Demon Jack (28 page)

“Jack?” she asked, her voice slurred.

“I’m right here,” I choked out.

“What happened? I'm so hungry. I'm starving. It hurts, Jack.”

“Long story,” I said, trying to keep my statements as short as possible.

“I’m hungry... God I’m so hungry,” she said, whining. Her eyes locked on the dripping wound in my side. I tucked my arm in closer, trying to keep it hidden from sight as best I could.

“I know, I know,” I followed her eyes, and realized my best shot out of this whole mess without having to fight off a wounded, hungry vampire.

“Hey, Hey. Look at me,” I said, snapping my fingers in her face to get her attention. She slowly tore her eyes from the blood on my side, eyes focusing on my face. “I need your hand, okay?”

She stared from me, to the blood on my side, then back up to my face again. She gave a tiny nod.

I stood and paced towards her slowly, my movements cautious and deliberate. I reached down and took her hand, the nails black, shiny, and viciously sharp. Very slowly, I brought it to my wrist, dragging one of the nails across the flesh. A line of fire followed it, and the slow well of blood.

“Tilt your head back,” I said.

She leaned her head back and I squeezed my fist as hard as I possibly could, clenching and unclenching it. Blood ran out in a thin, steady stream, pouring over her lips. She shuddered, a motion that made interesting motions run through certain parts of her anatomy. The wound in her neck slowly began to knit itself shut, leaving a thick pink scar. It would take more blood than I could give to heal her back to normal, but it was something. If it would maybe buy me an hour or so before she started getting too hungry for rational thought, I could live with that.

I pulled back, clasping a hand over my wrist. She looked almost stoned, eyes bleary and wide. A small whine slipped past her lips. I shivered, more from the cold than anything. I’d left my shirt inside on the floor.

“We need to get moving. The shock of what happened to Adam isn’t going to last long amongst the less than charitable guests. Can you walk?”

She nodded and pulled herself to her feet. I couldn’t help but notice how she looked like a jungle cat rising up from its hiding place.

“We’re going to walk the whole way?” she asked.

“No. We’re going to run like hell the whole way. Big difference.”

She looked back in the direction we had come and then back towards me and nodded.

We ran for the edge of the property, back towards the street. Every step was a nice little firework of pain in my chest. I did the best I could to ignore them as I ran. Adam’s lawn was expansive, a rolling plain of perfect grass and trees. It had the feel of the pictures one sees in books showing medieval European forests, dark and foreboding, riddled with fog. With the light crusting of sleet, it shone under the night sky, small sparks of color flashing here and there like diamond reflections. It crunched underfoot as we moved, keeping to the shadows.

Behind us, I could hear the yelling as Adam’s loyals began their pursuit. We weren’t going to be hard to track, our footsteps were going to serve essentially the same purpose as a road map. We went from moving and hiding to moving at a full-out sprint. The vampires in the house would be on us in a matter of minutes, more likely seconds. Still injured and fighting for every breath I ran on pure adrenaline, struggling to keep pace with Lucy. Even weakened, she was putting a distance between her and me that was becoming nearly impossible to close.

The first vampire leapt past us, easily clearing several tens of feet to land in front of us with all the grace of an Olympic gymnast. He was dressed in a simple black suit, his greying hair tied back in a ponytail. I didn’t slow down. I pointed the gun, firing two rounds. The first hit him in the stomach, the second the shoulder and he spun to the ground howling in pain and rage. I shot past him, running for dear life. The fence came into view, Lucy jumping just before she would have plowed through it. She cleared it with room to spare.

Another vampire, the woman who had been watching the goings-on by herself, burst from behind one of the thicker trees at my right. Her claws whistled, sinking into my arm, catching on bone. Flesh ripped, the force of the blow spinning me, putting me down in the sleet. She dropped on top of me, eyes gleaming. She held me down by the throat. Her taloned hand rose, ready for the blow that would rip my face to ribbons.

I closed my eyes, I didn’t want to see it coming. I could almost hear the sounds of Hell, the symphony of wailing and gnashing, of pains unspoken.

Her hand hit the ground beside my head, and she leaned down, her lips against my ear.

“Shoot me,” she said. “Don’t argue. Just do it.”

I blinked, stunned. I didn’t move, couldn’t, confusion written on my face.

She sighed, disappointed, and grabbed the gun, pulling it into her midsection. She put her thumb over my finger and pushed the trigger firing a round into her stomach, and then another. She growled, fighting back against pain and slid off me to settle on her knees, hands over her wound.

“We’ll talk. Soon,” she said through gritted teeth.

I scrambled to my feet, slipping the gun in the waistband of my jeans. I could see other vampires working their way through the trees towards me. I turned, jumping for the top of the wall. I didn’t make it, my fingertips barely holding me on the ledge. I scrambled, pushing my feet against the brick, more pain ripping through my side and chest.

Lucy’s hand locked around my wrist, pulling me over the wall a second before one of the vampires would’ve ripped my leg off. We hit the street in a roll, and it took everything I had to bite back a scream. Lucy pulled me to my feet, half dragging me away from the house. They wouldn’t chase us here, not through suburbia. It wasn't that they couldn't catch us, they could. They wouldn't follow us for fear of being seen, despite most of the houses having a few football fields worth of yard, tree, and privacy fence between them.

“What now?” Lucy asked.

“We keep moving,” I said, growling through the pain.

I stumbled, dropping down to one knee. The flush of adrenaline had faded and the cold hit me with merciless force. My teeth chattered and I could feel my body going weak, shivering violently. Everything caught up with me, the cold, the injuries, the flight across Adam's vast expanse of lawn - but it was mostly the cold. I had to fight to keep my feet.

Lucy practically dragged me down the street, one arm around my waist.

I hit the ground again, realizing only after a second that Lucy had let me slip to the asphalt. I felt her hand drift from my side, slowly sliding across my back and trailing little bits of warmth across my skin. I dropped the gun, not even realizing it was still in my hand until I noticed its absence.

Light, bright and blinding, hit me in the face. It tore at my eyes, little stinging pains that radiated all the way into my brain. I threw an arm up, in front of my face, fighting to push it away, to save my sight. I heard voices, a hushed chorus of fear and rage. A wet cracking sound, a choked gasp, and then arms were around my waist, dragging me through the snow.

I passed out, falling in a cold, almost comfortable darkness.

Chapter 28

I don’t know how long I was out, but when I awoke I was enveloped in soft, warm leather. Music played, fading in as I crawled my way back to consciousness. Something old - classic rock. I could feel motion, a gentle rocking movement and the slow glide around a turn. I was in a car apparently. Judging from the leather and the interior, a very nice car at that. Heat roared over my naked upper body, sliding against the cold and forcing it away with easy, steady fingers.

I sat up. I wasn’t fighting for breath, the pain in my arm and side subsiding to a roaring ache as opposed to the previous tearing burn. Lucy was driving, shadows heavy against her face, her eyes distant. She focused on the road, ignoring me, hands tight on the wheel. The gun sat on the passenger seat. Around us, Southie was starting to materialize, the lush manicured lawns of Adam’s neighborhood replaced with concrete and apartment buildings.

“Lucy?”

She didn’t say anything, instead her hand found the knob of the radio and turned it up.

I took the hint, settling back into the seat. We drove like that, the radio blaring, our conversation non-existent as we lanced through rundown industrial sites. Lucy finally pulled the car to the side, gliding slowly to the middle of an empty parking lot. Without a word, she grabbed the gun off the passenger seat and slipped out, moving to the back and opening the trunk. She reappeared a moment later and opened the back door. She tossed me a red warm-up jacket.

“Get out,” she said.

I got out of the car.

It was a newer model Mercedes, the paint a thick, unmarred glossy black. The jacket was expensive, soft and surprisingly warm in the cold air. I put the hood up and slid my hands into the pockets of my jeans. I walked a bit back from the car, watching her. She went back to the trunk, pulling a road flare from a small road survival kit. She cracked the flare, rolling it under the car, and then walked to me holding the gun out, handle first.

I took it, my eyes settling on her.

“We have to get rid of it,” she said, her voice cast low, something dark and ominous looming in her tone.

I nodded, lifting the gun and firing through the gas tank. Little hint, cars don't blow up when you shoot them, usually at least. Instead, thin streams of gasoline started to run from the holes, creating a small pool beneath the car. As the gas poured out, that pool expanded. We started walking backwards, watching the car. After a minute, the flare caught the gasoline, blue and yellow fire racing back into the gas tank.

The fuel in the tank caught, and there was a massive whump noise, followed by a blast of heat. Flames rode out from the under carriage, rising up over the sides and trunk. The tires burst in a loud pop. For a long moment, we stood and watched it burn. We watched the fire bubble and distort the paint and then burn it away to bare metal. The windows shattered and thick plumes of smoke billowed into the night sky. Finally, Lucy turned, walking away. I fell in step behind her.

“You okay?”

“Yes, which is why I’m not okay,” she said.

“Okay, that’s confusing. Where’d the car come from?”

She turned her eyes towards me, dark haunted eyes. She didn’t say a word, just walked beside me staring. The wound on her neck was gone. There wasn't even a trace of scarring left. In the fading light of the fire, I could see that the angles of her face were fuller, making her look almost the same as she had before this whole mess started. Two and two clicked together in my head to make four. I didn’t ask her about it. I just looked down and paid attention to putting one foot in front of the other while she wrapped the scarf around her face again.

“Where are we supposed to meet Maggie?” she asked.

“Garrison’s,” I said.

She nodded.

“You wanna talk about it?” I asked, really hoping she didn’t.

“No.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no idea what to even say to her. She had killed someone to save my life. I didn’t even know how to respond to something like that. Do you say thanks? Do you just ignore it? So I said absolutely nothing at all, which was probably worse.

We walked the rest of the way to Garrison’s.

Garrison’s was a hole in the wall at best - a tired old shell of a bar set between two other buildings. The hardwood floor was riddled with stains ranging from beer to blood with a healthy dose of everything in between. A bar lined one wall, the bartender, a thin, skeleton of a man with a shock of white hair polished the glasses with a bored expression. It was the type of place that played only Johnny Cash and Skynard, where the clientele mostly consisted of dock and factory workers, blue collar types who stopped in on their way home for a drink and a bit of relaxation after a hard day’s work. The interior was dark, heavy on shadows and lit by the colored lamps over ratty pool tables and old beer signs.

It was my kind of place.

Lucy huddled as far into her coat as possible. It didn’t help. The guys at the bar were still unnerved by her presence. One of them actually stood up and left, casting a wary glance over her as she passed. The alcohol probably helped a little to keep them from full-on bolting.

I was a step behind her, following as we traced our way through the tattered pool tables. Other than the few at the bar, the place was mostly empty. Maggie was seated in a booth in the corner, the scarred tabletop littered with two or three empty beer bottles. Another rested in her hand, and she sipped at it with a look of mild annoyance.

We slid into the vinyl bench across from her. She eyed us for a long moment, taking stock.

“So?” she asked.

“Well, I guess it’s settled.”

“You guess?”

“He won’t be bothering us for a while,” Lucy said quietly.

She watched us for a drawn-out, quiet moment.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asked, pointedly ignoring me, her eyes focused on Lucy.

Lucy’s glare could have frozen flame. It was a stare of pure, intense misery, of anger at nothing in particular. She held Maggie like that for a moment, leaving the witch to turn her head, looking towards the door.