K Stewart - A Shot in the Dark

I tilted my head, trying to listen for that particular voice without success. If he said one of them sounded like his wife Melanie, I would have to take him at his word. No one would know her voice better than he. “She’s fine, Marty. She’s at home, or out with Mira, probably shopping or baking or whatever it is they do when we’re not around.”

“Then why do I hear her out there? Calling for help, calling my name…” He pressed his hand against the windowpane and it fogged up immediately, leaving a ghostly palm on the glass. The temperature had dropped during the day. Autumn had arrived in the Rockies while we were busy with other things.

“Because you miss her, man. Because right now, there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.” Okay, I made that up, but it was as good an answer as any. “You think I don’t want to be home right now, with Mira and the kids? It’s just your mind playing tricks on you.”

I had to wonder, though… Axel’s earlier comment about the voices niggled at the back of my brain. They had no voices, he said. Voices, which were our doorways to our souls. They had no souls, then? They mimicked others, aping something they could no longer do on their own. I had to wonder, did they have souls at one time? If so, what were they before? As human as they looked, the thought unsettled me to my core.

“But what if it’s really her? What if they found her, took her?” His eyes searched the clearing out front, looking for the source of his wife’s voice. With night fully fallen now, he’d never be able to see the minions creeping around out there. “The baby…”

“Marty, she’s fine. I promise you, she is not out there.” Oh please don’t let me have just lied to him. Marty hadn’t signed up for this shit. This wasn’t his fight, wasn’t his fault. But he was stuck in it, just like the rest of us, because of me. How do you apologize for something like that? Can you, even?

He gave me a bleak look. “Easy enough for you to say. It’s not Mira calling for help out there.” He wandered over to where Cam and the others had started bedding down by the fire, and burritoed up in his bedroll, trying to muffle the sounds with the down sleeping bag.

I knew it was my job to get the guys out of here and home safe. That was a given. But right then and there I swore it to myself, swore on whatever I could think of and to whatever higher power was listening. I had to get them home. I couldn’t let Mel be a widow, when she wouldn’t even be able to understand why.

Duke and I, we decided to keep first watch. Sleep was for wussies.

Sleep was also for those who didn’t have a demonic poison coursing through their veins. Zane whimpered and tossed for a long time, and I couldn’t count the times Will was up to check on the kid and Oscar right with him. Finally, I shooed them both away, promising to sit with the boy for at least a while. Reluctantly, Will curled up in his sleeping bag, but if he got any rest at all it would be a miracle. Oscar hesitated, eyeing me warily, but weariness finally won out. Maybe I was the lesser of the evils, in his mind.

Duke and I found an open space near the ailing teenager and settled with my sword across my knees. With one hand, I idly rubbed the big dog’s ears.

“Jesse?” Zane’s voice drew me out of a near doze, and I looked down to find the boy’s eyes glassy, but lucid. “Could I have some water?”

“Sure, kid.” I fetched him a cup, waiting while he struggled into a sitting position before I handed it off. His eyes followed my newly tattooed hand as it passed through his field of vision. “You doing okay?”

He barely drank enough to wet his lips and lay back down. “My arm hurts. And I’m hot.”

A quick examination showed that his fever was high, but steady. It wasn’t bad enough yet to make him delirious. “You want me to wake Will up, see if he has something he can give you?”

“No. I’m okay.” There was a deep pause there, the kind that fills the silence with all sorts of unsaid things. I waited. “Jesse? Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Cameron explained to me about the deal. For my soul. Why did you do it?” He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, unwilling to look at me. The soulless do that a lot, I’d noticed, out of shame maybe.

“This?” I rubbed at the black marks seared into my arm. It didn’t even hurt anymore. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“But I’m nobody, to you. Not family or anything.” His eyes flickered my way once, then went back to studying the wooden beams above us. “That thing is going to try to kill you, and you agreed to it and I don’t understand why.”

I shrugged a little, leaning my head against the brick hearth. “Kid… There’s only one thing I’ve ever been good at, and that’s tearing stuff into tiny bits. I guess I’m just trying to turn that skill into something useful. So I help people, when I can.”

“But why?” His brow creased. He was really trying to understand.

It was hard to find the words for it. I mean, I could have rattled on for hours about bushido and honor and all of the things that I use to govern my life. But really, it boiled down to four words. “Because someone has to.”

I don’t think that answered his question, but a few moments later as he pondered on it, his eyes drifted closed. I’m not sure he slept, really. I don’t think any of us did. But we were at least still for a while.

W e took turns dozing, off and on. Duke sacked out somewhere around two a.m., his doggy snores rumbling through the cabin like a miniature eighteen-wheeler. It was soothing. It drowned out the voices.

I think it was the silence that woke me first. My internal clock couldn’t decide what time it was, but the windows were still dark, so that made it sometime not-morning. Propped up against the brick fireplace, I examined the last few moments, trying to decide why I wasn’t asleep anymore. The voices had stopped. No more wailing from outside, and the sun wasn’t even up yet.

I realized Duke wasn’t snoring anymore when the massive mutt padded over and shoved his head under my now-tattooed hand. “Good boy, Duke.” I tried to scratch his ears, but he dodged it, stepping back a few paces.

I let my hand drop and struggled out of my sleeping bag to stand, but the dog came back, pushing under my hand again. The moment I tried to touch him of my own volition, he stepped back again.

“Duke? You okay, buddy?” I reached for him again, and he let me rest my hand on his back briefly. I could feel the vibrations of silent growls through his muscled flanks. He tolerated it only for a moment before retreating again, taking another step away from me. His golden eyes fixed on me intently, almost like he was thinking about making a lunge for my throat. But that wasn’t the kind of dog Duke was. Believe it or not, I decided he was trying to tell me something.

“Whaddya got, big guy?” We danced for a few moments, me moving toward him, him retreating until we got to the bottom of the stairs. Then he gave a massive bark and bounded up into the dark loft above.

I grabbed my sword-I’m not stupid-and said, “Cole, bring a light.” I heard the thrash of a sleeping bag, and knew my little brother would be right behind me.

The loft was mostly empty. We’d moved all the sleeping stuff downstairs, leaving only our pile of half-packed bags.

In the light from below, I could see Duke pacing beneath the eaves at the far end, pausing on every pass to sniff at the shuttered ventilation window. It wasn’t big enough to even really be called a window. Round like a porthole, the metal shutters had been fastened tightly and latched from the inside. The mastiff stopped to paw at them, and I could see the ridge rise along his back at whatever he sensed on the outside.