Demon Bound

Jack narrowed his eyes at the small round pills. “What’s that, Xanax?”

“Darling, do I look like I carry mother’s little helper?” the girl scoffed. “Take it. You’ll have a nice ride, I guarantee.”

Jack eyed the little pills when she tipped them into his palm. Then the jet bounced again and turned, skimming west over water and on into southern Europe and the Middle East.

The girl unscrewed her complimentary in-flight water bottle and handed it to him. “I’m Chelsea.”

Jack debated for only a moment, until turbulence bounced him against his lap belt once more, and washed the chalky aftertaste of the pills down with nearly half of the water. After months off, his throat had forgotten how to accept copious handfuls of pharmaceuticals.

“I’m Michael,” he said. “Mick.” Giving a fake name was a reflex, when you couldn’t know who you were speaking to. Names were kept back, used for currency and passage, not given out like Chelsea’s mystery drugs. Jack pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He could still taste the pills.

“Why Thailand?” Chelsea asked after they’d watched an a

“Why did your parents name you after a fucking neighborhood?” Jack returned. She laughed, and washed down her own pills. Three, Jack noted. He must have lost that scraggly addict’s aura, the one that telegraphed he needed at least twice the doctor’s dose of any medicine you chose.

“They loved it there. We couldn’t afford it, of course—they lived out in Chiswick, and I left when I was about fifteen and went wild for a few years before I settled down and got into activist work.”

Sometimes pegging people dead to rights in the first go was extraordinarily boring, Jack reflected. If Chelsea had said she was going to Bangkok to recruit an all-castrato chorus line for the musical production of Trainspotting, the flight wouldn’t be dull, at least.

“You rescue prostitutes and bums, then?” he said. “Turn them into useful members of the human race?” The pills were making themselves known. His head and legs felt swimmy and his heart and lungs felt slow.

“I rescue anyone who asks me,” Chelsea said with a thin smile. “But what happens after that is up to them.” She put two fingers over his eyelids. “Go to sleep, Michael. I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”

Jack tried to say “time for what,” but he had a feeling he only mumbled vaguely before he drifted into a cotton-wool floating sleep. Chelsea’s image flickered once in his sight, gold lion’s eyes and twin shadows sitting on her shoulders. The Black caressed her sharpened cheekbones and full lips, and her hand that stroked his face was full of talons.

“Oh,” Jack slurred. “Fuck.” Before he could really look at Chelsea, put a barrier of power between her pointed black teeth and himself, a dream opened its jaws and swallowed him down. He saw Irish hills, English cities, Pete’s eyes, and then nothing, until it was much too late to do anything at all.

Chapter Twenty-two

Jack woke, suddenly and with the sensation of falling. He saw long metal arms out of the airplane porthole, metal carts ma

“Come on.” Chelsea nudged him. “It’s always better if you walk it off.”

Jack stood with her help and every joint in his body from his neck to his ankles protested. “The fuck did you give me?” he mumbled. His tongue was thick and furry, a remake of too many mornings when he’d been on the road with the Bastards. That had been the nicest thing about the heroin—you never got hungry enough to feel the sick afterward.

“Dreamless sleep,” Chelsea said. She stepped into the aisle and shouldered her fuzzy bag. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” She gave him another one of those small half-smiles, the ones that didn’t express anything close to comfort or joy. “That’s what you ask for, Jack. When you think no one can hear you. Not to see.”

Jack watched the way her eyes changed, from pleasant gray to iron slate to gold, pupiless and staring.

“Who are you?” he slurred. “Actually, strike that bollocks—what? What are you?”

Chelsea leaned back and squeezed his hand. “The guardian of the gateways sends her regard, Jack. She grants you safe passage through this land.”

Then she was gone, moving lithely through the crush of people disembarking from the jet where there should have been no space, just elbows and bags and snorts of “Move it!” from the American in the Hawaiian shirt, lugging two roller bags and a camera case.

Jack moved to the side and caught the bloke in the ribs as he chugged passed. “Sorry.” He shrugged. “Bit close in here.”

“Up yours, fuckwad,” the American said, and shoved on down the jetway, tossing smaller Thais and Brits out of the way with a casual swing of his luggage.

“Thank you for flying,” said the flight attendant ma

“Listen,” Jack said. “The girl sitting next to me on the flight—which way did she go?”

“Girl?” The woman’s eyes flicked toward the cockpit and the phone on the wall next to the tamper-proof door.

“Yes,” Jack said, shifting from foot to foot in an effort to force his blood to expel the drug expediently. His vision still swam in slow circles and his arms felt like logs, but at least he could talk without sounding like a Mancunian Joey Ramone. “Reddish hair, manky clothes, nice face. I need to find her.”

“Sir.” The attendant reached for the handset. “You were alone in your row.”

“She said her name was . . .” Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Never mind. Put the phone down, luv, I’m not crazy or trying to blow you up.”

The attendant set the phone down reluctantly. “Then what are you on about, sir?”

Jack sighed, trying to keep his balance on the gently listing jetway. “Nothing, it seems. I’m simply having a royally shite fucking day.”

When Jack backed away from the wide-eyed attendant and joined the concourse of Suvarnabhumi Airport, it was as full of people as a riverbed after a flash flood. The light scattered through the thousands of windowpanes that entombed Jack in glass as crowds shoved to and fro all around.

“Like bloody Snow White,” he muttered, watching a 747 take off overhead. The ground under his feet shook.

Jack let the crowd push him for a bit, drifting while he got his bearings. The demon knew where he was and what was happening, so who’d send the hippie girl on the airplane? The girl with lion eyes, and fingers like fossilized claws that could reach inside him and pull out his dreams like a photo album. The girl who wasn’t a girl at all.

It could be any number of people—or not-people, Jack reflected. Anyone he’d slagged off in the last twenty years. Any vulture circling who’d heard about the demon and wanted his pound of Jack Winter.

Or the demon could be a liar, could be stringing him up like a puppet and sending its cronies in the Black for its own amusement. Offer everyone a bit of the crow-mage, soften him up before the day came around so Jack wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t scheme, and would beg the demon for his life like every other stupid fuckwit who’d bound a bargain before him.

Jack knew this was likely as anything else, but he still let himself join the line for customs and presented the passport the demon had given him. Miles Hornby had tricked the demon, and Miles Hornby was in Bangkok.

“Reason for visit?” The Thai behind the glass couldn’t have been more disinterested if Jack were a cardboard cutout.

“Vacation,” Jack said, and fought to keep from laughing.

“Duration of stay?” The Thai clicked at his computer.

“Less than a week,” Jack said. “One way or another.”