not finishing the ritual was a bad thing.
He struggled to his feet and dragged the dead man—heavier the more of him there was in the world, all long bones and pale, tangled tentacles—with him.
Part of him was rattling around the inside of his brain in a panic. Whatever it wanted to say was muffled by lust and fear, but Hill figured it was probably the tentacles.
The pale, blood-smeared whips of them wrapped around Hill’s thighs and toyed with the ends of his hair. It definitely seemed like someone would have mentioned them, even if they left out the way they squeezed your cock through your jeans.
Blood dripped onto the floor as Davy planted his bare feet back into the living world. He gripped Hill’s jaw with one hand and deepened the kiss.
The taste of bones filled Hill’s mouth and seeped down into his lungs. The chill made his marrow ache and his blood feel slow and sludgy as his heart labored to move it on.
He couldn’t breathe.
Hill tried to pull away. He clawed at the spirit’s bare—broad, hard-muscled, not the time!
—shoulders and yanked at handfuls of matted blond hair.
Only the parts that were bloody, slick and cold, felt solid.
The rest gave like smoke or candy floss under his fingers.
Neither made the spirit react, except to tighten its grip and kiss him harder.
It wasn’t…
This was…
It wasn’t that bad.
Hill relaxed into the dead man’s cold embrace and kissed him back, fingers knotted through bloody hair. He just had to let go.
Of his breath. Of his anger. Of everything.
Hill staggered back a couple of steps. He stared in confusion at the back of someone’s head, a cowlick swirl of dark hair at the nape and a mole just under his ear, until he realized it was him. His back. His hair. He assumed his mole, but he’d never actually noticed it before.
If that was him, though, then who was he?
He looked down at his hands. They looked the same, felt the same. They moved the same when he clenched them into fists, bony and knuckly. His hand wasn’t bleeding anymore, but the wound was still visible. Sort of. It looked more like a bruise or a birthmark, a smudge of color against pale skin.
“Yeah, count yourself lucky,” someone said, their words thick with a Texas drawl. “That hurts like fuck.”
Hill looked up and watched with disoriented horror as his body turned around to face him.
It didn’t look like him.
Or it did, but only if he squinted. The line of Hill’s jaw was there, Hill’s hairline, Hill’s ears, but it was overlaid with his face.
Davy Jones’s short, straight nose, sharp cheekbones, and the stern, thin mouth that Hill could still somehow taste. The smirk was nothing that Hill’s mouth had ever managed either, cocky and pleased with itself.
On impulse, Hill flung himself at his body. He didn’t have any idea what he was going to do, but if he could be ousted, so could Davy. Before he could get close, one of the tentacles that squirmed around Davy snapped out. It grabbed Hill by the throat and hauled him up off the ground.
It squeezed until Hill’s eyes bulged, and he grabbed at it, fingers dug into the dense, heavy muscle that collared him.
“You knocked on my door, kid,” Davy said, his voice amused. He lifted his hand and licked blood from the open wound. “What did you think was going to happen? I’d go yell ‘boo’ at your enemies?”