Demon Bound (16 page)

“
You take care of Pete, you hear?
” Ollie’s Midlands brogue reminded Jack of a council worker who’d sneaked about in the dead of night and shagged his mother for a reduction in their electric bill. “
Lord knows, she deserves better than you.
”

Jack didn’t know if he disliked Ollie because the man was a prick or because he was right. Most likely both.

He pulled out the crinkled tourist map of the Dartmoor that Pete had procured on her visit to the archives and breathed onto his palm.

Witchfire blossomed, blue and spectral, from his skin, the gentle burn-off of extra magic against the night air. The flames drifted lazily into the twilit sky, the silvery glow lighting the map, just. Jack turned west. “Not much farther.”

“What are we looking for?” Pete asked. Wind swept down from the crest of the hill and lifted her hair like a
flight of black feathers against her cheek. Rain followed it, in a soft ice-cold sheet, and Jack cursed as it dribbled into his eyes.

“A road.”

“Jack,” Pete grumbled, “there’s a bloody road running right in front of the bloody house. Fuck me.”

“Not that road.” Jack felt his feet sink into mud as his boots found another ditch, and then gained a roadbed that was little more than gravel and dirt turning rapidly to sludge.

Pete cursed and stumbled against him. Between the witchfire gently bathing them in a bubble of blue and the sideways rain, Jack was none too balanced, but he caught her. She didn’t weigh much, but she was undeniably present.

Pete looked up at him, skin translucent and eyes black pebbles in the light. “Thanks.”

“Just up here,” Jack said, as the moor whispered to him, licked at him with teasing tongues of power. It wanted him to join in the wild celebration, in the mud and the rain. The Black here teased him with memories of what the demon had made him see. Such a place as this was made for the oldest rituals of the
Fiach Dubh.
The deep magic, the old magic that had fallen to the wayside as the people and their power hid in cities, curled up behind iron walls, in front of tellys instead of bonfires, and no longer needed to spill blood into the good soil to procure crops, children, and rebirth.

“This feels wrong,” Pete said, dropping her voice so that it blended with the rain. Jack also felt the urge to be silent, creep like a mouse under floorboards. The wild magic around him rose, gathered, and in the back of his consciousness he sensed the prickle of warning that had kept him alive as long as he’d managed the trick thus far.

“We should go back,” Pete said, more forcefully. She’d stopped walking, her gaze roving beyond the confines of the witchfire, too much white about the pupil. Fear-white. Her hands clutched her jacket at the neck, knuckles tight.

Jack’s heart sped up, warned him that they
should
go back, that they weren’t wanted here, that whatever was hunting on the moor tonight was bigger, older, and hungrier than he.

Cold,
Jonathan Lovett’s ghost hissed.
Always the cold.

“Fuck off,” Jack growled under his breath. The day he turned tail was the day he might as well take a razor to his own wrists. It was the single quality that he could lay claim to as a mage—he might not be as strong or quick as a sorcerer but he’d fight. And the fight he gave would be dirty and mean.

The crossroad loomed out of the rain and the gathering mist, a road sign knocked onto its side in the dying grass the only signal of human occupation.

Jack knelt and opened his bag, pulling out a battered tin and unscrewing the top. He pulled out his flick-knife and scraped up a layer of damp dirt, another. He filled the tin halfway, more than enough for the unwinding spell, but proper crossroads dirt, touched by no human hand, was difficult to come by and he could sell it. When he was back in London. Home.

Pete shivered and she hadn’t stopped looking around, but she crouched and watched him. “MG said once that you bury things at the crossroads and a demon comes to grant you a wish.”

“They buried murderers at a crossroads,” Jack said. “Couldn’t have them in a consecrated cemetery. The demon story is a load of shit.” Like so much of what MG said. Just enough truth in the lie to be destructive.

“Demons exist, though,” Pete murmured. Jack slapped the lid back on the tin with more force than he needed.

“Yes, they do. And calling them is much, much simpler than burying some ruddy box in a crossroads at the dark of the moon.”

He shoved the dirt into his bag and folded up the knife.
They were walking a dangerous edge, and he needed to steer Pete away. “Now if we’re done talking about it, may I suggest you don’t try to summon anything from the crossroad, and that we get the unwinding over with so we can find June Kemp?”

Pete sighed. “My sister said a lot of things. I’m not messing about with Hell, Jack. You don’t need to worry.”

He breathed in, out, tried to get the panicky tremors in his hands to stop. This deception deep under his skin was like detoxing all over again, shaking and stuttering and freezing to death even in a warm bed. “I’m not worried for you, luv. You’re much brighter than me and mine.”

Pete smiled, but even that couldn’t warm him. “I’m soaked. Let’s get back and get this nasty business done so we can go home.”

Jack’s witchfire faded as his concentration stuttered and they were swept up into the blue-black of moonless night and rain. He shoved his hands into his pockets as he watched and tried to keep the rain off, not succeeding. Mud worked its way into his boots, water between his toes, rain down the sides of his face.

Pete stumbled and cursed. “Hold on.” She felt in her pockets. “I’ve got my light here somewhere.”

Jack looked back to the crossroads as a thin beam of weak gold sprang to life from Pete’s penlight. In the witch-fire, which gave everything deceptive sharp edges, he might have missed a section of shadow peeling off its fellows and padding forward into the roadbed, but he didn’t miss it now.

“
Fuck
,” he hissed, as the wild magic rose to a roar in his head, drowning out even the rain.

“Jack?” Pete spun around, training her light on the spot where something moved.

“Pete,” he said softly. “You need to listen to me now.” His brain clicked over like he’d just snorted a straight hit of
crystal—it was too far to the house, they’d never make it in time. Not both of them, at any rate. His bag just held herbs and the odd tin of dirt, not salt, not iron.

All he had was his flick-knife. He was fucked.

“It’s . . . it’s that thing from this afternoon,” Pete whispered as the
cu sith
advanced on them, inexorably, the limpid glow of its eyes like a lamprey floating through the soft sheets of mist and rain. “The black dog.”

“Caught our scent,” Jack muttered. The black dog drew back its lip to reveal blade-sized teeth. “Pete,” Jack said. “When I tell you, you have to run. Really run, this time. For your life, and don’t look back. Get inside the house. Salt the doors and windows—every entrance.”

Pete’s fingers clutched his arm as the black dog snarled, a sound that vibrated through the soles of Jack’s boots. “Why the fuck are you telling me all of this?”

“The same reason I taught you the lockpicking charm,” Jack said, prising her grip off his jacket. “Because I might not be there when you need it.”

Pete tried to grab for him again but he held her at arm’s length. He hated letting go of her, hated the expression of utter bone-deep betrayal on her face. But he had practice calling whatever outward expression he needed in the moment to his face, too much practice, and he kept his features calm. “Go, Pete. Salt the doors.”

She hesitated for an instant, and Jack pushed her. “I said
run
, you stupid bint!”

Pete ran, her footsteps crunching on gravel and fading as they joined the grass of the moor.

Jack faced the black dog.

The thing stopped a few meters from him, scenting the air. It chuffed, large head swinging from side to side.

“You’re too late,” Jack told it. “Too late for anything except scraps. She’s gone.”

He squared up his shoulders. This wasn’t what he’d
imagined—a creature of the Black doing the demon’s work—but he supposed it was fitting as anything. “Get on with it, then. Lock your jaws on me and drag me down under the hill, if you would.”

The black dog cocked its head. It took another step and Jack’s body, the traitorous thing that craved a fix and Pete and life, took a jerky step back in return.

“You heard me!” Jack shouted, dropping his bag and spreading his arms. “What are you waiting for? Come the fuck on!”

He waited for the cold, deathless sensation of a Fae creature sinking its teeth into his magic, into his very soul, but it didn’t come. The dog just snarled, swiping at the air with a paw. Its claws looked like carving knives.

Jack held his ground, heart slamming fit to break his ribs. He stared into the black dog’s soft candle-flame eyes, and the black dog stared back. For a shred of eternity, Jack and the Fae creature shared the moor, the wild magic flowing around them, over and through Jack, filling him up with the desire to let go of his earthly burdens and step into the grasp of the
cu sith,
to give in to the inexorable pull of the Bleak Gates and admit that unless he found a way to get free of the demon, Death waited beyond every breath.

We don’t want the crow-mage
, the black dog purred in the sibilant bell-voice endemic to the Fae.

“I’m what you’re getting,” Jack gritted, but desperation was birthing a frantic plan in his hindbrain. The black dog was hunting, not feeding. It wanted something.

Creatures that wanted something could be bargained with.

They could be tricked. The sure and swift fate of those marked by the
cu sith
might not be his, after all.

We seek the blood-born messenger of the old voices, the girl on the owl’s wing,
the dog rumbled.

“Can’t help you there, mate,” Jack said. “Kiss me or kill me, but you’re not getting Pete.”

Crow-mage, in your arrogance do not make the mistake of thinking we will mind the Hellspawn’s bargain,
the dog whispered, and Jack’s stomach went sideways.

“How do you know about that?”

We guard the doorways and the byways, the secret places and all who pass. We see much. We see
you.

The dog let out a howl that could bleed eardrums, that rolled and echoed off the hillside.

“It’s not Pete you want,” Jack said, the edge of frantic making his voice ragged. “You have to
leave
, do you understand? Leave her alone.”

We are not seeking harm, crow-mage
, the dog hissed.
We are seeking to keep her from the taint of death, the mud and blood and carnage of the crow. We do not expect you to understand.

Jack felt his temper fray, a curious physical sensation akin to standing up too fast when you’d gone and tied a few pints on. His shield hex grew in front of him before he was even aware he’d whispered “
Cosain
,” and he felt witchfire curl across his exposed skin as his fury burned in the night.

Gone was the fear. Now he just wanted the thing in front of him to hurt, burn, and cower before his magic.

The black dog crouched, nails digging into the mud.
You think I fear a flesh-and-blood thing such as you, crow-mage? Bitch of the war-hag?

“You’re one to talk about bitches,” Jack said. “And I think you’re scared enough to keep away from me, to skulk around in shadows like a shade. If you want to kill me, you’re welcome, mate. Here’s your open chance. Take your fucking try.”

The black dog reared, charged, and Jack braced himself for the psychic impact on his hex. It felt like nothing so
much as sticking your head inside a great bloody bell and ringing the clapper, loud and riotously painful.

Something streaked into his vision from the left, a small form with a silver weapon. Pete swung the crowbar over her head and down, landing it squarely on the black dog’s spine.

“Go back where you sodding came from!” she shrieked.

The dog howled at the touch of cold iron, and stumbled. Jack spun out of the way, going on his arse in the mud and avoiding the thing’s claws by inches.

Cease!
The dog howled.
We mean to take you as our own, Weir. . . .

“Not bloody likely.” Pete clutched the crowbar, her breath rasping in and out like a saw, lips parted and body trembling. “Now I’m no mage and I’m no sure hand at this but if you come near me again I’ll send you back to the fucking Dark Ages, you mangy git, so take the chance and
fuck off
!”

She swung the crowbar again, catching the dog across the snout, and it yelped and cowered, eyes fading to a sick shade of orange.

That,
it told Pete,
was a grave error in judgment, girl.

“Wouldn’t be the first,” Pete said, her voice icy as the aura surrounding the black dog. “Won’t be the last.”

Jack gripped Pete’s arm, causing her to lower the crow-bar. The black dog skirted around the edges of his hex, wary now of the iron, its breath leaving great dragon puffs of white in the freezing air. “We need to go,” Jack told Pete. “We need to go
now.
”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Pete said. She dropped the crow-bar and backed up until she was pressed arm-to-arm with Jack, and as one they turned and ran.

Jack felt his lungs protest after the first few steps, a cutting sensation sawing against his breastbone. For the first time in his adult life, he wholeheartedly promised any
higher power listening that if he survived past the next few minutes, he’d seriously consider cutting back on the fags.

They pelted down the hill, Jack snatching glances into the night behind him, watching for the black dog.

The baying started when the estate was just within reach, a few hundred meters across the muddy grass.

On the crest of the hill, Jack saw the black shadow ripple and re-form as the dog stopped to scent him, and then two other shadows join it, all of them raising their snouts to the hidden moon and offering their blood oath.