Demon Bound

skulls, carved from black stone. A fetish or a focus—Jack wasn’t keen to find out, and even less keen to know the gangsters had some talent for sorcery.
    “Sorry, mate.” Jack held up his bloodied arm. “I’ve had my dance for today. Unless your invite is for a stitch-up and a stiff drink, thank you but please fuck off.”
    The man inclined his head. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. This is not a request, Mr. Winter.”
    Jack felt the electricity up and down his spine that signaled another mage was close. “You said it was an invitation.”
    “It can be,” said the one with the beads. “It can be something else if you don’t feel like being sociable.”
    Their magic was thick and hard, like scraping your knuckles against stone, leaving blood and skin behind. Jack favored them with a wide smile. Keep smiling, keep the gangsters calm, and work out how the bloody hell he was going to extricate himself from the situation before someone used that hard, ugly magic on him.
Think, Winter,
the fix mocked him.
You’re so clever. Bright boy, always a quicksilver mind.
    Jack spread out his hands, so the gangsters could see they were empty and that he was no threat, just another hapless
farang.
“Who do you work for, then? Or do you runabout like superheroes in chavvy gold chains, striking down wicked men like me where you find them?”
    Lefty sighed. “Mr. Winter, don’t make this difficult.”
    “Difficult?” Jack shook his head, slow and pitying. “Difficult would be me taking the two of you by the bollocks and tossing you headfirst through the waiting-room window. Difficult would be me cursing you into small, bloody smears in front of all of these nice people. I have not
begun
to be difficult yet, mate.”
    Jack felt the light air-brush of witchfire start to spread from his fingers and anywhere his skin was exposed. Everyone in the waiting room had averted their eyes when the men stepped up, but Jack didn’t care. He was never coming back to this bloody city, with its slick snakeskin magic and its crowded, whispering Black.
    Lefty’s hand shot out and clamped down on the spot where Jao had cut him. The pain was deep and dull, a rusted blade in his skin, and Jack ground his teeth to keep from yelling. “Mr. Winter,” Lefty said. “I don’t want to do this, but I have my instructions. You need to come with us. Right this moment.”
    Righty clicked his beads. The power around the two mages swelled. Jack felt blood from his wound start to drip again, hitting the linoleum floor with dull splats. Blood was a powerful cantrip. A mage could use blood as a conductor, a channel, a focus for almost any magic. If he had the control, and the skill. If he didn’t lose that control, let himself get taken over by a hungry ghost, and end up bleeding to death on the floor of a crypt. There was always a catch with magic. Limitless power, if you didn’t let it burn you alive.
    “Jack,” Seth said quietly. “You should do as they say.”
    “Thanks, Seth,” Jack said, keeping his eye on Lefty. “But I’m about through taking your advice.”
    “Your friend is concerned for your well-being,” Leftyintoned. “And rightly so. You’ve been here less than two days and already you’ve managed to end poor Jao’s life.”
    “Wasn’t me, I said,” Jack snarled. “And by the look of poor fucking Jao, he’d had it coming for miles.”
    Lefty glanced at the blood on the floor. “You are not in an enviable position, Mr. Winter. You can fight me, it’s true.” His grip tightened, driving iron barbs into Jack’s arm. “You’ll lose.”
    Jack watched the blood pool grow, crawling by degrees across the linoleum, adding a new stain to the battered gray surface. He didn’t reach for it with his talent, didn’t grasp the shimmering well of power waiting to fend off the gangster’s ministrations. “I’m not some nonce who’ll fold at the hint of a few hexes.”
    Lefty heaved a sigh as if he were being entirely unreasonable, and pulled up his shirt to display the silver butt of a gun—a .45, by Jack’s reckoning. “We already know you bleed, Mr. Winter. Now, walk in front of us out to the car waiting at the curb, and don’t cause a fuss.”
    “Magicians who go strapped,” Jack said. “Very Wild West, mate. Phallic, really. Suppose it’s true what they say about you Thais and your love of the ladyboys.”
    “It’s loaded with pig-iron bullets,” Lefty said, pleasant smile affixed to his face as if he were a