K Stewart - A Shot in the Dark

“What did you do?” He didn’t look up, but there was a faint twitch to his brows that said he was listening. “That wasn’t an amateur spell. What did you do, Cameron?”

Once I released him, passing him a towel to mop his face with, he leaned his elbows on the bar, mostly to prop up his head. “I consecrated the earth. We’re on holy ground now.”

Holy shit, pardon the pun. I moved so I could at least pretend like I was looking at his face. “You’re not an ex -priest, are you?”

Cam shook his head. “I need a glass of water.”

I fetched without really thinking about it. Instead of drinking it, he dipped a finger in it, murmuring under his breath. The scent of cloves filled the air again. I snatched his hand away from the glass, holding it firmly by the wrist. “Hey! Are you out of your mind? You’re gonna kill yourself!” Magic drew from the caster’s life force. Mira had drilled that much into my head. Too much magic, and the user would just drop dead, their very life given for their craft.

The possibly ex-priest shook his head again and tugged free of my hold, pushing to his feet. “Just had to bless it. Need to ward the doors and windows.”

“Why? If the ground is consecrated, they can’t get close.”

“It won’t last.” He wavered on his feet, and I caught him by one arm, sloshing the now-holy water over his hand. “Takes about six priests to make a consecration permanent. The boundary is going to shrink as time goes on. I need to set up wards.”

I glanced out the window. Night had fallen, hiding the clearing from view. Didn’t matter. Even if I couldn’t see him, I knew the Yeti hadn’t gone. “How long?”

“Hmm?” Cam definitely wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Understandably. We were gonna have to keep him awake tonight, watch for a concussion.

“How long until the spell breaks?”

“A day? Day and a half, maybe? I wasn’t exactly prepared.” With dripping fingers, he traced a symbol on the front window. “Sepire. ” The unfamiliar word prickled over my skin like static. I guess that answered the question of who had warded his apartment.

“Can you renew it?” I knew he couldn’t. The first one nearly killed him. Repeating it almost certainly would. But I wanted to know if he’d tell me the truth.

“I could. But I wouldn’t survive the backlash.”

“Dude! You need to see this!” Will’s voice reminded me that Cam and I were not alone.

I pointed a finger at him. “We’re gonna finish this conversation later.” Cameron just nodded and moved on to the next window.

Will and Cole were still crouched over young Zane, the boy’s face gray under the smears of his own blood. Normally, the kid looked a lot like his dad, the same wiry build, the same narrow nose. Zane’s hair was the same almost black that Oscar’s had been in his younger days.

But now, his eyes were wide with shock. There were shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. He’d managed to choke back his sobs into tiny, tortured hiccups, but his breath was still coming in shallow little gasps of panic. Will had patched him up with what supplies we had, but even I could tell that the kid had been chewed on good. His left arm was bandaged from knuckles to elbow, and his bare shoulders showed bite marks, clear up his neck. Not cute little love bites either, but eat-you-with-fava-beans kinda bites. Human bites, I noticed sickly. Most of them were swabbed in antibiotic ointment, and seeped a little blood through the darkening bruises.

“What’s up, Will?”

“Look.” Will tried to lift the corner of the bandages swathing Zane’s left forearm, and the kid flinched, whimpering, “Don’t.”

“ Shh. Jesse can help, I promise,” Cole soothed, and I gave him an odd look. What was I helping with, exactly?

Will continued to peel up the white gauze, slowly revealing the edge of a black tattoo.

“Shit.” I crouched, peering under the blood-soaked cloth as best I could. The tattoo curled and wove over most of his arm between wrist and elbow. Parts of it were mangled by the nasty bite mark on his wrist-human bite, my mind pointed out again, like I’d missed it the first time-but the rest of it seemed to writhe under my gaze, sliding over itself sinuously without moving at all. I felt an ache growing behind my eyes, just looking at it. I pressed the bandage down again. “Damn, kid…” Zane wasn’t the first kid I’d seen sell his soul, but he set a new record for being the youngest.

“It is, then?” Cole of all people would recognize the demon brand. He’d worn one himself.

“Yeah. And I think I know who it belongs to.” I’d seen that particular mark before. I had the scars to prove it. Without thinking, my hand went to my rib cage, feeling the hard ridges of scar tissue even under my shirt, and I couldn’t help but glance toward the door. Yeah, we were intimately acquainted.

“Jess?” I forced my eyes from the door, to find Will frowning at me. Will never frowned. I didn’t think he had those muscles. “Was that him? Was that the…?” He nodded toward my side. Will had been there that day, to stuff my guts back inside my chest. He knew firsthand what kind of damage the Yeti could do.

“Yeah.” What else could I say? My four-year nightmare had just walked back into my life. The vocabulary for that hadn’t been invented yet.

Zane’s eyes were glued to the floor, and he looked so very young, sitting there all bandaged up and pale. I touched his leg to get his attention. “Hey, kid. You need to look up at me, ’kay?”

It took him a few moments, but he finally did, tears glimmering in his eyes.

“I know what you did.” That made him blink a little, and the tears escaped to run down his cheeks. “What I need to know is why.”

At first he gave me that shrug. Y’know, the one they give when they know they screwed up, and nothing they say is going to get them out of trouble. The one that says they know they have no right answer.

“It was your mom, wasn’t it?” I looked up when Marty spoke, but I still caught Zane flinching out of the corner of my eye. Marty nodded to me. “His mother died, about two months ago. Long breast cancer battle.”

That’d do it. I looked back to Zane. “Was that it? You were trying to save her?”

It took him a long time to answer. “Yeah… But it didn’t work. It… went all wrong, somehow…”

“It usually does, kid.” I sighed and rested my hand on his head for a second. I could see already where this was headed for me. I just couldn’t let him stay like that.

“Will, look at his hand.” Cole barely whispered, so of course, we all turned to look. My paramedic friend cursed softly, seeing the dark streaks creeping slowly up the kid’s hand. Not the red of true infection, but an insidious blackness that started at his fingertips and radiated upward. You could almost watch it move.

“I’ve never seen gangrene set in that fast.” Will looked up at me again, trying to send me a message with just his eyes. I got it. It wasn’t gangrene and he knew it. He’d seen that before, too.

“What do you taste, Zane? Like… chemicals in the back of your throat?” The kid frowned faintly, licking his lips, then nodded, a puzzled look crossing his face. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Less than a year ago, I’d fought for the soul of the president of this great United States. Fairly standard fight, a Scuttle demon, nothing too tricky, except where it had stabbed me through my right calf. And that’s when the real fun had started. The first thing I remembered was the chemical taste in my mouth, so dry I couldn’t even spit.

Will opened his mouth to say something, but Cam piped up first. “It’s poisoning. Those things out there must be contaminated. It got into the wound, tainted it. It’ll spread until it kills him.” Apparently done with the warding of the downstairs doors and windows, he sagged against the stair railing just to stay upright. “You should get the hatchet.”