Demon Jack (13 page)

Her eyes rolled up towards me. She was pleading, begging for my help without saying a word. I met her gaze head on. I didn't have a choice, I had to see that pain and wrap it up in my guts. I had to feel it as much as she did. I had to make it mine and suffer through it with her.

Another scream ripped from her, a torn and ragged howl of pain in the now silent room. Adam didn’t say a word. The thralls were spellbound. Alice continued to stare, her eyes locked on Lucy, tracking her every motion.

Lucy’s skin seemed to pull in on itself, to tighten against joints and angles. Her vitality, her very life, seemed to collapse and wither as she became something new. Blood poured from her mouth and over her lips as her teeth fell from their gums, pushed out by the small, hypodermic like fangs. The same fangs that would inject the paralytic toxin and pull the blood from her future victims. She tried to mouth a word, my name, and it felt like a nuke went off in my chest. In that moment her agony and pain had been given a real, living form inside of me. I fought back tears of desperation and rage, refusing to take my eyes off of her.

She rolled onto her back, fighting for breath. At this point she was past needing it. Her back arched, again and again, raising her up off the floor, bending her body to contortionist-like angles as the seizures reached their crescendo and began to fall off.

Finally, she went still. The beautiful girl who had been there before had been replaced by something different. It was something equally beautiful, though it was a completely different form of beauty. It was the same type of beauty one sees in a jungle cat. It was something primal and vicious that awakens as much fear as it does awe. Smooth curves had become stark angles, what had once looked soft and inviting was now cold and stone-like.

She lay like that for a long moment, perfectly still. Everyone in the room was silent, their eyes all focused on Lucy. Finally, she rolled onto her stomach, pushing up to her hands and knees. Her head, hair hanging in her face and matted with sweat, lifted slowly. Her eyes, once lively, bright and very human, were now covered with thin white cataracts. She ran the back of her hand over her mouth, wiping away the remnants of something once very human.

Adam’s eyes stayed on me. He smiled again.

“See, that wasn’t so horrible, now was it?” he asked me.

Chapter 10

Adam paced towards me, hunching down so we were eye to eye. He wiped blood from his chin, sucking it off his fingertips with a low mewling sound. His eyes closed. He sighed, shuddering with pleasure.

“Now what to do with you?” Adam said.

“Want my advice?” I asked him.

“Please.”

“Kill me. Otherwise, me and you are gonna end up having a very long, painful talk,” I snarled.

“Oh?”

Adam turned just before Lucy sprung on him, her eyes flaring with rage. He hit her once. It was a quick backhanded swat that connected with the side of her face hard enough to lift her into the air and slam her into the expensive paneling. She hit with a resounding crack, bouncing off the wall and to the floor. She recoiled, retreating to the corner. She crouched there, thick, dark blood welling from a cut over her eye. She had the look of a spooked animal, eyes wide and searching back and forth with quick jerks. They settled on Alice.

“Oh goodie, she can still see me,” Alice said and shimmered, vanishing from view. Fat lot of help she was.

“You know, Jack, I may just take you up on that,” Adam said, drawing my attention back towards him.

I was going to say something threatening, or vicious. I didn’t get the chance.

The thralls, all at once turned towards the door, sniffing at the air. Adam’s eyes narrowed and I could see his body tense. Even Lucy had turned her attention to the door, eying it warily.

It exploded in a violent wall of sound and a shower of wooden shrapnel. I hit the floor, rolling away, towards the wall. The two thralls standing directly in line with the door were thrown back, screaming, trying to pull foot long spears of wood from various parts of their anatomy. Adam seemed only irritated, brushing splinters from his clothes, eyes narrowed. The thralls had taken the majority of the hit, mostly shielding Adam, Lucy and myself from the shrapnel.

I heard Maggie before I saw her, chanting as she walked. Her voice was low, husky, rolling Gaelic syllables pouring from her tongue. Thanks to the bond I had with Alice, I understood the pleas to a variety of gods and goddesses, the offers of blood for favors as she recited spell after spell. She stepped into the office and I could see now what had gotten the vampire’s and his pets’ attention. Maggie was bleeding. Four deep cuts, slashes roughly three inches in length, ran across the inside of her forearm. She carried a knife in one hand, a lighter in the other.

In one fluid motion, she drew the blade across her skin, drawing up another cut, letting the blood flow down into her hand and over the lighter. As the blood hit the lighter’s flame, it seemed to grow, turning a dark shade of crimson.

“Morrigan, mother of the dying,” she muttered in Gaelic and opened the lighter, sparking it to life.

“How dare you!” Adam said snarling.

Maggie ignored him, still chanting, blood dripping from her fingertips to the carpet.

“Lend me your touch, so they may burn. Lend me your kiss, so they may suffer,” the words spilling from her lips, faster now, her breath coming in almost excited, sexual pants.

Adam roared, anger searing his voice. With one hand he grabbed the desk, which probably weighed more than I did and threw it at Maggie. I shrank back at the action, so sudden, so ferocious that it was. She didn’t flinch, simply made a beckoning motion with her hand. Fire leapt from the lighter and into her palm, forming a perfect small glowing ball of flame. It looked like a tiny sun, tendrils of flame twisting and snaking around itself. It didn’t even blister the delicate skin of her hand. She threw it, side armed like a baseball.

There was a small shockwave, like being hit in the face with a pillow and a sound like gasoline being ignited. For a quick moment, the air was drawn out of the room. The fireball and the desk collided in mid air, shards of wood once more raining down, flame searing their edges. The carpet had caught fire. The sudden rush of heat from a moment ago was slowly being replaced by a build-up of choking warmth, not as hot but just as uncomfortable. Smoke was rising towards the ceiling, crawling across it like a newly formed thunderhead.

The thralls, those that could still stand, were working their way towards Adam, surrounding him in a defensive line. They gave the fire a wide berth, or at least as wide as possible in the confines of the office. They managed to form a broken line around their boss, putting themselves between Adam and Maggie. To their credit, none of them really looked like they’d be game for staying if they had the choice. That said, Adam had eliminated the general notion of choice from their vocabulary a long time ago.

“‘Ow dare I?” she asked, flipping her hand again, motioning another ball of flame into it. She grinned, wide, and hungry in a completely different sense than Adam's own gluttonous grins only a few moments ago.

“Oh, I dare, baby. I dare,” she said with a grin.

She flicked another fireball towards him, and he ducked under it, letting it explode against the wall. I heard Lucy shriek in fright, trying to pull herself further into the corner. Alice appeared beside me simply standing and watching the goings on with that same blank expression she had when, well, anything happened.

“Witch...” Adam snarled, eyes darting from Maggie to Lucy. Maggie winked, motioning another ball of flame into her hand. She cut her eyes towards me, her tongue running over her lips, before looking back towards Adam. The fire at her feet had grown to roughly a yard across, and the hunks of burning wood had started at least four smaller fires on the carpet in different, random spots throughout the office. The room itself was getting hazy with smoke, every breath a burning hitch in my throat. I struggled against the chains again, albeit briefly, out of nothing more than instinct. They had proven again and again that they wouldn’t be breaking anytime soon.

“Vampire,” she said grinning, her tone teasing.

Adam narrowed his eyes, and in a flurry of motion, pulled Lucy off the floor, throwing her over his shoulder. He kept his eyes on Maggie and turned, blasting through the wall behind him in a full linebacker style charge, leaving a roughly Adam sized hole in his wake. The thralls, with their master gone, got the hint and began scrambling through the hole after him.

Maggie watched the place where Adam had stood for maybe half a second before she turned and moved towards me. She crouched, eyeing the lock that held the chains around my ankles. For a moment, she just stared at me. I could see indecision and warring emotions playing across her features.

The hole Adam had made had created some ventilation for the smoke, but the influx of air was causing the fire to burn a lot faster and a lot hotter. I could feel sweat running down my back and neck in rivulets as the flames crept closer, tracing their way up the wall and over the books.

“Mind helping me out here?” I asked.

She didn’t say a word. She pulled one of those lock pick guns from the pack over her shoulder. She inserted the picks into the padlock and squeezed the trigger, her hand working the gun in quick smooth motions. I felt the lock, roughly the size of my fist let go and started kicking the chains off my feet. She repeated the process on the chains around my wrists.

“Thanks. What now?”

She didn’t answer. She turned, head down, going back the way she had come.

As we went, I tried to take stock of my surroundings. The hallway on the opposite side of the door that Maggie had just decimated led to a single, metal door. An exit sign above it fought to shine through the rapidly amassing smoke pouring from the room, which was now spreading at a much more rapid pace.

“Where are we?” I asked

She still didn’t answer.

I kept my head down, marching down the hallway and grabbed the door, pulling it open on an empty parking lot. It was still dark out. Once we were outside Maggie turned towards me. She didn’t say anything, just stared, eyes narrowed. She near trembled with rage, and waves of pure violent intent radiated off of her.

I cast a quick look around for Adam. I didn’t think he’d come jumping out now, not after Maggie’s display. Still, better safe than sorry.

“What’s with the silent treatment?” I asked.

She answered by hitting me, a quick, hard cross across the jaw. Pain flashed up through my skull, and for a second, spots flashed across my eyes. Apparently, it was the will of some bigger celestial being than myself that every person I met was destined to add to my growing list of injuries.

“What the fuck?” I growled, fighting to hold back another wash of anger. I clenched my fists, swallowing the urge to hit her back.

“What the fuck?” she asked, incredulous. “What the fuck do you think?” she pointed back towards the hotel. It was a small, three story affair, built with brick. A sign hung over the door, the words “Paradise Hotel” were little more than stains hidden behind rust and dirt. “Ya did that! Ya did that, you made all that ‘appen! What ‘appened to her, it’s yer goddamned fault!”

I took a step back. I had known it in there, watching it happen. It really sank home now, reverberating in my skull with the authority of a divine decree. Maggie's verbalization of it just served to twist the metaphorical knife a little deeper.

“You did this, you goddamn disgusting filthy little abomination,” She growled. “You drug ‘er along, didn’t give a shit what happened to ‘er, I should’ve left you in there.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked quietly.

“Because I’ma treat you like you treated ‘er. At the moment, yer useful.” She pointed towards her car. “Get in.”

Chapter 11

We drove in silence for the majority of the trip back to Boston. Maggie kept her eyes forward, hands gripping the wheel to the point her knuckles had grown a startling shade of white. She practically radiated volatile anger. I tried to ignore it. I couldn’t.

“I’m going to get her back,” I said finally.

“No,” Maggie responded, the words clipped and harsh. “Ya aren’t.”

I stared at her for a moment, my jaw hanging open.

“What?”

“I said, no. Ya aren’t.”

I blinked, confused. Less than half an hour ago, she was ready to tear my face off for what happened to Lucy. Now, she was writing her off, leaving her to Adam.

“So what, you hit me in the mouth, then that’s it? Situation over, we move on?”

“For the moment,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I call bullshit.”

She pulled the car over, brakes locking. The seat belt dug into my chest, but not before my forehead smacked against the windshield. Behind us, car horns blared. She ignored them, seething and near trembling with a barely contained rage. For a moment, she just stared, her eyes locked on mine. I could see the storm behind them, the warring emotions, and the sheer disdain for me.

“Ya don’t get it do ya?” She growled.