Authors: Demon Bound
It is not the same, crow-mage.
The Hecate sighed.
The Black is in turmoil
.
The ways between the worlds are choked with corruption. You know what is coming, Jack, and what you must do.
“I haven’t the faintest, darling,” Jack said. “All you old ones can never just spit it out, can you? Always got to dance in circles until your feet bleed.”
There is war coming,
the Hecate whispered.
There has been war before, war at the beginning and war since, but this will be the vastest, the bloodiest. The old gods and the old ways are rising, parting the layers of the spirit worlds.
Jack felt a long, slow crawl of unease down his spine. “And I’m supposed to do what about your war, exactly?”
The Hecate bared her teeth. Her canines were pointed, like her dog servants’.
You will do nothing. You will stand aside, crow-mage, and you will keep your meddlesome fingers out of what is coming.
Wind stripped the mist from her figure in a sudden gust, leaving her bare before Jack’s eyes.
The one who must act is Petunia.
“No,” Jack said instantly. “Pete has nothing to do with any of this.”
You cannot protect her, and to presume is a grave insult,
the Hecate snarled.
She is a Weir, crow-mage. She is a servant of the gateways just as you are a servant of the dead.
“Pete is an innocent,” Jack snarled. “She doesn’t belong in the Black. She doesn’t deserve your attentions.”
Petunia was a Weir long before she was your consort,
the Hecate snapped.
She will stand at the head of my army. She will lift us from the hidden place of dreams and place us on the path.
“Like fuck she will,” Jack snarled back. Pete’s talent brought her under the purview of the Hecate, true, but she’d never had a sign. Never seen her fate, like he had with the Morrigan. “You’ve made a mistake,” he said, softer. “It’s another Weir. Not Pete.”
The Hecate’s eyes flared.
The Black is rotting, crow-mage. The hag and her consorts, the demons and their
bargains, spreading filth through the worlds like poison in a river. Even now, demons dance in anticipation of the world’s end, and necromancers create offerings to their old gods. Sorcery and sin gnaw the bones of magic, of the druid and the Weir and the hearth witch.
The Hecate looked away from him, and a tear slipped over her translucent cheek.
The world I was born into is gone, crow-mage. But in the fires of war I will rebuild it from ash, and Petunia, my Weir, will open the way. I do not make mistakes.
She turned back on him, and Jack saw the full glory of the Hecate, her triple face and her owl’s wings and the vast, breathless space between the worlds that the girl’s form walked.
And if you value the world you live in, crow-mage, you will stand down. You will retreat, forget that you know such a thing as magic, and stay away from my Weir until it’s all over.
Jack felt his jaw twitch. Orders were orders, whether they came from a headmaster or the goddess of the gateways. “Can’t do that,” he said.
You will,
the Hecate hissed,
or you will burn the world.
Jack turned his back on her, started for the Naughton house.
“If I had a shilling for every time I’ve heard that bollocks.”
“Jack?” Pete called to him when he came through the door. “Jack, where’d you go?”
“Having a conversation,” Jack called. The Hecate’s eyes still burned in front of his gaze.
Stay away, mage. Or you will burn the world.
“You left all your things on the table,” Pete said, when he came into the kitchen. She handed him a plate of biscuits. “Expect you’ll be needing them.”
Jack shook his head, putting the biscuits down on the table, stealing one. “Those are yours now.”
Pete’s face tightened. “Jack, no . . .”
“Listen, Pete.” Jack placed his hands on her shoulders. “I haven’t time to explain properly, but suffice to say that there are people and gods in the Black who want you, dead or otherwise. They always will, because of what you are. I’m giving you me kit because you’re going to need it. To defend yourself and not be made to serve someone or something that you don’t want.”
Pete’s mouth quirked. “Fuck off. Who’d want my service besides musty old ghosts like Treadwell?”
“Your patron,” Jack said quietly. “The Hecate. The guardian of the gateway. Weirs are her purview, like the Fiach Dubh are the Morrigan’s.”
Pete sat down hard at the table. “Why does she want
me
? I haven’t done a thing!”
“You’ve got power,” Jack said. “And there’s some bad shite coming down the road, Pete. Power will be in short supply.” He closed his hand over hers. “Take the satchel. If nothing else, there’s still an unwinding spell needs doing and it’s high time you learned how to cast.” Jack felt about for a fag and lit it, blowing smoke to the ceiling. “And you should probably call that sodding Ollie Heath and have him arrest Nicholas Naughton.”
Pete’s eyebrow crawled upward. “Nick? Why?”
Jack watched the ash grow on the end of his fag.
Necromancers make offerings to their old gods.
“Because he killed his brother.”
Pete set down her mug. “That’s quite a leap, Jack.”
“This house is the work of a necromancer,” he said. “A line of necromancers. Nicholas Naughton said it was just himself and his brother. One of them’s dead. So, by your very own copper logic, the one that’s still kicking round London in a nonce suit is the necromancer. One who owns a great big country house and estate on which to bury the dead he’s bound.”
“But Naughton is the one who demanded that we cleanse the house!” Pete cried.
Jack stubbed out the end of his fag. “Naughton’s an idiot. You don’t get a poltergeist from a binding ritual. He knew I’d see it. We were probably sent here to be the next juicy mage offerings to his bone gods, seeing as how he’d run out of hapless family members.”
Pete pressed her hands together, put them against her mouth like she were making a brief bid not to smash something. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I sat there
and took that git’s money and
smiled
at him, for fuck’s sake.”
“You’re not the first person he’s fooled,” Jack said. “Think of how poor Danny must have felt swinging from that beam . . .”
“All right.” Pete placed her hands flat on the table. “I’ll keep the kit, for now. And I’ll have Naughton taken care of. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t coming back.” Sheen blossomed in her eyes, and Pete sucked in a long breath. “Tell me you’re coming back.”
Jack got up and pulled Pete up with him. Pete wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek into his shoulder. Jack put one hand on her neck, the silken ends of her hair tickling his palm.
“I’m coming back,” Jack whispered. It wasn’t a lie, really. Just an unknown quantity. “I should go back to work, luv,” he said. He would do what he always did when he was at a loss—smoke, curse, consult his books, and pace until something shook loose and he came up with a way to weasel out of his problem. He was a clever boy, after all.
Pete pulled him back against her instead, small body warming his skin. “No.” She ran her thumb down the scar on his cheek. “I don’t want you to go.”
Jack slid his hands across her waist, pressing his fingers into her hip bones. If he had the chance to look back, he supposed, he would call himself an idiot for spending time with musty books when he could be with Pete. “I suppose it can wait. For a bit.”
Pete pressed her lips against his, firm and warm and insistent. “I suppose it can. Just for a bit.”
Jack’s eyes snapped open, and he snatched up Pete’s mobile from the bedside table. Pete stirred next to him, groaning and pulling her pillow over her face.
The numerals spelled out 10:13, and Jack slumped back, forcing his heart to stop pounding.
He had hours. Hours until he faced the demon in Hell.
“Jack?” Pete curled into him, her leg sliding up his thigh to drape across his waist. “Don’t leave yet.” Her hands brushed down his abdomen. “Haven’t had a chance to say a proper good morning.”
Jack’s cock jumped as Pete’s hand wandered into unsafe territory, and her lips brushed over his earlobe. He rolled over and pinned her frame beneath his weight, causing Pete to yelp. Jack grinned. “Good morning, Petunia.”
“I called Ollie Heath while you were sleeping,” she said.
“Ohh, yeah. Nothing’s more erotic than talking about your work mates,” Jack said, nuzzling into her neck.
Pete slapped him on the back of his head. “Don’t be awful.”
Jack sighed, coming up for air. “What did he say?”
“Nicholas Naughton’s done a runner,” Pete murmured. “Cleaned out his flat and his accounts and he’s gone.”
Jack levered himself onto his elbows. “I’m sorry, luv. Looks like he’s not quite the idiot I thought.”
Pete lifted one bare shoulder. “It’s a problem for another day, Jack.” She pulled his face down, and Jack followed willingly.
He kissed her for a long moment, letting his fingers roam over her, memorize her. If it was the last touch he had, it needed to count. Memory was all that mattered, in the Black.
Pete pushed him off gently after a moment, rolling her face to the window. “Jack, there’s a bird watching us.”
Jack followed her eyes and saw the crow nestled on the sill, staring at him.
“Creepy thing,” Pete muttered. Jack rolled over on his back, throwing a hand over his eyes.
“It’s a fetch. A psychopomp.”
Pete quirked her eyebrow. “What’s it fetching?”
Jack laughed. “My soul, if I’m lucky. Everybody has a fetch. All the citizens of the Black.”
Pete shrugged. “I don’t.”
Jack put his feet on the floor, winced at the chill, and reached for his pants. “’Course you do.”
“No,” Pete insisted. “Never had anything like the crow in my life. I don’t have anything that’s stayed with me.” She propped herself up on her elbow and ran her free fingers down Jack’s spine. “Except you.”
Jack shuddered when her fingers, her magic, made contact with his skin. “I can’t say I’ve been that great about sticking around,” he told Pete. “In fact, I’ve been shite.”
“If anyone is going to take my soul down into the Land,” Pete said softly, “I’d rather it be you.”
Jack looked at the crow again. Its eyes gleamed, and it
stared back at him, unblinking, piercing him down to the core of his magic.
You know what’s coming,
the Hecate whispered.
The fires of war.
Jack raised his hand, staring at the crow through splayed fingers, an inkblot on the pristine dawn.
Something uncurled in his chest, behind his sight. It didn’t ache and pound against his mind as it had in recent weeks, it just stayed in his head, heavy and present.
“I meant it, you know,” Pete said. She sat up and wrapped her arms around him, her bare breasts pressing into his ribs.
“I know, luv . . . ,” Jack murmured.
You’re gonna die, Jack
, Lawrence whispered.
Best you can do is go with your head held high.
Jack stared at the crow. The crow stared at him. Watching, the way it always watched him. Waiting for his soul to float free of his body, so it could carry it to the Land. The way he’d watched Pete, since the first night they’d laid eyes on each other.
“Jack?” Pete said as he got out of bed and pulled on his shorts. “You’re quiet. What is it?”
Jack put a fag in his mouth and started for his books.
“
Don’t you worry. I think I may not be going anywhere.”
The demon was on time.
Jack stood under the tree in bare feet, denim, and his tattered Supersuckers shirt. He smoked a fag slowly, letting the burn travel all the way down his throat and warm him against the cool air.
“You ready, Winter?” the demon said. The grass under its polished shoes withered and died, fading away to bare salted ground. “No more excuses. No more tricks. You and I, down into Hell.”
“If you’re that eager to give up your name,” Jack said, flicking his fag away, “then let’s get on with it, mate.”
The demon’s smile twitched into life like a worm on a hook. “Why do I sense another card up your sleeve, Jack?”
Jack lifted his shoulder. “Maybe ’cause I’ve got one.”
Pete stood on the stoop of the Naughton house, watching. Far enough away not to get caught in the edge of a hex. Close enough for what Jack had thought of as he sat with her in bed, watching the crow.
The demon let out an irritated huff. “Let’s see it then, Winter. I’ll kill you that much quicker.”
Jack gave Pete a small smile of reassurance, and she lifted her hand in return. She trusted him, though he hadn’t told her what he intended to do. On the off chance it didn’t work, and the demon peeled his skin off.
Fuck
off chance
. There was a very good bloody chance it would all go pear-shaped. But Jack wasn’t going to hold his head high. He didn’t have the dignity left to accept his fate, so he might as well fucking fight.
He might live.
And Margaret Thatcher might hop on a broom and do a lap around the Houses of Parliament.
The demon grabbed him by the shirtfront, pulling them close enough to kiss, if Jack were that sort of man. “What the fuck are you grinning at, Winter?”
Jack turned his smile on the demon, and let the spell that he held in his mind unfurl. No kit this time, no salt or iron. Just his talent, coiled in his mind starving and stinging, like a snake.
Jack stared into the demon’s eyes, at the flame dancing there.
“Everyone has a fetch,” he said.
The spell unfolded, caught the wild magic of the moor, and faster—far, far faster than he expected—Jack and the demon tumbled into the whirl pool of his sight.
Everything is black. Everything is pain. Jack is aware that the screams echoing are his.
Light burns through his eyelids, light blotted out by a man’s shadow, and when he opens his eyes, he’s in Ireland. Seth is leaning over him. He’s fallen asleep on the grass, trying to read one of the interminable Latin diaries the older mage foisted on him. He throws the mouldering thing at Seth.