Deal with the Devil (Withrow Chronicles Book 3)

by Michael G. Williams

  The trouble in Seattle turned out to have a demon in the middle of it and Roderick not too far removed. It ended ugly: blood and ash all over, and plenty of politics to boot since I helped put a new boss in place when we wrapped up the deal. Roderick had reacted to the presence of a demon with undisguised enthusiasm for its destruction. I had zero worry Roderick would hear there was a demon in town and come roaring up to sit in its lap and learn some new tricks. No, I was worried Roderick would show up with a Gatling gun under one arm and two priests under the other. He is not the subtlest vampire I’ve ever met and he’s the one Agatha tried to adopt to be her new source of hot and cold running murder. Telling Roderick there was a demon in Durham would be a little like lighting a torch in front of Smokey the Bear.

  I was most worried about the way the demon seemed interested in me. Ross had said, “First we meet-cute,” and I didn’t know what that meant but I didn’t like the implication of a second step in whatever literally diabolical plot he was unfolding. A demon just being around wasn’t necessarily a big deal in my book. A demon noticing me, though, could be very, very bad. That I’d reacted by thinking he was hot was worst of all.

  I’d spent the intervening nights chasing myself in tighter and tighter circles. Finally I was sick of hearing myself fail to get anywhere. I said to hell with it and called up Roderick to ask for help.

  Whereas I’m a great big lump of lard with a bad attitude from the 1940’s, Roderick is a bird-chested little 1960’s go-go boy with vinyl boots, a permanent smirk and a plastic outfit for every occasion. He’s also, I strongly suspect, a complete psychopath. On the one hand, we’re all crazy: we attack mortals and drink their blood to survive. On the other hand, any mortal who eats a fast food hamburger is a little crazy in the eyes of their well-meaning vegan friends, aren’t they? It’s all relative.

  Roderick is my cousin in the traditional biological sense as well as being a vampire. We are each other’s last un-living relatives. Every other soul in our family, to our knowledge, is dead and buried and long forgotten. I don’t even remember most of them. I suppose a photograph of my immediate family would look like any other gathering of antiquated strangers. I haven’t got any photographs by which to check.

  “Cousin.” Roderick picked up on the second ring and answered just as smooth as you please, as though he’d been sitting by the phone waiting for my call.

  “Cousin,” I replied. “I need to tell you about something and I need you to offer me your honest opinion without judging me.”

  “Withrow,” he breathed, all heartfelt concern. “Of course. What is wrong?”

  “It’s… I… Okay, here’s the deal,” I said. I cleared my throat. Smiles was curled up next to the ottoman where I’d crossed my ankles. He could tell I felt uncomfortable. He sat up, circled around and nudged my knees with his forehead in order to get a scratch behind the ears. “I just need to tell you something that happened. And see what you think. Without you telling me I’m crazy and without you strongly overreacting.” I hesitated. “And I need you not to tell anyone.” By “anyone” I meant Agatha. I still didn’t really know how much he spoke to her. In theory he had turned down her job offer in favor of being given dominion over Asheville by me.

  “Do go on.” Roderick tends to jump straight to the point and he wanted me to do the same. “You have my word. I will honor whatever restrictions you place on this conversation and I will contain any outbursts of emotion. Now, dear cousin, please, dish.” The thing is, psycho or not, I have a lot of respect for someone who will state their terms and get down to business and Roderick is exactly that. Just these few short sentences between us had me feeling a little more like I was on an even keel. Roderick’s whole thing about being more socially connected really did have some substance to it.

  “OK, so, it’s like this.” I told Roderick about seeing El Diablo and about Ross and, with a lot of hemming and hawing, I mentioned that Ross had been powerfully attractive.

  “So what did you do after?” Roderick’s tone was entirely calm. Surprisingly calm. Diametric-opposite-of-my-expectations calm. Dangerously calm.

  “I walked across town and drove home.” I shrugged to myself. Smiles panted happily for a moment, then climbed up onto the couch and tried to sit in my lap. Even a lap as generous as mine is too small for a hundred fifty pounds of supernaturally enhanced Doberman but that never stops Smiles from trying.

  “And then what?”

  I opened my mouth, drew a long breath and held it. And then what, indeed? “I tried to pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “Withrow!” Roderick’s tone was a sharp rebuke. “Withrow Calhoun Alvison Surrett!” I blinked at hearing my full name for the first time in decades. “You will never fix anything by sitting around thinking it to death.”

  “Neither,” I replied, with my dander just a little bit up, “Will I ever find the guy. I’ll never find either of them! One of them moved as fast as a vampire and the other seemed to teleport, so explain to me how I’m supposed to find either one of them to do anything?”

  That shut him up for just a second, but only a second. When Roderick spoke again his voice was silky smooth again. “Cousin,” he said. “I apologize. You are clearly deeply bothered by this, and I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.”

  I still felt a little sulky, but I allowed as how I appreciated him saying so.

  “Now,” he said, “Let’s think this through. One of them is a human with superhuman abilities. You’re certain he wasn’t a vampire?”

  “He didn’t smell like a vampire. He smelled like a human but…” I waved my free hand around in the air, invisible to Roderick but a part of how I talk nonetheless. “He smelled extra human. You know how blood…” I trailed off. This sort of stuff was another form of dirty talk in vampire circles. For the ultimate transgressions against god and man, we sure could be prudes about things from time to time. Blood and our impassioned pursuit of it weren’t something we often discussed and talking about it with my cousin seemed yet another dimension of the perversion of having a cousin who’s a vampire to begin with.

  “It smells like life,” Roderick said. I was glad he’d done me the favor of breaking spades on that. The phrasing was perfect. Blood, to us, doesn’t just smell like mom cooking eggs on a Sunday morning. It smells like every time you’ve ever smelled eggs and bacon and pancakes and steak and fresh coffee and birthday cake. Blood smells like the future and the past and the vital energy of every breath of the person from whom it bleeds. It smells like potential. It smells like fate waiting to happen.

  “Yeah. But he smelled like lots of lives. Two or three or maybe half a dozen of them. He smelled like distilled, reduced, ultra-concentrated life. He was the strong stuff. High-test. I can’t compare it to normal human blood. I could only compare him to a legion of humans with open veins.”

  “Fascinating,” Roderick breathed. “And the blue guy, you are also sure he was not a vampire? Maybe he was a vampire in elaborate stage makeup?”

  “Nah,” I said. “He was a figment of my imagination or he was an honest to gods demon. I can’t really think he was anything else.”

  “Technically he may call himself a devil, it all depends and I do not really know the difference, but anyway, he will not be hard to find.” Roderick announced his knowledge of this and dismissed the same in one smooth breath.

  “How so? Do they have a section in the yellow pages?”

  Roderick sighed quietly. “Please tell me you do not use an actual phone book.”

  “Roderick,” I spoke very slowly, “Tell me how to find a demon. Devil. Whatever. No distractions. They are trouble and one of them seems interested in me.”

  “On that we are in total agreement,” Roderick said. “Demons are to be eliminated at every opportunity, especially those who have taken an interest in one. If he made himself attractive to you then he most definitely has plans for you. The ‘first we meet-cute’ is extremely worrisome.” He sighed, clucked his tongue. “He must
be found and destroyed. We can either try all the usual arcane stuff – you know, get some Satanist teenagers to summon it up for you by a human sacrifice, though those are supposed to be extremely hit or miss – or you can turn the tables and lure him in ahead of schedule. Waiting for him to approach you again is not an option. You cannot permit him to play out whatever game he has in mind for you.” Roderick sounded genuinely concerned, shading into angry, but very businesslike all the same. I had caught the ‘we’ back there, too. He went on. “Demons hunt, just like we do, but they take a lot longer to finish off their prey. We hunt and feed like a cat: there is a target, we chase it, we toy with it a little and we are done. Devils hunt like drug dealers. They find targets but they do not just harvest them the once: they cultivate them. They find someone who is primed to become a victim and take advantage of their vulnerability.”

  “In Seattle, it seemed like that demon just wanted to watch vampires hunt each other instead of humans. Is that all they ever want? Don’t tell me there’s some bullshit about selling one’s soul. That’s just a fairy tale.” I tried to sound disgusted instead of just a little bit afraid.

  ‘Mostly they give the person something they think they need and then help that person make all the wrong choices until it is too late. I do not know if the souls thing is for real, but I doubt it. I think they just take pleasure in seeing people suffer: the ones their ‘clients’ harm and then the clients themselves when karma catches up. In Seattle, they got to turn monsters against one another with all sorts of delicious ancillary effects: murder and mayhem and public fear.” Roderick paused, and we sat in silence for a moment, each of us remembering a series of awful events I won’t bother to relate here. After a few seconds, Roderick cleared his throat and spoke again. “Anyway, we need to make you seem desperate.”

  “Oh, good grief.” I nearly hung up the phone. “How do we do that, exactly?”

  “Usually,” Roderick said, just matter-of-fact, “If a vampire wants to get a demon to notice them they have to find a really desperate human being and drain them. You know how you pick up some of the emotional state of the person when you drink their blood?”

  An honest answer stuck in my throat. Draining someone completely wasn’t something I did very often for reasons of trying to go unnoticed and not make a huge mess out of things. There are vampires who find their personal Last Gasp so pleasurable or useful they do it all the time, but not me. Mine is useful, to be sure: I get to pick one topic from that person’s personal history and learn everything they knew about it and then some, including maybe some things they never had the chance to know in their own right. Whereas I gain access to information about my victim, Roderick cuts off access to information about them. He erases them from reality. The world forgets they ever existed. I shudder to think through some of the implications of that or how easy it would be to abuse.

  I knew what Roderick meant about the emotional states thing, though. I’ve always quietly assumed it’s something to do with hormones in the blood or the like: some biochemical process our bodies still follow despite our state of suspended necrosis. Vampires get all kinds of superstitious about blood the same way one culture after another has done about food over the millennia. We all quietly believed there to be some psychic imprint left when we drank. I’d only ever consumed the blood of the living when they were unconscious or terrified so I hadn’t enjoyed a lot of variety in emotional states to sample. I always felt jumpy and hyper-alert after but had always assumed that had more to do with having just assaulted someone in a dark alley or behind a truck stop and less to do with the emotional state of the person whose blood I’d consumed.

  “So, if I eat a really desperate person I can, what, smell desperate?”

  “To a demon, sure. I think ‘smell’ is just a metaphor, but it works.”

  “In exactly what context did you learn that?” I shuddered to think this had become the focus of Roderick’s attentions in the time since Seattle had gone down. Yes, the world is full of terrifying things but the point of being a vampire is not to linger over unanswerable questions of why and how. We become what we are so we can instead walk on by without giving a damn.

  “Seattle was just a field trip for you, Cousin.” Again, Roderick remained just as calm and conversational as a weather report. “For me, it was my home. I watched half a dozen vampires try to use that demon against one another and every single one of them died. Most of them died because you killed them. Not all of them, though.” He chuckled darkly. “Not all of them. I took care of my share when you were gone. After all, I still needed to bed down every morning with some surety I would wake up again. I hunted the devil’s disciples for months after you left. I introduced each one of them to the death they thought to avoid. I studied their practices in the process. Demon-worshippers are always happy to describe their methods. They all think they are the one person who can outsmart a devil. They are eager to brag.” I could hear the smile.

  I paused. My cousin, demon hunter? I couldn’t even begin to work on that. Instead, I changed the subject. “What’s a ‘meet-cute’?”

  “It is a term from screenwriting.” Roderick had the patient tone of an instructor dealing with a bright but somewhat limited student. “It is when two people meet in some unlikely or inconvenient circumstance and it complicates their eventual romantic relationship.”

  I choked on some combination of laughter and surprise. “Romantic relationship? Let’s just set aside for a moment the fact he is a demon.”

  Roderick interrupted: “A demon to whom you were attracted.”

  I went on. “Whatever. Setting that aside, you might not have heard, cousin, but I’m a vampire. The plumbing shut down decades ago.”

  Roderick sounded mildly confused for a moment. “Cousin…” He paused and asked with tremendous delicacy, “Have you not done any dating since you were turned?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m dead. We’re all dead. Hell, that was half of what I wanted to get away from.”

  “Oh, Cousin.” Roderick sounded like he’d just heard a year’s worth of bad news. “Oh, my stars. You have to do something about that. We cannot let Ross latch onto any actual desperation you really do feel. I am on my way. I will be there tomorrow night.”

  “Why?” I was sputtering now, shifting around in agitation so Smiles had to jump up and stand at the other end of the couch, looking this way and that, on the watch for whatever trouble had me wound up.

  “That is why he seemed so attractive to you, cousin. He must already know. Oh, my precious ducklings of doom, you must do nothing. Have all your calls held. Put out the word you will be busy for the next few nights. I am coming down there,” Roderick said, “And we are getting you a date.”

  It was good to feel like the cavalry might be about to ride in. On the other hand, it was terrifying to think Roderick was the cavalry. Even if he did know what to do about Ross, I was still left to study over the problem of El Diablo.

  El Diablo’s declaration he would destroy Duke and take down The Bull’s Eye if necessary was not exactly what I had expected. When I saw him stealing some historical artifact I figured, you know, pirates from the Ebay Islands or something. I hadn't figured on some weird personal vendetta or ambitions of general villainy.

  Honestly, the scariest thing about El Diablo was his absolutely delectable aroma. His blood was like fang Viagra and that was going to cause trouble sooner or later. If he were just some guy who seemed particularly ripe for getting turned into a snack, well, whatever; that happens all the time. If he were some kind of supernatural – a blood ritualist of some sort, or gods help us a shapeshifter, both of which do exist and about which I know less than next to nothing – it could create a lot of problems. He would eventually wind up on the wrong side of the bite from a vampire in my town and then blam, more politics. Somebody was going to blow their cover out of desperation to get to him or, worse, they were going to get to him and he was going to blow them to pieces. Neither of these were oka
y options for me. You don't wind up in charge by doing nothing and you don't stay there by doing nothing. You stay there by solving problems, in part out of the infinite kindness of your own dead heart and in part because when you solve problems you show people what might happen to them if they become a problem for you: namely, you'll solve them.

  I reflected on Roderick’s claim that demons can “smell” desperation. El Diablo sure had looked like he was desperate to get into that case. He’d looked ready to beat that glass in with his own skull if he had to. Had that drawn the demon – Ross – to the library in the first place? Had Ross given the kid the idea? If there was a devil running around and a kid who suddenly seemed to have a bunch of superpowers – a vampire knows superpowers when we see them – it seemed logical enough to associate them in some way. If he were trying to screw with vampires, perhaps in revenge for a couple of us having been wrapped up in screwing with a demon a few years ago, turning loose a sack of vampire catnip in the middle of town would be a great way to do it.

  While I let that thought ripen a little, I flipped to the late news and saw they were jawing about a carjacking in Durham. The talking head reading from the teleprompter had the sort of unlikely hair that made him look like he was running for county commissioner in 1987: perfectly sculpted and combed, just the right shade of salt and pepper, framing his face like a NASCAR helmet. I turned to that channel in the middle of his report, but what I caught ran like this:

  “...at which point the cab driver was able to find a payphone and call police. The taxi in question was driven across town on Main Street, onto East Campus and then onto a residential lawn. The carjacker appears to have attempted to use it as a battering ram to destroy the historic Stagg Pavilion, also known as the East Campus Gazebo, built in 1902. Upon exiting the vehicle, apparently unharmed, the carjacker was described by witnesses as being dressed in an elaborate costume, possibly the same 1950's mascot uniform stolen from Perkins Library last weekend during Duke University's fall break. The assailant shouted that he was ‘El Diablo’, which is Spanish for ‘the Devil’, before escaping on foot. Durham and Duke University police are actively investigating and urge anyone with information about this incident to call Crime Stoppers.