A Devil in the Details jjd-1

by K. A. Stewart

  “Spilled milk. You’re worth it.” It zoomed up the back of the wrought-iron chair, tail flicking spastically.

  “First, they won’t accept my challenge if I don’t have a soul to offer. Second, you know I’m not going to take you up on it. Don’t you have something better to do than annoy me?”

  “Nope. You’re it. As long as I’m hounding you, I don’t have to do anything else.” I swear, the squirrel grinned. I didn’t even know squirrels had those muscles. “And I am, if nothing else, a being of leisure.”

  Now that Axel was off my water bottle, I retrieved it to take a long drink. “That’s the same as being lazy, right?”

  The squirrel pouted. “You are an uncultured cretin, you know that?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  Axel hopped to the top of the patio table. “It’s my move, right?”

  The top of the table was worked in a checkerboard pattern. I hadn’t picked it out on purpose, but it turned out to work quite nicely as a chessboard. The pieces were stone, heavy enough that a breeze wouldn’t knock them over. I’d been playing against Axel for a couple years now.

  He knew very well that it was his move. After a few moments of studying the board, he nosed a bishop forward a few spaces. “Your turn!”

  Damn. He’d put me on the defensive with that one move. I was going to lose this one if I didn’t start paying attention. “I’ll think about it.”

  Vicious barking broke out on the other side of my neighbor’s fence, and the possessed squirrel flinched. The thick boards shuddered as the mastiff on the far side tried to smash its way through to get at the demonic presence in my yard. “Tybalt, stop that! Get back over here! Sorry, Jesse!” my neighbor called over the fence.

  “S’okay, Ellen. Have a good day at work.”

  “Filthy smelly mongrel…” The squirrel’s eyes began to glow red again, and I thumped him on top of his furry little dome with one knuckle. Axel gave a very squirrelish yelp of pain, then zinged under the patio table to glare at me, rubbing his head.

  “Ahht! You know the rules, no touchy. You don’t want the dogs to chase you, quit possessing the local wildlife.”

  “I could always visit you in my true form. I could eat that dog’s heart and spread its entrails over their trees like garland. Think your neighbors would like that?” He was angry now; his tail was twitching all over the place. He really hated dogs. They felt the same about him.

  “I think if you don’t want me to have Mira ward the yard, you’ll behave.” After the talking cockroach incident, she put protective wards on the doors and windows. Axel hadn’t come anywhere near the house since.

  The squirrel burst into a stream of profanity in both English and Demonic, ran a couple laps around the patio, then fell over dead as the demon vacated its little body.

  “Dammit, Axel!”

  Just once, I’d like to start my morning without having to bury some furry corpse. I’m running out of places to stick them in the yard, and I secretly harbor the fear that they’re all going to get up some night and come knocking on the sliding glass door a la Pet Sematary. Like I said, I don’t do zombies.

  The neighbor’s dog fell silent the moment Axel disappeared, proving that the demon really had departed. I went in search of a shovel.

  We had a strange relationship, Axel and I. His job was to con me out of my soul, something he went about with the bare minimum effort. And my job… I liked to think it was to make his life even worse than Hell. We enjoyed baiting each other, playing the occasional game of chess. Sometimes, we even talked philosophy. I can’t even imagine how old he is, but it gives him an interesting perspective.

  His name isn’t really Axel, of course. It’s a “Sympathy for the Devil” reference, and he really didn’t strike me as a Jagger. I don’t know his real name. I never want to know.

  I didn’t know his true form, either. He was too intelligent to be a Scuttle or a Snot. The most Snots could manage was the occasional menacing belch. I was pretty sure he was a Skin; possibly even a Shirt. The beast and humanoid demons were equally nasty to deal with, for various reasons, but Axel could fit either profile.

  I’ve been told there is a fifth class of demon, above even the Shirts. Those would be the actual angels who fell from Heaven once upon a time. I don’t know anyone who has seen one. It may be our own champion version of an urban legend.

  This of course begs the question, do I believe it? Y’know, I can probably believe there’s a God out there-big G and everything. But why he’d want to take a close personal interest in this ant farm down here, I don’t know. There are demons, so I suppose at least at one time, there had to have been angels. But this is Missouri, the Show Me state. So until I see it, I’ll file it in the maybe pile.

  Regardless, Axel was no angel. I was certain of that.

  Mira was getting shoes on Hurricane Annabelle when I finally made it back inside. I frowned a bit. “You girls have big plans today?”

  “I’m going to work with Mommy!”

  Mira nodded. “Yes, but we’re not going to color in anything but our coloring books this time, are we?”

  The red pigtails bobbed as Annabelle nodded. “I promise.”

  I scrubbed the dirt off my hands in the kitchen sink. “Mir, I could probably take her today. You can just sit behind the counter at the store and rest. Dee could do the heavy stuff.” I should know better. Nothing is going to get my wife to stubborn-up like my implying she can’t do something.

  “I’m fine, and Anna and I are going to have a fun day.” It was that “Are we clear?” voice. You know, the one that does not invite further argument. “What are your plans for the day?”

  “I guess I’m going to head over to Marty’s, see if he’s got my gear ready. I’ll probably have to go out late tonight, too.”

  “You still need to get your mother a present, while you’re out,” she reminded me.

  “I’m gonna call Cole, see what he got her. I don’t want to duplicate.” If my baby brother had ponied up for something big, maybe I could just split the cost with him and it could be a joint gift. I really suck at this whole gift-giving thing.

  I got the girls out the door and on the way to Mira’s bookstore, but I really wasn’t happy about it. Mira should have stayed home and regained her strength today. Nice to know my wife listens to me.

  I went to pull on some real clothes and get my hair under control. The day’s T-shirt said I’M MEAN BECAUSE YOU’RE STUPID. Add jeans and a ponytail, and you had the all-purpose uniform. I tucked my cell phone into my pocket. Ivan hadn’t called back, and I was starting to get worried-well, more worried than before. The scrying was ominous, at the very best, and no matter what I’d told Mira, I didn’t think Miguel had survived that battle.

  I was no shrink, but even I knew that worrying without action accomplished nothing. Since I could take no action at the moment, I decided to run errands instead. Regardless of Miguel’s fate, work was still work and staying alive was pretty high on my priority list. I’d start that process by getting my gear back from Marty. The rest… Well, everything else pretty much had to wait until I touched base with Nelson Kidd.

  I didn’t figure he’d wimp out. It took guts to come so far and admit so much. People like that don’t cave. I didn’t expect anyone to back out once they’d asked me for help, but I always gave them the choice. Who knows, someday someone might surprise me.

  To occupy my mind, I made a few more ticks on my mental to-do list. If Kidd was still willing to go through with it, I’d be summoning a demon tonight, and that required advance planning. You don’t just walk into a demon summoning unprepared. I’d done that. To say it didn’t end well is the edited-for-TV version. I’m damn lucky to still have my soul and all working organs and appendages.

  7

  Once upon a time, when Mira and I were still in college and we lived in the only ratty apartment we could afford, we had some bachelor neighbors. They were rowdy, uncouth, and basically good guys. Eventually, we go
t older, moved out of the mold-infested apartment building, started doing the whole grown-up responsible shtick. But we never lost touch. Marty and Will are still my two best friends in the world, and I exploit them shamelessly.

  Marty is a walking anachronism. He’s a welder by trade, but a blacksmith by passion. He wears a kilt whenever he can get away with it. The man doesn’t even own a TV. I mean, do you know how hard it is to not only find a blacksmith, but one who knows more than horseshoes and yard ornaments? It’s a dying art. We’re a dying breed, both of us men out of our time. That’s probably why I get along with him so well.

  It was a fifteen-minute drive to his house, and in that time I crossed from neatly mowed suburbia into nearly rural territory. Yards in this neighborhood bordered on fields and pastures, and the once-paved streets had long since gone to gravel. The last event of note here happened last summer when some cattle got loose and spawned a seven-mile low-speed chase. (Rumors of my alleged involvement in that bovine escape are highly exaggerated.)

  I parked in the front yard and waved to Marty’s wife, Melanie, as she pulled out of their drive. “He in bed yet?”

  She rolled down her window. “Nah, he’s out in the shed. There’re pancakes left in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

  “Thanks, Mel!” I must look positively emaciated. People are always trying to feed me.

  Marty worked nights, so I had even odds of catching him before he went to bed for the day. It seemed to be my lucky day so far. I could hear the static spit of the arc welder as I walked around the house to the workshop.

  A detached garage in a previous life, the shed had been converted into the manliest of manly domains, a refuge for all who revel in testosterone. The back corner was largely taken up by the forge and anvil, but there were also four motorcycles and one lawn mower (don’t ask) in various states of disassembly, an arc welder, and most important, a beer fridge.

  I didn’t bother to knock. He wasn’t going to hear me.

  Duke greeted me first. The young brindle mastiff rose from his pile of shop rags near the door and padded over, his tail swaying happily. He was the product of my neighbor’s last litter, and Marty had been more than happy to take the runt. If Duke was the runt, I didn’t want to see his siblings. At only seven months old, he was still growing to be the size of a large horse in short order. I couldn’t wait to see what he weighed in at, fully grown.

  Despite his impending hugeness, he had the sweetest temperament I’d ever seen in a dog. It never fazed him when Anna pulled his ears, crawled all over him, stepped on one of his enormous paws. The big wimp would turn and run from any unexpected noise, and he cowered at the sight of the Chihuahua next door.

  His doggy breath was warm on my hands, and it was an effort to keep him from bathing me with that huge pink tongue. I scratched his ears, and he rumbled in contentment, leaning against my thigh hard enough to almost knock me over. “You spoiled thing.”

  Marty, bare chested but welder’s mask firmly in place, was working over something I didn’t even recognize. It takes a real man to weld with no shirt on-or an idiot. He was possibly both.

  The welder threw off strobes of light, casting his extensive tattoo sleeves in strange dancing shadows. The stylized Celtic wolf on his right forearm almost looked as if it were snarling at me. I shielded my eyes from the glare, looking away. The welder hissed and spat a few more times until I heard the knobs on the power supply being dialed down. Marty, his helmet perched atop his head now, smirked at me when I dropped my hand. “Wuss.”

  “Bite me. You’re wearing a mask.”

  “I’ve eaten, thanks.” He laid the helmet and torch aside, then ran a towel over his shaved head. I still can’t figure out why, when a guy thinks he’s going bald, he shaves his head. It didn’t keep me from seeing the hints of gray in his black beard. And he was two years younger than I. I resisted the urge to check my own facial hair for signs of aging. “Go lie down, Duke.” Obediently, the mammoth mutt padded off to curl up on his bed again. “You’re here for your stuff?”

  “Yeah, if it’s ready.”

  “It’s ready. Not sure I wanna give it to you, though.” He cast me a disgruntled look as he rose from his stool. He was built like a fireplug, short and stocky with muscle mass attributed to long years of work at the anvil. In all truth, although I towered over him in height, I wouldn’t want him getting his hands on me in a fight. I firmly believed he could break me in half. “What the hell did you try to do-chop down trees with it?”

  It is a fact of life. Marty’s swords are his babies. Mistreat them at your own peril. “You knew it was going to get used when you gave it to me, man. And it’s held up to everything I’ve thrown at it.” Yes, Marty knows what I do. But he’s never seen it. I think there’s a large leap to be made between knowing and seeing. He couldn’t fathom the things that sword had been through.

  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.