Devil Take Me

by Jordan L. Hawk

  His breath hitched—I had no doubt his toes curled too—and he arched his back like a cat rising from a nap. “You sure know how to make a guy feel good, Johnny. In more ways than one.”

  I didn’t even have the strength to reply.

  He rose to his knees beside me and ran his hands along his naked thighs and belly, his ribs and chest, and luxuriated in the feeling of a body sizzling with power. He was hard—when wasn’t he? But his arousal went so much deeper than plain ol’ sex. I should know. I’d been carrying it with me all this time. Hating every minute of it.

  And what was I without the power? A bitter, hollowed-out shell.

  Or so I thought.

  Adam bent over me and settled a tender kiss on my forehead. Everything lit up, even the emptiness inside me. The connection of the uncompleted favor raged between us like a sparking power line with enough voltage to burn us both to a crisp. Yet somehow we were unscathed.

  “That you trust me with this?” he murmured against my brow. “It means everything.”

  It was either him or the old man. That old saw, better the devil you know? It’s shit. I’d take my chances with the one who’d just coaxed a load out of me, and it would be over soon enough, anyhow. An unfinished favor can only hang there so long, and pretty soon, the pull would be too much. He must’ve had some kind of plan for the aftermath—march across the estate, put a bullet in Helen’s brain, and then what? Pin it on one of his men, no doubt. And use all the mojo he’d drained from me to make sure the accusation stuck.

  I felt bad for whoever would end up taking the fall, but… better that poor sap than me.

  I could already tell it would be brutal when Adam left my side and even worse when he dispatched the favor. As a rule, I don’t let myself get attached to anything. But there I was, trussed up with him now by something far stronger than any physical binding. It was tense, like the second-last note of a song hanging in the air, or the clench before you empty your balls. But without the promise of release.

  He surprised me by attempting to scratch the itch by fucking. There’d be no substitute for him actually fulfilling the dark favor, and yet he tried. Fueled by the lines he snorted off his glass-topped nightstand, he coaxed me to stiffness and rode me hard, over and over, until the sheets dried from the heat of our bodies and then dampened again with our sweat and jiz. Maybe, at each dizzying peak, we experienced a shining moment of freedom from our infernal bondage. But just as soon as my dick would start to soften in his needy hole, the unmet favor sizzled between us again, twice as hungry.

  Eventually, when he’d rubbed me too raw to go again, he stretched out alongside me and trailed a fingertip down my collarbone. “How angry do you think he’ll be,” Adam said, “when he finds out you didn’t carry out the orders yourself?”

  “Like I give two fucks.”

  “Feel free to drop the tough-guy act anytime. We’ve shared our bodies. It wouldn’t kill you to share a misgiving.”

  Was it an act? I’d always figured if you cracked open my heart, there’d be nothing there but cobwebs and dust. But now this connection hung between us, buzzing with tension that hurt in all the best possible ways. It would be a real shame if he didn’t walk out of this alive.

  “Just act like you’re in it for the power. If the old man doesn’t know I took a shine to you, he won’t have any reason to take you down.”

  Adam bolted upright and looked at me. If I could still see the whites of his eyes, they would have been showing all around. “Damn, Johnny. I had no idea the stakes were so high.”

  And I had no idea how he’d just managed to slip under the Devil’s imperative and loop me into telling him who sent me.

  Fuck.

  Talk about distracting.

  He settled back, uneasily now. “You’re not gonna be a very popular guy once a certain someone finds out you made yourself a loophole.”

  “No shit.”

  “I want to be there, Johnny. When he comes to collect.”

  “I can see that you get off on living dangerously, but this isn’t fun and games. Do the deed and then save yourself. That’s the only way you make it out of this shit show alive.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.” The ghost of a smile danced behind Adam’s darkened eyes.

  Three days later….

  I STOOD against the bar and tapped the business card on the worn wood. It was plain matte black, with nothing on it but a number. I’d been handling it for days, and it showed. The card was bent, and its edges were soft. Second-guessing myself? Who knows.

  I’m not a sentimental guy. When I told Shawn to fuck off and find himself another gig, it was easy enough to ignore the hurt anger in his eyes and dodge the shot glass he pitched at my head. But if Adam hadn’t been such a hot piece of ass, I probably would’ve slipped out of his bedroom and done what I’d gone there to do in the first place instead of asking him the favor of carrying out my dirty work.

  Still, part of me had to wonder if he’d figured out a double-cross. Our connection was still there. It was an ache that thrummed through my guts with every breath I took, and if our souls were still tethered, his and mine, it meant he hadn’t carried out my favor.

  Maybe it was the connection that alerted me and left me hypersensitized to the old man’s evil mojo. After stewing in it so shamelessly, for so long, I felt him coming. The barflies must have too. The crowd was sparse that night, and what few bothered to show up had slowly trickled out of the Inferno like they sensed the general pall that hung over the joint. I stood alone in my dingy bar with my hand poised over the phone. And at midnight, when the digital clock by the register flashed its grimy red 12:00, a silhouette that hadn’t been there at 11:59 appeared outside the front door.

  Heart pounding in my throat, I keyed in the number on the card. In half a ring, an operator picked up.

  “Mr. Lockheart,” said a cool, unflappable female voice. “Are you at the Inferno?”

  I grunted.

  “I’ll page him right now,” she said, and hung up just as the front door opened.

  The wind howled, and a stray gust kicked in the rotten stench of sulfur. “Hello, Johnny.”

  I placed the receiver in its cradle and turned around to face the music.

  The old man wore a black trench coat against the clammy midnight chill, and he carried a walking stick with a crystal knob that out-sparkled the Hope diamond. He paused in the doorway with fog rolling in around him to let me get the full effect, and then he smiled.

  “How am I not surprised you couldn’t manage to carry out one simple request?”

  I wasn’t too shocked that I’d screwed up either, though I had no idea how Adam had managed to go so long without doing the deed, especially given his close proximity to Helen. The power of love? Hard to imagine, but anything’s possible. The only thing I knew was the gun was still cocked and the trigger hadn’t been pulled. The unfulfilled favor seethed through our bond with every heartbeat.

  Feigning an indifference I didn’t feel in the least, I pulled a dusty bottle of wine from beneath the bar and set to work paring the seal off the cork. My current customers drank bum wine, but this stock was a throwback to the old Inferno, back when it was a classy joint. Back before I dragged it through the dirt and left it as soiled as everything else I touched.

  The door closed itself behind the old man. He strolled up to the bar, cane tapping the sticky floorboards. I supposed I should feel nervous, but all I could summon was a sick sense of dread. I was slow at uncorking the wine, but it wouldn’t buy much time. Even though I dealt in screw-tops these days, I still owned a bar. There’s only so much incompetence a guy can fake.

  I poured. In the dimness the wine shone like spilled blood. “I get why you picked me,” I said. “No connection to this big-time TV broad—barely knew who she was—so I was the perfect guy to send in. Plenty of lowlifes fit that bill, though, and even more would gladly pull the trigger for the size of that reward. But the key was in getting past Adam and leaving him
standing.”

  The old man swirled his wine and let it breathe. Me, I wasn’t so lucky. My lungs felt like lead, and my head spun with the worry that there was no way I could stall him long enough. Even so, I had to try.

  “I’ve been wondering why it was so important to leave him intact. It’s not as if he could run the hot-shit housewife empire without her. She’s not just the name of her brand—she’s the face, the heart. I’ve been turning it around, looking at it this way and that, and the only thing I can figure is that you knew I’d be too weak to off the guy.”

  He inhaled the bouquet, frowned slightly, and put the glass down on the bar. “The heart wants what it wants.”

  “Even in self-defense, I’d hesitate. You knew it. But you knew he wouldn’t, and all the power you promised me, all that dark favor of yours running through my veins? It wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good with a bullet in my head.”

  The old man smiled grimly. “I never said you were stupid. Just stubborn.”

  Oh, I was plenty stupid. If I had half a brain, I wouldn’t have been in the situation I was in. “I get why you’d take me out. Can’t have the rest of the Chosen thinking they can thumb their nose at you their whole sorry lives and come away with a big payout in the end. But what I can’t figure out is this—why her?”

  The Devil toyed with the stem of his glass and then said, “You’re more alike, you and Helen Cross, than you realize. She’s just as stubborn as you—just as intractable—and her platform reaches far beyond the end of a tacky bar top. Unchecked, within a few short years, her power multiplies tenfold and her influence is staggering. And we can’t have other Chosen getting ideas, now. Can we?”

  The door creaked open, and the Devil looked annoyed. A guy in a postman’s uniform stepped in, glanced around, and planted himself in front of the jukebox. Before I could tell him to move along because we were closed, a couple of streetwalkers came in and sat at one of the tables to take a load off their feet. And then a guy in a business suit showed up. And an old lady in a babushka.

  One by one, the most random cross-section of people I’d ever seen filtered into the Inferno, and not a single one looked as if they expected me to pull them a beer. They filed in quietly until they filled the bar, from the old hostess stand where Mary had made her dramatic exit so many years ago, to the kitchen where the rest of the staff was found in a gassed pile by the locked door. And once the newcomers were close enough for me to see the polluted whites of their eyes, it became clear that every last one of them was Chosen.

  My heart sank as I pictured the lot of them bowing down to their master, dismantling the Inferno board by board, brick by brick, with their own hands, and then turning on me and tearing me limb from limb. Adam had told me to trust him. He promised he’d fix everything. But how could he? I still felt the unfulfilled favor that bound us together. If he hadn’t managed to take care of Helen yet, how could he possibly bail me out?

  And then the crowd parted.

  One by one, as if they were choreographed, the housekeepers and lawyers and street sweepers and cops fell aside, and at the end of the magical path, stood Adam. I expected him to be brimming with dark power, crackling with energy, eyes pure black.

  But no.

  They were as clear as the sky on a brisk winter day.

  All the mojo I’d funneled into him?

  Spent.

  My stomach bottomed out from the knowledge that, even combined, we didn’t have enough reserves to defend ourselves… but then I realized that the mob gathered in the Inferno wasn’t there to serve the old man.

  They were waiting for a cue from Adam.

  With those breathlessly clear blue eyes, Adam locked gazes with me. He smiled. Spreading his arms wide to encompass the group in his benediction, he indicated the Devil with a nod and gave a simple, clear instruction.

  “Kill him.”

  The crowd erupted.

  There were no weapons. They went at him with their bare hands. The Devil was shocked, but only for a moment. As he went down off his barstool, he managed to turn a few of the crowd against the rest, but the numbers were just too great. Chosen swarmed like lice on an unwashed junkie and tore first at his dapper trench coat and then at his leathery, tanned flesh. He was actually smiling at first, but the smile twisted into a cringe of fear when he realized he was outnumbered.

  I’d climbed up onto the bar, partly to watch, partly to keep myself from being torn to shreds. Hands clawed at him all around. A long-nailed secretary put a ribbon of deep scratches in his arm that let the others tear his flesh and peel it like old wallpaper. Someone tore off an ear. He howled as his tongue was ripped from his head. Someone else hit an artery. Blood sprayed. Amid the chaos, it seemed improbable that I’d feel the moment the old man bought it….

  But I did.

  Darkness gouted from his bloody mouth, oily, crawling out of his spent body like a sentient thing. It spread over the scarred floorboards and drooled through the cracks. And as it left him, the physical manifestation of his power, the hold on my soul, released.

  For the first time since I made that fateful decision in 1961, I could actually breathe.

  I searched the crowd for Adam and found him pressed against the wall by the front door, white shirt smudged and torn at the shoulder, his hair falling forward, but otherwise unharmed.

  “You did it,” I called to him. He couldn’t hear me over the wailing of the mob, but he saw, at least, and I think he got the gist.

  The tether between us evaporated as the old man’s life force drained away. How Adam had managed to hold off on killing his girlfriend for so long, I had no idea. He did it, though. He outsmarted the Devil.

  I had my eyes on him as I filled my lungs with the stale-beer and fresh-gore smell of the Inferno, when a canister of tear gas arced through the window.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1982

  ADAM

  I LOST count of how many prison guards I had to blow to get someone else to confess to the murder so Johnny could walk free. Three years’ worth of hardened bullies slapping me with their dicks, each one a bigger creep than the one before—and then, finally, a great, hairy beast who insisted he was straight while he shot all over my face. Maybe he was lying to himself. But in the end, he did right by me and talked someone else from that mob scene back at the Inferno into taking the rap.

  I hadn’t seen Johnny since his sentencing. Why? Figuring out my next move.

  Cops had hauled off Helen long before I showed up at the bar that night. I don’t think the Devil figured out precisely how I managed to tangle up the hit he’d put out on her in an unsalvageable loophole, but when the days ticked by and Helen remained unflappably alive, he knew something was up. If he couldn’t kill her, he’d settle for stripping away her money and power instead.

  Tax fraud.

  So they said.

  I was full up with dark power at that point—Johnny’s power—and could easily have asked a Chosen cop to put a bullet in his partner and let my mother off at the end of the drive. But she looked at me and gave her head a single shake no. Hopefully she knew what she was doing. And maybe, in women’s prison, she’d even be relatively safe until the dust settled.

  Johnny, though? No way could I save him—too much confusion, too many bodies. And him, at the nexus of it all, covered in gore and proclaiming aloud that the Devil was dead.

  The insanity plea recommended by the defense attorney didn’t fly, and now I supposed that was for the best. Otherwise Johnny would still be clogging the pipes of the mental health system.

  He wandered out the prison door with a handful of other inmates who’d just been cut loose. They carried their meager belongings in identical plastic bags, all of them staring up at the sky as though they misremembered the sun. A few of them broke off for tearful reunions with family and friends, but Johnny glanced at the bus stop and started digging in his plastic bag for a quarter.

  I rolled up, powered down the window, and leaned across to let
him see it was me. He blanched, and I wondered if my mirrored aviator glasses weren’t quite enough. But then he shook off the pall and brightened… as much as Johnny Lockheart ever brightens. He jogged over and climbed in.

  We both stared. Before, he looked like he was cobbled together from hard living and mistrust. Now, prison had amplified him, and he was downright intimidating. But as fascinating as this crystalized version of Johnny might be, it wasn’t his tattooed neck or his harsh, chiseled cheekbones that captivated me. It was his eyes. Green-gold, like a meadow at sunrise… and not a hint of black.

  “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

  He didn’t smile—that just wasn’t him. “She was your mother?”

  I sniffed a humorless laugh and pulled away from Cavalry Country Maximum Security. “By all accounts, still is.”

  He raked a hand through the lank hair that hung to his shoulders now. “All the ways that could’ve gone wrong. Sure, you blocked me from saying her name. But you couldn’t have known I would tell you to off your girlfriend.”

  “Maybe not, but I had a hunch.”

  “You could have said something once the favor dropped… once she was safe.”

  “I had to see how it would all play out.” I noted he hadn’t referred to her as Helen. I also suspected he had no idea that the compulsion still held.

  He dropped his hand into my lap and groped me through my slacks, not even bothering to wait until we were alone—not that there was anyone to see us on the isolated county road that led from the prison. But it was still a far cry from the self-contained bartender who had no use for anyone else.

  “Ever been with a woman?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “So, no girlfriend, past or present, and the whole damn time we were waiting for the old man to show up, you hauled around an impossible favor. Sure, I could feel it on my end, but you? It must’ve been gnawing at your guts like a rabid tapeworm. How long? Two days? Three?”