A Shot in the Dark jjd-2

by K. A. Stewart

  Suddenly, the Yeti was no longer amused. The handless female’s claws shifted on her branch, unsettled in her master’s anger. “You will not. I will devour them all.”

  “Then it seems we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?” And this was the tricky part. How to deal with a demon, without really dealing with a demon. Take lessons, kiddies. “How about we talk this out, once everyone’s back on safe ground? Say, tomorrow?”

  She scuttled closer, the branch dipping under even her slight weight until her gaunt and filthy face was level with mine. “You will swear this. To willingly present yourself.”

  “ If you let us go now. All four of us. Let us get back to the cabin untouched, and without any of your choir boys singing out.”

  A low growl uttered from the skeletal creature’s chest, but in the end the Yeti agreed. “I will see you on the morrow, champion.” The light in the minion’s eyes went out like a snuffed candle, but she didn’t move. Her head slowly rotated back the other direction, keeping us in her hungry black gaze.

  “Guys… start walking. Slowly.” I didn’t know if those things were like most predators, but I didn’t want to take the chance that running would trigger them into pouncing. I didn’t believe the Yeti’s promise of safe passage for a moment. I just hoped it would buy us a bit of time.

  “Jess… what have you done?”

  “Just walk, little brother. Keep walking, and don’t stop for anything.”

  Cole got us pointed in the right direction-I’d been right, they’d been luring us the wrong way-and we started picking our way through the thick underbrush.

  The creatures shadowed us all the way back. Duke’s constant rumbling growl was indicator enough, even if we hadn’t been able to see them slipping through the branches like demonic spider monkeys. Every once in a while, we’d round a fallen tree or a pile of dead limbs to catch one of them leaping silently out of our path. They kept their distance, and there were no more eerie calls to scramble our brains.

  It was hard, once we could see the clearing through the trees, not to just bolt for safe ground, but I had Cole’s shirt knotted in my fist, and he held Marty’s, and the three of us calmly and slowly crossed those last few yards. “Walk,” I kept murmuring to them. “Just walk.”

  The tingle of Cam’s consecration spell never felt so good, as we crossed that invisible line of safety.

  I could breathe again.

  12

  W ill was waiting for us on the porch, with Cole’s handgun. My brother made a big show of taking it back from him and unloading it, glaring at me all the while. I glared back. If he didn’t know me well enough to know I’d been bluffing, that was his problem.

  And of course, the damn voices started up again the moment we were inside. “Ain’t he a dandy!” “I’m bored, are we there yet?” “I’m a little teapot!”

  “I swear, if I never hear ‘I’m a little teapot’ again,” Cole growled, and I was inclined to agree with him. The song was forever ruined. “We’re never gonna get any sleep if that keeps going on.”

  We tried, at first. Those who weren’t on watch tried muffling the calls with their sleeping bags pressed tightly against their ears, but nothing seemed to drown out the wheedling, entreating pleas. I could feel it like a mosquito whining in my ear, and any time I started to let my guard down, to try to sleep, it was there, trying to lure me out the door. So long as they were calling out there, we were all in danger of dashing off to our deaths, and I had the feeling they intended to call all freakin’ night.

  I briefly entertained the idea of trying to negotiate better terms with Big Ugly, but deep down, I knew the Yeti wasn’t going to bargain twice in one night. Besides, he was well on the way to getting what he wanted from me already. I had nothing left to offer.

  Zane had a bad night too, but it seemed to be more from the pain in his arm than the eerie voices in the dark. He tossed and turned, whimpering quietly in his sleep, but as I watched him closer, it didn’t coincide with the calls from outside. Even Cameron, who was borderline unconscious, twitched and flinched in time with every pleading voice in the darkness. But Zane was definitely sleeping, even if it was unsettled.

  “Hey, little brother?” Cole was propped up in the corner, half dozing, but he opened his eyes when I called to him. “Watch the kid.”

  “He’s not hearing them,” Cole concluded after a few minutes. “Why is he not hearing them?”

  “The poison, maybe? The brand? Protecting Ugly’s property?” Or maybe… Cameron had prayed over the kid. He’d anointed Zane with the blessed water. And while I still wasn’t sold on this whole “god” thing, I did believe in the power of will. “Look at his arm.” There, where Cameron had traced his mysterious symbols, the creeping blackness had hardly advanced at all. It wasn’t healing the damage, but it was at least slowing it. If it could stop the poison, maybe it was stopping the magic in those voices, too.

  Cam’s glass was still sitting on the mantel, half full, and when I dipped my fingers in, they tingled. Hmm. “Cole, c’mere.” I gestured at his forehead with my wet fingers. “Cross or pentacle?”

  “What?”

  “Cross or pentacle, they’re the only ones I know.” Hey, just because I didn’t have any magic of my own didn’t mean I was above using other people’s.

  “Um… cross, I guess.” I drew an invisible cross on Cole’s forehead with the blessed water, while my brother raised a skeptical brow at me. We both stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Cole finally nodded. “I think… that helps. It’s still there, but

  … not as bad.”

  “Not as bad is good enough for me.” I went through the house anointing everyone else, including the dog. Out of sheer perversity, I painted a pentacle on the sleeping priest’s forehead. Almost immediately, the tension started to fade from the room.

  Luckily, once we’d broken out of the lure, it seemed easier to resist. We bedded down as best we could, still taking turns at watch, and tried to salvage what was left of the night.

  There was one nasty tussle with Will around two a.m., trying to keep him from walking out the door. It never occurred to me before how much heavier he is, and he packs quite a wallop when he puts his mind to it. It took Cole and me both to put him down, and then Marty dumped the last of Cam’s blessed water over his head. He came out of it spluttering, soaked, and embarrassed as hell. I came out of it with a healthy new respect for my buddy’s strength, and a bruise across my right cheek that was gonna be a shiner by morning.

  Marty was up most of the night too, watching out the window. They say there’s nothing so dangerous as a man with nothing to lose, but I don’t think that’s true. Men with nothing to lose go out in a blaze of glory-big, but quick. When you have everything to lose, when you know what you’re fighting for, that’s when you’re a truly dangerous man. That’s when you take out every single motherfucker in your path, calmly and cleanly. That’s what I saw in Marty’s eyes. All he wanted was to get back to his wife and his unborn child. They almost got him once, and nothing out there in the dark was going to stop him now.

  Close to morning, Zane started running a fever. I remembered that fever, so bad I’d hallucinated in full Technicolor and surround sound. Even thinking about it made my mouth dry and parched, and I drank sparingly of our small water supply. Poor kid was in for worse.

  Oscar tried to stay up and care for his son, but in the end even he drifted off. I felt for the guy, really I did. If that had been Anna there, gnawed on like that… I understood the need a father has to protect his child, even if he had no idea how to go about it. Oscar was doing all he could, and hating himself every moment because it wasn’t more. I knew.

  Thankfully, the voices vanished at dawn, though it would be a couple of hours before the sun would be high enough to peek over the treetops. I didn’t believe for a moment that those things were gone, but if the light was going to chase them away for a bit, I’d take it and be happy.

  Besides, I had stuff I needed to do, an
d a promise to keep no matter how badly I didn’t want to.

  I picked a moment when the guys were all mostly dozing. Only Duke raised his head to watch me slip quietly out of the cabin with my sword belted on.

  Palm out, I followed the brown, crusty trail of Zane’s blood toward the trees, feeling for the edges of Cameron’s consecration spell. I found it about halfway across the cleared area, the point where the tingling on my skin ceased, like a switch turned off. The holy ground was shrinking fast. I dug a line in the dirt with my scabbard at that point, and took two big steps back.

  For a moment, I eyed the forest around me, too quiet by far. Nothing was stirring, no birds were singing. As if I needed more proof that I wasn’t alone.

  “Hey! Ugly!” My shout echoed off the mountain, bouncing back to me mockingly. I winced a little, knowing that it was going to rouse the guys, and I so didn’t want them to interfere with this.

  Almost instantly, one of the creatures appeared at the edge of the forest, clinging to a tree trunk about eight feet off the ground. This one didn’t even have a nose, something black and gooey trickling down its face from the gaping hole. “Not you. Other Ugly. Go get your master.” The Yeti was watching through those black eyes. I could feel his gaze on me, even by proxy, but I was done dealing with lackeys.

  The minion never moved from its spot on the tree, but there was a rustling farther back. Three more of the little pets clambered spiderlike through the tree branches above us, but they found places to settle and moved no more. Not like the white-furred behemoth shouldering his way into view. He didn’t even bother with the human illusion, this time, smashing saplings flat as he passed like they were so many blades of grass.

  I called his kind Skin demons, the animalistic Abrams tanks of Hell, and the Yeti was the biggest I’d ever seen or heard of. Though he moved along on all fours, it was more of an apelike walk, leaning on the front limbs only as a convenience. Fully upright, he’d top me by a good four feet, and his forelegs were as long as I was tall. Christ, was he this big last time? Or was my own remembered agony coloring my perceptions?

  He’d changed, that was for sure. He’d been a four-legged death machine when I’d faced him last, but more like a polar bear than a gorilla. He’d grown strong enough in just four years to come back across the veil into the real world, and he was closer to humanoid this time. He was evolving.

  “Jesse James Dawson.” Oh yeah, he remembered me. His oil-slick voice oozed into my head, and I fought the urge to hunch my shoulders against the intangible taint. He came to the edge of the clearing, his muzzle wrinkling as he sniffed the air. “You reek of fear.”

  “You try staying cooped up in a cabin with six other guys and no shower for a couple days. You’d reek too.” I rested my hand loosely on my sword, mostly because it would stop the shaking. He was right, I was freaking terrified. He was standing yards away, but in my mind I could feel that hot breath on my face, feel those claws digging their way into my rib cage. You beat him once. You can do it again. That was getting me nowhere. I tried again. A samurai does not fear death, only a bad death. Yeah, that didn’t help much either. Not in the face of that.

  “What do you want, little man?” As if he was thoroughly bored with me already, he rubbed his curved horns against a nearby tree, stripping bark in wide swathes and gouging deep into the heartwood.

  “I think it’s more about what you want. You’re here for me, right?” He smiled, exposing great white fangs as big as my palm, and didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. “So let’s deal.”

  The chuckle was more of a growl. “What makes you think you have anything I want?”

  I got to answer with a chuckle of my own. “Oh come on. I handed you your ass four years ago. I spanked you all the way back down to Hell, and that was after you got a look at my insides. You know you want a piece of me again.” That wasn’t entirely accurate, but it got the job done.

  The Yeti swung his massive head in my direction, claws raking lines in the forest floor. I could smell the sulfur of his breath as he snarled. “You got lucky, sack of meat. And this time, I will finish the meal I began.” He snapped his teeth on empty air, and I was insanely proud of myself for not flinching.

  “Then this is the part where we start discussing boundaries and whether or not we can see other people.” I moved my scabbard and dropped down into a crouch I could hold for hours. I’d need to, if this negotiation went like normal. “You wanna start, or should I?”

  “Stakes!” he barked. Of course. Always know the reward for your toils. “I will return the soul of Zane David Quinn.”

  Oh that was just pathetic. “Nice try, and no dice. I will, however, take the soul of Zane Christopher Quinn.” I shook my finger at him admonishingly, and I was secretly proud that I’d thought to ask the kid’s full name the night before. Sometimes, Jesse is smart. Not often, but sometimes. “ Tsk-tsk, you can do better than that. And just for that, I want his soul, and I want a promise of safety for everyone inside that cabin.”

  He growled, something I could feel vibrating through the earth where I sat. “And what do you offer?”

  “I offer the soul of Jesse James Dawson.” I hoped he’d accept it. It was all I had, after all.

  He actually paused to think about it, the bastard. His head swayed back and forth, rattling twigs out of the lower tree branches. Finally, his eyes flared red, and he snarled, “Done!”

  A black slash seared across the back of my hand, from the first knuckle almost to my wrist, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air around me. The mark had delicate little hooks at each end, the beginnings of a more elaborate design.

  Shit, that always hurt. The pain would pass in a moment, but that first burn was always startling, always the worst. Even more startling was the fact that he’d accepted my terms. Safety for the guys had come way too easy. I’d screwed up already, somehow, even if I couldn’t see it yet. If I could figure it out before this was over, maybe I could compensate.

  “Weapons.” We’d trade off like that, one of us making a demand, the other agreeing or vetoing. And every single word was so very important.

  “I will fight with what I am given.” He flexed his claws at me, waiting for me to make assumptions about his weapon choices. Assumptions are bad, m’kay?

  “No. Declare it.” I watched him closely. His efforts at deception were amateur at best. He was playing me, somehow. A demon didn’t get to be that strong by being bad at his job.

  My demand was followed by another growl, but he conceded. “Claw, and fang, and horn.”

  “I will fight with a melee weapon of my choice.”

  “NO!” Something in my insides went to jelly at that roar, and I heard it bounce off the mountain, echoing back at us. “Declare it!”

  Damn, he called me out on that one. “I will fight with this sword.” I drew my katana from its scabbard, holding it up for display. “The sword that ripped your throat out and sent you back to Hell once before.”

  I hate being pinned to one weapon. If my sword broke, or mysteriously disappeared sometime before the big fight, I’d be screwed.

  “Done.” Another acceptance, another flash of pain as the terms seared into my very skin. This time, my grimace was more of a smile. I’d won that round, though an onlooker might not realize it. In agreeing to only his physical weapons, the Yeti had forfeited any use of his magic. Sadly, so had I, but since I didn’t have any magic, it was a small loss.

  “Your call, fuzz ball.”

  His head swayed a bit, muzzle wrinkling as he sniffed the air, pretending to be deep in thought. “Aid.”

  Oh, that was a laugh. Like I was going to even dream of going up against him and his pets. “A one-on-one fight, just you and me.”

  The mammoth creature blew out a breath, the reek of sulfur hanging heavy in the air, before nodding his horned head. “These will not aid me.” He gestured to the trees above, and I looked up to realize that there were at least five of the gaunt minions up there, all watchi
ng me with the same black eyes. “And the ones in the cabin will not aid you.”

  This one was tricky. “These” was such a mutable term. Did he mean “these five here,” or “these types of creatures,” or…? And what did he define as aid? Marty couldn’t reinforce my armor? Cam couldn’t say a prayer for me (not that I’d ask him to, but just as an example)?

  Still, he’d left me a loophole too. Only those in the cabin were banned from helping me. If they left the cabin, however… Or even better, if I could call in Ivan and the cavalry… It was all about the letter of the contract. There was no spirit to it.

  Did I call him on it, force a better deal, or recognize the danger and take the loophole? I pondered that for a few moments, before nodding. “Done.” Zap, another streak of black wound itself through my flesh.

  It was a weak term. He knew it, I knew it, and we both moved on. I personally thought I had the best of that deal. I knew what he’d throw at me. He had no idea what those brilliant lunatics in that cabin might come up with.

  We addressed armor. I wanted some, and just because I didn’t have mine on me at this moment didn’t mean that I couldn’t come up with some later. It took some flattery on my part (“You have that thick pelt-it’s only fair. Do you think your claws can’t open me up through a thin layer of metal?”) but he accepted.

  We couldn’t agree on a “where.” My answers were too vague for him, and his were obviously designed to put me at a disadvantage. We argued that one point for forty-five minutes, while the sun crept westward and the light shifted in my favor. There was something comforting about basking in that warm glow while the big fur ball cringed farther and farther into the trees. Even so, I wanted this done. The sun would pass beyond me soon, and then the trees’ shadows would creep back in my direction. I didn’t want to be out here when that happened.