Demon Bound by Demon Bound

the Dartmoor felt like nothing so much as ghost sickness. Jack shut his eyes, tried to push against the tide of the sight. Had to, because if he left Pete alone out here by checking out they’d both be fucked.
    “I’m going to check the motor,” Pete said, climbing out. “Open the bonnet, would you?”
    Jack did as she asked and followed her. They were in pea soup now, and Jack smelled the icy, freshwater scent of rain on the breeze.
    “We shouldn’t linger,” he said. The waves of power only worsened, outside the protective steel bubble of the Mini.
    Pete poked at the innards of the engine, while Jack lit a fag. “You know,” she said, “you should be doing this, you being the man and all.”
    “Sorry, luv,” Jack told her. “My manly prowess is confined to picking locks, smoking, and being ridiculously good looking.”
    “You’re bent.” Pete shook her head, fighting a smile.
    Jack returned it. Seeing Pete smile started a small fire under his stomach, and it helped mute the buzzing of the Black, for a moment. “I don’t hear you disagreeing, luv.”
    Pete sighed, at him or the car, he wasn’t sure, and shut the bonnet. “Well, it’s buggered.” She pulled out her BlackBerry and held it up to the sky. “No service, either. We either walk, or wait to be pancaked by a lorry.”
    Jack looked into the fog, where he knew the hills were watching them. Gathering magic. Waiting.
    “How far can it be?” he said gamely. Pete got her bag and jacket, locked the Mini, and joined him on the edge of the road.
    “Hopefully not so far my shoes start leaking. I’m in a foul enough mood already.”
    Jack shoved his hands into his pockets, keeping a few steps ahead of Pete. He swept the hills from one side of the road to the other, steps hard and sharp on the gravel, heartbeat sharper. Whatever was out there in the fog stared back. Jack could see nothing except the phantoms of mist wandering aimlessly among the hedges and the hills, but he felt it. His skin went colder than the air, and he curled his fists inside his leather, scrabbling for a little magic to throw behind a shield hex. He wasn’t going to be dragged away like a sod in a fairy tale. Whatever had stalked them to this deserted spot clearly didn’t know what sort of a mood he was in.
    Nothing sprang at him as they walked away from the Mini, but the wild power of the moor followed, and the watcher followed with it. Jack resigned himself to a game of seeing which of them broke nerve first—the mage, or the creature.
    “You know,” Pete said as they squelched through the dead grass on the shoulder of the road, “this reminds me of that night. You remember the one, where you played the set at Club Bleu . . .”
    “And your sister got herself pissed on tequila,” Jack remembered. Pete’s sister MG was a vision in black lace, long Bettie Page curls, wide eyes, and lips made for blow jobs All of which hid a mind that would have done the bunny-boiler from
Fatal Attraction
proud. In other words, she was just Jack’s—old Jack, Bastards frontman Jack—type. If there wasn’t a chance a bird would come at you with a kitchen knife, where was the laugh?
    “Right, and she made us walk for miles at three in the morning looking for a curry.” Pete picked up the thread.
    “Not just any curry,” Jack said.
    “A
green
curry.” They mimicked MG’s put-on posh accent together.
    “Thank God they only made one of her.” Pete sighed. “That’s what our Da used to say.”
    Jack had first seen Pete standing at the edge of the pit in Fiver’s, a hole in the wall shitebox, far from Club Bleu as she was from her sister, even though they’d arrived together. Where MG dominated every room she entered, Pete stayed small and pale, worrying a full pint glass between her hands. There was no great lightning bolt, no flash of recognition from past lives. She looked at him, and he looked at her, while the music played.
    And suddenly, MG had been the furthest person