by Hannah Jayne
Will’s cell phone chirped a strident ring that nearly yelled “emergency,” and Alex’s went soon after.
Will grabbed both of my arms. “Stay here until I come back for you.”
Alex nudged Will slightly, his eyes settling on mine for a split second before they went over my head. I turned, seeing Sampson striding down the hall.
“Sampson.”
Both Will and Alex both strode for the elevator and popped in the same one. I vaguely wondered who would make it to the upper world alive. I turned and clapped my hands once. “So, that was weird. Earthquake, them, sorry about that.”
But nobody moved.
SEVEN
“Should we get back to work? Sampson?”
Sampson swallowed hard, sucking in a long, deep breath. “Can you come with me, Sophie?”
I blinked and everyone peeled away silently—even Nina. I tried to catch her eye, to silently question, but either she didn’t see me or she was purposely avoiding me. But it couldn’t be that, because Nina was my best friend. Wasn’t she?
With his hand on my elbow, Sampson led me to his office. He offered me the guest chair and went around to his desk, sitting, staring at me in silence.
“What is it? No offense, but you’re kind of scaring me with all this.” I gestured to the look of consternation on his face, to the way his lips were pulled downward at the corners.
“This isn’t easy to say, Sophie.”
I straightened, pricks of heat walking up my spine. “What isn’t easy to say?”
Sampson seemed to sag, sinking back in his chair. “You know, I never had children of my own.”
I nodded nervously.
“I didn’t want them to carry this burden that I’ve been saddled with.”
“You know they might not—it doesn’t always work that way.” My voice was small and my head was churning. What was Sampson trying to get at? I knew all this already.
“I know. But having you here, especially after your grandmother made me promise to take good care of you, I kind of feel like I have a daughter in you.”
A lump was rising in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down. I wasn’t sure if I was on the verge of tears because I’d always thought of Sampson like a father, or because no one says “I’ve always thought of you like a daughter” unless it’s a college graduation or you’re about to die.
And I graduated college a long time ago.
“But we both know I’m not your father, Sophie. You do have a father.”
“I have a man who added his genetic material to my mother’s to make me, yes. But he’s no father.”
Sampson nodded, taking that in. “Nonetheless, he’s your father.”
I stood, suddenly agitated. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run from the building. I wanted to hop a plane to Tahiti where no one would talk to me in this weird, ominous commentary that said nothing but meant something I didn’t want to know.
“What’s going on, Sampson? Just tell me. I’m not a little girl. And hell, I’ve faced, like, everything. Real murderers, mythical murderers, bat-shit-crazy high school students. Why is everyone looking at me like I’m about to die or burst into flames at any moment? It’s really fucking unnerving.”
“It’s him.”
“Him who? What the hell? Why can’t people just say what they mean? ‘It’s Harry, Sophie.’ ‘It’s Jack, Sophie.’ Why ‘him’? What is everyone trying to keep secret?”
Sampson nodded slightly, the motion nearly imperceptible. “You’re right. It’s Lucas Szabo.”
I sat down hard, feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. “Lucas Szabo?”
Yes, I had known my father was involved. Whispers of “Satan” and “the devil” had been everywhere, casually tossed out in the last two days. But that name—hearing it, molding my lips around it and squeezing out the sound—hit a place so deeply buried in my psyche that I never wanted to revisit it. Lucas was my father, the one who, four days after my birth, abandoned me and my mother, and who, when I was nearly three, caused my mother to take her own life. He was a horrible, spiteful man, but for some twisted and masochistic reason, I had always wanted him to notice me, to want to come back to be with me, to approve of me, his daughter. I knew, intellectually, that could never happen because I knew who Lucas Szabo really was.
My father is Satan.
It strikes a chill down my spine whenever I think about it—which I try to make as little as possible. He had raised another daughter, my half-sister Ophelia. And even though she was evil and cuckoo bananas crazy, he had raised her and loved her and kept her with him—when he had abandoned me.
I know that Hell is no place for a child. And frankly, I’ve never been totally sure of what my father does or what, exactly, being the devil entails. I mean, I was the one swallowing souls, so really, what else was there? I guessed he was in charge of heinous eternities and sharpening pitchforks and all, but I had never dwelled on it. My father didn’t want to have anything to do with me, so even if I wanted to, it wasn’t like he was grooming me to take over the family business or anything. Which I would be terrible at, truth be told. I’m a total softie. I hate serial killers and axe murderers and people who say “supposably” as much as the next person, but damning someone to Hell? That seems a little heavy handed. And actually being the devil? Well, frankly, I look awful in red. Like a big stewed lobster.
“Do you understand, Sophie?”
I shook myself out of my head. “I’m sorry, what?”
Sampson blew out a sigh, but his lips turned up into a twinge of a smile. “Always Sophie. What I said was there has been a prophecy, a foretelling, whatever you want to call it. Are you aware of this?”
I squirmed. “Like the Mayan 2012 thing? Or the Nostradamus thing? Or is there another thing?”
“Armageddon, apocalypse—it’s been called a lot of things.”
I batted at the air and crossed my legs. “Of course I’ve heard of all that end-of-the-world stuff. I’ve seen every zombie/apocalypse movie ever made. And I swear, the way the zombies down here react, you’d think they really believe they’re next in line to take over. Who are we kidding, right? Zombies are going to overthrow us. With what? Half of them can’t keep track of their own limbs to save their . . . lives.”
I knew that wasn’t what Sampson meant. I know because when I’m wrong and I don’t want to face reality or the craptasm that is my reality, I babble.
“Satan has been calling people in.”
“Okay.”
“Just like the good, his people can roam free. They are allowed to do as much destruction as they like.”
“Allowed?”
“Well, by his standards.”
I nodded. “Because everyone has free will.”
Sampson bobbed his head. “That’s the spin he puts on it.”
“So I don’t understand. I know he’s my—” I wanted to say “sperm donor,” but it didn’t seem appropriate in the shadow of Sampson’s Boss of the Year trophy. “I know he’s my father, but why does he want to see me? Why now? Why is he”—I pantomimed shaking the earth—“doing all this?”
“Well, Sophie—”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me. The devil works in mysterious ways?”
Sampson gave me a look, and I blew out an exasperated sigh. “It’s been said in all the stories, prophecies, whatever you want to call them that one day the devil will come back and call on all his sons”—his eyes cut to me—“or daughters, as it were, and his family will rise up to overtake the good of humanity.”
“I’m not answering that call. I’m not rising up. I am good. I mean, sure, I’ve sampled a few grapes before buying and yes, I admit it, I did cut that tag off my mattress under penalty of law, but that hardly equates to me being rooted in evil or joining the uprising against, you know, you guys.”
Sampson looked down at his hands. “I’m hardly good, Sophie.”
“Regardless, I have no intention of going into the family business. So
what am I supposed to do?”
Sampson clapped a hand over his mouth and stroked his chin. “A lot of people could potentially be in danger.”
“Prophecy, prophecy.” I nodded.
“A lot of our people.”
My eyebrows went up. “Our people? Underworld people? Our people eat my people for breakfast. Or they would if it wouldn’t cause their insurance premiums to skyrocket.”
“Sophie, I care about you. I love you, you know that. But you can’t be here.”
Sampson didn’t move, didn’t flinch, but it felt like he had kicked me in the chest.
“What are you saying, Sampson?”
He pushed back from his chair, stood, and started to pace. “I promised your grandmother that I would always protect you.”
“Yeah, we covered that.”
“But I have a duty to protect the demons of the Underworld, too.”
I pumped my head. “Yeah, yeah.”
“You being here—and Lucas, with this, with”—the words seemed to choke in his throat—“you, is putting everyone down here in danger.”
My body temperature bottomed out. I could feel the icy cold seeping into my hands and feet, swirling through my veins. “Oh.”
“It’s not permanent, of course. Certainly not. You’re still a very important part of the Underworld Detection Agency, Sophie, and you always will be. You are a part of this family—”
“But I just can’t be here.”
The obvious pain in Sampson’s face should have moved me, but it didn’t. “So I give everything I have to the Underworld Detection Agency—to everyone here—and now that I might be the one who needs help . . .”
“You have to understand where I’m coming from, Sophie.”
I held up a silencing hand. “I get it. You have a duty to protect everyone. The good of one versus the good of the many. I know, I’ve seen that Star Trek episode.”
“Sophie, please. We’re not abandoning you. We would never abandon you. We’re all here—”
I stood, numb. “But I can’t be.”
“It’s just that we don’t know what to expect with you father. He’s a trickster. And I can’t, in good conscience, risk—”
“Sampson, I understand.”
He dropped his head. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”
I stood up silently, without looking at Sampson, and walked back to my office. I had planned on avoiding the stares of everyone around me, but I didn’t have to. Once they saw me coming, everyone averted their eyes, turned their backs on me, pretended to be busy with anything else.
I had gone from a glowing cocoon of two-man love to being the loneliest person on the planet in a matter of moments.
I stayed in my office and organized and reorganized papers until I was sure just about everyone had left the building. I kept the radio on, my computer speakers on low as newscasters broadcast minute-by-minute updates on the quakes—which streets had buckled, which blocks still didn’t have power, how many people had been freed from the rubble.
Sampson’s words kept coming back to me, and each time they did I turned the volume up a little bit more so that the scientists and seismologists that the radio station kept patching in could explain that earthquakes happened because of shifting tectonic plates and heat and not because a piddly redheaded woman had Satan’s calling card running through her veins.
There were fires and there were tragedies. That didn’t always spell the end of the world—at least that’s what I kept telling myself as I rode up the elevator, listening to the soothing sounds of Jon Secada Muzak.
“Oh. Hey.”
Alex was standing in the police station vestibule, but he was dressed in full SWAT gear and my knees started to shake faster than the earth did. He looked rugged with a five o’clock shadow and dirt streaked over one cheek, his hair plastered back with sweat and grit. He was dressed in all black, his short sleeves straining against his thick, round biceps, showing just the tip end of his feather tattoo. His black-gloved hands were fisted at his sides and even though he had an assault rifle slung across his slim-fitting bullet-proof vest and a six-inch knife strapped to his thigh, I had the overwhelming and unsafe urge to rush him, to throw my arms around him and hiccup-cry until he promised me that no one was abandoning me, that he would always be with me.
Instead, I shifted my weight and cleared my throat, biting back those threatening tears. “You look pretty. Tough. You look pretty tough,” I said, with all the grace of a blubbering idiot.
He wiped a piece of grit from his chin with the back of his hand, and if I hadn’t been served such a heartbreaking blow by my so-called “family” downstairs, I would have tripped over my panties falling head over heels, once again, for Alex.
“You shouldn’t have taken the elevator.”
It wasn’t exactly the sexy, comforting line I had imagined, but the fact that SWAT Alex was talking to me still sent a delighted shiver through me. I realized that the only thing I was in real danger of was becoming a jiggly pool of lady goo.
“Sorry,” was my sexy rejoin.
“Anyone else down there?”
I shook my head. “Why are you dressed like that? You’re a detective.”
“It’s a state of emergency. The city was hit pretty severely by the quake. Power lines are down, windows were shattered on Market. There’s widespread looting. I’m SWAT trained so I was patrolling. People get pretty awful when they think they can take advantage of someone else’s misfortune. Is there a reason you’re staring at me?”
He patted his chest with his gloved hands, and I clamped my knees together tightly.
“No. I was just listening intently to what you had to say. Why did you come back here if it’s so bad out there?”
“Things are beginning to go back to normal. Power is being restored. And you weren’t answering either of your phones. Nina said she’d left you back at the office.”
There was a wash of crimson under the dirt streak on Alex’s cheeks.
“You came to save me.”
He rolled his eyes. “I came to check on you. If anyone is going to be able to save herself, it’s going to be you. Come on.”
He threw an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the door.
“I must be moving up in the world. Usually you would ask how I was responsible for the disaster in progress.”
“Yeah, well, I thought this one was probably out of your realm of expertise.”
Alex pushed open the door for me, and we both scanned the city in the fading twilight. We weren’t staring at the city I lived in; we were staring at the smoky, ruined set of some disaster film. Cars were abandoned in intersections. A piece of street had buckled and split down the center. A Muni bus sat empty, doors wide open, gaping front windows like hollow, sightless eyes. The humming pulse of San Francisco—horns honking, cable cars ringing, the general chatter of life in the city—had been snuffed out, and the silence was unnerving.
I shivered. “This is weird.”
“I’ll give you a ride.”
“That’s okay—I drove today.” I pointed to my little Honda, which looked like it had been fished out of the bowels of the earth post-quake. Most of the spray-painted VAMPIRE graffiti had worn off, and I had fixed the back window with a good dose of duct tape. It wasn’t much to look at, but it moved. Mostly.
“I’d feel better if you let me drive you.”
Normally this kind of chauvinism would grate on me because I like to think I’m a feminist, but after the whole puddle of goo in the face of G.I. Joe Alex, I wasn’t even going to bother.
The streetlights were out along all the avenues so it was slow going.
“So when you were out . . . patrolling,” I started, pinching the skin on my upper lip. “Did anything interesting come up about the quake?”
Alex glanced at me as he took a corner. “What are you talking about?”
I glanced around the empty car as if there were spies everywhere. “Do you think this was a regular earthqua
ke or was it something more . . . supernatural?”
He guided the car down a street that was completely dark, the gaping black windows of each still house looking ominous and foreboding. I pulled my jacket tighter over my shoulder and shifted in my car seat.
“Remember that house over there?” Alex asked, gesturing with his chin.
I squinted to make out the boxy house. “Yeah. That was where we saw the werewolf.” I smiled. “Good bloodthirsty times. You still didn’t answer my question.”
“It was an earthquake, Lawson. If you’re asking if the road split and the devil came tap-dancing up, I’m going to have to say no. It was just an earthquake.”
I picked at a piece of dried rice stuck to my pants. “But the gates of Hell . . . and Sampson just fired me.”
Alex’s brows rose. “He fired you?”
“No exactly fired, fired. But he said that I should make myself scarce until all of this is figured out.”
“What does he mean by ‘all of this’?”
“Armageddon, I’m assuming. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”
“Look, Lawson, I know I told you about Armentrout. And I know I was the one who told you there might be more to it than you think. But . . .” Alex shook his head. “I just have a hard time buying that this”—he jutted his chin out the windshield—“is . . . that. But then again . . .”
“But then again what?”
“You know what they say about the devil.”
“No, not really.”
“He’s a trickster.”
I rolled my eyes. “Trickster? Sampson said the same thing. So, is this Satan or a ten-year-old boy?”
“He’s into ruses, games.”
“I pose my question again. I don’t know if I should be quaking in my proverbial boots or picking up a stash of lollipops and sling shots.”
“There’s the feisty Lawson I know.”
I waited for him to say, “and love,” but it never came. I shifted in my seat and reminded myself I had bigger fish to fry. “Have you heard anything?”
“Haven’t been on the fallen angel website lately. Didn’t see any apocalyptic tweets.”