Demon Bound

Or his.

Jack felt his lungs seize as the fags had their revenge, and he let himself fall back, landing next to the clammy sack of flesh on the floor. He clapped one palm on the corpse’s stiff leg, fixing on Jao as the panting necromancer poised over him for the killing blow.

Black oily power floated behind Jao’s gaze, like a burning slick of gasoline on a river. Jack opened his sight to the energies of the morgue, pulled all of the power into him that his body would allow.

When you cast a curse, second chances weren’t given. Curses worked in triads, the words of power, the energy of the mage, the conductor medium. All three balanced exactly, or the curse could snap back and do worse to you than you’d conjured, thrice.

Curses weren’t worth the trouble, by and large, when the same problems could be solved with a boot to the teeth or a cricket bat to the guts. But Jack had seen what they could do when they were applied properly, and he needed to stop Jao, for sure and for good.

He drew in his last bit of air, held it, and expelled it in a fury, putting all of his panic and rage behind it, pushing every ounce of his energy into the words of power while he grasped the corpse hard enough to leave a handprint on the dead man’s splotchy skin. “Cosbriste!”

The corpse jumped under him as its leg bone cracked, and Jao let out a scream. His left leg twisted under him as the curse sprang across the distance between Jack and the necromancer like a starving dog and sank its teeth into his soul. Jao’s leg bone snapped with a clean, crisp sound in the small room, and he dropped.

The scalpel tinkled out of his grasp and landed close to where Jack sat, fighting to pull his heart back under control as it thundered along fit to snap his ribs.

It always took a few seconds to realize you were still alive, when Death put out a hand and clapped it against your face, forced you to look it in the eye.

Seth came pelting through the door with a security man in a blue uniform, and stopped short at the scene before him. “Jackie boy, what the fuck is this?”

“Leg-breaker curse,” Jack said hoarsely. His feet slithered under him on the wet concrete, but he used the slimy tile wall and got to his feet. “What’s it look like, we danced a samba?”

The security guard asked Seth if things were all right, and Seth waved him off in Thai, pressing a few hundred bhat into the man’s hand before he shoved him out of the morgue. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in a ménage à trois,” Seth growled. He slammed the door and locked it. “He came after you like a fat schoolboy on a custard cake. Told you not to open your big mouth.”

Jack flipped Seth the bird. “Up yours.” Air passed across his extended arm with a sting. His cut was pumping blood, and the slash neatly bisected his tattoos. Jack grabbed a towel from the wash closet and wrapped it around himself, vines of crimson soaking through the cotton. “That cunt. If I get some sort of infection that makes bits of me fall off . . .”

“You need stitches,” Seth said. “I’m not mopping up after you again, Jackie.”

“After we find Hornby.” Jack took a deep breath through his nose. Willed his heart to stop pumping his life out of the gash Jao had left. Wrestled the magic in the room back under control. It was rough and ugly, like a waterfall from a polluted stream, as his power and the magic left over from the sobbing necromancer’s attack commingled.

He tied off the towel tight as he could stand it, and righted the surgical table with his good hand. “Get him up,” he told Seth, jerking his chin at Jao.

“Jack, he’s a good bloke,” Seth said. “He’s a scared bloke. Whatever’s happening here, it’s not his fault. . . .”

Jack pointed at the table. “Get him up and put him on the fucking table, McBride.” He didn’t have any spare panic now, just a tight black feeling in his chest. He was alive. He’d looked at the blade coming down and he was still standing. Jack didn’t think he’d ever become accustomed to the weightless, breathless feeling of still taking up space in the world when he should be on his way through the Bleak Gates.

Seth wrestled Jao’s limp form onto the table with a grunt. “Jack,” he said. “I’m asking you, properly now . . .”

Jack slammed his good hand down onto the metal next to Jao’s head. The clang echoed round the small room and Jao whimpered.

“Right,” Jack said. “I ask again: where’s Hornby’s fucking corpse?”

Jao’s throat worked. “I can’t . . .” he rasped. “I can’t . . . tell you . . . that.”

Jack turned his back, went to the instrument tray, picked up a rib spreader. “Five seconds and I loosen your jaw, mate. The old-fashioned way. No curses involved.”

“Jackie . . .” Seth looked at him askance. “This is a far cry from you, Winter.”

Jack put the rib spreader against Jao’s lips. “I’m a far cry from meself right now, Seth,” he said. “I’m a desperate man and this cunt is standing between me and my dead vocalist, so either hold him fucking still or walk out now.” He cranked the spreader one turn. “Where’s Hornby?”

“I can’t say it!” Jao screamed. “I can’t!”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Jack ratcheted spreader another turn. “Where’s Hornby?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jao quavered, his voice distorted by the metal fingers in his mouth.

The pounding in Jack’s head increased to blackout levels, and his hands quivered. He knew the rage. He’d watched it belt him across the mouth, pour whiskey down its throat, and kick him with steel-toed boots for fourteen years before he left Manchester.

And he wanted Jao to share the knowledge, wanted to crank the fucking rib spreader to the maximum and break the sneaky wanker’s jaw.

Instead, he leaned close to Jao’s ear, close enough to smell sweat and the last vestiges of cologne. “You should be,” he hissed.

“You should be,” Jao shouted. “You think you the worst thing to come through my door? You think I’ll tell you when he’s . . .”

Jao choked, and then his face went slack after a moment of struggle. Cloudy, bloody spiderweb drifted into the whites of his eyes, and his body slumped against the table, still.

Seth shoved two fingers against Jao’s sweaty neck. “He’s dead. You’ve fucking killed one of my best customers, Jack. Bloody cheers.”

Jack dropped the rib spreader. “That wasn’t me.”

Seth threw up his hands, like an aggravated mother. “Who the fuck was it, then? Darth fucking Vader?”

Jack wheeled and grabbed Jao’s kit bag, dumped out the necromancy supplies atop Jao’s surgical instruments. “By my guess,” he said, “whoever Jao was afraid enough of to take a slash at me.” Baggies of herbs, a tin of salt, a child’s knucklebones in a velvet sack, a silver dagger blunted on the edge, and a bit of lint fell onto the steel.

Jack slammed his fist into the table. The pain brought him back to himself, a bit, but the rage was still pumping through his veins like cold fire, racing his heart and splitting his skull. “Fuck. He doesn’t have a grimoire.” Jack pressed his hands over his face. He was smeared in blood, his eyes were gritty, and he wanted nothing more than to put his head down and sleep for roughly a decade, until the world made sense again. As much as it ever had.

“Who’s next?” he said instead, dropping his hands to look at Seth. “Who’s the next necromancer you know? One who might actually have some corpse-raising spells lying around instead of trying to cut me fucking throat?”

“Forget that, boy,” Seth said. “After what you just did? You aren’t in any shape to be working magic of this caliber. Can see it right in your face.”

“For fuck’s sake, Seth!” Jack scattered the instrument tray with a sweep of his arm. “This isn’t an academic exercise, this is my fucking life!”

“And what god decrees your life weighs more than his?” Seth pointed at Jao. “Or Miles Hornby’s? What makes you so bloody special, Jack Winter?”