Demon Bound

“Or I might just take it into my head to show you the error of your ways,” Jack said. He was decently sure that Pete, the dedicated and driven inspector, had no idea the effect she had on men. Especially when she gave them that wicked come-hither look while smiling her arse off at their expense.

“I’d like to see you try,” she teased. Jack tasted the noodles, felt his stomach give a warning gurgle, and passed them to Pete.

“There’s a way we might find Hornby,” he said, to distract himself from sicking up all over Robbie’s stall. “It’s not pleasant or easy but it’s a pretty reliable scry if you can get past that.”

“Good.” Pete finished both portions and chucked the cartons in a bin. “When can we do it?”

Jack tilted his head, found the sound of sirens and screaming on the night air. “As soon as I find a corpse.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

The accident was a scooter accident, and the man in the street was broken nearly in half. A lorry idled nearby, the  driver arguing with police. Bhat changed hands, and the police returned to their vehicle, inching away from the scene through traffic.

Crowds on the pavement pressed close. A camera flash added its punctuation mark, bleaching the dead man’s skin paper white.

The corpse collectors carried a canvas field stretcher of the type used by the Territorial Army, and they set it on the damp street. Rain water and blood mingled in the gutters, slick black flowing down into the sewer and out to the river.

Jack stepped into the street, boots splashing in the current from the rain, and approached the corpse collectors. “Oi. Speak any English?”

One of them nodded, so Jack produced his wad of bhat. “There was a bloke died earlier today, in the hospital up the road. Name of Jao. Where’d you take him?”

The man shrugged. “I didn’t pick him up. Lemme ask my friend.” After an exchange, he pointed at Jack’s money. “Give us that and you can ride along.”

Jack nodded, but pulled it back when the man reached for it. “Her, too?”

Pete made a face at the small ambulance. It was an ancient Cadillac, insignia blacked out with spray paint, the low chassis and dented fins giving it the visage of a shark. “In that? With the corpse?”

“It’s that or I give up, go home, and get to know the more intimate crevices of Hell,” Jack shrugged. Pete’s jaw twitched, but she nodded.

“All right.”

The ambulance pulled away from the accident site with a jerk that moved Jack, Pete, and the corpse to the left as if they were on strings. Pete let out a breath as the corpse’s bloody hand flopped into her lap. “Jack, when this is over I am going to shove your head so far up your arse . . .”

Jack nudged the corpse back onto the canvas sled with his boot. “Get in line, luv. I’m popular on that score.”

They rode through newly rain-washed streets, neon bouncing off the dew and refracting Bangkok into a thousand shards of glass.

The hospital was larger and newer than Jao’s lair, and Jack caught a glare from a nurse when he and Pete walked through A&E with the corpse delivery.

Morgues, as far as they went, were not Jack’s favorite places on earth, along with police stations and shops that sold a lot of glass figurines. Morgues were cold and their magic was spiky, the layer between the Black and the light world thi

Jack saw ghosts, the first other than the dead GIs since he’d arrived in Bangkok. Most were still and silent, wearing their Y incisions and their last injuries like permanent black and silver tattoos. A few bore the twisting cloaks of ethereal malignancy, pain and rage spilling across the tiles from their sunken black eyes and gaping black mouths.

Jack fought against the nausea that boiled up in his guts. The fix was having its revenge.

At least the dead told him they were in the right place. Jao’s spirit would draw every scrap of dead magic within the vicinity, a necromancer’s soul an irresistible morsel.

If Jao had been a different sort of person in life, Jack might have felt a bit of pity. Then again, his arm was still throbbing and swollen, so perhaps not. Jao and Rahu and the lot of them—they could rot in their miserable little city on their corpulent, stinking river.

The corpse carriers deposited their bundle and the one who spoke English eyed Jack. “You still want to see him?”

Jack cast his eye at the tray of instruments waiting for the return of the unlucky charnel worker in the morning hours. “I want to do more than that.”

The corpse man rolled out a tray, and Jao’s milky, suffocated eyes, shot through with pink spider veins, stared up at the ceiling. The corpse man held out his hand. “I can’t just leave you alone in here, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jack shoved the last of his bhat into the corpse carrier’s hand. “I know the score, mate. Give us a moment for my trouble?”

The man nodded and he and the partner retreated with their sled. Jack pinched the sanitized plastic covering off the instrument tray and picked up the Stryker saw, the whining darling of B-horror directors everywhere.

Pete frowned. “Jack, what are you doing?”

“Something sacrilegious in nearly every way you can think of,” said Jack. “Learnt from a Stygian Brother back when they’d stolen Lawrence’s death—you want to find something, nothing homes in faster than a piece of black magician.”

Pete pressed a hand over her mouth. “Please tell me you’re speaking in terms of a vial of blood or a lock of hair.”

“Petunia, he’s dead,” Jack explained as he gave the saw an experimental rev. “And he was a nasty bugger when alive, so if you’re going to lose your supper over this of all things, go wait outside.”

Pete’s eyes narrowed. “Just because I can stand some of the things you get up to doesn’t mean I like them.”

“Fair enough.” Jack slipped on a cotton mask and a pair of goggles that pinched at the temples. He flipped the switch, and lowered the Stryker saw to Jao’s neck. The blood mist against his goggles was fine, coagulated, and nearly black. The salt-iron tang of it filled the air.

The saw faltered when it reached the spine, and Jack pressed down with all of his strength. He was rewarded when Jao’s head flopped back, nerveless, the skull thunking on the metal tray like Jack had dropped a bowling ball.

Jack looked at Pete, who had backed up against the far wall. Her pulse was pounding in her neck like a jackhammer. “Find me something to carry this in,” he said, indicating Jao’s head.

Pete moved stiffly, and got him an orange biohazard bag, which Jack in turn stuffed into a tote left behind by a morgue worker. Pete’s color hadn’t improved. “I’m going to be sick.”

“If you’re dealing with bastards, sometimes you’ve got to get dirty,” Jack said. “Be a bit of a bastard yourself.”

Pete put as much distance between herself and the bag as possible. “Jack, I don’t think I could do what you just did. Magic, fine. Demons, very well. But things like this . . . I just can’t.”

“You could, Pete.” Jack zipped the bag closed. “Just pray you never have to.”

Jao’s head was leaden, and Jack felt the tendrils of bad magic seeping into the air around him. The ghosts crowded after Jack, Pete, and Jack’s burden as he crossed the threshold back into the hospital, watching him through the swinging doors, their whispers teasing his sight until it felt like a thin needle piercing his brain.

Jack exhaled, massaging the center of his forehead. Pete eyed him. “What is it now?”

“Nothing,” Jack said. “But sometimes, I think I made the wrong bloody deal.”

“By most people’s definition, any deal with a demon is a wrong one,” Pete grumbled.

“Here it comes.” Jack shouldered the bag. “The self-righteous tongue-lashing from your spot of Catholic guilt. Go ahead, luv—I’m ready.”