A Shot in the Dark jjd-2

by K. A. Stewart

  “And the screaming?”

  “There are… some kinds of agony that even being soulless can’t silence.”

  I suppose being dumped on holy ground would qualify as that kind of agony for one of Hell’s children. Even one that started out human. “So… he just yanks their souls out. Leaves the body an empty shell, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he can do it to anyone, if he owns their soul.”

  “Yes.”

  “So… what about Zane? Could he just… yoink?” That was a disturbing thought. If the Yeti could just rip Zane apart like that, turn him into one of those things…

  “He must touch them.” He glanced down the stairs, and I got the feeling that he could see Zane right through the floorboards. “I would be very careful with your young friend, down there. I’d hate to see anything… tragic happen.”

  He pushed off the wall, and I thought he was going to do his little disappearing act again, but he stopped. “Have you figured out why he came after the boy, of all people?”

  Yeah, I’d had the chance to think about that too. Long hours spent not sleeping lent themselves well to in-depth pondering of all the universe’s injustice. I didn’t like my conclusions. “Because he knew I’d be here. He knew I’d find the kid, and I’d fight for him.”

  “Your fatal flaw, Jesse. That damned honor you hold around you like a warm blanket.” The demon sounded downright disappointed in me. “You would live a lot longer if you’d learn to be a bit more self-absorbed.”

  “Hold your breath ’til that happens.”

  He chuckled softly. “And do you know why he came for you? I mean, specifically why him, why you, why this?”

  “Because he hates me?”

  “That’s a given, but do you know why?” I shrugged, and Axel grinned. He was enjoying this. “Think about it, Jesse. Voices call us forth, but simple words won’t do it. What do you know that no other living champion does?”

  His name. Because I’d faced the Yeti before, I knew his name. And names have power. In all honesty, I’m not sure what kind of power. Mystical Shit 101 was full last time I tried to sign up. Whatever it was, it meant something to the demons. Somehow, me possessing that name was a threat. A big enough threat to kill for.

  I only nodded, showing him that I understood. Even thinking of it, the demon’s name swam dangerously close to the surface of my mind, fluttering like a moth with razor-blade wings, and I bit my tongue to keep it from somehow slipping out by accident. I’d have to say it, call him out when the time came. I wondered if, deep down, that made me any better than Cam and his little cadre of demon-summoning priests.

  “What use is it? What can I do to him, with his name?”

  Axel looked at his bare wrist. “My my, look at the time. I think our session is up for the day.”

  “You’re a dick, Axel.”

  “I’ve had a long time to perfect it, thank you.”

  “What about the other champions? Are they all facing ghosts from their pasts, names they know?”

  The blond demon shrugged. “Dunno. I don’t have a vested interest in the rest of your little playmates.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “You’re being awful liberal with your information.”

  “Like I said, I just want you to be you. It works in my favor at the moment.” His eyes looked past me, over my shoulder, and he grinned with demon red eyes. “Oh this is about to get interesting.”

  I turned to find Cameron at the top of the stairs, staring wide-eyed at Axel. His gaze darted from the demon to me and back, and I saw a grim resolve settle into his eyes. The smell of cloves sprang up strong-stronger than I thought him capable of really-and he opened his mouth to do… something.

  “No!” I jumped, clamping my hand down tight over the possibly ex-priest’s mouth. “Don’t even try it. You don’t have enough juice to bless a sneeze anyway.”

  He struggled halfheartedly (I think a true fight between us would be a lot messier), but finally settled for trying to pry my hand away from his face. I looked back at Axel. “You’ve caused enough trouble. Go on, get.”

  Cameron’s eyes got wider, and though I couldn’t hear him, I could feel the movement of his protest against my hand. “Look, he’s… He’s a friend.” Sort of. “He’s not the thing that’s out there.”

  “Aw, Jesse… I’m touched. Tears in my eyes, really.” I glared at the demon, and he just chuckled. “Wanna bet he’d wet himself it I walked over and touched him?” Axel wiggled his fingers with a leer.

  “Would you quit? This isn’t helping.”

  “Oh I’m sorry. When exactly did I offer to help?” He smirked.

  Cameron said something else behind my palm, and I gave him a look. “Can I let you go without you… doing some hocus-pocus or whatever?” He nodded, his eyes promising to behave. I removed my hand and stepped back.

  “That’s a demon!” His voice was distant, tinny, but I could make out the words so long as I was looking at him. Cameron pointed an accusing figure at Axel, who just laughed.

  “Give the little priest a big cigar!” The smile Axel gave him was nothing short of predatory and the demon advanced on Cameron. “Now what are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. He’s going to do nothing.” Will someone please explain to me later how I wound up protecting a demon from a priest? I put a hand on each chest and pushed, noting that yet again, Axel’s touch didn’t trigger Mira’s protection spells. In fact, he felt all too human. It was… yes, creepy, okay? I didn’t have a better word for it. “Both of you go to your separate corners and cool off.”

  Cameron ignored my well-meant advice, of course. “What’s it doing here?”

  “ It got stuck inside when that set off that rather poorly constructed consecration spell,” Axel spat. “ It had no intention of hanging around this little ape colony any longer than absolutely necessary, up until that point.”

  “Axel…”

  “What? He can be rude but I can’t? Demon, hello…” Whatever tirade he was going to go off on next was interrupted by a booming voice from outside, so loud that even I could hear it.

  “ARCHITECT!”

  Axel cursed, too soft for me to even tell what language he was speaking. My stomach gave a small lurch, so I was guessing it was demonic.

  “ARCHITECT! Come out!” It had to be the Yeti because the mere sound of the voice made my skin crawl and I tasted oil at the back of my tongue.

  I looked at Axel. “Architect?”

  He ignored me. “I believe, gentlemen, that that is my cue to depart.” Axel sketched us a small two-fingered salute and headed for the stairs. Cameron scrambled to get out of his path.

  I know the guys downstairs had to be saying, “What the hell?” (again) when Axel calmly walked down the stairs and headed for the front door, Cameron and I thudding after him.

  I think we’d all forgotten about Duke. The mammoth mutt took one look at Axel and made a lunge for him, bellowing to high heaven. Without breaking stride, Axel snarled-literally snarled, with bared teeth and glowing eyes-at him, and the dog nearly did a backflip trying to come to a halt on the hardwood floor. Axel barked, “Sit!” and the big lummox cowered, making a puddle on the floor. So much for our valiant defender.

  I snapped a quick, “Stay inside” at the guys, trying not to sound like I was telling them to sit as well, then followed Axel out onto the front porch. Cameron trotted after us pretty quick, and everyone else pressed against the windows to watch.

  The Yeti was standing just inside the tree line, carefully out of range of the morning sun. He’d assumed his human guise again, the albino in the charcoal gray suit. Knowing what he really was, I could see both forms, flickering over each other like a bad film clip, managing to fill both the hulking space that was the Yeti and squash itself into the slender man’s form at the same time. It was going to give me a headache before too long. Dark shadows swirled around him, wisps of blight coalescing where he stood like fog seeking low ground.

>   Axel leaned against the porch rail nonchalantly. “You rang?”

  “We must speak, Architect. Come here to me.” The suit-clad figure was still, but the other, superimposed over the first, swayed side to side, shifting from clawed foot to clawed foot. Almost like he was nervous.

  I strained to hear the Yeti’s words. The voice part of it was still muffled in my damaged ears, but the demon side, the sickly oil-slick side was getting through loud and clear. Ugh.

  Axel snorted. “No, you come here.” It was a moot point. Neither demon was going to cross the last strip of consecrated ground. The Yeti did inch out of cover though, fidgeting until he found a place safely shaded from the light. The furry form snarled its reluctance, almost like it was pulled forward against its will, while the man in the suit merely stood with his hands folded together in front of him.

  “We must speak,” he said again, his colorless lips barely moving at all. “Of many things.”

  “Of cabbages and kings?” Axel examined his fingernails idly, apparently finding them infinitely more interesting that the creature across the clearing.

  “Of your transgressions.” I had a feeling that not only did the Yeti not have a sense of humor, but he had never read Lewis Carroll.

  Axel laughed, and part of me cringed to hear myself laughing at the Yeti. I was really going to have to talk to Axel about using someone else’s voice. “You and I might have all the time in the world, but our friends here do not. Perhaps you should pick just one great sin to harp on?” At some point, I realized, Axel’s language had changed. He’d become all stuffy or something. More formal. I started to understand that, whatever this was, it wasn’t just a regular old chat between buddies.

  Furry Yeti’s head tossed in agitation while Human Yeti’s image remained calm, cool, and collected. “You should not be here. You violate your own laws.”

  The blond demon snorted again, and I swear I saw the real Yeti flinch. “There is no law that says I cannot try to collect a soul, especially one I’ve had a claim on for years. Check the ledgers, you’ll see my mark.”

  I gave Axel a “what the fuck?” look, but he refused to take his eyes off the other demon.

  “Yes… the Architect’s little pet.” The Yeti was not happy. The man in the gray suit frowned, jaw clenching, and overlaid on that image, the big hairball’s muzzle wrinkled, his claws digging furrows into the forest floor. “A mark unclaimed is a mark unclaimed. Your presence here exerts undue influence-”

  “YOU DARE?!” That hurt, and out of the corner of my eye I caught Cam clamping his hands down over his own ears too. Damn, Axel had some lungs on him. “You DARE question ME?”

  And it wasn’t just us. I swear, the Yeti about wet himself. He looked just like Duke making a puddle on the floor. It’s kinda hard to be scared of something that looks like a spanked puppy. “The laws.. .”

  “I know the laws! Did I not write them? Shall we really start tallying up just who has violated what?” Axel moved down to the very last step, as far as he could go without touching the ground. “Do you really want that eye focused on you?”

  I’ve heard of the power of personality, but I don’t think that I truly appreciated what that meant until I watched Axel back the Yeti down with nothing more than a stern glare and a few cold words. Even without his gaze fixed on me, part of me wanted to go slinking back inside too, and I’d taken two steps before I caught myself.

  “You are sworn to be neutral.” Even cringing and all but melting under Axel’s gaze, the Yeti had enough spine to try to resist. “Remove yourself.”

  “YOU WILL NOT COMMAND ME!” Leaves fell from the trees; rocks clattered down the hillside behind us. Axel’s voice reverberated for what seemed like forever. “MY WILL IS LAW!”

  I don’t know what he did. He flung his hand out, a casual gesture, and there was a flash of light, brighter than the sun. When I finished blinking the after images out of my eyes, the Yeti was gone. After a few moments Axel’s shoulders relaxed, and he dropped his hand to his side. “Well. That’s that, then.” He shook his head, frowning at something, and finally said, “Well, shit.”

  There wasn’t enough time in the world to formulate all the questions I wanted to ask. Geez, where would I even start? Architect? Laws? What? I finally settled for, “What the hell is going on, Axel?”

  He looked at me like he’d just remembered my existence, and shook his head, the sun glinting off his piercings. His injuries were gone, I noticed in a distracted way. Too tough to keep him down for long, apparently. “There’s no time, not today. He won’t stay gone forever; he’s grown too strong for that. You need to listen to me, because I can only say these things once, and then… I most likely won’t be back for a while.”

  When he put it that way… I just nodded.

  “The creatures out there aren’t gone. They’re his. I don’t have the power to command them. Without him here to direct them, they’ll be feral, rabid. He’s starved them, so they’ll be very hungry.” Axel spoke quickly, an urgency in his (my) voice that I hadn’t heard before. “Your Yeti will be back as soon as he can marshal his strength. You need to go now, or you won’t leave here alive. I can’t protect you anymore.”

  So many things to ask, “Why?” being only the first in a very long list. And there was no time.

  “I feel weird saying this, but… be careful, okay?” He’d helped, okay? For his own reasons, yes, but he’d helped. A little. Don’t judge me.

  Axel paused a moment, then smiled, and I could almost believe it was sincere. “Thanks.” A whiff of sulfur and he was gone. I knew he wouldn’t be back. Not until this was over.

  I shook my head when Cameron tried to speak. “No time. Grab your shit. We’re outta here.”

  Somehow, now that Axel was gone, I felt like a real little worm on a big damn hook.

  15

  “I think there better be time, Jess.” I’d fully expected the guys to jump when I said jump, but instead they faced me in a semicircle, Marty’s dark brows drawn together in the deepest frown I’d ever seen on him. “Who the hell was that? Don’t give us shit about him being a coworker. I think that ship has sailed.”

  Oh yeah. I’d been hoping they’d miss that part. “I don’t know his name. I call him Axel. He’s a demon.”

  “You knew that. You knew that, and you let him around our families. Our kids.”

  “He’s…” Harmless? Not dangerous? Like Marty had said, I thought that ship had sailed. “Can we do this later? We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Why are we leaving at all? Isn’t his magic protecting us?” Oscar pointed at Cameron, and the priest shook his head.

  “It isn’t magic, it’s faith. God has chosen us to-”

  “Look! We seriously don’t have time for a lesson in semantics!” Even Duke flinched when I raised my voice. “First, Cam, you can call it whatever the hell you want, but my wife can do all that you just did, and she doesn’t even believe in your god. In fact, I’m pretty sure your god and her goddess aren’t even on speaking terms. So chew on that before you start spouting off about being the ‘chosen of God.’

  “Second! The wards here are blown. The consecration is gone, and Cam can’t even keep Axel out, so we need to go and we need to go now. If anyone wants to further discuss this, submit it to the committee and I will have an answer for you in six to eight weeks. Provided that we live! Now move your asses!”

  I didn’t have to tell them twice. Well, technically, yeah, I did, but there wasn’t a third time. We grabbed everything that remotely resembled a weapon, shrugged into our backpacks, and were out the door in five minutes.

  I gotta say, I was impressed with every single person there. I mean, we were voluntarily leaving a semi-secured position, to take a stroll through woods teeming with pseudozombies. I guess bravery is really just the ability to shout louder than the little voice in your head that screams, “Run, stupid!”

  Marty, ankle wrapped so he could walk on it, tied Duke’s lead around his wa
ist to keep his hands free, and we walked in tight formation, keeping Zane in the middle. I’ll give the kid credit. As sick as he was getting, he kept up, marching out of the clearing in grim silence. I hoped he’d make it at least to the truck, ’cause there was no way in hell we’d be able to carry him and fight at the same time.

  Cole took point with what few bullets he had left. Being right-handed, I stayed on the right side, scanning the trees as we walked. Marty and Duke had our left flank, and Cam stumbled along at the rear (more to keep an eye on me than anything, I suspected). Oscar was armed with the one and only hatchet we had, and he and Will walked on either side of Zane.

  Without Duke, we’d have been toast in the first rush.

  Barely ten yards into the trees, they dropped down on us from the branches above, and the only reason we had any warning was Duke’s raging bellow. In fact, the big dog yanked Marty right off his feet, lunging at the nearest threat.

  The creature on that side-the handless female, I realized, which meant she’d fled the roof last night instead of being slaughtered with the rest of her kind-hit the ground on all fours and immediately sprang back into the brush, vanishing from sight. Duke, roaring like a grizzly bear, did his damnedest to drag Marty with him, chasing after it.

  And while we were all looking that way, three more hit us from the other side. Even as I turned belatedly, cussing at myself for falling for the ruse, one of them leaped at Will and I knew I couldn’t get there in time. I shouldn’t have doubted my buddy. For all that he pretends to be a bumbling doofus, his mind is sharp and his reflexes were even better. The creature skewered itself on Will’s fireplace poker, then went flying into a tree as Will gave a huge heave and flung it off. It wasn’t a killing wound, though, and the thing went scurrying off into the trees again before we could go after it.