A Snake in the Grass

by K. A. Stewart

  It was like that first night, the night the souls had blasted their way into me. I was drunk on it, and even in the face of certain doom for myself and for my multitude of passengers, I wanted to laugh with a giddy sense of joy. This was being alive.

  Reina hissed in displeasure, I’m sure at the light, and my eyes landed on her next. It was…not what I’d expected.

  I’d seen one once before, and the sight had nearly ripped my sanity out of my skull. To look upon it is both indescribably beautiful, and so terrifying that a person should run screaming and never stop. The last time, I’d groveled with my face on the ground, and considered myself pretty damn brave for the effort.

  This time…it wasn’t the same. Reina was an angel. Or maybe had been, at one time. Under the human guise she donned, her true form was wreathed in hues of gold that artists haven’t even invented yet. Gold and white and silver, just like the old crazy homeless guy in L.A., Felix. But where his had been a pure light, agonizing in its perfection, hers bled into browns, reds, blacks at the very edges. Where his had seemed to rise right into the sky, hers was grounded firmly to earth, leeching into the soil below our feet, tainting all that she touched. Her, I could look upon without pain, without feeling like my brain was about to go trickling out my ears.

  And I realized, juiced up like I was, that I wasn’t the least bit afraid of her. “You should go now. They really want to fry your sorry ass, and I don’t know that I can stop them.”

  The area that should be her face colored in mottled shades of blood red and sickening orange. “Do you think you can do me harm, worm?”

  “I’m willing to give it a shot. And even if I’m wrong, that’ll be two hundred and seventy-five souls that you’ll never see. Pretty sure sacrificing themselves will put them back on the big G’s good list. They won’t be headed down.”

  She wavered, weighing the odds, and in the end I was pretty sure it was greed, not fear, that won out. “This is not over, soul-bearer. We will see each other again.” In less than an eyeblink, she vanished, leaving behind the stench of sulfur.

  I took a deep breath, closing my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could still see the blood pulsing in my eyelids, taste the salt on the air from the ocean so far out of sight. “When you’re ready, guys. I think we made our point.”

  The souls receded slowly, reluctantly, but finally every iridescent tattoo was back under my shirt where it belonged, and I could open my eyes to find only the darkness of a moonlit forest night. “Estéban…”

  It took me a bit to find a place where the chasm narrowed so that I could cross it, and then longer to make my way back to my protégé, still just a dark heap in the grass where he’d landed.

  His skin was warm when I touched him, which was my first relief, and then I found a pulse, slow but steady in his neck. “Thank you,” I whispered, and I couldn’t even say for sure who I was grateful to.

  I know you’re not supposed to move people, in case of more injuries, but I had to roll him over onto his back to try and get a better look. He had an egg-sized lump on his skull, and there was dried blood on a small stone next to him. Just bad luck in the landing. “Kid. C’mon, kid, you gotta open those eyes.” I patted his cheek gently, all the while, the words ‘traumatic brain injury’ running through my head.

  Finally, his eyelids twitched, then fluttered open, though he was having a hard time focusing on me. “Jesse?”

  “Yeah, kid.” I couldn’t help it, a small laugh escaped, probably not appropriate to the situation at all. “Christ, kid. Helluva time you picked for a nap.”

  “I’ll do better next time.” His eyes darted this way and that, trying to see past me. “Where is she? Reina, where….?”

  “She’s gone. Gone back to wherever bad things go when they’re not out being evil.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No. Missed my chance.”

  “We have to tell Mamá, we have to…” He made the mistake of trying to sit up before I could stop him, and almost passed out again.

  “Easy there, you’re in no shape yet to go traipsing around.”

  His face was pale, I could see that even in the darkness. “How do we get home?”

  “Well, kid, it’s like this.” Settling into a more comfortable position, I very carefully shifted him to that his head was pillowed on my thigh. “I’m gonna sit here and keep you awake all night, because of the concussion I know you have. And when the sun comes up in the morning, all bright and shiny, your mom is going to send out the cavalry to come find us. And then we’ll go home.”

  “Can’t do that,” he mumbled, his words slurring just slightly. “Not safe here, the old magic.”

  “You let me worry about that. Just stay with me, okay kid? Why don’t you recite your multiplication tables, to start. And then maybe we’ll talk about baseball stats or something.”

  He blinked at me, uncomprehending, so I prompted him with the first one. “One times one is…?”

  “One. Uno.”

  “Ooh, tricky hm? Gonna go for both languages? Okay, smart ass, two times two.”

  “Four. Cuatro.”

  “Three times three.”

  “Nine. Nueve.”

  Chapter 18

  Dawn came with Estéban’s head still resting in my lap. He’d drifted into a normal sleep at some point, and so long as he still protested when I pinched his arm, I let him have it. If nothing else, it gave me time to think. There was a lot I had to sort out, after all of this.

  Our clothes were damp with dew by the time I heard an engine in the distance, and fifteen minutes later, Sveta came bursting through the trees at the edge of the clearing, gun in one hand, and her bared shaska blade in the other.

  “Time to wake up kid, the cavalry’s here.”

  “Mmph.” Still, Estéban blinked his eyes open slowly, and they looked a little better than they had last night.

  “Sveta! We’re here!” I waved my hand until she located us. “Watch out for the big hole in the ground!”

  Between the two of us, we managed to get Estéban back to the vehicles, Terrence waiting in the second pickup truck. I loaded Miguel’s bike up into the back of the other, and we caravanned back up to the Perez compound.

  As far as injuries went, we were all going to be okay. The kid was going to be on light duty for a week or so until his brain unscrambled, but I think that was the only thing that kept Sveta from kicking his ass. She was a little pissed about getting clocked in the dome.

  Carlotta was back on her feet, though she’d declared herself merely a supervisor as the kid-pack assembled breakfast with their usual chaotic efficiency. She grabbed my hand as I walked past, pressing a kiss to my knuckles before releasing me. Her way of saying thanks. I gave her a small smile, then went to collapse. I was too old for all-nighters.

  In the boys’ room, I carefully placed The Way back in the case where it belonged, and laid the machete on Estéban’s bunk. They’d ensconced him in his mother’s bed, being the biggest and most comfy, with Rosaline keeping careful watch on him for the concussion. Sinking onto my own low cot, I rested my head in my hands for a long time, only now allowing the shakes to come.

  Eventually, I laid down and slept, the rest of the truly exhausted. No dreams came, no visions of Gretchen Keene toppling to her death, or of a large arena with a mysterious figure at the other end. Just darkness, quiet and peaceful. When I woke, I started packing up my gear.

  “You cannot leave yet! We have not yet figured out how to remove the souls!” Carlotta was understandably against the plan.

  “I didn’t intend to live here forever, Carlotta. You’ve seen enough of it now, you have a good place to keep working from. I’m going home to my wife and my children.” That was one thing I’d decided during my long vigil. The world was going to Hell, in a fairly literal sense. I couldn’t stop that, but I could go be with my wife while she gave birth to my second child. I could play with my daughter, and teach her katas and how to make the world’s best PB&J san
dwich. I was pretty sure I didn’t have a lot of time left, but I could choose how I would spend it.

  Now that I’d declared what I was thinking of as “the nuclear option”, I didn’t think the demons would be coming after me so overtly. They wanted the souls intact more than they wanted me dead. It would buy me some time, buy Carlotta and Terrence more time to figure out a solution.

  Because of course, Terrence was staying in Mexico. No one was surprised when he made his gruff declaration, but Estéban and I hid our grins. Seriously, old people in love are adorable.

  Carlotta made a few token protests. “Who is going to protect Jesse, then? Sveta cannot do it alone.”

  “I am.” Every person in the room turned and blinked at Estéban, but he held his chin up and didn’t flinch at all. “I’ve thought about this a lot. Mamá…” He leaned over to take her hands. “I’m not sure that I can be a champion, not like Papa and Joaquin and Miguel. I’m not sure… I’m not sure that I believe what they believed, about all of this.”

  Carlotta nodded slowly, simply waiting for him to go on.

  “But what I do believe is that Jesse is a good man, and that he fights for the right things. I think I can better serve at his right hand, than by risking my life for people who may or may not deserve it.”

  I raised a brow at him. “Practiced that in the mirror, did you?”

  The kid blushed, but chuckled. “Like twenty times.”

  His mother just looked at him, reaching out to smooth a stray lock of hair off his forehead. Her fingers traced his jaw, rough from not shaving for a few days, like the rest of us, and then she straightened the collar of his T-shirt even though he didn’t need it. “Oh, mi hijo.” She turned to look at me. “Do you agree? Do you think that my son can protect you?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. There’s no one else I’d trust as much.” The kid flashed me a beaming grin that made him look every bit as young as he was, and I just gave him a nod. I meant every word. If it was all going to come to an end, there were very few people in the world I’d rather have with me.

  “Señor Zelenko will not like this…” Carlotta tried again, and I just shook my head.

  “I’ll handle Ivan. Don’t you worry about him.” Sveta snorted at my statement, but when I gave her a challenging look, she just raised her hands in acquiescence. “All right, you two. Pack it up. We’re heading home as soon as we can get a plane.”

  As soon as we could get a plane turned out to be two days later. Despite the lack of body, the Perez clan gave Paulito a suitable funeral, and neither Estéban nor myself felt like telling them exactly how he died.

  I cornered the kid a couple times, just to see how he was handling it. I mean, he had killed his own cousin, even if that thing hadn’t really been Paulito anymore.

  Estéban paused in making repairs to the goat fence, eyeing his hands for a moment. “That monster was not my cousin. The transformations are irreversible, he could not have been saved. It was a mercy killing.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Our exit from the Perez home was like our departure from my house, only magnified by like a thousand. Every member of the clan had to come say farewell to their departing hero, and that process in and of itself took nearly an hour. Paulito’s mother pressed tearful kisses to his cheeks, and blessed him in the name of every saint I’d ever heard of, and he promised to pray for Paulito’s soul which made her weep harder. All through it, the kid’s eyes stayed dry, his stance firm. Even when Carlotta held him close and whispered quietly to him, he only hugged her in return then waved a smiling goodbye to his family.

  Homecoming was sweet, but I think my family was happier to see Estéban than they were to see me. Mira fussed over the still-visible lump on his head, and Anna latched onto her adopted big brother and refused to let go for at least the first hour I was home. I could see that Estéban was just as happy to be back home, and despite all he’d been through, there was something lighter about him than when we’d left.

  The first thing I asked of him and Sveta, though, got some pushback.

  “Did you get hit in the head?” Sveta glared at me suspiciously.

  Esteban nodded his agreement. “This is a bad idea. Those wards are strong, there’s no reason to dismantle them.”

  “I have my reasons. Just do it. And then I’m going to introduce you to someone we’re going to be seeing a lot of, I think.”

  Reluctance in every gesture, the pair of them set about taking apart Terrence’s carefully constructed wards around my back yard. Standing out by my water garden, I felt when the last of them snapped, the ever-present tingle under my skin fading away into nothing. I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders, and even the souls in my back felt a bit more relieved to not have that constant pressure on them.

  “All right. I want the two of you to stand back on the patio, and for the love of everything, do not say anything. Especially not your names, understand?” Their expressions said they didn’t, but they obeyed, watching me warily.

  I waited until they were standing back by the sliding glass door, then turned to face out into the yard. “Axel.” I got no response, at first, at least none that was visible. But my eyes weren’t my only sense, and the hint of sulfur teased my nose. “I know you’re here. Come out. I want to introduce you to some folks.”

  A few more moments passed before the tall figure emerged from behind a sapling tree that shouldn’t have been big enough to hide a pencil. I heard Sveta’s breath catch behind me, and held up a hand. “It’s all right. He’s fine.”

  Axel raised a pierced brow at me, glancing over my shoulder to look at the pair on the patio. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, looking for all the world like a slouching, petulant teenager. “Didn’t know you were going to out me like this.”

  Estéban immediately disobeyed my prohibition against speaking. “I know you. I’ve seen you here before.”

  The demon tilted his head and smirked faintly. “Ah yes, the student. Now I remember.”

  “It was time for them to truly meet you.” At the sound of my voice, Axel’s attention swiveled back to me. “Their lives are on the line, right next to mine now. They needed to know what we were dealing with.”

  “And are we? Dealing, I mean?” Axel’s eyes flashed red, finally betraying his irritation. “Do you have any idea what you have done, Jesse?”

  “Which part? The part where we broke a really pissed off fallen angel out of her prison, or the part where I threatened to detonate the little tac nuke you’ve got riding around in my skin?”

  He threw up his hands. “You have no idea the ramifications of these events. The power balances that have been tipped, the moves that have to be scrapped now and rethought…”

  “Of course I don’t.” That made him pause, and he tilted his head at me. “You’ve been very careful to keep your little intrigues to yourself. Well, this is me, telling you that it ends now.”

  The man-demon narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you’re gonna pull up a chair, right here on this patio, and you’re gonna lay it all out for me. No deals, no bargains, just information. You’re going to tell me what this little war is about that you’ve got brewing. You’re going to tell me who Reina is and why she’s so pissed at you. And you’re going to tell me how the hell you intend to get me out of this shit that I never signed up for.”

  Axel blinked at me like I’d slapped him in the face. “I can’t just…”

  “You can. And you will. I’m done playing.”

  His eyes darted to our audience and back to me again, looking uncertain for the first time since I’d known him. “And you want them to hear all of this.”

  I nodded. “They need the chance to walk away. The one I didn’t get.”

  “We’re not—”

  “I would never—”

  Of course that set both Sveta and Estéban to talking over each other, despite the f
act that they’d been told not to speak. “Quiet, both of you. Grab some chairs. I think we’re going to be here a while.”

  The kid obediently grabbed a few plastic chairs, dragging them around our patio table, and I went and took a seat, kicking one out in invitation to Axel. After a moment of eyeing it like it was a striking snake, he came and sat as well, stretching his long legs out. “It will have to be the Cliff’s Notes version, or we’ll be here all night.”

  “Hey, we got nowhere to go. Start at the beginning.”

  He was right. Even with the abridged version, we were out on the patio most of the night. Mira brought us drinks and sandwiches at one point, frowning intently at the demon on her deck even as she slid a glass of lemonade in front of him. Axel managed to smile politely and thank her, even if he didn’t touch the beverage at all.

  Hours of chatting boiled down to a few basic facts. There were two factions in Hell, which was something I pretty much knew already. To say they didn’t get along was putting it mildly. You had the one side, represented (or lead? Axel managed to avoid that question) by Axel and those allied with him. And then we had the other side, who until a few days ago had been without their leader. Of course, it was Reina, whatever her real name was. Their war had been put on hold a thousand years ago when she got put on ice, but as the spells around her weakened, the demons had started to rebuild their ranks, once again choosing sides.

  The good demons – and wasn’t that an oxymoron? – believed that it was their duty to test the souls of the world, to make deals, to follow the rules as laid out. It was a job, a purpose, and they took it very seriously.

  “But why? I mean, what are you supposed to get out of it?”