Demon Bound

echoed round the small room and Jao whimpered.
    “Right,” Jack said. “I ask again: where’s Hornby’s fucking corpse?”
    Jao’s throat worked. “I can’t . . .” he rasped. “I can’t . . . tell you . . . that.”
    Jack turned his back, went to the instrument tray, picked up a rib spreader. “Five seconds and I loosen your jaw, mate. The old-fashioned way. No curses involved.”
    “Jackie . . .” Seth looked at him askance. “This is a far cry from you, Winter.”
    Jack put the rib spreader against Jao’s lips. “I’m a far cry from meself right now, Seth,” he said. “I’m a desperate man and this cunt is standing between me and my dead vocalist, so either hold him fucking still or walk out now.” He cranked the spreader one turn. “Where’s Hornby?”
    “I can’t say it!” Jao screamed. “I can’t!”
    “Can’t, or won’t?” Jack ratcheted spreader another turn. “Where’s Hornby?”
    “I’m not afraid of you,” Jao quavered, his voice distorted by the metal fingers in his mouth.
    The pounding in Jack’s head increased to blackout levels, and his hands quivered. He knew the rage. He’d watched it belt him across the mouth, pour whiskey down its throat,and kick him with steel-toed boots for fourteen years before he left Manchester.
    And he wanted Jao to share the knowledge, wanted to crank the fucking rib spreader to the maximum and break the sneaky wanker’s jaw.
    Instead, he leaned close to Jao’s ear, close enough to smell sweat and the last vestiges of cologne. “You should be,” he hissed.
    “
You
should be,” Jao shouted. “You think you the worst thing to come through my door? You think I’ll tell you when he’s . . .”
    Jao choked, and then his face went slack after a moment of struggle. Cloudy, bloody spiderweb drifted into the whites of his eyes, and his body slumped against the table, still.
    Seth shoved two fingers against Jao’s sweaty neck. “He’s dead. You’ve fucking killed one of my best customers, Jack. Bloody cheers.”
    Jack dropped the rib spreader. “That wasn’t me.”
    Seth threw up his hands, like an aggravated mother. “Who the fuck was it, then? Darth fucking Vader?”
    Jack wheeled and grabbed Jao’s kit bag, dumped out the necromancy supplies atop Jao’s surgical instruments. “By my guess,” he said, “whoever Jao was afraid enough of to take a slash at me.” Baggies of herbs, a tin of salt, a child’s knucklebones in a velvet sack, a silver dagger blunted on the edge, and a bit of lint fell onto the steel.
    Jack slammed his fist into the table. The pain brought him back to himself, a bit, but the rage was still pumping through his veins like cold fire, racing his heart and splitting his skull. “Fuck. He doesn’t have a grimoire.” Jack pressed his hands over his face. He was smeared in blood, his eyes were gritty, and he wanted nothing more than to put his head down and sleep for roughly a decade, until the world made sense again. As much as it ever had.
    “Who’s next?” he said instead, dropping his hands to look at Seth. “Who’s the next necromancer you know? One who might actually have some corpse-raising spells lying around instead of trying to cut me fucking throat?”
    “Forget that, boy,” Seth said. “After what you just did? You aren’t in any shape to be working magic of this caliber. Can see it right in your face.”
    “For fuck’s sake, Seth!” Jack scattered the instrument tray with a sweep of his arm. “This isn’t an academic exercise, this is my fucking
life
!”
    “And what god decrees your life weighs more than his?” Seth pointed at Jao. “Or Miles Hornby’s? What makes you so bloody special, Jack Winter?”
    “No god,” Jack snarled. “I belong to a demon, remember?” Jack wished, viciously, for something to take the edge off his panic and pain.
    “’S what I thought,” Seth sighed. “Always had to be the chosen one, the one for whom the rules didn’t fucking apply, didn’t you, Jackie?”
    “If you’ve got something to say, spit it out.” Jack unlocked the door and slipped out into the hospital corridor. Seth followed him, digging a Silk Cut from his pack and lighting it with a vicious snap of his power.
    “You know you shouldn’t be here, Jack. You stole some time from the crow woman by cutting your deal, but her claws are sharp and her gaze is sharper. We all reach the road’s end. There’s nothing you can do to change
that.
”
    “My road doesn’t end