Demon Bound

“I’m not saying a word,” Pete told him, and kept her promise while they left the hospital and found a motorbike taxi. Jack told the driver, “Nearest river bridge, and hurry it up.”

Pete stayed silent while they poked inch by inch through the crush of motorbikes and cars converging on the choke point of the river’s edge. She stayed silent when Jack paid the driver with pounds sterling, and she stayed silent when he walked to the center of the pedestrian walkway and peered into the river.

“How long are you going to be in a snit?” The sewage stink of the river, mixed with salt and cooking oil, wafted up to put greasy little fingers all over his face.

Pete sniffed. “As long as I bloody well please.”

“Look.” Jack let out a sigh. The river was crowded with long boats and water taxis, but this spot looking toward the skyscrapers and away from the slums would do. “Whatever you want to say, let it out and have done. This silent treatment is for twat couples on the telly. It’s not for us.”

“Oh.” Pete’s tone bit down hard and let Jack know that his usual style of git with a bit of arsehole mixed in might have landed him in uncharted territory. “There’s an us now, is there?”

Jack stopped, his hands knotted in the plastic wrapped around Jao’s head, and shut his eyes. “Pete, what do you want me to say? Want me to run into the street and declare me love? Burst into song? I don’t know what we’ve got any more than you do.”

“If I have to tell you what we’ve got, Jack, then fuck it anyway. It’s not bloody worth it.” Pete paced away a few steps and leaned on the railing. “Never was.”

Jack set Jao’s head back in the bag. “You think I don’t know, Pete?” He stood up, went to her, grabbed her arm. His hand slipped against her sweat. “That I’ve been stupid and reckless and deserve what I’ve got coming because I’m a coward and a liar? You think it doesn’t follow me like shadow wherever I walk on this earth?” His fingers pressed down, and they would bruise, but Jack couldn’t stop himself. He’d frayed, and worn, and now he’d broken. “Tell me, Pete. Tell me what exactly you don’t understand about my wasted, wrecked existence, because from where I’m standing it’s not that fucking complicated.”

Her eyes filled but her fist came up, thumped against his chest like a second heartbeat, over and over. “How you could do it!” she shouted. “How you could do it when you’re Jack Winter!” She slumped against him, her fist unclenching. They’d traded bruises, now. Stood square and equal. Pete gave one shuddering breath and drew herself upright. “You’re not supposed to be the one with scars, Jack,” she whispered. “Because if you can be broken, that means I have to pick up the pieces, and it terrifies me, knowing what I know now, to think you won’t be there beside me someday soon.”

Jack conjured a smile. Pete didn’t need to see the dark, twisted, terrified mess inside his chest. She needed to see his armor, the Jack she’d met a dozen years ago. “They haven’t got me yet, luv. And if this goes right, they won’t.” He passed the backs of his knuckles down her cheek. They came away warm, wet, and salty.

Pete looked down, sniffed like she hadn’t let the tears come at all. “You promise me?”

“Promise,” Jack said. And he meant it, for fuck-all a promise from him was worth. For Pete, he’d kick and fight and bare his teeth until the demon dragged him into Hell with claws in his hide. “Now, I need to concentrate on scrying, so what say we kiss and make up?”

Pete choked a laugh. “Because nothing’s romantic as a head in a plastic wrapper. You sweep me of my feet, Jack Winter. Truly.”

He dipped his head and planted a light brush of lips on her forehead. “I do me best.”

Jao’s head still stared at him bug-eyed when he unwrapped it, lips swollen and tongue threatening to pop out from the mouth. Jack forced the jaws open with his finger and dug in his bag for herbs. He stuffed in his scrying mediums, a flat black stone, a twist of feather, and a clump of sage. He gathered Jao’s hair in a clump, attaching a length of linen string in a hardy knot.

Jack cradled the head in his arms and stepped up on the rail, toes hanging into space, black water flowing under his feet like the tide of souls into the Bleak Gates.

He held the head out in front of him like a rugby ball, wrapping the string around his knuckles. He lowered the thing by degrees, until it dangled a few meters above the water, and the feedback of black magic traveled up his arms and across his skin, burrowing deep.

“Someone’s going to see us,” Pete warned.

Jack rocked against the weight of the head, and the heady rush of energy all through his nerves. “’Course they will. However, I wager no one’s going to bother the crazy farang and his severed head.”

Pete made a face, like she’d report him to the coppers herself if she had a choice. “Just be quick. That head is absolutely creepy.”

The string in his fist gave a twitch, and Jack held up his free hand to Pete. “Hush.”

Scrying wasn’t like summoning or exorcism. It was a quiet art, precise and delicate, requiring a steady hand and a steadier mind to keep the sharp pinpoint of focus on whatever it was you sought. Mages used ink, mirrors, or  plain stone pendulums to find nearly anything. White witches stared at crystals and sorcerers used the writhing, sticky energy of necromancy to scry with human bodies.

Mages could find ghosts, missing things, lost people, but to find a human being who wanted to stay hidden and cemented their chances with magic—that was the realm of the darker arts.

The head moved. It swayed back and forth in a parabolic arc above the river water. Water, the great current that bound the spirit world and the light one, cha

Jack said, “Miles Hornby.”

The head came to a stop at an angle, rigid, white eyes staring north. They rolled back toward Jack.

He felt the magic squirm from his grasp, winding down the string to take up residence in Jao’s skull. Jack’s skin crawled, like it was trying to separate from his flesh and bone.

The sorcery spoke, in a voice that was older than bone and more wicked than any demon. It filled Jack up until it spilled over, and as he watched the head’s jaws began to work, the swollen tongue flopping with the effort needed to form a word.

Jack’s stomach and his balance lurched as the scrying spell gripped him, and he strained to hear the worlds borne on the spell. For a moment, there was only the rushing water and the hiss of the long boats poling underneath the bridge, and then his arm jerked as the spell snapped home.

“Kâo Făn Wat,” the head gasped, and then the string broke and the thing plunged into the river with a splash, disappearing beneath the dark and oily waves.

Jack let go of the string, felt it slip through his fingers and follow the spell down into the depths. The long boats passing by paid no notice to the slowly dying pool of ripples on the river. They paid even less attention to one lone white nutter standing on the rail.

Pete grabbed him when he swayed, and Jack jumped down. The heroin had left behind a feeling of being hollow on the inside, a carapace around a dusty left-behind set of i

“So?” She let go of him quickly and put an arm’s length between their bodies. They may have made up the fight but he wasn’t forgiven.

“Kâo Făn Wat,” Jack said. “Whatever that means.”

“A wat is a temple,” Pete said. “Learnt that from Tomb Raider. What direction?”

Jack pointed to where the head had come to rest. “That way. Never heard of Kâo Făn Wat. No idea what it is.”

Pete grimaced. “Fantastic. Now what do we do?”

Jack sighed, the feeling of inevitability clenching at his stomach, forcing him to step out to the road and hail a motor taxi. “Now we go and ask someone who does.”