Possessing the Witch

Chapter 5

Gryph continued to watch the television newscast. The sketched image of him was replaced by the reporter. “This just in—the victim was in ICU after surgery when she was attacked again and smothered to death before anyone could get to her.” Police units, lights flashing, rolled in beside the newswoman. Officers leaped out of their squad cars and raced into the building.

His blood freezing in his veins, Gryph realized what saving the woman had cost him and the rest of the outcasts who lived their lives beneath the city streets. With an animal like him identified as the beast who’d ravaged a woman on the streets, every police officer would be searching all the nooks and crannies in the city. If they dug too deeply, they would locate the Lair.

He’d put them all at risk of discovery. And whomever had attacked the woman outside the theater in the first place was still running free and had gone back to finish the job.

He had to get out of Selene’s apartment. She’d seen him in his half-changed form. She’d know the drawing was of him, and she might return with the police to haul him in for murder. Or if she didn’t turn him in, and the police found him there, he’d bring her down with him. The evidence was stacked against him by an eyewitness, who was dead. If Selene chose not to hand him over to the authorities, she could be arrested for aiding and abetting a suspected murderer.

With purposeful strides, he entered the kitchen and pulled open the compact clothes dryer, removing his cloak and the tattered remains of his trousers. He stepped into the ripped pants. The shirt was beyond repair. Rather than leave it there as evidence against Selene, he shoved it into a pocket, slung his cape over his shoulder and hurried toward the door.

Gryph paused by the small window beside the door, pushed aside the frothy mauve curtain and lifted the edge of the blinds to peer out at street level. It wouldn’t be long before people ventured out onto the early morning city streets. The sidewalks would fill with workers headed to their jobs.

He unlocked the door and eased it open. The sun had yet to top the horizon and spill over the crowns of the skyscrapers. For the moment, nothing stirred, nothing moved in front of Selene’s apartment. Lights remained off in the buildings surrounding the little dress shop and its basement apartment. One by one the streetlights blinked off.

Still weak, but getting stronger, Gryph slipped out the door, up the stairs and eased into the gloom. Years of blending into obscurity had refined his skills at disappearing.

Rounding the corner of the building, he paused and listened. The rumble of an engine grew louder until a dark motorcycle turned onto the street and slowed in front of the dress shop. Two people got off.

He risked being seen or caught, but he had to know if the rider or the passenger was Selene.

Both riders pulled off their helmets. The driver’s long, inky-black hair slipped free and fell to her shoulders, the streetlight shining down on it, giving it a blue glow. The second rider struggled with the strap beneath her chin.

Gryph held his breath as she finally loosened the strap and lifted the helmet up and over her head. Long, chocolate-brown hair slipped free and fell in a dark cloud, tumbling down her back. Selene, with her brown hair and deep, brown-black eyes, stood beside the motorcycle.

The driver pulled a gun from a holster beneath her black leather jacket, released the clip, checked her ammunition and then slammed it back into the handle.

Selene laid a hand on the woman’s arm. “Brigid, that’s not necessary.”

“I’d ball up some fire, but I don’t want to burn your place down.”

“He wasn’t the killer. Whoever it was had an enmity, an evil about him that was palpable. I never sensed that with Gryph.”

“So his name is Gryph, is it?” The woman with the coal-black hair and ice-blue eyes held out her hand, palm up. “Give me the keys.”

Selene dug in her pocket and handed over the keys. “He’s not a monster.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“He’s different,” Selene insisted.

“I’d say. How many people do you know who look like him? He’s a freak and he killed a woman tonight.”

Gryph ground his back teeth. I didn’t kill anyone, he wanted to shout aloud, but he held his tongue.

As the black-haired woman descended the stairs to the basement apartment, Selene turned in his direction. She stared straight at him, as if she could see into the shadows.

His eyesight, keen in the dark, both from experience at moving in the blackness of the underworld and from the inner lion’s nocturnal nature, could see the worry lines etched into her brow. He inched backward, ready to run.

A soft sensation brushed across his senses as if someone reassured him that it was okay. At the same time it gave him a gentle mental push, urging him to leave.

Headlights filled the street as an SUV turned the corner and came to a stop behind the motorcycle.

The redhead who’d helped Selene get him down the stairs climbed out of the driver’s seat and a man unfolded from the passenger side. A blonde and a brunette emerged from the back doors.

“Is he still here?” the redhead called out.

“About to find out,” said the black-haired woman with the key in her hand.

“I tell you, he wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Selene insisted.

“You saw what he did to that girl in the hospital. We all saw the bruises on your arms. He’s dangerous.”

“He didn’t kill her and he didn’t mean to hurt me.”

Guilt squeezed Gryph’s chest so hard he couldn’t breathe. He’d hurt her when all she’d tried to do was help him. Balthazar had been right all those years. The only place for him was below the surface. Up until the past five years, he’d lived his life in the underworld, where the misfits and freaks existed judgment-free, and where he wouldn’t be unleashed to hurt innocents. Amassing a fortune and building a business didn’t make him any more human.

“You say he didn’t hurt her, but the victim had the forensic artist draw a picture of her attacker, which happened to match your guest from what you say.” The redhead nodded to the woman at the bottom of the steps. “Sounds pretty damning to me. Let’s check out your monster.”

The woman at Selene’s door unlocked it and pushed it open, her gun held in front of her. A light went on inside the apartment. She disappeared inside. A few moments later, she called out, “He’s gone.”

It was time to go. Gryph turned to leave. His night vision temporarily compromised by the headlights, he didn’t see the soda can until he nudged it with his bare foot. The can skittered across concrete, making a metallic grating sound that echoed against the buildings in the alley.

“What was that?” the man who’d arrived in the SUV said from the top of the stairs.

“Probably the wind,” Selene said.

Gryph stood poised to run, out of sight of the group standing near Selene’s apartment.

“I’ll check it out,” the man said.

Gryph took off, aiming for the corner of the building at the end of the alley. If he could get there before the man rounded the side of Selene’s building, he could lose him in the maze of downtown structures.

Channeling his inner beast to give him speed and strength, he ran, reaching the corner as a shout rang out.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!”

He didn’t slow, didn’t stop, just ran as fast as his feet could carry him. At the end of another building, he flew around the corner, crossed the street and ducked around another structure.

Before long, he was several blocks away, the sound of pursuit long disappeared.

Careful to ensure he wasn’t being followed, he entered a back alley, swung wide around a large trash bin and a stack of decaying pallets, and stopped in front of a solid steel door. He dug his fingers into a chink in one of the bricks beside it and unearthed a key that fit the door.

With practiced efficiency, he twisted the key in the lock. The door opened inward, revealing stairs that led into a basement. Replacing the key in the chinked-out space, he entered, closing the door behind him. On quiet feet, he moved through the darkness, descending to the basement floor.

One of the oldest buildings in downtown Chicago, it had access to the tunnel system beneath the city. Built in the early nineteen hundreds, city planners had hoped the tunnels, with their narrow-gauge rail cars, would allow quick and efficient transportation of cargo to and from the buildings downtown, freeing some of the congestion of the streets above. The plan failed, but the tunnels remained, for the most part. Some had collapsed, others had been filled in when skyscrapers had been built on top of them. The labyrinth provided a warm, safe haven from weather and prying eyes to the inhabitants who called it home.

Having been abandoned as a small baby, unable to fend for himself, Gryph had known no other domicile. If not for the benevolence of Balthazar, he’d have perished in the harsh Chicago streets, unwanted, unloved and unprotected. When he’d discovered a good living in day trading five years ago, he’d accumulated enough wealth to own his own building downtown and he dared to move closer to the light.

Like many who had been forgotten, shunned or thrown away, like himself, he’d lived his life in the shadows of the city, rarely venturing out. Even in his own building, he rarely stepped outside, preferring to limit contact with humans to avoid any mishaps or triggering his inner beast to appear.

Balthazar warned him about the surface dwellers and their lack of compassion or understanding of anything strange or unusual. His adoptive father taught him to sense the rise of his inner beast and control the urge to morph into his animal form. As a child, spikes in emotion had thrown him into animal form.

At those times, for his own protection and the protection of the others in his care, Balthazar had confined Gryph to a cage, letting him out when he’d returned to human form. Those times had marked him deeply. He’d hated the cage and everything it stood for and vowed never to be caged again.

Kindhearted yet firm, Balthazar had taken him into the Lair, brought him up as his own son. The older man collected strays like him, bringing them into the fold, helping them to assimilate into a life in the shadows, finding useful work for them, from running street cleaners to servicing office buildings at night when everyone else slept.

Balthazar raised Gryph and another lost boy who’d been the child of a crack addict with no other family to call her own or to claim the child. Broke, homeless and strung out, his mother had holed up in the basement of a building. When the maintenance super had discovered her temporary lodgings, she’d tied her baby to her back and hidden beneath a trap door, clinging to a ladder to avoid being evicted. She’d descended the metal ladder until her feet touched the bottom of the well.

A light glowing at the end of a long tunnel led her to the center of the underworld city. Balthazar had taken her in, offering food and shelter for her and the baby as long a she resisted the lure of her addiction and promised to keep the community secret.

Not long afterward, her hunger for drugs drove her back to the surface. She never came back.

The baby named Lucas came to live with Balthazar and Gryph when Gryph was eight.

Balthazar, a college professor in his former life amongst the humans, had taught Gryph and Lucas to read and write, instilling in Gryph a love of classic literature and the arts. Determined to give them all the educational advantages of the surface dwellers, he’d set up a computer lab in the Lair, running ethernet cables from above to allow them to learn about the world in the light.

Though he’d never traveled outside the city limits of Chicago, Gryph could name all the countries on earth. He’d learned about finance and day trading, becoming quite good at following the news and anticipating market changes. Using seed money he’d earned cleaning buildings after sundown, he’d amassed a small fortune he kept stashed in banks stateside and abroad. Five years ago, he’d come out of the darkness to buy the building he now lived and worked in.

He’d dreamed of one day visiting other countries.

For now, his home was in the basement of his office building with a shaft that led to the maze of passages beneath the city.

He worked his way to the center of the Lair, passing old Joe Lowenstein, fast asleep in his cubby, blankets tucked up to his chin to ward off the chill and damp of the underworld. Joe had been a chemist until he’d been severely scarred in a chemical accident. Half his face melted off, blind in one eye and his right arm completely useless, he now made a living carving beautiful figurines out of wood, with his good hand and a vise grip Balthazar had appropriated from an abandoned workshop. Each finished figure sold in an upscale art gallery on 35th Street for thousands of dollars. Still Joe slept in the cubby, his money accumulating in a bank.

He rolled over, his good eye opening. “Gryph? That you?” Joe’s voice was as mottled as his face, gravelly to the point of almost being unintelligible.

“Go back to sleep, Joe,” Gryph whispered.

“Trouble’s brewin’,” Joe rasped.

“How so?”

“Some say it’s you.” Joe rubbed a hand across his scarred cheeks. “Don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. Balthazar will know.”

“I’m headed there now. Thanks for the heads-up.” Gryph continued toward the forgotten city’s center, the hairs on the back of his neck spiked, the inner beast clawing at his insides to be released to attack the tension in the air.

A small gathering ringed the entrance to the rooms he, Balthazar and Lucas had called home for so long. It was nothing more than a former storage area beneath the city, where supplies had been kept. It consisted of four large compartments. Gryph, Lucas and Balthazar each claimed one as his own and the fourth was a common area they still gathered in to share the events of their days or nights when time permitted. Balthazar had refused to move in with Gryph in his building nearer the surface, claiming he preferred the darkness to the light after all these years.

Now Balthazar stood at the entrance, his voice ringing out over the angry shouts of the small crowd. “Keep calm, people. I’m sure there’s some kind of misunderstanding.”

“What if he leads them down here?” someone asked.

Balthazar held up his hand. “He wouldn’t. He’s much too smart and cautious to let that happen. Please, go to your homes. Let me talk to Gryphon. I’m sure he can clear it all up.”

“Clear up what?” Gryph strode across the wide, open space where the old tracks had switched and turned down the long tunnels leading to the ends of the old city. He clutched his cloak around him, to hide the tattered remains of his clothing beneath.

“There he is!” a woman shouted. “What have you done? What kind of monster are you to attack a defenseless woman?”

“I’ve done nothing.” Gryph stood straight, his shoulders thrown back. “I’m no more a monster than any of you.”

“You killed a surface dweller.” Raymond Henning, a man with the ability to blend into the surroundings as easily as a chameleon, shook his fist at Gryph. “We all took an oath when we came to live here. No one hurts anyone. Now that you’ve let your beast kill, it will crave more bloodshed.”

“I didn’t kill anyone, and I don’t crave blood,” Gryph said, his voice urgent but calm. These were his people. Most of the money he earned through his day trading and businesses went to providing food and comfort for them. He’d only ever told Balthazar, whom he’d sworn to secrecy.

“How soon before they start a city-wide manhunt for you?” A young woman with blue and green fish scales on her neck and face pulled a scarf up over her head, her eyes darting around the group. “They’ll find us and drag us back into the light, or worse, exterminate us.”

“Will any of us be safe if the authorities discover what we have built down here?” Raymond asked.

“No!” shouted a mutant man with a bulbous blob completely covering the entire left side of his face spoke up. “We’re doomed. The authorities will track him here. They can’t have a killer on the loose in Chicago. It’s bad for tourism. They had an eyewitness, they know his face, and they won’t stop until they string him up for the woman’s murder.”

“I won’t lead the authorities down here. I’m careful to preserve what we have. It’s as much my home as yours. You all know me.” He waved a hand at Raymond. “Raymond, didn’t I lead you here when you’d passed out drunk in an alley and given up hope?”

Raymond frowned. “Yeah, but—”

Gryph continued, “Tara, when you first came to the Lair, didn’t I show you around the maze of tunnels until you were comfortable on your own?”

The furry woman nodded. “You did.”

“Many of you have known me my whole life. Have I ever hurt anyone?”

Many in the crowd muttered no.

Gryph lowered his voice and said softly, “I wouldn’t condemn the people I love to exposure to those who don’t understand us.”

Lucas, who had long dark hair, draped an arm over Gryph’s shoulder. “That’s right. You all know Gryph. He’s a good man. He might not be able to control his beast, but he’d give his life for any one of you.”

Gryph frowned at his brother. “I have control.”

Lucas’s mouth twisted. “Of course you do, even when you’re angry, right?” He clapped his hand on Gryph’s back. “Always the hero who could do no wrong.” Though he smiled, Lucas’s lip pulled back on one side in almost a sneer.

Gryph stared at his brother whose hand on his shoulder was tight, his fingers digging in.

Balthazar held up his hands. “You heard the man, he didn’t kill the surface dweller. Go home and get some sleep. Everything will be better by morning.”

Reluctantly, the crowd of misfits dispersed, muttering and grumbling as they trudged to their makeshift rooms constructed of abandoned pieces of plywood or cardboard in offshoots of the derelict rail tunnels.

Not long ago, Balthazar had worked with a handful of people to tap in to the electrical grid of the buildings, reactivating the lighting system in select tunnels so that they wouldn’t have to live in total darkness. For safety’s sake, everyone was required to have a stash of emergency flashlights. Every inhabitant knew that when city workers descended into the underground tunnels, they had to make themselves scarce. If they were discovered, the good surface-dwelling citizens of Chicago would force them to the surface, where they’d be pitied and treated as freaks.

“Where have you been?” Balthazar asked as he led Gryph and Lucas into his chambers.

“Recovering.” Gryph whipped the cape off his shoulders exposing his naked chest and the bandage Selene had carefully applied.

Balthazar’s lips pressed into a thin line. He peeled back the bandages and examined the ragged scabs over Gryph’s shoulder. “Who did this?”

“Question might not be who, but what?” Lucas said. “Looks like an animal attack. Did you do this to yourself?”

Gryph cast a tired glance at Lucas. “What reason would I have to attack myself?” he asked, then turned to Balthazar. “The woman was attacked by a large black wolf. I got to her as he was ripping into her.”

Balthazar’s brow lowered into a V. “Wolf, you say?”

“Since when have there been wolves in downtown Chicago?” Gryph asked. “I thought they stayed well north. Could they be shifters?”

“Are you sure that’s what it was?” Lucas lifted the tattered shirt. “You didn’t black out when you transformed?”

“I didn’t black out,” Gryph assured him.

“Were you unconscious at all last night?” Balthazar asked.

Gryph hesitated. “Yes. After I made sure the woman would be okay, I left her for the emergency medical technicians and got away before they could see my face.”

“But not before the woman saw yours.” Balthazar walked to a bookshelf and selected a brown leather journal. “Unfortunately, the victim was able to describe you in sufficient detail for a sketch artist to draw a reasonable likeness of you in your half-shifted state. And equally unfortunate, the news publicized it. Did anyone else see you? Did you pass anyone while you were running?”

Again Gryph hesitated. “No.” The lie came hard to him. But he didn’t want any of the otherkin to seek out Selene or the other woman and consider them threats to the Lair’s existence. The two women had helped him when he might have died of his wounds or from exposure to the potentially toxic river water. The fewer people who knew he’d spent time in Selene’s apartment, the better. He hoped that she wouldn’t tell the police he’d been there. If she did, it might hit the news and the inhabitants of the underworld would once again see it on their televisions, even in the depths of the tunnels.

Yes, cable television was another improvement, along with internet connection, that Balthazar had been adamant about bringing to the people who lived below Chicago. Because of his desire to bring technology to the underworld, Balthazar had opened up an entire world of learning to Gryph and Lucas.

Balthazar checked Gryph’s wound and bandaging. “Since when did you learn about poultices, son?”

Lucas’s pale gray eyes narrowed, watchfully.

“I’ve been studying the internet for holistic cures. It was one of the remedies.”

“Made of what?” Lucas leaned close and sniffed. “Some kind of herb and mud?”

“Something like that.” Gryph strode into his old room and dug a shirt out of the dresser, his gaze lingering on the world map tacked to the wall.

“Traveling among the humans is dangerous. You risk your life and anonymity each time you walk among them.” Balthazar held up a hand. “I know you’ve been doing it for the past five years, but this was exactly what I feared might happen.” Balthazar stood in the entrance to his room. “Last night you thought you had control of your beast, yet you still transformed.”

Gryph stiffened. “What else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him kill her.”

“Indeed, but by transforming and showing yourself as such, you’ve made yourself a target.”

“No one in my office knows.”

“But the woman you saved saw you with your face half man and half lion.”

“I saw the drawing on the television. They won’t link it to Gryphon Leone. The features weren’t specific enough. She concentrated on the animal.”

Balthazar nodded. “True enough. In the meantime, you’re better off taking a leave of absence. Tell your office staff you’ll be out of the country.”

Already shaking his head, Gryph stepped forward. “I can’t.”

“What is so important you can’t lay low for a few weeks until the furor dies down?”

“The charity ball for the children.”

Balthazar’s lips formed a thin line. “The charity ball. Why do you have to be there?” Balthazar’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t you just spend the money and let someone else take the reins on planning?”

“My company is sponsoring it. The money raised will go to the homeless children of Chicago. I’ve helped sponsor it for the past three. This year, GL Enterprises is the main sponsor. The Women’s Aid Organization is demanding that the head of GL Enterprises needs to attend the ball to show his support.”

Lucas chuckled. “My brother, a home-grown Chicago celebrity. A wanted man in more ways than one.”

“Believe me, I’d let them handle all of it, but they said our donations have dwindled and the public wants to know the man sponsoring the ball is fully committed. They’re afraid I’m Mafia or something—you know, dirty money.”

“That’s right, father, the philanthropic Gryphon needs to put in an appearance, to set the old biddies’ minds at ease.”

“You can’t risk it,” Balthazar insisted. “If you transform during the ball, you’ll have the entire city on you so fast you won’t have a chance to escape.”

“The children need me.”

“They need you alive. Not dead.”

“I’ll keep my exposure to a minimum. At least until the ball is over. Perhaps, in the meantime, the police will find the animal responsible for Miss Grant’s attack and death.”

If the animal was a shifter, there had to be others in the city. Gryphon would put out feelers among his staff.

All his life he’d held on to the dream of traveling to other countries. After the previous night, he was certain he couldn’t risk getting too far from his haven beneath the city. Where else would he go if his inner beast emerged unbidden? Where would he hide if his secret was unleashed?

“Son,” Balthazar said, “none of this would be an issue if you hadn’t transformed.”

“I had to transform to save the woman,” Gryph said.

“And her attacker came after you.” Balthazar spoke like it was a statement instead of a question.

Gryph nodded, his thoughts processing the information and coming up with what lay at the back of his mind during his escape to the Lair. “It had to be a shifter.”

“Why do you say that?”

“How else could it have entered the hospital without being detected to finish the job it started? A wolf can’t open doors without hands.”

“Are you sure it was the same person or creature who attacked the woman in the first place?”

“Why would anyone come back to smother her unless he wanted to make sure she didn’t expose the true nature of the animal that attacked her?”