“A clear area, at least forty feet in diameter, with no innocent lives to endanger.”
“I did not ask about dimensions or populations, I said WHERE?” His white-furred fist hit the ground, causing a minor explosion of soft forest soil. He really wasn’t going to let this one go. “Will these mountains suffice for you? You have the whole range to choose from, to find your ‘clear area.’ ”
It’d have to do. Pissing him off any further wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Besides, the “where” was easily manipulated by the “when?” I agreed, and he growled at me, indicating that it was my turn to name the next term.
“When I call your name.”
That brought him up short, and he shuffled back and forth on his huge paws for a bit. I knew what he was thinking. On the one hand (paw?), it allowed me to completely control my environment. I could make sure we were somewhere without collateral damage; I could make sure I was armed and armored. Hell, I could wait a year and never call the fight due, if I wanted.
On the other hand, calling him by name meant he could get to this plane, fully formed and ready to brawl. He could ride my voice (if Axel was to be believed) across the veil on that one word, without any drain on himself. Just mentioning his name made it swim to the surface of my mind, and my mouth went dry. I’d never spoken a demon name, had sworn I never would. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
Yes, I knew what advantage I was giving him. But if I was going to have any chance at all in fighting him, I had to delay this as long as possible.
The word “done” wisped through the air, and my forearm burned in response. The design stretched from my knuckles almost all the way to my elbow in sharp angles and impossible swirls. Like Zane’s brand, it writhed if I looked at it too long, and made my head ache.
The minions in the trees shifted a bit, the first sound they’d made since they perched themselves above us, and I glanced upward. They were all looking at me now. Well, they’d been looking at me all along, but now, their gaze held some kind of hungry anticipation, and two of them slid a few feet down the trunk they were clinging to, getting closer. What in the world had drawn their attention?
That’s when I felt the barest caress across the back of my knuckles where they rested on my knees. It was the feeling of a soap bubble, opening slowly around an intrusion.
Cam’s spell had reached me.
I stood up, dropping my sword into my hand again as I stepped back away from the ever-shrinking barrier, and the Yeti chuckled deep in his barrel chest. “I think we are finished here, champion. I will listen for your call.” He stepped backward, fading into the safety of the shadows.
“Wait. I’m not done! You will let us leave here!” Dammit, I wasn’t ready to let him go.
The darkness itself seemed to laugh. “I think not.”
“Motherfu-…” Wasn’t going to do any good. He was gone, and his pets faded back into the canopy. I expected a demon to try to screw me in a deal. Didn’t expect him to just walk out on one. Every time, a new trick.
Hours spent in a crouch left me stiff, and I hobbled the few yards back to the cabin. Maybe Dr. Bridget was right. Maybe I was getting too old for this crap.
The walk to the cabin was shorter than I would have liked, proving just how small our consecrated area had become. The spring would be exposed by now. I hoped we had enough water to last. Last for how long? Shit, I didn’t know. I had to find a way to get them all out of here, to get help for Zane. If the spelled area kept shrinking at this pace, we had one more day, tops.
Cole opened the door for me as I stepped up on the porch, and I got the impression that he’d been standing vigil for me for the last few hours. The smell of food hit me like a ton of bricks, and I suddenly realized how very hungry I was.
“I don’t know what it is, but it smells good.”
My little brother grabbed my arm as I tried to slip past him. “What’s the deal, Jess?”
I looked down at his hand on my arm, then back up with a raised brow. “The deal is I’m hungry. Who cooked?”
He ignored me. “When are you fighting?”
“When I choose. I have to call his name.” I lowered my voice to answer him. “Then I intend to take my sword and lop off his furry head. Any more questions?” Honestly, it was no one’s business, except maybe Zane, and I didn’t feel like discussing it in an open forum. All I really wanted was breakfast. Well, lunch by now. I stared at Cole until he released my arm, and went to fill up my plate.
Lunch was a silent affair. We huddled over our plates of nondescript slabs of venison and some canned baked beans. Nobody talked, really, but I could feel their eyes on me. Mostly on my newly tattooed arm. By now, they all knew what it meant.
Nobody really had the guts to ask me about it, and I didn’t feel like offering up any information. That’s the thing about demon slaying. Ultimately, it’s a very solitary activity. They couldn’t help me. I was on my own.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what the hell I was going to do, but quite honestly, I wasn’t having a lot of luck with it. Calling the fight due now, when I had no armor, was just suicidal. I’d faced the Yeti like that once. I had no illusions about surviving it a second time. But I had no idea how to get the guys out of here safely. The Yeti wasn’t just going to let us wander down the trail whistling “Dixie.” Every scenario I ran through in my head ended badly. Very badly.
There was some small discussion among the others about trying to get the hell out, but about the time they started that, the shade from the tall trees was creeping up on the front porch. The minions weren’t openly prowling the clearing, but we could see them slipping in and out of the brush, testing the boundaries of the light and Cam’s spell. None of the guys were crazy or desperate enough to want to brave the night with those things out there. Yet.
By morning, the consecrated ground would be gone. And since Axel had proven that Cam’s wards were strained at best, I knew we’d have to move then. Seemed like everyone else knew it, too. They started packing up their gear in somber silence, and we ate dinner without saying a word.
We knew the moment the sun set, because that was when the voices starting howling from the woods again. They were closer this time, sounding like they were right under the damn windows. There were more kids’ voices this time, like they’d figured out the perfect way to rattle us.
Standing at the front window, I could see the dark shapes moving against the forest. In the dark, in the trees, it was impossible to count them. They clambered through the trees, dangled from branches, scurried over each other without regard to any law of physics. Occasionally, one would stop, raise its head, and we would hear a voice calling out of the dark, pleading, enticing.
Even knowing the lure was there, protected against it, I could feel the pull, somewhere below my ribs, just in front of my spine. That was the part of me that would feel better, feel calm, if I could just put one foot in front of the other, just walk out the door to the waiting calls. It wasn’t overwhelming, and knowing it was there made it easier to resist, but it was enough to make everyone unsettled, almost queasy. Either that, or the venison had turned. Same sensation.
The guys bunked down to try to get what sleep they could, but no one really expected to be well rested come dawn.
Marty found me by the window after a while and stood with me in silence, the both of us watching the night grow darker. Finally, he cleared his throat a little, his voice coming out hoarse. “One of them sounds like Mel.” When I looked down, there was anguish in his eyes, a strain in his face that he was trying very hard not to let me see.
I tilted my head, trying to listen for that particular voice without success. If he said one of them sounded like his wife Melanie, I would have to take him at his word. No one would know her voice better than he. “She’s fine, Marty. She’s at home, or out with Mira, probably shopping or baking or whatever it is they do when we’re not around.”
“Then why do I hear her out there? Cal
ling for help, calling my name…” He pressed his hand against the windowpane and it fogged up immediately, leaving a ghostly palm on the glass. The temperature had dropped during the day. Autumn had arrived in the Rockies while we were busy with other things.
“Because you miss her, man. Because right now, there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.” Okay, I made that up, but it was as good an answer as any. “You think I don’t want to be home right now, with Mira and the kids? It’s just your mind playing tricks on you.”
I had to wonder, though… Axel’s earlier comment about the voices niggled at the back of my brain. They had no voices, he said. Voices, which were our doorways to our souls. They had no souls, then? They mimicked others, aping something they could no longer do on their own. I had to wonder, did they have souls at one time? If so, what were they before? As human as they looked, the thought unsettled me to my core.
“But what if it’s really her? What if they found her, took her?” His eyes searched the clearing out front, looking for the source of his wife’s voice. With night fully fallen now, he’d never be able to see the minions creeping around out there. “The baby…”
“Marty, she’s fine. I promise you, she is not out there.” Oh please don’t let me have just lied to him. Marty hadn’t signed up for this shit. This wasn’t his fight, wasn’t his fault. But he was stuck in it, just like the rest of us, because of me. How do you apologize for something like that? Can you, even?
He gave me a bleak look. “Easy enough for you to say. It’s not Mira calling for help out there.” He wandered over to where Cam and the others had started bedding down by the fire, and burritoed up in his bedroll, trying to muffle the sounds with the down sleeping bag.
I knew it was my job to get the guys out of here and home safe. That was a given. But right then and there I swore it to myself, swore on whatever I could think of and to whatever higher power was listening. I had to get them home. I couldn’t let Mel be a widow, when she wouldn’t even be able to understand why.
Duke and I, we decided to keep first watch. Sleep was for wussies.
Sleep was also for those who didn’t have a demonic poison coursing through their veins. Zane whimpered and tossed for a long time, and I couldn’t count the times Will was up to check on the kid and Oscar right with him. Finally, I shooed them both away, promising to sit with the boy for at least a while. Reluctantly, Will curled up in his sleeping bag, but if he got any rest at all it would be a miracle. Oscar hesitated, eyeing me warily, but weariness finally won out. Maybe I was the lesser of the evils, in his mind.
Duke and I found an open space near the ailing teenager and settled with my sword across my knees. With one hand, I idly rubbed the big dog’s ears.
“Jesse?” Zane’s voice drew me out of a near doze, and I looked down to find the boy’s eyes glassy, but lucid. “Could I have some water?”
“Sure, kid.” I fetched him a cup, waiting while he struggled into a sitting position before I handed it off. His eyes followed my newly tattooed hand as it passed through his field of vision. “You doing okay?”
He barely drank enough to wet his lips and lay back down. “My arm hurts. And I’m hot.”
A quick examination showed that his fever was high, but steady. It wasn’t bad enough yet to make him delirious. “You want me to wake Will up, see if he has something he can give you?”
“No. I’m okay.” There was a deep pause there, the kind that fills the silence with all sorts of unsaid things. I waited. “Jesse? Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Cameron explained to me about the deal. For my soul. Why did you do it?” He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, unwilling to look at me. The soulless do that a lot, I’d noticed, out of shame maybe.
“This?” I rubbed at the black marks seared into my arm. It didn’t even hurt anymore. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“But I’m nobody, to you. Not family or anything.” His eyes flickered my way once, then went back to studying the wooden beams above us. “That thing is going to try to kill you, and you agreed to it and I don’t understand why.”
I shrugged a little, leaning my head against the brick hearth. “Kid… There’s only one thing I’ve ever been good at, and that’s tearing stuff into tiny bits. I guess I’m just trying to turn that skill into something useful. So I help people, when I can.”
“But why?” His brow creased. He was really trying to understand.
It was hard to find the words for it. I mean, I could have rattled on for hours about bushido and honor and all of the things that I use to govern my life. But really, it boiled down to four words. “Because someone has to.”
I don’t think that answered his question, but a few moments later as he pondered on it, his eyes drifted closed. I’m not sure he slept, really. I don’t think any of us did. But we were at least still for a while.
13
W e took turns dozing, off and on. Duke sacked out somewhere around two a.m., his doggy snores rumbling through the cabin like a miniature eighteen-wheeler. It was soothing. It drowned out the voices.
I think it was the silence that woke me first. My internal clock couldn’t decide what time it was, but the windows were still dark, so that made it sometime not-morning. Propped up against the brick fireplace, I examined the last few moments, trying to decide why I wasn’t asleep anymore. The voices had stopped. No more wailing from outside, and the sun wasn’t even up yet.
I realized Duke wasn’t snoring anymore when the massive mutt padded over and shoved his head under my now-tattooed hand. “Good boy, Duke.” I tried to scratch his ears, but he dodged it, stepping back a few paces.
I let my hand drop and struggled out of my sleeping bag to stand, but the dog came back, pushing under my hand again. The moment I tried to touch him of my own volition, he stepped back again.
“Duke? You okay, buddy?” I reached for him again, and he let me rest my hand on his back briefly. I could feel the vibrations of silent growls through his muscled flanks. He tolerated it only for a moment before retreating again, taking another step away from me. His golden eyes fixed on me intently, almost like he was thinking about making a lunge for my throat. But that wasn’t the kind of dog Duke was. Believe it or not, I decided he was trying to tell me something.
“Whaddya got, big guy?” We danced for a few moments, me moving toward him, him retreating until we got to the bottom of the stairs. Then he gave a massive bark and bounded up into the dark loft above.
I grabbed my sword-I’m not stupid-and said, “Cole, bring a light.” I heard the thrash of a sleeping bag, and knew my little brother would be right behind me.
The loft was mostly empty. We’d moved all the sleeping stuff downstairs, leaving only our pile of half-packed bags.
In the light from below, I could see Duke pacing beneath the eaves at the far end, pausing on every pass to sniff at the shuttered ventilation window. It wasn’t big enough to even really be called a window. Round like a porthole, the metal shutters had been fastened tightly and latched from the inside. The mastiff stopped to paw at them, and I could see the ridge rise along his back at whatever he sensed on the outside.
My shadow grew longer on the floor in front of me, and for one heartbeat I was really freaked out until I realized it was only my brother with the requested light source. Cole came to stand beside me, but his eyes weren’t on the dog. Instead, he eyed the ceiling, dark above us despite our warm circle of light.
“What the hell is that?” He raised both hands, and I realized he had his gun, trained along the beam of the flashlight.
It took a moment to hear what he heard, the softest of sounds, easily missed before in the heavy breathing of sleeping men and the snoring dog.
“That’s… scratching against the shingles. Almost like digging
…” Our eyes met, coming to the same conclusion. “They’re on the roof.”
The how wasn’t really important, but even as my eyes flew back to our suddenly breached defens
es, I knew. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the south side of the cabin where the trees were the closest. Trees that had, in the last few hours, been bared of Cam’s consecration spell. Trees whose thinnest branches drooped over the tall cabin. I’d seen those creatures scamper up and down the spindliest trees like it was nothing. Climbing those trunks would have been child’s play, once the spell on the ground wore off, and while those branches were too spare for any human to risk crossing, for the Yeti’s little pets it would be like walking down a four-lane highway right onto the roof over our heads.
Before we could even formulate a plan, the metal-shuttered window exploded inward. Duke was the fastest to react, grabbing the filthy arm that reached through the portal and ripping it off with a wrench of his great head. Black gore spattered over the floor.
It didn’t stop the creature crawling its way through the window, however. In fact, I think it made it easier, the lack of an arm making for less body to stuff through the tiny aperture. Its shoulders contorted in an unnatural way, almost folding in half to wedge itself into the circular opening. Its remaining arm braced against the wall and it slithered through up to its rib cage, where the unyielding bone caught it up for a moment.
“Duke, heel!” He came to me, thank God, carrying his grisly trophy with him. “Head shot, little brother.” Without a word, Cole leveled his gun at the bald head. The thing hissed at him once before its skull exploded in a rain of rotten brain matter, splattering all of us. The rest of it hung in the window, twitching spasmodically.
The sound of the gunshot in close quarters brought everyone awake, with a chorus of “What the hell is going on?” from downstairs.
“Where the fuck are Cam’s wards?” I growled to myself, but Axel had already proven that they were shaky at best. If the Yeti’s little friends were getting inside, I think we’d now passed into the realm of “completely useless.”
First order of business was to get those nasty bastards off our roof, before they succeeded in digging through to the loft. Even as skinny as I was, going out a window of that size was out of the question, so we left Marty and the dog up there with the hatchet to make sure no more made it inside from that entry point.
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