Deal with the Devil (Withrow Chronicles Book 3)

by Michael G. Williams

  Hell, more happens on simple classified ad sites than you’d think. Humanity specializes in conducting its shadiest business as close to out in the open as it can manage. Just ask the nosiest neighbor you’ve got. The people next door are not as good at hiding their transgressions as they think they are and, quite frankly, neither are you.

  Sporting Goods is always a popular choice for weaponry. I picked up a couple of baseball bats, a headlamp for jogging at night and something called a “kettlebell”. Apparently it’s the thing gym bunnies use instead of ordinary dumbbells. My interest was mostly from the fact it was a big, heavy weight with a handle. I imagined punching someone with that would hurt like hell.

  I’d also taken some inspiration from The Bull’s Eye and picked up a few more items of plain black clothing and a plain black baseball cap. I like to stay anonymous when I’m going to do violence but at the same time I like my victims to know who put them down. I wanted the interloper to see my face but I wanted to leave open the possibility anyone else who might wander into the scene would see The Bull’s Eye. I had nothing but respect for her, but I was also willing to take advantage of her reputation.

  The rest of my haul consisted of a few odds and ends from all over the place: a big tin of lighter fluid; a box of strike-anywhere matches; a roll of braided twine; two packs of plain white undershirts for men; a pack of tube socks; a hatchet; an electric camping lantern with a long-life LED (what will they think of next?); one of those disposable wet-mop things; and a thirty-foot roll of telephone wire. Hardly anybody has a land line anymore, to hear tell, but let me assure you phone cable has its uses. Rubber-sheathed twisted copper cabling is a hell of a lot harder to break free of in an escape attempt than a zip-tie or novelty handcuffs and it is way easier to tie in a knot than a garden hose. I also grabbed a couple of rolls of Halloween-themed duct tape just in case. Abductions and murders always go better with duct tape.

  With those various things I had all the makings of blunt weaponry, a nasty garrote suitable for turning into an apparent suicide, a handy clean-up tool, a combination weapon and disposal implement, shaped fire (stuff a sock with an undershirt and newspapers soaked in lighter fluid, insert in bound enemy’s mouth, make s’mores) and a light to see by while burying the bodies. I already had a shovel, of course. Every vampire worth her salt carries a shovel in the trunk.

  The next time you wander through an ÜberBargains and wonder why the strung-out kid with the bloodshot eyes and the long nails is pushing a cart full of half the hardware and camping sections, ask yourself if it’s a good idea to judge a person who might be on their way to murder some guy.

  I was strolling along with a pair of headphones on – Depeche Mode in the tape player in my pocket – when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned around, holding one earpiece away so I could send scampering whoever was about to ask to pet my dog, but I stopped short.

  Ross was standing there petting Smiles. The demon stood up straighter and smirked at the shopping cart. “Getting your Christmas list taken care of early?”

  “I haven’t found the most desperate person in all of Durham yet,” I replied. My guard was instantly up. Roderick had me scared and I was as surprised by my own reaction as I was by Ross’ appearance in this place. It occurred to me, of course, that his being there meant he always knew where I was and what I was doing. He had chosen that moment to manifest, when I was alone and in public and couldn’t do anything too crazy. “So, I’m a little surprised to see you here.”

  Ross smiled, ducked his head like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and laughed. “I confess I couldn’t stay away.” He rolled one perfect shoulder under a tee shirt depicting some cartoon I didn’t recognize. “I…” He licked his lips and my fangs started to descend of their own accord. Those spoiled-amber eyes flirted with me from under a blue iridescent brow and he went on. “I find myself intrigued by you, Withrow. I think I may have a small crush.”

  The thing about vampires is, we are not exactly good at saying no to temptation. After all, that’s how most of us got here. Offered a shot at the ultimate transgression – shuffling off mortality itself rather than just this mortal coil – we went all-in. Some of us may have tried to pretend they had to think about it before leaping at the chance but they’re the minority. We are people who said yes to crazy ideas or we wouldn’t be here in the first place.

  Long seconds of silence passed between us as Ross – whatever his real name might be, he was “Ross” to me – waited for me to say something and I waited for something to say.

  I looked back across my whole life and I saw nothing but one iteration after another of times I’ve gone out of my way to be a bastard to someone so they’d leave me alone in future. I thought of Mary-Lou Reinholdt on my front step that first time, blinking in the bright lights and trying to tell me about the neighborhood association and my dog. I thought of when I later pointed out to Mary-Lou the single worn spot on my couch to make the point I did not want or need other people in my life and would never be able to have them anyway. I thought of when I stood in the back room of a store just like this one trying to decide whether to kill Jennifer for knowing too much. I thought of the biological family I let my maker dispose of so I wouldn’t have to deal with them again; of my trip to Seattle; of meeting Roderick for the first time; and of the shock I felt when I realized the vampires in Seattle actually gave a damn about one another. When I witnessed vampires holding hands in a room full of other vampires I thought I had seen it all and the opening act.

  I had pushed others away from myself so many times, and so thoroughly, my own psychopath cousin was on me to make friends.

  A part of me – relegated to the back of my mind, pushed so far into a corner it could be heard by no one but its own self – knew it was not normal for me to think like this. I knew I did not normally give a damn about any of these things. That part of me also knew with a certainty it found deeply unsettling (and liberating in its own way) that I was not thinking about these things because I wanted to. Ross was a demon, a devil, maybe an imp: whatever one might want to call a living spirit of temptation itself. I’ve already said I don’t know if there are gods or heavens but I know there are hells. I didn’t know if Ross literally came from one of those but he was clearly something supernatural, something strange, and he had the power to summon up within me those longings I’d most deeply buried beneath nearly seven decades of empty social calendars. If he could do this – if he could find me whenever he wanted and make me feel what I didn’t want to feel – then fine, he could have me and it wasn’t really my fault if I gave in.

  In fact, it might be educational to find out what happened if I did.

  Fangs descending, wordlessly barking like an animal, I shot forward at a speed surprising even to me. I locked lips with Ross and pushed in close, shoving him backwards, right up against a big plastic display of googly-eyed jack o’ lantern faces made of waxed cardboard and cheap paint. The display tore free of the shelf supporting it, showering us in goofy grins and slow-motion spinning eyes. I’d jumped into super-speed without even realizing it when I kissed Ross and he was only now starting to realize what was happening.

  His eyes were open, and so were mine, but his slid closed with deathly slowness and by the time our tongues met I’d slammed him into the next row (Thanksgiving table settings), dragged him around its end-cap display (bundles of split firewood in plastic bags), shoved him into the next (various black-painted candelabras for Halloween parties) and then knocked over a display of bulbs for autumn planting. By the time they were spilling out around our feet, Ross had caught up and we were full-on making out in the middle of an ÜberBargains on a Wednesday night.

  People were starting to notice.

  His hands twisted around the lapels of my trench coat, pulling me closer than seemed readily possible. My hands slid down the back of his tee shirt to grab both cheeks of his ass and squeeze like I was kneading bread. He made a sound of encouragement, and so
did I. I opened my eyes for a second to see where Smiles had gone but he was sitting beside the cart, eyes alert, ears up, seemingly happy to stay right where he was.

  I spun us again and Ross and I burst through one of those sets of big, swinging doors into the warehouse area in the back. I thought again of the last time I’d walked through just such a set of doors: behind them I had found the offer of Jennifer’s friendship. I had turned that down.

  This time I would not be saying no.

  A pimply kid who didn’t look big enough around to hold a whole set of organs produced an awkward guffaw as Ross and I spun and tumbled past him, locked in an increasingly complicated embrace: hands here and there, arms, twisting around one another, palms pressed against one another’s flesh. I was not a virgin the night Agatha took from me the problem of my mortal life but neither was I terribly experienced. Affection between two men had not been seen in public and I hadn’t seen a whole lot in private, either. Now two men could kiss in public and have random passersby think it amusing rather than revolting.

  The back room of a store like ÜberBargains is mostly row after row of floor to ceiling shelves with metal cages around some and open shelving units on others. There are pallets of regular consumer goods in industrial-sized cardboard containers, stacked one atop each other. Ross and I careened off one, then another, playing lusty pinball across the vast space to which “guests” of the store are not normally invited. His hands were all over me, with no regard to what I thought was a pretty unattractive physique, and I was just as eager to explore his. The scales of his flesh were smooth to the touch, with no seam I could detect. I wondered if they were purely some cosmetic magic. It felt like warm flesh to my vampire’s hands, not the armored hide of some reptile from infernal realms. As we shifted and twisted in our eagerness to touch every part of one another I could feel his muscles ripple at each caress: tendons stretched, joints popped, his tongue at my neck. I realized in a far-off, distant way someone was trying to talk to us but it didn’t matter.

  I shoved Ross up against a stack of dog food bags as high as a basketball player could jump, leaned back just enough to let him see my teeth, and snarled. He nodded, hand on the back of my head to pull me in, and I struck. My fangs pierced the silver-blue skin of his throat as easily as that of any mortal and fire spilled out of the wound. I pressed my lips to that perfectly shaped throat and those impossible, imperceptible scales and drank deep of what was, I guessed, the demonic equivalent of blood.

  Human blood, or rather the experience of consuming it when it is literally everything one needs to live, is very difficult to describe. It’s like trying to describe an orgasm or to describe the sensation of tasting something for the first time. You may say something tastes like an apple, for instance, but like what does an apple taste? You can say an apple tastes sweet and a little sour, crunchy or crisp with a softness underneath, but how do you explain “sweet” to a space alien who’s never tasted Earthly sugar before? This is the dilemma I face in trying to describe what it’s like to drink human blood. I can’t describe the sensation to you other than to say it is hot and salty and for just a little while it will silence the wild animal in the pit of every vampire’s guts. It also tastes like memories and sadness and sometimes, when we’re very lucky, it tastes like desire or perhaps like surrender. It tastes like all the things that make humankind enjoyable, even admirable. It carries both the nobility of human spirit and the detestable anguish of human carelessness and fear.

  Ross’ blood didn’t taste like that. It tasted like need. It tasted like holding a Molotov cocktail in one hand and matches in the other. It tasted like the sensation of holding a handgun for the first time: that moment when you realize guns were made to be shot and the only thing in the world to do with the thing in your hands is to fire it. It tasted like suffering and it tasted like wanting to make another suffer. If human blood tastes like vulnerability and good intentions, this stuff tasted like swaggering malice. It was all the best of the bad ideas a mind could fathom and more besides. It wanted me to drink it, deep and forever, and never stop, never be satisfied, never again let out that little sigh of relief when the growling animal inside finally falls into sated sleep.

  I wondered what terrible things I would learn if I drank him dry, right there: what unearthly horrors would my Last Gasp make available to me?

  I didn’t get to find out. He had twisted up his fingers in my hair as I drank, at first, but then he mustered unquestionably supernatural strength and used it to pull me just an inch away but no further. My fangs ached to sink back into that flesh but my brain was starting to unknot itself and I could hear someone – an employee, I guessed – lambasting us for having tumbled backwards into forbidden territory. I started to lick the wound to close it up but Ross or some quality of his own supernatural condition beat me to it: the flesh simply sealed over and the excess blood dried, crumbled and fell away like desiccated ash. I quickly licked my own lips to clean them up but all I could taste was salt and something bitter and powdery. I reached up and pushed my hand across my own mouth out of habit but it came away with just a couple of flecks of that same crusted, sandy residue.

  Devils. Weird.

  I stood straight, cleared my throat and turned around to look at whoever was accosting us for having wound up back there in the first place.

  It was a guy in jeans, a hoodie and a decorative walkie-talkie in his left hand.

  “Just pay for your purchases and leave,” he was saying to Ross, “And we’ll all forget any of this happened.”

  I smacked my lips for a moment and reached down to straighten out the tee shirt I had tucked into my black jeans. “What’s the matter, bucko,” I grumbled. “Never seen two fellas engaged in a little heavy petting?” I reached out and put one fingertip in the center of his chest, tapping it once. “Run along and play cops and robbers somewhere else. We ain’t breakin’ any laws.”

  The rent-a-cop looked shocked at me, his eyes on the finger I’d used to invade his personal space. I didn’t give a good goddamn what he thought. He was a pipsqueak. The whole world was made of pipsqueaks. As far as I was concerned they could all go squeak themselves right to hell and back: I had met a boy who would kiss me.

  Ross stepped around and tried to pull the focus of the conversation back towards sanity. “Please ignore my friend. We’re leaving. I’m very sorry.”

  I looked at Ross, eyes wide, brow twisted up into a topo map of parallel canyons. “Sorry? Sorry! You just apologized to this guy? What in the hell is the point of being what we are if we’re going to go around kowtowing one second and bending over backwards the next so none of these bastards get offended for one fleeting, precious second?”

  I mean, Christ, Ross had blue and silver skin. I wondered who in hell this kid thought he was to be standing up to the reptile before him.

  Ross didn’t even look at me. Instead, he pushed me towards the door. “We are leaving,” he said, very firmly, voice very serious. “We are leaving right now.”

  He motored me out that way, his hands against my chest while my own were busy flipping off the store’s security guard with both hands and giving him a raspberry at the same time.

  “That was nice,” Ross said in something of a rushing, perfunctory manner as he steered me towards my cart and towards Smiles. “Now pay for your things and leave. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  I started to say something, but he pressed a cool finger to my lips.

  He deposited me back at the cart, where a couple of employees and one little old lady wearing a whole heap of furs were gawping at us from the other end of the aisle.

  “I like a floor show,” the lady said to no one in particular. She balled up one claw and tapped it against the arm of an employee, then came out with a ridiculous little hen’s cackle before saying, “Hoo!” She sounded like an enthusiastic owl.

  Smiles walked over and started licking my hand. That sort of snapped me out of it, and I blinked a few times. “Yes,” I said
to Ross without looking around at him. “That was… nice.” I cleared my throat. (The little old lady cackled again.) “Just, maybe next time, could you, I don’t know, call first?”

  I turned to address him directly but he was gone. I stuck my head around the end of the row – dodging the jack o’ lanterns we’d spilled before – but he was gone. I wondered if there was angry yellow smoke being sucked into a ventilator somewhere.

  I felt a little dejected at his exit, but that was quickly replaced by a thundering realization: the thing I had said to the rent-a-cop.

  “What in the hell is the point of being what we are,” I’d said. I shuddered suddenly, with fear and shock and a bone-deep chill. That’s the sort of talk I don’t let other vampires use around mortals and I’d gone and used it myself. I could have just hoodooed that security guard into submission on the spot, no problem, but I hadn’t. Instead I’d simply tried to assert my superiority over him.

  One shot of demon blood and all I wanted was to lord my power over something weaker than myself.

  “Your friend’s a looker, sonny.” The little old lady had tottered over to me while I pondered the awfulness of what I’d just done; not awful in a guilty, morals-y way, but awful in the purely pragmatic sense of preferring stealth over domination as the way to survive in the mortal world.

  I glanced down at her, draped in foxes whose eyes were closed forever. “Was he?”

  “Sure,” she said. “He looked just like my Charlie. Tsk.” She shook her head. “Tall men were always my weakness. Of course, every guy was tall next to me.” She tittered again and favored me with one of her apparently signature arm-taps. Her hand was covered in age spots, the skin drawn as tight around her knuckles as a tarp on an old boat stored for winter; thin a mattress cover one size too small. Time had used her flesh to shrink-wrap her bones.