K Stewart - A Shot in the Dark

Eventually, I found the plucky little stream again, and by following it I found the clearing in the trees where I’d first called the Yeti. Even just thinking of him brought a sour film to the back of my throat, and I wished vainly for something to drink.

I’m not dumb enough to drink out of a mountain stream. Duh. But I could wash the blood from my hands there. For some reason, the thought of staining Marty’s truck with my blood was overwhelmingly unacceptable.

I knelt, noting which joints ached in all the wrong places. By morning, I’d barely be able to move. I dipped my hands into the ice-cold water, letting it run over the deep cuts and numb away the pain. I examined the injuries with a curious detachment, marveling that I still had motion in my fingers at all. I’d sliced my palms up pretty good.

Though… I gingerly wiped the caked blood off my left palm, letting the water carry away the grime, and realized that I couldn’t see a cut at all. Looking at my right, I found the same there, my palm unmarred. Where my knuckles should have been scraped and bloodied, I found unbroken skin.

“Oh holy…” So, Cam’s coin had worked after all. I knew I couldn’t leave it there in the stream for just anyone to find. What if someone noticed this little creek suddenly had healing properties? I dug in the icy mud for a few moments, trying to find just where I’d buried the bespelled quarter, but I had no luck. Hell, I could have been yards off, in either direction. I finally had to resign myself to leaving it, and hoping that the spell would wear off before anyone noticed.

The Suburban was right where I’d left it, when I finally managed to make my way to the right location. I threw what was left of my katana in the back, and deep down I mourned my loss. She’d been good to me. She’d been there with me since the very beginning.

On the passenger seat, Cole’s phone glowed, indicating a missed call and a waiting message.

“We’re fine,” were the first words out of his mouth. “Everyone’s fine, and we got Mira on the phone. She was at the amusement park. Can you believe it? Zane’s gonna be okay. Call me, big brother, soon as you get this. God, please call.”

I would. I’d call him as soon as I got off the mountain, preferably before someone arrested me for trespassing. As soon as my hands stopped shaking. Maybe when the full-body shudders subsided. Definitely after my vision stopped being all black around the edges.

But first, I was going to call my wife, and I didn’t even care what time it was back home.

She was expecting me. The phone rang only once. “Jesse??”

“Hey, baby.” I couldn’t help it. I had to smile at the sound of her voice, so thick with worry and tight with relief. “Did I wake you?”

Of course I hadn’t woken her. She’d been pacing the floors, for the thousandth or so time, wondering if I was alive or dead, if the next phone ring was going to be that call. “Goddess, Jess. Where are you?”

“Um… somewhere on Pikes Peak? I paid Viljo a visit. He says hey.”

“Are you all right? Cole said you were fighting.”

How did Cole know…? Oh yeah. The Yeti went bye-bye, and Zane’s tattoo flaked off. That’s how he knew. “Um… yeah, a little. It’s all right. I won.”

She took a deep breath, and I could hear the squeak of our bed as she sank down onto it. “How badly are you hurt?”

Good question. “Actually… not too bad. Gonna be a lovely shade of purple in a few hours, but nothing fatal. Nothing even debilitating.” Sore and stiff and bruised was way better than filleted and bleeding and dying. Infinitely better. Hell, compared to my usual adventures, I’d come out of this one the rosy picture of health.

“You’re sure? You’re not… you’re not lying to make me feel better?”

“No, baby. Promise.” Of course, I’d lied to her about other things. Omitted. Dodged. It was no wonder she thought I might be fibbing now. I deserved her doubt too much to even be hurt by it. “Physically, I’m fine. Swear.”

“And not physically?”

Ah, that was the question. For days, I’d buried my fear, crammed it down deep where no one else could see. I’d been running on adrenaline and instinct for three straight days now, wrapping myself in it like armor. But all of that was gradually washing away as I sat here, leaving me with nothing but belated terror. I rested my forehead on my knees when my vision started to swim again, my blood pressure humming in my ears. “It was him. It was the one in my dreams. He came back.” God… he came back. And if he could come back once, he could come back again. That certain knowledge sent shudders through my body so hard I almost dropped the phone. “Are you all right there? You and the kids? Nothing weird?”

Handless had been near Ivan. Which meant the Yeti had. It wasn’t unthinkable that he’d been near my wife and daughter too. Esteban.

Mira was exasperated when she answered. “We’re fine. It’s you I’m worried about. Do you need help? I can call Ivan, or Avery, or… Someone can come get you.”

“No, I’ll be fine. I’m gonna… just sit here a bit and catch my breath. Then I’m gonna go hook up with the guys again. We’ll be home either late today or tomorrow, okay?”

“You call. You call every time you guys stop for something, all right? I want to know that you’re coming home.”

“I always come home, baby.” Oops. There’s that lie again. “Hey, I hear you got Zane all patched up.”

“Oh, yeah. Cameron seems to have some basic magical ability. Enough that it worked. You’re going to have to explain all that to me when you get home.” She didn’t want to talk about Cam and Zane, I could tell that much. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked one more time. “Jess, if you need help…”

“Baby, I’m fine. And you should get some sleep. Anna’s gonna drag you out of bed in a couple hours whether you want to or not. I’ll see you both soon.”

She heaved a heavy sigh. “I… Be careful, please. Come home.”

“I will. Love you, baby.”

“I love you too, Jess.”

I hung up the phone and tried to muster the energy to get to my feet. The sun rose while I sat on the ground leaning on Marty’s dented fender. It lit the world in shades of fire. It was beautiful.

There was a variety of interesting headlines in several news-type publications in the days and weeks following my pseudovacation.

The first one made national news, all the way from Fort Collins, Colorado. Apparently, an oxygen tank exploded in a storage room at the local hospital, damaging a hallway and causing the evacuation of the entire facility. Everyone was so thankful that it wasn’t a tank in a patient’s room, and that the injuries were minimal. No one could figure out just why the tank exploded, or what it was doing in the storage room where it didn’t belong. Investigations were ongoing.

It took Cole a week (and most of a six-pack) to tell me what really happened.

“You’re going to think I’m insane, big brother,” he mentioned quietly one night. “Absolutely out of my ever-loving mind.”

The Yeti had walked right into the ER in his human guise, like he owned the place. At his heels were two of his minions, scuttling along like the good little pets they were.

“It was like nobody saw them. Like they couldn’t see them.” Cole shook his head. “Why could we see them, and no one else?”

“People see what they want to see. You guys kinda had it crammed down your throat.” Really, I had no idea what I was talking about. Philosophy I could explain. Mystic shit, not so much. Despite my eerily accurate dream, I was not a magic user. I knew this. I believed this. So what the hell had happened to me up there?