Elle James - Possessing the Witch

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?”