A Shot in the Dark jjd-2

by K. A. Stewart

  “And I’m telling you that you are wrong. Now.” I fixed him with a look of death. At least, I hoped I looked intimidating. A little. “If Mira tells you how to do the spell, could you duplicate it?”

  He thought for a few moments, then shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not one of the methods I’ve been taught, and there really isn’t any room for improvisation-”

  “But if Mira can make you understand, if she can tell you what she did, can you do it?”

  It took him a bit, but he finally nodded. “I can try.” He turned then to head up the stairs, climbing each riser like it took real effort.

  “Are you all insane?” We all turned to look at Oscar, who was wide-eyed, just this side of being a little crazy himself. “Those.. . those things were… escaped chimps or something. And you’re babbling about magic and spells?”

  I approached him slowly, like you would a spooked animal. “It sounds nuts, I know, trust me. And I don’t know what those things were, but they weren’t chimps; they weren’t animals. Did you see the big white thing come barreling at us? That’s a demon, and he’s trying to get in.” But why? He couldn’t hurt anyone without a contract. Couldn’t touch us at all. But the Yeti had come charging at us anyway, charging at me. Something wasn’t right. I tried to keep my uncertainty off my face.

  “A demon? You expect me to believe that bullshit?” Color flushed into Oscar’s pale face. I don’t think I’d ever heard the man curse, not once in all the years I’d known him.

  “It doesn’t matter if you believe it. Not believing it doesn’t change anything.” I stopped moving forward. If he was gonna snap, I didn’t want to be in arm’s reach.

  “And just how do you know this? What makes you so fucking smart?” I didn’t even get a chance to answer him before he advanced on me, fists balled at his side. “You knew about that stuff and you didn’t tell anyone?! You just…! You just let us all go walking around out there with those things!”

  “I didn’t know they were there, Oscar. And I couldn’t have reached him any faster.” But there would always be that little voice that asked if I could have. If I’d noticed the smell sooner, or left the porch earlier, or even run up the path faster… If I’d have turned back when Axel told me to, would they have come for me, instead of Zane?

  “Bullshit! You didn’t even try!” He shoved me, and I let him, backing up a step or two. Wasn’t the man’s fault his world just got turned on its ear. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same, in his place.

  Duke, however, took offense, and a low growl rumbled through the room. “Marty, hold the mutt!” Even with his considerable strength, earned over a forge and anvil, Marty had a helluva time holding on to his two hundred pounds of pissed-off dog.

  Things only got worse when Oscar came at me again, shoving me with both hands. “You just let those things… those… your fault!”

  I could hear Duke setting up for that deep bass bellow of his, and I knew Marty wouldn’t be able to hold him. “Oscar, you need to calm down.” I promise, I used my calm grown-up voice and everything. It was when he swung at me that things got interesting. I blocked the first one easily, batting his fist aside and dropping into a defensive stance. “I mean it. You’re going to get someone hurt.” It was going to be him, but man, I didn’t want to do it.

  “Fuck you!” The second punch whiffed by my ear as I sidestepped it, and I caught his wrist, wrenching his arm back behind him and pressing up. I knew it was gonna hurt like hell, but it was the only way I could think to get through to him.

  Zane was yelling too. “Dad, leave him alone! Stop!” But it didn’t make a difference.

  “Oscar! Chill the fuck out!” It was like he couldn’t even hear me. He screamed, jerking against my hold until I was afraid he was going to dislocate his own shoulder. This was going to get out of hand if I didn’t do something drastic.

  “Sorry I have to do this.” I released my grip on his arm, reaching around to grab him by the throat instead. From behind, I put pressure against the back of his head. He gagged as I cut off the air to his windpipe. “Just gonna take a little nap…”

  He flailed for a few seconds, and I knew he was already seeing stars. Six seconds in, and the world would be going gray. Eight, and he slumped in my arms. With Cole’s help, I lowered him to the floor and released the choke hold. Oscar gasped, blinking his way slowly back to consciousness.

  I rested my hand on his chest, waiting until his eyes could focus again. “I recommend you stay down. Savvy? We’ve got more important things to deal with at this exact moment.”

  Things like saving Zane’s arm. I knew that poison, knew that a raging fever and amazing pain were coming in short order. At the very least, he needed a hospital, and the nearest one was in Fort Collins.

  Things like who the hell Cameron was. Not to mention how we were going to get out of this damn cabin with those things waiting out there in the woods. Yeah, it hadn’t escaped my notice that them staying out meant that we had to stay in.

  The dog was still growling. Even with the “danger” subdued, Duke was still reacting like there was a threat in the room. I finally looked at Marty, who gave me a strained shrug.

  “Let him go. See what he does.” Not my best idea, but Marty couldn’t hold on to the big lummox forever.

  The mastiff gave a lurch in Oscar’s direction, and I tensed to head him off, but Duke did no more than pad over to sniff the downed man, hackles still bristled along his striped shoulders. I could see Oscar’s eyes, wide with fright as that massive muzzle brushed against his throat in passing. Duke settled for a firm snarl, then made the rounds of the room. Zane also got a growl of disapproval, which didn’t surprise me. Dogs and the soulless just don’t get along. I yanked Oscar’s sleeve up, but found his arm bare. No surprise, but I had to be sure. I’d been fooled before.

  “Okay, I get why he’s edgy around Zane, but Oscar’s down. What’s bugging Duke there?” No one really answered me, but I was used to talking to myself. I looked down at Oscar, who seemed to have lost all his fire, tears leaking silently from the corners of his eyes. Taking mood swings to a bit of an extreme, wasn’t he? “I wonder… Cole, keep an eye on Oscar please.”

  Above the bar hung one of those bar mirrors. You know, the ones with the gold tracing around the edges, and some beer logo from the seventies at the top. It was bigger than I was used to, but it would do what I needed.

  “Cameron!”

  He appeared at the head of the stairs, more sliding down them than walking. “Hmm?”

  “Can you make a mirror?”

  “A what?”

  “A mirror.” I showed him the one in question. “A mirror that lets you see across, see if anything’s lurking.”

  He settled on the bottom step, resting his bandaged head against the railing. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

  Dammit. This was going to get irritating. “Look. My wife does this, with these symbols here.” I grabbed a napkin off the bar and started scribbling down everything I could remember. Man, I hoped I had everything right. Might be a spell to turn someone into a rabbit instead.

  Cam looked over my scrawls, and shook his head. “I’m not familiar with this work. It looks… is this pagan?” I groaned and smacked my head against the wall. “If you know the sigils, why don’t you just do it?”

  “Because I don’t have any magic. Anything I need, my wife does.”

  There was no mistaking the look of horror that crossed his face before he caught himself. “I… you…” He blinked at me for long, shocked moments, and I just let him. “How are you still alive??”

  “I’m just that fucking good. Now answer my question. Can you do it?”

  It took him another few moments of staring at me like I’d grown a second head, but finally, he gathered himself enough to address the subject at hand. “What is the mirror supposed to do? Maybe I can adapt it somehow.”

  “Okay… I need to be able to see across the veil. The
n you break the mirror, and whatever’s caught in it is yanked to the physical side where we can deal with it.”

  The possibly ex-priest thought for long moment, then nodded. “I. .. think I can come up with something like that. But why are we doing this again?”

  “Because I think something got inside before you set up the wards. Maybe has been inside this whole time.”

  It took Cam a good hour to come up with something for the mirror trick. Occasionally, he’d ask me a question that I didn’t have the answer to anyway, but for the most part he sat with his head bowed, lips moving silently as he… prayed, or whatever. I just checked on him from time to time, making sure he hadn’t lapsed into unconsciousness instead.

  In the meantime, we got Zane settled with his father. I don’t think the old man had any more fight in him anyway. I kept Duke near the pair, hoping the dog’s presence would ward off what I feared had gotten through. The boy looked bad. Really bad, considering that his wounds were relatively minor. There were fresh bruises blossoming every moment, it seemed, but that didn’t account for the gray tinge to his face. He was scared, he was in shock, and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it. There was only so much Will could do with a first aid kit and torn up sheets.

  “Is he gonna be all right?” I asked quietly, hoping that the Quinns wouldn’t hear.

  Will’s grim face behind his round glasses said it all. There wasn’t a shred of humor left in him anywhere. He was a goofball of the first order, except when it came to doing his job. Then he was the most efficient, organized paramedic I’d ever seen. (Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of them.) “I remember how tore up you were, man. If that poison doesn’t kill him, the shock from an amputation would. I need things we just don’t have here.”

  I clapped a hand on his shoulder. What else could I do? “Mira would say to have faith.”

  “Yeah, but in what?”

  My eyes went to Cam, hovering over the mirror we’d painstakingly detached from the wall. “Right now, I’d say him.”

  “But, dude? Who is he?”

  Damn good question. And as soon as this little magic trick was done, I was going to find out the answer.

  The air in the house was almost choking on the smell of cloves. That’s how I knew whatever Cam was doing was working. Funny how no one else ever seemed to notice that smell.

  “So… how’s it going?” I kept a safe distance back, just at the edge of where my skin started prickling. Never good to startle the magic man.

  “I… think I have something that will work.” Cam displayed some neat and orderly symbols scratched into the back of the mirror that looked nothing like what Mira normally used.

  “That’s magic?”

  “No, that’s prayer. Written in shorthand.” We traded skeptical looks at each other.

  “Will it work?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  With some effort, we got the mirror propped upright and one by one we paraded in front of it. Even Duke got his turn on the runway.

  The mirror showed nothing, except that my little brother was starting to put on weight.

  “It’s all those doughnuts, little brother.” He flipped me off.

  “So, what are we supposed to be seeing?” Marty looked at himself in the mirror, Duke at his heel.

  “Hopefully, nothing. So, either this thing’s not working, or we’re not infested yet.”

  “It’s working!”

  “Infested with what?!” Cameron was offended. The rest of the guys were just worried.

  I motioned for Marty to help me move the cumbersome thing until we could frame the two Quinns in its reflective surface. I heard a small blasphemy from Cameron’s lips, and a worse one from Will’s. My own stomach twisted in a painful knot. “Infested with those.”

  I called them Scrap demons. They were the parasites of the demon world, giant poisonous fleas if you will. In singles and pairs, they could feed off a person, subtly sucking their will to live, nudging them toward depression, paranoia, or worse. And I had never seen so many in one place.

  A veritable horde of the little bastards clung to the Quinns. Their black forms, like greasy mops, scuttled over young Zane, their spindly insectile legs exploring every inch of his body. One of them plucked at his hair with a three-toed “hand,” bringing it to what I presumed was its face to sniff. Hard to tell when they didn’t actually have any eyes.

  “Wh-what the fuck are those things?” Oscar had found the courage to speak again. Wide-eyed and pale, he watched one of the creatures clamber up on his reflection’s shoulder. To his credit, he didn’t try to bat it off. Wouldn’t have worked anyway.

  “Those are Scrap demons. Nasty little buggers, but easily squishable.” I tried to get a head count on the grubby little swarm. There were at least seven on Zane that seemed permanently attached. Another dozen or so skittered between the two, not caring if they crawled over each other, their twiggy legs catching in the oily coils of fur on their fellows. Those would be the ones to watch, the ones that would latch on to one of us just as easily.

  “They don’t look like much. Are they dangerous?” Will bent down to poke at the mirror, and I grabbed his hand to stop him. I didn’t know if he could disrupt Cam’s magic, but I wasn’t willing to risk it until we were ready.

  “One alone, not really. This many… They’ll kill Zane if we don’t get them off him. It’s not shock, it’s them, sucking on his life. They’re probably what’s making Oscar all pissy too. If we can scrape off the scuzzies, things will go back to some semblance of normal.”

  “But… he said this was holy ground.” Oscar pointed at Cam who had finally slumped onto a bar stool again.

  The possibly ex-priest looked a bit gray around the edges too. He’d way overextended himself. “The land is consecrated,” he explained. “Not the cabin floor. They were inside before the wards went up, so now they’re trapped here with us.”

  “But where’d they come from in the first place? I mean, how long have they been on us?”

  If I had to guess, I’d say the Yeti sicced his little greasy minions on the Quinns when Zane sold his soul. Despair is a good motivator, and if the demon could bag the whole family, so much the better. With the kid’s mom just passing, they’d have been ripe pickings. “There’s no telling. With all the stress of losing your wife, you probably never noticed the behavior changes. If Zane’s been a little more hostile than usual… If you’ve felt extra depressed. Mood swings, irritability, sudden bleakness. It was all explainable. Hell, if it wasn’t for the big doofus, I’d have never known they were here myself.” I patted Duke’s head, and he leaned into me hard enough to almost knock me over. “From now on, we watch the dog. If there’s something wrong, he’ll know before any of us.”

  “All right. We know they’re here. Now how do we kill them?” Cole walked over and touched Oscar’s shoulder, the one that was currently hosting a Scrap demon. In the reflection, the demon scuttled away from Cole’s hand, climbing down the front of Oscar’s shirt, clinging to the cloth with its three-toed claws. Interesting.

  “First, we need weapons.” Cole reached for his holstered handgun-when had he found time to put that on?-and I shook my head. “Bit of overkill there, little brother. Besides, we might need the bullets. Just… find stuff that will stab or smash. They’re crunchy inside. Think of them like really big, really hairy cockroaches. With huge mouths full of shark teeth. And oh yeah, they’re venomous.”

  The look from the group as a whole said, “Are you out of your freaking mind?!”

  9

  The first thing we did was light every lantern we could find. The sun was well and truly down by now, and the last place I wanted to be hunting demons, even little ones, was in the dark. Every shadow was a potential hiding place, and we positioned the lights to eliminate as many as possible.

  “Count them. We have to get them all. There aren’t any other mirrors in the house, so this is the one shot we’ll get at them.” The troops were lined up, h
anging on my every word. Sort of.

  We’d managed to wrangle weapons easy enough. My sword, some fireplace implements, a hatchet. Duke. It had been decided that Oscar and Zane weren’t up for helping, nor was Cameron. So it would be just me and my buddies on bug-squishing duty. The trick was going to be getting all the little buggers before they got over their fright and faded back across the veil.

  “They’re going to scatter the moment the glass breaks. They’ll know they’re visible, and they’ll try to hide until they can gather their wits and slip back across. So we gotta move quick. If one gets away from you, watch Duke. He should be able to keep up with them if we can’t.” Man, I hoped I was right. Duke was more known for his cowardice than anything else. It remained to be seen if his sudden bravado would hold.

  “Whatever you do, don’t get bit.”

  “What happens if we get bit?”

  “I… don’t actually know. Just know you’re not supposed to get bit.” I nodded toward Zane and his blackening fingers. “It’s not like that. It’s a different poison. If it gets on your skin, it’s gonna feel like battery acid, and it’ll eat through your clothes just the same too.” I was trying to cram as much information into one briefing as I could, but I just knew I was going to forget something. “When they die, they’re gonna just mist away. Try not to get too much of the black stuff on you. It won’t do any damage in small doses, but it’ll make you numb and cold temporarily. Any questions?” No one spoke up.

  Somewhere deep inside, I was proud of them. Cole had dealt with demons before, but never in combat mode. Will had glued the pieces of me back together often enough after a fight, but had never seen one. Marty… well, there was a large leap between “knowing” and “seeing” and he’d just made it in the last couple of hours. And none of them seemed fazed.

  It took us another fifteen minutes to get a head count on the little demons that we could all agree on. Each of us took up a position more or less surrounding the Quinns, and Cam stood ready next to the mirror.