Hell Has a Succession Problem

What Raven Saw

Raven had always been good at triage.

Triage meant deciding in three seconds who could be saved and what it would cost.

Marcel's lips were going blue. The thing's hand was locked around his throat. And the thing had a body, which meant it had rules.

That was why she stepped toward it.

Not because she was brave. Because it had said the seams hold, and she was a doctor.

"Walt," she said, calm as a pulse oximeter. "I'm going to help you. Stay still."

The ring of teeth turned toward her, delighted.

"Come closer, Doctor."

She did.

She unzipped the trauma bag with one hand, pulled out the portable defibrillator, and slapped both pads onto Walt's chest through the gray suit.

"Seams are for sewing," Raven said. "Hearts are for stopping."

She hit the shock button.

The room cracked like a whip. Walt's body arched, every muscle locking at once, and the hand on Marcel's throat spasmed open.

Marcel dropped. He hit the tile, sucked in air like a drowning man, and croaked, "Did you just defibrillate a demon?"

"Get up."

"That was incredible."

"Get up, Marcel. It will be back in a minute."

The thing was folding in on itself, thrashing, the ring of teeth chattering. The pads sparked. It had sixty seconds, maybe less.

Raven grabbed Cass under the arms. Marcel grabbed her feet. Neither of them said a word.

Her little hatchback sat crooked at the curb with the door open and the engine still running. She had run in so fast she'd forgotten the keys.

"I'm in back with Cass," Raven said. "You drive."

"You're the better driver."

"I'm the better doctor. Drive."

Marcel dropped behind the wheel. His ribs screamed. His throat felt like swallowed glass.

He floored it.

The club shrank in the mirror. Something white and fast came out of the alley behind it, and a pair of headlights swung onto their tail.

A security SUV, with a hospital crest on the door.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Marcel said.

"That's Walt's truck," said Raven.

"It's not Walt's anymore."

Behind it, a delivery scooter wobbled out of the dark, carrying a very angry man in a pizza uniform.

"He's still on the scooter?"

"They really commit to the bit," Marcel muttered, and took a left on two wheels.

Raven braced against the seat, one hand on Cass's pulse, the other squeezing a bag of oxygen into her lungs. Cass was gray and shallow and cold.

"Pulse is thready," Raven called. "Her arm is warm and the rest of her is freezing. Whatever's in that brand, it's pulling heat out of her."

"Can you stop it?"

"Not in a Honda."

"Then keep her alive until I find a place that can."

"Marcel." Her voice was low and steady. "Talk."

The SUV slammed into a trash can. Metal shrieked behind them.

"Now?"

"You promised me everything. Drive and talk."

He took a breath. It hurt.

"My father is the Devil."

"Okay."

"That's it? Okay?"

"I watched Walt's face fall off. Keep going."

So he did.

He told her about the club, and how he'd named it as a joke. About a mother who left when he was fifteen, and a father who stayed. About the throne, and the sovereigns, and the six fingers on his throat.

He did not make a single joke.

Raven asked questions the way she took a history. One at a time, flat, no flinching.

How long had his father been after him? Who else knew? Could these things be killed?

He answered every one honestly, and every answer made her hands move a little faster on Cass's chest.

The scooter caught them at the next light. The pizza man leaned out, one hand reaching for Raven's door, grinning with all his borrowed teeth.

Marcel opened his own door into the front wheel.

The pizza man went over the handlebars and into a hedge, still clutching a pizza box. Nobody asked where the pizza came from.

The SUV caught up. Its bumper kissed theirs, and the whole car shuddered.

"Hold on," Marcel said.

He cut through a gas station, jumped the curb, and drove straight into an automatic car wash.

Foam sprayed. Giant brushes spun. The SUV tried to follow and got swallowed by a roaring curtain of soap.

Behind them, something screamed, and it did not sound like Walt.

They burst out the far side, dripping and blind, into the empty street.

"That was fantastic," Raven said faintly.

"Thank you."

"I'm still furious."

"I know."

She went quiet for half a block. The oxygen bag hissed.

"Dennis?" she asked.

Marcel's hands tightened on the wheel.

"I think he was dead before he walked in. I think he was just the coat." His voice cracked. "I'm sorry."

Raven closed her eyes. Her hand never stopped moving on Cass's chest.

"And Walt?"

"I don't know."

"He has a granddaughter. He showed me a photo last week." She said it flatly. "Every night he holds the door."

Marcel said nothing. There was nothing to say.

"You didn't make a joke," Raven said at last.

"I promised."

"You could have told me four years ago."

"You would have run."

"I walk toward things."

"I know." He met her eyes in the mirror. "That's why I didn't tell you."

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the radio turned on.

It did not crackle. The music simply stopped, as if someone had reached in and switched it off.

"Marcel Hart," said a woman's voice, soft and amused. "You drive like a bartender."

Marcel's blood went cold.

"Who is this?"

"A friend with mirrors. You may call me Kessa."

"I don't have friends with mirrors."

"You do now." A silken pause. "You have had a very long night, and it is going to get longer. I can end it."

"How?"

"Renounce your claim. Publicly, before the court, at sunrise. Say you will never sit that throne."

"And?"

"And every hunter on your trail goes home. The brand fades. Your little doctor sleeps in her own bed." Kessa's voice warmed, like a hand on his shoulder. "All you owe me is a signature, and the protection of my court."

"Protection."

"Think of it as a very comfortable leash."

Marcel glanced at the mirror.

Raven was staring at him across the back seat, bloody to the elbows, Cass's head in her lap.

She shook her head once. Slowly.

"Don't you dare decide this without me," she said.

"I'm not," he said. "I'm thinking."

Because he was. Sign the leash, and Cass lived, and Raven slept in her own bed, and the club stayed his.

It was the cleanest yes anyone had ever offered him.

That was exactly what scared him.

"Think faster, Mr. Hart," said Kessa. "I would hate to lose the girl in the back seat."

The brand on Cass's wrist flared bright.

"Her pulse just dropped twenty points," Raven said, very quietly. "Marcel, I can't fix that from here."

"I know."

"Then whatever you decide, decide it now."

And a new voice cut across the radio, harsh and low and completely unmistakable.

"Marcel. Do not say yes."

Marcel almost put them into a lamppost.

Trigon sat in the passenger seat, boots on the dash, one hand on the knife he had somehow stolen back. He had not been there ten seconds ago.

"How the fuck," Marcel said, "did you get in my car?"

"I did not use the door."

"I swear to God..."

"Listen." Trigon's face was tight. "Kessa is not offering you peace. She wants you off the board before dawn, and she does not care how."

"So it's a trap."

"It is a trap." Trigon turned in the seat and looked at Raven, grim as a gravestone. "And it is already closing on her hospital."