K Stewart - A Shot in the Dark

Goose bumps sprouted over my arms, my shoulders, and my stomach cramped painfully. Something bad was coming, and I’d invited it in, asked it to come have tea. I was gonna love him, and pet him, and call him George, right up until he ate my spleen.

I kept my eyes focused on the ring of trees around me, barely breathing myself as I strained for that first sound, the one that would tell me where he was coming from.

It turns out, that first sound was a chuckle somewhere behind me. I whirled and found the Yeti lounging quite comfortably on the far side of the tiny creek. He shook his horned head in amusement. “I knew you would call. You are predictably foolish.”

“Yeah, and your mama dresses you funny.” Don’t look at the water. Don’t look at the water. All I needed was for him to charge me, to run through what I really, really hoped was now holy water. “Where are your little pets?” That was the loophole I’d left in the contract. If he was gonna screw me, this was the point.

“I left two of them with your companions. They were hungry.” The white-furred behemoth stretched then, rising to his full height. Pine needles rained down on him where his horns jostled the lower branches. Christ, he was huge. “But this one… she longed for your presence.”

Dammit, I fucking knew it. “What the hell does it take to kill you?”

Handless emerged from the darkness behind the Yeti. Her left arm was gone at the shoulder, the bone a rather diseased gray color where it poked through. Putrid black fluid ran from the wound down her washboard ribs, and her right arm still ended in the jagged bony stump. Somehow, it didn’t make her look any less dangerous. She snarled at me in her silent way.

This was not good. Even unarmed as she was, literally, I couldn’t fight the Yeti-plus-one. Any lapse of attention was going to get me eaten. “Afraid to take me on by yourself, Fuzzy?” Maybe I could get Handless into the stream too? Or maybe I could convince them both to sit down for a game of cutthroat pinochle instead. Seemed just as likely. Bet she’d have a helluva hand, har har har.

“She will not interfere. Provided that you play my game.”

“What game?”

“Any game I wish.” The beast smiled, muzzle wrinkling to reveal those gleaming fangs that had ripped into me almost every night for the last four years.

I kept an eye on Handless, but she didn’t seem inclined to move, just crouching at the Yeti’s heel like a good little hound. “Then we’re just burning moonlight. C’mon, Fuzzy. Give it your best shot.” I had to hope that Cole and the others could hold their own against a few rabid zombies. There wasn’t anything I could do but deal with what was right here before me.

“As you wish.” He dropped to all fours, rocking back and forth on his clawed feet and enormous knuckles for a moment. I swear, as big as he was, the mountain actually rocked with him. Or, it could have been a bit of dizziness from the damaged ears. Whichever.

I settled into a ready stance, sword held low, and waited. C’mon. .. go for a little swim…

The Yeti opened his muzzle and roared, the sound echoing off the peak, crashing through the night air. The sound slammed into me like a tidal wave, and my head reeled with vertigo. The night tilted at off angles, and the ground seemed to ripple beneath my feet.

After what seemed like forever, the echoes died away and my brain corrected itself so that all down things were down and all up things were properly up. I blinked my eyes open in time to see him spring at me. Neatly up and over the goddamn stream.

Well, shit.

T he Yeti crossed the distance between us in two giant leaps. The third one took him completely over my head. I dropped to one knee to avoid the claws, and his fur brushed across my face as he passed. It smelled of something musky and rank. A drunk goat swimming in a septic tank, maybe, with the distinctive undertones of sulfur and ozone. Futilely, I lashed out with my sword, trying to connect with anything solid, but the demon wasn’t intent on attacking me. In a crash of brush, he bounded into the trees on the opposite side of the clearing and vanished.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” I hopped to my feet as quickly as I could, focusing on Handless who hadn’t moved at all. She cocked her head to the side, watching me from her one-armed crouch. I didn’t dare take my eyes off her, but… Where did you go, Fuzzy? I strained to hear any trace of the Yeti’s passing, but between my ears and the oppressive demon stillness that had fallen over the area, there was nothing.

The guttural chuckle echoed out of the darkness, but I couldn’t get a bead on the location. “Come find me.”

“I did not sign on to play hide-and-seek!” My own voice bounced back at me mockingly. Hide-and-seek! Hide-and-seek! It sounded odd to my abused eardrums, like the inside of a large glass jar.

It was eerily familiar, but I couldn’t place just why. Not with more important things on my mind, like whether or not I was going to see the dawn with my internal organs inside me, or beside me.

To my left, up the mountain, a tree groaned and crashed down. I could see the new gap in the pine canopy twenty or so yards ahead of me. The newly revealed stars were so bright tonight, so far from the city lights.

I had two choices. I could stand here, and assume that eventually, the Yeti would get tired of his games and circle back around to me. Or, I could chase after him, which was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to play with me. I knew that about him, because I’d seen him do it before. It was just something he did, like being white and hairy or having really bad Hell-breath. Like that old story about the frog and the scorpion, it was simply his nature.

Handless shifted her weight, inching forward a few steps when I continued to just stand there. “That how it’s gonna be? I either chase him, or you come for me?” She inched again and I leveled my sword at her. “Bad. Sit. Stay.” I could take her. I was pretty sure of that. But I also knew that the second I committed to that fight, the Yeti was going to come back and dissect me.

And let’s face it, pursuing him was my nature. Pretty sure he knew that about me, too. I gave Handless a small salute, and deliberately turned my back on her. Every step I took, I kept expecting to feel her slight weight land on my back, her blunt teeth tear into my neck. But she never moved. The last time I glanced back at her, she was still sitting on the far side of the stream, just watching me.

Running uphill is bad, m’kay? I wasn’t that stupid. I set out at a determined walk, taking my sweet time in skirting around brushy turns or fallen limbs. Running pell-mell through the dark woods was only gonna earn me a broken leg, or worse. The Yeti couldn’t have this little brawl alone, so he could by God wait until I got there.

I found the downed tree easy enough, the soil still damp around its old roots. It looked like it had been ripped out of the ground and tossed a few yards, even. Showing off? Trying to intimidate me? Or just happy to cause as much destruction as possible?

There was a tuft of white fur stuck to a branch, and even as I reached to pluck it off, it dissolved into a puff of black mist. I jerked my hand back and rubbed my fingers on my shirt, just in case I’d gotten any of the blight on me.

The Yeti hadn’t been gone that long, then. He’d waited here, to see if I was coming. I could picture him in my mind, lounging here, dragging his head along the murdered tree trunk. Sure enough, my fingers found gouges in the bark, left by the massive curved horns.

Any other time, I’m sure Pikes Peak is beautiful. But I have to say that, in the dark of night, in the freezing cold, I wasn’t that enamored of it. I passed my katana from hand to hand, flexing my fingers to keep them limber.