Demon Bound

Righty jerked him along and Jack lost his view. He watched a corridor lined with Japanese-style Shoji screens speed by, alcoves full of gold statues, until they came to a jerky halt again under a gilt archway, beyond which a pair of doors studded with iron nails waited.

“Bit Las Vegas, if you ask me,” Jack said. “The gold paint isn’t doing it any favors.” He couldn’t make out fuckall in the dimness of the place, but air came from somewhere above and the smells drifting in were of sewage and chili oil and sun-warmed concrete, wound up with the cloying musk of nag champa incense.

“We are in Khlong Toei,” said Lefty. “It is . . .”

“A slum?” Jack guessed. Manchester or Bangkok, poverty-ridden streets all smelled the same.

“And a port, and a holy place, among other things,” Lefty said. “Farang assume because a place is one thing it must be only that thing.”

“It smells like one thing,” Jack muttered. “Shit.”

Lefty pointed at Jack’s feet. “Take off your boots.” When Jack didn’t immediately comply, Lefty put a hard, knuckle-ridden fist into his kidneys.

“You poisonous bollock-pustule!” Jack wheezed. “What was that for?”

“I grew up in Khlong Toei,” Lefty said softly. “It’s my home. Just because you see a face does not mean that face is not wearing a mask.”

“Yeah. Many faces, mystical Far-East shite, blah blah blah,” Jack said. He stuck his fingers in his bootlaces and yanked them off. “No offense to your lovely home, mate, but I didn’t ask to be here and I don’t fancy spending any more of my life in slums. Had enough of that already.”

Lefty’s stony face didn’t flicker. “He’s waiting for you. Go through the door and show him the proper respect. Or you can choose not to.” The gangster took the nickel-coated .45 out of his waistband and let it dangle loosely in his hand. “Frankly, I’d like it if you did.”

“Subtle,” Jack told him. “You tell all your dates exactly how long your pan handle is, as well?” Jack’s toes curled on the cool stone seeping through the holes in his socks.

“He is the master of Bangkok,” Lefty said. “And you’ll address him as such. You are a maggot, not fit to get crushed under his foot.”

“I’ve got a fucking pronoun, at least,” Jack said. He’d wanted to be wrong, to have merely fallen in with necromancers, but Seth had set the master of Bangkok on him and Seth didn’t pull punches. McBride always did have a talent for note-perfect screwings-over. Jack fancied that if Seth hadn’t been magically inclined, he would have made a bang-up divorce barrister.

“Get moving,” Lefty said. “He’s not patient.”

“That makes a pair of us,” Jack grumbled before putting his hand on the door within the arch.

The interior of the building whispered with cool shadows, sunlight filtering through cracks in the roof. Votives flickered in lanterns hung from roof beams and a small gold Buddha glowed in the low light at the far end of the room.

Behind the Buddha, the shadows moved. They crawled across the floor and re-formed, spilled into cracks and slithered out again, and at last they twined and formed into a man, who folded his hands at the small of his back and tilted his head to examine Jack with fathomless eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Winter,” the shadow said. “Thank you for your promptness.”

“Well, if you want promptness nothing assures it like stuffing me into a bloody boot,” Jack said.

The shadow laughed. The power that crawled off the man’s shape told Jack it was not a man at all. The magic was not the magic of a human. Thick, cloying, prying at his defenses and his sight with relentless claws, it slipped in around all of Jack’s frayed edges and tried to fill him up with the hot, dry winds of Hell. Jack didn’t like things that he didn’t know how to work over with his talent, or how to exorcise. The master of Bangkok wasn’t an energy he’d felt before, and Jack gave a violent shiver. He was a control freak; he admitted it, owned it, wore it with pride.

That comes from being beaten and spit on and raped by the sight your whole life, Seth had said. Use it, Jackie boy, don’t fight it.

The only voice he’d ever wanted in his head was the one that bent him over and fucked him in the end. Jack let out a small chuckle.

The shadow flowed toward him. “Something amusing to you, Mr. Winter?”

“Just thinking.” Jack shrugged. “If I didn’t have shite luck, I’d have no luck whatsoever.”

“Very apt,” the shadow agreed. “But today, your luck is good. You’re here.”

Jack caught a glimpse, just a flash, of a blackness that went on and on, and a horned figure with a protruding tongue riding on the back of a black ox while behind him came every dark and wretched thing that found refuge in the Black. He tried to shut his sight against the creature in front of him, but the tattoos on his shoulders began to burn and his head felt as if it would split. He ground his teeth together and drew blood from his tongue while the creature laughed, a smooth, velvety sound that made Jack’s skin prickle.

“You can’t stop seeing, Jack. I’m not like one you’ve met before.”

“D’you want me to stick a star on you?” Jack said. He focused on the pain in his arm, the lump forming on his head. Physical pain could hold the sight back—for a little while. Long enough for him to either talk his way out of the temple or find out exactly how deep he was in the shit.

“Introductions, then,” said the creature. It held out a hand, and with a ripple of power its body became flesh. Its hand floated in front of Jack’s face, slim and unscarred, adorned with silver rings and black fingernails. “I am Rahu.”

Jack didn’t take the proffered digit. “You’ll forgive me, but I’m not fucking stupid.”

Rahu lifted a shoulder. “Your friend Seth did pass that tidbit on.” At Jack’s sneer, Rahu gri

“Seth hasn’t been me friend in a long time,” Jack said. “You’re so all-knowing, you must know that.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that he values his new life here, and if one values life in the currents of the Black river of Bangkok, one eventually crosses paths with me.”

Jack pushed his hands through his hair. It curled around his temples. The heat killed any hope of his usual mess of spikes. “If you’re going to kill me, could we kick on?” Jack said to Rahu. “I’ve never been so damp and miserable as in this city.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Rahu said. He whipped out his hand and closed it around Jack’s scalpel wound. “I’m going to tell you two facts: this isn’t your city. And it isn’t a scheming demon’s, either. I don’t know why your bargain-binder sent you here, but you’ll tell me. How quickly determines whether you go back to London in a bag or on your own two feet.”

Jack met Rahu’s eyes, and refused to flinch as the creature kept a death grip on his wound. “I didn’t come here to move against you. I just came here to bring Miles Hornby home.”

Rahu’s eyes were black, pupilless. They flickered with power, like Jack’s own eyes when his magic was up. Jack tugged against his grip, but the creature held fast. “I smell it on you, Jack,” Rahu hissed. “I can taste it in the air around you. There’s demon taint on your skin and in your blood. You’re a dog, following a command.” He let go of Jack. “And you’ve just walked into a wolf den.”

A dark handprint stayed in the dried blood on Jack’s arm, and the skin was freezing and burnt, frostbitten from a touch. Fingertips of shiver worked their way across his skin, searching through nerve and tissue and blood.

“Go home,” Rahu said again. “Go back to your demon and tell him whatever coup he sent you to conduct failed. This is your only chance.”

Jack rubbed the burn. Pain could be managed. Pain meant his heart was still beating. Pain was a friend. “I can’t,” he said.

Rahu’s lips drew back. His profile was striking—sharp nose, sharper cheeks, the barest hint of crystalline white fangs protruding over his lower lip. “I don’t think I heard you,” the creature said.