Finally, Cole handed over his phone, but he wasn’t happy about it. I figured I was in for a lecture later.
I delayed my trip long enough that my buddies could grab their packs for anything essential. Pulling Cole aside one last time, I told him, “If anything goes wrong, do not let that big furry son of a bitch touch Zane. If he touches the kid, he’ll turn him into one of those things. At all costs, he can’t take the kid.” Cole nodded like he understood, and I took off, paintball marker in the seat beside me, aired up and loaded with holy ammo.
Driving Marty’s Suburban was like maneuvering a garbage barge after driving my little Mazda pickup, but I’d manage. I knew Viljo’s address, since we’d mailed him Mira’s dead computer earlier this summer, and I plugged that into Cole’s phone and pointed myself south.
The problem with long drives is that it gives the mind too much time to wander. Mine, of course, kept going back to the Yeti, and I scratched at the black marks on my skin a few times. It didn’t itch, really. It burned like hell, sinking in, but that passed quickly. Mostly, it was just the knowledge that it was there, y’know?
I made myself look straight ahead, trying to be a conscientious driver and all, but there was that insidious voice in the back of my head, the one that was whispering all the horrible crap that was going to happen to me. Pretty sure that going into a battle fully expecting to lose was a bad thing.
But I knew damn well that the last time I’d faced him, I’d been only lucky.
That wasn’t entirely true. I mean, I had skill, even back then. No brains, that’s for damn sure, but I could swing a blade. If I hadn’t been good, he’d have ripped me in half before I’d taken two steps.
The kicker was, that thing that cornered us up at the cabin, that wasn’t what I’d fought, last time. He was . . . bigger. Stronger. Just . . . more. He couldn’t have handled his little zombie army, back then. Couldn’t have stood up to Axel, even if I had no idea who and what Axel really was. The Yeti was a thug, then, not a master.
Still, I’d been lucky.
It was my second challenge, ever. A local television reporter that Cole had known. Sold his soul for his fifteen minutes in the TV spotlight, I guess. He was dying, when Cole brought him to me. He actually passed away a few months after the fight.
At that point, I hadn’t asked Marty to make my armor yet, so it was just me and my sword, and balls the size of boulders. I really thought I was hot shit.
Will had been there, the first time I ever asked him for help. I didn’t expect to need it. My first challenge had gone so smoothly. My second one . . . did not. If he hadn’t been there afterward to duct tape my guts in, I’d have bled out on the spot. Lucky, see?
I guess it could have been worse. I mean, I held my own for about half an hour before I realized the Yeti was just toying with me. Like a cat batting a mouse around. I imagine I had amused him greatly. Scrawny little human darting around with his big flashy sword. I’d scored a couple of hits on him, blight trickling out, but nothing big enough to take him down, nothing crippling enough to finish it. I figure he’d let me have those strikes, just to see what I was made of.
The moment he decided he was bored, it was all over. Even as huge as he was, he moved faster than anything I’d ever dreamed of. This vicious flurry of claws, flying at my face, at anything I couldn’t defend with a single blade. I clearly remembered the last feint, flowing into a block for a strike that wasn’t coming, and knowing, knowing, I’d been had.
He picked me up like a bowling ball, sinking his claws into my ribs. Some act of divine providence kept my sword in my hand, and I forced myself to open my eyes when I felt his fetid breath on my face. He sniffed at me, and obviously found me wanting. Those jaws, bristling with fangs the length of my head, opened up, and that’s when I opened his throat. I let him hold me up, feeling my own weight fracturing my ribs on his claws, and slashed the big furry neck almost to the spine.
I was covered in blight, freezing and numb, and I remembered hitting the ground. At that point, I didn’t really care. It was warm there, lying in a pool of my own blood, and the stars were very bright that night. I remembered being vaguely annoyed at Will for blocking my view at one point. And then I didn’t know anything until weeks later, when I woke up in some ICU with more tubes and monitors than NASA.
You can understand why I wasn’t anxious to use that particular strategy again. Not like it was an option. The Yeti would never let me get that close again, never pause to gloat. He was going to rip me into tiny Jesse kibbles and that would be the end of that.
The scars down my ribs itched too, again more a product of my mind than any actual physical cause. There were details about that long-ago fight I was pretty sure I had wrong, things I’d blocked out, or forgotten or whatever. But what my waking mind couldn’t remember, my sleeping mind did. I’d dreamt of the Yeti ever since, and every single time, he killed me with little to no effort.
Contemplation of my own impending doom got me as far as Denver, where I was forced to stop for fuel and something that vaguely resembled a cheeseburger. By the time I got the big truck full, I’d promised myself that I’d find something else to think about for the remainder of the trip, even if I had to resort to singing show tunes. Luckily, I found a radio station that played classic rock, turned it up to a level even I could hear with my damaged eardrums, and I was on the road again.
Another hour saw me in Manitou Springs, ready to crush Cole’s phone into tiny electron particles. Yes, I understand that GPS systems are only as good as the data that’s been entered into them, but when it kept telling me that Viljo lived in a Taco Shack, I was pretty sure it was wrong. I mean, it would be brilliant, not having to leave the house for food and such (if Taco Shack counted as food, which was debatable), but I didn’t think even Viljo was that much of a shut-in.
Finally, in frustration, I rolled the window down and asked the next person I saw walking along.
“Oh, you want Old Backlick Road. That’s up toward the Peak.” The man pointed in the direction of the looming mountain in question. “You go up the highway a piece, take a left at the Git-n-Go, go a couple a miles. You’ll see a blinking yellow light—keep going straight. Then you’ll come to a T in the road. Hang a right, go about five miles, and you’ll see the sign. If it hasn’t fallen down again.”
Of course. Old Backlick Road. How silly of me. Lives were at stake, and the GPS wanted to quibble about the age of the freakin’ road.
What my very helpful guide neglected to tell me was that the blacktop ran out shortly after the isolated, possibly abandoned gas station. Keep in mind that I was no stranger to gravel roads—Missouri has plenty, and not far from my house—but I was driving a monster of a strange vehicle, and these particular roads had ruts that made the Grand Canyon envious. Five minutes in, and I was sure that every vertebra in my back was pulverized, and my teeth clacked together as I jounced over the road so hard that I saw stars.
Luckily, the sign for “Old” Backlick Road—which still said just BACKLICK ROAD, I might add. And what the hell kind of name is that??—had not fallen down, and with some deductive reasoning (I guessed), I took a right and headed out into what is officially known as “the boonies.”
It took me another half an hour to find what I hoped was Viljo’s place. The double-wide trailer sat off the main road (and I use the word “main” loosely) quite a ways, and the path that passed for a driveway was so overgrown, it might as well have been nonexistent. The only reason I even realized it was there was the mailbox at the corner, and the pile of FedEx boxes sitting under it. Surely, they’d be delivering out here only if someone was around to pick up the packages.
The Suburban rattled down the treelined trail until I found a very large, very angry-looking plywood penguin pointing an intimidating flipper at me. The sign around its neck said TRESPASSERS WILL BE REFORMATTED. Okay, I admit, I have no idea what the penguin had to do with anything other than being flat-out bizarre, but the menacing sign was definitel
y a computer reference, so I assumed I had the right place.
The double-wide trailer I found at the end of the trail could have been anyone’s trailer, really, except for the numerous phone and power lines running in through the top of it. Lines that I really should have noticed, coming off the road. Proof that humans, as a species, seldom think to look up.
I turned the diesel engine off and sat in silence for a few moments, waiting to see if anyone was going to come investigate. Truthfully, despite my rural upbringing, overly rustic places like this always make me listen warily for banjo music on the wind. The last thing I needed was to get out and find myself looking down the barrel of a shotgun.
There had been a halfhearted attempt to mow what passed for a lawn, maybe two months ago. The lawn-mower sat where it had been abandoned, tiny tendrils of vines climbing their way up the handle in slow-acting revenge.
The trailer itself was some nondescript shade of weatherworn gray. Could have been blue, in a previous life. The windows on one end of the house trailer were boarded over. The rest were heavily curtained. I watched them, to see the telltale twitch of someone watching me, but there was nothing.
I eased out of the truck, holy paintball marker in one hand, and shut the door softly behind me. In the trees around, I could hear birds chirping, and the breeze was a decidedly chilly but perfectly mundane source of my goose bumps. It took me a few moments to realize that the low throb I heard wasn’t my heartbeat, but the deep bass of some loud music, emanating from within. A piercing wail, muffled but audible, escaped through the insulated windows. Björk. Gotta be.
I had to smirk to myself. Definitely the right place.
17
“Viljo! Open the goddamned door!” I pounded on the door for the third time, well aware that the flimsy structure would totally cave if I decided to just kick it in. Before I could truly talk myself into that, the pounding music silenced, and I heard the sounds of someone moving around inside. “C’mon, Viljo, it’s cold out here!”
There was no peephole in the door, but someone—Viljo, I assume—had cut a small square out of the wood and positioned some kind of flap over it. That flap lifted, but there was nothing on the other side but a glass lens, staring blankly at me. I glared at the tiny technological spy. “I don’t have time for this, Vil. It’s a freakin’ emergency.”
After a moment—during which I seriously considered painting that little lens neon pink with paintballs—the flap dropped shut, and I could hear multiple locks rattling on the inside of the door. Judging from the sound of it, the door was solid metal behind the wooden exterior. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to kick it in. I was vaguely glad I hadn’t tried,’cause that would have just been embarrassing.
The door finally swung inward, and I peered into the darkened trailer . . . and then I looked down. “I . . . thought you’d be taller.”
The man who looked up at me was five feet tall, if he was lucky. His stringy hair was dyed matte black, and pulled back into a ragged ponytail. The sparse attempt at a mustache looked like it had been painted on with mascara, and he blinked at me behind his heavily smudged glasses. “Jesse?”
I shrugged. “Surprise.”
Viljo stepped back to allow me in, and I caught him slipping something back behind the door. A quick glance revealed a baseball bat. “Who did you think was knocking, Vil?” I felt no magic tingle as I crossed his threshold, and it made me pause for a heartbeat. Viljo’s trailer wasn’t warded. Oddly, I realized that I’d expected it to be.
“Never can be too sure. Immigration could come calling at any time.” And he was gonna take a bat to them? Remind me not to spook the little geek.
Viljo glanced around his dimly lit abode, and frowned. “Please excuse the mess. I do not get visitors, often.” It went without saying that he preferred it that way.
The place really was a disaster. The one trash can I could see was overflowing with empty energy drinks, and there was a stack of pizza boxes as high as the kitchen counter. I think there was a couch against the far wall, but it was covered in what looked to be a pile of black T-shirts. The single lamp in the corner was smothered by yet another black T-shirt thrown carelessly across the shade, and I moved to whip it off, thinking “fire hazard!”
Of course, a fire might have been appreciated. It was freezing ass cold in the trailer. I mean, it was colder inside than out, and my breath frosted in front of me. “Air conditioner works.”
“The cold is good for the servers.” He spent a few moments locking the door securely behind me. “You said this is an emergency? What kind of emer—?” His eyes lit on the tattoo on my arm. “Oh. That kind. I thought you were on vacation.”
“So did I.” I looked for a place to sit, then decided it was more sanitary to stand. I did set my paintball marker down, fully expecting it to be swallowed by the T-shirt monster breeding on the sofa. “Have you heard anything weird over Grapevine? Anyone missed checking in or anything?”
He snorted. “Over the last three days? No. Though I have been unable to contact Father Gregory, as you asked me to.”
That didn’t surprise me. The knights knew what was going down already, they didn’t feel the need to keep in touch. “We need to send out an alert, get everyone on the phone or the computer or whatever. Everyone needs to check in.”
“Why?”
“Because they really are out to get us.” I put a hand on his thin shoulder and turned him toward the back of the trailer (where I presumed his computers were) before he could ask any more questions. I wasn’t sure I had answers anyway.
The rear half of the double-wide was taken up entirely with servers and computers and monitors and wires and . . . I counted ten screens before I gave up, and made it only halfway around the room. There were no lights beyond the flickering of multiple monitors and the glow from at least seven computer towers, each in its own violently bright color.
The temperature was noticeably warmer in there, due to all the active machines, I guess, and I came to appreciate Viljo’s cranked up AC.
The geek planted himself in a chair and rattled something off on a few different keyboards. Instantly, the monitors went from their swirling idle phases to windows that seemed to open up into different locations in cyberspace. Viljo didn’t think I saw him shut down the porn windows, and I smirked to myself.
“So, should I tell everyone why I am blowing up their phones, or is it to be a surprise?” Once he focused on that monitor, his eyes never wavered from it. I was left talking to the back of his head.
“It’s possible that the demons have put a hit out on us.” I scratched at the black marks on my arm absently. “One had a trap waiting for me up at the cabin.” A trap that he’d had to have put in place months ago. Chilling, really, when you think about it. I suppose immortal creatures really aren’t constrained by things like “time.”
Viljo’s fingers paused on the keys. “That is . . . not possible. The contracts . . .”
“They’ve found a way around it.” I finally spotted a footstool, buried under a stack of gaming magazines. Shoving the pile off onto the floor, I dragged the stool over so I could have a seat next to Viljo. “We have to warn everyone to watch their backs.”
In a few keyboard taps and a half dozen clicks of the mouse, Viljo had the message winging across the ether. “Should we warn the Order, also?”
“No.” And if the bastards had warned us in the first place, God knows how much of the last few days could have been prevented. I added that to my mental list of “things to punch Cam in the face for.”
“Okay then. Alert sent. When Ivan calls, you get to talk to him.” Viljo rocked his chair back, folding his hands over his stomach. Images and screens kept flickering up and down over his monitors, almost like the network had a mind of its own.
One Web site caught my eye, and I leaned forward to see better. “What’s that?”
Even in the darkened room, I caught his blush. “Just . . . something I have been working on.”
“It just started out as a way to tweak my Web design skills. Practice, you know?” His hand twitched at the mouse, obviously dying to minimize the window to keep me from looking at it. “Then I started getting hits, and . . . well, most people treat it as a joke. Something funny. I added a contact address, though. In case anyone really wants to contact a champion.”
“Any takers?”
“Not yet.” Finally, he clicked the window closed, to keep me from prying. “But I am getting over two hundred thousand hits a day. Word-of-mouth traffic has been huge.” He brought something else up on the screen, some kind of log detailing who viewed the site and from where. “Ivan thinks it is a brilliant idea.”
Of course he would. I suppose I could see the value. For every thousand people who thought it was a joke, there was that one person, alone and scared, who might reach out. It could be helpful. “Keep me posted on how it goes.”
We kind of ran out of things to talk about, then. Outside of demon slaying, we really didn’t have a lot in common. After a few moments of awkward silence, Viljo looked at me. “Want to wager on who calls in first?”
“Hm. Sveta will be last.” Time zones would dictate who called in first, and I had no idea who was where at the moment. But Sveta, the one and only female champion and poster girl for rebellion and authority issues, would most certainly drag it out as long as possible.
Viljo snorted and gave me a sly grin. “I think she will be first.”
“What do you know that I don’t, Viljo?” I was still giving him a suspicious look when the phone beside his keyboard broke into the opening riff of Santana’s “Black Magic Woman.”
Viljo made a big show of picking it up to answer it and setting it to speakerphone. “Why, hello, Svetlana.”
A Shot in the Dark Page 20