by Megan Derr
Wyatt was in his bedroom, most of the components and pieces of furniture that had comprised Jackie's workroom neatly stacked up against one wall. He was bent over a book, brow furrowed as he read, but he looked up when he heard Jackie. His mouth curved into a grin. "So what's it like to be a demon's toy?"
"Shut up," Jackie groused, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "Anything interesting happen while I was out with Phoenix? Where the hell did he go, anyway?" he asked, only then realizing that Phoenix should have been around, too.
"He went to find a room for the night, said it was too crowded in here, but that he'd be back tomorrow to talk to you. Said he had some ideas of where to go next. Can I come this time?"
Jackie shrugged. "Don't see why not. Can't hurt to have more help along, that's for sure. What are you reading?"
"A compendium of binding magic that I borrowed from someone," Wyatt replied.
"Borrowed or 'borrowed'?" Jackie asked.
Wyatt flashed another grin. "Do you really want to know?"
"Come to that, not really," Jackie said, shaking his head, mouth twitching. "Just make sure I ain't gonna have anyone on my stoop hollering for justice. I aim to get a decent amount of sleep and won't be none too pleased if I'm woken up early."
Laughing, Wyatt replied, "Yes, Sheriff. So when you do think that demon—Ned—will come back?"
"I don't think he will unless he thinks he has to," Jackie said. "That one don't strike me as much of a team player—most demons ain't, but he seems especially set."
Wyatt closed his book and peered at Jackie thoughtfully. "He seems to be pretty obsessed with you. First at Roman's place and then today. You know a lot about what's going on, and between the two of us, we have enough knowledge and ability to figure out the spell in those runes covering him. Yet he lets us live—not just you, us. Because he knows killing me would hurt you."
"I ain't sure what you're getting at," Jackie said, though he kind of feared he did, except he had to be ten kinds of crazy to believe it. "If he's obsessed with me today, he'll have forgotten me tomorrow. Demons only care about territory, power, and their consorts. I ain't got nothing to do with any of that. When he stops being amused, he'll kill us sure as anything. Remember that."
"I will," Wyatt said and opened his book again. "You sleeping on the couch?"
"Ayah," Jackie said and then realized that all his things were in his room. Did he dare risk waking Emma to get them? Where the hell was he going to put her?
Wyatt smiled at him. "I grabbed some stuff for you. It's all in the bathroom. Go get some rest, Sheriff. We've got a long day tomorrow."
"Truer words ain't never been spoke," Jackie said with a sigh. "Thanks. You get on to bed yourself, son." He left, headed for the bathroom, mind spinning with thoughts of demons and magic and all the problems caused by both, chased by the scents of autumn and the feel of Ned's lips against his own.
Part 06: Beer for My Horses
Jackie woke up feeling hot, feeling… pinned. He groaned and dragged his eyes open, reaching for the guns he'd put on the floor even as he stared up into eyes the color of an early morning sky, rose and gold and hints of blue. He froze, surprised, but not quite yet alarmed. "What time is it?"
"Six thirty."
"In the morning?"
"Yeah."
Jackie groaned again and closed his eyes, trying to roll over to smother himself with his pillow. Ned refused to budge, and Jackie opened his eyes again to glare as hard as he could manage at six thirty in the morning with a demon straddling him. "Did you bring me coffee, at least?"
"I haven't lived this long only to do something as stupid as not bring a cowboy his morning coffee," Ned said and leaned over to pick something up off the table. Brandishing the coffee, which smelled like perfection, he said, "Best to be had around here."
"Get off me so I can drink it." Ned sighed, but obediently climbed off him, settling on the edge of the coffee table. "Demons," Jackie muttered and fumbled until he managed to sit up properly on the couch. He took the coffee out of Ned's hands and downed several swallows.
"Doesn't that burn your tongue?"
"Only if you're a fool who don't drink real coffee," Jackie replied and drank more of it. "What in the hell are you doing here at six thirty in the morning? I know I look like a cowboy, but I ain't gotta be up to tend animals or shoot rustlers, for crying out loud. I just draw fancy shit with chalk. Why you getting me up before the sun?"
Ned snorted. "Are you done drinking and bitching?"
Jackie sighed and finished his coffee. "Ayah."
He'd barely gotten the word out when he had a lap full of demon and a mouth taking his like it was the last thing Ned was ever gonna do. Jackie grunted against Ned's mouth, tried to shift to get a better grip on Ned and the whole damn situation, but somehow he only wound up with one hand cupping the back of Ned's neck and the other firmly tangled in his soft, worn t-shirt. It'd been months since he'd had another body pressed up against his in such fashion and the sudden, unexpected wash of ardent attention threw his senses into overload.
Ned made a rough, low noise of approval as Jackie went pliant beneath him, pulling back only to press a sharp, toothy kiss to the edge of Jackie's jaw before shifting to nuzzle against him, the mixture of rough to gentle and back to rough as teeth bit as his neck leaving Jackie unable to focus on anything but what Ned did next.
Demons.
Jackie shifted his own hands, curling them around Ned's biceps, admiring the well-formed muscle beneath warm skin. He hesitated, though, as his fingertips trailed over the roughness of countless scars where runes had been carved and burned into flesh. Jackie drew back, stared into Ned's eyes.
Ned huffed an impatient breath through his nose. "Stop with the kicked puppy face, sorcerer. They don't even hurt anymore. Get back here." He sank his fingers into Jackie's hair and pulled him up into a hungry kiss, running his tongue along Jackie's lips, nipping them before licking into his mouth as though intent upon devouring him from the inside out. Jackie went with it, more than a little dazzled by being the object of such focus. He'd had plenty of lovers in the past, but none of them had left him feeling so… hell, he couldn't even sort it out.
So he didn't bother, just dug his fingers into Ned's almost too-warm skin, pulled him flush, and ate at his mouth like a man eager for supper after a long day of work. Ned was obviously pleased with his enthusiasm, rubbing against him, his groan so deep Jackie felt it in his chest. He drew back enough to taste along the skin of Ned's jaw and down his throat, morning stubble scraping along skin shockingly soft in contrast to the scarred skin beneath Jackie's fingertips.
He made a soft noise of protest when Ned pulled away and sat up—but shifted to immediate approval when Ned stripped off his shirt and cast it aside, revealing a chest riddled with more scars, but no less appealing for them. Jackie splayed his hands across it, relishing the warmth of Ned's skin, the play of muscle, before curling his hands around to fan them across Ned's back and urge him down for another go at that wicked mouth.
Ned chuckled against his lips, something satisfied and a touch smug in it, but the sound only went straight to Jackie's cock. He raked his nails lightly down Ned's back, teased just beneath the waistband of his jeans, though Ned's belt kept him from doing much else. Pulling back, pausing for a long, slow lick and nibble at Jackie's mouth, Ned said, "You're wearing too much, cowboy. Let's get you out of those rags."
Part of Jackie's mind nagged at him, warned him of how many different kinds of stupid it was to be messing with a demon—especially one as unusual and unknown as Ned. The rest of him just didn't give a damn, didn't care about anything except the sure way Ned handled him. Ned pulled him to sit up enough to yank off his shirt, his claws scoring fine red lines down Jackie's chest, making him shiver. He outright moaned when Ned said something indistinct and put his mouth to an old scar left over from a pissed off goblin.
He dragged his own fingers over Ned's smooth scalp and down to curl around his neck, dig
his nails in just enough to tease, feeling the way Ned's skin prickled right on up. Ned looked up at him through his lashes, eyes glowing like a midday autumn sun. The smell of apples and fallen leaves was stronger than ever, and underneath all that was the tang of demon and the musky scent of lust. Jackie shifted enough to get a leg between Ned's, rubbed it just so—and got too-sharp teeth to his jaw for his trouble, making him jerk.
Ned shifted so he was straddling Jackie proper again. "I was hoping to find you in your bed, Sheriff. Guess I'll have to save that for later."
"What makes you think there's—" he broke off with a stuttering groan as Ned grinded their cocks together. The corners of Ned's mouth twisted up, expression thick with satisfaction. Jackie tried to glare, but it faltered entirely when Ned shifted enough to get his hands on Jackie's pants and shove them out of the way to grab his cock. "Sonofabitch!"
Laughing, Ned bent down to put his mouth wherever he could reach, leaving behind a hot-cold sensation that did nothing to calm Jackie down, not even a little bit. "It's not nice to call a man names when he's got his hand on your dick."
"Shut up," Jackie retorted and yanked Ned down to feast on his mouth, kiss him so hard his own lips were left throbbing. He fumbled between them, got his own hand around Ned's cock, thick and uncut, almost hot to the touch. The rough, ragged noise Ned fed him then was damn near the most addicting thing Jackie had ever heard.
Fuck, even Roman hadn't left him this punch-drunk.
It went quickly after that, sweaty and awkward and over-eager. Jackie cursed as he came, wet and sticky all over himself, joined shortly after by Ned. He really needed to get showered and ready for the day, but he couldn't much care about that right then, not when Ned was giving him another kiss, lazy and a trifle sloppy, but just as enthralling as all his others.
"Damnation," he managed eventually, wrapping one arm around Ned and letting the other dangle off the edge of the couch. "You always this friendly with cowboys who shoot at you?"
Ned let out a sharp laugh against Jackie's skin, breath hot and doing nothing to cool Jackie off. "Usually I maim or kill anyone who shoots at me."
"Let me guess," Jackie said with a snort. "I was just too pretty."
He wasn't expecting the pensive, almost afraid look that flitted across Ned's face before he banished it with something much more smirking-mocking. "Yep. Just too pretty."
"Demons," Jackie said, and then added, "I seem to be saying that a lot lately."
Ned sat up, not seeming to care a wit about the mess they'd made. Climbing off Jackie, he sat on the edge of the coffee table again. "Probably in that same frustrated tone, too. Humans. Did I get the tone right?"
"Dead on." Jackie stood up. "Hang on a second." He slipped into the bathroom and cleaned up quickly, tugging on a pair of jeans before heading back out and letting Ned have a turn. When Ned reemerged, Jackie stirred from a light doze and said, "You go from hostile to friendly mighty fast."
"I came to convince you to stay out of it, you stupid human."
Jackie tamped down the anger and hurt that sparked at the words. "Was the sex to make your argument more persuasive?"
"The coffee was to make my argument more persuasive," Ned said with a sigh, eyes shifting through red and orange and yellow like wind-tossed leaves as he stared at Jackie. "The sex was a lapse in judgment."
"It often is," Jackie said, relaxing. "It's about all you're getting, though, 'cause I ain't backing out of the matter. I told you already, hoss, I'm too old to be told by others where I can and can't stick my nose. The concern is appreciated—"
"You don't know what you're talking about!" Ned snarled. "Do you think you're special because your daddy was the one to put down the bastard who did this to me? He was the weakest one in this whole mess. It's the things he got right that you need to be worried about."
"You and Firebrand."
Ned sneered. "Yeah, me and Firebrand. Do you know how many people suffered and died before he finally got his experiments 'right' with me and Firebrand? Do you know what it's like to be summoned and bound inside a broken mind? When I was bound to this body, all that remained were fragments of a life of unceasing pain—memories of capture, transport on a miserable ship, a life of slavery. As if the life he'd already suffered wasn't bad enough, he was then sold to Corrigan and turned into an alchemist's lab rat. There are no words to describe such a life. I destroyed what remained of him just to give him peace, and then it was my turn for agony. Do you think any of these marks were laid down easily?"
Jackie reached out and curled his fingers around Ned's arm, ran his thumb over runes that had either been branded or carved into his skin. He laid his palm on the master rune carved into the place over Ned's heart. My heartbeat is your heartbeat. My breath is your breath. My soul is your soul, until my heart ceases to beat, and my breath at last runs out, and my soul passes on. The marks might have been beautiful if they'd been put there properly and with Ned's permission. "What did he do to you?" he asked softly.
"I'll never tell," Ned said. He started to withdraw his arm, but Jackie held fast, reluctant to let go though he couldn't say why. His thumb lingered over one particular mark, a rune comprised of three base runes that essentially meant endless. It wasn't a mark to be used lightly—but then, all the marks he could see were pretty intense. He still couldn't make total sense of them, only that blood had been used in their making and it was soul magic. It would take hours to lay out every single mark and put them in proper order. It would take… hell, weeks or even months, to figure out the spell. He'd be lucky if it didn't take years, and he was good at binding spells.
Surrendering to an impulse, Jackie lifted Ned's arm slightly as he dipped his own head and pressed a brief kiss to the endless mark. Ned drew a sharp breath. Jackie let him go and sat up. "You must know I ain't gonna listen to you, demon. Why don't you just admit you came here looking for help?"
"I work alone," Ned said flatly, but Jackie didn't miss the look that flickered across his face—longing, though for what Ned longed, Jackie couldn't begin to say. More than just help with Firebrand, he suspected. "Too many people have already died, Sheriff. Your body doesn't need to join the pile, and I know you don't want that dumb kid joining it either."
"What we choose to do is our business, like I keep telling you," Jackie replied. "Instead of trying to be a knight, why don't you tell me what you know and let me help? You almost had Firebrand last night. Why didn't you kill him?"
"He's immortal, same as me," Ned replied. "He's also fucking indestructible. I know, I've tried just about everything. Nothing kills him and I'm about the only one who can keep him down for any length of time. We weren't kept together in Corrigan House. We were close enough to hear each other scream, but that's about it. Corrigan was careful to keep all his experiments separated. Each room of his house was a different nightmare. The entire place smelled of suffering: pain, fear, blood, death, and rot. I've never seen such awful energies. Some of them were so broken they barely had energies at all, just a haze of dull mist instead. Do you know how much suffering has to be endured to break someone like that? That they literally stop putting out living energies? To kill them in all but the beating of their hearts? Corrigan did that, but he did it on behalf of someone else as much as for himself."
"Who?" Jackie asked. "That's the question I been trying to answer: who paid Corrigan? Who's controlling Firebrand?"
Ned's mouth twisted. "I don't know. All these years and I've never been able to figure that out, though I try. Like I said before, you're all fools if you think Firebrand is being controlled. Those damn experiments might have broken me, but they didn't get far enough to remake me into their chosen image. I got away. Firebrand isn't controlled by anyone. He's part of the whole mess, though I never knew quite how."
"How do you know that if you don't know who he works for—with, rather?"
"Whenever I come out for too long, it's him that's sent after me. When I first got free he came after me and he's been hunting me
ever since. He and whoever he works with want me back, to pick up right where they left off." Ned looked away, mouth tight, eyes downcast, his face etched deep with lines of weariness and remembered pain. His voice was low when he resumed speaking. "I don't remember much from those days, but I remember they were all happy when what they did to me worked." Ned's eyes blazed like a bonfire. "The one thing they didn't count on was their spell working too well. They want me back something fierce and it ain't happening. I'll figure out a way to die before I ever let them find a way to bind me and use me. Demons might be one of the enslaved races, but that don't mean we're content to be collared."
Jackie reached out, curled his fingers around Ned's shoulders, tugged gently—and oofed in surprise at the sudden, unexpected weight when he found himself with a lapful of demon again. Warm lips brushed along his cheek, the corner of his mouth, and then Jackie was being kissed slow and soft and sweet. When Ned finally drew away, Jackie was left feeling bereft. "Ned…"
Ned licked his lips. "You'll wind up dead. I wish you'd just stay out of it."
"Demons don't act like this," Jackie said. "They don't act like this with anyone, except—" He bit the word off, unable to say it—unable to believe it. He stared into Ned's eyes, disappointment and relief tangling into a coiled mess in his gut when Ned didn't reply. His eyes were filled with a sadness that made Jackie hurt, and he hadn't thought there was anything worse than the broken state of his Pa when they'd buried Mama. Not certain what to say, he just drew Ned in again and offered the only comfort he could, cupping the back of Ned's head and kissing him until the need to breathe forced them apart. He hadn't a clue why Ned was latching on to him, but it would be a cold day in hell before Jackie denied him.
The fierceness of his own thoughts, of his attachment, probably should have alarmed him, but Jackie didn't give a damn. He settled back down on the couch, keeping Ned with him, shifting until they were as comfortable as two grown men could expect to be crammed together on such limited surface area. Surprisingly, it was remarkably easy to drift off again, warm and content in a way he hadn't been in longer than he cared to think about.
