K Stewart - A Shot in the Dark

Axel was not amused. His gaze swept the forest around us, and he finally pointed at my feet. “There. Pick that up.”

“That” proved to be a small branch, probably fallen off one of the trees overhead. Small, nondescript, definitely not something that could be used as a weapon. I bent to retrieve it, carefully keeping my eyes on him.

He held his hand out to me as I straightened up. “Hand it to me.” Cautiously, I extended the stick out to him, and he snatched it out of my hand. “There, now you’ve given me something. We’re even.”

At the risk of sounding mushy… where was the Axel I had come to know and hate? He would never have let a potential deal go without at least trying to bargain for something bigger, and his insistence on it had almost cost me my life last spring. “Axel, what’s going on? You’re not usually this… accommodating.”

“Don’t worry, Jesse. I still want your soul. But for right now, I need to keep it attached to your body until I can come collect.”

“So you’re saying I’m in danger. From what?” He stepped away from me, started to retreat into the trees. “Dammit, Axel, you can’t just drop this on me and bail!”

“I can’t say more. My hands are tied. If I could-” Whatever he was going to say next was lost as he suddenly stumbled.

I admit, it’s instinct. Someone falls, you catch them. I jumped forward, caught his arms and eased him down as he sagged toward the ground. A bout of wracking coughs shook his wiry frame, ending all conversation for a few long minutes. Eventually, he turned his head and spat something dark and sticky off to the side, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Are you okay?” I asked again. It felt strange, asking him that. Why should I care if the demon was hurt? Damn, could he even be hurt? They could be banished, yes, evicted from whatever physical form they’d taken. But actually injured? That opened up a whole new realm of “evil things Jesse can do to demons” if it was true. I made a mental note to roll this over in my brain later. There had to be something here I could use.

He took a few deep breaths, testing, before he nodded. “Yeah. Just a bit more banged up than I realized.” He raised a brow, glancing at my hands still on his arms. “Are you gonna kiss me, or let go?”

“Fuck off.” I released him immediately, but I had to stare at my hands, rubbing my fingertips together. There was nothing there. No tingle of magic, no scent of cloves, no electric spark. Under normal circumstances, I should never have been able to touch the demon, not with my wife’s spells of protection laid on me. But they protected me only from someone who meant me harm…

“Get off the mountain, Jesse. That’s all I ask.” The voice, my stolen voice, was distant suddenly, and I looked up in time to see Axel fade from view before my eyes. There was a faint scent of sulfur and ozone, and he was gone. His last words were whispered from thin air. “They’re coming.”

Well… fuck. That was as deep and meaningful as I could manage. Who was coming? When? Where? I cussed Axel up one side and down the other as I stood and debated my options. This was all pertinent information I could have used, dammit!

A nut bounced off my paintball mask with a loud clack. Glancing up, I saw my irate rodent friend still watching me. “Yeah, I know. I know. And you better git too, before he does come back and eat you.”

The animal gave me a firm chitter and vanished in a swoosh of fuzzy tail.

I couldn’t just “get off the mountain.” My friends were out there in the woods, and they’d freak if I didn’t show up at the cabin in pretty short order. Not to mention that the Quinns were already up there, and if something bad was coming for me, I couldn’t just leave them.

“Okay, first things first. One, stop talking to myself. Two, gather up the guys.” I’d figure out what to tell them when we were all in one spot. “Hey guys, I got a message that we need to go.” “From where?” “Um… little bird told me?”

I mean, here I was with an enigmatic warning from a creature I couldn’t trust any farther than I could throw him. Except… the spells hadn’t tripped. I should have zapped the hell out of him when we touched, pun intended, but nothing happened. What did that mean?

I quickly dismantled my marker and stowed it in my pack, suddenly preferring to leave my hands free for my sword if need be. I found my way back to the trail through a few yards of intervening scrub brush, then set out at a determined jog. I had to find my friends, and fast.

The cabin was a wonderful sight, when I finally burst from the trees into the large clearing. Now, let me explain that when I say cabin, I don’t mean some little shack in the woods. It was a two-story bungalow with porches in both front and back, running water, a fully stocked bar, and a generator-driven fridge. The second floor was mostly a loft where we could spread our sleeping bags and crash, and downstairs we could sprawl out in front of the fireplace and play cards or shoot the breeze, or whatever.

Oscar Quinn was stacking firewood on the front porch, laughing and chatting to my friends who had all beaten me there, to a man. “Oh, and there’s the last one. Hey, Jesse!” Oscar was in his midfifties, if I had to guess, but lean and wiry as only an outdoorsman can be. His skin was dark and weathered, and his hair was whiter than it had been, last I’d seen him, but the smile was the same. It made his eyes crinkle.

As I trotted across the open area, I did a mental head count, relaxing a little when I realized everyone had arrived safely, if paint-splattered. If anyone noticed that I had my sword in my hand instead of my paintball gun, they didn’t comment.

By the time I got inside, everyone was claiming a chunk of floor in the loft or jostling over the kitchen sink as they tried to wash the paint out of… everywhere. I tried to get Cole’s attention, to get him away from the others, but he was either intentionally ignoring me, or I wasn’t putting enough effort into it. “Cole. Cole! Hey, dumbass!” Nada.

It would wait, I told myself. Axel had said to get off the mountain, so surely that meant I had time to do so. Right? Right?? Besides, the sun would be down in the next half hour. Traipsing down the trail in the dead of night was just asking for an accident.

To convince myself, I walked to the window where I could see the glory of the Colorado wilderness spread out before me. Night was falling, the sky already deep purple to the east, and the color of day-old nacho cheese in the west. Things looked peaceful. They looked normal. It looked totally alien to me, I realized. When normal looks weird, your life is pretty messed up.

“Martin, check the refrigerator, make sure it’s on.” Oscar frowned and wrinkled his nose as he came in the door. “Smells like the eggs have spoiled. Would be just our luck, yet another thing going wrong.”

A quick check established that the fridge was working, but I quit paying attention to what was going on behind me sometime after that. I could smell it too, the distinct odor of rotten eggs, very faint on the mountain air. The scent of sulfur.

I craned my neck to peer out the window, searching the tree line for… what? I didn’t know, but the goose bumps were suddenly marching up and down my back, keeping time with my heart as it sped up. Was it just me, or was there something out there, watching us?

Someone moved at my elbow, and I glanced long enough to see that it was Cameron. He looked out the window with the same dark frown I knew I was wearing. There was something rotten in Denmark, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the eggs.

“Oscar? Where’s Zane?”

Oscar looked up from his discussion of generator mechanics. “I sent him out to get more firewood. He should be back any minute; he’s been gone awhile.”