A Shot in the Dark

by K. A. Stewart

  I glanced out the window. Night had fallen, hiding the clearing from view. Didn’t matter. Even if I couldn’t see him, I knew the Yeti hadn’t gone. “How long?”

  “Hmm?” Cam definitely wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Understandably. We were gonna have to keep him awake tonight, watch for a concussion.

  “How long until the spell breaks?”

  “A day? Day and a half, maybe? I wasn’t exactly prepared.” With dripping fingers, he traced a symbol on the front window. “Sepire.” The unfamiliar word prickled over my skin like static. I guess that answered the question of who had warded his apartment.

  “Can you renew it?” I knew he couldn’t. The first one nearly killed him. Repeating it almost certainly would. But I wanted to know if he’d tell me the truth.

  “I could. But I wouldn’t survive the backlash.”

  “Dude! You need to see this!” Will’s voice reminded me that Cam and I were not alone.

  I pointed a finger at him. “We’re gonna finish this conversation later.” Cameron just nodded and moved on to the next window.

  Will and Cole were still crouched over young Zane, the boy’s face gray under the smears of his own blood. Normally, the kid looked a lot like his dad, the same wiry build, the same narrow nose. Zane’s hair was the same almost black that Oscar’s had been in his younger days.

  But now, his eyes were wide with shock. There were shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. He’d managed to choke back his sobs into tiny, tortured hiccups, but his breath was still coming in shallow little gasps of panic. Will had patched him up with what supplies we had, but even I could tell that the kid had been chewed on good. His left arm was bandaged from knuckles to elbow, and his bare shoulders showed bite marks, clear up his neck. Not cute little love bites either, but eat-you-with-fava-beans kinda bites. Human bites, I noticed sickly. Most of them were swabbed in antibiotic ointment, and seeped a little blood through the darkening bruises.

  “What’s up, Will?”

  “Look.” Will tried to lift the corner of the bandages swathing Zane’s left forearm, and the kid flinched, whimpering, “Don’t.”

  “Shh. Jesse can help, I promise,” Cole soothed, and I gave him an odd look. What was I helping with, exactly?

  Will continued to peel up the white gauze, slowly revealing the edge of a black tattoo.

  “Shit.” I crouched, peering under the blood-soaked cloth as best I could. The tattoo curled and wove over most of his arm between wrist and elbow. Parts of it were mangled by the nasty bite mark on his wrist—human bite, my mind pointed out again, like I’d missed it the first time—but the rest of it seemed to writhe under my gaze, sliding over itself sinuously without moving at all. I felt an ache growing behind my eyes, just looking at it. I pressed the bandage down again. “Damn, kid . . .” Zane wasn’t the first kid I’d seen sell his soul, but he set a new record for being the youngest.

  “It is, then?” Cole of all people would recognize the demon brand. He’d worn one himself.

  “Yeah. And I think I know who it belongs to.” I’d seen that particular mark before. I had the scars to prove it. Without thinking, my hand went to my rib cage, feeling the hard ridges of scar tissue even under my shirt, and I couldn’t help but glance toward the door. Yeah, we were intimately acquainted.

  “Jess?” I forced my eyes from the door, to find Will frowning at me. Will never frowned. I didn’t think he had those muscles. “Was that him? Was that the . . .?” He nodded toward my side. Will had been there that day, to stuff my guts back inside my chest. He knew firsthand what kind of damage the Yeti could do.

  “Yeah.” What else could I say? My four-year nightmare had just walked back into my life. The vocabulary for that hadn’t been invented yet.

  Zane’s eyes were glued to the floor, and he looked so very young, sitting there all bandaged up and pale. I touched his leg to get his attention. “Hey, kid. You need to look up at me, ’kay?”

  It took him a few moments, but he finally did, tears glimmering in his eyes.

  “I know what you did.” That made him blink a little, and the tears escaped to run down his cheeks. “What I need to know is why.”

  At first he gave me that shrug. Y’know, the one they give when they know they screwed up, and nothing they say is going to get them out of trouble. The one that says they know they have no right answer.

  “It was your mom, wasn’t it?” I looked up when Marty spoke, but I still caught Zane flinching out of the corner of my eye. Marty nodded to me. “His mother died, about two months ago. Long breast cancer battle.”

  That’d do it. I looked back to Zane. “Was that it? You were trying to save her?”

  It took him a long time to answer. “Yeah . . . But it didn’t work. It . . . went all wrong, somehow . . .”

  “It usually does, kid.” I sighed and rested my hand on his head for a second. I could see already where this was headed for me. I just couldn’t let him stay like that.

  “Will, look at his hand.” Cole barely whispered, so of course, we all turned to look. My paramedic friend cursed softly, seeing the dark streaks creeping slowly up the kid’s hand. Not the red of true infection, but an insidious blackness that started at his fingertips and radiated upward. You could almost watch it move.

  “I’ve never seen gangrene set in that fast.” Will looked up at me again, trying to send me a message with just his eyes. I got it. It wasn’t gangrene and he knew it. He’d seen that before, too.

  “What do you taste, Zane? Like . . . chemicals in the back of your throat?” The kid frowned faintly, licking his lips, then nodded, a puzzled look crossing his face. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  Less than a year ago, I’d fought for the soul of the president of this great United States. Fairly standard fight, a Scuttle demon, nothing too tricky, except where it had stabbed me through my right calf. And that’s when the real fun had started. The first thing I remembered was the chemical taste in my mouth, so dry I couldn’t even spit.

  Will opened his mouth to say something, but Cam piped up first. “It’s poisoning. Those things out there must be contaminated. It got into the wound, tainted it. It’ll spread until it kills him.” Apparently done with the warding of the downstairs doors and windows, he sagged against the stair railing just to stay upright. “You should get the hatchet.”

  “Um, for what exactly?”

  “The arm has to go—there’s no cure for that.” The whatever-he-was shook his head. “The shock of the amputation will probably kill him anyway, but at least he’d have a chance.”

  “You can’t cut my boy’s arm off!” I’d forgotten about Oscar, who’d been watching the proceedings with a kind of mute horror. “He’s only fifteen!” The man lurched to his feet, then stood there with fists clenched, like he wasn’t sure what to fight, or even how to begin finding out.

  “That poison will kill him if it reaches his heart. This is the only way to save him.”

  “No, it’s not.” They both looked at me, and Cameron frowned. “Will, how high can that stuff go before we have to cut off the arm?”

  My buddy frowned thoughtfully behind his thick glasses, then drew his finger across Zane’s biceps near the shoulder. “‘Bout here, I think? But I’m not a surgeon, Jess, I’m an EMT, and we don’t have the stuff—”

  I waved him into silence. “Find a pen, mark that spot. Until it gets there, we have time.” I looked to Cameron. “It is curable. My wife can do it. If I can find out how she did it, could you duplicate her spell?”

  Cameron frowned even darker. “Just who did she cure?”

  “Me.” I reached down and yanked my jeans up to display the shiny pink scars on either side of my calf. “Scuttle demon in January. Punched right through my leg, and the black streaks started going, just like that. The doctors were going to take the leg, just like you said. Mira saved me.”

  He was shaking his head before I’d even finished. “That’s not possible. We’re taught, right from the begin
ning, that a tainted wound is fatal.”

  “And I’m telling you that you are wrong. Now.” I fixed him with a look of death. At least, I hoped I looked intimidating. A little. “If Mira tells you how to do the spell, could you duplicate it?”

  He thought for a few moments, then shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not one of the methods I’ve been taught, and there really isn’t any room for improvisation—”

  “But if Mira can make you understand, if she can tell you what she did, can you do it?”

  It took him a bit, but he finally nodded. “I can try.” He turned then to head up the stairs, climbing each riser like it took real effort.

  “Are you all insane?” We all turned to look at Oscar, who was wide-eyed, just this side of being a little crazy himself. “Those . . . those things were . . . escaped chimps or something. And you’re babbling about magic and spells?”

  I approached him slowly, like you would a spooked animal. “It sounds nuts, I know, trust me. And I don’t know what those things were, but they weren’t chimps; they weren’t animals. Did you see the big white thing come barreling at us? That’s a demon, and he’s trying to get in.” But why? He couldn’t hurt anyone without a contract. Couldn’t touch us at all. But the Yeti had come charging at us anyway, charging at me. Something wasn’t right. I tried to keep my uncertainty off my face.

  “A demon? You expect me to believe that bullshit?” Color flushed into Oscar’s pale face. I don’t think I’d ever heard the man curse, not once in all the years I’d known him.

  “It doesn’t matter if you believe it. Not believing it doesn’t change anything.” I stopped moving forward. If he was gonna snap, I didn’t want to be in arm’s reach.

  “And just how do you know this? What makes you so fucking smart?” I didn’t even get a chance to answer him before he advanced on me, fists balled at his side. “You knew about that stuff and you didn’t tell anyone?! You just . . . ! You just let us all go walking around out there with those things!”

  “I didn’t know they were there, Oscar. And I couldn’t have reached him any faster.” But there would always be that little voice that asked if I could have. If I’d noticed the smell sooner, or left the porch earlier, or even run up the path faster . . . If I’d have turned back when Axel told me to, would they have come for me, instead of Zane?

  “Bullshit! You didn’t even try!” He shoved me, and I let him, backing up a step or two. Wasn’t the man’s fault his world just got turned on its ear. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same, in his place.

  Duke, however, took offense, and a low growl rumbled through the room. “Marty, hold the mutt!” Even with his considerable strength, earned over a forge and anvil, Marty had a helluva time holding on to his two hundred pounds of pissed-off dog.

  Things only got worse when Oscar came at me again, shoving me with both hands. “You just let those things . . . those . . . your fault!”

  I could hear Duke setting up for that deep bass bellow of his, and I knew Marty wouldn’t be able to hold him. “Oscar, you need to calm down.” I promise, I used my calm grown-up voice and everything. It was when he swung at me that things got interesting. I blocked the first one easily, batting his fist aside and dropping into a defensive stance. “I mean it. You’re going to get someone hurt.” It was going to be him, but man, I didn’t want to do it.

  “Fuck you!” The second punch whiffed by my ear as I sidestepped it, and I caught his wrist, wrenching his arm back behind him and pressing up. I knew it was gonna hurt like hell, but it was the only way I could think to get through to him.

  Zane was yelling too. “Dad, leave him alone! Stop!” But it didn’t make a difference.

  “Oscar! Chill the fuck out!” It was like he couldn’t even hear me. He screamed, jerking against my hold until I was afraid he was going to dislocate his own shoulder. This was going to get out of hand if I didn’t do something drastic.

  “Sorry I have to do this.” I released my grip on his arm, reaching around to grab him by the throat instead. From behind, I put pressure against the back of his head. He gagged as I cut off the air to his windpipe. “Just gonna take a little nap . . .”

  He flailed for a few seconds, and I knew he was already seeing stars. Six seconds in, and the world would be going gray. Eight, and he slumped in my arms. With Cole’s help, I lowered him to the floor and released the choke hold. Oscar gasped, blinking his way slowly back to consciousness.

  I rested my hand on his chest, waiting until his eyes could focus again. “I recommend you stay down. Savvy? We’ve got more important things to deal with at this exact moment.”

  Things like saving Zane’s arm. I knew that poison, knew that a raging fever and amazing pain were coming in short order. At the very least, he needed a hospital, and the nearest one was in Fort Collins.

  Things like who the hell Cameron was. Not to mention how we were going to get out of this damn cabin with those things waiting out there in the woods. Yeah, it hadn’t escaped my notice that them staying out meant that we had to stay in.

  The dog was still growling. Even with the “danger” subdued, Duke was still reacting like there was a threat in the room. I finally looked at Marty, who gave me a strained shrug.

  “Let him go. See what he does.” Not my best idea, but Marty couldn’t hold on to the big lummox forever.

  The mastiff gave a lurch in Oscar’s direction, and I tensed to head him off, but Duke did no more than pad over to sniff the downed man, hackles still bristled along his striped shoulders. I could see Oscar’s eyes, wide with fright as that massive muzzle brushed against his throat in passing. Duke settled for a firm snarl, then made the rounds of the room. Zane also got a growl of disapproval, which didn’t surprise me. Dogs and the soulless just don’t get along. I yanked Oscar’s sleeve up, but found his arm bare. No surprise, but I had to be sure. I’d been fooled before.

  “Okay, I get why he’s edgy around Zane, but Oscar’s down. What’s bugging Duke there?” No one really answered me, but I was used to talking to myself. I looked down at Oscar, who seemed to have lost all his fire, tears leaking silently from the corners of his eyes. Taking mood swings to a bit of an extreme, wasn’t he? “I wonder . . . Cole, keep an eye on Oscar please.”

  Above the bar hung one of those bar mirrors. You know, the ones with the gold tracing around the edges, and some beer logo from the seventies at the top. It was bigger than I was used to, but it would do what I needed.

  “Cameron!”

  He appeared at the head of the stairs, more sliding down them than walking. “Hmm?”

  “Can you make a mirror?”

  “A what?”

  “A mirror.” I showed him the one in question. “A mirror that lets you see across, see if anything’s lurking.”

  He settled on the bottom step, resting his bandaged head against the railing. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

  Dammit. This was going to get irritating. “Look. My wife does this, with these symbols here.” I grabbed a napkin off the bar and started scribbling down everything I could remember. Man, I hoped I had everything right. Might be a spell to turn someone into a rabbit instead.

  Cam looked over my scrawls, and shook his head. “I’m not familiar with this work. It looks . . . is this pagan?” I groaned and smacked my head against the wall. “If you know the sigils, why don’t you just do it?”

  “Because I don’t have any magic. Anything I need, my wife does.”

  There was no mistaking the look of horror that crossed his face before he caught himself. “I . . . you . . .” He blinked at me for long, shocked moments, and I just let him. “How are you still alive??”

  “I’m just that fucking good. Now answer my question. Can you do it?”

  It took him another few moments of staring at me like I’d grown a second head, but finally, he gathered himself enough to address the subject at hand. “What is the mirror supposed to do? Maybe I can adapt it somehow.”r />
  “Okay . . . I need to be able to see across the veil. Then you break the mirror, and whatever’s caught in it is yanked to the physical side where we can deal with it.”

  The possibly ex-priest thought for long moment, then nodded. “I . . . think I can come up with something like that. But why are we doing this again?”

  “Because I think something got inside before you set up the wards. Maybe has been inside this whole time.”

  It took Cam a good hour to come up with something for the mirror trick. Occasionally, he’d ask me a question that I didn’t have the answer to anyway, but for the most part he sat with his head bowed, lips moving silently as he . . . prayed, or whatever. I just checked on him from time to time, making sure he hadn’t lapsed into unconsciousness instead.

  In the meantime, we got Zane settled with his father. I don’t think the old man had any more fight in him anyway. I kept Duke near the pair, hoping the dog’s presence would ward off what I feared had gotten through. The boy looked bad. Really bad, considering that his wounds were relatively minor. There were fresh bruises blossoming every moment, it seemed, but that didn’t account for the gray tinge to his face. He was scared, he was in shock, and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it. There was only so much Will could do with a first aid kit and torn up sheets.

  “Is he gonna be all right?” I asked quietly, hoping that the Quinns wouldn’t hear.

  Will’s grim face behind his round glasses said it all. There wasn’t a shred of humor left in him anywhere. He was a goofball of the first order, except when it came to doing his job. Then he was the most efficient, organized paramedic I’d ever seen. (Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of them.) “I remember how tore up you were, man. If that poison doesn’t kill him, the shock from an amputation would. I need things we just don’t have here.”

  I clapped a hand on his shoulder. What else could I do? “Mira would say to have faith.”

  “Yeah, but in what?”

  My eyes went to Cam, hovering over the mirror we’d painstakingly detached from the wall. “Right now, I’d say him.”