K Stewart - A Devil in the Details

“I was to be managing to receive one message from Grapevine. Archer was to be checking in last week. He has not.”

Ice ran down my spine, despite the rapidly warming day. “Maybe he just forgot.”

“Maybe. But I am not believing that. Neither are you.”

He was right. I didn’t believe it for an instant. You always made your check-in call. Always. Ivan drilled it into our heads from the moment he turned up on our doorsteps. “In this day of technology miracles, there is no reason we are to be fighting alone.” There was no acceptable excuse for missing a check-in.

Champions died. It was a fact of our existence. But in the last four years, we’d lost three total. To lose two, within weeks of each other? It was unthinkable. And these weren’t rookies, either. Both men were experienced fighters. “What the hell is going on, Ivan?”

“I am not to be knowing.” That baritone voice quavered. I think that was when I really knew it was bad. Ivan had seen it all. Nothing was supposed to shake him.

“Did you ever find Miguel’s weapon?”

He took a deep breath, causing static on the line. It gave us both a moment to collect ourselves. I was getting more scared by the moment. Ivan was our rock. If he was crumbling, the rest of us were in deep shit. “Ah… that. It is possible that mystery is to being solved. Miguel’s younger brother is to also be missing.”

That was supposed to solve the mystery? “And?”

“We are believing that Miguel’s contract was for the machete to be delivered to the brother. If Miguel has perished, perhaps he has taken it and gone in pursuit of Miguel’s soul.”

That made sense, in an incredibly stupid teenager kind of way. For Miguel’s family, demon hunting was in the blood. To hear Miguel tell it, they’d done it since before the Christians conquered the Aztecs.

Of course, the kid was also next in a family who had a history of getting eaten by demons. I might have bugged out, too, at that age.

“Shit, he’s what, thirteen?”

“Seventeen.” Easily old enough to get himself killed and have his soul stolen. Also old enough to know he didn’t want to die like that.

“And you still don’t know who Miguel worked for last?”

“There are leads I am to be tracing. It is being difficult, from here. Signals are bad, in the hills, and the power is not to being steady.”

“You gotta find that kid, Ivan. If he has gone hunting, he knows who Miguel was working for.” And he was about to be in way over his head.

“I am to be trying my best. I fear it is to be taking time we do not have.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Please, let there be something I could do. I hated sitting here, thousands of miles away, feeling useless.

“You said you were to be having a mission?”

For me, they were paying clients. For Ivan, they were missions to save worthy souls. I won’t even get into Ivan’s objections to me charging money for what I do. “Yeah, here in town.”

“Do not be taking it.”

I sighed and resisted the urge to bang my head against my steering wheel. The black marks on my skin proved it was already too late for that. “The contract’s already set. I can’t back out now. But I’ve got two weeks until the challenge. I’m in no immediate danger.”

“How powerful is it to being?”

“It’s a Skin.”

“A what?” Okay, so not everyone is up on my lexicon.

“A beast type. A wolf-hyena thing big enough that I could ride it to work.”

He said something that was undoubtedly a Ukrainian curse. “I am to be coming there, then. As soon as I am to be finished here. Things are to being very wrong.”

“Do you need me to track down any of the others, make sure they’re all accounted for?” I’d met three champions, besides myself and Ivan. I had no doubt that two of those were dead now. The rest… their names and contact information lay within Grapevine, and though they were only pixels on a screen for me, I’d do anything in my power to protect them.

“ Tak. That would be most helpful. Do be telling them do not take on more missions until I am giving the word.”

I scratched my jaw. It itched where I’d shaved. “You think something’s taking a swipe at us?” Immediately, the blue Ford Escort leapt to mind. Yeah, something was after us.

“It is not to being possible. The contracts must be followed. They cannot to be attacking without permission.” He said it forcefully, as if sheer will would make it so.

In all honesty, it should have been true. Rule number one: A person had to consent to any harm a demon brought him. There was no such thing as an unwilling victim; unwitting, yes, but never unwilling. That rule was older than anyone’s memory, and inviolable-until now.

“Well, ’til we figure this out, you watch your own back. Nothing would cripple us faster than losing you.”

He sounded grim when he said, “ Tak. I am to be realizing this more and more.” I didn’t like the sound of that. “I will to be calling you at this time tomorrow, if not to being earlier.”

“If you don’t, I’m hopping a plane to Mexico.”

He chuckled faintly, but it was forced. “God to be watching over you, Dawson. Whichever one will to be having you.”

“You, too, Ivan.”

I sat in my truck for a long time after I hung up the phone. Some random, unidentifiable birds hopped around the parking lot, picking tasty tidbits out of the asphalt. There was no breeze, but the day hadn’t yet hit that mugginess of which Missouri summers are capable. A multitude of cars drove up and down the busy street just beyond the parking lot, the drivers oblivious to the world changing right under them.

None of them knew two particular men were dead. Though an infinitely small drop in a huge bucket, those two men had fought all their lives to protect people they’d barely known. They had shed blood countless times for no other reason than it was the right thing to do.

Only last summer, Mira and I had gone to Mexico for Miguel’s wedding, and he had presented his beautiful new bride to us. His whole face glowed when he looked at her. I felt the same way when I looked at Mira. Now Rosaline was a widow, joining the growing ranks of women who were collateral damage in the battle between good and evil. Miguel also left behind his mother, three brothers, and who knew how many nieces and nephews.

Guy… I didn’t know Guy. Was there a Mrs. Lumberjack? Did he leave behind a family to mourn him or a child who would never know him? Or was he just one of the many nameless, faceless disappearances in the world? Would anyone have known, if Ivan didn’t keep track of us all?

Fame, glory… A Jedi craves not these things; a samurai doesn’t, either. But a part of me wanted to go grab some random person, shake him until his teeth rattled, and scream, “Don’t you know, don’t you care what these people have sacrificed, all for you?”

I was angry-angry at Miguel and Guy for not seeing a trap coming, because surely that’s what had to have happened; angry at the forces of Hell, for taking two good men away; angry at the forces of Heaven, too, if such a thing existed, for allowing Hell to happen in the first place; furious with myself for the black brand covering my right arm. Without that, I could have gone looking myself. But no, instead my soul was in the keeping of some metaphysical escrow agent for another two weeks. Without something to bargain with, there was nothing I could do.

I gripped my steering wheel until my knuckles went white, taking breath after breath to calm myself down. It wasn’t fair. The good guys were supposed to win. I punched the center of the steering wheel, and my dead horn gave a sad attempt at a chirp.

When I’m upset, there’s only one place I want to be.