A Snake in the Grass

by K. A. Stewart

  Estéban backed his cousin through the grass, Paulito just this side of outright running away. They got so far away that I realized I could only see them illuminated by the green glow of all the stones around us. Night had fallen, and the pair of idiots had fought their way into the dead center of the clearing. It was only a matter of time before Paulito tripped on a rock and went down, and then the kid really was going to kill him. I was sure of that. He’d kill him, and spend the rest of his life hating himself for it.

  “Kid!” There wasn’t even a flinch to show he’d heard. “Estéban! Let it go! Stand down!”

  Maybe it was the sound of his name. Maybe it was just that he’d been conditioned for so long to obey my voice. But for a split second, he hesitated. And in that second, I saw the machete come up, the blade ominously dark in the green light. “No!”

  There was a clang as The Way met the machete, the kid’s block coming up impossibly fast, and then a grunt as Estéban executed a nearly perfect spin kick and took Paulito square in the chest, launching him off his feet.

  Silence fell over the clearing as all eyes watched Paulito, sprawled on his back and gasping like a landed fish. He’d dropped the machete, and it lay at Esteban’s feet, though I’m not sure the kid even realized it. Reina, silent for so long I’d almost forgotten her, inched forward to see better, and but my eyes were all for Estéban. What are you going to do now, kid? The next few moments were going to tell me just what kind of teacher I’d been. Would he let him live?

  And suddenly, Estéban’s decision didn’t matter anymore at all, because Paulito started screaming.

  Chapter 17

  I thought at first he’d landed on a fire ant hill or something. Paulito flopped around in the trampled grass, tearing at his shirt with frantic fingers. His screams grew higher, breathier, cries of agonizing pain and fear. But in the dark, we couldn’t see anything assaulting him.

  Estéban took a step forward and I held a hand out to him. “Don’t. Stay back.” Something… Something was happening.

  It was the smell that caught me first. It wasn’t cloves. It might have been, at one time, but now it was old, mildewed, rotten. There was something sickly sweet about it, like rotting meat, and something behind even that that was…ugh. Clotted blood, my mind told me, though why I knew what that smelled like, I couldn’t say.

  Old magic. The moment I thought it, my vision started that dizzying flicker, showing me the real world in one breath and the magic beneath it in the next. The spellstones, even the ones that didn’t glow to the naked eye, sprang up all around us, and the on-again-off-again sight gave them a strobe effect, flashing in the corners of my vision.

  Paulito had fallen into a pool of leftover magic. I could see it, surrounding him like a green cloud of gas, the tendrils of it winding around his chest, his arms and legs. The ancient power, long since altered from its original intention, crept into his mouth like invading vines, and his voice choked off as his back arched painfully.

  The first crack of breaking bone was like a gunshot in the clearing. Paulito’s left arm suddenly jutted at an impossible angle, a jagged spur of bone gleaming whitely in the dark. No blood though, I realized, and even worse, the bone seemed to be growing, lengthening.

  “Madre de Dios…” The kid crossed himself.

  In the dark, in the tall weeds, it was hard to see everything that happened. There were more sounds of breaking bone, of muscles and tendons tearing. Paulito occasionally let out an agonized gurgle. Something dark sprouted from his skin, looking almost like scales, only to have them slough off and fall away, leaving raw, weeping sores behind. The fingers on one hand fused together, while the ones on the other hand grew four extra knuckles, and the newly sprouted claws dug deep furrows in the soil.

  His joints snapped and reformed at angles that weren’t natural in human anatomy, and his spine had grown, that much I could see, adding at least another foot to his height if he were able to stand upright. He made it to his feet once, tottering on knees that bent backwards as he howled his agony to the night sky. The voice was no longer human. After that, he collapsed in a heap and was still. The wisps of magic around him died away, soaking into the ground as if they’d never been.

  Estéban swallowed hard, and I had to admit I was doing my best not to vomit too. “…Paulito?” He had to be dead. No one could survive…whatever that was. “Primo?”

  I was just about to call it, advise coming back in the daylight to tend to burial duties, when the mass on the ground twitched, stirred. Oh shit.

  What rose to its feet wasn’t Paulito anymore. Only the T-shirt hanging in ragged tatters off its spiked shoulders revealed that this had once been a human man. The oozing skin had hardened in places, forming a shell that gleamed in the green spell light. The arms were longer, spikes of sharp bone jutting from the elbows in such a way that they’d never be able to straighten. One hand had melted into something like a pick, and the other was all spidery fingers and claws.

  The legs were animal-like, bringing the thing up to stand on its toes, powerful thighs ready to propel it forward. More bone spikes had grown out of the spine, clear up the back of the neck and protruding out the top of the skull, and when it finally turned to look at us, the face was…indescribable. Suffice to say that there were fangs everywhere, and more of that dark, chitinous armor.

  The monster-formerly-known-as-Paulito turned its whole body, the neck frozen in one position by the extrusions of bone and armor, and its gaze zeroed in on Estéban. Opening its gaping maw, it bellowed, and the sound shook the night.

  “Run, kid!” But he had nowhere to go. We were in the middle of nowhere, with no cover, nothing to hide behind or take shelter in.

  The creature sprang, its impossible limbs launching it a good ten feet in the air. Esteban waited until the very last second, then dove out of the way, rolling to his feet as the thing crashed down where he’d been just seconds before.

  Whatever was left of Paulito in there, it obviously remembered the grudge against his cousin, because the monster kept focused on the kid like I wasn’t even there. As stealthily as I could, I tried to circle closer, intending to reclaim the fallen machete and join in on the fight. Turns out, I wouldn’t need to.

  The thing swiped at Esteban with the thin, claw-tipped fingers, and screeched as they met spell-blessed metal. The Way was wickedly sharp and layered with so much magic, it sliced through shell and bone like it was butter.

  The kid was fast, as fast as I was really, and that was what saved him. The creature was ungainly, unbalanced, and it cornered like a brick. Estéban darted under its reach, slicing at where hamstrings should be, and the thing bellowed in pain, dropping to its…knees? On all fours, it looked more pathetic than dangerous, but it tried to lunge at the kid again as he came around in front of it.

  Estéban only stepped back a foot or so, removing him safely from the range of the thing’s slavering jaws. “Vaya con Dios, primo.” And the katana came down, a perfect strike. The gruesome head bounced once on the flattened grass, and the huge body slowly toppled over to land on its side. A pool of dark fluid slowly formed under the severed neck.

  “Yessssss……!” We both whirled at the voice, turning to find Reina still standing there. I’d totally forgotten about her. “Yes! It is done!”

  The ground beneath our feet gave a sudden lurch, and a crack opened up in the earth, splitting the clearing right down the center. All I could do was try to keep my feet as the quake vibrated down to the very core of the mountain we stood on. It went on forever, it seemed, and when things were finally still, Estéban and Reina stood on one side of a six-foot-wide crevasse, and I stood on the other.

  Estéban, still with my sword in his hand, turned to face the woman. “What have you done?”

  The dark woman threw her head back and laughed, a joyous carefree sound. “Oh, I did nothing. You did it, little champion. It was all you. Gracias.” And with one negligent wave of her hand, an unseen force hit Estéban hard enough to t
hrow him a dozen yards, and when he landed, he didn’t move again.

  “Kid!” I started to run forward, only to find myself on the crumbling edge of the opening in the earth. In the dark, it was impossible to tell how deep it was, and even with a running start, I wasn’t sure I could clear it.

  “Be careful, soul-bearer.” Reina sauntered forward, her hips swaying artfully as she approached. “After all of this, I would hate to have to fish you out of a hole in the ground.” She peered over into the chasm, shaking her head in obvious amusement.

  The souls in my back stilled, suddenly, the first time since this whole thing started that I hadn’t felt them creating a riot under my skin. I felt them watching her warily, like rabbits under a hawk’s shadow. “Who are you?”

  She chuckled, shrugging her bare shoulders. “Reina will serve our purposes, I suppose. It means ‘queen’ in their language, did you know? Though how you all keep such things sorted in your tiny brains, I will never understand.”

  “It’s you.” I knew it, even as the words escaped me. “You’re not working for the first…you are the first.”

  She smiled coquettishly, shrugging again. “It is one way I am known, yes. Though there are some that would argue whether or not I am the first, or simply a first.” Her smile took on a dark gleam, and she tilted her head, eyeing me up and down. “Some like your dear friend, The Architect.”

  A chill ran down my back, and I was suddenly very aware of Axel’s spell. I’d only heard him called The Architect one other time, and I still didn’t know why. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Reina snorted her disgust. “You reek of The Architect. Do you think I cannot smell it on you, the stench? He sent you, did he not? You can return to him and tell him that you failed. I walk the earth once again, free.”

  The spellstones had gone dark, I realized. The moon was just barely peeping over the trees, not quite full, and the light we stood in was white, not green. “The ancient priests…they didn’t defeat a great evil here.”

  “No. Oh, they tried, valiant little things. But all they were able to do was confine me here, temporarily.”

  “A thousand years or so is an odd definition of temporary.” One step at a time, I started making my way along the edge of the crevasse. If I couldn’t go over it, I’d have to go around it. I had to get to Estéban.

  “For your short-lived kind, yes, I suppose it is.” She strolled along with me, like we were taking a flirtatious jaunt through the woods on a moonlit night. “In recent decades, though, the bindings started to weaken. I was able to project my image out, a little farther every year. Trying to make contact, you see.”

  She paused, looking down, and I realized she’d come upon what was left of Paulito. “He was so easy to manipulate. So much hate and envy.” Nonchalantly, she nudged the massive body with one foot, toppling it over into the gaping hole in the ground. “I told him what he wanted to hear, and he brought me what I needed to break the bonds.”

  “Blood.”

  “Death.” Her eyes flashed red for the first time, lighting up the night for a heartbeat. “A human death, to be specific. I knew, if I could get both of them here, that one of them would die. It didn’t matter which one.” The glare in her eyes died down, and she smiled at me again. “I was not counting on you, though. The soul-bearer. Even here, in my prison, they whispered of you.”

  “Yeah, people tend to do that.” I stepped on something that wasn’t rock, or grass, and it moved slightly under my boot. Glancing down, I realized that I’d found Estéban’s machete, forgotten in all the chaos. “So, uh, what’s the plan now? You’re loose. You’ve got a couple thousand years of movies and pop culture to catch up on. What’s a single demon do for a night on the town? Disneyworld?” I ran my mouth, because it’s what I do best, and slowly tried to work my toe under the hilt of the machete without her noticing.

  She laughed softly, and I was glad that I could entertain the nice lady demon. “You talk a lot. I mean, you all do, but you more than most.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “And you think that if I reveal my plan to you that you will be able to stop me in some way? Or perhaps take the information to The Architect in exchange for some reward?” She shook her head, her dark hair falling around her face. “Foolish. First of all, The Architect knows very well what my plan is. My confinement merely postponed it, it did not change it. Second, I could tell you every single thing I’m planning, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. The end result is inevitable.”

  “That’s some major self-confidence there.”

  “I am eternal. You are less than half a grain of sand in an infinite hourglass.”

  “Nice imagery. Almost modern.”

  “I try.” She tilted her head to the side. “And as amusing as this is – what do you really think you’re going to do with that blade, anyway? – I find that I am anxious to be away from this place sooner rather than later. So we must discuss the multitude of souls that you are carrying with you.”

  Well crap. Since she’d seen it anyway, I did a little kick with my foot to flip the machete up into my hand. Looked pretty slick, and there wasn’t a single person here to appreciate it. Story of my life.

  I felt better with a blade in my hand, even if it wasn’t mine. Still had no idea what I was going to do with it, though. I didn’t think taking on the queen bitch over there was going to be as simple as sticking the pointy end of a sword between her ribs.

  “The souls are not up for discussion. They’re mine.” My shoulders grew warm at that, a feeling of approval radiating out from the tattoos.

  “They’re a commodity. They can be bought and sold, like anything. And I am willing to buy them from you.”

  My skin rippled, the souls expressing their distress at that thought. “What’s the going rate for a soul these days?” Not that I was actually going to take her up on it, I just had to buy some time until I figured out what my next course of action was.

  “For these? Oh…I’d say a life would be sufficient. One pure, untainted life, in exchange for two hundred and seventy-five souls.”

  “My life?” I had to laugh at that. “Listen, lady, I don’t know who told you I was pure and untainted, but they told you some vicious lies.”

  Reina grinned. “Who said I was speaking of you?” Her head turned, ever so slightly, and one hand stretched out toward a dark form on the ground, one I’d been trying very hard not to think about. Estéban. “He has a valiant heart. I can feel your touch on his soul.”

  No… “Leave him out of this.”

  She raised a brow at me. “What is it worth to you? The advantage is all yours here, you must realize. You get his life, safe and sound. You rid yourself of your cumbersome burden. You free yourself of the pursuit that you must know is coming. You can just…walk away. The alternative is that someone – myself, perhaps, or maybe your dear Architect – will rip that power out of you, and leave you a smoking husk on the ground. The souls will still be gone, and you will have gained nothing.”

  “When you put it like that, you make it seem like there’s no choice.” I couldn’t see well enough to know if Estéban was still breathing. Reina could be jerking my chain all along. But if there was a chance… I couldn’t let the kid die. I’m sure Reina knew that. That was the point, after all.

  “No one would blame you, soul-bearer. Under the circumstances, you are taking the only option you have available.”

  She was right, to a point. Given the choice to let Estéban die, or give up the souls, yeah, there was only one acceptable result. However, there was a third option she hadn’t even considered. Hell, I shouldn’t be considering it. “You forget one thing.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “I could just take these two hundred and seventy-five souls’ worth of power, and I could blast your sorry ass back to Hell where you belong.” I could do it. I’d burned up one of the souls before to save my own neck. Surely this much mojo behind a blow like that would be enough
to give even a demon as old as this one pause.

  Her eyes narrowed, and for the first time, the pleasant smile dropped completely. “You would dare that? They will die, you realize. Every human who gave their soul over to you for safe keeping will cease to be at that moment. Two hundred and seventy-five lives sacrificed to save one boy? Is that really what you want?”

  Of course it wasn’t what I wanted. In my perfect world, we were all going to walk out of this alive, but I didn’t always get what I wanted. It was a bluff. I just had to hope I could be convincing enough, for long enough.

  I’d forgotten to take into account the souls themselves. They were aware back there, after a fashion. I could feel them perk up the moment I suggested burning them up, using them to banish the Reina-demon. I braced for the pain, preparing to have my muscles knotted into uselessness, but it never came.

  Instead, the tingling sensation, the ever-present zing that told me they were there, started to spread. The tattoos spread up the back of my neck, into my hair, and down my arms, until I could see them shining white in the darkness as they coiled around my wrists, like frost on glass as they covered my hands. Under my jeans, it was the same, the feeling of hot-cold threads tracing designs on my skin, all the way down to the soles of my feet. The dark clearing lit up like someone had turned on a floodlight, and all of it came from me, blazing in the night.

  I might be bluffing, but the souls were not. They made it perfectly clear that they had chosen, and I could feel a deep satisfaction from them, as if deciding their own purpose had been all they wanted all along.

  “I don’t know that what I want is going to matter very much.” They closed over my eyelids last, and I blinked out of reflex at the brightness. When I opened them again, I was again spell-sighted, the dim stars above us now excruciating in their clarity. Each and every blade of grass that swayed in that clearing drew my attention. The odors of old and new magic, of sulfur and cloves and rotting, decaying flesh threatened to choke me, and I could feel bits of it clinging to the inside of my lungs.