A Devil in the Details jjd-1

by K. A. Stewart

  Aside from the few incidents as boys where we’d wholeheartedly tried to kill each other, we’d been close. Cole even credited his career in law enforcement to my brief stint with lawlessness. Even as adults, after we’d gone our separate ways, hardly a day went by that we didn’t talk, and we always kept up our good-natured competition. I got the first college education, but he landed the reputable career. I bought the first house; he bought a bigger one. He married first, but I had the first kid-that sort of thing.

  Things changed, after Nicky came.

  Even at barely five years old, my nephew was probably the strongest person I’d ever known. That child had been through more pain and suffering in his short life than any person should have to see in ten lifetimes. I’m not sure the doctors know everything that’s wrong with him yet.

  He was six months old when they nearly lost him. I can’t count how many nights Mira spent holding Stephanie’s hand at the hospital. Twice, the priest was called, and even Mira gave her own form of last rites. It wasn’t a matter of if; it was a matter of when.

  That’s when Cole made his deal. I couldn’t tell you how the demon found him, but I’m willing to bet they haunt hospitals, places where people are at their most desperate. Looking back, I’ve always tried to figure out whether I realized Cole was gone extra long that night? If I’d gone to find him, could I have stopped it all? But I didn’t, and it was done.

  Within hours, Nicky’s vitals had stabilized. They took him off the machines. He smiled for the first time. We were so happy with his miraculous recovery, it never occurred to anyone to ask how. Back then, who knew to be suspicious of unexpected good fortune?

  I still remembered Cole coming to me one sunny summer day at Mom’s. Nicky and Anna were just crawling, and content to play in the dirt. Dad and Mom were fussing over the placement of the checkered tablecloth, while Mira and Steph just set the table without waiting for the discussion to be resolved.

  “Jesse?” That’s what got my attention. He never called me by name. I examined his face closely and saw something dark in his eyes, something terrifying. He looked scared. My brother-the-cop was never scared, even when he ought to be. “I think I did something really bad.”

  He showed me the writhing brand on his left arm, the sigil that marked his soul as someone else’s property. He introduced me to a world of demons and nightmares I hadn’t even known existed. And he asked me if I knew any way out.

  Now, realize that my wife is a witch, as in Wiccan. But her magical abilities are something separate and apart from her religion, and at that time, I had no idea this stuff existed. I accused Cole of getting drunk and tattooed. I laughed in his face. It took some time to convince me he was really in trouble. After that, though, it was on.

  I mean, what was I supposed to do? He was my little brother, and he was in deep. He explained to me about the contract, what the tattoo meant. And it stood to reason that a demon that would make one deal would make another. In the movies, people made challenges with the devil all the time, right? Golden fiddles and shit. I didn’t know all the rules, but I knew how to fight. It’s one of the few things I’ve ever been good at. And I knew that turning a blind eye was worse than anything else.

  I fought for his soul. I fully admit that I won only through sheer luck. It should have made us closer, surviving something like that. Instead, we drifted apart.

  Maybe he knew I always harbored a faint disappointment in him. Maybe he couldn’t handle my knowing his dirty secret. Maybe he just hated himself for not making a better deal when he had the chance. He’d bargained for Nicky to live, that one time, not for his continued good health. The demon got the better of Cole. Maybe it ate at him. I don’t know. Like I said, we don’t talk much anymore.

  I brooded on that way longer than I should have-most of the drive home, in fact. We’ll pretend that’s why I didn’t notice the blue Ford Escort in more than a passing way until I was nearly home.

  In all fairness to me, though, I had no reason to notice it. I mean, it’s an Escort, right? The most innocuous car known to man. It wasn’t driving erratically; it wasn’t even that close to my truck. It was there, three cars back, the driver no doubt minding his own business and thinking things such as “Man, my hemorrhoids hurt.” If not for the incident the previous night and the sudden feeling of ants crawling all over my arms (never a good sign), I never would have noticed it at all.

  But once I’d made four different turns, and it was still back there, I started paying more attention. What were the odds that a blue Escort tried to run me off the road the night before, and now one had just showed up behind me again?

  On a hunch, I took a random right turn, just to see what would happen. Not thirty seconds later, the plucky little car followed right behind me. “Okay, buddy… Let’s see how serious you are about this.” I sped up, soon doing forty through the residential neighborhood.

  The Escort kept up, never farther than three blocks behind me. To my frustration, I couldn’t make out any features of the driver. The sunlight bounced off the windshield, the glare blinding me. I took another right down a shade-dappled side street, hoping to get a better look, and screeched to a halt in the middle of the street.

  The car pulled up at the end of the block and sat there for several long moments. I watched it in my rearview mirror, almost feeling the gaze of the silhouetted driver staring back. I was almost certain it was a guy. The hair was either close-cropped or slicked down, shoulders decently broad. I could hear the whine of a belt under the hood, and I filed that away as an identifying mark.

  I don’t know how long we stared at each other like that. It seemed like forever. Then the Escort floored it and squalled tires in the other direction.

  “Oh, you think so?” I did an ugly U-turn myself, running up over someone’s nicely manicured lawn, and was off in hot pursuit. The bastard wasn’t man enough to face me directly, was he? It should be noted that this ranked pretty high on my “stupid me” tricks list.

  I caught a glimpse of the car as it left the subdivision and headed east. Toward the highway. If I didn’t catch up to him before he hit I-35, I’d lose him in the traffic. I shifted through gears as fast as I could, rounding corners at highly unsafe speeds. Where the tiny residential street met a four-lane thoroughfare, I lost sight of the blue car for just a moment.

  Cussing under my breath, I glanced up and down, trying to guess which way he’d gone. The highway was to the left, but he could lose himself in more housing additions if he went right.

  The sound of a squealing belt carried to me through the open window, and I smirked. Gotcha. Stomping on the gas, I turned left. I lost the belt whine in the roar of my own engine, but I knew he had to be just ahead of me. I topped a small rise, fully expecting to see the blue car just ahead of me, and fumed when it wasn’t. Where the hell. ..?

  There was nothing there but a pale yellow VW bug, its engine wailing plaintively as it trundled over the next hill. “Dammit!” I glanced behind me, on the off chance that a blue Ford Escort would materialize on command, but there was nothing.

  My gaze returned to the front just in time to keep me from annihilating a small ratlike dog as it ran into the street yapping at my wheels. I slammed on the brakes, and rested my head against the steering wheel until my heart stopped marching double-time in my chest.

  Well, that rather eliminated any chance of last night being a random act of drunken stupidity. In a way, I was relieved. I mean, for whatever reason, someone was rather annoyed with me. But at least that meant there wasn’t some maniac on the road, running hapless people into ditches. Mira was safe; the girls at work were safe. The question was, should I report it or not? I mean, if this was work related-champion work, not retail work-what would I say?

  I concocted and discarded at least twenty different stories on the way home, and none of them were even remotely plausible. By default, I guess I would just keep it to myself-no use upsetting Mira.

  My power steering whined as I pulled into
my garage, mocking me and almost muffling the ring of my cell phone. “Hello?”

  “Dawson.” Ivan sounded as if he’d been gargling gravel. “It is being morning there, tak? I am not to be waking you?”

  “No, no, I’m up. What’s going on?”

  I could almost hear him shaking his grizzled white head. “It is being muchly difficult here. And I am thinking that the news will not be good.”

  8

  I rummaged through the kitchen to fix myself some kind of sustenance as Ivan talked. Surely any and all paranoia I was experiencing was a result of hunger. That was the ticket.

  The leftovers were piled neatly in the fridge, dated and color coded. My wife is sometimes a bit anal, but I love her anyway.

  “Miguel was to be entertaining a client three weeks ago. He was to be meeting them when he traveled north to visit family. A town called Mascarena. He was to be telling Rosaline this, but he was not speaking the name.” Ivan’s voice grumbled in my ear, sounding rather like a great disgruntled bear.

  I didn’t find Miguel’s actions unusual. I don’t tell Mira whom I work for, either, most of the time. I operate under the assumption that she’s safer not knowing. “He didn’t tell his brothers or anything? Not even where he was going?”

  Ivan has a powerful frown. I could hear it over the phone, could picture the deeply creased forehead beneath his stark white crew cut. “There is to being some language difficulty here, but, I believe the brothers are not to be knowing. The family in the north; they are being afraid to speak, even to Miguel’s family. It is possible they are not to be understanding that I mean no harm. I am told I am to being intimidating.”

  He was probably right. No one would ever mistake Ivan for anything other than military or law enforcement, and neither was popular in Mexico, especially near the border. Add to that his horrible English and their native Spanish, and it gave a whole new meaning to “language barrier.” “Look, I have a client in town myself, but once I’ve settled him, Mira and I can fly down. She can translate for you.” Mira was amazing with languages, and Spanish was just one of several she spoke fluently.

  “That is not being necessary. We are to be making do with what we have. The family is to being most hospitable to me.”

  Of course they were. Miguel’s mother often reminded me of my own. Every woman was her daughter and every man was her son, even if they already had white hair and wrinkles when she met them. No doubt, Ivan was finding himself mothered to death by the feisty Mexican widow.

  “Well, is there anything we can do?” I pinned the phone against my shoulder so I could slap a few slices of leftover pork roast on some bread-good stuff.

  He sighed heavily. While I joked about Ivan’s being the old man, it occurred to me for the first time that he truly was getting old. He’d been battling demons longer than I’d been alive. No other champion had as many kills to his credit as Ivan. “His-what is word?-his weapon is not to being returned. I am to be worrying much about this.”

  “He uses a machete,” I supplied absently. Not returning a weapon was against the rules.

  I’ve never seen a losing battle, but from what I hear, demons don’t leave bodies lying around. One of the first things Ivan taught us to negotiate was for some proof of death to be delivered. A head or hand is a bit macabre, so we usually opted for our weapon to be presented to the person of our choice. Beats a singing telegram.

  “Miguel wouldn’t have forgotten that clause. He’s been at this longer than I have.” Ten years longer, for all that Miguel was seven years my junior. It was a family matter, with him, handed down through the generations. He’d lost his father and one older brother to it already.

  “ Tak, I am to be knowing this. But it is not to be found all the same.”

  “Is it possible he isn’t dead?” Mira’s scrying hadn’t been one hundred percent conclusive, though I’d never heard of a demon taking a hostage. They didn’t worry about our fleshly vessels, just the sweet goodies inside. Maybe souls really do taste like Peeps.

  “I am not knowing. I have never to be seeing this before.” He hesitated a moment before going on. “Dawson, being careful, tak? Some things are to being incorrect. I am not happy.”

  I wasn’t happy, either, for more reasons than I could count. “Yeah, I’ll be careful. You know me.”

  “This is what is to be worrying me.”

  “You’re just a regular comedian aren’t you?” I had to smile, but I knew Ivan wasn’t joking. I wasn’t entirely sure he knew how.

  “Is Mira being there?”

  “No, she’s at work,” I mumbled through a mouthful of sandwich.

  “When she is coming home, perhaps to be having her call Rosaline? I think she would like to hear from Mira.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  “I will be in touch.” He disconnected the call before I could say good-bye. It really was rather annoying. I’d have to stop doing that to people.

  I finished my lunch because I knew I’d need the energy later tonight, but it just didn’t taste good anymore.

  My next pass through the kitchen was business related. Nelson Kidd was never going to say, “Y’know what? I screwed up, so we’ll just let the demon have my soul.” And even if he did, I couldn’t live with myself after that. Deep down, I knew this. So tonight, I would be summoning a demon for negotiations.

  Your average denizen of Hell is just that-stuck there with only other demons and Jerry Springer reruns for entertainment. Sure, there are a few texts floating around the world with actual demon names, and every so often some amateur magician tries to summon one forth. (It does work, although it rarely turns out like the summoner intended.) Other than that, vacation options from Hell are pretty limited.

  However, once in a very great while, a demon gets enough power to come across on its own. Then, they wander around, gather up souls, and solidify their power base until someone like me comes along and puts the hurt on them.

  Regardless of how they get to this plane, they’re usually rather pleased to be here. I’m guessing Hell’s not that scenic, and the chance to get out and stretch their appendages is welcome. On top of that, they get a chance at another soul. Who wouldn’t be happy to take the trip to the real world? But y’know how you always have that one tourist, usually sitting next to you on the plane, who just bitches and gripes about everything? They have those in demonkind, too, and they get real snippy about being ordered around.

  Since I thought of myself as an air marshal on a demon’s vacation flight, it was only fitting that I equip myself with all the necessary measures to control a rowdy passenger. And I was all out of demon-begone.

  It’s a simple recipe of Ivan’s devising, and all the ingredients can be found in an average kitchen cabinet-well, at least in our kitchen cabinet. In truth, we’re the only people I know who buy both cayenne pepper and cumin in bulk.

  You take a bunch of cayenne pepper and a bunch of cumin. I operate on the idea that more is better, so long as it’ll still spray through the spritzer thingy. Dump that into a bottle of water, attach a spray nozzle, shake well. Squirt your pesky demon like a bad puppy and it usually departs posthaste. Do not stand downwind of your spray. It hurts just as bad in your own eyes-not that I would know anything about that, of course.

  No, I don’t know why it works. Mira says those two spices are known to have protective properties even without magical additions. Good thing, since you could put all my magical talent on the head of a pin and still have room to spare.

  I poured some into a refillable Mace canister on my key chain, amongst the rest of my strange collection of protective charms and antidemon gadgets. I tucked the larger bottle into my duffel bag.

  My next task was to do a check of my armor. Perhaps it’s disrespectful to my Asian leanings, but I prefer metal around me to bamboo. There’s just something comforting about being encased in links of steel.

  I hadn’t always worn armor. That first battle I went into with a sword and rampant stupidity
. I was lucky, that time. I never got the chance to be so lax again. The second time, I won, but I spent six months in ICU after the Yeti tried to eat my lungs. That’s when I started charging fees and convinced Marty to throw together some protective gear. We’ve been tinkering with the armor ever since. He wants to put me in plate. I’m resisting.

  The mail covered the big areas, chest, thighs, calves, upper arms. I wore thick leather bracers on my forearms, and steel-toed work boots. Beneath it all, I wore a layer of heavy padding, designed to keep the metal from ripping my skin to shreds. That alone added a good fifteen pounds to the already heavy outfit.

  In the beginning, I had worked long hours to build up my strength to compensate for the extra weight. But the protection it offered more than made up for any loss in mobility. You can’t fight when your guts are flopping around down by your feet.

  The only thing I hated about it was the smell. No matter what I did, my armor and padding always smelled of sweat and blood and sulfur. It wasn’t the easiest thing to wash. Maybe, with the arrival of warm weather, I could try to wash the padding again and hang it out to dry. It’d take a couple days, though, and there was no time to do it now.

  I dropped the tailgate on my truck and laid each piece out, looking them over for any imperfections, not that I expected to find any. Marty did good work. He had even oiled the leather straps and replaced one buckle that had started to wear thin.

  My shirt looked like a wadded-up ball of steel until I shook it out into the supple, shining work of art that it was. It was dull, tarnished steel, though at one time, Marty had worked gold-tinted links into the neckline and cuffs of the sleeves. Most of those had been damaged and replaced over the years, and now it was an almost uniform charcoal gray. The newest links shone brightly against the dull chain of the original armor, but aside from that, the repair was seamless.