Caitlin Kittredge - Demon Bound

Pete shook her head. “Never saw a gangster at the Met who didn’t keep a promise when there was respect or honor involved. Never saw a hard man who risked his own reputation to make another look bad.” She smiled to herself, eyes narrowing. “Miles Hornby exists. And he’s in this city.”

Jack shook his head, scattering raindrops from his hair. “If he’s alive, he’s going to be even harder to find than dead.”

Pete pushed a finger into his chest. “Then you’d better hope you’re as good as you say you are, hadn’t you?”

He flashed Pete his smile, the one he used on stage and in situations where something larger wanted to beat the shite out of him. “I am that, luv. Every bit as bloody good. ’S how I stayed alive for thirteen years.”

Pete opened the door back into the noise of the bar. “Good to hear. Now let’s find Hornby, because I want to go home.”

Trixie watched Jack and Pete carefully when they came into the bar. Her hands worked over drinks and glasses, but her eyes stayed on him. You all right? she mouthed. Jack waved her off.

“Seems a silly thing to bargain your life over,” Pete murmured as they came to the street. “A name.”

“Not among demons,” Jack said. “Names have power—a name is the only thing that separates a demon from the ravening horde, down there in the Pit. Names given by Lucifer are Hell’s currency.”

“And souls are what, Hell’s bus token?” Pete shook her head, lip curling up. “I hate bloody demons. I hate every last one. Cold bastards.”

Jack didn’t correct her. Demons knew the value of cold bastardry better than any being in the Black. He’d taken most of his lessons in merciless self-service from demons. They were good teachers.

“I suppose I can call up some contacts,” Pete said as they walked through the night market, the tide of Patpong parting around them. “Use Ollie to get in touch with Interpol, see if Hornby’s turned up anywhere besides the grave he was supposed to be in.”

“He won’t.” Jack shuddered as the last of the good feeling the fix had brought ran out of him. Now was just roiling guts and headaches and cravings all over again. “Hornby’s too clever to get caught up by the coppers. He’s gone deep underground.”

Pete lifted a shoulder. “Faked his death? That’s never as simple as the telly makes it seem.”

“Simple enough,” Jack said. “Come to a city where the demon’s not welcome, spread around a story of a taxi accident that probably really happened, shove an anonymous gangster’s corpse in the grave in his place, and poof .” He spread his fingers. “No more lightly talented, unlucky musician with a short lifespan for the demon to find.”

Pete pulled a face. “First thing we learn in the Met—people don’t just vanish.”

“No,” Jack agreed. “Even mages.” You could get a new face and a new identity with varying degrees of magic, but to erase other people’s memories of you—that was the trick. Memories were the spine upon which the Black rested its weary flesh and blood. Memories were the only thing truly a man’s if he moved among the creatures of Faerie and Hell.

“People don’t just disappear,” Jack echoed.

“I said it,” she agreed. “Who here might know? What about that git Seth?”

Jack held up his hands. “Not Seth.” His scalpel cut was healing crookedly, puffy and red around the edges. He needed a real hospital, real stitches from a real doctor. “Seth shot his bolt,” he said. “He thinks I’ve gone over to sorcery, and I think he’s a fucking cunt. It’s safe to say we’ve reached an impasse.”

“He did try to kill you.” Pete folded her arms in such a way that Jack knew Seth would be eating through a tube if Pete had reached the scene a few seconds earlier.

“I’ll see him again someday, settle it, probably have to put the mad old man down.” Jack sighed. “Selling me out to the demon of Bangkok . . . I swear. He’s gone senile.”

“Who, then?” Pete stopped walking as her stomach rumbled. “Bloody hell, I’m starving.”

Jack realized they were near Robbie’s stall at the edge of the night market and gestured. “Oi, mate. You got anything to eat around here?”

While Robbie troubled his neighbor, a noodle cart, for two pasteboard containers heavy with spice, Jack rubbed the back of his neck. His head and his muscles ached. His arm hurt at the slash and at the injection site. Pete’s mouth twisted nervously.

“You all right?”

“Falling apart,” Jack said. “I’m discovering that I’m not as young as I once was.”

“Fuck me, I could have told you that,” Pete scoffed. Jack nudged her in the ribs.

“Oi. Watch that mouth, missy.”

“Or what?” Pete cocked her eyebrow, corners of her mouth dancing with a grin. Robbie handed her the noodles and she sucked down a mouthful with her chopsticks, watching him over her food with a hooded gaze.

“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.”

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.