Demon Bound

and out of the seam of his Y-incision, burying the hawthorn in the dead man’s chest, missed and he stabbed himself in the thumb.
    “You know who he was,” Jack told Jao. He snaked out his hand and snatched the hawthorn bundle from the corpse’s chest. “And now you’re going to tell me what happened to the body.”
    Jao’s lip curled. “You think you can order me around?”
    “Bet your lying arse, I do,” Jack said. “I’ve come too far and I’ve staked too much.
What
did you do with Hornby?”
    Jao heaved a dramatic sigh and cast a look at Seth. “Don’t look to me,” Seth said. “I’m not his bloody keeper.”
    Jao extended his hand to Jack. “Give it back.”
    “Nope.” Jack twitched the hawthorn out of Jao’s reach. “Quid pro quo, mate. Where’s Hornby?”
    Jao’s jaw muscle knotted under his skin, and his eyes blazed with the sick bruise-purple witchfire endemic tosorcerers. “I make your skin into a handbag, you miserable white bastard. I pull your teeth one by one and string them for conjure necklace . . .”
    Jack held up the hawthorn twig. “Too much chatter. Not enough information.”
    Jao’s lip pulled back in a sneer. Seth rubbed his forehead. “Jackie, I warned you. . . .”
    “I’m waiting,” Jack intoned, pulling his lighter from his pocket and flipping the top. He held the flame just under the hawthorn. “I don’t hear an answer.”
    “I can look up,” Jao muttered after a long moment when Jack wasn’t sure if Jao would cooperate or come after him with a scalpel. “Get my log book.” He shuffled over to the steel table and pulled a battered ledger from his bag, flicking over the pages with irritable twitches of his fingers. “Here,” he said finally. “Come here.”
    Jack approached but stayed clear of arm’s reach. “You find him.”
    In response, Jao spun around and lashed at him with a blood-coated scalpel. Jack slipped on the slick floor, went down, lost the lighter and the hawthorn twig along with his balance. His elbow cracked the concrete and pain radiated from his arm into his chest, hot fingers of flame.
    Before he could manage a fresh breath or to take inventory of his smashed bits, Jao lunged for him again, and Jack slid backwards, banging into the surgery table. The corpse shifted, and the whole thing toppled over.
    “Seth!” he shouted. “Grab this crazy cunt!”
    Nothing answered him except Jao’s hysterical gasping as he raised the scalpel and bore down on Jack. Jack whipped his gaze at the spot where Seth had last stood.
    Seth had vanished.
    Jao was screaming, face swollen and red as an overfilled balloon. As with the signs on the door, Jack didn’t need to speak a lick of Thai to know hysterical fear when he saw it.
    The silver tooth of the scalpel struck. Jack raised his hand and spit out a word of power, throat contracting like there was a cord about his neck.
    “Cosain!”
    The shield hex didn’t stop Jao, since he was flesh and only tangentially magic, but it slowed him down. The blade slid neatly along the outside of Jack’s arm as the necromancer stumbled and fell over the toppled surgery table, into the embrace of the corpse. Pain sparked in Jack’s muscle and bone, warm blood dripping down his forearm onto the floor to join the dead man’s.
    Jack’s hammering heart and blurred vision told him that he didn’t have more than thirty seconds before the blood loss and the blow put him out, and Jao was already up. Panicked and awkward as he was, he was faster than Jack on Jack’s best day.
    “I’m not going back!” Jao shrieked. “Not into that mouth! No more!” He slashed at Jack, and Jack felt air part in front of his eyes as the scalpel missed his face by millimeters.
    Jack considered that he was an all-right brawler, when the weapons were bottles, fists, or chains. He’d spent enough time in dodgy clubs populated with skinheads looking for a bruising to be fair with his fists. Against a crazed necromancer with a blade, though, he was rubbish.
    Jao wouldn’t sit still long enough to be hit with any kind of paralysis hex, and a spell to steal breath or eyesight wasn’t the sort of thing you conjured empty-handed.
    Jack had his sight, a flick knife, a pack of cigarettes, and the necklace Robbie had given him. No kit, no spell materials. Jack Winter, mage, had precisely shit.
    Jao came for him again, his magic cutting a roiling wake through the Black, and Jack ducked his swing, nearly falling over the corpse. The