I could hear her even with my ears half functional, swearing in her heavily accented English. “Viljo, I swear by all that is holy, if this is another of your ‘system tests’ to get me to call you, I will come there and stuff that phone up your scrawny little ass!”
The geek put his hand over the phone, giving me a grin and a shrug. “She loves me,” he mouthed. “No, my sweet Ukrainian blossom, this is actually an alert requested by one Jesse Dawson, currently occupying my ottoman. Would you like to speak to him?”
Though she didn’t say yes, he pushed the phone in my direction. I rolled my eyes and flipped the speaker off. Raising it to my ear, I caught the tail end of a mutter that sounded like, “I don’t have enough vodka to be awake this early.”
“Sveta?”
There was a bit of startled silence at the other end of the line. Then she said, “Oh! You really are there. I thought Viljo was making lines at me again.” Her accent, so similar to Ivan’s thick Ukrainian, made me smile. Man, I hoped we’d gotten to everyone in time. Ivan was getting on in years, and if a demon managed to ambush him somehow . . .
“No, it’s really me. Are you all right? Have you noticed anything strange?”
“Mmph.” That was the sound of someone struggling with a pillow. I made that same noise often. “Stranger than Viljo?”
“You haven’t been contacted for a contract? No strange creatures lurking?” What else might they do, what else? “No strange men following you?”
She was quiet for a moment. “You know . . . there was a man yesterday. I saw him several times throughout the day, but he seemed to be traveling with a tourist group and I thought on it no more.”
“What did he look like?”
Her patience was getting thin. I had to wonder what time it was, wherever she was. “I don’t know. Like a man. He had dark hair and nice buttocks.”
Ew. “Could he have been a priest?”
“How am I supposed to know this? He had no collar, no . . . what is the word? . . . cassock.”
She had a point. I felt stupid. “All right. Well, if you see him again today, go up and talk to him. Find out if he is one of the Order, and if he is, stick close to him. I don’t think he’ll object.”
Sveta yawned hugely, right in my ear. “As entertaining as seducing a priest might sound, is there a particular reason?” She was already drifting back to sleep, I could tell.
So I explained things to her. In graphic, smelly, oozy, Catholic-y intrigue-y detail. By the end, she was listening intently, and Viljo looked like he might puke. “If they’re coming for you too, you have to be ready.”
“Tak. You are right. Thank you for the warning, Jesse Dawson.”
“Take care, Sveta.”
Viljo was already back on the computers, fingers flying over multiple keyboards, so I just set his phone down beside him. It rang almost immediately (a normal ring, I noted, not the special one he obviously had for Sveta), and he snatched it up without looking. “Chen.”
What followed was a rapid exchange in Chinese that totally flew over my head. Who knew the little geek spoke Chinese? I should have known, though. I mean, Viljo was GMontag, who took down the Great Firewall of China for three months, once.
I guessed Viljo was talking to Chen Li Zhao, a Chinese-born champion who typically worked his own large corner of the world. Whatever they were saying, the hyperactive geek was dead serious this time, relaying information back and forth with brisk efficiency.
As he spoke on the phone, several windows popped up on his screen, other champions logging in to Grapevine in response to his urgent text messages. Window after window after window, and Viljo’s phone kept ringing. God, how many were there? Way more than the ten or so I thought we had left. There were people on those screens I’d never seen before, faces that were totally foreign to me. Viljo knew them all, though, and I made a mental note to ask him what the hell was up with that later.
Twice, I caught a glimpse of people I recognized. Avery on one screen, in San Francisco, and another man I thought might have been Colin somebody from London.
Part of me hoped that I’d see Estéban’s face pop up, that I could find out where Mira was, make sure my family was safe. It didn’t, and even when I went out to the Suburban to get Cole’s phone, I had no luck locating anyone. As far as I knew, Kansas City had dropped off the face of the planet.
I found Cameron’s phone number on Cole’s contact list, too (because that’s how anal my little brother is), but I got nowhere with it, either. Figured. The Goody Two-shoes actually turned his phone off in the hospital.
As more and more people checked in (And why didn’t I know about this? Were we all kept in the dark this way?), Viljo became more and more absorbed in his duties, alternating between his phone and a dozen different Webcam windows on his many screens.
About the time I heard Ivan’s booming voice come through Viljo’s cell phone, I ducked out of the room, taking a short walk through the trailer to stretch my stiff muscles. Twitching one of the heavy curtains open a bit, I realized that it was getting dark outside already. I’d blown the five-hour time limit I’d given Cole, and he was going to be fretting. I’d done all I could here. I needed to get back to the guys.
“Hey, Viljo? I’m gonna take off, okay? Come lock up behind me.”
The geek emerged from his fortress of nerditude, nodding his agreement. “Ivan says you are ‘to beink careful.’ ” He mimicked the accent almost perfectly, if not the deep gravelly voice, and I chuckled.
“I’ll do my best.” I picked up my holy-loaded paintball gun, then had second thoughts and handed it to Viljo. He gave me a questioning look. “Blessed ammo. Just . . . in case. I noticed you don’t have wards on your doors.”
He blinked at me in nerd horror. “Do you know what that kind of spell does to sensitive server equipment?”
“Vil, I just watched you whack one with a wrench.”
“It was a highly specialized wrench.”
I showed him how to take the safety off the marker, and gave him a quick how-to in case a ball broke in the barrel. “It won’t kill most things, but it’ll make them think twice. I’ll be back to get this later, so don’t break it.”
He snorted, obviously offended by my doubts.
“Hey, Vil? Who were all those people?”
His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”
“All those champions. That’s way more than ten or twelve of us.”
The geek frowned and shook his head. “You talk to Ivan about that. He has given instructions.”
I didn’t like that answer, but knowing Viljo’s rabid devotion to our Ukrainian leader, I didn’t think I’d get any more out of him.
It was dark by the time I got on the road. I’d forgotten how far into autumn we really were. Gone were the nine p.m. sunsets, the long summer days. Winter was knocking on the door, and I had to scrape a little frost off the windshield before I could get going. I was so not dressed for an early cold snap.
Getting out of Viljo’s place was easy. Remembering which godforsaken back road led toward civilization, not so much. Twice, I got turned around in the dark, and had to backtrack, using the distant lights of Manitou Springs and the looming presence of Pikes Peak to guide me. And trust me when I say that turning a Suburban around on a narrow gravel road is not easy.
All the while, Cole’s phone sat silently on the seat beside me. I tried to mentally will it to ring, to vibrate, something. Surely, they’d contacted Mira by now. Maybe I was just out of the service area, or Cole forgot his own number. (Hey, it happens. How often do you dial your own phone?) Whatever the excuse, I was a good three hours from being able to find out if the dill-wads didn’t call!
This was how I felt last spring, I realized, and quite a few nights since then as I waited for some strange car behind me to run me off the road again. It was the feeling that something horrible was approaching, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, could only sit and wait for it to land on me
with both feet. Months ago, I was helpless to save Miguel and Guy. I was helpless now to produce Mira and her life-saving magic, helpless to reach out and protect the other people around the world who followed my same calling.
I hate being helpless. Even more than I hate zombies.
I won’t say that my mind was entirely on what I was doing (driving a two-and-a-half-ton death machine) and I was probably going too fast considering the road and the unfamiliar vehicle. But when I say that someone appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the road, I mean literally nowhere. Suddenly, there was a tall figure in my headlights, arm raised to shield his eyes from the glare.
In that frozen “oh shit!” split second, I saw the blond Mohawk, the glint of too much metal in his face, and I knew in some back corner of my brain that it was Axel. But that couldn’t stop my instinctive swerve, foot mashing hard on the brakes as the enormous truck pirouetted gracefully off the gravel road and into the ditch.
I came to a stop with a jarring metal crunch, establishing first that I didn’t seem to be injured, and second that the truck was still running with no noticeable noises of impending death. The third thing that I established was that when I got out of the truck, I was going to kill Axel.
18
“Jesus freakin’ Christ, Axel!” I hopped out of the truck, landing in ankle-deep, freezing muck, and slammed the door harder than I needed to in my frustration.
The demon appeared at the front of the vehicle and grimaced. “Again, can we not bring him into this?”
The left front fender was dented in, and I anxiously examined the truck for broken lights, happy when I found none. The fender damage was mostly cosmetic, and Marty could get it beat out in no time. That didn’t make the accident any better, really, but at least I hadn’t totaled someone else’s truck.
“Have you ever heard of the phone? Or like . . . a singing telegram or something?” The demon actually looked a bit abashed when I turned my furious glare on him. “You could have gotten someone killed!”
“I needed you to stop. There was no time for a polite request.”
I clambered out of the ditch, my feet making a nice “ssssshluck!” noise with every soggy step. As best I could tell in the dark, the rest of the Suburban seemed all right. “What’s the freakin’ emergency, then?”
“He’s after the boy.”
That made me stop, which was no doubt his intent. “The Yeti?”
The blond demon nodded. “At the hospital. If he touches the boy, it’s all over.”
“He’s . . . in public? In full view of—” Axel was already nodding emphatically. “Why the hell would he do something crazy like that?”
“Because he knows you. He knows you’ll do anything to protect that child.” Axel’s eyes glowed cherry red, beacons in the darkness. “He knows the only way for you to save the boy, from here, is to call him away. To call your challenge due.”
“The guys are there. Are they all right?”
Axel shrugged his lanky shoulders. “They were when I last saw them.” That wasn’t an answer. He’d been giving me a lot of nonanswers lately.
“You could be lying.”
“I could be. But think. Have I ever told you a lie? Even a little one?” He smirked and nodded toward the truck. “Try to call your friends. See if they’ll answer their telephones while they’re under attack.”
I advanced on him and poked my finger into his chest, mostly to see if Mira’s protective spells would trip. They didn’t. Again. “You’ve been pushing me around like a damn pawn for the last week, for whatever agenda it is that you have, and I’m getting pretty tired of it.”
He smiled at me, that slow sinister grin I was familiar with. This was an Axel I recognized. “Are you willing to let your friends die, the boy’s soul be ripped out, over a sense of moral outrage, Jesse?” He tsked softly at me and stepped away, putting distance between us as he moved down the gravel road. “There might be hope for you after all.”
“Does the Yeti have his little pets with him, attacking the hospital right out in the open?”
“Mmhmm. A few. He’s become very short on cannon fodder, thanks to you.” His boots crunched on the gravel, every step taking him farther and farther outside the reach of the truck’s headlights.
“And if I call him away, those things will go apeshit again, like earlier.”
“Mmhmm. But if you don’t call him away, little Zane will be one of them. I wonder if he’ll even realize when he’s ripped his own father’s throat out, eaten his tongue.”
“If I call him away, I want something from you in return.”
That made him pause, and he raised a pierced brow at me. “And what might that be?”
“Help them.” The Yeti had rightful claim on my soul at the moment. I couldn’t offer that to Axel and he couldn’t ask. What was the worst that could happen? The demon pursed his lips thoughtfully, eyes narrowing as he looked me up and down. “C’mon, man. Whatever little spat you’re having with your own kind, you’ve already picked a side by helping us earlier. Help them again.”
He made a great show of thinking it over, rocking his head from side to side, going through the hemming and hawing. Finally, he smirked. “All right. If you call your Yeti away, I’ll help them. But you will owe me a favor. Not your soul, I won’t even try that. But . . . something. Something I’ll ask for later.”
“Fine.” Part of me expected that deal to burn itself black into my skin, like the Yeti’s brand, but nothing happened. Maybe these ephemeral “rules” covered only set contracts, not vague favors.
“Decide quickly, Jesse. They don’t have much time.” He took two more steps backward, and the darkness swallowed him up. Sulfur wafted to me on the tiny breeze.
What else could I do but throw my head back and yell “FUCK!” at the empty night sky? Then I kicked one of the tires for good measure, mud splattering everywhere.
Well, I could try to get Cam—or anyone else for that matter—on the phone. Of course, every single number I tried went unanswered. It did occur to me at some point that Cole’s phone was one of those fancy ones that would let me look up things, so I found the number for the hospital in Fort Collins. And that one went unanswered too. I hung up when it hit fifteen rings.
As much as I hated to believe that Axel might be telling the truth (and trust me, I knew he was doing it only for his own benefit), I couldn’t think of any reason for a hospital phone to go unanswered, unless major shit was going down.
Sadly, I was in no shape to be fighting the Yeti. I had my sword in the truck, yes, but my armor was all the way back in Missouri. I threw open the back doors of the truck, pawing through what was left of my friends’ belongings. They’d taken their packs at the hospital, and with them they’d taken their paintball markers. No holy paint for me.
As a last resort, I patted my pockets down, wishing futilely for any of my little antidemon gadgets and doohickeys. I discovered something hard and flat in one pocket, and investigation revealed it to be a quarter. It tingled against my fingertips.
Great. One sword, and one holy quarter. This was my arsenal.
Second concern was location. Fighting in the middle of a blacked-out gravel back road was probably not the best idea. Not to mention that our terms said it had to be in the mountains. Immediately, my eyes lit on the peak, looming large over me. I grinned. Perfect. This time of year, any campgrounds would be deserted, and hopefully the park rangers would be long gone home for the night. If I was lucky.
With the judicious application of a crap load of gas and a colorful variety of curse words, the Suburban gave a lurch, a shudder, and then it was free of the muddy ditch, albeit quite a bit dirtier. I drove back toward the lights of the city until I found the first sign that pointed toward Pikes Peak, and I took that turn. Whaddya know, Marty’s truck will squall tires. Probably shouldn’t mention that to him.
I’d never actually been to Pikes Peak before this, but I knew you had to buy passes in order to drive up the mountain. A
nd where there are passes required, there are gates. And where there are gates after closing time, there are gate crashers. Guess what I was.
I don’t know if there was supposed to be some kind of barrier across the drive or what, but there wasn’t. There was a light on in the little guard shack, but I didn’t see anyone sitting in it as I blew right past it. I did hope briefly that: one, no one tried to chase me up the mountain, and two, that I didn’t get anyone in trouble for not being at their post.
According to the posted signs, it was at least an hour drive to reach the tippity top of the mountain. The guys didn’t have an hour. I’d have to make my stand somewhere lower down, preferably somewhere I could find cover, use the terrain to my advantage.
The road wound upward in sharp turns that seemed more about inconvenience than actual necessity. There were no guardrails on the serpentine highway, and I took the corners at unsafe speeds, straying dangerously close to the edge of the pavement. Each turn made my head swim, my damaged ears contributing a mild case of vertigo to all the other crap I had to deal with. The Suburban cornered like a brick, and my arms ached with fighting it, despite the power steering. No wonder the drive up took so freakin’ long.
How long did I have? How much time had passed since Axel dropped his bombshell? Was I far enough up the mountain for it to count? Would Axel hold up his end of the bargain?
The tall trees that lined the road hid the top of the peak from view, and I kept my eyes open for anywhere I could pull off the road. Big trees were good; they gave me something to put my back against. Not to mention that they’d help hide the truck in case the absent guard actually saw me speed through.
When I spotted the roadside sign that jokingly indicated a Bigfoot crossing, I figured that was omen enough. Bigfoot, Yeti, same diff, right? I swerved the truck off the road, feeling the damp soil give under the heavy vehicle, and hoped vaguely that I’d be able to get the truck unstuck later. If I was alive to get it unstuck. I hopped out of the truck and didn’t even stop to strap my sword on, just carrying the scabbard in one hand.
A Shot in the Dark Page 21
