Caitlin Kittredge - Demon Bound

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, channeling the sorcerous energy into Jack’s search.

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 innards, owner long since moved on.

“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.”

“I have to say, I would have laid a bet that you wouldn’t come back here.” Rahu smiled at Jack, at Pete. Outside, the nighttime smells and sounds of Khlong Toei rose and fell and tantalized, thick and dreamy.

“Not by choice, mate.” Jack fought the urge to remove the smirk from Rahu’s face. Not that he could manage it, but the effort would be cathartic.

“Seth McBride is in the hospital,” Rahu said. “It seems someone fractured his skull.”

“Good,” Pete shot back. “Never met anyone who deserved it more.”

Rahu clucked. “Out of respect for your mistress, Weir, I’ll let it pass. But don’t think I’ll turn my head a second time.”

“The crow woman? She’s not mine.” Pete snorted. “Talk to Jack.”

Jack stepped in, closer to Bangkok’s demon than he would have strictly cared for. He only moved so close to show that after the last time, he wasn’t afraid. “Kâo Făn Wat. Hornby’s hidden out there.”

“And this concerns me how?” The night was wet and warm as saliva on skin, but Rahu neither sweated nor for-went his all-black head-to-toe getup. Jack had learned long ago that you didn’t trust things that didn’t sweat.

“You want me gone, you tell me where he is,” Jack said. “Simple. You want me to hang about, bothering your nec-romancers and your arse-boys like Seth, getting drunk, pissing in your gutters, and generally making a great fat nuisance of meself, then by all means. Pull the other one.”

“Kâo Făn Wat is the Temple in Dreaming,” said Rahu. “And I can’t tell you where it is, mage, because no one knows. No one who knows the location of Kâo Făn Wat has lived in the last five hundred years.”

“I’m not mistaken,” Jack growled. “I scryed for Hornby. I asked the Black.”

“Then perhaps you’ve forgotten that the Black can lie and deceive,” said Rahu. “Just as a treacherous mage can.”

“Fine,” Jack said. “What can you tell me? Or are you useless, like all the other pit-spawned wankers I’ve come up against?”