Demon Bound Read online

  All he had was his flick-knife. He was fucked.

  “It’s . . . it’s that thing from this afternoon,” Pete whispered as the cu sith advanced on them, inexorably, the limpid glow of its eyes like a lamprey floating through the soft sheets of mist and rain. “The black dog.”

  “Caught our scent,” Jack muttered. The black dog drew back its lip to reveal blade-sized teeth. “Pete,” Jack said. “When I tell you, you have to run. Really run, this time. For your life, and don’t look back. Get inside the house. Salt the doors and windows—every entrance.”

  Pete’s fingers clutched his arm as the black dog snarled, a sound that vibrated through the soles of Jack’s boots. “Why the fuck are you telling me all of this?”

  “The same reason I taught you the lockpicking charm,” Jack said, prising her grip off his jacket. “Because I might not be there when you need it.”

  Pete tried to grab for him again but he held her at arm’s length. He hated letting go of her, hated the expression of utter bone-deep betrayal on her face. But he had practice calling whatever outward expression he needed in the moment to his face, too much practice, and he kept his features calm. “Go, Pete. Salt the doors.”

  She hesitated for an instant, and Jack pushed her. “I said run, you stupid bint!”

  Pete ran, her footsteps crunching on gravel and fading as they joined the grass of the moor.

  Jack faced the black dog.

  The thing stopped a few meters from him, scenting the air. It chuffed, large head swinging from side to side.

  “You’re too late,” Jack told it. “Too late for anything except scraps. She’s gone.”

  He squared up his shoulders. This wasn’t what he’d imagined—a creature of the Black doing the demon’s work—but he supposed it was fitting as anything. “Get on with it, then. Lock your jaws on me and drag me down under the hill, if you would.”

  The black dog cocked its head. It took another step and Jack’s body, the traitorous thing that craved a fix and Pete and life, took a jerky step back in return.

  “You heard me!” Jack shouted, dropping his bag and spreading his arms. “What are you waiting for? Come the fuck on!”

  He waited for the cold, deathless sensation of a Fae creature sinking its teeth into his magic, into his very soul, but it didn’t come. The dog just snarled, swiping at the air with a paw. Its claws looked like carving knives.

  Jack held his ground, heart slamming fit to break his ribs. He stared into the black dog’s soft candle-flame eyes, and the black dog stared back. For a shred of eternity, Jack and the Fae creature shared the moor, the wild magic flowing around them, over and through Jack, filling him up with the desire to let go of his earthly burdens and step into the grasp of the cu sith, to give in to the inexorable pull of the Bleak Gates and admit that unless he found a way to get free of the demon, Death waited beyond every breath.

  We don’t want the crow-mage, the black dog purred in the sibilant bell-voice endemic to the Fae.

  “I’m what you’re getting,” Jack gritted, but desperation was birthing a frantic plan in his hindbrain. The black dog was hunting, not feeding. It wanted something.

  Creatures that wanted something could be bargained with.

  They could be tricked. The sure and swift fate of those marked by the cu sith might not be his, after all.

  We seek the blood-born messenger of the old voices, the girl on the owl’s wing, the dog rumbled.

  “Can’t help you there, mate,” Jack said. “Kiss me or kill me, but you’re not getting Pete.”

  Crow-mage, in your arrogance do not make the mistake of thinking we will mind the Hellspawn’s bargain, the dog whispered, and Jack’s stomach went sideways.

  “How do you know about that?”

  We guard the doorways and the byways, the secret places and all who pass. We see much. We see you.

  The dog let out a howl that could bleed eardrums, that rolled and echoed off the hillside.

  “It’s not Pete you want,” Jack said, the edge of frantic making his voice ragged. “You have to leave, do you understand? Leave her alone.”

  We are not seeking harm, crow-mage, the dog hissed. We are seeking to keep her from the taint of death, the mud and blood and carnage of the crow. We do not expect you to understand.

  Jack felt his temper fray, a curious physical sensation akin to standing up too fast when you’d gone and tied a few pints on. His shield hex grew in front of him before he was even aware he’d whispered “Cosain,” and he felt witchfire curl across his exposed skin as his fury burned in the night.

  Gone was the fear. Now he just wanted the thing in front of him to hurt, burn, and cower before his magic.

  The black dog crouched, nails digging into the mud. You think I fear a flesh-and-blood thing such as you, crow-mage? Bitch of the war-hag?

  “You’re one to talk about bitches,” Jack said. “And I think you’re scared enough to keep away from me, to skulk around in shadows like a shade. If you want to kill me, you’re welcome, mate. Here’s your open chance. Take your fucking try.”

  The black dog reared, charged, and Jack braced himself for the psychic impact on his hex. It felt like nothing so much as sticking your head inside a great bloody bell and ringing the clapper, loud and riotously painful.

  Something streaked into his vision from the left, a small form with a silver weapon. Pete swung the crowbar over her head and down, landing it squarely on the black dog’s spine.

  “Go back where you sodding came from!” she shrieked.

  The dog howled at the touch of cold iron, and stumbled. Jack spun out of the way, going on his arse in the mud and avoiding the thing’s claws by inches.

  Cease! The dog howled. We mean to take you as our own, Weir. . . .

  “Not bloody likely.” Pete clutched the crowbar, her breath rasping in and out like a saw, lips parted and body trembling. “Now I’m no mage and I’m no sure hand at this but if you come near me again I’ll send you back to the fucking Dark Ages, you mangy git, so take the chance and fuck off!”

  She swung the crowbar again, catching the dog across the snout, and it yelped and cowered, eyes fading to a sick shade of orange.

  That, it told Pete, was a grave error in judgment, girl.

  “Wouldn’t be the first,” Pete said, her voice icy as the aura surrounding the black dog. “Won’t be the last.”

  Jack gripped Pete’s arm, causing her to lower the crow-bar. The black dog skirted around the edges of his hex, wary now of the iron, its breath leaving great dragon puffs of white in the freezing air. “We need to go,” Jack told Pete. “We need to go now.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Pete said. She dropped the crow-bar and backed up until she was pressed arm-to-arm with Jack, and as one they turned and ran.

  Jack felt his lungs protest after the first few steps, a cutting sensation sawing against his breastbone. For the first time in his adult life, he wholeheartedly promised any higher power listening that if he survived past the next few minutes, he’d seriously consider cutting back on the fags.

  They pelted down the hill, Jack snatching glances into the night behind him, watching for the black dog.

  The baying started when the estate was just within reach, a few hundred meters across the muddy grass.

  On the crest of the hill, Jack saw the black shadow ripple and re-form as the dog stopped to scent him, and then two other shadows join it, all of them raising their snouts to the hidden moon and offering their blood oath.

  “What d’you know,” he panted. “I thought it was just being a pretentious git using the royal we.”

  “Less talk!” Pete snapped. “More moving!”

  The house lay so close, back door open, a slice of light spilling forth like the Heaven that the priests of his childhood assured Jack he’d never see.

  Behind him, the black dogs bayed and he felt their breath, heard their pants as he ran through the rain, dug in his toes, and really pulled for the line. He wasn’t going to
die in the mud, brought down like a rabbit.

  Jack didn’t have much, but he was better than that.

  Just when he thought he was going to drop, when black closed in at the edges of his eyes and his breath felt like a rusty bayonet ripping through his chest, he hit the door, tripped over the threshold, fell hard on the shoulder the poltergeist had bollocksed.

  Pete stumbled after him, slamming the door and sliding the bolt home. Jack felt the wild magic following them, like a cloud of toxic smoke, and he pointed at the kitchen. “Salt!”

  In the fetid kitchen, Jack snatched up the big tin he kept in his kit and Pete grabbed for the leather packets laced with thongs, jerking one around her neck and tossing one at Jack. He put it on as he flung a line of white crystal at every window and door he passed. With each application, the magic retreated a bit, loosening its bony grip on his heart. The baying of the hounds faded, and finally, as Jack salted the front door, all that remained was the gentle wash of the rain against the glass and discordant drip of water from a leak somewhere high above.

  Jack realized his hands were shaking as he closed up the salt tin, and it took a few tries to shut it tight. He leaned his forehead against the front door and fumbled for a fag. His pack was flat and empty. “Shit,” he muttered. It never rained but it poured.

  The shivering wasn’t just from coming so close to the cu sith and its mates a second time—he was soaked to the bone and the mansion was erratically heated at best.

  “Pete?” he shouted, checking the salt lines one last time. Nothing from the Black was coming into the mansion. Nothing was getting out, either. Jack hoped the poltergeist of Danny Naughton would hold off from smacking him about until Jack’d managed to put a ration of whiskey and a cup of tea down his throat.

  Until he stopped shaking, stopped betraying the bottomless fear that had crept up when he saw the black dog again. When it spoke to him. Fae creatures, other than the Unseelie, didn’t speak to humans, and they certainly didn’t threaten them like the black dog had.

  “Kitchen, still,” Pete called. Jack put the salt away in his bag, and pushed his hands through his hair before he left the front hall. It was damp and frozen at the tips, and started him shivering again.

  Pete had poured the last of a cloudy bottle of whiskey into two jam jars. She took hers, mounting the servants’ stairs. “I’m freezing. I’m going to get dried off.”

  “Are you all right?” Jack said as she started up.

  “Of course,” Pete said. “Shaken, a bit. But fine.”

  She didn’t meet his eyes, and Jack took her gently by the wrists, drawing her close. “Why did you come back? I told you to stay inside. Stay behind the salt.”

  Pete still wouldn’t look at him. “Jack . . .”

  “Why, Petunia?” He gave her a small shake. “Do you realize what could have happened?”

  “Of course I do!” Pete flared. “I’m not bloody stupid!” She shrugged him off with an angry slap. “I’m not fine, Jack, and I don’t know precisely what happened but I do know that you don’t get to give me orders. Not about things like this. I won’t let you fling yourself on a sword for me. No one gets the right to do that, you understand?”

  Jack grabbed her again, pushing her back against the door, her skull and his knuckles rattling against the wood. “You need to understand, Pete. I won’t always be able to tell you what to do, so you have to learn, now. Before . . .”

  He trailed off, letting go of her, scrubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes. The secrets crowded close in his brain and his skull throbbed like it was going to shatter.

  “Before what?” Pete said, softly. She took his hands, pulled them down so she could look at his face. “Before what, Jack?”

  It was her touch that undid his resolve, because it was gentle. Pete could be hard—Jack’d experienced it firsthand when she’d handcuffed him to her bedpost and forced him to detox from the heroin.

  But she held his hands gently, and squeezed them. “Jack . . . just tell me.”

  He looked at his boots. They were crusted with mud and salt, drying now, the battered leather stained. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t, Pete.”

  Her touch went away. “If that’s how it is then we can’t be anything, Jack. We’ll do the job and we’ll collect the pay but if you can’t tell me something even when it’s eating you up, then this can’t go on.”

  She mounted the stairs and she was out of sight before Jack found his voice. “I’m sorry, Petunia,” he murmured. “I am so, so sorry.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  He followed her after a time, found her stripped down to her undershirt and denim. Her muddy clothes were in a heap on the carpet and she’d lit a small fire in the smoky grate.

  Jack held out a mouse-nibbled pink towel. “Peace offering?”

  Pete sighed and then snatched it from him, using it on her face and hair. “Only because I’m like a drowned rat.”

  “No,” Jack said, using his own manky towel to dry his hair. “You’re never that, luv.”

  “Jack,” Pete sighed. “Do me a favor and don’t try and make this better by coming on to me. It’s just horrid and confusing at this point.”

  He turned his back so Pete wouldn’t see him looking gut-punched, because what sort of a hard and wicked mage would he be if he got sour over a girl shooting him down?

  “My apologies,” Jack said. “In a platonic and boring fashion, is it all right if I share your fire until me clothes dry out? I have a feeling if I fall asleep damp I’ll wake up with some horrid Victorian disease.”

  “That’s fine,” Pete said. Her posture unwound when she realized he wasn’t going to push her.

  How he wanted to push her. He wanted to touch cool milky skin with his fingers, feel hot breath on his neck, crush her with the desperate pressure he felt whenever she came within a meter of him.

  Jack stripped off his shirt, the sodden thing landing with Pete’s clothes, and unlaced his boots, setting them on the hob. His tattoos licked up the firelight, and he was surprised when Pete sat next to him on the edge of the bed, blocking the dancing shadows.

  “I trusted you, you know,” she said. “When we met again. I trusted you even though it nearly killed me.”

  Jack lifted his shoulder. “Trust isn’t a commodity that has any value in this life, Pete.”

  “But it does between us,” she said. “And the fact that you won’t trust me speaks buckets.”

  He stayed silent. There was nothing to be said, and Jack valued silence, always had. When one grew up with screaming, crying, and soft whimpering day and night, silence was worth more than gold. And when there was nothing to be said that didn’t bring fury on your head, you shut the fuck up and you took your lumps.

  “And the real pisser of it is that I like you,” Pete said. “If this were some bloke at work, or a regular, normal, dull-as-dishwater boyfriend, I wouldn’t care. I’d move on. But you, Jack. You had to make me take the plunge into this life with you, and now you won’t trust me and that’s just bloody shit of you, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t,” Jack corrected her, voice barely more than a cigarette rasp. “Not won’t. Can’t trust you.”

  Pete’s lip curled. “Well, Jack Winter, tell me: what can you do?”

  Jack felt the weight of the secret, in his gut like a stone. He felt the demon’s secret as mercury on his tongue, cold and slippery and begging to be spilled.

  Instead, he grabbed Pete by the nape of her neck and pressed their lips together.

  She let out a small sound, her cheek going flush and warm against his as their bodies met, and her hands searched up his bare chest for his shoulders, finger pads digging in and holding fast.

  As he slid his tongue between her lips, and they parted warm and willing for his advance, Jack thought to himself that he should stop. If he had any kind of decency left, he’d stop. He’d remove himself from temptation then and there, and never see Petunia Caldecott again.

  But Jack knew the s
tory of him and temptation, knew it by rote. The bright, hot, shining things always tempted him. And sooner or later, Jack always gave in.

  Pete climbed into his lap, slim strong thighs pressing against his legs, breaking the kiss long enough to tangle her hand in his hair, dig the other into the flesh of his back, press her tits against his chest and her core against the swell of his cock, which grew harder, nearly painful, at even the hint of her touch.

  Jack wasn’t naive enough to think he held any control over himself any longer. He put his lips against Pete’s neck, the deep-down reptile memory expecting the taste of sweat and sex and woad from his vision.

  She tasted cool instead, a few raindrop still clinging to her skin, her pulse fluttering under his mouth as he frantically drank down as much of her as he could. It was his last chance, his only chance, and Jack breathed her in instead of air as his hands searched out the hem of her shirt and tugged.

  Abruptly, Pete pulled back, away from him, and Jack came back to himself with a vertiginous jolt. He was too warm, the air was too cold, and his hard-on scraped painfully against his jeans.

  Of course she’d stop him. This was Pete he was with, not some coke-addled Bastards groupie or blissed-out junkie girl fucking him for a bed in a squat.

  Pete put her finger under his chin, drew his gaze up. Every touch sent waves of the Black echoing through him, their magics twining even now, as Jack struggled to keep himself from simply grabbing her and doing what every fiber in his body demanded.

  “Jack, what are we doing?” she whispered. Her voice was rough and her breaths were heavy, in time with Jack’s own throbbing heart. Pete was spinning out as badly as he was, and for some reason the knowledge filled Jack with a giddy joy. He might as well have chased a handful of downers with a shot of espresso.

  “I don’t know anymore,” he whispered back, pressing his forehead against hers, their lips close enough to share any secret.