Devil Take Me

by Jordan L. Hawk

  Sometimes an offer is too good to refuse, and even someone as jaded as I am gets sucked in. But at least this time I was going in with my eyes wide open.

  As Adam’s body went rigid and his breathing stuttered, I looked into his eyes—crystalline blue, misted by clouds—and said, “Fine. The favor’s yours. I’m in.”

  He looked surprised. Then pleased. And then he pressed his mouth to mine and plunged us both into that scorching abyss.

  Chapter Ten

  1961

  JOHNNY

  SO COLD.

  The Devil let go of my hand, but what did that matter? It wasn’t the handshake that sealed the deal, but the agreement. He was watching me with this little smirk, like he’d trained a dog to dance and was pleased with himself for doing it… but was also a little bit sad for the stupid mutt who’d just traded its nonexistent dignity for a bone. “Go fuck yourself” was right on the tip of my tongue. I’d even sucked in the breath to say it—when I saw his eyes.

  Black. Solid black.

  “You don’t strike me as someone who thinks of himself as innocent,” the old man said. “But now the veil has been lifted, and you can truly see. There are two types of people in this world—those who are Chosen, and those who are not. Don’t expect any favors from the clay. They’re nothing but the steppingstones to greatness. But enlist the help of the Chosen, and you will have what you seek.”

  I was only half listening. Mostly I was scrabbling at the door, yanking the handle and feeling it snap shut without doing a damn thing.

  The old man waxed eloquent. “The world is simply a great wheel of exchange. The idioms are innumerable. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You can’t get something for nothing. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And that’s just in the English language. Pay attention, Johnny. You’ll need to know how this works, and I’m only going to show you once.”

  His smile deepened. I yanked frantically at the door.

  “Johnny… do me a favor.”

  “Sure,” I managed to say. Not that I thought he bought it—I was clearly humoring him and wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of that car. But as soon as the word left my mouth, that icy feeling of nothingness morphed into something else.

  Back when I was a kid, I would save my pennies for model airplanes just so I could huff the glue. The feeling I got when I acquiesced to the Devil was something like that nauseating head rush, but a thousand times worse.

  It filled the emptiness, and yet there was no satisfaction. Only the urge to capitulate.

  The old man paused, made sure he had my attention, and said, “Be a sport, Johnny, and unlock the door.”

  The urge grew, intensified. And while I felt no more calm than I had before the agreement, there was, at least, a queasy sort of focus. I got a better look at the car door, found the lock, and despite my sweaty fingers, pulled it open.

  Such a small thing. But when I performed the act, another floodgate opened, and where the sickening urge to please had been, something else rushed in. Pure potential.

  Raw power.

  With the lock disengaged, the door clicked and swung open… not by any mechanical means, I now saw.

  “I’ve given you a lot to think about, Johnny, but remember what you’ve learned tonight. Fairness exists, but it’s up to you to make justice happen. Rudolpho was the one who took that tip. Who else but the owner could hover around the hostess station without attracting undue attention? Bad enough he rakes in all the business and sends you home with only a few skimpy dollars in your pocket, but then he skims off the best of the tips, spends it on his uptown mistress or a downtown whore, and then leaves that poor, innocent girl to take the blame. Think about all of that. Remember it. And when you find someone else with my Mark, someone like you, ask him for a favor. And tell him to make things right.”

  Chapter Eleven

  1979

  JOHNNY

  ADAM DIDN’T apologize for the deep red welts the cords left on my wrists and forearms, and if he had, I wouldn’t have believed him. Sorry just wasn’t his style.

  His private bathroom was as big as my apartment, and the shower took up the entire far wall. Like the rest of his suite, it was updated and modern, all chrome and glass. He pulled me into the shower with him and held me there, not with force, but with kisses. The water was so hot, it seemed like it should scald away the stain of the task I was there to do. But unless he sliced me open and let the spray pound against my filthy soul, that wasn’t gonna happen.

  With his dark hair slick with water and his long eyelashes clinging together in gleaming black points, he looked almost innocent. Especially now that I’d taken his last favor. The Mark was so thin on him that his eyes held only a suggestion of clouds, and I could clearly make out the crystal blue of what they used to be.

  No doubt mine were as dark as my heart.

  I turned my head and broke our kiss. I’d hoped giving him a favor would take the edge off the Devil’s work, but I was wrong. It only made things worse. “Just tell me what to do,” I said, “and I’ll do it.”

  “You don’t need to sound so demoralized about it. Don’t you trust me?”

  I laughed bitterly, sputtering shower spray.

  He touched his tongue to my shoulder and caught a bead of water. “I know what you’re thinking—I’ll tell you to off yourself. Here. Where the blood won’t stain. But in the little time we’ve known each other, haven’t you figured out that I’d never stoop to something that obvious? Besides, I’d rather deal with you than with whoever would take your place. I know you.” He slipped a wet hand between my legs and caressed my balls. “Biblically.”

  I doubted that made much difference, and I still didn’t entirely trust him.

  But I liked him a hell of a lot better than I did the old man.

  “I already agreed,” I said. “You can stop selling it now.”

  “I know. But I get off on seeing you squirm.”

  If it gnawed at me to have a favor undone, then being in that precarious spot of agreement—the one where the deal is sealed but the particulars are still hanging—was worse than waiting for Adam to decide whether or not he’d let me shoot my load. I thought about the quarter that rolled out of Mary’s purse—back in my former life as a human being—how it spun, wobbled, careened around like a drunk with the spins. An extended moment of unresolved tension.

  That’s how it felt. Times a million.

  He skimmed his palms up my arms. The slick heat of the water made our skin glide like silk. Then he paused with his hands on my shoulders and gave me an encouraging push. I folded to my knees. The hot spray parted my hair and needled my scalp. He nudged his wet dick against my cheek, not even bothering to aim for my mouth. Marking me in his own way.

  “I don’t really remember what poverty is like,” he said, “but I look at you, and I wonder if it might be better if I did. Nowadays I’ve got access to anything money can buy… and anything it can’t? Well, that’s what favors are for.” As he spoke over the echoing rush of water and mashed his dick against my cheek, I felt it start to firm up again and fill out. He cupped the back of my head and stroked himself against me even harder, and pretty soon he was stiff enough that his cockhead flicked my earlobe. “When you picked up that knife… I got such a rush. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you hesitated, because we’d be having an entirely different conversation right now if you hadn’t. But the danger….” He sighed. “Now that’s what it’s like to feel alive.”

  I’m guessing he didn’t want an answer, and not just because he was in love with the sound of his own voice. He jammed his dick into my mouth. Even without the cords binding me, I didn’t stop him. Nothing to struggle against anymore, but I didn’t even try. He’d made a mark on me—different from the blackness in my eyes, different from the red welts at my ankles and wrists. And I welcomed it. He and I were in it together now. For better or for worse.

  He eased his feet apart and said, “You know what I want. Touch me.
”

  I pressed a finger up his ass and wondered why it was still so slick. Then I realized what I felt inside him was the dregs of my own jiz. His body was a welcome distraction from the urge to rage through the house in search of Helen and get myself killed by the security staff.

  He grabbed my head more firmly, two-handed, and started fucking my mouth, deep. “It’s almost a shame,” he said as he pumped his dick in and out, in and out, “breaking that tension.”

  I made a sound in my throat.

  “You don’t agree?” He peered down at me through the spray. “You’ve been awfully good tonight, so I suppose this time I can let you have what you want.” He slowed his squelching thrusts, pulled out, and skimmed his cockhead across my lower lip, back and forth, in a wet caress. “After all, knowing I have a merciful side will only keep you more off-balance.”

  He touched my cheek with his fingertips. I closed my eyes and leaned into his hand.

  “Here’s the favor.” He spoke so low, I could hardly hear him over the sound of running water. “Promise me you will never again, under any circumstances, utter Helen’s name.”

  In all the years I’d been doing favors, and in all the favors I’d done, I’d never heard one framed as a promise. But I had no doubt at all that once I gave the word, I’d be permanently bound. And, as favors went, it seemed suspiciously simple.

  “Okay. I promise.”

  As he smiled down at me, the remaining traces of darkness drained from his eyes. They were only a man’s eyes, now. Winter blue. Their Mark was so tapped, I couldn’t even tell that he was Chosen anymore.

  “One more thing and you’ll be free.” Adam pulled me to my feet so we were equal, gazed deep into my eyes, and said, “Now it’s my turn to grant you a favor of my own. Just tell me who to kill.”

  Chapter Twelve

  1961

  JOHNNY

  EVEN WHEN, on the surface, something seems fair… chances are, it’s as shady as the wrong side of a crapper.

  I left the big black Caddy full of the righteous indignation you only find in people too young or too stupid to know any better. I’d never had much to do with Mary—her being front of house and me a lowly busboy—but I felt a certain kinship with her, in the way the waiters treated her. It was the same way men treated me when I ventured into the woods at Center Park.

  It wasn’t just the power seething through my veins that had me so turned around—it was all that talk of fairness. Anyone’ll tell you not to believe a damn word the Devil says, but my folks weren’t religious. Maybe other kids were threatened with Old Scratch dragging them down to hell when their parents caught them jerking off to the men’s underwear page of the Sears catalog. I just got the belt.

  The world looked different once the veil was lifted. I stood on the double yellow line down the center of Main Street and ignored the horn blasts and catcalls of the occasional late-night joyrider and took in everything with fresh eyes. I’d always figured the rich side of town was somehow better than anyplace I’d hang my greasy hat. But now I saw it was all steel and concrete and wood, just the same. And the alleyways still reeked of rat piss.

  After the black sedan drove off, it took me a while to find someone like me, another Chosen. I’d been walking for who knows how long, oblivious to the cold. Long enough to take me into a neighborhood that wore its desperation a little more proudly. A wino in a stained overcoat was pawing through the trash outside First Calvary Bank. Most of the time, guys like that scuttle away when they hear someone coming, but this one was different. He glanced up, cool and calm, and looked me square in the eye.

  His eyes were seething with dark clouds.

  I hesitated.

  He smiled grimly and said, “Welcome to the club, kiddo. You got something you want to say to me?”

  Somehow I stammered out the story of the Inferno—the tip, the argument, the sight of Mary in her torn blouse, striding out into the night. I was wondering exactly how much of the conversation in the big black Cadillac the bum needed to know when he said, “Look, kid, it’s simple. Just tell me what you want. Make sure it’s possible—I can’t go lift up that Buick, for instance—and if you tell me to, you’ll gum up the works and we’ll both regret it. Keep it simple. Say what you’re looking for and let me figure out how to make it happen. It all starts with you asking me for a favor.”

  When I asked him for a favor and he accepted, the thread was forged. My insides lit up with anticipation. I didn’t like the feel of it, and the urge to chafe it away was probably to blame for the careless way I phrased it. That and sheer stupidity.

  “What happened at the restaurant—it wasn’t fair. Make it right. Make Rudolpho pay.”

  As I said the words, power rushed out of me, thundered through the connection, and filled him. Power fresh from the Devil himself.

  The wino’s grim smile deepened. “Say what you want for broads with experience. Nothing beats a virgin.”

  It took a few days before I noticed what was what. I was too busy test-driving my newfound power. You don’t realize how small your shell is until you outgrow it. And me? I’d blown that old carapace to pieces. In less time than it took most people to read a book, I’d stolen a car, returned a different car, punched out someone’s deadbeat husband, and taken a piss on the stodgy memorial in the town square. For every boon I granted, I got an even better favor in return. It wasn’t so much that I was invincible. No, even more useful—I was Chosen, part of an invisible brotherhood where I could always count on a fellow sinner to bail me out, no matter how public my transgression.

  It was one hell of a week.

  I was sprawled on my narrow twin bed—sleeping off a bender, with a stranger’s watch on my wrist and the pong of spunk at the back of my throat—when real life finally intruded.

  Not sure how many times my old man said my name. A week earlier I would’ve snapped wide awake, but now? I wasn’t scared of him anymore. Not even a little.

  When I knuckled the grit from my eyes, I really saw my father for first time in forever. He was nowhere near as big as I remembered. Not nearly as threatening—just a stooped, graying man with nicotine-stained fingers and confusion on his face.

  Or was it fear?

  “The cops are here, Johnny. And they’re asking about you.”

  Let ’em ask.

  I took my time pulling on my clothes and slicking back my hair and swaggered out through the apartment with a cockiness only ignorance can fuel. The flatfoot at our door wasn’t Chosen, but so what? Someone at his station was bound to be, and whatever it was they were pinning on me wouldn’t amount to anything more than a free ride downtown.

  “John Lockheart, Jr.?” he said.

  “That’s my name.” So fucking cocky.

  “You work at the Inferno?”

  I’d been expecting him to try to pin one of the stolen cars on me or maybe the stack of cash I’d carted out of the bank, whistling, only to toss it in a nearby trash can when I realized I had no real use for it anymore. So I was caught with my pants down when he asked about that old place.

  “Yeah… I mean, I guess you could say I do. I, uh, took a few days off….”

  “You might want to sit down, son,” he told me, which was ridiculous. Even the old geezer trembling in the kitchen doorway never called me that.

  “You got something to say, pal, then say it.”

  The cop sighed. “There’s been an… incident… at your workplace.”

  So what, I thought. And then I remembered the first favor I’d asked. The one where I told the wino to make Rudolpho pay. Not only that, but to make it fair.

  There was a slim chance the gas leak had been an accident, the cop said. But given that the whole staff had been locked in the kitchen while it happened, more likely than not, it was deliberate.

  They came to that conclusion for sure once Rudolpho’s body turned up with a bullet in its brain and a revolver in its hand. Newspapers carried the story on the front page, ten days running. Local Restaurat
eur Kills Ten, Takes Own Life.

  What they didn’t report on was the convoluted nature of Rudolpho’s will. He had distant family back in Italy and some cousins in Cleveland who were especially ticked off. But Rudolpho had left his business to be divided equally among his employees.

  No one understood why he’d do such a thing and then turn around and kill them all—all but the one who’d been sleeping off half a case of Schlitz. None of the sheep could figure it out, anyhow.

  But I knew. To compensate for the skimmed tips, the twisted channels of dark favors had engineered for Rudolpho’s ill-gotten gains to go to an employee, along with everything else the poor sap owned. And as for all the collateral damage?

  That’s just how the Chosen got their rocks off.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1979

  JOHNNY

  IT HAD been years since I’d asked anyone for a favor. How many? Too many to count. So I was unprepared for the feeling of the Devil’s Mark leaving me when I passed the burden to Adam.

  I sprawled on his silk sheets, still wet from the shower. They clung to my back and grasped at the moisture. Me, though… I was just so drained that I felt dazed.

  When you ask someone a favor—when you forge that infernal connection—you can’t see it. It’s not physical. And yet I’d been amassing power for so long, when I told Adam what he had to do for me, I swore I could see the darkness rush out of my soul and into his.

  At the very least, I saw his crystalline blue eyes cloud over, solid black. And once the power left me, I was too weak to lift my head off his pillow. Which smelled of citrus and earth.