"Don't touch me," she spat, shaking off my hand. Her eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere in the middle of the bed, as though she couldn't even look at me.
"Liz, please."
"I want you to leave," she said.
"What?"
"I SAID LEAVE!"
At that last, the lights came on. I heard the grumble of patients in nearby beds, angry at the sudden disturbance. I heard a clatter of footfalls from down the hall, and the officious tones of hospital security ringing off the walls. And last, I heard the thudding of my heart, which threatened to burst inside my chest. I looked at Liz, my face a silent plea, but she was having none of it. So, security drawing closer, I fled.
I headed away from the nurses' station and hit the stairwell at a run, tears streaming down my cheeks. Four stories' worth of stairs passed unnoticed beneath my feet, and I spilled out into the biting cold night. I was in a narrow alley, the street beyond hidden behind a heaping mound of trash. Pavement bit the tender flesh of my hands and knees as I collapsed, retching, to the ground, my body racked with sob after painful sob. I didn't know if they were coming for me. At that point, I didn't care. I thought I'd reached the bottom, then. The worst that it could get.
I had no idea how wrong I was.
"Shit, Sam, I always figured you were kinda gutless, but this? Crying like a little bitch in the street?"
At the sound of his voice, my stomach clenched, but there was nothing left to purge. I didn't want to look at him. I knew I couldn't not. Almost without volition, I lifted my head.
Walter Dumas stood beside me, smiling. Black fire raged in his eyes. He was wearing the same suit I'd seen him in this evening, now filthy and blood-soaked. Three jagged holes, redbrown with drying blood and scorched around the edges, graced his shirt in the center of his chest. Beneath them, his skin was knotted and discolored, like a horrible injury decades old. As I stared at him, disbelievingly, Dumas tugged a bloodspattered kerchief from his pocket, and extended it to me. When I didn't take it, he just shrugged and returned it to his pocket.
"So what's the matter, Sammy-boy — lady troubles? Eh, them dames are all the same. Always squeamish when the killing starts."
My head was reeling. This couldn't be happening. "You… I mean, I…"
"Killed me, yeah. Well, tried to, at least. Made a pretty good go of it, too, if you don't mind my saying. Most folks just snap and make for the nearest blunt object, but you had yourself a plan — you even bought yourself a gun and everything. Gotta say, I'm proud o' you, son. Or, rather, I was, till I saw this pathetic little display."
"You… you wanted me to kill you?" I asked.
"Hell, yes, I did" he replied, "that's why your pal Johnnie dragged me into this affair! After all, you can't consummate a contract without blood. It's a common misconception in deals of this kind that the blood you sign with has got to be your own. Truth is, blood taken with malicious intent is always far more binding. I gotta tell you, I was beginnin' to think you'd never seal the deal — I been runnin' you ragged for months now, and you just kept on takin' it."
"'Deals of this kind'? Deals of what kind?"
"You mean you still haven't figured it out? I guess you always were a little dense. We own your soul now, boy. Or, rather, the Boss Man does, though credit goes to Merihem — 'scuse me, Johnnie, for puttin' the whole thing together. How's fire and brimstone for all eternity sound, kiddo? Cause that's where you're headed."
"You can't be serious."
Dumas said, "OK, you got me on the fire and brimstone. I mean honestly, I don't know who came up with that shit, but it sure as hell wasn't us. You kids and your books. It's downright cute, really. About the owning your ass, though, I'm afraid I'm quite serious."
"So what, then? You're just gonna whisk me off to hell, now?"
"Aw, come on, Sam, where's the fun in that? Nah, we'd rather let you sweat a bit. Don't you worry, though — your day is coming soon enough."
"I don't believe you," I said.
"You know what? I think you do."
There was no point arguing, I realized. Dumas was right. I did believe. "What do you mean, my day is coming?"
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough. You wanna know the funniest part?"
"What's that?"
"If you had only guessed at what I am, you wouldn't be in this predicament."
"How's that?"
"Ain't no sin to kill a demon. But as far as you knew, it wasn't a demon you were killin'. In this-here game of ours, intent is everything, and your intentions were just as black as can be. Tell me that ain't the bit that's gonna keep you up at night." Dumas laughed. "Anyways, this has been fun and all, but I got places I need to be. See you 'round, Sam."
And just like that, I was alone.
"Do you think they saw us?"
I glanced back through the glass door through which we'd ducked. It was plastered with multicolored sheets of paper — ads for roommates, dog-walking services, and the like, all obscuring my view of the street beyond. "I don't know."
We were standing in the vestibule of a Vietnamese noodle joint, just a tiny patch of threadbare floor mat stacked high with free weeklies and wedged between two doors. The interior door was propped open, giving me a view of the restaurant's spartan dining room and teasing my empty stomach with the aroma of ginger and lime and simmering meats. What few patrons there were made no attempts to hide their puzzled stares, and I couldn't blame them. What a pair we must make: Kate, scraped and filthy beneath her bluestreaked hair and studded choker, looking for all the world like a punk-rock zombie. Me, pallor ashen from loss of blood, much of which had dried red-brown into my tattered clothes. I, too, looked like a dead man walking, which was funny, cause for a change, I wasn't.
"So what do we do?" Kate asked.
It was a fair question. We'd barely made it a couple of blocks from the station before we'd spotted them: a pair of demons, combing the street, the black fire that burned in their eyes belying the impassive expressions that graced their otherwise human faces. I had no doubt that there were more of them — dozens, maybe hundreds by now — fanning outward from the spot we'd last been seen, determined to put a stop to this war, to this girl, once and for all. I wasn't about to let that happen, but that meant we needed a plan. From the looks on the diners' faces, we sure couldn't stay there.
I looked into Kate's eyes, so trusting and innocent despite all they'd seen, and I wished I had something to tell her. Truth was, I was out. Out of gas, out of ideas. I had no fucking clue where to go, or what we'd do when we got there. I'd fucked this job up from the get-go, and now, the whole city was on our tail — humans and demons alike. We'd be lucky if we lasted the night.
But of course I didn't say any of that. No, what I said was this: "We've got to get off the streets, and quick. Find a place to hole up while things calm down. If we stay off the radar for a while, there's no way for Bishop or the demons to get a bead on us. That means first we've got to get out of here. It's probably a matter of minutes before someone here calls the cops, if they haven't already. Right now, I'm thinking kitchen."
Kate nodded, and we ducked out of the vestibule, darting through the dining room and pushing open the kitchen's swinging double doors. The kitchen was hot and narrow and cramped, with two apron-clad cooks barely visible behind stainless steel counters stacked high with pots and pans and bins piled high with fresh-cut veggies. They shouted at us in their mother tongue, but we were gone as quickly as we'd come, banging open the heavy metal door that led to the alley behind the place. It slammed shut behind us, and I leaned against it while I got my bearings.