A Shot in the Dark

by K. A. Stewart

  It took me about ten minutes to work my way up behind my prey without alerting him. The curly ponytail said it was Will, and I grinned as I took aim.

  Thup-thup-thup, a perfect bright green line right up the middle of his back. “Ack!” He whirled, trying to find the source of his attack, and flipped me the bird when I waved from my concealment.

  I made my way to his side. “I heard you tag someone, who’d you get?”

  “Either Cole or Cameron. Short-haired and tall, couldn’t tell the difference.”

  We nodded and parted ways, Will parking where he was with his marker over his head. He was out for ten minutes, but whoever he’d tagged earlier should just be moving again. I ducked into the brush, grinning inside my mask.

  Somewhere up ahead of me was my little brother—or Cameron, which was just as good—and I was on the hunt.

  Twice more, I heard the distant sounds of brief paint-splattery battle, but it was a good half hour before I found anyone again.

  Coming around a large oak, I spotted Duke standing in the middle of the trail, looking rather bewildered. There was no sign of Marty anywhere, and the big dog stood as if frozen.

  A cold chill slid down my back, and I scanned the underbrush for signs of my friend. Had something happened? Was he hurt? I strained my ears for any sound of movement, but even the wildlife had fallen silent, no doubt spooked by my own clumsy passage through the brush.

  Risking giving away my position, I called out in a hoarse whisper, “Marty?” Just as I debated on abandoning the paintball gun for my sword, I took four hits to the chest and one directly to the mask. Blue paint smeared my vision and splattered through the grille enough that I could taste it. (Let me assure you, the paint may smell like hot chocolate, but it tastes like crap.)

  Wiping the paint off my mask, I finally spotted Marty in his camouflage gear, lying right under his own dog to fire off a few shots. No wonder the poor animal looked confused.

  “No fair using the dog as a shield, man!” By the way his shoulders were shaking, he was laughing his ass off. That’s how he wanted to play it, hmm? “Duke! Sit!”

  Obediently, the two-hundred-pound mutt sat, right in the middle of Marty’s back.

  “Jesse, you rat bastard!”

  “You’re welcome!” I gave him a jaunty wave and found a nice fallen tree to sit on and wait out my time-out. He wrestled his way out from under his dog, and the pair of them disappeared up the path.

  Of course, yelling out like that put Marty and me on everyone’s hit list. Cole got me from behind not twenty yards up the mountain. I managed to tag Will and Cam both before they saw me, and somewhere along the way, Marty closed the distance and lit me up again. It got so I was spending more time sitting than walking.

  I was taking advantage of my enforced rest stop to answer nature’s call when I heard a soft “Hsst!” behind me. Thinking one of the guys was about to ambush me, ten-minute rule or not, I pretended not to hear it, taking the time to zip up my jeans. No way I was gonna let them surprise me like that.

  I bent down, pretending to tie my boot, but really, I was reaching for my own marker. Maybe I could get a shot off first.

  “Hsst!” There was a bit more insistence in the noise this time, and when I refused to respond, it was followed with a hissed, “Over here!”

  That . . . didn’t sound like the guys. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it sounded like me. Oh hell. I yanked up my mask and perched it on the top of my head to get a clear view. “Axel?”

  “In the flesh.” There was a skittering sound and I looked up in time to see a fat gray squirrel disappear around the trunk of a tree and reappear on the other side, bushy tail twitching spastically. The furry beastie gave me a red-eyed grin. “Who did you expect? It’s too early for Santa.”

  The animal was a dark charcoal gray, almost black, and it had to outweigh my squirrels back home by a good chunk. Its ears were adorned with enormous tufts of hair. Looked like my great-uncle Walt.

  “In someone else’s flesh, you mean. Nice ears.”

  “Yes, they are rather nice, aren’t—” He preened with one front paw until he realized what he was doing; then he looked at his offending foot in horror. “Oh hell no. Wait there.” With a flick of his brushy tail, he disappeared around the tree again.

  “Slipping into something less furry?”

  “You could say that.” The face that appeared around the tree a few moments later was all too human looking, Axel taking his usual pierced, Mohawked guise.

  How he did that, I will never know. I mean, most demons, they can hide their true form, make an illusion over it that looks human. Even the weaker ones, the Snots and Scuttles can manage that much. Guess it helps them relate to their victims. Touch them, though, and your hand will go right through it, like a hologram.

  The true forms, the actual demon bodies, are constructed of solidified blight. That’s how we’re able to banish them, cutting away bits and pieces until they lose concentration and the ability to hold themselves together. Demons come in a lot of different forms: the Snots, barely more than brainless oozes; the Scuttles, often insectoid and a bit more intelligent; the Skins, usually some kind of fur-bearing animal, strong and cunning; and the Shirts, the ones who have evolved enough to look vaguely human. I’d fought them all, at one time or another. I thought I had a pretty good handle on what to expect.

  But Axel . . . If he was a Shirt, he was the most human-looking one I’d ever seen, and his constructed body was rock solid. Which meant that he was either way more powerful than any demon I’d ever seen or . . . or I don’t know what. Yet another of those mysteries I was unlikely to solve anytime soon.

  The squirrel, now unpossessed—dispossessed?—shot out of the underbrush like a gray rocket and up the nearest tree, chattering its displeasure.

  “What are you doing here?” I stood up, glancing around warily. The last thing I needed was one of the guys catching the demon here. I’d never be able to explain that away.

  “Looking for you.” Axel rubbed at one of his ears, then frowned at his hand. “Damn rodents.”

  “I’m not that hard to find.”

  The squirrel was still scolding him from the branches above, and Axel shot a red-eyed glare. “Watch it, or I’ll eat your entrails.” His answer was a walnut launched at his head with surprising accuracy. I liked the squirrel already. Axel bared his teeth at his former host, then turned his attention back to me. “I’d have caught up sooner, but that damn mutt was too close.”

  Okay, supreme beings, bless Duke in all his furry glory. I was so getting that dog a huge rawhide bone when we got home. “Stalker much?”

  “Oh that’s nothing. I almost mistook your brother for you, until I heard him speak. That could have been . . . awkward.”

  I went from being creeped out to pissed off in zero seconds flat. “You stay away from him. He’s off limits and you know it.”

  Axel held up one hand to forestall my incoming rant. “Now, now, no need to get feisty. I didn’t come here for that.” Another walnut pelted him in the head, and he snarled at the branches above. “You’re a furry hors d’oeuvre, I swear . . .”

  I snapped my fingers to get his attention. “Focus, Axel. Why did you come here?” The more I looked at him, the more I thought there was something . . . off. Something in his usual smile, some tightness around his mouth, or his eyes. The way he sagged against the tree, almost like he actually needed it to keep himself upright. “Are you okay?” Part of me wondered why I even cared.

  He ignored my question but seemed to take it as a challenge, pushing off the tree to stand on his own. It didn’t escape me that he wrapped one arm tightly around his ribs, holding himself in pain. “I came to give you a message.”

  I saw how he stayed close to the tree trunk, dodging as much of the fading sunlight as he could. Now, I’m pretty sure the light doesn’t physically harm them, but man, demons don’t like it. The forest canopy provided just enough shade where he was standing to t
hrow his face into darkness.

  “Step into the light.” Unlike most demons I’d dealt with, Axel had never made special efforts to avoid the sun. Something was wrong. Well, more wrong than usual.

  “I’ll stay here, thanks.”

  “What’s up, Axel?”

  “Let’s just say I’m not at my best today, hmm? Now shut up and let me give my message.” His eyes flashed red and stayed that way. I was pissing him off.

  “From who?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He moved one step closer, and as his face passed out of the tree’s shadow, I could see it clearly for the first time. His lower lip was split and swollen, and the right half of his face was a lovely shade of eggplant purple. Axel had obviously had a very bad day.

  “What the hell happened to you?” More importantly, how the hell had it happened? I’d never seen a demon with visible injuries. At least ones I didn’t cause myself. Damn, how much damage did it take to bruise blight?

  He managed a pained grin, running his tongue over his teeth. “A fairly accurate description, actually. You ever see those videos of family Thanksgiving dinners that turn into all-out brawls? Think of it like that.”

  “You had a family food fight?”

  He chuckled. I will never get used to hearing my laugh come out of a demon’s mouth, and the muscles in my back twitched as I tried not to shudder. “I guess you could call it food. If it’s any comfort to you, I came out on the winning side.”

  “I’d hate to see the other guy.”

  “Oh yes. You would.” The smile faded quickly. “You need to get off the mountain.”

  Normally, I would laugh in the face of any order Axel gave me, but there was something in his eyes, something in his borrowed voice. It sent another wave of chills down my back. “You’re the one that told me to come up here.”

  That earned me a frown. “You ever hear of reverse psychology?”

  “Yeah, and you suck at it.” I finally closed the distance between us, just so I could lower my voice. Who knew where the guys were? “Did you flatten Marty’s tires?”

  His mouth twisted as he contemplated the answer. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

  “And turn Will’s alarm clock off?”

  “Hey, that was just him being a moron. I had nothing to do with that.”

  I could feel the beginnings of a headache, somewhere behind my eyes. “Any particular reason why?”

  “You’ll find out. But get somewhere public. Somewhere you can put your back against something solid.”

  “That sounds like a threat, Axel.”

  He shook his head. “Not from me. I’ll swear it if you like. Just . . . do as I ask, this one time.”

  Everything in me screamed no. You don’t do what a demon asks, period, the end. Even if (especially if) they phrase it to be for your own good. I eyed him warily, as if I could drag secrets from him with the power of my charismatic gaze. Or some shit. “What’s in it for you? You don’t give out information for free.”

  The demon’s eyes flared red again in the dappled shadows, and he spat a curse in a language I didn’t understand. Even so, the single word made my vision swim and the trees around me tilt at bizarre angles for the space of two breaths. Demonic speech is not meant for human ears. The cussing that followed in English was easier to follow.

  “Damn you for your stubbornness, Jesse Dawson. You are the most infuriating creature on this planet.”

  “You been talking to my wife?” When in doubt, resort to being a smart-ass.

  Axel was not amused. His gaze swept the forest around us, and he finally pointed at my feet. “There. Pick that up.”

  “That” proved to be a small branch, probably fallen off one of the trees overhead. Small, nondescript, definitely not something that could be used as a weapon. I bent to retrieve it, carefully keeping my eyes on him.

  He held his hand out to me as I straightened up. “Hand it to me.” Cautiously, I extended the stick out to him, and he snatched it out of my hand. “There, now you’ve given me something. We’re even.”

  At the risk of sounding mushy . . . where was the Axel I had come to know and hate? He would never have let a potential deal go without at least trying to bargain for something bigger, and his insistence on it had almost cost me my life last spring. “Axel, what’s going on? You’re not usually this . . . accommodating.”

  “Don’t worry, Jesse. I still want your soul. But for right now, I need to keep it attached to your body until I can come collect.”

  “So you’re saying I’m in danger. From what?” He stepped away from me, started to retreat into the trees. “Dammit, Axel, you can’t just drop this on me and bail!”

  “I can’t say more. My hands are tied. If I could—” Whatever he was going to say next was lost as he suddenly stumbled.

  I admit, it’s instinct. Someone falls, you catch them. I jumped forward, caught his arms and eased him down as he sagged toward the ground. A bout of wracking coughs shook his wiry frame, ending all conversation for a few long minutes. Eventually, he turned his head and spat something dark and sticky off to the side, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Are you okay?” I asked again. It felt strange, asking him that. Why should I care if the demon was hurt? Damn, could he even be hurt? They could be banished, yes, evicted from whatever physical form they’d taken. But actually injured? That opened up a whole new realm of “evil things Jesse can do to demons” if it was true. I made a mental note to roll this over in my brain later. There had to be something here I could use.

  He took a few deep breaths, testing, before he nodded. “Yeah. Just a bit more banged up than I realized.” He raised a brow, glancing at my hands still on his arms. “Are you gonna kiss me, or let go?”

  “Fuck off.” I released him immediately, but I had to stare at my hands, rubbing my fingertips together. There was nothing there. No tingle of magic, no scent of cloves, no electric spark. Under normal circumstances, I should never have been able to touch the demon, not with my wife’s spells of protection laid on me. But they protected me only from someone who meant me harm . . .

  “Get off the mountain, Jesse. That’s all I ask.” The voice, my stolen voice, was distant suddenly, and I looked up in time to see Axel fade from view before my eyes. There was a faint scent of sulfur and ozone, and he was gone. His last words were whispered from thin air. “They’re coming.”

  Well . . . fuck. That was as deep and meaningful as I could manage. Who was coming? When? Where? I cussed Axel up one side and down the other as I stood and debated my options. This was all pertinent information I could have used, dammit!

  A nut bounced off my paintball mask with a loud clack. Glancing up, I saw my irate rodent friend still watching me. “Yeah, I know. I know. And you better git too, before he does come back and eat you.”

  The animal gave me a firm chitter and vanished in a swoosh of fuzzy tail.

  I couldn’t just “get off the mountain.” My friends were out there in the woods, and they’d freak if I didn’t show up at the cabin in pretty short order. Not to mention that the Quinns were already up there, and if something bad was coming for me, I couldn’t just leave them.

  “Okay, first things first. One, stop talking to myself. Two, gather up the guys.” I’d figure out what to tell them when we were all in one spot. “Hey guys, I got a message that we need to go.” “From where?” “Um . . . little bird told me?”

  I mean, here I was with an enigmatic warning from a creature I couldn’t trust any farther than I could throw him. Except . . . the spells hadn’t tripped. I should have zapped the hell out of him when we touched, pun intended, but nothing happened. What did that mean?

  I quickly dismantled my marker and stowed it in my pack, suddenly preferring to leave my hands free for my sword if need be. I found my way back to the trail through a few yards of intervening scrub brush, then set out at a determined jog. I had to find my friends, and fast.

  7

  The cabi
n was a wonderful sight, when I finally burst from the trees into the large clearing. Now, let me explain that when I say cabin, I don’t mean some little shack in the woods. It was a two-story bungalow with porches in both front and back, running water, a fully stocked bar, and a generator-driven fridge. The second floor was mostly a loft where we could spread our sleeping bags and crash, and downstairs we could sprawl out in front of the fireplace and play cards or shoot the breeze, or whatever.

  Oscar Quinn was stacking firewood on the front porch, laughing and chatting to my friends who had all beaten me there, to a man. “Oh, and there’s the last one. Hey, Jesse!” Oscar was in his midfifties, if I had to guess, but lean and wiry as only an outdoorsman can be. His skin was dark and weathered, and his hair was whiter than it had been, last I’d seen him, but the smile was the same. It made his eyes crinkle.

  As I trotted across the open area, I did a mental head count, relaxing a little when I realized everyone had arrived safely, if paint-splattered. If anyone noticed that I had my sword in my hand instead of my paintball gun, they didn’t comment.

  By the time I got inside, everyone was claiming a chunk of floor in the loft or jostling over the kitchen sink as they tried to wash the paint out of . . . everywhere. I tried to get Cole’s attention, to get him away from the others, but he was either intentionally ignoring me, or I wasn’t putting enough effort into it. “Cole. Cole! Hey, dumbass!” Nada.

  It would wait, I told myself. Axel had said to get off the mountain, so surely that meant I had time to do so. Right? Right?? Besides, the sun would be down in the next half hour. Traipsing down the trail in the dead of night was just asking for an accident.

  To convince myself, I walked to the window where I could see the glory of the Colorado wilderness spread out before me. Night was falling, the sky already deep purple to the east, and the color of day-old nacho cheese in the west. Things looked peaceful. They looked normal. It looked totally alien to me, I realized. When normal looks weird, your life is pretty messed up.