Demon Jack (17 page)

I could feel the power rising with her chant, sudden and furious.

I turned, chancing a quick glance over my shoulder. She had moved in front of Lucy, putting herself between the incoming horde and the new vampire. She was bleeding already, the dripping knife held in one hand. She finished her chant, pursed her lips together and blew, and much the same as she had with the fireballs. A gust of wind tore from across the club, knocking three of the rushing assailants off their feet and slamming them into the far wall with bone jarring intensity.

I ducked the stop sign again, spinning into the frenzied girl. My elbow snapped up, catching her in the side of her neck while my other hand grasped the metal pole of the sign, wrenching it free from her hands. I continued the spin, using the weight of steel and forty pounds of concrete as added momentum and crashed the entire thing into the back of the girl’s thighs. There was an audible snapping as both of her femurs broke. She hit the ground in a heap. She didn’t so much as whimper, let alone scream and I actually had to jump back as she pushed herself up with her hands and started to pull herself towards me. I brought the concrete end down, in a quick, snapping arc across the back of her neck and shoulders. Her body twitched once before going still.

Adam grabbed the postman who had tried to gut me only seconds before and simply tore his throat out with a single bare hand. He tossed the bloodied hunk of flesh that once been an esophagus aside, a look of disgust on his face. He dropped the twitching Postman to the ground beside it. Behind me, the thralls were waging a losing battle, as one by one the green-eyed mob tore into them, simply beating or stabbing most of them to death with bare hands or crude instruments.

Maggie drew the blade across her arm again and threw another gust of wind, swinging her arm up mocking an uppercut and sending an overweight woman in threadbare clothing some twenty feet into the air. She hit the ceiling with a bone shattering thud, before falling back down to the floor, becoming still. Another cut, another gust of wind, and she sent an elderly man careening into the bar, his back hitting its edge and bending backwards, snapping with a sound like Rice Krispies.

I made a B-line through the melee, ducking and jiving around stray blows, taking up a spot beside Maggie. I grabbed the gun and clip from the floor as I went. It was a miracle that it hadn’t been kicked, picked up, or otherwise lost in the chaos. I jammed the clip into the handle, and jerked the slide back. Maggie was pale, her forearms and hands slicked with blood. Her eyes were glassy, and she seemed to wobble on her feet with every movement.

I lifted the gun, firing two quick shots into the chest of a blonde twenty-something guy in running shorts. The gun barked and he staggered with each shot. For a moment, he looked at me surprised, the green fading from his eyes. He held a hand to his chest and I saw the look of confusion falling over his baby blues. He staggered forward two more steps and then toppled. Adam promptly reached down and snapped his neck, ignoring the dying man’s whispered pleas, begging not to die. Adam turned, claws flashing, and tore the face off of another runner, probably blondie’s girlfriend. She hit the ground, writhing and screaming like mad, the green glow in her eyes vanishing. Adam silenced her with a quick stomp to her ample chest. Maggie threw another gust of wind, this time sending a thrall airborne and into a charging group of four more of the green eyed freaks, leaving them to fight amongst themselves to get back to their feet.

We had a brief moment to breathe, the fight now mostly turning to Adam and his thralls against the majority of the green eyes still standing.

“You gonna make it?” I asked Maggie, finally cutting my eyes back towards Lucy. She looked terrified, despite her newfound strength. A strength she hadn’t even had a chance to come to terms with let, alone employ. More than terrified, she looked hungry, her eyes on Maggie’s arms.

“Lucy.” I snapped my fingers at her.

Her eyes shot towards me, and I could see the naked need in them.

“Jack... Get me out of here. Please,” Lucy said.

“I don’t ‘ave much more left in me,” Maggie said, her voice whispery and far away. I looked between the two, Maggie pale, on the verge of falling out on me, Lucy, trembling with fear and hunger.

“Lucy, is there some way out of here?” I asked, firing another round at one of the charging green eyes. I was off my mark, hitting it in the shoulder instead of the face, spinning it around and sending it to the ground. It was back on its feet in less than a second. Maggie hit it with another gust of wind from her pursed lips, sending it tumbling end over end into two of its compatriots.

“I... I...” Lucy looked around, eyes wide, her head still trying to wrap itself around the scene in front of her, to separate herself from the instinct to gorge on the blood and carnage.

“Jack. I’m gassed.” Maggie groaned, dropping to one knee. She looked like it was taking everything she had to just stay conscious. The knife slipped from her hand, landing on the floor next to her bag.

“LUCY!” I yelled.

She reacted as if I’d slapped her, eyes snapping towards me. She thought for a second and nodded, turning towards the door beside the DJ booth.

“In the basement,” she said finally.

I grabbed Maggie by the arm, half dragging and half carrying her, and followed Lucy. She stumbled to keep up. I fired two more shots into the melee, hoping to discourage any would be followers.

The door led into a tight hallway, various closed doors lining each side. The door at the end was open. A small set of stairs wound down and into the basement. We took the stairs, leaving the sounds of the fighting behind us.

The basement was vast, the walls lined with more bondage gear, stacked liquor boxes, and beer kegs. It was unfinished, the floor bare concrete, the walls bare cinder block. Lucy moved to the back, past another stack of empty beer kegs and liquor boxes to a grate set in the floor.

“This is how Adam brought me here, through the sewers,” she said.

Next to me, Maggie let out a slow, whimpering groan. I set her down, and tore off a portion of her shirt, tying off her wounds. I was going to have to get her somewhere, hospital or something. I didn’t know if she was going to make it. Her color had become an ashy pale, her motions slow and weak. She healed quickly, at least, from what I could tell if she had her magic skin lotion goop. Though at the moment, she wasn’t doing much outside of weighing me down.

I debated leaving her. I probably should have. For some reason, I couldn't.

“Hang with me, Maggie,” I growled, pulling the makeshift tourniquets tight.

Lucy lifted the grate one handed and tossed it aside. Behind us, stragglers were filing down the stairs, bounding the few steps to the floor in pursuit. I fired another three shots towards them, doing nothing more than shattering a few wine bottles and ricocheting off the cinderblock walls. In hindsight, I’m lucky one of them didn’t bounce right back up and give me a kiss. I grabbed Maggie, throwing her over my shoulder and stepped over the edge. The hole was wide enough for the both of us, almost six feet across and recessed into the floor.

We fell maybe six, eight feet at best. Maggie let out a strangled “oof” when we hit the bottom. I tried not to think of the lumps of spongy gunk that hung around my feet and ankles, floating in the shallow water. Lucy dropped down through the grate a second later, surprisingly graceful and seemingly un-phased by the muck. Granted, she didn’t breath much anymore, which probably made it a lot easier to ignore the stench.

One of the green eyes dropped in right behind us. He was dressed in a tracksuit, and looked to be about forty at best. He stared at me, eyes narrowed. He growled, blood caking his face, most of his teeth broken at the gums.

“Host,” he growled.

“Hi,” I said and shot him twice in the face, the gun echoing loudly through the sewer. The third pull of the trigger left me with a dry click. I dropped the empty clip into the water, hitting the release with my thumb. I somehow managed to balance Maggie over my shoulder, slam the spare clip into the handle, and snap the slide back into place without dropping her.

“We need to move,” I said, looking to Lucy.

Adam was more than likely holding his own up there, thralls or no thralls, but some of the green eyes had followed us into the basement. It wouldn't be long before they found their way into the sewers after us. In such tight quarters, with a new vampire and a bleeding woman on the verge of shock, the best option I had was to get the hell out of Dodge, regroup and try to figure out what the fuck I was going to do next.

“Which way?” I asked Lucy.

She shrugged.

“What do you mean?” I said, spreading my arm wide and eliciting a small whimper from Maggie.

“I was sort of, you know... In a not so great spot,” she said, eyes narrowed.

I sighed.

“Fuck it,” I said, and turned moving as fast as I could over the slippery stone floor of the sewers, Lucy a step behind me. Alice was nowhere to be seen. Go figure. I turned at random, taking rights and lefts, as the route appeared to put as much distance between Adam's club and us as possible.

Echoes of pursuit followed us: water splashing, growls and footsteps. The walls of the sewer played hell with the acoustics, sending the echoes bouncing off each other and reverberating in maddening ways. They seemed almost a foot behind us and a hundred yards away all at the same time.

Lucy yelped in pain as we passed under beams of sunlight, thrown across the floor like prison bars through a storm drain. They made her stagger, like she was on the verge of fainting until she passed once more into shadow. The variation between fright and total lethargy was kind of disconcerting, to be honest. I looked back as I went, her face and arms had withered and blistered, turning the deep red of a really nasty sunburn. She put on a mask of determination and pushed on, ignoring the pain.

We ran like that for what felt like hours, but it was probably not much more than twenty minutes. Panting, I settled Maggie on a dry patch of the floor where the stink and sludge hadn’t touched. She slumped against the sewer wall. Her breathing coming in slow, shallow gasps. Lucy stayed back in the shadows. She twitched, her posture equal parts hunting cat and drug addict inches away from a fix. The look in her eyes spoke volumes. They were distant, vicious, and settled on Maggie’s arms where the blood had sheeted and dried, dying her skin a coppery brownish red.

“Lucy,” I said, my voice even.

She didn’t respond, her empty eyes starting forward. Her tongue darted out, sliding over her lips with hungry anticipation. Even in the gloom, I could see the tiny, venom coated fangs that lined her mouth where her teeth had once been. It was a painful reminder.

“Lucy,” I said again.

She blinked, turning to look at me. For a moment she stared, head tilting slightly to the side, eyes coming back into focus. She shook her head, her lower lip trembling. Tears welled in her eyes.

I was disgusted. Disgusted with Adam, disgusted at the situation, but more than anything disgusted with myself. I had always been about myself. I didn’t care really who got hurt, or where the chips fell, as long as it was in my favor. In front of me, coated in blood and shit, one nearly dying, one already dead and still moving with a hunger worse than any addiction rolling in her gut, it became crystal clear that the game had changed. It became even more clear that I had changed somewhere along the way. Killing Essie had been a necessity, and while it hung around my neck, it was tolerable, even acceptable to my worldview. With Maggie? Maggie had intervened and known the risks. I could accept that. Lucy was a different story. Just by being in my presence her life was over before it had even really had a chance to start.

I could hear my father’s voice in the back of my head, breaking free of the cage I had kept it in for years. His drunken slur screaming the words in my psyche: “You’re a goddamned disappointment. Everything you touch turns to shit.” I shook my head, looking between one dying and one crying.

“Jack,” Alice said from behind me.

I turned towards her, eyes narrowed.

“Not now,” I growled, perfectly content to hold onto my rage and self-loathing without being reminded that on top of it all, I had sold my soul to, you know, the forces of Hell.

“Jack,” she repeated.

I gave her a murderous glare.

She vanished.

I took a deep breath, pushing my father’s voice away, my anger, and tried to think through the situation rationally. I had to get somewhere safe, first of all. Not the church, and not any of my old haunts. Somewhere warm, off the map. I had to get Maggie to a hospital. I had to get Lucy as far away from Adam as possible. I had to get somewhere, hunker down and figure out how to deal with the total shit storm my life had become.

The pieces of something sort of like a plan start to formulate in my head. I rolled with it.

“Lucy, can you keep under cover until night?”

She nodded, albeit weakly. “I can try,” she said, her arms crossed under her breasts, wrapped over her stomach like she might be sick. She looked frail, broken beyond repair. I had to push down another massive bout of self-loathing.

“Right. Keep moving, go to the Commons. Soon as you can get out of here, head topside, meet me there. Alright?”

She nodded.