Demon Bound

Seth’s farmhouse in County Cork.
    “Nasty,” Jack murmured. “A hungry, nasty creature of the Black.” His blood was drying to sticky paste on the window, and his palm ached. Pushing magic through his own blood always left him cold, fever-achy, and drained like he’d passed out in a pub loo and woken with a crick in his neck.
    It left too the faint craving for that floating, golden place where his talent met Pete’s Weir. He wished to drink down every last drop of Pete’s power, ride it forever.
    One fix or another, it made no difference.
    “That’s it?” Pete jiggled the key and the Mini started on the first crank, purring contentedly as always. “Usually you talk my ear off, Professor. Have you ever seen something like it before?”
    “Once,” Jack said, as they turned back onto the paved road and crawled back through the thinning fog to the junction.
    He could still hear the howl, echoing off the low stone wall and thatch roof of Seth McBride’s farmhouse. He’d climbed up on the roof and lit a fag, watching the enormous spectral creature pad on four feet across the fields, a purpose in its step so terrible and deliberate that even though the night was warm and soft, the height of an Irish summer, Jack had felt bone-chilled.
    The creature had looked at him, great blazing eyes staring across the distance and searing him body and sight. Then ithad walked on, over the rise and into the valley, where Seth’s closest neighbors resided.
    In the morning an ambulance bumped over the dirt track and into the same valley, left again with cargo wrapped in a yellow hazmat bag.
    You got yourself under stone when you heard a
cu sith
at bay. The black dog scented for blood, and the blood of the soul he’d come for was the only blood that would do.
    It was the first time Jack felt real fear toward a creature of the Black. Demons could swallow you down into Hell and Fae could bargain your memories away for a song, but they had rules. They could be tricked. No one bargained with the
cu sith
, the hound of Death. No mortal could make it see reason, no matter how clever a bastard he might be. Jack didn’t like fear—fear was useless in the Black, the stealthy, laughing killer that made you freeze, forget your hexing words, and piss yourself before something bit your head off.
    The
cu sith
was a subject of fear, of the inexorable human fate that conjured it. You couldn’t look into its lantern eyes and not see death staring back, unblinking and untenable.
    “It’s a
cu sith
,” Jack said. “Lots of names besides the Irish—black dog, in English. Harbinger of death. Chases down souls and drags them through the Gates.”
    They pulled into the circular drive of the Naughton house and Jack had the peculiar sensation again of falling into a vortex, the Black swirling and concentrating in this spot. After the
cu sith,
though, the state of Naughton’s psychic real estate seemed a minor concern.
    “Any particular souls?” Pete climbed out and approached the sucking void, but Jack blinked and it was just a rotted-out, rundown estate again.
    “Any it can get its jaws around,” he said. Pete bit her lipas if she wanted to press him, but she merely collected her keys and bag and went inside.
    Jack stayed for a moment, reluctant to walk back into Naughton’s eldritch problem.
    If the
cu sith
had only been hungry, it might have happened upon him by accident.
    But he was a mage and this was the Black and there weren’t any accidents or fucking coincidences. The
cu sith
had come for him, had seen the brand of the demon hovering just out of view. Marked for bloody death, and a
cu sith
’s favorite snack. Jack had the cold comfort that the
cu sith
was stepping onto the demon’s turf and that the demon made short work of those who tried to play with its toys.
    The only downside to the equation was Jack being the toy.
    He watched the crow land on the finial of Naughton’s roof and caw, spreading its wings and widening its beak until it looked grotesque, as if it were trying to answer Pete’s query.
    Any particular soul?
    Only mine
, Jack replied.
Jack fucking Winter, dead man bloody walking.

Chapter Fifteen
    Jack didn’t believe in dwelling on the inevitable. Try to change the future, and the future would just fuck you back, bent over and proper. Instead, he went into the Naughton house, went to his room, and checked his kit for graveyard dirt, coffin nails, herbs, and his scrying mirror. Matches, chalk, and copper