“I wish we could help them, too,” Kidd murmured, echoing my own thoughts.
I’d often wished for a way to get a roster of all the souls a demon held. Ivan insisted that, if a person was interested in saving himself, he’d find a way. But I’d always wondered-what if people just didn’t know they still had a choice? Maybe, if we could contact those people after a demon’s defeat, they’d be more willing to seek redemption, knowing the fight would be easier. Maybe they wouldn’t care at all. I was continually surprised by the foibles of human nature.
“Get some rest, Mr. Kidd. It’s late.” Or early, maybe. The clock in my truck said two thirty. I’d quit resetting it for daylight saving time years ago, so it was either right or an hour off. Either way, it was past time for good little boys and girls to be in bed. “Call me again in about ten days so we can make arrangements.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dawson.” He slid out of the truck and disappeared into the hotel. Wandering sleepily toward home, I was very pleased not to see any blue Ford Escorts in my taillights.
11
Wednesday morning dawned, not with my wife in my arms and my daughter catapulting into my bed, but with the shrill clamor of the alarm clock.
“Buh? Muh…” I beat on it several times before I realized I was abusing the phone by mistake and corrected myself. I blinked at the offending luminescent digits for some time before they finally obeyed and became 7:00 a.m.
Why was the alarm going off so early? Where was Mira?
It finally occurred to me that it was Wednesday-truck day at the store. Mira had gone in early and no doubt taken Hurricane Annabelle with her. So why was I getting up at seven? After how late I was out last night, why was I getting up at all? On about four hours sleep, I was not even human. Someone should know this.
Zombie-me wandered to the bathroom to do all the usual morning things, and found a note taped to the mirror. Doc appointment, 10:30 a.m. Don’t forget! Work at 3 p.m.
Groaning, I knocked my head against the wall next to the sink. Of course I’d forgotten. I had intended to forget. Face it, no man wants to go to the doctor. It just isn’t bred into our DNA.
I’d only just gotten up, and already my day was jam-packed with fun and frivolity. It wasn’t like the night before involving mundane things such as demon challenges, snippy agents, and soulless baseball players. No, today I faced true terror-a doctor’s appointment and an afternoon shift at It. I suppose it says something about me that I find the banality of real life more taxing than the really freaky stuff. I often wonder whether I could function without having an adrenaline high for more than a week or two.
I actually do my doctor an injustice. She’s a really good doctor. She patches me up; she puts up with my crap. Most of the time, when I don’t have to be hospitalized, she takes what I can pay her and doesn’t fuss too much if I have to carry the bill over for a month or two. Most important, she doesn’t ask too many questions. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t buy the security consultant line, but she doesn’t know about the demons. Maybe she thinks I’m a spy or something. That’d be cool.
Hospitals, of course, are beyond her control, and those cost an arm and a leg. You can imagine that insurance companies really don’t want to take me on. Two had dropped me already, and the most recent one was charging a small fortune to insure me as a “security consultant” (I doubt they had a category for “demon slayer”). It was only a matter of time before they dumped me, too.
For the pittance they paid out on my last hospital adventure, I should have just let the docs cut the damn leg off.
Since getting up at the butt-crack of dawn meant I had some time to spare, I fumbled into my sweats and grabbed my katana. It was time for us to become reacquainted after our long separation.
As I passed the patio table, I saw that Axel had made another move, countering my knight. I paused long enough to put a rook in harm’s way, then stepped into the grass.
My usual katas, performed unarmed, I did for exercise and to keep my skills sharp. My sword katas, I did for love. There was just something so right about feeling that weight in my hand, moving with the balance point just below the guard, feeling my own reach extend to the tip of the sharp blade.
The logical part of my mind ticked off the forms as I passed through them. Upper form was to block an overhand attack or bring the blade down with force on an opponent. Lower form was to flow into an uppercut or to block across the body. Step here, step there, move, shift, turn. But my mind’s eye saw the hellhound, and each strike countered an imaginary attack or took advantage of a potential weakness.
The demon-hound outweighed me and out-massed me. I had to keep it at sword’s reach and move fast-slicing wounds, not stabbing. There was too much risk of being disarmed that way. Many small wounds would bleed as much as one big one, and that was what I needed. I had to drain away the blight, the physical embodiment of the creature’s will. Only its will kept it here. The thing had to bleed.
I fought my imaginary opponent for an hour and a half, trampling patterns in the dew-soaked grass through my phantom battle. But in the end, I felt confident that I knew how to defeat it-not certain, never certain, but confident.
And you’re probably thinking I should just take a gun and shoot the damn thing. It’s a good idea, in theory, until you realize that when you’re shooting something that doesn’t have a kill point, a vital organ to hit and incapacitate or kill it, your only recourse is to cause massive amounts of damage. Most firearms don’t cause enough damage, and you’ll run out of bullets before you poke enough holes in it. The guns that do cause enough damage-the large calibers, the huge automatics-well, you can never be sure where those bullets are going to stop, after they pass through your target. And I’m not a big fan of collateral damage, so blades are best in most cases. Though, there was the flame-thrower incident. That was a hoot.
At the appointed hour, showered and clean-shaven in honor of spring, I appeared at the office of one Dr. Bridget Smith, who happened to be sitting at her receptionist’s desk when I walked in. It was a small family practice, cozy and comfortable. The chairs, in soothing pastel colors, matched the artistic watercolor prints on the walls, which in turn complemented the delicate paisley pattern in the carpet. I had no idea why I knew what paisley was, and it vaguely disturbed me.
It was apparently my lucky day. I was the only patient there. Oh joy, glee and rapture, even. Even in my head, I have to be sarcastic.
“Hey, Jesse.” Dr. Bridget is one of those women who makes “heavy” look damn good. I didn’t know enough about fashion to figure out why the plum-colored blouse and tailored gray skirt looked so great on her. Whatever it was, her clothes accented all the right curves. She was… What was the word? Voluptuous. Yeah, that’s it. And if I ever said it out loud, she and Mira would both thump me right between the eyes for it. Did I mention that she’s Mira’s best friend from college? Yeah. Awkward much? Hell yeah. Especially when you consider that I dated Bridget first.
Realistically, I should have picked a different doctor. But as I said, Dr. Bridget cuts me lots of slack in important areas. I doubt another doc would have.
A lock of dark hair had come free from her neat bun, and she brushed it out of her eyes with a frazzled grin. Her white lab coat was tossed over an empty chair, and there were about fifteen files scattered about, presumably in some order unfathomable to the layman. “Nice shirt.”
The T-shirt slogan of the day, IN TOUCH WITH MY INNER PIRATE, was emblazoned across a rustic skull and crossbones.
“Rough day already?” I found a clean, and therefore safe, place to perch and observe the chaos.
“Kim’s out sick today, so I’m a little behind already.” She glanced around, looking for something, then threw up her hands in exasperation when it failed to leap to her attention. “Where did I put that file? I just had it…”
Yes! “We can cancel. I can come back another time.” I edged toward the door, tasting freedom.
“No, no, you’re a q
uick one. Just head on back to the grape room and get the pants off. I’ll catch up in a second.”
Dammit. So near, and yet so far. And for the record, there is something very wrong about your wife’s best friend ordering you to get your pants off, doctor or no. “The grape room?”
She gave me a smirk. “I treat kids, too. It’s to make them feel comfortable.”
“I’m not saying a word.” Like a good little boy, I headed back to the examination room with the very purple door and shed my boots and jeans. That left me in an icy cold office in my SpongeBob boxer shorts (a Father’s Day present from Anna). Somewhere, there was a sheet thing she’d want me to wrap around myself for modesty. Now where was it?
“So, how’s Annabelle doing?” I could hear her shuffle papers out front as she called back to me.
“Oh fine. Y’know-too smart for her own good.”
“She excited about school this fall?”
“Oh yeah, driving us nuts about it.” Sheet, sheet… Where would I be, if I were a sheet? Aha! There was a cabinet under the exam table.
Of course, as I bent over to explore the cabinet, Dr. Bridget walked in behind me. “Nice boxers.”
I yelped-a manly yelp, I swear-and snatched up a sheet to hold protectively in front of me. She smirked.
“I’ve seen you naked, Jess.”
“Unconscious and bleeding does not count as naked.”
The new tattoo on my right arm caught her attention, and she turned my wrist this way and that, examining it. “New tattoo?”
“Temporary. Just trying it out to see if I like it or not before I commit.”
She rolled her eyes at me with that expression of supreme female amusement. “Hop up on the table, and let me see the calf first.”
I scooted my scrawny butt up on the crispy paper as instructed and arranged the sheet so she could get a good look at my right leg. The scars were almost perfect circles of shiny pink skin on either side of my calf, hairless and smooth. It looked like I’d tangled with a really big hole punch.
Bridget poked and prodded at me with cold fingers, making those “hmm” noises that doctors do. “Any tenderness?”
“Nope.”
“Any muscle weakness or spasm?”
“Nope.” Aside from what my workouts brought on, but she didn’t need to know that.
“It doesn’t look like the poison left any lingering tissue damage.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I still don’t know how you managed to clear that out of your system so fast, when we couldn’t even figure out what it was.”
I knew how. The doctors in Bethesda ran every test they could think of to identify the toxin in my system, with no luck. In fact, more than half the samples were misplaced or destroyed. At first, the hospital staff joked that I was the unluckiest patient ever. When I kept getting worse, with no antidote in sight, it wasn’t so funny anymore.
Enter Mira, her herbs, and her magic. They flew her out, quietly telling her she may need to say her good-byes to me. For three days in the ICU, she snuck me her own brand of medicine and prayed to her goddess while my right calf turned dark and sent ominous red streaks up my thigh. I don’t know how high they had the morphine drip set, but I was pretty much a vegetable for the really fun parts. All I could remember of the intense fever was being so very thirsty. And just when the doctors started mumbling about amputation, the infection receded, my skin pinked up, and I started to heal. The doctors congratulated themselves for a job well done, all the while wondering what the hell they did that finally worked.
The secret of it always made me smile. It wasn’t a modern medical miracle. It was an ancient one. I always wondered what the doctors would think of that if they knew.
“You still doing the exercises?” Bridget, oblivious to my wandering thoughts, continued groping my leg.
“Yep.” She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. “I am, I swear! Ask Mira.”
“Okay, slide down. Let me see the hip.”
This was the tricky part. In order for her to see the hip to her satisfaction, the boxers had to go. It was an interesting dance to accomplish that without losing the sheet, and of course she wouldn’t make it easier by leaving the room. She did turn her back, though. Hurray for professionalism amongst friends.
She made me do a few runway walks across the room, and a couple deep squats, just to prove I could. “You want me to balance on one leg and juggle torches next?”
The good doctor ignored me. “Looks like your range of motion is almost back to normal. You might have some pain in cold or rainy weather, though.” She leaned against the sink and gave me that thoughtful look. I hated that look. Nothing good ever followed that look. “That’s a helluva scar collection you have going, you know.” Crap. It was this conversation.
I glanced down. My legs, aside from the most recent acquisition, were unscarred. There were, of course, the lovely claw marks down my left side from armpit to hip, a constant reminder that I was most definitely human. There were also the other minor ones I’d collected over the last few years. They were nothing grossly disfiguring, but they were probably not the kind of scars a security consultant should have. Since no one was actually sure what a security consultant did, no one called me on it. “Chicks dig scars, right?”
Bridget shook her head, the friend gone and the doctor firmly in place. “The older you get, the more your body is going to hate you. Maybe you ought to think of slowing down some, while you’re still healthy.”
“I’m thirty-two, Bridge. Not a hundred thirty-two.”
“You want to live to see thirty-five?”
Of course I wanted to. The odds of it, though? Not good. I accepted that a long time ago. The samurai fears not death, only a bad death. “You know, Cole’s a cop, and no one gives him this shit.”
“Cole doesn’t have four ICU stays under his belt.”
“I’m not going to argue this with you again, Bridge.” She was a friend, yes. But even friends have limits.
“Mira and Anna-”
“Mira and I have talked about it,” I said in my best end-of-discussion voice. In fact, we’d talked and screamed and thrown things… Yeah, it had been discussed-at length. “And they will always be taken care of.”
Her jaw clenched, and I could hear her teeth grinding. I have that effect on a lot of women. “Fine. But as your doctor, I’m obligated to tell you to slow down.” She threw my pants at me, smacking me in the chest. Trying to catch them, I dropped the sheet, and there was a scramble to cover myself with something, anything. Bridget smirked. “And as your friend, I’m reminding you that Mira says not to forget your mom’s birthday present.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, dressing after the doc left the room. Was there anyone Mira hadn’t told? This was getting ridiculous.
I wandered back out to the front to find Bridget at the receptionist’s desk again and three people in the waiting room. The doc glanced up at me once. “I’ve got you down for another checkup in a month, Jess. Keep doing the therapy; maybe get some swimming in this summer.”
That earned a grimace. I don’t swim. I do sink rather well, though. “I’ll see what I can manage.”
She grabbed my hand when I went to leave and lowered her voice. “God watches out for you, Jess. I firmly believe that. But you can’t keep testing him this way.” She had that look in her gray eyes, the one that said she truly believed. How my wife the witch and this devout Catholic became best friends, I will never know.
“You worry too much, Doc.” No doubt, she would spend her next visit with Mira detailing just what kind of a worthless sumbitch I was. There were times when I wondered if she was right.
The sun was bright when I walked out into the parking lot. There wasn’t a cloud in the steel blue sky, and it looked as if that sky went on forever. Sometimes I wondered how the world could look so cheerful, knowing what horrible things existed there. Then I thought of people like Bridget-good people, with faith in a greater power, in absolu
te good. I hoped I wouldn’t let them down.
12
As I was clambering into my truck, my hip buzzed. I was learning to hate my cell phone. It never brought good news. There was some wriggling involved, but I finally got it out of my pocket. “Hello?”
“Dawson.” In just that single word, I could hear defeat in the old Ukrainian’s gravelly voice. My stomach tied itself in knots in anticipation of bad news.
“Hey, Ivan. What’s the word?” I rolled the window down and got comfortable. It wasn’t like anyone needed my parking spot.
“Is there to be any chance that you are to be hearing from Archer, of late?”
I frowned at the odd question. I’d met Guy Archer only once, and we weren’t what I would call close. He was a stocky man with black hair graying at the temples, stick-straight posture, a faint French accent. Stoic didn’t even begin to describe his expression. Ex-military, I thought, or possibly Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In plaid shirts, blue jeans, and worn work boots, he looked like a lumberjack, and he bore that impression out when I saw him pin a playing card to a tree trunk with a thrown hatchet. Lumberjacks did that kind of thing, right?
We had exchanged nods and not much else. I stuck to the United States mostly, and Guy sat up there in Toronto, doing his own thing. Miguel, yeah, I kept in touch with him, but Guy-not so much. “No, not for months. Why?” There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Ivan? You still there?”
“I was to be managing to receive one message from Grapevine. Archer was to be checking in last week. He has not.”
Ice ran down my spine, despite the rapidly warming day. “Maybe he just forgot.”
“Maybe. But I am not believing that. Neither are you.”
He was right. I didn’t believe it for an instant. You always made your checkin call. Always. Ivan drilled it into our heads from the moment he turned up on our doorsteps. “In this day of technology miracles, there is no reason we are to be fighting alone.” There was no acceptable excuse for missing a checkin.
A Devil in the Details jjd-1 Page 11