Chapter One
The Bronx, New York
Little Stevie Berlain desperately needed some gas, the kind that came from a syringe filled with liquid fire. He hurried across the deserted parking lot, one trembling hand holding a Kool short to his cracked and bleeding lips, the other in his jacket pocket, holding the hypodermic.
To most, it seemed another typical January night in the South Bronx, bitterly cold with a bone-chilling wind. All the talking heads said that, coast to coast, it was the coldest winter in modern history. However, Stevie was oblivious to the cold. In his clouded mind, it was springtime and all the birds were singing. He had just scored and the party was on. His only bitch was with his dealer and the ever-increasing cost of product.
"Sixty dollars!" he grumbled. "Sixty goddamned dollars! Fuckin' rip off!"
Still, he knew he would have paid ten times that amount for the ten ccs of dirty brown dishwater in the syringe. Or he would have cut the guy's head off, and stole his dope. If he couldn't buy it, he'd take it; simple as that. Little Stevie had a reputation as a heavyweight cranker, a mad tweaker, and no price was ever too high to pay in either cash or violence. For eleven years, the drug had been both his savior and his demon.
Now he only needed to make it back to his apartment, where he could do himself some serious good. Little Stevie figured he had too much class to shoot-up on the street corner like some common addict. But his apartment was on the other side of the borough, an hour walk in this crappy weather.
Connie! He thought of his former girlfriend and spat out a wad of phlegm. Uppity crank whore! But Connie was still good for something. Her brownstone was only a few blocks away and he still had a key. Maybe he would invite himself in, and after pleasantries, maybe a quick head job, he would partake of the demon in the syringe.
Stepping over the broken curb and out into the street, he saw headlights slowly emerge from an alley to his left.
Fuck me! Cops or preds!
Little Stevie grew up in the streets of the South Bronx. He knew that it was unlikely that anyone else was out in this weather past midnight unless they were looking to score, haul you to jail, or roll your ass. He knew all the dealers and most of the preds on sight. No, the car was moving too slowly, stalking him.
Yep, gotta be the cops.
Little Stevie hurried across the street, flicking the stub of the Kool out into the freezing mist. Connie's apartment was only three blocks away and he didn't need any problems. Not that he really gave a damn who was in the car, either. Nothing or nobody was going to interfere with him getting ripped out of his skull tonight.
As he reached the sidewalk, he glanced over his shoulder and noticed that the car continued to pace him. The glare from the dual high beams prevented him from making out the model, but Little Stevie thought it looked like a long, older model Lincoln. He knew that no narc worth his salt would be caught dead in an old Lincoln. He was only a little relieved.
Little Stevie fought back the instinctive urge to run the remaining couple of blocks. You never, ever ran through this neighborhood unless bullets were flying. Running always resulted in one of two things and both were bad. Either some cop would see you and snatch your ass up just to ask you some idiotic question like, "Hey buddy, where's the fire?" or the neighborhood predators would smell you and go into a feeding frenzy. Even if you couldn't see them, the predators could always see you. Always. Running through this neighborhood was like hanging a bloody steak around your neck in a pool full of sharks.
It never occurred to Little Stevie that he might simply be experiencing the legendary paranoia associated with his personal demon. Slowly, the car picked up speed, passed him by, and disappeared from sight. The windows were heavily tinted, too dark to make out the occupants, but Stevie knew they weren't bangers or preds. No bullets or nail-studded baseball bats came flying at him as the car drew even. Now, more than a little relieved, Little Stevie reached the next intersection and hurried across the slick pavement. Anticipation wore on him. God, I need to hit that point!
"Two more blocks," he muttered. "Just two . . ." The words froze on his lips.
Up ahead, beneath the dingy yellow glow of a streetlamp, stood a solitary figure wearing a wrinkled trench coat; one of those James-fucking-Bond numbers that comes down to your knees and belts at the waist. Predators, most of whom were gang-bangers, loved those coats, a perfect length to hide a sawed-off shotgun or a piece of lumber. The collar of the coat was pulled high against the face and Little Stevie wondered if it was some whacked-out hooker working the shit shift.
Where in the hell did he come from? Little Stevie was certain that the sidewalk had been empty only seconds earlier. He cursed again and spat out another wad of brown phlegm. Screw it. Too close now to worry about it. In another ten minutes, Little Stevie would be sitting in a cozy apartment, with a needle in his arm and joining the ranks of the demigods.
As he approached the street corner, some of Little Stevie's concern melted away. The person beneath the streetlamp looked a little anemic, kind of light in the ass-pockets. The top of his—or her—head wouldn't reach the middle button on Little Stevie's shirt.
In reality there was nothing little about Little Stevie. He carried the nickname by virtue of being the youngest of five thuggish brothers. Little Stevie was the baby, but at six feet five inches, and two hundred and forty pounds, he was by no stretch the smallest. And in another ten minutes, he would be a foot taller, thanks to the demon in the syringe.
Lowering his head against the cold, Little Stevie walked on. The person up ahead stood quietly waiting . . . watching.
Little Stevie quickened his pace. Within seconds he drew abreast, and then passed the figure in the trench coat, averting his eyes the way addicts often do in public, as if the act somehow made them smaller or invisible. As he moved past the trench coat, Little Stevie felt the light caress of icy fingers on the back of his neck.
Startled, he let out a loud guttural "Whaaa—!" and whirled about. Still standing beneath the streetlamp, the frail, emaciated figure looked anything but threatening.
"What the hell is your problem, dude?" Stevie yelled. The person said nothing, but took a slow step, shuffle forward. Stepping back in surprise, Stevie raised his scarred fists. For a brief moment, he caught a glimpse of a hideously disfigured face buried inside the high collars, but dismissed it as a trick of the poor lighting.
"You got two seconds to move your ugly ass down the street before something really bad happens to you." Suddenly, rolling this guy seemed like a great idea.
Who knows? Maybe Mr. Dude has a couple of bucks on him.
Mr. Dude said nothing. Instead, he took another slow, shuffling step forward and for a moment Stevie thought the air seemed to waver, as if he was looking at heat waves coming off of dry asphalt on a one hundred and ten-degree day. As his muddled mind struggled to puzzle out the odd visage, an ungodly pain announced itself just above his belt buckle.
Looking down, he saw that Mr. Dude had somehow closed the eight-foot gap that had separated them, and buried his arm in Stevie's stomach up to a not-so-scrawny elbow. Icy fingers closed around his spinal column and all feeling drained from Little Stevie's legs. With a pitiful moan, the addict collapsed onto the sidewalk.
"Ugh! F—fuck me! This ain't . . . ain't happening."
Mr. Dude bent over the wounded man, and the high collar of the overcoat fell away. For the first time, Little Stevie had a clear look at Mr. Dude's face. Little Stevie screamed.
Grasping the mortally injured man by a mop of dirty blond hair, Mr. Dude dragged Stevie into the deep shadows of a nearby alley.
"Hold, Drammach!"
Stevie slumped back onto the wet pavement as the grip on his hair disappeared. From the corner of his eye, he could see Mr. Dude backing away, coming to a stop at the edge of his peripheral vision. Over the pounding of his own heart, he heard the sharp click of hard-soled wing tips on asphalt, and a man suddenly appeared over him, peering down, smiling. In stark contrast to the hideous, malformed Mr. Dude, the man was pure perfection.
"It would seem that you're having an extremely bad day," the man said pleasantly.
"F—fuck me, I'm dying! Keep him off me, man! For God's sake, j—just help me!"
"You really shouldn't use that name, you know. After all, He doesn't know you, any more than you know Him. As for my associate, consider how fortunate you are to have seen his face. For him to reveal his true nature, he must favor you a great deal! Perhaps . . . perhaps he senses a kindred nature, yes?
"I'm going to help you. And in return, you're going to help me. You're going to find someone for me. A boy. And when you find him, you'll kill him. Do you understand?"
Little Stevie only understood that he was dying. But if this man could somehow help him . . . if he could keep Mr. Dude away. . . .
"Y—yeah, anything, any—" Little Stevie coughed and bloody froth spilled from his lips.
"Splendid! Now, I'm going to give you something . . . a gift. And you'll thank me. Oh, how you will thank me." The dark-haired man with the beautiful face leaned forward until his mouth hovered above Stevie's own. He paused for a moment, then said, "Then again, perhaps not."
The man's mouth descended and covered Little Stevie's and for the first time, the addict considered that perhaps not all demons came from a syringe.
Copyright © 2006 by Liam Jackson. All rights reserved.
