A Devil in the Details

by K. A. Stewart

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  BUYER’S REMORSE

  With a heavy heart, I called the number he’d given me. He answered on the first ring. “Mr. Kidd? I am listening,” I said.

  “Oh, I . . . um . . . Well, I have a bit of a problem, and I was told you were an expert in such matters.”

  I had to laugh. The human penchant for understatement never fails to amuse me. “No, sir, you do not have a ‘bit of a problem.’ You made a pact with demonic forces. You sold your soul to the devil, and now you want me to get it back. This qualifies as a huge problem.”

  It always takes people a moment to recover when I put things so plainly, and in the silence I added, “I will meet you at the Chino’s across the street from your hotel. You have one hour to convince me.”

  ROC

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  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First printing, July 2010

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18852-1

  Copyright © K. A. Stewart, 2010

  All rights reserved

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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  To Aislynn, for being;

  to Scott, for believing;

  and to Janet, for doing the hard stuff

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my agent, Chris Lotts, for fishing me out of the slush. To my editor extraordinaire, Anne Sowards. To my beta slaves: Janet Yantes, Geoff Glover, Jesse Philips, Lori Diederich, Jessica Vaughn, Jenn Wolfe, and Will Sisco. To Auggy, for being beta, webmaster, and pet code monkey all in one. To Dr. Gita Bransteitter for being my part-time medical consultant and my full-time best friend. To the Rogue’s Row at the back of the Metro bus, for always making me laugh. To Zak, Beth, and Badger of Badger Blades (www.badgerblades.com) for making Jesse’s swords a reality. To the AW Purgatorians for commiserating when I was down and for kicking my butt to get me back up again. To Aislynn, who keeps insisting my books need more dragons. And to Scott, without whom there would be no Jesse Dawson at all.

  1

  There’s a certain sound the human head makes when it hits the trunk of a tree. Meatier than a “crack”; not quite as hollow as a “thunk”—it’s unmistakable. And when it’s my head, I tend to take offense.

  I leaned against said tree and glared at my opponent until my double vision returned to single and the world swam back into focus. “That one’s gonna cost you, Crabby.” If looks could kill . . . well, first off, my life would be a lot easier.

  On the other side of the clearing, what looked to be a mutant crab-scorpion crossbreed rattled and hissed at me in annoyance as it tried to wipe the thrown dirt out of its stalky eyes. The silver light gleamed off its knobby black shell, giving it a metallic sheen. Its right pincer, large enough to neatly sever my thigh, clicked and clacked loudly. A drop of venom hovered at the tip of its thick segmented tail, the dangerous appendage arching high over its back and weaving like a snake in thrall.

  Taking a deep breath, I tossed my thick braid back over my shoulder, out of reach of grasping nasty things, and adjusted my grip on my sword. My breath and the cold night air combined to create frost in my beard, and I wiped it away with my free hand, flinging aside the pellets of ice. The crab creature got its vision cleared and gave a threatening stab of its tail in my direction.

  Now, I’m a believer in the power of positive thinking, but do you ever just have a sneaking suspicion you’re not winning?

  The distant whump-whump-whump of a helicopter broke the silence as it patrolled the camp’s perimeter and kept the paparazzi and innocent bystanders at bay. Any sane person or animal had long since fled the chill and the noise, which left just me and my definitely questionable grip on reality. The full moon was up in the sky somewhere, casting the world in blue-white serenity, while down here under the tree canopy I did the tango with . . . that.

  What I had here was a class-two Scuttle demon, the category so named (by me) for the way they . . . well . . . scuttled. Only one rung up from primordial ooze on the demonic ladder, most times they were easily confused and taunted into carelessness. None of them would ever be a candidate for Mensa.

  Lack of intelligence didn’t mean lack of speed, however, or lack of armor. I was having a helluva time getting past that thick carapace. My blade already held quite a few nasty nicks from the attempts. Marty was going to kill me for hurting one of his precious swords.

  Still, the crab-demon had a few wounds. Intangible dark energy, which passed for blood amongst demonkind, slithered across the forest floor with eerie sentience, coalescing into a ball of black nothingness behind the creature. I’d heard that essence called void-blood, nethe
r-essence, or some other poetic-sounding crap. To me, it was just blight, and it would suck the life out of whatever it touched.

  I gave the demon the universal “Come get some” gesture and pushed off the tree to resume a fighting stance. The crab scuttled left, testing me, and I carefully placed my feet on the uneven terrain as I shifted right. It was impossible to feel my way through the thick soles of my boots, and I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off the demon. My armor jingled faintly, sounding like macabre sleigh bells, and the crab hissed and snapped its pincers in return. Not for the first time, I questioned the wisdom of wearing only chain mail and leather for protection. I’d found that I simply could not move well enough if I added plates to it, but was mobility worth it if I couldn’t stop a crushing blow?

  Lightning quick, the demon charged, spiny feet carrying it across the clearing in an explosive crackle of dead pine needles. At the last second, I calmly side-stepped right, avoiding the massive claw and dodging the poisonous stinger, bringing my sword down at the juncture of one chitinous leg. The twiggy limb snapped with a gunshot report, and the crab- demon screamed in inhuman outrage. The severed leg dissolved, and dark energy poured from the wound, billowing into the night air to join the rest that had escaped. Slowly it began to swirl, forming the beginnings of a portal.

  You don’t really kill demons. You can only wear them down until they lose the strength to hold on to this plane. Thanks to the crab’s armored form, the fight had already gone on longer than I would have liked, and the trick would be to see which one of us was going to tire first. Next time—if there was a next time—I hoped for a fluffy bunny demon, something pink and easily dispatched.

  I let my momentum carry me past and away like flowing water, again finding myself across the clearing. Now, I’m a fairly athletic man in the prime of my life, but we’d been at this for the better part of forty-five minutes, and the running back and forth all night was getting old. “Come on, Crabby. I’m too old to play tag.”

  The Scuttle demon limped in awkward circles for a moment, as if the now- missing leg had been the rudder keeping it on a straight path. Its eyestalks swiveled to keep me in sight, and it chittered something furious at me. I’d reduced it to babbling. It wasn’t even bothering to speak English in its fury.

  The next charge wasn’t quite so coordinated. Twice on that pass, my katana glanced harmlessly off the black shell with a jarring clang. I felt it all the way to my shoulders. As I moved to spin away from the tail again, the demon whirled and slammed that massive pincer into my left hip. I went tumbling head over heels into the leafy forest litter, barely managing to keep my sword. The pungent smell of crushed pine needles filled the air.

  It wasn’t broken. Broken hips happen to old people, not to strapping young men of thirty . . . -ish. But it was going to bruise, and I could feel links of chain digging through my jeans and into my skin where the padding beneath gaped. I didn’t have time to ponder the state of my armor or the severity of my injury. I didn’t even have time to get up off the ground.

  Crabby barreled over me, screeching at the top of its . . . lungs? There was no strategy to its attack. It had succumbed to rage, flailing wildly as it tried to stampede me. I could only curl up and try to protect my poor head. Even so, my braid caught on a spur of carapace, wrenching my neck despite my efforts. I aimed a kick at one leg, trying to make it list harder to port. In retaliation, one of those spiny appendages speared straight through my right calf like a shish kebab. I’m not ashamed to admit I screamed. The crab howled, too, triumphant.

  Funny how you can notice key things when you’re about to be skewered by a tap-dancing crab-demon—important things, such as how soft and squishy the underside of the thing looked. Its belly was silvery gray, and pulsated with every grotesque movement. In fact, it looked rather like the raw oysters I’d eaten at a black-tie gathering a few years ago. Yeah, I wouldn’t be eating those again.

  I consider myself a philosopher, an educated man. But there are times when learning and culture are simply not applicable. And should you ever find yourself being trampled by a demonic crustacean, when in doubt, stab the squishy spot.

  Apparently, Crabby didn’t have eyes on its underside, because it was having a hard time finding me, all tangled up under its legs. And while I was safe from the stinging tail, I was still in real danger of being bludgeoned into mush. A joint cracked against my head as I tried to squirm enough to reach my boot, and colorful streamers darted past my eyes for a moment. My katana was all but useless in close quarters. This is why I carry a plain old skinning knife in my right boot. It may not be pretty; it may not be elegant; but the pointy end goes into the other guy, and that is all I need.

  With both hands, I slammed the blade in up to the hilt, then did a little jerk and wiggle for good measure. Instead of oozing, wriggling innards, blight poured out over my hands, which instantly went numb clear to the elbow. I lost my grip on my knife in the frantic roll to keep the void energy from touching my face and chest. Deep in some primitive, instinctive place, I knew that stuff would kill me if I let it wash over me, and no amount of training can erase the first primal imperative to survive.

  The crab-demon shrieked and spasmed above me, losing all interest in pursuing an attack. Staggering first one way, then another, it jibbered and chattered in some pitch approaching supersonic. There was no mistaking the sound of abject terror, even in some language I would never understand.

  It occurred to me, perhaps a bit late, that being under the thing in its death throes was not wise. I took the easy exit on hands and knees, out through the hole left by the missing leg, not too proud to scuttle myself when the situation called for it.

  The blackness beneath billowed up, a dark fog that flowed over the forest floor to join the rest, the portal growing larger, more defined. The crab-demon continued to shriek and twitch even as I watched its own black carapace collapse inward with a sickening crunch, its will draining away with its strength. First the spiny legs dissolved and flowed away, and then the shell, inch by inch. The tail stabbed at nothing in the leaves, one last reflexive effort to save itself. The creature’s voice dwindled into a pathetic wail, then into nothingness. The last to go was the giant pincer, clacking to the end, and it finally poofed into an ominous black cloud and flowed into the gaping hole in reality.

  The portal itself was a dark mirror, three feet off the ground, as big around as a fifty-gallon drum. It shimmered briefly, the surface going from black to silver to clear in a matter of heartbeats. A faint odor of sulfur tainted the crisp night air, and just out of my range of hearing, something screamed, high enough to make my teeth ache. As always, I tried to get a glimpse through that portal, to see what lay behind. I got no more than a sense of immense heat and terrible soul-killing dread before it vanished with a faint blip and the vague tingle of static electricity. Oh well. I’m probably better off not knowing, anyway—curiosity and the cat and all that.

  The only thing left in the battle’s wake was silence. In the distance, some brave night bird sent out a questioning chirp. The breeze was cold enough to sting as I gulped air, trying to will my pulse to slow, to keep my blood from pumping out and down my leg.

  You never realize how hurt you are until the adrenaline starts to fade. I flexed my hands until the feeling returned to them. My bruised hip screamed with every beat of my heart and, oddly, hurt worse than the pierced calf. Of course, that could also have been the blood loss talking.

  I limped across the clearing to pick up my knife. Though it looked clean, I wiped it on some dead leaves and sheathed it in my boot. That put me close enough to examine my calf. I was pretty sure I could poke my finger through the hole and wiggle it on the other side. I didn’t. Even my stomach wasn’t that strong. I needed bandages and something to stop the bleeding. Beneath the copper scent of my own blood, there was something else, an odd chemical odor. I didn’t know what it was, but it couldn’t bode well.

  My body moved on autopilot, bending to collect my katan
a. I cleaned it as well, though the blade was likewise spotless. There were three new nicks in the edge. Marty was going to have purple kittens when he saw it. You wouldn’t expect a blacksmith to be so damn touchy. I forced myself to stand upright, centering my body a moment before sliding the sword into its scabbard.

  Only then did my gaze go to the three men waiting in the tree line. The two on either side, in their identical black suits and earpieces, tensed as I hobbled my way toward them. I couldn’t fault them for that. It was their job. But the part of me that loved inappropriate humor wanted to giggle. Big bad men in black, scared of a scrawny, beat-to-shit samurai. I had to give the guys credit, though. They’d just seen things that weren’t supposed to exist, and it hadn’t even fazed them.

  It was the man in the middle I focused on. He had salted hair, the lines of many cares on his face, and a suit that probably cost the taxpayers a pretty chunk of change. He pushed his left sleeve up and stared in unabashed amazement at the unblemished skin on his inner forearm. I thought I even saw him blink tears from his bleary eyes. Finally, he shook himself, reached into the breast pocket of his tailored suit, and produced a long envelope.

  I snatched it with no remorse whatsoever. The medical bills on this one were going to be a bitch, and he could more than afford it. “Thank you, Mr. President. Your soul is your own again. Try to take better care of it this time.” My right foot was overly warm. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew my blood was pooling in my boot. I didn’t have time for pleasantries.

  “Thank you, Mr. Dawson, for . . . Well, thank you.”

  “Here.” I produced a card from inside one of my leather bracers, trying not to smear blood on it. It’s a simple card. I print them myself—just white card stock and black letters, JESSE DAWSON, CHAMPION, and a private cell phone number. “If you ever find anyone else in your situation, you can tell them I might be able to help them. Make sure they mention your name.”