Authors: Demon Bound
The crow woman came to him. She bent and touched his face, and all of Jack’s instincts flared to life again. The crow woman was never a cause for celebration, or calm, even at this moment. She appeared for one reason and one only.
“No . . . ,” he croaked. “No, I’m not finished.”
The raven woman grinned at him. Blood dripped from between her teeth, painted her lips black-red.
I’ll wait.
The blood galvanized Jack. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t slip away because of Treadwell, a fucking ghost, a piece of vapor. He was the crow-mage. When he died, he became the crow woman’s.
“Wait as long as you like,” he rasped. “I have time. I have a life yet . . .”
All warriors meet their end in my arms
, the Morrigan whispered.
All battles have a loser
.
Come away to the field with me, Jack. Take your place in my ranks.
“I’m not . . . yours . . . yet . . .” It was getting hard to speak, becoming an effort to suck in anything besides blood. Pete had fled, and the bar of light from the open tomb door lit the Morrigan from the back, casting the shadow of her wings across Jack’s eyes. Outside, in the light world, he heard the flutter of wings, the hollow croak of a crow.
You are my favored son, Jack,
she whispered.
You are the crow-mage. Called to the Land of the Dead from his day of birth.
“No . . . ,” Jack choked, black borders swirling at the edge of his vision like slowly sinking into a deep well. “I left them. I left you.”
The
Fiach Dubh
are a construct, Jack. Men and flesh and petty concerns wrapped in the illusion of power. I am Death. I am eternal.
Her fingers brushed his cheek, her nails digging into his flesh. He felt nothing except the chill of the stones.
“I won’t go,” he croaked. “Not willingly.”
It is the field, crow-mage,
the Morrigan hissed.
Or it is Hell. You are a sinner in life, Jack Winter, but I could make you a god in Death.
Jack dipped his shaking fingers into his own blood, felt
a clear rough patch on the stones. “Never . . . never wanted to be a god. Just wanted to live me life. . . .”
The pages of the grimoire he’d stolen from Seth’s library floated before his eyes, blurred and half-remembered.
It was enough. It had been enough to expel him from the
Fiach Dubh,
and it would be enough now.
Jack drew from memory the invocation and the pentagram, the devil’s gateway. The calling card of the Trium virate. The invitation for Hell on earth. A sorcerer’s knowledge, for a mage who had nothing left but a slow ebb and flow of blood and magic.
You fool!
The crow woman spread her wings, screeched, spectral wind chilling Jack’s wounds.
You can only prolong. You can never escape.
“Yeah, well.” Jack coughed and more blood coated his tongue. That was a bad way to go. His time was slipping down to the last few grains in the hourglass. “Guess it’s Hell for me, hag. So until my time’s up . . .” He extended his two fingers into the crow woman’s face. “Fuck off.”
He let his eyes fall shut, his fingers move across the blood-slicked stone. The words fell from his lips with surprising clarity, words of power from his long-ago glance at the mildewed linen pages Seth kept locked in a metal trunk from his days in the Irish army. Locked with a bespelled lock and a set of hexes, until the clever boy Jack Winter had slipped them.
Mages didn’t deal with demons. Only sorcerers invited the denizens of Hell to their threshold. Only evil men.
Desperate men.
“I call the servants of the Morning Star, the tainted princes, the jackals of judgment,” he whispered. “As your servant, I humbly call.”
He opened his eyes with a struggle, the ceiling of the tomb wobbling and distorting as he stepped to the threshold
of dying. It hurt less this time, was colder, stiller than the hotel in Dublin, but dying itself always felt the same. Cold. Always cold.
“With my blood on the stone,” Jack whispered, “I call.”
A shimmer of black in the shadowed air, a thickening of the darkness in the corner of the tomb. Jack listened to his heartbeat, felt the cobweb kiss of black magic across his bloody face.
“With lies in my heart,” Jack rasped. “I call.” This was where a name was supposed to lay, a race of demon or a word of power to bind the encroachment of Hell to the sorcerer’s will.
Jack didn’t know the names of demons. Seth hadn’t taught him. Had expelled him from the order when he’d tried to learn. Had left him to the mercy of his sight.
“Somebody,” Jack rasped. “I’m Jack Winter. And I sodding need your help.”
He didn’t see the demon come, but it was there when his gaze roved back to the floor of the tomb, black suit and dark hair, so ordinary as to cause tears of disappointment.
The demon took a step toward him, and cocked its head. “And what, little mage, is so dark in that heart of yours that you summon whichever of Hell’s Named that feels like making a human a plaything today?”
Jack met its eyes, those dreadful black button eyes that spoke of flayed skin and burnt char, breaking and bleeding and screaming.
“I don’t want to die,” he whispered. “I can’t, yet . . .”
The demon crouched, laid a hand on his wound, Jack’s blood growing vines of red up the immaculate French fold of its white shirt as it ran a finger down his cheek.
“A mage who’s afraid of the afterlife. That’s interesting, that is.”
“Not . . . afraid,” Jack managed. “I can’t. I can’t . . .”
“All right, be still,” the demon purred. “Don’t drain
yourself dry before we have a chance to chat with one another.”
“I’m . . . the crow-mage. . . .” Jack managed. “If I die . . .”
Laughter floated around him, dark and poisonous as a sip of cyanide laced into port wine. The demon sat on its heels. “Say the words, mage, and I’ll consider what I can do to help you.” It smiled, and Jack knew he should be scared, terrified, pissing in his shorts.
If he had any sense, he’d be frightened.
If he had any balls, he’d be dying on the floor alone, last words taken away only by the ghosts of Highgate.
But the mages who decreed
Thou shalt not bargain with demons
, Lawrence and Seth and the rest, they’d never been here. Never felt cold stone under their back and warm blood on their skin. They’d never seen the crow woman, watching and waiting for them to join the ranks of her corpse army.
“Say it,” the demon coaxed. “I want to hear it from your sweet throat, mage.”
The words crawled up with Jack’s last breath. “Please,” he said to the demon. “Save me.”
A litter of cigarette nubs lay at Jack’s feet when he finished talking, tiny corpses borne on the rivulets of rain.
Pete wrapped her arms around herself, didn’t look at him, didn’t speak.
Jack exhaled. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the ribs by a jackboot, a fair few times, and left in a gutter to be pissed on. “You’re too bloody quiet,” he muttered. “Say something.”
Pete sniffed, and uncurled her arms. “How long?”
“Thirteen years,” Jack said. “Thirteen years from the day I died.”
“And Hornby? What’s he to you?” Pete chewed on her bottom lip.
Jack stood, worked the kinks from his back. He didn’t used to knot up, to feel the bruises from fights until the day after. Now he felt all of it, down to his worn-out bones. “He’s me chance,” he said. “All I have to do is bring him home.”
Jack climbed up, swayed only a little, decided it was safe to walk inside and find himself a stiff shot of whiskey.
Pete caught his hand. “I should be furious with you. You’ve kept everything from me.”
“I know,” Jack said. “If you weren’t furious, I might think you were some kind of shapeshifter and go looking for an iron needle to kill you with.”
“I just don’t understand why you felt like you couldn’t tell me,” Pete said. “ Were you just going to let me wake up one day and be alone forever? Is that how little you care, Jack?” Pete sniffed hard, the only hint the red in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks.
Jack felt in his pocket for his bandanna, held it out to her. “I suppose I was afraid, Pete.”
Pete’s expression sagged. “Jack, you’re not afraid of anything.”
He felt the ends of his mouth curve up. “I’m a good liar.”
Pete grabbed the bandanna from him and dabbed at her face. “You know I should bloody kill you.”
“I’d deserve it,” Jack agreed.
“Only it won’t do any bloody good and I’ll still end this alone in the Black,” Pete said. After a moment, composure returned to hers features and she blinked the last of the moisture from her eyes. “But if you give Hornby to this demon, you’re free?”
“If I find Hornby, I won’t have to worry about the demon,” he said. “Because I’m not making the mistake of trusting it twice.” Jack got a fresh fag and lit it. “But the thing’s just been playing with me. Hornby wasn’t in that box. He’s not anywhere.” He exhaled. “I’m fucked. It just wanted a laugh. Let’s go home.”
Pete drew in a breath. “Why would the demon promise you something like a name? Why give you a chance at breaking this awful deal if Hornby isn’t who the demon says he is?”
“This is a guess,” Jack said, “but perhaps because it’s a fucking demon and they wank off to human suffering?”
Pete shook her head. “Never saw a gangster at the Met who didn’t keep a promise when there was respect or honor involved. Never saw a hard man who risked his own reputation to make another look bad.” She smiled to herself, eyes narrowing. “Miles Hornby exists. And he’s in this city.”
Jack shook his head, scattering raindrops from his hair. “If he’s alive, he’s going to be even harder to find than dead.”
Pete pushed a finger into his chest. “Then you’d better hope you’re as good as you say you are, hadn’t you?”
He flashed Pete his smile, the one he used on stage and in situations where something larger wanted to beat the shite out of him. “I am that, luv. Every bit as bloody good. ’S how I stayed alive for thirteen years.”
Pete opened the door back into the noise of the bar. “Good to hear. Now let’s find Hornby, because I want to go home.”
Take the secret to my grave
I’m not your tale to tell
Not your salvation, not your lost boy
I’d rather burn in Hell
—The Poor Dead Bastards
“Soul Currency”
Trixie watched Jack and Pete carefully when they came into the bar. Her hands worked over drinks and glasses, but her eyes stayed on him.
You all right?
she mouthed. Jack waved her off.
“Seems a silly thing to bargain your life over,” Pete murmured as they came to the street. “A name.”
“Not among demons,” Jack said. “Names have power—a name is the only thing that separates a demon from the ravening horde, down there in the Pit. Names given by Lucifer are Hell’s currency.”
“And souls are what, Hell’s bus token?” Pete shook her head, lip curling up. “I hate bloody demons. I hate every last one. Cold bastards.”
Jack didn’t correct her. Demons knew the value of cold bastardry better than any being in the Black. He’d taken most of his lessons in merciless self-service from demons. They were good teachers.
“I suppose I can call up some contacts,” Pete said as they walked through the night market, the tide of Patpong parting
around them. “Use Ollie to get in touch with Interpol, see if Hornby’s turned up anywhere besides the grave he was supposed to be in.”
“He won’t.” Jack shuddered as the last of the good feeling the fix had brought ran out of him. Now was just roiling guts and headaches and cravings all over again. “Hornby’s too clever to get caught up by the coppers. He’s gone deep underground.”
Pete lifted a shoulder. “Faked his death? That’s never as simple as the telly makes it seem.”
“Simple enough,” Jack said. “Come to a city where the demon’s not welcome, spread around a story of a taxi accident that probably really happened, shove an anonymous gangster’s corpse in the grave in his place, and
poof
.” He spread his fingers. “No more lightly talented, unlucky musician with a short lifespan for the demon to find.”
Pete pulled a face. “First thing we learn in the Met—people don’t just vanish.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “Even mages.” You could get a new face and a new identity with varying degrees of magic, but to erase other people’s memories of you—that was the trick. Memories were the spine upon which the Black rested its weary flesh and blood. Memories were the only thing truly a man’s if he moved among the creatures of Faerie and Hell.
“People don’t just disappear,” Jack echoed.
“I said it,” she agreed. “Who here might know? What about that git Seth?”
Jack held up his hands. “Not Seth.” His scalpel cut was healing crookedly, puffy and red around the edges. He needed a real hospital, real stitches from a real doctor. “Seth shot his bolt,” he said. “He thinks I’ve gone over to sorcery, and I think he’s a fucking cunt. It’s safe to say we’ve reached an impasse.”
“He did try to kill you.” Pete folded her arms in such a
way that Jack knew Seth would be eating through a tube if Pete had reached the scene a few seconds earlier.
“I’ll see him again someday, settle it, probably have to put the mad old man down.” Jack sighed. “Selling me out to the demon of Bangkok . . . I swear. He’s gone senile.”
“Who, then?” Pete stopped walking as her stomach rumbled. “Bloody hell, I’m starving.”
Jack realized they were near Robbie’s stall at the edge of the night market and gestured. “Oi, mate. You got anything to eat around here?”
While Robbie troubled his neighbor, a noodle cart, for two pasteboard containers heavy with spice, Jack rubbed the back of his neck. His head and his muscles ached. His arm hurt at the slash and at the injection site. Pete’s mouth twisted nervously.
“You all right?”
“Falling apart,” Jack said. “I’m discovering that I’m not as young as I once was.”
“Fuck me, I could have told you that,” Pete scoffed. Jack nudged her in the ribs.
“Oi. Watch that mouth, missy.”