Demon Bound

. . . she never found the necklace. My mother’s necklace. It was Valentine’s Day.” Lovett reached for Jack and Jack took a fast step, nearly tumbling over another headstone. “The day I died . . .”
    “Sorry, mate.” Jack snapped the spirit heart shut and shoved it into his pocket. “Guess us Northerners are all the same.”
    Lovett faded with a sigh, just another formless silver shade drifting among the tombstones and weeds, and Jack made his way back to the iron gate, which hung open at an angle that imitated a cheap paperback gothic.
    “Shame on you, Jack Winter.” The voice was far too smug and solid to come from a spirit throat. “Leaving that poor soul with his noncey unfinished business.”
    Jack turned sharply, saw nothing. “Leave off your games,” he snarled. “If you’ve got something to say, look at me face. If not, bloody well fuck off. I still have time.”
    “Do you really?” the demon purred. He was there, in the slice of shadow cast by the gate, same suit but sportingwhite on black this time and the same black, black eyes. “Or do you only have as much time as I give you?”
    Jack jerked his chin. “This how all you gits dress in the Pit? Or did you lose your way en route to the
Clockwork Orange
fancy-dress party?”
    The demon narrowed its eyes. “You should take care how you’re speaking to me, Jack Winter. What’s that the little black book says?
As above, so below?
Show me fealty now and I could perhaps find some little time to spare you. Time with Miss Caldecott, just for instance.”
    “You’re not screwing me with that particular dildo, not again,” Jack snapped. He turned to walk away, because he knew it would slag the demon off. Demons were creatures of ritual and respect to the point of compulsion. Jack tipped a salute over his shoulder. “Do give my regards to the other droogs.”
    “You don’t want her?”
    Jack stopped in the middle of the road that ran by the church, looked back. The demon smirked, rocking back and forth on the balls of its feet like it was waiting for the punchline of a joke. Jack sneered in return, contempt he didn’t feel except as a nervous boil in his guts.
    “You know exactly what I want, you bastard.”
    The demon smiled, tongue flicking out between its teeth. “I suppose that’s why we’re here, isn’t it, Jack?”
    “It is,” Jack agreed. “But the difference between you and me is that me, I don’t care about my moth-eaten old soul. But I’ll be thrice-damned if I drag Pete down with me, so if you show your face again before it’s my time, I’ll exorcise you so far back into Hell you won’t even have a name.”
    “Ohhh.” The demon shut its eyes and breathed deep, nostrils flaring, as if Jack’s belly-deep, sweaty fear was a heady perfume. “Jack, Jack. You shouldn’t threaten me so, old son. You know that I can visit you any time I like. Can do anything to you that might come into my little head.”
    “Fuck. Off,” Jack said plainly, putting the rest of the road between the demon’s grin and his person.
    The demon raised its hand as if to say farewell, and Jack felt the breathless, vertiginous sensation of magic, demon magic, too late as it gripped hold of his mind and dug its claws in deep.
    Pete shivered in the night air, the rain causing the torches at the edge of the stones to spit and smoke. Her hands tugged against the iron restraints, small delicate fingers begging to return the gesture as Jack’s hands searched over her stomach, her ribs, coming to rest on her breasts. His finger pads stroked her nipples, smearing the blue paint in time with his thrusts.
    This was raw magic, how it had always been, since the first druid and the first Weir long ago. Layers of power wrapped Jack, sweat grown cold against his skin. Pete circled her legs about his waist. Her heels dug into his thighs and her lips parted, panting wordless cries that urged him on to finish, to bind the spell their bodies wove, to take her magic as his own, by force. . . .
    Jack raised his face from the pavement, feeling small pockmarks where grit had wormed its way into the flesh of his jaw. A car horn sounded from somewhere far off.
    “Jack?” Pete’s voice drew closer and small hands felt his pulse, checked his pupils, and then sat him up.
    “’M all right, luv,” he managed. “Just wanting tea, I expect. Low blood sugar.”
    Pete favored him with her
Don’t pull my bloody leg
eye-brow.
    “Alien abduction?” Jack offered.