Demon Bound

home.”
    Jack’s witchfire faded as his concentration stuttered and they were swept up into the blue-black of moonless night and rain. He shoved his hands into his pockets as he watched and tried to keep the rain off, not succeeding. Mud worked its way into his boots, water between his toes, rain down the sides of his face.
    Pete stumbled and cursed. “Hold on.” She felt in her pockets. “I’ve got my light here somewhere.”
    Jack looked back to the crossroads as a thin beam of weak gold sprang to life from Pete’s penlight. In the witch-fire, which gave everything deceptive sharp edges, he might have missed a section of shadow peeling off its fellows and padding forward into the roadbed, but he didn’t miss it now.
    “
Fuck
,” he hissed, as the wild magic rose to a roar in his head, drowning out even the rain.
    “Jack?” Pete spun around, training her light on the spot where something moved.
    “Pete,” he said softly. “You need to listen to me now.” His brain clicked over like he’d just snorted a straight hit ofcrystal—it was too far to the house, they’d never make it in time. Not both of them, at any rate. His bag just held herbs and the odd tin of dirt, not salt, not iron.
    All he had was his flick-knife. He was fucked.
    “It’s . . . it’s that thing from this afternoon,” Pete whispered as the
cu sith
advanced on them, inexorably, the limpid glow of its eyes like a lamprey floating through the soft sheets of mist and rain. “The black dog.”
    “Caught our scent,” Jack muttered. The black dog drew back its lip to reveal blade-sized teeth. “Pete,” Jack said. “When I tell you, you have to run. Really run, this time. For your life, and don’t look back. Get inside the house. Salt the doors and windows—every entrance.”
    Pete’s fingers clutched his arm as the black dog snarled, a sound that vibrated through the soles of Jack’s boots. “Why the fuck are you telling me all of this?”
    “The same reason I taught you the lockpicking charm,” Jack said, prising her grip off his jacket. “Because I might not be there when you need it.”
    Pete tried to grab for him again but he held her at arm’s length. He hated letting go of her, hated the expression of utter bone-deep betrayal on her face. But he had practice calling whatever outward expression he needed in the moment to his face, too much practice, and he kept his features calm. “Go, Pete. Salt the doors.”
    She hesitated for an instant, and Jack pushed her. “I said
run
, you stupid bint!”
    Pete ran, her footsteps crunching on gravel and fading as they joined the grass of the moor.
    Jack faced the black dog.
    The thing stopped a few meters from him, scenting the air. It chuffed, large head swinging from side to side.
    “You’re too late,” Jack told it. “Too late for anything except scraps. She’s gone.”
    He squared up his shoulders. This wasn’t what he’dimagined—a creature of the Black doing the demon’s work—but he supposed it was fitting as anything. “Get on with it, then. Lock your jaws on me and drag me down under the hill, if you would.”
    The black dog cocked its head. It took another step and Jack’s body, the traitorous thing that craved a fix and Pete and life, took a jerky step back in return.
    “You heard me!” Jack shouted, dropping his bag and spreading his arms. “What are you waiting for? Come the fuck on!”
    He waited for the cold, deathless sensation of a Fae creature sinking its teeth into his magic, into his very soul, but it didn’t come. The dog just snarled, swiping at the air with a paw. Its claws looked like carving knives.
    Jack held his ground, heart slamming fit to break his ribs. He stared into the black dog’s soft candle-flame eyes, and the black dog stared back. For a shred of eternity, Jack and the Fae creature shared the moor, the wild magic flowing around them, over and through Jack, filling him up with the desire to let go of his earthly burdens and step into the grasp of the
cu sith,
to give in to the inexorable pull of the Bleak Gates and admit that unless he found a way to get free of the demon, Death waited beyond every breath.
    We don’t want the crow-mage
, the black dog purred in the sibilant bell-voice endemic to the Fae.
    “I’m what you’re getting,” Jack gritted, but desperation was birthing a frantic plan in his hindbrain. The black dog was hunting, not feeding. It wanted something.
    Creatures that wanted something could be