Deal with the Devil

by Kevin Lee Swaim

  “Did she?”

  “According to her, the men are dead. You think Spurlock killed them?”

  “It couldn’t have been her,” Callie said.

  “Why not?” Desmond asked.

  I shook my head. “I forgot. Madame Wang said the men were killed as part of some kind of ritual. Death magic. According to her, only the living can perform death magic.” When Desmond didn’t speak, I asked, “Do you know anything about that?”

  “Nah,” Desmond said. “We don’t truck with no witches. Too dangerous.”

  Asa nodded. “Desmond’s right. I spoke to Madame Wang seventy or eighty years ago. She was a young girl, but she had power. I urged her to move on, find another city, but she told me she wouldn’t stick her nose into our business if we didn’t stick our nose into hers.”

  “You left her alone?”

  “She was just entertaining people,” Desmond said. “Taking their money and telling them a bunch of junk.”

  “Okay. You left her alone, and you kept Garski at bay by feeding him a steady string of vampires.”

  “Only the ones that needed killing,” Desmond said.

  “Like Spurlock?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We were speaking with Madame Wang when Spurlock attacked. She killed Wang, and then Greta and Elijah attacked her.”

  Desmond pursed his lips. “I told them if they ever saw her again…”

  “You ordered them to kill her?”

  “Yes.”

  “It sure didn’t work out like that.”

  “You have been beating around the bush—”

  “Spurlock ripped Elijah’s heart out,” I said.

  Desmond staggered back. “That ain’t possible. Spurlock is powerful, but she ain’t that powerful.”

  “She tore through Elijah like he wasn’t even there.”

  “No,” Asa said. “Desmond is right. She’s not that powerful.”

  “She’s damned sure more powerful than you think she is.”

  “And Greta?” Desmond asked.

  “I tried to shoot Spurlock, but she yanked Greta into the line of fire. It was an accident.”

  “An accident?” Desmond asked. “An accident might kill my Greta? What, you just blasted away?”

  “You weren’t there,” Callie said. “Sam is right. Tessa Spurlock is powerful.”

  A dull whump-whump came from above. The floor vibrated like something large had struck the concrete foundation, and I raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

  Desmond’s eyes widened. When he opened his mouth, his gleaming white fangs were out. “It sounded like grenades.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The ground shook again as another pair of whumps rocked the building. “Grenades?” I asked. “Are you serious? Who would attack your place with grenades?”

  “Garski,” Desmond snarled. “It’s gotta be Garski.”

  “He will stop his attack once he knows we are here,” Callie said.

  Asa turned to Callie and frowned. “I don’t think he will care.”

  “But we’re human—”

  “What difference will that make to him?” Desmond asked.

  “He’s a man of God,” Callie said, as if it made all the difference in the world.

  Desmond spun to Callie so quickly that she took a step back. “Sister? You may be devoted to God, but Garski ain’t got but one thing on his mind, and that’s killing us.”

  “But—”

  I reached out and grabbed Callie’s hand. “He had no problem knocking Xavier unconscious. He kidnapped me and shocked me with a Taser. Garski isn’t like us. Like you. He’s willing to do things you aren’t.”

  “You think he might actually harm us?”

  “Callie? He might kill us to get to them.”

  “This is madness,” Callie said. “None of this makes sense. There are too many things going on in Chicago. The murders. A rogue vampire. The Ancients.”

  A range of emotions had played across Desmond and Asa’s faces over the past thirty minutes, but now I saw an emotion I had never seen from them.

  They’re afraid. They’re … terrified!

  “The Ancients are in Chicago?” Desmond demanded. “How many? You saw them? Of course you ain’t seen them.”

  “How do you know we haven’t seen them?” I asked.

  “On account of you still being alive.”

  “Oh. Has anyone ever seen them?”

  “Nobody I ever heard of.”

  “Some say a few of our kind in Europe have seen them,” Asa said, “but mostly the sheriff just shows up and tells them what the Ancients wants them to do.”

  “I never heard nothing but stories,” Desmond said. “And they are all bad. If they are here, then we are in deep shit.”

  A pop-popping came from far above, barely louder than a cough. “Does that sound like gunfire?” I asked.

  “Jimmy should have sent everyone home,” Desmond said. He turned to Asa. “Call him.”

  Asa removed his walkie-talkie from his waistband and spoke Jimmy’s name into it. There was nothing but static, and Asa said Jimmy’s name again.

  There came a man’s voice this time. “I’m coming for you.”

  “That’s Garski,” I said.

  Desmond grabbed the walkie-talkie from Asa. “Where’s Jimmy?”

  The walkie-talkie squawked, and then Garski said, “Don’t worry about your servant. Worry about yourself.”

  “Garski!” Desmond shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Garski! You better not hurt him. He’s not one of us. You can’t hurt him!”

  The walkie-talkie was silent.

  “Garski!”

  “Can he get down here?” I asked.

  Desmond considered that. “He can take either the elevator or the stairs. But he can’t call the elevator, and the stairs are locked up tight—”

  There was a boom, this time much closer, and the building shook again.

  “Did that sound like someone blowing up a door?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t,” Callie said.

  “I think he did,” Asa said. “He’s coming.”

  Desmond turned to me. “You got any weapons on you, hunter?”

  I knelt and pulled my Kimber from my ankle holster. “I have this and one magazine of silver bullets. The rest are in the truck.”

  “What about you, girl? You carrying anything?”

  Callie’s dismayed look gave away the fact that other than her crucifix, she was defenseless.

  Desmond shook his head. “Ain’t that grand. We got us a crazy man wanting to kill us, and all we got is our bare hands and two humans.”

  “Dammit,” I said. “He’s just one man. You two are over a hundred years old. There’s no way he can overpower you.”

  Desmond frowned. “You better hope you’re right, hunter, ’cause I’m getting worried.”

  * * *

  “Is there another way out of here?” I asked.

  Desmond started to speak, but Asa interrupted him. “The tunnels?”

  “What tunnels?”

  “This part of the city is thick with tunnels,” Desmond said. “We used them back in the day to run booze, broads, and…”

  “And what?”

  “Back when we used to hunt,” Desmond said. “I’m talking about before Prohibition. We had ways of getting around so we weren’t seen.”

  “There are tunnels under this building?” Callie asked.

  “There was a door,” Desmond said. “I had it boarded up when I bought this place. I have no idea where it goes. We ain’t needed anything like that in years. I never figured I would need a way out of my own club.”

  I frowned. “We could take our chances with Garski…”

  “We could.”

  “Or we could find out where that tunnel goes. You pick.”

  Desmond glanced at the tub. “What are we gonna do ’bout Greta?”

  “We can
bring her with us,” Callie said.

  “I don’t know if she can be moved yet,” Desmond said.

  “How many floors above us?” I asked.

  “Two,” Desmond said. “We keep the extra booze in the basement, and extra chairs and tables in the subbasement.”

  “If he’s clearing each floor, how long do you think we have?”

  Desmond tilted his head. “Two or three minutes. Maybe.”

  I said, “Then we either risk taking Greta, or we take our chances with Garski.”

  Desmond nodded. “The tunnel, then.” He bent down, and stuck his hands in the blood up to his armpits, and carefully lifted Greta from the tub. She squished and slurped as she emerged, a beautiful ebony statue covered in scarlet. Her eyes were closed, and the hole in her arm had filled in with waxy-looking skin the size of a silver dollar. “Sorry, Greta, but we gotta go.”

  Greta didn’t move. Rivulets of blood ran from her naked body and formed great crimson puddles on the concrete floor.

  “Get me a blanket or something,” Desmond barked.

  Asa nodded and took off so fast he was just a blur.

  Desmond shook his head sadly. “Follow me.”

  We followed him back the way we had come, past several more steel refrigerators, the elevator, and the stairwell. There was dead silence from above.

  Desmond gave the stairwell door a long look, then we continued on. There was an old steel door behind the elevator shaft, and Desmond nodded at it. “Open that.”

  It took quite a bit of pressure to twist the knob, and I had to put my shoulder against the door and push, but it finally opened with a groan..

  Asa joined us, carrying a stack of thin white sheets. “This is all I could find down here.”

  “Ain’t no problem,” Desmond said. He shifted Greta to his left arm and grabbed the sheets with his right hand, snapping them open and wrapping Greta in them. “We got to go.”

  The room was pitch black and smelled like old newspaper. I took a step inside and hesitated.

  “There should be a switch on your right,” Desmond called out.

  I fumbled against the wall until I found it and flipped it with a soft click. An overhead fluorescent light came on and gave me a good look at the room. It was bigger than an average living room, and cardboard boxes lined the walls. “Where is the tunnel?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  Asa brushed past me and started tossing boxes aside, each hitting the floor and splitting open to spill their contents of old cocktail napkins against the pitted gray concrete.

  Callie entered behind me and stood to my left. “I don’t see a door.”

  “I told you it was boarded up,” Desmond said.

  I stared at the gray cement wall that Asa had exposed. “I don’t see any boards.”

  Desmond cradled Greta against his chest, and he stared at the wall with a grim look on his face. “I meant I had it closed off.”

  I could now make out an outline where the cement was a slightly lighter color, and I stabbed my finger at it. “That’s a problem. How are we going to make it through that?”

  * * *

  Desmond glanced down at Greta. “Asa will take care of it. Hunter, get that door shut. We’re going to make some noise.”

  Asa turned to the wall and struck it hard enough with his fists that a dull thump radiated through my chest. Another fist struck the wall, followed by another thump.

  “Oh,” I said dumbly. “Right.” I turned back to the door we had just come through and inspected it. There was no lock on the door. “I don’t know how—”

  “Figure something out,” Desmond said, “because sure as shit Garski is gonna find us.”

  “I’ll help,” Callie said. She began frantically searching the room, knocking over boxes and searching through their contents.

  I joined her. As we looked for a way to secure the door, I heard a cracking noise from the concrete behind us. I turned to see Asa continuing his assault against the concrete wall as fist-sized chunks broke free and clattered across the floor.

  “There’s nothing here,” Callie said. She kicked over one last box, which contained nothing but old silverware. “We can’t keep him out.”

  I stared at the door handle. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Rip the doorknob off,” Desmond said.

  “What?”

  “Rip the damned knob off. That should hold him for a bit.”

  “I can’t rip off a metal doorknob—”

  “Hunter, you got some of us inside of you. You said it yourself. Now rip off that damned knob!”

  I grabbed the knob before I had time to think and yanked as hard as I could. Surprisingly, it gave way with a screech of metal. I held it in my hand, staring at it like I had never seen one before.

  Oh, shit.

  “Sam,” Callie said. She handed me a few of the forks from the cardboard box. “Use these.”

  I took the handful of forks and jammed them into the remains of the mechanism, then twisted them until they bent over on themselves. A few more forks and the mechanism was wedged tight.

  The sound of cracking cement behind us stopped. I turned and was shocked to see that a hole two feet deep and big enough for a man to step through had been torn through the wall. Desmond motioned for Asa to step through, and the vampire disappeared into the darkness beyond.

  “You better follow him,” Desmond said, “unless you two are gonna fight that maniac.”

  I followed Callie to the wall. Desmond stepped through into the darkness, carefully holding Greta’s body to his chest. Callie removed her cell phone and pushed a button. The light on the cell phone came to life, like a mini-flashlight, and I followed her through the hole and into the tunnel beyond.

  Callie’s cell phone provided very little light, but I could make out the details of the tunnel. It was just tall enough that I was forced to stoop to keep my head from hitting the arched concrete top.

  The concrete walls were stained brown, and there were puddles between rusty steel tracks that led off into the distance. There were varying degrees of dirt and mud on top of the concrete floor, and an overwhelming foul smell hit me, a mixture of mold, mildew, and something else.

  Callie put her hand over her mouth. “It smells like a sewer!”

  “This used to be the ground level of Chicago,” Desmond said. “The city grew up around it. Sewer pipes run through the dirt behind these walls. I guess it seeps in…”

  We followed Desmond and Asa through the tunnel until they stopped at an intersection with the remains of a rusting switching mechanism for moving railcars between the tracks.

  “We need to go one way or another,” Desmond said.

  Asa pointed to the left. “It smells better that way. It could be fresher air.”

  “It could just be less sewage,” Desmond said.

  Far behind us, there was the sound of something pounding on metal. I spun around to look at the hole in the wall, which was now just a tiny point of light in the distance. “Garski found the door.”

  Desmond’s face was grim. “We got to find an exit.”

  “I don’t mean to alarm anybody,” Callie said, “but my phone is almost dead.”

  “We can’t see in the dark,” Asa said.

  “You ain’t helping,” Desmond said. He swung his head from side to side and sniffed. “Left it is.” He hurried down the tunnel with Asa following close behind.

  Callie grabbed my hand and whispered, “We only have a couple of minutes of light. The flashlight app sucks power.”

  I held the Kimber in my left hand and checked in my pocket with my right. “Great. I left my phone back in the truck.”

  We barely made it thirty feet before we came to a fork in the tunnel with another rusted-out switching mechanism.

  “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” I asked.

  “One of these should lead back to the lakefront,” Desmond said. “They wer
e built to haul freight. There’s got to be a way out of here.”

  “We’re a long way from the lake.”

  A dull whump from behind us echoed against the concrete walls.

  “Garski blew the door,” Asa hissed. “Quit talking and get to walking.”

  Desmond grunted and slung Greta over his shoulder, walking as fast as the muddy earth would allow. Within seconds, we came to a section that had once housed a door but was now covered in concrete, much the same as Desmond’s club’s subbasement had been.

  “You think you can bust through it?” I asked.

  Asa inspected it. “Depends on how thick it is.”

  Callie’s phone dinged softly. “My phone is shutting down.”

  Desmond and Asa gave Callie sour looks.

  “It’s not my fault,” she protested. “I didn’t plan for this.” As she finished speaking, the phone shut off and the light died out, plunging the tunnel into darkness.

  If you’ve never experienced complete darkness, and most haven’t—not in several generations anyway—one might think complete darkness isn’t so bad.

  One would be wrong.

  The darkness was like a living thing, and that thing was out for vengeance. It felt like the walls were closing in and the darkness was trying to strangle me.

  Time slowed, and then stopped, as the reality sank in.

  I’m in a tunnel, surrounded by vampires, and being hunted by a crazed vampire hunter.

  “We ain’t got no choice,” Desmond’s voice boomed against the concrete. If I hadn’t known he was standing in front of us, I wouldn’t have been able to place his location with all the echoes playing tricks on my ears. “We got to bust us a way out of here.”

  I heard a thump, followed by another and another, and realized Asa was pounding against the cement-covered doorway.

  Either Asa clears the cement or Garski catches us. Things can’t get any worse.

  “Desmond,” a woman’s voice croaked, barely above a whisper but somehow loud enough to hear over the pounding of Asa’s fists. “I’m hungry.”

  * * *

  “Greta,” Desmond said. “How you feeling?”

  “Cold,” Greta replied after a long silence. “It’s dark and cold. I’m … starving!”

  “Just hold on,” Desmond said. “We’re in the tunnels.”