Demon Bound

eyes, and refused to flinch as the creature kept a death grip on his wound. “I didn’t come here to move against you. I just came here to bring Miles Hornby home.”
    Rahu’s eyes were black, pupilless. They flickered with power, like Jack’s own eyes when his magic was up. Jack tugged against his grip, but the creature held fast. “I smell it on you, Jack,” Rahu hissed. “I can taste it in the air around you. There’s demon taint on your skin and in your blood. You’re a dog, following a command.” He let go of Jack. “And you’ve just walked into a wolf den.”
    A dark handprint stayed in the dried blood on Jack’s arm, and the skin was freezing and burnt, frostbitten from a touch. Fingertips of shiver worked their way across his skin, searching through nerve and tissue and blood.
    “Go home,” Rahu said again. “Go back to your demon and tell him whatever coup he sent you to conduct failed. This is your only chance.”
    Jack rubbed the burn. Pain could be managed. Pain meant his heart was still beating. Pain was a friend. “I can’t,” he said.
    Rahu’s lips drew back. His profile was striking—sharp nose, sharper cheeks, the barest hint of crystalline white fangs protruding over his lower lip. “I don’t think I heard you,” the creature said.
    “You did.” Jack swallowed. “I know you’re the master of Bangkok, that the demon won’t step foot here because of you, so I reckon you’re a hard one, but right now I’m something worse.”
    Rahu’s perfect eyebrow raised, wrinkling his perfect golden forehead. If the nasty, oily smirk wasn’t in place, he could have been a ringer for the Buddha. “And what are you, Jack?” he purred.
    Jack balled his fists. “I’m desperate.” Feeling his rings dig into his flesh and his tattoos flex gave him a grounding, a bit of the real against the vast whirl pool of magic Rahu commanded. “Miles Hornby is a dead man who tricked a demon. The demon sent me to bring him home, and I said I would.”
    Rahu twisted the rings on his fingers, methodically, one after the other. “You are not making a compelling case for your continued life and breath, Jack.”
    “I have to find Hornby,” Jack said. Telling a demon the truth was always a risk, because most demons wouldn’t know truth if it sat up and offered them tea and a biscuit. “I’m going to make him tell me how he got out of his bargain.” Jack locked his eyes onto Rahu’s, even though staring at the creature made his sight scream. “And then I’m going to do the same thing.”
    Rahu ran his fingers along the gilt altar supporting the Buddha. Gold paint curled in flakes under his fingernails. “Ridiculous. I don’t believe you.”
    “I don’t particularly care,” Jack returned. “I’m going to break my bargain, and to do that I have to find Hornby.”
    Rahu merely smiled. Some men Jack knew could smile and make it a thousand times worse than any curse, hex, or blow. Kev. Seth. Treadwell’s ghost.
    “You don’t know who you’re bargaining with, Jack. Your demon is older and cleverer than most.” Rahu’s face went jagged, all planes and rage. “I once was master of the whole of the Floating World, the lands beyond the sea and to the mountains. Do you know who took that from me? Do you know who resigned me to this fetid, sweltering trap of an island?”
    “We both have something to hate it for, then,” Jack said. “I’d think you’d be dancing in place to help me.”
    Rahu’s smile went sharp and cold as the rusty edge of a razor. “And yet, for
some
odd reason, I don’t trust a man sent to me by the very demon responsible for this misery of an existence.”
    “Believe it or not”—Jack lifted a shoulder—“I really don’t give a fuck, mate. May I go?”
    “Not yet.” Rahu’s voice stopped Jack as he started to walk away. “You say you’re a desperate man. Desperate men bargain. Am I to understand you correctly?”
    Jack cursed inwardly, sensing he’d walked right onto the big red X and let Rahu drop an anvil on him. “I suppose.”
    “And you wish the possession of the dead man Hornby.” Rahu tapped his chin with one black-painted nail. “Which explains why you attacked poor Khan Jao.” Rahu tipped Jack a wink. “No sort of necromancer, are you?”
    “Call me a madman, but my mum always taught me to leave the dead be,” Jack said.
    “Did she?” Rahu advanced on Jack, laid a hand against his temple before Jack could backpedal. Ice crystals