Caitlin Kittredge - Demon Bound

Pete fetched up against his shoulder, propelling Jack into the flat. His protection hexes hung in useless tatters from the demon’s passage.

“This is him?” Pete said. Her fists curled into small knots of knuckle and bone.

“It,” Jack said. “Not him, no matter what it chose to make itself look like.”

The demon ticked its tongue against its teeth. “I’ll ask again, Jack—where’s my soul?”

Jack ignored the feeling that the floorboards had dropped away from him, ignored that his heart was thudding so loudly it nearly drowned out his own voice. “Did you check the last place you had it? Or—hold up—behind the sofa?”

The demon cocked its head, and Jack was on his knees. Blink, crash, pain. Jack’s air rushed out of him, but he didn’t make any sound. Didn’t let the demon know that it hurt. That was the first thing you learned—never show them that it hurt.

“Where. Is. My. Soul?” The demon knelt and put a finger under Jack’s chin. He felt the nail sink in, and a trickle of blood work its way into the hollow of his throat.

Pete’s shadow fell over them both. “Let him go.”

The demon’s black pits of eyes flicked away from Jack, looked to Pete, and came back to rest. Tiny flames danced in their recesses. “Got a better offer for me, my dear?” He licked his lips. “You offered yourself to Treadwell. You nearly died. Won’t be a near miss with me, I promise you.”

“Pete,” Jack managed. “This isn’t your problem, luv. Get out of here.”

“No,” she said. “It can’t have you.”

The demon’s lip curled back. “If she keeps sassing me, Winter, she’s going to be joining your arse in the Pit. Am I quite clear?”

Pete grabbed Jack’s arm, clung to him, and for once her power didn’t stir him up. The demon’s cold, inhuman, lizard-brained magic curled back from the onslaught of the Weir, and Jack’s sight quieted.

“You can’t have her,” he echoed Pete. The demon laughed.

“I don’t need her, Winter. I’ve got you.”

“No.” Jack raised himself up from the floor with Pete’s help. The demon’s nail scraped across his jaw as he yanked away. “You don’t have me, either.”

The demon stopped smiling. “What are you saying to me, boy?”

Jack shook off the pain of the demon’s magic, made himself stand straight. “Your fucking soul is in Hell, one of Rahu’s charges. He had the right idea—shot himself in the face. You wanted Hornby, that’s where Hornby’s gone to. He didn’t cheat death in the end but he cheated you, right enough.”

The demon’s eyes flamed to twin points. “This is not what we agreed on, Winter.”

“It’s not,” Jack said wearily. “But it’s what you’re getting. You want him, you go and tangle with Rahu. I find myself curiously unmotivated to do anything else you ask.”

He crossed his arms and waited for the demon to absorb the fact that his prize soul had slipped away.

The demon lifted a shoulder. “Ah, well.”

Pete shot Jack a glance. He bored his gaze into the demon. “Well? What?”

“Dead, isn’t he?” the demon said. “Old Rahu is a bitter sod, but I’m sure I can find something he wants for one marginally talented musician who sold himself out of noble selflessness. Fuck me, it’s so boring when they do it for altruism.” It grinned at Jack, as if they shared a secret. “I told you that no one cheats me, Jack.”

“You did,” Jack agreed, trying to ignore the sickness in his throat. The crow landed on his sill, stared in at the proceedings. It opened its beak silently, bared it at the demon.

“Can’t say it hasn’t been fun, Jack,” the demon intoned. “I’ll be seeing you in, oh, about thirty-six hours, yes? Three-thirty p.m. on the day.”

“Not so fast,” Jack snarled. His shakes had started again, withdrawal or simple fatigue he couldn’t tell, but the thing he knew for sure was that this time, it wasn’t fear.

“I think you owe me something,” he told the demon. “We made this bargain for your name.”

“And the bargain was for a whole soul, not a scrap I have to wrestle away from another member of the pack,” the demon said. “I was quite clear. Too bad, Jack. You failed. I’ll see you soon.”

The demon opened the door of the flat, began to exit. Pete and the crow watched Jack with frantic stillness, panic raging through Pete’s eyes.

Jack stepped toward the demon. “ Wait. ”

The demon turned its head back, mouth flicking in amusement. “Yes, Jack?”

In Jack’s mind, the pages of the grimoire that he’d copied before Seth had ripped it from him floated. The summoning. The safeguards a sorcerer could use.

“I’m calling our bargain before the Triumvirate,” Jack said aloud. The pain from the demon’s magic increased, vibrating through his blood and his bones, making his head ring as if it were made of brass, but Jack held on. “I challenge you before the rulers of Hell for your name, you shite-talking speck of soot. For your name.”

The demon’s face cracked, its expression going waxy and plastic, a lifelike doll with the batteries run down. “Don’t do this, Winter. Your pride is going to eat you alive, boy.”

Jack decided it was his turn to laugh, even though it hurt. “I’m not scared of you, or dying. Not anymore.”

The demon shook its head. “Then you should be, Jack. Because you’re going to Hell, and all that you’ve left behind is bad memories and a broken heart.”

“I challenge you in the view of the Triumvirate,” Jack repeated. “For your name.”

“I heard you the first time,” the demon snarled. “You are making a bad, bad mistake, Jack. I liked you before this, but now you’ve begun to irritate me.”

“You can’t refuse,” Jack said quietly. “You and every other demon of Hell are bound by the same laws.”

The demon rolled its eyes heavenward, a move that Jack would have found infinitely amusing were he not bartering for his life. “Fine. Name the time and place of me thoroughly teaching you the error of your ways.”

“The Naughton manor,” Jack shot back. “One day from now.”

“Very well.” The demon grinned at Pete. “Enjoy the day with him, Weir. It’s your last.”

It was gone when Jack looked back, the Black rippling in its wake. Jack made it to his sofa and slumped. Pete sat next to him, brows drawn together in vast concern.

“Jack, what just happened?”

He put a sofa pillow over his eyes. There had never been sofa pillows—or saucers, scatter rugs, or napkins made of cloth—until Pete had come to live with him. A sofa pillow was good. You could tuck it under your head for a quick kip, or use it to smother yourself when you’d just become the biggest bloody fool you knew.

“I made the shit choice,” Jack said. “To willingly go to Hell and challenge the demon to learn its name before the three ruling members of the Triumvirate.”

Pete chewed on her lip. “Can you win?”

Jack took the pillow away. “Not a chance.”

Pete let her air out, slumping back to mimic his position. “Oh.”

She went to her travel bag, found her fags and lighter, lit one. She offered it to him when she’d taken a drag. Jack accepted it and polluted his lungs for a long breath.

“Cheers.”

“And the Naughton mansion?” Pete asked. Jack scratched under the edge of his bandage, where the cut from Jao was beginning to itch like a particularly virulent venereal disease.

“Blank spot in the Black. Energy is so bollocksed up from the necromancer fucking about I thought it might give me an edge.”

Pete curled against him, surprising him with her weight, and Jack moved to make room for her in the crook of his body. “Thought you said you’d lose,” she whispered.