Demon Bound

Kartimukha stamped its feet, its tongue flapping and its eyes blazing as it snarled. Feed me!

“Oh, fuck off,” Jack panted. “It’ll take more than raking up tattered old nightmares, my son.”

Kartimukha hissed, and tensed to spring. Jack braced himself. Violence, at this late date, would almost be welcome. He was itching to use his fists and feet on something, to take the fight into the tangible world where he could make the creature in front of him hurt and bleed.

“That’s enough.”

Rahu’s voice cut the air, and Kartimukha bowed his head. Rahu ran his hand over the mangy lion’s mane, and turned his eyes on Jack. “Kartimukha ate your memories. What was it like?”

Jack swiped at the blood on his face. “Tickled.”

Rahu sighed. “It appears that you did tell the truth. You are attempting to trick your demon.” He opened the cubby beneath the altar and removed a cloth-bound scroll tied with silk cord. “This is my personal necromancy grimoire. Take it. Your plan won’t work, but take it.”

Jack took the grimoire and shoved it down into his leather where it rested snugly against his ribs.

Rahu inclined his head. “May I ask you a question, mage?”

“After I ask you one.” Jack backed away, so that he could touch the doors of the temple with his palm. “Where’s Hornby?”

“The Christian cemetery north of the city,” Rahu said. “We burn our dead, but Hornby’s bandmates paid for him to be interred. What was left after the taxi finished with him, at any rate.”

Jack shoved the door akimbo, letting in the sounds and scents of Khlong Toei. “All right. Ask yours.”

“Why did you promise yourself to the demon?” Rahu folded his arms. “I’m curious, because your fate must have been beyond imagination to risk challenging Hell so.”

Jack thought of Pete, of the demon’s covetous smile when he said her name. “I had someone needed looking out for,” he told Rahu.

Rahu chuckled. “Lucky them.”

“Take care,” Jack said. “And good luck with the whole memory-eating bit.” He stepped through the door, and back into the light.

“I’ll see you again, mage,” Rahu called. “And next time, Kartimukha will feed.”

“Yeah,” Jack called back. “Shaking in me boots and all that. Virtually pissing in fear. Cheers, Rahu.”

The door shut, and he stood on the street. The Lexus had vanished, along with Rahu’s boys, so Jack began to walk back to the train line, to catch a car to Patpong. He would get his kit, take the grimoire, and go dig up Miles Hornby.

He would make Hornby tell him how he tricked the demon and he’d take the poor sod home so that Jack could get close enough to do the same.

But first, he was going to have a few choice words with Seth McBride.

Chapter Thirty

After the train dropped him at Silom Road, Jack found his way down Patpong 2 and up the stairs by Club Hot Miami. He leaned his head against Seth’s door, and listened for three beats of his heart. Sounds of the telly emanated from within, along with Seth’s voluble cursing against the parentage of the goaltender on the screen.

Jack braced on the railing. He put his boot against the lock and after two kicks the flimsy, rotted door flew inward to dent the damp plaster of the flat wall.

Seth leaped from his armchair, lager can tumbling to the floor and spilling a sticky amber puddle across the boards. “Jack?” he exclaimed. “Crow and cross, boy.”

Jack closed the space between them and hit Seth in the jaw, sitting him down hard in the puddle of lager. “Thought you got rid of me, Seth?”

Seth’s eyes bled to white, and a shield hex rippled at the edges of Jack’s vision. He leaned forward and pulled Seth up by the front of his T-shirt, so that any hex the other mage threw would disintegrate Jack, but put Seth on his arse as well. “You sent them to kill me.”

“Rahu wouldn’t kill you,” Seth scoffed. “He’s the master of Bangkok, not some thug fresh from the Pit. He was supposed to teach you a lesson and send you on your way.”

“You have no idea what he did to me,” Jack snarled. He wanted to smother Seth with magic, break his bones, call a demon to feast on his entrails. But that was the old days talking, the old hates.

Seth had found him, in the end. He’d kept Jack from passing through the Bleak Gates. For that, Jack dropped Seth back into his chair and paced to the window. The sun was setting across Bangkok, lighting the clouds on fire, orange tongues of airy flame scraping the iron sky.

“He did it to me as well, you know,” Seth said after a time. “When I arrived. He judged me worthy to live in this city under his protection.”

Jack leaned his forehead against the sticky glass. “What did he show you?”

“’S not important,” Seth muttered. “A girl, some bad magic, a mistake. It was all a very long time ago.”

“Well, mine wasn’t,” Jack said. His scars were itching, like they hadn’t in a decade. The thin lines were dessicated and covered over by track scars, but they burned now, like a hot razor was parting his flesh all over again.

“Jack.” Seth sighed. “Here’s the truth—you burn things down. After you tried topping yourself and finished disgracing the brothers, I had to leave Ireland. I lost my life because of you, Jack. But I’m content here, and if you come in throwing your weight about, everything will go to ashes because Jack Winter doesn’t leave anything but death in his wake.” Seth stood and held out his hand. “Give me the grimoire.”

Jack shot a glance at the open door, judged the distance, and then folded his arms. “Not in the cards, mate.”

“I’m not letting you bring your feud with Hell to me doorstep,” Seth insisted. “Give me the grimoire or I’ll take it from you.”

Jack spread his hand. “Come on then, old man. Make your best effort.”

A flutter of magic, like feathers across his cheek, and Seth balled his fist. A hex, a black flight of crow’s wings, flew toward Jack.

He’d never been one for duels—silly, antique things for mages who still wore frock coats and wallowed their days away in absinthe halls. Wi

Jack let himself fall, stumbling out the flat’s front door. He rolled to a stop against the railing and Seth’s hex flew overhead, magic screaming against his sight.

Panting, Seth chugged after him, raising his hand again. Seth might be old, but he was mean and tenacious, and fear only made him meaner.

“You stupid sod,” Seth wheezed. “Can’t accept your fate, leave them what still have a life to it and die like a normal bugger . . .”

“Not in my nature.” Jack pulled his own power to him, the slimy magic of the Black slipping between his grasp, shield hex forming and fragmenting before he could cast it. “You of all people know that, Seth.”

“Knew it would come to this, somehow. Always.” Seth’s magic flew to him, settled about his shoulders like a mantle of swirling black energy. Jack felt the cold, spindly fingers of a death curse reach out for him. “Sorry as hell, too. I did like you, boy. You can take that with you when you go.”

A shadow fell across Seth’s face as he raised his hands, and before the death curse flew free, there was a clang of metal on bone and Seth crumpled.

Jack sat up and shook off the first vestiges of the curse, his skin prickling. A figure crouched, and he saw Trixie’s bruise-colored eyeshadow and plum-painted Bettie Page lips, masking an expression of dire worry. “Are you all right?” she demanded.

“Fine.” Jack tested his shoulder, his ribs. They hurt, but he’d survived worse. “Thanks for the assist, luv.”

“Wasn’t me,” Trixie said. She helped him up and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She came looking for you, and we saw Seth about to do you in.”