Demon Bound

Practice, like.”
    I am not a golem of anger or terror or pain, mage
, the thing said.
I am not those pieces of child’s play that haunt your isle.
    Jack sighed. “Then thrill me. What are you?”
    I am all things black and hopeless,
it whispered.
I am the Kartimuhkha.
    When it breathed the name aloud it grew and solidified, the small details of its body resolving like Jack’s gaze had been blurry from a long night of pints, fags, and mood-altering chemicals. The thing in front of him sported long claws that scraped flakes from the stone floor, strings of spittle hanging from its jaws and blazing flames dancing in its sunken eyes.
    Jack stopped smiling. He felt a bit as if someone had just wrapped a rope around his neck and the other end around a gallows pole. “You have a name.”
    I have yours as well, crow-mage. Your soul is bare before my eyes.
    Elemental demons were scavengers, the carrion birds of Hell. They clung to human emotion, to sin and sadness and pain. They didn’t have names of their own.
    Jack hissed through his teeth. “What do you want, then, Karti? Begging? Crying? To play fetch?”
    Feed me your pain,
Kartimuka whispered. It padded closer on bare human feet, its long tongue snaking out to lap at Jack’s skin.
Feed me your terror.
Where it touched him, a numbness started, one that Jack recognized too well as the paralyzing bliss of a high.
Feed me your nightmares,
Kartimukha purred, and Jack fell to his knees and felt his sight peel back the layers between his consciousness and the Black.
    Tell me the truth,
Kartimukha rumbled in his ear.
Show me why you’ve come.
    He managed to scream once before his mind was stripped bare and Kartimukha plunged his claws in.
    Jack saw everything, everything at once, and it overwhelmed his sight like a flash flood. His skull throbbed and filled up with the sensory overload of touching Kartimukha until he was sure it would split wide open.
    Kartimukha watched him impassively, one foot planted on his chest.
Show me the secret dark and shame inside of you, mage. Feed me. Fill me.
    Jack couldn’t breathe. His limbs were lead. His lungs were flat. This was the drifting place, the twilight sliver between life and the Bleak Gates, the place of overdose and suicide, of regret and despair. His heartbeat slowed, a watch with a loose spring and faulty gears.
    Yes
, Kartimukha breathed.
So many memories. So much pain.
    Jack felt the claws tighten around him like razor wire, around his sight and his magic and the things—the memories—that made him Jack Winter were sluicing away as the Kartimukha fed.
    “You can’t have them,” he whispered. Kartimukha tilted its head.
    They cause you pain, mage. I can rid you of them. Why would you keep them?
    Jack shut his eyes against the horrible burning gaze. “They’re mine,” he said. “They’re my scars, not yours.”
    You have been brave for a long time, Jack.
Kartimukha caressed his face with its hot, sour breath.
You don’t need to be brave any longer.
    “Brave?” Jack wheezed. Drawing a breath was agony. He felt as if someone had put a jackboot into his ribs. “I shoot smack into my arm to forget the things I’ve seen. I wake up screaming because of the things I’ve done. I can’t even look the only person who gives a fuck about me in the eye. I’m not brave, I just survive better than most.”
    Then why do you fight?
Kartimukha sounded genuinely puzzled.
Why not feed me those bleeding dreams? Why live with the scars?
    Jack forced himself to look at Kartimukha again. “That’s all I have, mate. Scars. If you want memories, if you want to see that I’m being truthful, then take a look inside my head if you can stand it.” He raised his head. An inch was all he could manage. “I’m not afraid of my own memories.”
    Kartimukha snarled.
Even now, you lie.
The thing raised its paw, brought it down, and struck into Jack’s mind with its power and its magic, stripping him down to the core.
    Jack blinked and found himself staring at a stained plaster ceiling, neon light blinking Morse code across the ceiling from the sign bolted to the wall outside.
    He was warm—warm from whiskey in his gut and warm from blood dribbling down his arms. A hooked rug, lumpy underneath his body, soaked up the red, stain spreading.
    Jack’s blood was black under the blue neon. His fingers went slack, and the razor blade tumbled to the carpet.
    Around him, the dead crowded in. A severe man in a celluloid collar and Windsor