The window was black with the coal-smoke of passing carriages, the dirt so thick he wrote his name in it; his real name. The traffic was a continuous parade of gleaming iron carapaces sliding by under the skin of the street lanterns’ slick, oily light. They moved at a speed and grace that was so much more pleasant to behold than the clattering carriages splashing horse shit he had known the last time he had been here.
Rain fell onto the pedestrians, puckering the wet hides of their coats against their bent bodies as they hurried for shelter.
Emotions came up to him in waves; from the streets, the other flats, the nearby shops. They’d changed the world but people were still the sad, needy wretches they’d always been. He made sport of them, taking those emotions and heightening them – sadness deepening to depression, elevating lust, broadening anger into rage – then he’d imagine what they would do when they reached their destinations.
Reeves could feel Bridget’s restraints like a lodestone in the very centre of his being, pulling everything inwards, leashing him, limiting him, shaming him. Using his powers like this, without permission, felt like fighting against the tide.
Somewhere out there, Bridget could feel him testing her limits, slipping these small acts of malice out through her efforts to keep him in check. Soon she would begin to— He felt her control harden, the feeling like a sink within him, a cold robbing of his abilities. That damn tattoo on her arm. Never had this been done to a demon, never had humans been able to do this. The humiliation was a cold dagger in his side.
No matter, he had other projects to keep him occupied.
Crossing the room to the narrow bed, he dipped his fingers in the courier’s red, open torso, his eyes fixed on the wall before him.
Time sank into a creative haze as he worked. He didn’t resurface until he felt the approach of, for want of a better word, his mistress.
Her control had begun to slacken again. Reaching out with his mind, he found the tangle of thoughts and emotions of the guard posted outside his door. A little more belligerence would be amusing. Anything that inconvenienced his mistress amused him. He suppressed compassion, stoked anger, all the time pulling at Bridget’s hold over him.
But it wasn’t as hard as it had once been. He didn’t even have to stop his painting.
He heard Bridget coming up the stairs but paid little attention to what was said to the guard. Hard words were exchanged, the tone far more pleasing than the argument. Reeves smiled as the words became sharper, feeling emotion spiked and tempo quickened.
After a protracted conversation, there came the familiar snick of the key in the lock. The door opened.
The dark of the symbols in the hall hurt his eyes and bones, a wind that cut right through him. They were unsubstantial things as light and strong as cobwebs, holding him in this room unless he was permitted to depart. The whole wall outside was covered with them, the door frame as well. Even outside they set his teeth on edge.
Reeves gave a laboured stretch, disguising his discomfort.
Bridget blinked in the doorway, adjusting to the dark. The only light in the room was what spilled through the window and what she brought in with her. ‘Switch on a light,’ she ordered.
Reeves was compelled to obey but for once their wants were the same.
She closed the door behind her just as Reeves flicked on the bedside lamp.
Her eyes widened as they alighted on the bed. The delivery man’s glassy eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. He’d kept a knife in his bag for protection and done the work himself, sawing the blade down his sternum and then across, letting it all hang out. Reeves had allowed him to see but not to scream. He’d watched the pain in the man’s eyes, watched his eyelids droop as his victim found another route of escape and departed.
‘What is this?’ Bridget rounded the bed. Reeves watched with amusement as she put her fingers against the corpse’s jugular. The dullard’s pulse had stagnated hours before.
Reeves swept his arm, bringing the mural to her attention.
The blood had spilled from the corpse like the overfilled vessel it was and Reeves had used the insides to rouge the walls.
It was coming along. The outline was there and he was pleased with it. He’d got the lips just right, that down-curve of disapproval and he’d added just the right amount of fantasy too. He’d added a glint to the eye, brought out the cheekbones. It was an idealised vision of the subject, playing on the attraction the subject held toward his vessel’s body.
He could taste the colour rising in Bridget’s cheeks as she took in her own image. It was a nude, drawn from memory of the first night he’d been summoned when the binding had been fresh and strong.
She was already rolling up her sleeve, looking back to the door.
Reeves gave a weary sigh.
The binding contracted the moment her thumb brushed the ink. It was like being pulled deep into a void within himself, black and fathomless, like being encased in rock and being alone and naked in a vast gaping nothingness all at once. He could sense no other living thing, not the drivers outside, not Bridget before him or the seething, skittering insects that lived beneath the floorboards. The only glimmer of light was that tattoo on Bridget’s arm, that small pinhole into the world.
Except it was no longer quite so simple. The void was thinner. Though he couldn’t feel the emotions, he could feel where they were, maybe even reach out and touch them if he tried. Bridget’s tattoo was no longer the only beacon, there were other paths he could take, darker but traversable.
Bridget removed her thumb from the sigil and the binding dropped back to being merely an annoyance. Bridget blinked hard, swaying a moment. The effort of restricting him had cost her a lot more than it had him.
Reeves grinned as he got back to his feet.
She had felt it too, the truth plain on her face, the bond between them had decayed to almost nothing. There was a momentary flicker before she tried to reassert control, heading back to the door and checking that it was locked. ‘I want this cleaned up.’ Coming to stand at the bed, she hissed the words, trying to shout them but not be overheard by Jamison’s man outside. ‘I order you to clean this up.’
Taking his time in complying, he reached out across the bed, admiring reflections in the gore. He made as though to pull at the duvet, roll the corpse up in it. Bridget’s right hand was in reach, so he struck, firmly grasping her wrist, pulling her and the duvet toward him, across the body, cradling her hand to his chest.
Surprise spread across her face as she tried not to fall into the red pool between them. Her free hand clutched at her handbag to stop it falling from her shoulder, a foot went out behind her so that she could keep her balance.
‘It’s almost over,’ he said.
‘Let go of me.’ Her hand snapped back to the sanctuary of her chest, holding it in a mirror of the gesture he’d just performed. There were bloody marks where he’d gripped.
‘You feel it too.’ Blood ran in dribbles to the floor, the mattress creaking as Reeves began to climb across, a hand deep in the cook-boy’s torso, gore soaking his knees and crisp, clean cuffs. ‘Crumbling away. You want the release. You want to know it’s over. You lie awake at night, fretting over what I’ll do next. Aren’t you tired of my weight around your neck? Let me have my way.’
The corpse’s hand flopped from the side of the bed as Reeves dismounted, more blood falling in a treacle-thick waterfall.
Bridget was backing away, cornering herself by the window. She was tugging at her sleeve again, her thumb finding the familiar spot in the crook of her elbow. She pressed.
The blackness yawned again but Reeves kept coming. Each step was agony, weak and thin as water. But the darkness was less consuming, as flimsy as the curtain she hid behind. He could still feel her, follow her power out from the leash around his heart and back into hers. He touched it but it wouldn’t give. Not yet. But he could give it a tug.
The woman gasped as he did. Her thumb came away and the world returned and he was inches away from her. He could smell the perfume on her skin and in the small space between them it mixed with the blood on his breath.
‘Bridget’s hubris can finally be at an end. It sickens you. After, all the closed minds, too stupid to realise your genius and now they are right.’
‘Shut up, I order you to shut up.’
‘—no better than those who failed before you. You finally got what you wanted and it was worth nothing at all. What does that make you?’
Bridget was pale, shaking and taking in every word.
‘You will be among the last to die. You will chew out your own tongue, bite the ink from your skin. The blood of everyone who knows your name will be on your hands and countless others besides. You will go down as one of history’s greatest fools. Your death will be very public – a parable for all who come after.’
Bridget stood, stricken. Reeves could feel her emotions closing down and saw only the briefest, hottest of flashes as she pressed into her tattoo. The veil ripped open in him again with the force of a tempest, sheering away thought and flesh and time.
‘Then maybe I should make the most of it.’ Those words the only thing he could perceive.
The phone began to ring. The world flooded back in as Bridget went to answer it. She couldn’t completely disguise the tremble in her voice. ‘Hello? Yes. Yes, I’m there now. We’re on our way.’
Reeves dipped his head to the receiver so he could be heard. ‘I enjoyed the food, Mr Kavanagh. A welcome surprise.’ He locked eyes with Bridget. ‘I look forward to hearing about the job you have for me.’
Bridget blinked, put out. ‘What job is—?’ But Kavanagh’s voice had been replaced by a single musical note.
‘You weren’t told. They have a new job for us. Even when I’m on my knees I’m above you.’ Reeves stepped away with a sneer. ‘But I’m covered in viscera.’ Without waiting for a reply, he stripped, letting the clothes fall about him.
He smiled, knowing she was watching.
‘The task drips with ambition. The requirements this job makes of me will be extraordinary.’
His eyes never left her face as he shrugged on a fresh shirt.
‘The day you’ve feared has arrived – a matter of hours before I slip from your chains. You will want to run.’
He could feel the turmoil inside her. She’d paled, a hand clutching at the windowsill for support.
‘Maybe you’ll even find a way to hide from me.’
She gave a shuddering breath, hope kindling in her eyes.
Reeves smiled as she strode to the door, turned as he pulled on trousers and felt the wards’ glow against his back.
‘Be sure he gets to AK on time,’ said Bridget to the guard. ‘There’s something I need to do.’
The door closed behind her and Reeves raised his arms, a conductor about to awaken the orchestra.