A Devil in the Details

by K. A. Stewart

  “Dawson. Good morning.”

  I winced and held the phone away from my ear. “Ivan?” With that thick Ukrainian accent and booming baritone voice, it couldn’t be anyone else. I could barely make his words out over the unmistakable clamor of an airport in the background.

  “Tak. It is much good to be hearing your voice.” The man had been traveling in and out of the United States for the better part of thirty-five years, and his English was still horrible. I loved it.

  Out of habit, I checked my desk calendar. “I don’t have to check in for two more weeks, so to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Rosaline was to be calling me.” I frowned and had to wait for the next part of his statement for clarification. Okay, maybe the broken English wasn’t so much fun, sometimes.

  “And?”

  “And she is not to be hearing from Miguel for two weeks past.”

  Translation, for those who don’t speak “Ivan”: Rosaline had called, and she hadn’t heard from Miguel for two weeks. I frowned harder. Sure, the business takes us out of contact sometimes, but I have never failed to call my wife for two weeks straight. If I ever did, I’d never be able to come home again. She’d kill me.

  “Did he miss his check-in?”

  “Ni, not yet. But it is to being most unusual for him.” Ivan sounded worried. I think that bothered me more than anything. When the old man is worried, deep shit is going down.

  “And his weapon wasn’t delivered to you?”

  “Ni. Have you to been speaking with him? Did you know of his most recent mission?”

  “I haven’t talked to him in a couple months. Rosaline doesn’t know where he was going last?”

  “I am to be flying into Mexico City later today. I will be finding out what I can.”

  “Yeah, Ivan, keep me posted. Let me know if there’s anything we can do from here.”

  “The phone lines there are not to being stable, and they are not to having a connection to the Internet. Perhaps I will to be having you relay messages to Grapevine, when I am able to be making contact?”

  “Yeah, I can do that. Hey, you be careful down there, okay?”

  “Tak, I will be doing that. May God be keeping you safe, Dawson.”

  After we hung up, I wondered if all these blessings were going to jinx me.

  We called ourselves champions. I didn’t choose the name; it had been that way longer than anyone could remember. We shared no race, no country, and our reasons were as varied as our backgrounds. Men—and women—like us had been fighting the good fight for millennia.

  Some were warrior-priests, tied to the church. Some were holy men, shamans who drew power from the land. We were mercenaries, and monks, and everything in between. We battled with blades and hammers, pipes and bats—whatever we had that we were comfortable with. Most—in fact all save me—also had that little something extra. Call it faith; call it voodoo—the religion doesn’t seem to matter. Hell, even the atheists of the group have it. There is magic in the world, and it gives a champion the ability to hold his own on a mystical level.

  Except me. I’m the mule of this circus. No wonder they keep expecting me to drop dead at any moment. I could feel magic. I know when it’s present. But trying to touch it myself is like grasping at smoke. It goes right through my fingers.

  I picked up the clear crystal from my desk, turning it over in my hand. It was small, a perfectly shaped quartz. It was marred by a single milky flaw in its depths.

  Ivan gave it to me years ago. He insisted my magic wasn’t gone, just dormant, and when I finally found a way to reach it, I would see some sign in the crystal. So far, it hadn’t even twitched. Day after day, it lay on my desk, flawed and inert—like me. Sorry, Ivan.

  Sometime before I became a champion, back when I was still chasing cheerleaders in high school and sneaking beers from my parents’ fridge, a champion named Ivan Zelenko decided he was tired of fighting that good fight alone. Using the technology that was still in its infant stages then, he set about finding all who had fought Hell’s minions and won.

  He found us through newspaper clippings, hospital records, village legends. I can only imagine what it was like for the first person he contacted, having this enormous stranger appear on his doorstep. I wonder, did he just come right out and say, “Excuse, please, you fight demons?” The thought always made me chuckle, but it was most likely the truth. Ivan wasn’t known for subtlety.

  He worked for years, doing research, traveling, gathering us all. He connected men and women from all over the world with others who understood the things we could never explain to those closest to us. With Ivan keeping track, never again would a champion’s death go unnoticed, his soul lost to the blackest abyss. Never again would one of us die unremarked and unknown, our deeds fading along with our memory. We were tagged and catalogued, like any other endangered species, our names and locations held in one secured database called Grapevine. When one of us disappeared now, at least someone would know.

  Ivan never talked about his life before being a champion, and you don’t really ask things like that. If I had to guess, I’d say he was military. The dramatic side of me says KGB, but there’s no way to know. I do know that he has survived longer than any currently living champion, with more kills under his belt than several of us put together. Now easily into his fifties (hey, I’m not asking him his age, but you can if you want), he doesn’t fight anymore. But he still watches after the rest of us, a combination of drill sergeant and father.

  My fingers traced the framed picture on my desk. Frost-haired Ivan stood on one side of a bride and groom, towering over them both, his shoulders as broad as two of me. Mira and I stood on the other side of the dark-haired, dark-skinned couple. Both were smiling at each other more than at the camera. The photographer had captured Rosaline’s wedding veil fluttering in the breeze, as if it might suddenly spring to life in the photograph. Miguel gazed down at his new wife, dark eyes glowing in that way unique to a man in love.

  “She is everything to me, Jesse. I could pass to Heaven happily, knowing I had been in her presence for only a few moments. To have her as my wife . . . God has blessed me.”

  At the time, I had chalked Miguel’s poetic sense up to a young man’s true love. But now something seemed darkly prophetic about those words, and they settled somewhere low and cold in my gut. It was the place where disaster lurked, where misfortune was quite comfy. Mira called it premonition, insisting that it was my one claim to magic. I called it common sense, and I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in a happy ending for this one.

  Leaving my den for the bedroom, I chose the day’s attire carefully, mindful that I was meeting a client. My blue jeans had no holes in them, and my black T-shirt said I’M A GEEK in big white lettering. The sleeves were short enough to show off the tattoos down both biceps, each one a string of kanji quoting the first two lines of the Tao Te Ching. “The Way that is spoken here is not the eternal Way. The name that is spoken here is not the eternal name.” The outfit was complete with the combat boots that had no visible bloodstains. Dress to impress; that’s my motto.

  Mira had managed to capture Hurricane Annabelle, and the redheaded imp was currently seated at the kitchen table with chocolate pudding smeared from ear to ear. “Daddy! Hugs!” Those fudgy fingers reached for me, and I had to laugh despite the pall that had descended over my day.

  “Not a chance, button. You’re a mess.” I did carefully lean down to kiss the top of her pigtailed head, though, then took a moment to wrap my arms around my wife and just hold her.

  She tucked her head neatly under my chin, proving yet again that we were perfectly matched in every way. Her hair smelled like strawberries.

  In the ten years I’d known her, she’d gone from a plucky, headstrong girl to the most elegant, graceful creature I had ever laid eyes on. Even after childbirth and eight years of marriage (which translates as eight years of putting up with my shit), she was not only beautiful in body, but in spirit. The me
re thought of being without her was enough to make my stomach clench painfully, and I squeezed her tighter.

  We stood for long moments in each other’s arms before she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  That’s why she’s so perfect. I don’t have to tell her; she just . . . knows. “Ivan called. Miguel is missing.”

  She leaned back so she could look up at me, her green eyes going dark with concern. “Oh goddess . . . Rosaline?”

  “Ivan’s on his way. He’ll call when there’s word.” I offered her my cell. “I know—normally I say don’t answer it, but . . . If it’s not Ivan, just tell them to call back tomorrow.”

  She frowned, eyeing the hated phone as if it might bite, but finally she nodded and tucked it into her hip pocket. “I’ll work a protection spell for both of them later. They gave permission.” My wife, the witch.

  I’d known she was Wiccan long before I had ever known about the reality of magic. At one time, her offering to cast a spell would have been the same as someone’s saying, “Good luck!”—well meant, but ultimately useless. It was only later, when I wound up in the middle of this mess, that I realized how powerful her spells could truly be. If I had no magic, Mira made up for it in spades. She believes that’s why we were drawn together; that we are stronger together than we are apart. I kinda like that idea.

  “You’re going out.”

  “Yeah. Just a meet and greet, I should be back later.” The look on her face made me pause. “What?”

  “It’s just . . . a little soon, isn’t it? It’s only been two months, and you were hurt so badly. . . .” She worried her lower lip between her teeth.

  “Hey, I’m fine! Bench-pressing cars and leaping over tall buildings, even.” I gave her what I thought was a rakish grin. “Besides, it’s just a meeting. I’m not going to whip out my sword and go to town right then and there.”

  Somehow, I don’t think she was convinced of my prowess. Still chewing her lip, she took a wet rag in hand and went to try and uncover my child from somewhere under an explosion of chocolate.

  We’d been over this before. I mean, Mira understands what I do, and she supports me. But I always worry that at some point, she is going to get tired of waiting for that phone call from Ivan, the one that says I’m not coming home. I guess I’m lucky she’s put up with me for this long.

  She finally sighed heavily, indicating that her internal conversation was over. “Well, don’t forget you have to work this afternoon. And you still have to get a present for your mother’s party on Saturday.”

  Crap. I eyed the schedule stuck to the fridge, and yes, she was right. Why do I even pretend to doubt her?

  My mother’s birthday party was the event of the year in my family; never mind Christmas or Thanksgiving. The reigning matriarch of the Dawson clan would be celebrated, and woe to he who thought otherwise. And trust me, I don’t care if Evelyn Dawson is only four foot eight; I’m scared of her and you should be, too. She’s a short firebrand of pride and old- fashioned Scottish temper. She raised my brother and me with an iron fist inside a satin glove, and to this day I hold the highest respect for all women because of it (’cause if I didn’t, she’d know, and she’d find me).

  “I’ll probably go to work straight from my meeting, then. I can go shopping after, and I’ll be home in time for dinner.”

  Mira snorted. “Sure you will. You just don’t want to be here to help me with the house cleansing.”

  Well . . . there was that, too. I grinned. “Sorry, honey, the life of a busy man and all.” If I missed the yearly smudging of the house with sage bundles, so much the better. I love my wife, and I respect her abilities and her religion. I just wish it didn’t involve so much smoke.

  I was getting into my truck when she poked her head through the kitchen door, Annabelle settled on one hip. “Jesse?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Be careful. Please?” Those lines of worry had formed around her eyes again. She didn’t have those four years ago—a lifetime ago.

  Normally, I’d have had some flip answer for her, but it occurred to some higher level of my brain that this might not be the right time. “I will, baby. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy!”

  She hit the garage opener for me, and I backed out into the noonday sun.

  Now, you have to understand that I have a very exclusive list of things I love in my life. Sure, I love my mom and dad, and my brother, yadda yadda. But topping the list were three things: my truck, my daughter, and my wife. Not necessarily in that order, but . . . I love my truck almost as much as I love my wife.

  It’s a steel gray ’94 Mazda B-4000. It leaks every fluid it has, the power steering has this horrible whine to it, and it hasn’t had air-conditioning for the last six years. But she’s paid for, and she’s never let me down. Every time Mira threatens to shoot her, I go out and buy her something pretty like seat covers or a new gear shift knob. The truck, not Mira. And there is a certain thrill to riding down the highway at “Drive it like it’s stolen” speed, hair blowing in the wind from the open windows. Man, I couldn’t wait for summer.

  The only thing that could dampen that bright thought was the lingering worry over Miguel. There are only a double handful of men (all right, and one woman) in the world who do what I do. And when one of us goes missing, it touches us all. I hoped Ivan was able to find something. If that old man came up empty-handed, there was nothing to be found.

  At the very least, he would be able to take care of Rosaline if the worst was true. Damn, they haven’t even been married a year yet. I’d had Mira and Anna long before I’d taken on this duty, but looking back, I don’t know that I would have married at all if I’d have known what was ahead.

  Maybe Miguel was just stuck somewhere without communications. Maybe he was even injured, but fine. Maybe . . . Maybe he was dead, and his soul was in Hell, being tortured by a whole slew of fiends he’d sent back there himself. The lead in my stomach told me just which of those options I truly believed.

  I didn’t want to think about what Hell was really like. I mean, sure, I tried to catch a glimpse now and then, but that was purely morbid curiosity. I suppose I believe we all have our own personal Hell, full of the things that frighten us the most. Mine, I’m sure, would force me to watch unspeakable things happen to my wife and daughter, over and over again, while I stood there helpless. And there would be zombies. I hate zombies. Yes, I know they’re fictional creatures, but so are demons, and we see how that holds true.

  Dammit, Miguel, what did you do? This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to him. Not with a new wife, and so many years ahead of him.

  Even driving, I can manage to meditate, and I took a few deep breaths to find my center. The cares of the world pass through me and around me. I am a willow in the wind. I bend and am not broken. Worry for Miguel would have to wait. I had a client to interview.

  From my house to the airport was only about a twenty-minute jaunt up the highway. Convenience was part of the reason I liked it here in Kansas City. It was urban enough to have all that culture and stuff that people think is so great, and still rural enough that people went out of their way to be courteous and help one another.

  And Kansas City, north of the muddy Missouri River, was booming. Sprawling housing developments and retail expansions blossomed on both sides of the six-lane I-29. I saw at least three new hotels, a couple large-scale hardware places, and countless restaurants where there had only been muddy lots a few months ago. Ooh, hey, they’re opening a new Hooters!

  Of course, to punish me for my impure thoughts, the powers that be chose to make me forget my exit was coming right up. I saw the sign about thirty yards too late. “Aw shit!”

  My poor truck lurched and groaned in protest as I downshifted faster than recommended and cut across two lanes of traffic. The rumble strip vibrated under my tires and horns blared around me, but I managed to swerve down the exit ramp in a feat of dexterity that impress
ed even me. “Crap! Sorry . . . sorry . . .” The driver behind me was not so impressed and gave me the finger. I waved an apology and kept my head down, hoping the red light didn’t catch me at the bottom of the ramp. I’d rather be safely away from the guy in the Volvo I almost ran over, thank you.

  Mira’s always lecturing me about road rage and how many crazy people there are in the world. Sadly, she’s right. You never know when that guy next to you just found out his wife is cheating on him with the pool boy, or maybe he just got Diet Coke instead of regular at the drive- through. You never know what’s going to make someone turn on a fellow human being. And as much as I love my truck, I didn’t think she’d stop a bullet.

  There are times (usually when I’m having trouble with my compassion for man) that I wonder why I bother helping people. Humans, as a group, aren’t known for their inherent goodness. We run the very large gamut from true evil to insignificant pettiness, but as a rule, we’re not a kind species.

  It is also possible that I am jaded by the population I deal with on a regular basis. I get to see the worst of them—the greedy ones, the vain ones, the ones who reached for just a little more and got their hand caught in the trap. Now, I’m not saying that no one has ever sold his soul for a good cause. But typically, I don’t get those folk knocking at my door. Sure, the ones I get are sorry for what they’ve done, regretful and contrite. But . . . Well, I don’t know about you, but I personally think there had to be something wrong with them to entertain the devil’s offer to begin with.

  So, why do it? Why put myself on the line for people I don’t know, and like even less? Because it needs to be done. It’s not even a choice for me. A samurai who turns his back on those in need is no better than any other common thug. He should protect the weak and advocate for good over evil. Shirking that duty would be a great act of dishonor. And that’s just not who I am.

  4

  The darkness inside Chino’s Sports Bar was an abrupt contrast to the blinding sunlight outside, and I had to blink my eyes for a few moments before they’d adjust. It was fairly busy, for the Monday lunch crowd. I’d counted on that. Businessmen in suits chatted and told dirty jokes over their on-the-company steak lunches. One group of construction workers was loudly cheering on an arena football game at the bar. Three tables in the back were taken up by off- duty security guards from the airport, killing time before or after a shift change. Quiet places are no good for private talks. You need noise to muffle the conversation.