The Demon's Deal

by H. D. Gordon

  “The door is locked,” doc said. “I don’t have the key.”

  I gave her an incredulous look, tightened my hold around her neck, and used my free hand to snap the lock on the door.

  “Magnificent,” she mumbled.

  I didn’t have time to consider this creepy-scientist comment, because Biagi was in the adjacent room. He’d been sitting in one of the chairs, flipping through a car magazine, and I used his moment of confusion to deliver a kick to his face as well. This time, however, I didn’t hold back, and the crunching of his nose was more satisfying than I would admit.

  It was rare that I used my full strength on a human, as I was fully aware of how much damage I could do. But if anyone deserved it, I was pretty sure it was this guy, and I took a moment to gloat as he slumped to the side in much the same manner Becky had done.

  A moment later, I was pushing through the door that let out into the hallway where Clare and the other women were still lined up against the wall. Two more guards were out here, and they were quicker to react than Biagi had been. They reached for their guns. I shoved the doc against the wall as I spun and knocked the weapon free from the hand of the guard nearest me.

  He swung his fist toward me, and I ducked, focusing on the guard who still had his firearm. He managed to get a shot off before I was able to break his wrist, making him drop the weapon. The sound of the gun reporting was enormous in the small space, however, and the bullet nicked my shoulder before embedding into the wall.

  Without their firearms, the two didn’t stand a chance. A few moves, and they were on the ground. They would not be getting up for a good while.

  The women stood wide-eyed as they watched this, the doc pressed so close to the wall that it seemed she wanted to melt into it. I snatched her up again, knowing I’d need some collateral if I hoped to make it out of here.

  Clare ran to catch up with us as I dragged the doctor down the hallway. “Wait,” she said. “Please, take me with you.”

  “Neither of you are getting out of this place,” the doctor said. “It’s like a fortress. One way in, one way out.”

  “Great,” I said. “And you’re going to show us the way. If they shoot at us, I’ll just use you as a shield.”

  This shut her up.

  Confirming my earlier observations about her, Clare scooped up the guns of the two unconscious guards, offering me one. When I shook my head, she tucked one into the back of her waistband and held the other aloft. She nodded as if to say, Let’s go.

  I shoved the doctor farther along, the only sound that of our shoes squeaking over the linoleum. Into the silence, an alarm started to blare. Clare looked over at me with big eyes.

  “We need to hurry,” she said.

  No shit, Sherlock, I thought, but didn’t say.

  Four guards appeared at the end of the hallway. The doctor shouted at them to hold their fire, and they came rushing toward us. If my memory served, we still had to make two lefts and a right to get back to that front door…and get through all the armed guards in between. Once I did that, I could run into the cornfields and maybe lose them there.

  A spike in Clare’s aura distracted me, and I bumped into her in time to knock her shot off target, the sound of her gun firing exploding against my sensitive ears.

  “Are you insane?” she screamed at me.

  Maybe I was, but I also knew what it felt like to take life, and it was not a feeling I ever wanted to face again. The Seers voice raced through my head.

  That’s the trouble with heroes…

  “Just aim for the legs,” I said, but the words were cut off with the return of gunfire.

  Unconsciously, I ducked behind the doctor as Clare fired back at the guards. The sounds were so enormous in the tight hallway that my ears began ringing. The doctor’s body jerked in my arms, and then went slack. For a couple heartbeats, I could only stare down at her in horror.

  When I’d said I’d use her as a shield if necessary, I had just been making a threat. I hadn’t really meant it.

  The doc stared up at me with wide eyes. Blood bubbled at the corners of her mouth. That ringing in my ears grew louder.

  “Alice!” someone shouted. “Alice! Come on, we have to go!”

  I blinked and saw Clare standing next to me, the barrel of her gun still hot in her hand. I looked down the hall at the guards. The four of them lie on the floor, scarlet pooling around them.

  Clare shoved me forward, snapping me out of my trance.

  I wondered once again just who Clare was, and why she was such a good shot.

  We made it to the front door of the facility, the alarm still blaring, ears still ringing. I pushed the shock away in order to handle what was in front of me.

  Surprise, surprise. More men with guns.

  “Try not to kill anyone else,” I gritted out to Clare as I kicked one guard in the stomach and slammed another into the wall.

  She shot another in the leg while I rammed my knee into the crotch of a fourth, following that up by grabbing him around the back of the neck and slamming my knee into his nose. He dropped like a rock. Then we were standing in a pile of unconscious guards, the only thing between us and the outside world a door of reinforced steel.

  Clare yanked at the handle. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Shit,” she said. “They’re controlled electronically. There’s no way—”

  I stepped back a couple feet, gathered my strength, and put every bit of supernatural force behind my kick. The door was ripped right from the concrete walls, flying outward in a rain of dust.

  “What the—?”

  I shoved Clare to the side as I tipped the barrel of a gun away from us, disarming the man wielding it and knocking him hard enough in the head to render him unconscious, but hopefully not kill him.

  The sound of footsteps from behind had us running out into the bright sunlight. I looked back to see five more guards heading our way. I picked up the steel door I’d just ripped from the frame, waiting a couple heartbeats until the men were lined up like bowling pins, and chucked it at them. They went down like dominos.

  I glanced over at Clare to see her eyes wide, her aura a mess of emotions.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand. “They’re not going to stop coming.”

  She nodded, and we ran headfirst into the cornfields.

  Run. Run. Run.

  It was one of the very first things they made us do in the Brokers. Being able to fight was important, but being able to run was essential. All throughout my childhood I’d been woken up before the sun rose and forced to run three miles before I was even allowed to have breakfast. For years, it was wake up, go pee, pull on shorts and sneakers, and run.

  So many of those days I would curse the superiors, thinking that this incessant running was simply to torture us, not seeing the benefit, only feeling the pain. They rewarded those who finished those morning races first, and our times were always recorded, so that they could congratulate us for shaving some time off, or berate us for getting slower.

  Nick had always been in good spirits about the morning runs, had smirked when I’d let out a string of curses and complain.

  “One day, we might be running for our lives,” Nick had said to me. “And then you’ll be grateful.”

  I’d snorted. “I’d be grateful if I got to sleep in one miserable day of my life,” I’d said.

  And now here I was, grateful that I could run fast and for long distances. Running for my life.

  We crashed through the high corn stalks, the sea of gold swallowing us up. I had no idea where we were or where we were heading. The only plan was to put as much distance between us and that breeding-building as possible. Once we did that, I could come up with a better plan.

  It was a stroke of luck that Clare was able to keep up, and I noticed for the first time that she was stronger physically than I’d given her credit for. The air tore in and out of her lungs, her hair matted to her forehead as the bright sun beamed down from overhead, but she
kept on pumping. Either she also was a runner in her everyday life, or fear for her survival had made her one.

  Behind us, I could hear the shouts of the guards, knew that several were in pursuit. I made sure to steer us away from them. As long as the psychos didn’t bust out a helicopter or something, we just might make it out of here alive.

  Because one thing was certain; if they caught up to us now, there would be no questions. They would kill us on the spot.

  At last, we came to the end of the cornfields, and to the edge of a thick forest. Just the sight of all that greenery made tears well in my eyes, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think we were out of the fire yet.

  “Slow down a little,” Clare panted beside me. “I can’t…”

  I did as she asked, even though I wanted to shout at her that we needed to keep moving. The run through the cornfield could not have been more than a couple of miles, and I could have run another two at least at the pace I’d been keeping.

  Then, again, I wasn’t exactly human.

  I slowed, my head tilting to the side as I picked up the sounds of men not too far off, the crackle of their radios identifying them as our pursuers.

  I blew out a breath through my nose as Clare leaned against a tree, gasping. Then I turned my back to her and bent my knees a little.

  “Hop on,” I said. “I’ll carry you.”

  Clare’s eyebrows shot up. “You can’t possibly….” She trailed off.

  Then she hopped up onto my back, wrapping her legs around my waist.

  Her weight was nothing to my supernatural strength. I began to run again at a faster pace than before now that I didn’t have to moderate it so she could keep up.

  “What are you?” she whispered in my ear as we ran.

  The doctor’s wide-eyed face flashed through my head, the image of her body riddled with bullet holes.

  “A monster,” I replied.

  Clare only held on tighter.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Eventually, we came to a residential area. I found a car and hot-wired it. I was too tired and too emotionally drained to care that it was wrong. I’d try to return it if I could, but right now, I needed wheels.

  Clare said nothing as the engine roared to life, only climbed into the passenger side and buckled her seatbelt.

  After we’d been on the road for ten minutes or so, she turned to me. “Where are we going?”

  I sighed. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I’d managed to find Highway 47, and I knew it would take me to a more populated area sooner or later. “Right now,” I said, “we’re just getting as far from that place as possible.”

  “We should go to the police,” Clare said.

  “And tell them what?”

  Clare was silent a moment. “The truth,” she answered, but sounded like she didn’t believe it herself.

  I knew the Peace Brokers, and I knew that they would not have set up an operation like the one we’d just run from without covering all their bases. If we went to the police, someone from the Brokers would be called, and we would be dead before we realized what happened to us.

  “The police can’t help us, Clare.”

  Clare said nothing for a while. I gripped the wheel and tried to think of my next move.

  “How did you…. How did you break that door like that?” she asked, cutting into my thoughts.

  “I think the hinges were rusty,” I said.

  She gave me an incredulous look. “You ripped it right from the frame, and then you carried me for miles on your back, running at a pace that had to be Olympian.”

  I suppressed a sigh. I so did not feel like having the whole there’s a world full of creatures you never knew existed conversation right now.

  “I can’t take you back to your house,” I said instead. “They’ll be looking for you. Is there somewhere you can go where they wouldn’t find you? Somewhere safe?”

  “So what? I’m just supposed to be on the run forever? This is insane.”

  “You have no idea,” I mumbled. “And, no, not forever. I’m going to shut this shit down, one way or another.”

  “Are you an alien?”

  I sputtered a laugh. “May as well be.”

  “Medically engineered?”

  “Guess again.”

  Clare scoffed. “Come on.”

  “My real name is Aria. I’m what’s called a Halfling. I’m half human and half Fae.”

  “Fae? What the hell is that?”

  I chuckled.

  “Like the mythical creature? You’re a fairy?”

  “That’s a derogatory term, but sure, whatever.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Well, you see, when a Fae and human love each other very much….”

  “Hilarious. And who were those people? What were they planning to do with us?”

  “They were planning to use our wombs to make more like me. Halflings.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “How does no one know about this?”

  I shrugged. “The same way most of us don’t know about half the stuff that goes on within the systems and institutions that run our worlds.”

  “Well, they should know.”

  I shrugged. “Anyway, where’d you learn to shoot like that? Were you in the service?”

  Clare shook her head. “No, but my father was, and he taught me how to shoot when I was a child. I won a couple competitions, actually…. I’m an investigative reporter for the Grant City Gazette.”

  A reporter. Awesome.

  Clare must have sensed my unease, because she laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to write an article. It’s not like anyone would believe me, but my curiosity has definitely been piqued.”

  “I’m sure it has, but if I may, a word of advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t dig into this, Clare. It’s a rabbit hole, and the things you’ll find will haunt you. They’ll change your life forever.”

  Clare snorted. “It’s already been changed forever. How much worse can it get?”

  I looked over at her, making sure she saw the seriousness of my expression. “A lot,” I said. “It can get a lot worse.”

  I called Thomas. There really wasn’t much choice.

  I tried to convince Clare to go somewhere else, somewhere safe, but she insisted there was no such place. She was not willing to put her family or friends in danger. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t really blame her.

  A few hours later, we were back at Thomas’s secret cabin in the woods.

  “You are such a buttwipe!” Sam exclaimed as she threw her arms around me.

  I cringed as she squeezed the shoulder where the bullet had grazed me. “Yes, that’s pretty much what I feel like…. This is Clare.”

  We took a seat by the big fireplace, and I told the story.

  “Back up,” Raven said. “You went to the Seer and she was dead? Why didn’t you just come back to us?”

  “I don’t like involving you all in this,” I answered, and it sounded lame to my own ears.

  “Total buttwipe,” Sam mumbled.

  I continued on with my story, seeing that the news of the Seer’s death had taken a toll on the hope in their auras. Everyone’s but Thomas’s. I tucked that away to question him on later.

  “The Brokers are working with Cross Corp to breed Halflings?” Vivian said. She glanced over at Nick. “This is worse than we thought.”

  “But that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” I said, recalling the meeting in the dock house between Cynthia Shay and Dr. Cross. “They’re all working for someone else, someone who’s only ever whispered about, someone we have no idea about.”

  “The man in the shadows,” mumbled Matt, who had been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was here.

  “What?”

  Matt cleared his throat. “The man in the shadows,” he repeated. “In comic books, there’s always a bigger villain behind the big villains. Th
is bigger villain is the one who doesn’t make an appearance until the final issue, but he’s the one who has been pulling the strings the entire time. The true puppet master. The Man in the Shadows.”

  “This isn’t a Gods damned comic book,” snapped Nick.

  I shot him a look. “No, Matt’s right. And if we want to stop these people, we need to take them out at the root.”

  “We still need to get the Relic and return it to its guardian,” Vivian said. “So here we are, back at square one.” She looked out the large wall of windows at the setting sun. “And we have less than two weeks to do that before Aria runs out of time.”

  “Runs out of time?” Clare asked. She looked to me. “What are they talking about?”

  “Aria sold her soul to a Demon,” answered Sam.

  I sighed.

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered Clare.

  “I warned you it could get worse,” I said.

  “Anyone know of another Seer?” asked Sam.

  Silence all around.

  Raven was leaning against the hearth, staring into the flames. She hadn’t spoken more than a couple words since I’d arrived. She turned to face us now, red lips pressed into a tight line and long black hair shifting over her shoulders. “I know someone who might,” she said.

  “Who?” Nick asked.

  I didn’t miss the fear that spiked in her aura, and I’m sure Nick saw it, too.

  “Shiva,” Raven said. “The bastard I used to work for.”

  Shiva.

  The Mixbreed who’d lured me to a warehouse by kidnapping a special needs classmate of mine. He’d done so to try to get me to join his merry band of weirdos. When I’d shown up, he’d promised that Brian Brewbaker, my classmate, would go free. I’d turned him down, and the next day, two detectives had knocked on my door. They’d found Brian’s body in the bay.

  Raven’s fear was not misplaced, either, because Shiva had used her as bait for the Blue Beast, and she had almost died when the Grant City Bridge was under attack. I’d saved her life that night, and since then, she’d left Shiva and had been loyal to me.

  “I always thought Shiva was working with the bad guys,” I said to Raven as we stood alone outside the cabin.