A Snake in the Grass

by K. A. Stewart

  He sighed and shook his head. “I do not know. Perhaps one of the homes in the mountains, but most of those have held the same families for generations. Reina does not belong to any of them that I know of.”

  “Would any of them shelter Paulito?”

  He frowned, the crease between his brows looking deeper in the dim light. “At one time, I would have said no. But there were men at the warehouse that I have known since I was a small child, families that we have lived near for years. I would not have believed them capable of such actions either, and yet there they were.”

  The frustration practically dripped from his voice, and I let the silence stretch out, hoping that he would go on. Finally, he did, smacking his hand against the dash. “I do not understand why these things are happening. Everyone on the mountain, in town, they all know what my family does. They used to respect the name Perez. Now… I do not know what has caused the change. I do not know why Paulito would do these things. He is one of us.”

  “But he is not.” Sveta’s eyes watched out the window as the dark trees whizzed past. “You are the champion, Estéban. And your brothers and father before you. Paulito is only a cousin, he is not in line to be a champion.”

  The kid frowned even harder, if possible. “That… That doesn’t matter. The title has passed through cousins before, it doesn’t have to only come through our line.”

  “Then why did it not go to him when Miguel died, hm?” Sveta finally turned to raise one delicate brow at him. “He is older. Physically, he is larger than you. He has trained alongside you, yes?”

  “I… His casting ability is weaker, I suppose? Maybe that is why Mamá decided that it should come to me instead.”

  “And why is it her decision? She is not a Perez by birth.”

  “Because…because it just is. Papa would have wanted it this way. Mamá is strong, and smart and no one knows more about magic than she does.” Esteban blinked at us both as if we’d just asked him to explain what the number nine tasted like. His mother’s authority was an unquestionable absolute in his world.

  “Jealousy is a terrible mistress, kid. And I have a feeling that Paulito doesn’t give two shits that his magic isn’t as strong as yours. All he sees is that he got passed over for something that should have rightly come to him, even if he’s the only one who thinks so.”

  “So…do you think he took Miguel’s weapons because he is going to use them to become a champion?”

  “No. No, I think he took them because he’s a petty little shit and he didn’t want you to have them.” I gave him a small smile. “He doesn’t understand that the weapon doesn’t make the champion. You could pick up anything and be ten times the man he will ever be.”

  Even in the darkness, I could see the blush color his cheeks, and he dropped his gaze to his hands. “Thank you, Jesse.”

  “No problem, kid.”

  Chapter 13

  Somewhere on the dark road between town and home, Estéban sat up and tapped my arm. “Stop the truck. Stop!” Turning in his seat, he eyed the empty night behind us.

  “Did you see something?” Sveta, permanently wary, already had her gun in her hand, and I honestly couldn’t say that she’d ever put it away after the cantina incident.

  “No, I just…” After a moment, his shoulders sagged, and he turned to face front again. “Never mind. It was stupid.”

  “No, you had a thought, what was it?”

  He ran his hands through his dark hair. “You asked where a person would go, if they didn’t want to be seen. And it occurred to me that there is one place that no one goes, and it would be perfect, except that it’s crazy to go there in the first place, which is why no one goes. Even Paulito wouldn’t.”

  “Sounds like a perfect place to check out. What is this place?”

  “The ruins. There’s a small trail, just back down the road a bit. But the ruins are dangerous, that is why no one goes there.”

  I tilted my head at him. “Ruins? Like Mayan or Aztec or whatever? There aren’t any ruins near here.”

  “Not flashy, tourist attraction ones, no. But they’re there, all the same. Well, what’s left of them. They’re not even really ruins anymore.”

  I exchanged looks with Sveta across Estéban, and she gave me a firm nod. “Sounds like we’re going exploring. Where’s this road, kid?”

  I threw the truck in reverse and backed slowly down the empty road until the headlights caught a faint opening in the trees that might have been a cart path, back in its ambitious younger years. “Thought you said there was a road.”

  “I said a trail. You said road. The truck should fit.”

  Quite certain my night was going to end up with me pushing the truck out of some forest mud hole, I slowly eased the pickup off the gravel road and into the trees. Me and my brilliant damn ideas.

  “Cart path” had been generous. It was a game trail at best, and the tree branches made horrible noises as they scraped over the sides and roof of the truck. Even at low speed, the rough terrain bounced us all in our seats, and I had to white-knuckle the steering wheel just to keep us from jolting right off into a tree. “I think we could get out and walk faster than this.”

  “At some point, we’ll have to. You can’t drive all the way.”

  I gave the kid a raised brow. “If no one comes up here, how do you know you can’t drive all the way?”

  He shrugged as best he could with his hands braced against the dashboard. “Sometimes we have to come.”

  “‘We’ meaning champions, or ‘we’ meaning the Perez family?”

  “It depends.”

  After ten minutes of the most excruciatingly obnoxious drive I’d ever made, we were confronted with a large tree down across the path, which was going to definitely impede our progress. There happened to be just enough clear area that I felt I could turn the truck around and point it facing out, so it seemed as good a place as any to leave the vehicle.

  “Take The Way,” Estéban said, tossing my sword at me as he slid out of the truck.

  “You think I’m going to need it?”

  “Better safe than sorry. Sveta, keep your gun out.” If she thought Estéban’s order strange, she said nothing.

  As we clambered over the fallen tree behind him, I finally thought to ask, “Uh, kid? Just what kind of danger is up here? I get the idea you’re talking more than just falling rocks and poisonous snakes.”

  The flashlight beam bounced down the trail ahead of us as we walked, like some will-o-wisp from a children’s story. The night birds fell silent as we passed, but picked up again as soon as we were out of sight, all things that were right and normal in the midnight wilderness.

  “No one remembers what the ruins use to be. If it was a pyramid, or a building, or what. There are only old stones left now, scattered in the grass. They are very old, and the symbols on them have been worn away with age. But there is a legend.”

  We had to pause a moment to maneuver around another batch of deadfall across the path, and I started to wonder if the obstacles had been put there deliberately. Seemed convenient that every tree in the place wanted to fall across this narrow, three-foot trail.

  “A legend?” Sveta prompted, once we were back on track again.

  “Yes. The legend says that many, many years ago, before the Spanish came, one hundred ancient priests gave their lives at this spot to defeat a great evil. No can remember what people they were of, and the line died here, with them.”

  “What evil?” Legends often had a grain of truth behind them, I’d found.

  “No one remembers.” Abruptly, we stumbled out of the trees into a large clearing covered in tall grass. The waist-high weeds provided a smooth surface against the forest fabric, looking like a grass-filled lake probably thirty yards in diameter. “But we know it is true, because of what they left behind.”

  “And what did they leave?”

  Estéban turned to face us, and flipped the flashlight off, sinking us into total darkness in a split secon
d. “Magic.”

  For a second, I was really annoyed at him for what I thought was a prank, but then I realized that I could still see his face, illuminated by a soft green glow. Sveta on my right was similarly visible, and I saw her frown as she tried to find the source of the light.

  “Here, look.” The kid advanced a few feet and bent down to clear the tall grass away from something. Upon further examination, we found nothing more than a smooth rock. It might have once been square, but the passage of unfathomable amounts of time had worn away the angles and corners, and left behind only a stone, gray and unremarkable except for the faint green glow emanating from its surface. “Some of them still shine. Most have gone dark by now. The spell is older than anything anyone remembers.”

  My skin prickled across the back of my neck, and the souls stirred a bit. Old magic wasn’t always the most stable thing in the world. Though spells usually faded with time, sometimes the magic lingered, warping and going stagnant beyond its original purpose. Sticking your hand in a puddle of that was…unadvisable. “Think you should be touching that thing, kid?”

  He stood up and flipped the flashlight back on. “This one is fine. There are a few, further in, that I would avoid.”

  “This is why no one comes here.” Sveta prowled a few paces to my right, parting the grass to reveal another stone. This one glowed as well, though it was much fainter than the first. “Because of the corrupted magic left behind.”

  “Right. It’s dangerous to stumble into it. It…does things.”

  Only a lunatic would wander around this clearing, Estéban was right. You’d never be able to see the pocket of bad mojo until you were in it, and then it would be too late. “Don’t go too far, Sveta.” She gave me a scathing look that I could see even in the dim light. “You know this place best, kid, do you see any signs that anyone’s been here lately but us?”

  We all looked, Esteban playing the flashlight slowly over the tall grass. There were places in the weeds, empty spots that concealed another stone, and I realized that there wasn’t a single sapling or tree growing anywhere in the large open circle. Whatever had happened here, the land remembered.

  Where we’d entered, the grass was broken and flattened, marking a clear trail into the trees, but if someone else had been here, it hadn’t been recently. The odds of someone making camp at this exact place were slim at best.

  “Do you smell that?” Sveta, having ranged farther than I was comfortable with, stood as a tense silhouette at the corner of my vision. “Something is dead.” Well that’s never good.

  “Careful,” I muttered, as we all three proceeded to be stupid and go exploring. Once it was pointed out, the thick stench of decaying meat was obvious on the night air, and grew stronger as we circled the outside of the clearing. It didn’t take long to trace it to its source, another of the glowing rocks.

  This one was the largest we’d stumbled across, and flat, providing a nice working surface for whoever had been here before us. Because someone surely had. The chicken carcass that had been left dismembered on the stone could attest to that.

  Sveta crouched down, wrinkling her nose against the stench. The kill wasn’t recent, by its advanced state of decomposition, and the putrid smell hung like a thick cloud around the stone. “Its head is off, cleanly, and the meat was left. This was not an animal kill.”

  Estéban frowned. “Someone killed a chicken here?”

  “A sacrifice,” I murmured, because it felt like saying it louder would make it worse.

  Sveta nodded her agreement with me, and spat off to one side. I felt like spitting too. Sure, there were people in the world who used blood and sacrifice to fuel their magic, but they weren’t the kind of people anyone wanted to talk about. Or to.

  Again, I recalled Mystic Cindy, and the impossible lifespan she claimed to have lived. If she was telling the truth, I had to wonder if magic like this was how she managed it. One day, you will ask how I did it, and if you are very, very unlucky, I will tell you. I shivered and closed my eyes for a second, willing the voice away before it could develop into a full-blown flashback.

  “Nothing came to eat it, later. If it was just a dead chicken, some coyote would have had a meal by now.”

  “I must tell Mamá. Whatever spell this was meant to power, it cannot be allowed.”

  Ah, now that was the question, wasn’t it? What exactly had this dead chicken been meant to conjure up? “Can you feel any spells at all around it? Anything more than the stone itself?”

  After a moment’s thought, Sveta shook her head. “Nothing recent. Perhaps it failed, or it was something done by an uneducated caster.”

  I crouched down as well, and Sveta stood up, keeping watch over us as I extended my hand toward the gore-stained rock. Hey in there, you guys see anything here that I can’t? If there was one thing I’d learned in the last few months, it was that the slightest trace of magic was guaranteed to set my passengers off. May as well make use of it.

  My back had been buzzing unpleasantly since we entered the clearing, but they suddenly quieted, almost like they were pondering the situation. Feeling brave, I leaned closer to the stone, palm outstretched. In response, goosebumps travelled down my arm – just one arm, and didn’t that feel weird – and my hand grew warm for a moment. Before I could examine the novelty of that, the sensation retreated, and the souls were quiet again. Whatever was here, it wasn’t enough to warrant their interest, apparently.

  “Maybe it was just a bunch of kids, playing at casting spells. Saw one too many movies or something.” I gathered my sheathed sword up again and stood, shrugging to Estéban. “That stuff happens, right?”

  “Sometimes.” His gaze roamed the circle again, and he frowned. “They’re supposed to know better, even the people in the town. Everyone knows this is a dangerous place. Tourists, maybe? Though I don’t know who would have shown them the way up here.”

  “Well, there’s nothing else we can do here now, and I’m tired as hell, so let’s get moving. Sveta…?” I turned to look at her, only to find her back to us, her arms up in a perfect shooter’s stance as she aimed at the dark treeline. “Uh…Sveta?”

  “We are being watched.”

  The words froze me in my tracks, and I strained my eyes to find what she’d seen. “Where?”

  “I…do not know. Something is here, though.” Slowly, she tracked her line of sight along the edge of the trees. “I can feel it, but I see nothing.”

  “She’s right.” Estéban’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “The birds have gone silent.”

  Oh hell, why couldn’t a walk in the woods just be a walk in the woods? Slowly, I drew my katana from its scabbard, feeling the spells on it as they sent my senses tingling. “Backs together, keep an eye out. Douse the flashlight.” There was a faint snick as the light was extinguished, leaving us in only the green glow from the ancient spell stones.

  There was nothing. No sound, no scent save the decaying chicken. The night air was oppressively still, and the only thing I could detect was my own heartbeat and Estéban’s quiet murmuring next to me. Even in Spanish, I recognized Psalms 23:4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Yeah, I’m not religious, but I had a T-shirt that ended the phrase with “Because I’m the baddest sunofabitch in the valley.” See? Educational.

  The odor of cloves burst into the still air suddenly, and the souls in my back surged toward my left, toward the kid. Whatever he was casting, they’d noticed.

  Long moments passed. Very long, tense moments. Finally, even Sveta was forced to lower her arms, frowning in confusion. “And it is gone. Whatever was here has vanished.”

  “Perhaps I frightened it off?” There was a note of hopefulness in Estéban’s voice, but we all knew his tiny little prayer hadn’t been enough to scare a flea.

  I finally forced the muscles in my shoulders to relax, rising out of my fighting stance. “Or maybe it just got bored.” Glancing to my left, I looked Estéban over
critically. “You okay, kid?” His spell, whatever it had been, was tiny by casting standards, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be feeling the effects.

  “I’m fine.” It was hard to see the pallor of his skin in the darkness, but he seemed steady on his feet, so I dropped it. “We should go now before it comes back.”

  I wholeheartedly agreed.

  We followed the bouncing flashlight beam back through the trail we’d already broken in the grass, all of us keeping a wary eye on the trees around us. I think I only truly relaxed when I heard the first of the night birds resume calling. Whatever had been with us, it was gone now.

  The walk back to the truck seemed shorter than the trip in, and I was inordinately relieved to see it sitting right where we’d left it. Maybe I’d seen one too many horror movies, but I’d half expected it to be gone, or the tires slashed or something. Still, there was the chance that something horrible was going to jump out of us right as we reached the safety of the vehicle, and I tightened my grip on my sword. Because movies, you know?

  Right on cue, the brush to our right rustled, and all of us spun to point weapons and flashlights in that direction. Too small, my brain was telling me as the bushes shook and rattled at knee level, too low to be human.

  What finally broke cover was…well, I’m not sure just what it was. I think it had been a raccoon once. There was something left of the roundish shape, the gray fur, the waddling walk. That was about all that was identifiable, however. A row of spikes had sprouted from its spine, glistening with wet scales, but as it passed under a low hanging twig, the protrusions bent aside, soft and floppy. The lower jaw had grown grotesquely outsized, sharp pointy teeth curving up to form a cage around the upper part of the snout until the thing couldn’t even open its mouth anymore. The eyes were milky white and filmed over, but tears of something dark stained the fur beneath them. One back foot had become twisted around to face the wrong direction, and the thing hobbled with a labored wheezing to its breath.