Demon Jack (24 page)

I grabbed Maggie, pulling her across the street, putting the parked cars lining the sidewalk on each side between the green eyes and us. The only real chance we had at the moment was to run, to run and try and put as much distance between them and us as possible. I just hoped we could keep ahead of them enough to lose them in the maze of Boston. Hernandez and Yavetta, still running, were a half a block down. Their once pursuers were still focused on Al Dossari. Hernandez and Yavetta, meanwhile had managed to reach their car, a long black sedan that was parked at the corner.

I could see Hernandez, in the distance, slide into the driver’s seat. He fired up the engine, clouds of steam rising from the back of the car as the heated exhaust met the chill winter air. Yavetta opened the door to the passenger side and turned to me, watching me as I ran.

For a second, everything slowed down. The screams of the maniac possessed died away. Even this far away I could see it. The glowing eyes, radiating pure green hatred beneath Yavetta's wide brim hat.

I almost stopped in mid-stride, a well of vindication rising up in my chest. I wasn't sure of the specifics, but something in my gut told me I had been right, goddamn it. I had been right the whole time. I had been right and it wouldn’t matter now because no one would believe me. Maggie was ahead of me, running towards the safety of the alleys and the twisting rows of back and side streets. The set up had been perfect too, completely and utterly perfect. Anything that came out of my mouth after this would make me look either desperate or, at worst, traitorous.

No one would believe me now, not after this had gone to shit like it had. Not with Al Dossari lying in the middle of the sidewalk dead, beaten to death by the green eyes. Not with all of us fleeing from an attack.

Yavetta stared me down from almost half a block away and his smile widened. Around me, the coffee shop's clientele were returning to normal, shaken and confused to find themselves outside, when the last thing they'd remember was sipping their Chai frappa lattes or whatever the fuck they were called.

Chapter 22

We trudged through the hotel’s parking lot, breathing heavy and sweating despite the chill of the winter air. Maggie had paled, two stains of bright scarlet high on her cheek. She staggered a bit as she walked, the adrenaline of the chase giving way to weariness. She still wasn't a hundred percent and it showed. The throw-down at the coffee shop had only exacerbated her condition.

My mind rolled over the idea, over what I had seen and more importantly how to convey it, to make something out of it. I knew at least part of the story. Yavetta or Hernandez, for whatever reason, was the one behind Legion - in some way shape or form. With such a simple counter to my oh-so-genius scheme, any argument I could use to rally the troops behind me was shot to hell. They’d never believe me, and whichever one it was would have the death of Al Dossari to hold up as proof. I had been outstepped at pretty much every turn. Maggie had probably served as an unintended well of information to the culprit.

I was outclassed and outgunned. I could run, bail on them both…
Should
bail on them both, as a matter of fact. I had a lot more invested in me than I did either of them. If I died it was the end of the road for me, I was on a one way express right back to Hell’s front door. If they died, well, then I didn’t. Point for that option. Huge point for that option. I could slip out now. Hang back, let Maggie get inside the room, then just turn and walk away.

If I did, if I could get far enough away, New York maybe, or DC, fade out like I had here once upon a time. I could dodge Adam and Legion.

Despite the fact that I felt I owed them, I was really starting to see the upside to ditching them. This one might hang with me for a bit, make it a tad harder to sleep, but I’d get over it.

“I’m going to have a cigarette, then check on Lucy,” I said, following Maggie up the stairs. She didn’t say anything, opting to turn a glare at me that would melt solid steel under its intensity.

“You do that,” she said, her disgust staining her words. “I have a phone call to make.”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

She stopped with the door half open, staring at me for a long time. Her eyes radiated challenge before she pulled her phone out of her pocket. She slipped through, slamming the door behind her. I lit a cigarette, taking a long drag and exhaling twin snakes of smoke through my nose. I tried to play everything out again in my head. It was all such a simple set up, and I’d been flung right into it without so much as a stutter step. I was right, at least I thought I was, and made to look like I was wrong. Damn frustrating that.

“I know what you're thinking and don’t run,” Alice said, flickering into view. She was sitting on the railing, eyes locked on my face.

“I thought you said if I follow through on this I was as good as dead?” I said.

“You are.”

“The demon is telling me to be altruistic?”

“Hardly. The demon is telling you to be pragmatic,” she said calmly.

I quirked a brow and inhaled from the cigarette.

“Pragmatic huh?”

“Yes. This is bigger than you.”

“You’re not making a goddamned bit of sense, Alice,” I said.

A meth head, his teeth worn to nubs and his ratty clothes stained, passed by. He looked at me like I was totally insane, or really, really high - one of the two. He was shaking his head and muttering something about tweakers.

Hi pot, meet kettle. Asshole.

I ignored him, focusing on Alice.

“So, care to make me understand?” I asked.

“Jack, your selfishness is astounding,” she said. “You’ll leave these people to face this and for the sake of self-preservation it’s perhaps best that you do just that. But let me ask you this - what if this is just the beginning? What if this is only the start?”

I raised a brow at that.

“The beginning?”

“Yes, The beginning.”

“Of?”

“Something bad,” she said.

“I think we’ve achieved ‘something bad’ already, Alice.”

“No, not yet you haven’t,” she said and vanished.

“Fucking demon,” I muttered. For a long moment I stood there, smoking, thinking, trying to play everything over in my head. All I had to do was turn and start walking. Walk away and wash my hands of the whole mess.

Instead, I used the key Lucy had given me to her room and slipped inside. It was dark, mattresses flipped and propped against the walls, over the windows in an attempt to block as much sunlight as possible. I could see her face, barely visible in the gloom peeking out from beneath a small bundle of blankets. She was sleeping, though the fact that she didn’t breath, didn’t move, didn’t so much as flinch made her look dead.

Adam could move during the day, albeit he was diminished. He had also had several decades to get to that point. During the day a vampire as young as Lucy pretty much had no choice but to sleep. Only something extreme would wake her up from the near death state she was in. It would take an explosion, a direct physical attack, something of that nature. If she did wake up, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. She’d react like a cornered animal, all claws and teeth with very little rationale.

I crouched down beside her, watching her sleep for a few minutes, the pair of us statues in the empty room. Outside, a siren wailed, a high keening drone of sound in the otherwise perfect stillness of the room. Staring at her, at what she had become, a weight settled on me. It was a cold, cloying sensation settling in my chest. Frustration, rage and helplessness grabbed my nerves, my thoughts, and choked me.

The siren covered up the sound of me crying.

My shoulders hitched, and I settled back putting my back against the wall. I was scared. I was in over my head. I wanted to bail. I wanted to set things right. I wanted to survive. I didn’t want them to be more broken remnants of a life that I had fucked up since day one. Years of being the fuck up, years of drugs and nothing and being empty and desperation and struggle and misery - and this is where I ended up. At one point, people feared me. When I worked for Mr. Lin, people whispered my name with respect, and then that was gone. It was just as fleeting as everything else. It was full circle and everything that was left in the end was broken.

I was scared to see the things, to face the things, that I had created. It was the story of my life, one crippling fear after another.

I sat there, terrified, tears streaming down my face until I drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Chapter 23

I woke up a second before Lucy almost tore my throat out. Her hands were vice-like, one intertwined in my hair pulling my head sharply to the side, the other against my chest, pushing me into the wall and holding me still. Her eyes were empty, hungry, glassy and distant. They were locked on the big vein in my throat.

Rivulets of venom coated her lips and stained her chin a pale yellow. It was a nasty toxin, it would paralyze me if she got a hold of me with her teeth, but be kind enough to leave me feeling every razor sharp fang tearing into my skin. I’d feel every touch of fear that came with having my life’s blood drained and be completely unable to move to stop it from happening. Gasping, mewling sounds escaped the back of my throat. I managed to put my foot into her stomach, holding her back. Her jaws snapped closed with an audible clacking sound, close enough I could feel her lips brush against the tender hollow of my neck, the venom instantly numbing my skin.

“Lucy!” I yelled, shoving her back with all the strength I could muster. She hit the ground, rolling backwards ass over hat and into the dresser against the wall. The TV fell with a crash of sparks and glass. She came up to her hands and knees, eyes still focused on my neck and burning with animal hunger.

I shot to my feet and she hit me like a linebacker, driving me back into the wall hard enough that I felt something in my neck crack from the whiplash. Her jaws snapped again at my neck, my hand catching her chin, forcing her head back. God, she was strong, far stronger than I expected. She was a vampire for barely more than a day and already she was every bit as strong as I was. She shoved me into the wall and the drywall beneath us gave way, small bits of white dust falling onto my shoulder. The two-by-four studs underneath us creaked audibly from the strain.

“LUCY!” I heard Maggie’s voice, as the door flew open and she burst into the room. Outside, full dark had settled, the streetlights backlighting her and casting her shadow across the floor. She spat something out in Gaelic and drew her knife across her skin. It didn’t matter, I didn’t have even the slightest bit of a chance to brace myself.

Lucy looked up, smelling the blood at the same instant that wind tore through the confined space, turning the whole room into something vaguely equitable to a wind tunnel. The gust hit us both, lifting us from our feet, slamming us into the back wall. Glass shattered behind Lucy, her tiny frame smashing into a mirror hung from the wall. I was lucky, I went through the dividing wall which separated the bedroom section from the bathroom and found myself laying in a bathtub full of chunks of drywall and lumber, little pieces of light fixture dropping into my lap.

Lucy rose from the floor with a shriek, both tortured and starving, a banshee howl that carried with it the death of a girl and the birth of a monster. She shook her head violently, blue and green hair whipping back and forth and tore through the apartment, bowling Maggie over, sending her to the floor. I watched her leap off the second floor walkway, nothing more than a blur of motion, and vanish into the night.

“Ow,” I groaned, pushing a hunk of drywall off of me and crawling out of the debris. My hip gave a brief howl of pain, but given the course of the past few days, it was something that had become old hat, and as such, was promptly ignored.

I pulled myself to my feet, heading out to follow Lucy. Maggie was back on her feet, staring out the doorway. Outside, a crowd was gathering, faces appearing and trying to get a glimpse of the calamity. I ignored them, grabbing Maggie’s hand and pushing through the small mob of onlookers. They watched us in stunned silence, questions dying on their lips as they got a look at the scowl on my face.

“This is so not good,” Maggie said, master of the obvious that she was.

“You think?”

I pulled her behind me, descending the steps and heading through the parking lot. That kind of excitement would bring police, even to a place like this. It’d take them longer to get here than say, suburbia, but it was still inevitable. After my last altercation with the cops, I intended to put as much distance between the boys in blue, the hotel, and myself as possible. I wasn’t as concerned with being turned in as I was of being caught by another of Adam’s stooges. Trading a stolen gun for a few days room and board had afforded me at least the luxury of a better than average chance that the clerk wouldn’t rat me out if for no other reason that he'd want to keep his own skin out of the fryer. Granted, I sort of wish I had kept the gun now, hindsight and all that.

We walked, heads down, for a few blocks. Maggie didn’t say anything, her messenger bag thrown over her shoulder, bumping against her hip in hushed rhythm with her step. She kept her head down, shoulders hunched, in no way dressed for the cold. Our hasty retreat had left us with little more than what we were wearing and Maggie’s bag of tricks.