Huntress

“Name,” Jack said, draining his pint to the dregs. He knew what Lawrence would say—Fuck off you crazy bird. But Lawrence wasn’t around, and Ava was pretty.

Demons aside, the night could be going in worse directions.

“You think I know the true name of a demon?” Ava snorted. “We flesh-puppets aren’t privy to that sort of information.”

“You’d be surprised what people cough up when they’re dying. Desperate. Pick your D-word.” Jack pushed his glass at Ava. “Another, luv, and get me a plate of food, if this place has any that won’t land me with botulism. If we’re going to talk about demons, I’m going to need something to eat.”

Her face glowed. “So you’ll do it.”

“Did I say I would?” Jack said. “Americans. So quick to jump their little six-guns. Get me another pint and order me a fry-up and we’ll discuss it.”

Ava narrowed her eyes. “Why? You were going to say no before.”

She could read him well. Jack remembered that for the future, when he had the sneaking suspicion it would bite him in the arse. “You interest me.” There, frank and open. “Not many humans deal with demons. Fewer call them a ‘problem.’ Must have a pisser of a story behind that.”

Ava pushed back her chair and went up to the bar, passing the bartender a wad of notes. He grumbled, but went in back and turned on the grill.

Jack watched her, pulling a fag out of the air and touching his finger to the end. A moment before sweet, blessed tar filled his lungs. He should say no to Ava. Say no and walk away before he heard anything that would get a demonic boot in his arse, or outright killed in the street. Mages already had a short enough lifespan in the scheme of the Black, the harsh and gleaming world of magic they and a host of nastier creatures inhabited. Mages were forever damned to playing both sides, standing in the Black and the mundane, belonging to neither.

Just say no. Jack snickered at himself. Here he was, as if he were fourteen again, seeing ghosts and scared of the dark, and not a man who survived, who walked in and out of light and shadow like passing under a bridge.

The good: Ava meant money, a change from hours on the road, nights in clubs that smelled like piss and lager, kips in places that smelled worse.

The bad: he could end up in a backstreet with his heart torn out. Death in bloody Scotland.

Jack liked music, liked the life. He liked fronting the Bastards and having time with people who weren’t aware of the Black any more than your average housewife.

But he admitted he liked the prospect of meeting Ava’s demon even more.

“It’s simple, really,” Ava said. “I just need you to get me into the demon’s city.”

They were walking through narrow streets watched over by silent shops and terrace flats. Jack had convinced Rich, Dix, and Gavin to get bunks in a hostel. Rich complained, but Jack paid. Tomorrow they’d go back to England and he’d be here. But if it went sour tonight, Jack liked the idea that he wasn’t alone.

He took a forkful of eggs from the takeaway container in his hand and chewed before he answered. “Never simple. Not with demons. Especially the type that have their own cities.”

“What’s your problem with demons?” Ava’s heels made a sharp heartbeat on the pavement.

“What’s your romance with them?” Jack said. The fry-up tasted of year-old grease and stale ingredients, but he was starving and Ava’d paid.

“Demons and I go back a long way, and I don’t have any illusions about them,” Ava said. “They took away someone I cared very much about. Let’s leave it at that.”

“What sort of deal did you make to get ’em back, then?” Jack glanced at her as he licked bacon grease off his fingers.

Ava rounded on him. “I didn’t make a deal. My soul is my own.”

“Ain’t that a fucking bit of poetry,” Jack snorted.

Ava took his container away and tossed it into a passing bin, then looped her arm through his.

“Aren’t you curious? To know what type of girl I am?”

“I already know,” Jack said. “Dangerous. Dangerous to a bloke like me.”

“Look. I need to speak with a particular demon at a particular time, and I’m not welcome. I need a guide who knows the Black and has neutral associations with the demon contingent. That’s where you begin and end. Sound dangerous? In the least?”

“I didn’t say the job was dangerous, luv,” Jack said. “Said you were dangerous.”

Ava stopped him, with a hand on his chest, and pressed two fingers against his lips. “Take the job and you’ll see I’m a pussycat.”

She was warm, much warmer than the air around them. Jack curled his fingers around hers. “As long as this demon of yours will keep until morning.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Morning will be fine.”

Her skin was warm, and she smelled like heat and smoke. She tasted like magic burning.

Ava pushed him against the brick wall, the rough mortar scraping Jack’s neck. Her fingers closed over the spot and her other hand tugged his belt, heavy with nail heads, free.

Jack pushed under her sweater, the cold of the night and the heat of her skin combustible. He let her pull his head down, bruise her mouth against his and smiled around them at her gasp as his cold fingers trailed up her back.

Ava jerked his fly free, her hand freeing his cock from the confines of his jeans.

Jack tugged back against the hand on his neck. “You know I would have done the job without the favors, luv.”

Ava kissed him again, biting his bottom lip before she let go and slid down his chest to waist level. “Shut up, Jack. That’s not why.”

Jack decided arguing any further would be pure idiocy. Her lips pressed down on him, and Jack’s head snapped back against the brick, fingers knotting in the dark corn silk of her hair.

Her tongue, rough and insistent, stroked and curled around him, and Jack’s throat caught, the only sound that escaped a groan as Ava moved.

He watched her head bob fore and back, hair gleaming under the streetlamps, each stroke of her mouth hotter and firmer and harder to resist than the last. Jack rolled his eyes upwards, to the rusted terraces and swaybacked rooflines of the mews.

Ava’s tongue trailed along his underside, curled and sucked like she was savoring something sweet, and Jack shut his eyes, breath scraped from his throat. He put a hand on Ava’s head, fingers tangling in her hair, trying to beg her to slow down, though he doubted he could actually speak. Ava didn’t take his message, more insistent with every stroke, and Jack swore he could feel her grinning.

Her free hand hooked fingers over the waistband of his jeans, pads stroking against his hipbone, and it was that small, oddly intimate gesture that pushed Jack over the edge. He pushed his hips forward, and Ava let out a mewl as she allowed it, sticky lip gloss and spit and her frantic, hungry movement combining so that Jack let out a shout. “Fuck!”

Ava raised her eyes, alight with mischief. She sat back on her heels, tucked her hair behind her ear, and stood. She traced the crescent of her lower lip with her thumb. “Serviceable, I take it?”

Jack started to laugh as he buttoned himself up. “You know exactly what that was, you wicked tease.”

Her mouth quirked up. “I do indeed.” She slid a hand into his. “Come on, Winter. Let’s get you to bed.”

When he woke up, in the hostel bed on a mattress that barely deserved the title, the sun was just a possibility, a little ghost-light and shadow beyond the broken window shade.

Ava was gone, her clothes absent the floor and her heat vanished from the pillow next to him. Jack rolled out of the sheets and felt under the bed until he found his trousers and boots, and pulled them on.

The hostel was a Victorian pile, and there was a terrace, too small to really stand on but big enough to smoke a fag. Jack caught the eye of the mirror and ran a hand through his hair to make it stand up.

Just pink around the edges, the sky glowed, that unearthly glow that made normal people stay indoors. Jack lit up and blew smoke toward the heavens. Two drags in, the doorknob turned, creaking like dead bones in the old house.

“That was fast,” Jack said. “But you didn’t need to freshen up for me, luv. I rather liked you filthy.” Hearing no reply, he half-turned. “Ava?”

A great weight hit him from behind—hands, Jack realized, massive hands—and bounced his skull off the doorjamb before taking him to the floor. A voice curled forth, over the ringing in his skull, like a tendril of smoke through the air. “Hold his arms, Barney.”

Jack’s face pressed into the musty Persian rug, and Barney planted a knee in his kidneys. Jack grunted. “Love you too, darling.”

“Shut up,” Barney intoned.

“Well,” the voice said. Scots, the thick, expansive brogue that made tourists and Americans mistake the city of Edinburgh as friendly. “Jack Winter, is it?”

A toe reached under Jack’s chin, lifted his face. The shoe was shiny snakeskin, emerald green dotted with black. The owner of the foot in the shoe reeked of burnt paper, the grand mal scent of demons.

“It’s your fucking mum, is what it is,” Jack snarled. He had a hangover, too much beer and sex, and too little sleep, and his mood in the mornings was uncharitable on any day.

“Just listen,” said the voice of the shoe. Jack rolled his eyes up and saw a young git, angelic fat baby face, blond hair long enough to be fashionable in 1987 but no later, and a loud white suit that screamed gangster.

“You want me to listen, have your villain here leave off feeling me up. My gate don’t swing that way, son.”

Barney bashed Jack’s nose into the carpet for his trouble. Bright Lad snapped his fingers. “Barney! That’s quite enough. I’m sure Mr. Winter agrees there’s no need for violence.”

“Mr. Winter is going to shove your blond gob straight up your arse if you don’t let him go,” Jack grunted.

“Senseless altercations will only hurt you, Mr. Winter. Now, do I have your guarantee as a gentleman that you’ll refrain from any antics if I let you up?”

Jack began to laugh, shaking the weight of Barney on his back. “Someone told you I was a fucking gentleman? You should pay him, mate, because that’s a hell of a story.”

“If you’re not going to cooperate,” Bright Lad said, “I do have other ways of keeping you compliant.”

Jack sighed. “Just let me up. This carpet smells like piss.”

Barney retreated, and Jack climbed to his feet, rubbing his forehead in a futile attempt to ease the throbbing. “Now tell me why you broke in here before I get all sorts of cranky fuck and do you in on the spot.”

“That would be ill-advised, Mr. Winter,” Bright Lad cooed. “Humans against demons tend to end in very small pieces.”

“Little ’uns,” Barney agreed, like lorries colliding. “Bite-sized.”

Opening his sight just a little, Jack took another look at Bright Lad. White hair in a sharp point over his forehead, teeth even sharper, a lipless mouth, and great, screaming black holes for eyes. You could fall into those eyes, be torn apart by the knives in his empty gaze …

Jack shook his head and passed a hand over his eyes. The screaming faded.

“Now that you’ve ascertained that I am, in fact, what I say I am,” said Bright Lad, “I have a simple message for you.”

“Hardly seems fair,” Jack said. “You seem to know all about me, Tony, and I don’t even know your name.”

Bright Lad cocked his head. “Tony?”

“Montana. The suit? It’s a bit over the top, mate.”

The demon pursed his lips. “My name is Nazaraphael, Jack Winter. Now may I state my business?”

Jack picked up his leather coat, the liberty spikes pressing into his palm, reassuringly flesh and blood. He rattled around in the pockets until he found a bottle of rotgut whiskey that still had a