Demon Bound

“’Ey, you were the one who’s so keen to truck with these rotters,” Seth said. “Chin up, little camper. It’s not going to bite you.”

Jack cast a baleful eye at the corpse. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

A figure backed out of a small wash closet on the other side of the morgue. The space was spare, just a steel counter covered in surgical instruments and a black nylon doctor’s bag, the washroom, and a row of freezers near it. A hose dangled from the ceiling, fitted with a spray nozzle for washing bodies. The quiet drip-drop-plip of water and blood was the only sound, beyond the humming of the freezers.

“Jao,” Seth said, giving the small pathologist a nod. “Been keeping yourself well, mate?”

Jao looked from Seth to Jack. He fired of a rapid sentence of Thai and Seth spread his hands.

“No, no. He’s a friend. He’s one of us.”

Jack gestured at the dead man on the table. “Hell of a centerpiece, mate. Your work?”

Jao slipped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and picked up a scalpel and forceps, peeling back the skin of the man on the table. His cuts bifurcated tattoos, sutras and dragons tangled together in the hurried flurry that Jack recognized as prison ink.

“So?” he growled finally, hands never pausing as he lifted out a section of sternum that a Stryker saw had separated. “What you want?” Jao wore white at his temples and a scowl on his face like battle scars, and he glared up at Jack from under a thatch of black hair. He resembled more than anything a troll, something small and scuttling that lived under a bridge. Jack knew from hanging about Pete and her work with the Met that it happened when you spent your days prodding dead bodies.

“You had a bloke come in about two weeks ago,” Seth said. “Dead bloke, obviously. Farang who got himself pasted in a man vs. taxi spat. White, probably pale as this cunt right here.” Seth jerked his thumb at Jack.

“He was a singer,” Jack supplied. “And talented.”

“Talented, right.” Seth fingered his packet of Silk Cut, tapped out a fag. Jao curled his lip back.

“Ain’t no smoking in the surgery.”

Jack took the fag from Seth’s fingers and stuck it between his own lips, touching his finger to the end. “Brilliant. You see this dead bloke or not?”

“No,” Jao said instantly. He opened the nylon bag and pulled out a bunch of herbs. “We ain’t had nobody here like that.”

The herbs went under the dead man’s skin and Jao rummaged in his supplies until he found a wide-gauge needle and rough cotton thread.

“That’s hawthorn,” Jack said, puffing out a cloud of smoke and breaking off the burning tip of the fag, for later. “Recognize the leaves.” He poked at the pile of herbs in the dead man’s chest cavity. “Not a lot of hawthorn trees in this part of the world, eh, mate?”

Jao slapped his hand away. “Not for touching.”

“I’m really couldn’t give a flying fuck what you’re doing to this poor bastard,” Jack said. “Although according to Seth here, you people got a real problem with ghost sickness. Seems maybe you’re not so very skilled at your chosen discipline, Jao.”

Jao’s massive eyebrows drew together like a thorny hedgerow. “What you mean ‘you people’?”

“Skin traders,” Jack said evenly. “Necromancers. Liars.”

Seth rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Jack . . .”

“You recognized the description,” Jack said. Jao’s hand, moving the needle in and out of the seam of his Y-incision, burying the hawthorn in the dead man’s chest, missed and he stabbed himself in the thumb.

“You know who he was,” Jack told Jao. He snaked out his hand and snatched the hawthorn bundle from the corpse’s chest. “And now you’re going to tell me what happened to the body.”

Jao’s lip curled. “You think you can order me around?”

“Bet your lying arse, I do,” Jack said. “I’ve come too far and I’ve staked too much. What did you do with Hornby?”

Jao heaved a dramatic sigh and cast a look at Seth. “Don’t look to me,” Seth said. “I’m not his bloody keeper.”

Jao extended his hand to Jack. “Give it back.”

“Nope.” Jack twitched the hawthorn out of Jao’s reach. “Quid pro quo, mate. Where’s Hornby?”

Jao’s jaw muscle knotted under his skin, and his eyes blazed with the sick bruise-purple witchfire endemic to sorcerers. “I make your skin into a handbag, you miserable white bastard. I pull your teeth one by one and string them for conjure necklace . . .”

Jack held up the hawthorn twig. “Too much chatter. Not enough information.”

Jao’s lip pulled back in a sneer. Seth rubbed his forehead. “Jackie, I warned you. . . .”

“I’m waiting,” Jack intoned, pulling his lighter from his pocket and flipping the top. He held the flame just under the hawthorn. “I don’t hear an answer.”

“I can look up,” Jao muttered after a long moment when Jack wasn’t sure if Jao would cooperate or come after him with a scalpel. “Get my log book.” He shuffled over to the steel table and pulled a battered ledger from his bag, flicking over the pages with irritable twitches of his fingers. “Here,” he said finally. “Come here.”

Jack approached but stayed clear of arm’s reach. “You find him.”

In response, Jao spun around and lashed at him with a blood-coated scalpel. Jack slipped on the slick floor, went down, lost the lighter and the hawthorn twig along with his balance. His elbow cracked the concrete and pain radiated from his arm into his chest, hot fingers of flame.

Before he could manage a fresh breath or to take inventory of his smashed bits, Jao lunged for him again, and Jack slid backwards, banging into the surgery table. The corpse shifted, and the whole thing toppled over.

“Seth!” he shouted. “Grab this crazy cunt!”

Nothing answered him except Jao’s hysterical gasping as he raised the scalpel and bore down on Jack. Jack whipped his gaze at the spot where Seth had last stood.

Seth had vanished.

Jao was screaming, face swollen and red as an overfilled balloon. As with the signs on the door, Jack didn’t need to speak a lick of Thai to know hysterical fear when he saw it.

The silver tooth of the scalpel struck. Jack raised his hand and spit out a word of power, throat contracting like there was a cord about his neck.

“Cosain!”

The shield hex didn’t stop Jao, since he was flesh and only tangentially magic, but it slowed him down. The blade slid neatly along the outside of Jack’s arm as the necromancer stumbled and fell over the toppled surgery table, into the embrace of the corpse. Pain sparked in Jack’s muscle and bone, warm blood dripping down his forearm onto the floor to join the dead man’s.

Jack’s hammering heart and blurred vision told him that he didn’t have more than thirty seconds before the blood loss and the blow put him out, and Jao was already up. Panicked and awkward as he was, he was faster than Jack on Jack’s best day.

“I’m not going back!” Jao shrieked. “Not into that mouth! No more!” He slashed at Jack, and Jack felt air part in front of his eyes as the scalpel missed his face by millimeters.

Jack considered that he was an all-right brawler, when the weapons were bottles, fists, or chains. He’d spent enough time in dodgy clubs populated with skinheads looking for a bruising to be fair with his fists. Against a crazed necromancer with a blade, though, he was rubbish.

Jao wouldn’t sit still long enough to be hit with any kind of paralysis hex, and a spell to steal breath or eyesight wasn’t the sort of thing you conjured empty-handed.

Jack had his sight, a flick knife, a pack of cigarettes, and the necklace Robbie had given him. No kit, no spell materials. Jack Winter, mage, had precisely shit.

Jao came for him again, his magic cutting a roiling wake through the Black, and Jack ducked his swing, nearly falling over the corpse. The corpse, lying still, waiting for its fate as the instrument of the necromancer’s black magic.