Demon Bound

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 askmy 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.
    “All right.”
    The ambulance pulled away from the accident site with a jerk that moved Jack, Pete, and the corpse to the left as if they were on strings. Pete let out a breath as the corpse’s bloody hand flopped into her lap. “Jack, when this is over I am going to shove your head so far up your arse . . .”
    Jack nudged the corpse back onto the canvas sled with his boot. “Get in line, luv. I’m popular on that score.”
    They rode through newly rain-washed streets, neon bouncing off the dew and refracting Bangkok into a thousand shards of glass.
    The hospital was larger and newer than Jao’s lair, and Jack caught a glare from a nurse when he and Pete walked through A&E with the corpse delivery.
    Morgues, as far as they went, were not Jack’s favorite places on earth, along with police stations and shops that sold a lot of glass figurines. Morgues were cold and their magic was spiky, the layer between the Black and the light world thinned by death and the dead themselves, who crowded in close as he crossed the threshold.
    Jack saw ghosts, the first other than the dead GIs since he’d arrived in Bangkok. Most were still and silent, wearing their Y incisions and their last injuries like permanentblack and silver tattoos. A few bore the twisting cloaks of ethereal malignancy, pain and rage spilling across the tiles from their sunken black eyes and gaping black mouths.
    Jack fought against the nausea that boiled up in his guts. The fix was having its revenge.
    At least the dead told him they were in the right place. Jao’s spirit would draw every scrap of dead magic within the vicinity, a necromancer’s soul an irresistible morsel.
    If Jao had been a different sort of person in life, Jack might have felt a bit of pity. Then again, his arm was still throbbing and swollen, so perhaps not. Jao and Rahu and the lot of them—they could rot in their miserable little city on their corpulent, stinking river.
    The corpse carriers deposited their bundle and the one who spoke English eyed Jack. “You still want to see him?”
    Jack cast his eye at the tray of instruments waiting for the return of the unlucky charnel worker in the morning hours. “I want to do more than that.”
    The corpse man rolled out a tray, and Jao’s milky, suffocated eyes, shot through with pink spider veins, stared up at the ceiling. The corpse man held out his hand. “I can’t just leave you alone in here, you know.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Jack shoved the last of his
bhat
into the corpse carrier’s hand. “I know the score, mate. Give us a moment for my trouble?”
    The man nodded and he and the partner retreated with their sled. Jack pinched the sanitized plastic covering off the instrument tray and picked up the Stryker saw, the whining darling of B-horror directors everywhere.
    Pete frowned. “Jack, what are you doing?”
    “Something sacrilegious in nearly every way you can think of,” said Jack. “Learnt from a Stygian Brother back when they’d stolen Lawrence’s death—you want to find something, nothing homes in faster than a piece of black magician.”
    Pete pressed a hand over her mouth. “Please tell me you’re speaking in terms of a vial of blood or a lock of