Demon Bound

by Demon Bound

  Jack hissed through his teeth. “What do you want, then, Karti? Begging? Crying? To play fetch?”

  Feed me your pain, Kartimuka whispered. It padded closer on bare human feet, its long tongue snaking out to lap at Jack’s skin. Feed me your terror. Where it touched him, a numbness started, one that Jack recognized too well as the paralyzing bliss of a high. Feed me your nightmares, Kartimukha purred, and Jack fell to his knees and felt his sight peel back the layers between his consciousness and the Black.

  Tell me the truth, Kartimukha rumbled in his ear. Show me why you’ve come.

  He managed to scream once before his mind was stripped bare and Kartimukha plunged his claws in.

  Jack saw everything, everything at once, and it overwhelmed his sight like a flash flood. His skull throbbed and filled up with the sensory overload of touching Kartimukha until he was sure it would split wide open.

  Kartimukha watched him impassively, one foot planted on his chest. Show me the secret dark and shame inside of you, mage. Feed me. Fill me.

  Jack couldn’t breathe. His limbs were lead. His lungs were flat. This was the drifting place, the twilight sliver between life and the Bleak Gates, the place of overdose and suicide, of regret and despair. His heartbeat slowed, a watch with a loose spring and faulty gears.

  Yes, Kartimukha breathed. So many memories. So much pain.

  Jack felt the claws tighten around him like razor wire, around his sight and his magic and the things—the memories—that made him Jack Winter were sluicing away as the Kartimukha fed.

  “You can’t have them,” he whispered. Kartimukha tilted its head.

  They cause you pain, mage. I can rid you of them. Why would you keep them?

  Jack shut his eyes against the horrible burning gaze. “They’re mine,” he said. “They’re my scars, not yours.”

  You have been brave for a long time, Jack. Kartimukha caressed his face with its hot, sour breath. You don’t need to be brave any longer.

  “Brave?” Jack wheezed. Drawing a breath was agony. He felt as if someone had put a jackboot into his ribs. “I shoot smack into my arm to forget the things I’ve seen. I wake up screaming because of the things I’ve done. I can’t even look the only person who gives a fuck about me in the eye. I’m not brave, I just survive better than most.”

  Then why do you fight? Kartimukha sounded genuinely puzzled. Why not feed me those bleeding dreams? Why live with the scars?

  Jack forced himself to look at Kartimukha again. “That’s all I have, mate. Scars. If you want memories, if you want to see that I’m being truthful, then take a look inside my head if you can stand it.” He raised his head. An inch was all he could manage. “I’m not afraid of my own memories.”

  Kartimukha snarled. Even now, you lie. The thing raised its paw, brought it down, and struck into Jack’s mind with its power and its magic, stripping him down to the core.

  Jack blinked and found himself staring at a stained plaster ceiling, neon light blinking Morse code across the ceiling from the sign bolted to the wall outside.

  He was warm—warm from whiskey in his gut and warm from blood dribbling down his arms. A hooked rug, lumpy underneath his body, soaked up the red, stain spreading.

  Jack’s blood was black under the blue neon. His fingers went slack, and the razor blade tumbled to the carpet.

  Around him, the dead crowded in. A severe man in a celluloid collar and Windsor tie. A mod girl in a leather minidress with handprints on her throat.

  They touched him, hissed at him. Stared into his soul with their black eyes and waited for him to be one of them.

  This is how it ends, the girl whispered, but her voice wasn’t the strangled rasp Jack remembered. The voice was Kartimukha’s. This is your last moment of life. Come to me, Jack. Leave your misery with your life.

  Jack drifted, dreamy. Soon it would be over. Soon he could forget his sight, forget his failed time with Seth and the Fiach Dubh.

  Soon, he would be one with the dead instead of fighting them.

  The ghost girl stooped and brushed her fingers across his forehead, moving aside strands of sweaty hair with icy fingers. This is how it ends, she breathed. Let go, Jack. Come to me.

  This was how it ended. Life bled onto the floor of a cheap hotel room. A razor blade in a straight line up his forearms. The end of Jack Winter.

  Faintly, Jack felt his breath slow and the warm, floating sensation of blood loss engulf his senses. A maid would find him, and he’d lay in a freezer for a few months, an anonymous body among the anonymous dead of Dublin, until he was sent to the potter’s field.

  He was with the dead. With the dead he would stay.

  A sense of wrongness overtook Jack, the last flicker of his magic. This was not how he died. He didn’t lie down and give up. He cut his wrists deep with a shiny new razor and he felt his life draining onto the floor but he didn’t die, he didn’t go over even when the ghosts begged him to join their ranks. . . .

  No one’s coming for you, the ghost girl breathed.

  Jack turned his face away from her, watching the hotel sign blink outside the glass. Raindrops clung to the windowpane, refracting the blue light, blue like witchfire. A crow landed on the sill outside, flapped its wings. The bird’s profile beat against the glass, beak leaving starburst cracks as it wrecked itself trying to get inside.

  The pain of his cuts crawled inside the numbing sensation of the ghosts, the ache from the floorboards and the burning of whiskey in his empty stomach.

  Hush. The ghost girl stroked his brow again. Rest, Jack. None of it matters now.

  The crow beat at the window, its own black blood smearing the glass.

  A pounding started outside the hotel room door. “Jack!” Fists and boots shook the wood. “Jackie, you stupid bastard! Open the fuckin’ door!”

  Seth’s voice was the hand that dragged Jack away from the Bleak Gates.

  Seth came in. Seth called 999.

  Jack curled in on himself, struggling with nerveless fingers to stanch the bleeding from his arms, and the crow watched him, stock-still now. Beak broken and bloody as his own body. Croak sad and empty as Seth’s echoing voice as he wrenched Jack’s arms above his head, tore his own shirt to stop the bleeding.

  The crow waited for Jack, waited for his soul until the emergency responders came in, their codes rapid-fire into their radios.

  “Attempted suicide. Six minutes out . . .”

  “Hang on, Jackie,” Seth whispered. “You stupid prick. You hang on. None of the crows get to check out that easy.”

  Jack retched violently. Blood ran from his nose and his guts twisted.

  Kartimukha gave a cry. No! Feed me!

  Jack struggled to his knees, and then his feet. Breathing was a task, but he could hear the sounds of a modern street, and he felt the Black ebb away, letting go of the strangle-hold on his sight.

  Kartimukha stamped its feet, its tongue flapping and its eyes blazing as it snarled. Feed me!

  “Oh, fuck off,” Jack panted. “It’ll take more than raking up tattered old nightmares, my son.”

  Kartimukha hissed, and tensed to spring. Jack braced himself. Violence, at this late date, would almost be welcome. He was itching to use his fists and feet on something, to take the fight into the tangible world where he could make the creature in front of him hurt and bleed.

  “That’s enough.”

  Rahu’s voice cut the air, and Kartimukha bowed his head. Rahu ran his hand over the mangy lion’s mane, and turned his eyes on Jack. “Kartimukha ate your memories. What was it like?”

  Jack swiped at the blood on his face. “Tickled.”

  Rahu sighed. “It appears that you did tell the truth. You are attempting to trick your demon.” He opened the cubby beneath the altar and removed a cloth-bound scroll tied with silk cord. “This is my personal necromancy grimoire. Take it. Your plan won’t work, but take it.”

  Jack took the grimoire and shoved it down into his leather where it rested snugly against his
ribs.

  Rahu inclined his head. “May I ask you a question, mage?”

  “After I ask you one.” Jack backed away, so that he could touch the doors of the temple with his palm. “Where’s Hornby?”

  “The Christian cemetery north of the city,” Rahu said. “We burn our dead, but Hornby’s bandmates paid for him to be interred. What was left after the taxi finished with him, at any rate.”

  Jack shoved the door akimbo, letting in the sounds and scents of Khlong Toei. “All right. Ask yours.”

  “Why did you promise yourself to the demon?” Rahu folded his arms. “I’m curious, because your fate must have been beyond imagination to risk challenging Hell so.”

  Jack thought of Pete, of the demon’s covetous smile when he said her name. “I had someone needed looking out for,” he told Rahu.

  Rahu chuckled. “Lucky them.”

  “Take care,” Jack said. “And good luck with the whole memory-eating bit.” He stepped through the door, and back into the light.

  “I’ll see you again, mage,” Rahu called. “And next time, Kartimukha will feed.”

  “Yeah,” Jack called back. “Shaking in me boots and all that. Virtually pissing in fear. Cheers, Rahu.”

  The door shut, and he stood on the street. The Lexus had vanished, along with Rahu’s boys, so Jack began to walk back to the train line, to catch a car to Patpong. He would get his kit, take the grimoire, and go dig up Miles Hornby.

  He would make Hornby tell him how he tricked the demon and he’d take the poor sod home so that Jack could get close enough to do the same.

  But first, he was going to have a few choice words with Seth McBride.

  Chapter Thirty

  After the train dropped him at Silom Road, Jack found his way down Patpong 2 and up the stairs by Club Hot Miami. He leaned his head against Seth’s door, and listened for three beats of his heart. Sounds of the telly emanated from within, along with Seth’s voluble cursing against the parentage of the goaltender on the screen.

  Jack braced on the railing. He put his boot against the lock and after two kicks the flimsy, rotted door flew inward to dent the damp plaster of the flat wall.

  Seth leaped from his armchair, lager can tumbling to the floor and spilling a sticky amber puddle across the boards. “Jack?” he exclaimed. “Crow and cross, boy.”

  Jack closed the space between them and hit Seth in the jaw, sitting him down hard in the puddle of lager. “Thought you got rid of me, Seth?”

  Seth’s eyes bled to white, and a shield hex rippled at the edges of Jack’s vision. He leaned forward and pulled Seth up by the front of his T-shirt, so that any hex the other mage threw would disintegrate Jack, but put Seth on his arse as well. “You sent them to kill me.”

  “Rahu wouldn’t kill you,” Seth scoffed. “He’s the master of Bangkok, not some thug fresh from the Pit. He was supposed to teach you a lesson and send you on your way.”

  “You have no idea what he did to me,” Jack snarled. He wanted to smother Seth with magic, break his bones, call a demon to feast on his entrails. But that was the old days talking, the old hates.

  Seth had found him, in the end. He’d kept Jack from passing through the Bleak Gates. For that, Jack dropped Seth back into his chair and paced to the window. The sun was setting across Bangkok, lighting the clouds on fire, orange tongues of airy flame scraping the iron sky.

  “He did it to me as well, you know,” Seth said after a time. “When I arrived. He judged me worthy to live in this city under his protection.”

  Jack leaned his forehead against the sticky glass. “What did he show you?”

  “’S not important,” Seth muttered. “A girl, some bad magic, a mistake. It was all a very long time ago.”

  “Well, mine wasn’t,” Jack said. His scars were itching, like they hadn’t in a decade. The thin lines were dessicated and covered over by track scars, but they burned now, like a hot razor was parting his flesh all over again.

  “Jack.” Seth sighed. “Here’s the truth—you burn things down. After you tried topping yourself and finished disgracing the brothers, I had to leave Ireland. I lost my life because of you, Jack. But I’m content here, and if you come in throwing your weight about, everything will go to ashes because Jack Winter doesn’t leave anything but death in his wake.” Seth stood and held out his hand. “Give me the grimoire.”

  Jack shot a glance at the open door, judged the distance, and then folded his arms. “Not in the cards, mate.”

  “I’m not letting you bring your feud with Hell to me doorstep,” Seth insisted. “Give me the grimoire or I’ll take it from you.”

  Jack spread his hand. “Come on then, old man. Make your best effort.”

  A flutter of magic, like feathers across his cheek, and Seth balled his fist. A hex, a black flight of crow’s wings, flew toward Jack.

  He’d never been one for duels—silly, antique things for mages who still wore frock coats and wallowed their days away in absinthe halls. Winning a magic slap fight didn’t depend on how much power you commanded or how refined your hexes—it only depended on being the man who could duck faster than the other.

  Jack let himself fall, stumbling out the flat’s front door. He rolled to a stop against the railing and Seth’s hex flew overhead, magic screaming against his sight.

  Panting, Seth chugged after him, raising his hand again. Seth might be old, but he was mean and tenacious, and fear only made him meaner.

  “You stupid sod,” Seth wheezed. “Can’t accept your fate, leave them what still have a life to it and die like a normal bugger . . .”

  “Not in my nature.” Jack pulled his own power to him, the slimy magic of the Black slipping between his grasp, shield hex forming and fragmenting before he could cast it. “You of all people know that, Seth.”

  “Knew it would come to this, somehow. Always.” Seth’s magic flew to him, settled about his shoulders like a mantle of swirling black energy. Jack felt the cold, spindly fingers of a death curse reach out for him. “Sorry as hell, too. I did like you, boy. You can take that with you when you go.”

  A shadow fell across Seth’s face as he raised his hands, and before the death curse flew free, there was a clang of metal on bone and Seth crumpled.

  Jack sat up and shook off the first vestiges of the curse, his skin prickling. A figure crouched, and he saw Trixie’s bruise-colored eyeshadow and plum-painted Bettie Page lips, masking an expression of dire worry. “Are you all right?” she demanded.

  “Fine.” Jack tested his shoulder, his ribs. They hurt, but he’d survived worse. “Thanks for the assist, luv.”

  “Wasn’t me,” Trixie said. She helped him up and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She came looking for you, and we saw Seth about to do you in.”

  Jack looked at the person behind Trixie and felt his guts drop into his boots.

  “Jack,” Pete said. “Glad to see you’re still making friends.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Trixie set Jack up with a whiskey and retreated to the far end of the bar. Pete picked at the label of her Thai-brand beer. “Who was that on the landing, then? Jealous boyfriend?”

  “Cute.” Jack watched her, and grimaced when Pete’s expression went stony and blank. Her copper expression, used on suspects and scum. Jack drained his glass. “How’d you find me?”

  Pete’s expression darkened. “You aren’t as mysterious and unfathomable as you might think, Jack.”

  “Seth used to be a friend,” he offered. The warmth of the whiskey burned some of the aches and pains out of his body, but not his mind.

  “Your passport tripped a security alert at Heathrow,” Pete said after a time. “I had you flagged. Ollie’s mate at Interpol.” She turned on her stool and faced him, fingers tapping the wood of the bar. “So I knew you came here. Still waiting on the why.”

  Jack tipped his empty glass to her. “Sightseeing.”

  “Right, that’s fine,” Pete agreed. “Keep treating me like I’m stupid a
nd that your honeyed words are all I need to hear.” She leaned in, close enough that Jack could see the furious pulse beating in her neck. “I thought something had happened to you. That morning, when I woke up alone. I thought you’d gone and gotten yourself killed. I was frantic. I cried, Jack. Over you.”

  “Pete . . .” Jack slid his hand over her rattling fingers. “I had to go. I freely admit it was shit of me to leave you like that, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  “Very well,” Pete snapped. “Because lord knows your secrets and lies are more important than anyone they might leave behind.” She jerked her hand out from under his, the friction warming his palm. Pete glared. “Put your hand on me again and you’re going to discover exactly how sorry you can be, you ruddy son of a bitch.”

  She drained her beer and slammed the bottle on the bar. Jack watched her, re memorizing her hair, the set of her mouth, the way her fingers drummed unconsciously on the bar. Even furious with him, Pete was the best sight he’d clapped eyes on during this whole miserable journey.

  Pete sighed, at last. “But as usual, anything I might be feeling gets shoved aside in favor of Jack Winter’s latest disaster. So who’s Seth, and why was he ready to take your head off with a hex?”

  Jack shot a look at Trixie. She was too far away to overhear much of anything, and from the vicious way she was rattling glasses about, thought that Jack’s girlfriend had come to reel him back in from his carefree sexual exploration of the exotic Orient. “It was a curse, not a hex,” he told Pete, “and it’s complicated.”

  Pete reached behind the bar, snatched another beer from the ice bucket, and banged the cap against the bar edge to take it off. “Ah. I see. Far too complicated for those of use who aren’t Jack Winter.”

  Jack avoided her gaze by staring at a bruise forming on his knuckles from where he’d hit Seth. He said, “Luv, it’s nothing for you to worry over,” and would have said more, except Pete hit him.

  Her palm left a burning impression on his cheek and snapped his teeth sideways, blood coating his tongue. The last vestiges of the whiskey stung.