A Devil in the Details

by K. A. Stewart

  He grumbled under his breath and tossed a jingling duffel bag at me. It hit me in the chest hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. “The chain was easy enough to fix. There’s a set of new leg guards in there, too. Trying to see if I can get the plates whittled down enough to be useful.”

  I glanced into the bag long enough to be certain he hadn’t affixed metal plating to the rest of my armor. “I can’t move in that stuff, man. Binds me all up.”

  “Just try it out, okay? If it works, you won’t have this problem with stabbing wounds anymore.”

  He had a point. Chain just wasn’t meant to stop a piercing blow. That I’d survived this long was either a testament to my skill, or my pure dumb luck. I wasn’t sure which.

  Five swords of various styles rested in the rack on the back wall. I eyed a rather vicious-looking kopesh while Marty retrieved my katana. He brought it to me for examination, drawing it from its bamboo sheath with the same reverence I showed it.

  Marty worked with 1075 high- carbon spring steel. The swords had full tangs and guards and pommels of either solid bronze or steel. With proper leverage I could bend a sword nearly in half, only to watch it snap back to perfect form every time. I’d seen him knock chunks out of his own anvil with a blade and never mar the finish on the sword. He took pride in his weapons.

  “There were some bad nicks, but I got them worked out. I’m gonna start on a new one for you. Not sure how much more this one’s gonna take. She’s had a hard life.”

  Boy, didn’t I know it. “How about that kopesh there?”

  Marty snorted at me. “You couldn’t handle that one. Stick with the katana.” He perched himself on his worktable and picked up his twelve-string guitar, his burn-calloused fingers moving over the frets absently. It’s what he does when he’s annoyed. When he’s actually playing, he’s damn good.

  He was right, of course, about the kopesh. I didn’t know the first thing about fighting with one of the wickedly curved blades. Still, I could add that to my list of things I’d like to learn someday. “What do I owe you?”

  He strummed a few bars of “Stairway to Heaven,” and I threw a greasy rag at him in retaliation. No self-respecting guitar player plays that song. “I had all the stuff already. You buy the beer next Sunday.”

  “Done.” The beer deal was the ultimate bargain between men. Marty puttered around the shop, bedding the place down for the day, and I leaned against the fridge. “Hey, what’d you get your mom for her last birthday?”

  He glanced at me quizzically. “We all went in on a new flat-screen TV for her and Dad. Why?” Damn him. Marty-of-the-six-brothers—he could afford to do something like that.

  “Having a barbecue for Mom’s birthday on Saturday, and I still don’t know what to get her.”

  He whistled lowly. “Damn, man. You’d better get on it.”

  Thanking him most profusely for his jewel of wisdom, I took my leave (paying my respects to Duke, too). I tossed the duffel bag into the back of my truck with a jingling thump and laid my sword nicely on the passenger seat. The sword got buckled in, even. Always show respect to your weapon.

  I tucked my earpiece into my ear and speed-dialed my little brother as I pulled back out into traffic. It rang three times before he answered.

  “Cole Dawson.”

  “Hey, little brother.” Yes, my brother’s name is Cole Younger Dawson. Mine is Jesse James Dawson. My father had an outlaw obsession, and for some unfathomable reason, my mother didn’t veto his name choices. Don’t call me JJ. Only one person gets to call me JJ, and you look nothing like my ninety-six-year-old grand-mother.

  “Hey, big brother. What’s going on?” I could hear a police radio squawking in the background. He was obviously working.

  “Calling to touch base with you about Saturday. You coming?”

  “Yup, got the day off work. Steph and I are bringing Nicky and some pasta salad thingy.”

  “Cool, cool . . .” That would make Annabelle happy. She adored her cousin Nicky. “So . . . what are you getting Mom?” There was a long moment of silence that said so much. “Crap, you don’t have any ideas, either.”

  “Steph said she’d find something.” He sounded sheepish. I don’t think cops are supposed to sound sheepish.

  “Mira’s making me do it myself.”

  He snickered at me. “Well, if you’re lucky, that storm front they’re predicting will move in and we’ll have to cancel. Give you more time to shop.”

  “Are you kidding? Mom’ll have us out in the yard with umbrellas to protect the grill and the cake.”

  His radio blared an unintelligible message, demanding his attention. “I gotta go, big brother. See you Saturday.”

  “See ya.” I sighed and hung up. Dammit! And I’d forgotten to tell him about the belligerent tailgater from last night. Crap crap crap. Oh well, it’d wait another day.

  I missed Cole.

  Outwardly, my brother and I were a study in opposites. Sure, we both topped six feet tall, but where I was skinny to the point of scrawny, Cole had more bulk, earned on the police gym’s weight benches. Instead of my blond, Cole’s hair was chestnut brown with a hint of curl if he didn’t keep it cropped short. We shared the same sharp nose and blue eyes, but Cole’s eyes always seemed to fade more toward gray.

  Aside from the few incidents as boys where we’d wholeheartedly tried to kill each other, we’d been close. Cole even credited his career in law enforcement to my brief stint with lawlessness. Even as adults, after we’d gone our separate ways, hardly a day went by that we didn’t talk, and we always kept up our good-natured competition. I got the first college education, but he landed the reputable career. I bought the first house; he bought a bigger one. He married first, but I had the first kid—that sort of thing.

  Things changed, after Nicky came.

  Even at barely five years old, my nephew was probably the strongest person I’d ever known. That child had been through more pain and suffering in his short life than any person should have to see in ten lifetimes. I’m not sure the doctors know everything that’s wrong with him yet.

  He was six months old when they nearly lost him. I can’t count how many nights Mira spent holding Stephanie’s hand at the hospital. Twice, the priest was called, and even Mira gave her own form of last rites. It wasn’t a matter of if; it was a matter of when.

  That’s when Cole made his deal. I couldn’t tell you how the demon found him, but I’m willing to bet they haunt hospitals, places where people are at their most desperate. Looking back, I’ve always tried to figure out whether I realized Cole was gone extra long that night? If I’d gone to find him, could I have stopped it all? But I didn’t, and it was done.

  Within hours, Nicky’s vitals had stabilized. They took him off the machines. He smiled for the first time. We were so happy with his miraculous recovery, it never occurred to anyone to ask how. Back then, who knew to be suspicious of unexpected good fortune?

  I still remembered Cole coming to me one sunny summer day at Mom’s. Nicky and Anna were just crawling, and content to play in the dirt. Dad and Mom were fussing over the placement of the checkered tablecloth, while Mira and Steph just set the table without waiting for the discussion to be resolved.

  “Jesse?” That’s what got my attention. He never called me by name. I examined his face closely and saw something dark in his eyes, something terrifying. He looked scared. My brother-the-cop was never scared, even when he ought to be. “I think I did something really bad.”

  He showed me the writhing brand on his left arm, the sigil that marked his soul as someone else’s property. He introduced me to a world of demons and nightmares I hadn’t even known existed. And he asked me if I knew any way out.

  Now, realize that my wife is a witch, as in Wiccan. But her magical abilities are something separate and apart from her religion, and at that time, I had no idea this stuff existed. I accused Cole of getting drunk and tattooed. I laughed in his face. It took some time to convince me he was r
eally in trouble. After that, though, it was on.

  I mean, what was I supposed to do? He was my little brother, and he was in deep. He explained to me about the contract, what the tattoo meant. And it stood to reason that a demon that would make one deal would make another. In the movies, people made challenges with the devil all the time, right? Golden fiddles and shit. I didn’t know all the rules, but I knew how to fight. It’s one of the few things I’ve ever been good at. And I knew that turning a blind eye was worse than anything else.

  I fought for his soul. I fully admit that I won only through sheer luck. It should have made us closer, surviving something like that. Instead, we drifted apart.

  Maybe he knew I always harbored a faint disappointment in him. Maybe he couldn’t handle my knowing his dirty secret. Maybe he just hated himself for not making a better deal when he had the chance. He’d bargained for Nicky to live, that one time, not for his continued good health. The demon got the better of Cole. Maybe it ate at him. I don’t know. Like I said, we don’t talk much anymore.

  I brooded on that way longer than I should have—most of the drive home, in fact. We’ll pretend that’s why I didn’t notice the blue Ford Escort in more than a passing way until I was nearly home.

  In all fairness to me, though, I had no reason to notice it. I mean, it’s an Escort, right? The most innocuous car known to man. It wasn’t driving erratically; it wasn’t even that close to my truck. It was there, three cars back, the driver no doubt minding his own business and thinking things such as “Man, my hemorrhoids hurt.” If not for the incident the previous night and the sudden feeling of ants crawling all over my arms (never a good sign), I never would have noticed it at all.

  But once I’d made four different turns, and it was still back there, I started paying more attention. What were the odds that a blue Escort tried to run me off the road the night before, and now one had just showed up behind me again?

  On a hunch, I took a random right turn, just to see what would happen. Not thirty seconds later, the plucky little car followed right behind me. “Okay, buddy . . . Let’s see how serious you are about this.” I sped up, soon doing forty through the residential neighborhood.

  The Escort kept up, never farther than three blocks behind me. To my frustration, I couldn’t make out any features of the driver. The sunlight bounced off the windshield, the glare blinding me. I took another right down a shade-dappled side street, hoping to get a better look, and screeched to a halt in the middle of the street.

  The car pulled up at the end of the block and sat there for several long moments. I watched it in my rearview mirror, almost feeling the gaze of the silhouetted driver staring back. I was almost certain it was a guy. The hair was either close-cropped or slicked down, shoulders decently broad. I could hear the whine of a belt under the hood, and I filed that away as an identifying mark.

  I don’t know how long we stared at each other like that. It seemed like forever. Then the Escort floored it and squalled tires in the other direction.

  “Oh, you think so?” I did an ugly U-turn myself, running up over someone’s nicely manicured lawn, and was off in hot pursuit. The bastard wasn’t man enough to face me directly, was he? It should be noted that this ranked pretty high on my “stupid me” tricks list.

  I caught a glimpse of the car as it left the subdivision and headed east. Toward the highway. If I didn’t catch up to him before he hit I-35, I’d lose him in the traffic. I shifted through gears as fast as I could, rounding corners at highly unsafe speeds. Where the tiny residential street met a four- lane thoroughfare, I lost sight of the blue car for just a moment.

  Cussing under my breath, I glanced up and down, trying to guess which way he’d gone. The highway was to the left, but he could lose himself in more housing additions if he went right.

  The sound of a squealing belt carried to me through the open window, and I smirked. Gotcha. Stomping on the gas, I turned left. I lost the belt whine in the roar of my own engine, but I knew he had to be just ahead of me. I topped a small rise, fully expecting to see the blue car just ahead of me, and fumed when it wasn’t. Where the hell . . . ?

  There was nothing there but a pale yellow VW bug, its engine wailing plaintively as it trundled over the next hill. “Dammit!” I glanced behind me, on the off chance that a blue Ford Escort would materialize on command, but there was nothing.

  My gaze returned to the front just in time to keep me from annihilating a small ratlike dog as it ran into the street yapping at my wheels. I slammed on the brakes, and rested my head against the steering wheel until my heart stopped marching double-time in my chest.

  Well, that rather eliminated any chance of last night being a random act of drunken stupidity. In a way, I was relieved. I mean, for whatever reason, someone was rather annoyed with me. But at least that meant there wasn’t some maniac on the road, running hapless people into ditches. Mira was safe; the girls at work were safe. The question was, should I report it or not? I mean, if this was work related—champion work, not retail work—what would I say?

  I concocted and discarded at least twenty different stories on the way home, and none of them were even remotely plausible. By default, I guess I would just keep it to myself—no use upsetting Mira.

  My power steering whined as I pulled into my garage, mocking me and almost muffling the ring of my cell phone. “Hello?”

  “Dawson.” Ivan sounded as if he’d been gargling gravel. “It is being morning there, tak? I am not to be waking you?”

  “No, no, I’m up. What’s going on?”

  I could almost hear him shaking his grizzled white head. “It is being muchly difficult here. And I am thinking that the news will not be good.”

  8

  I rummaged through the kitchen to fix myself some kind of sustenance as Ivan talked. Surely any and all paranoia I was experiencing was a result of hunger. That was the ticket.

  The leftovers were piled neatly in the fridge, dated and color coded. My wife is sometimes a bit anal, but I love her anyway.

  “Miguel was to be entertaining a client three weeks ago. He was to be meeting them when he traveled north to visit family. A town called Mascareña. He was to be telling Rosaline this, but he was not speaking the name.” Ivan’s voice grumbled in my ear, sounding rather like a great disgruntled bear.

  I didn’t find Miguel’s actions unusual. I don’t tell Mira whom I work for, either, most of the time. I operate under the assumption that she’s safer not knowing. “He didn’t tell his brothers or anything? Not even where he was going?”

  Ivan has a powerful frown. I could hear it over the phone, could picture the deeply creased forehead beneath his stark white crew cut. “There is to being some language difficulty here, but, I believe the brothers are not to be knowing. The family in the north; they are being afraid to speak, even to Miguel’s family. It is possible they are not to be understanding that I mean no harm. I am told I am to being intimidating.”

  He was probably right. No one would ever mistake Ivan for anything other than military or law enforcement, and neither was popular in Mexico, especially near the border. Add to that his horrible English and their native Spanish, and it gave a whole new meaning to “language barrier.” “Look, I have a client in town myself, but once I’ve settled him, Mira and I can fly down. She can translate for you.” Mira was amazing with languages, and Spanish was just one of several she spoke fluently.

  “That is not being necessary. We are to be making do with what we have. The family is to being most hospitable to me.”

  Of course they were. Miguel’s mother often reminded me of my own. Every woman was her daughter and every man was her son, even if they already had white hair and wrinkles when she met them. No doubt, Ivan was finding himself mothered to death by the feisty Mexican widow.

  “Well, is there anything we can do?” I pinned the phone against my shoulder so I could slap a few slices of leftover pork roast on some bread—good stuff.

  He sighed heav
ily. While I joked about Ivan’s being the old man, it occurred to me for the first time that he truly was getting old. He’d been battling demons longer than I’d been alive. No other champion had as many kills to his credit as Ivan. “His—what is word?—his weapon is not to being returned. I am to be worrying much about this.”

  “He uses a machete,” I supplied absently. Not returning a weapon was against the rules.

  I’ve never seen a losing battle, but from what I hear, demons don’t leave bodies lying around. One of the first things Ivan taught us to negotiate was for some proof of death to be delivered. A head or hand is a bit macabre, so we usually opted for our weapon to be presented to the person of our choice. Beats a singing telegram.

  “Miguel wouldn’t have forgotten that clause. He’s been at this longer than I have.” Ten years longer, for all that Miguel was seven years my junior. It was a family matter, with him, handed down through the generations. He’d lost his father and one older brother to it already.

  “Tak, I am to be knowing this. But it is not to be found all the same.”

  “Is it possible he isn’t dead?” Mira’s scrying hadn’t been one hundred percent conclusive, though I’d never heard of a demon taking a hostage. They didn’t worry about our fleshly vessels, just the sweet goodies inside. Maybe souls really do taste like Peeps.

  “I am not knowing. I have never to be seeing this before.” He hesitated a moment before going on. “Dawson, being careful, tak? Some things are to being incorrect. I am not happy.”

  I wasn’t happy, either, for more reasons than I could count. “Yeah, I’ll be careful. You know me.”

  “This is what is to be worrying me.”

  “You’re just a regular comedian aren’t you?” I had to smile, but I knew Ivan wasn’t joking. I wasn’t entirely sure he knew how.