A Snake in the Grass Read online

  A SNAKE IN

  THE GRASS

  A JESSE JAMES DAWSON NOVEL

  K.A. STEWART

  Published by Pirate Ninja Press at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2014 K.A. Stewart

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design, Inc.

  www.gobookcoverdesign.com

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Also from K.A. Stewart

  About the Author

  Dedicated to Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  So many aspects of my life would be impossible without my family, and I’m lucky enough to have more than one. So, for the family I was born to: Grammy, Butch, David, Gary, Eric, Laura, Jimmy, Lora, Jackie, Jason, Chase, Rylee and Cashlee. For the family I chose: Scott, Gita, Paul, Jayson, Dawna, Melissa, Caron, Faith, Josh, Jenn, Erin, Andy, Ethan, Rachel and Will. And for the writing family that chose me: Anne, Ginger, Alice, Caleb and Janet.

  Thank you.

  Also, a special shout out to Paul Henri Alanís Noyola for his diligent efforts in correcting my gawdawful Spanish. Gracias.

  Chapter 1

  Forever ago…

  It’s no secret that I was a hell-raiser as a kid. Well, more teen than kid, but you know what I mean. If there was trouble, I found it. If there was petty crime, I committed it. If there was a drug, I did it. A lot. Seriously, I did my fair share of drugs. Hell, I did my share, and your share, and a couple other people’s shares. If I hadn’t been arrested at fifteen, I’d most likely have been dead before eighteen.

  In contrast, my little brother had known he wanted to be a cop from the time he was three years old. While I embraced the reputation of my outlaw namesake, Jesse James, my brother Cole Younger Dawson was destined to be the exact opposite of his. Straight A student, honor society, volunteer work, you name it, he was there. He was the kind of guy that you just knew was going to rip open his shirt to reveal a Superman emblem underneath. Still is, to this day.

  You’d think that such a disparity in personalities would cause friction, and yeah, we did our damnedest to kill each other on several occasions, but in the end, it always boiled down to blood. He was my blood, and there was no power on earth that could help the person who laid hands on my little brother. We were close, even when we absolutely didn’t understand each other. That’s what brothers do.

  So like I said, I tore up the town with some buddies one night, and I got arrested while my so-called friends high-tailed it over the chain-link fence out back. Can’t even remember what I was running on that night, but I tried like hell to take a chunk out of the cops that put me down. I failed, of course. I seriously weighed maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Bet it was like getting attacked by a broom straw. Those guys probably still laugh about it, and I deserved it.

  Judge Carter, known for his unusual sentences especially in juvenile cases, opted to suspend any time in Juvie for me, so long as I attended a court-selected martial arts class twice a week. Everyone around me, including me, expected it to be a spectacular failure. Turns out, it wasn’t.

  If Judge Carter saved my life, then Carl Bledsoe set my path from that moment on. Sensei, disciplinarian, smacker-of-hard-heads and later, friend. He taught me everything I would need to know to become the man that I am today. He drove the tenets of bushido into my head until I could recite them in my sleep (and have). He taught me to value honor and integrity. He taught me that there are things greater than just one man, and that sometimes, doing the right thing may suck, but it’s always worth it.

  And of course, he taught me to kick a lot of ass. That’s one of those things I’m not supposed to say, but hey, it’s come in handy in the years since. Sometimes, when I have nothing to do but think back on what my life has become, I have to wonder what would have happened to all the people that I’ve helped if I’d never learned the skills that I have. If I’d have dropped the classes, or if I’d climbed over that fence after my friends, or if I’d just stayed in that night and smoked another bowl. If I wasn’t who I am, where would my baby brother be now?

  He was young when he came to me for help, but we were both old enough to be fathers. My Annabelle and his Nicky were less than six months apart in age, just at the age where they should be toddling. Well, Anna was toddling. Nicky, so frail and weak, had spent the best part of his first year in and out of hospitals with so many ailments that I think the doctors despaired of ever discovering them all.

  Nicky was five months old the first time they called the priest to perform last rites. He pulled through that time, somehow, but the next time was barely a month later, and even Mira was convinced to bless the tiny little life that was surely passing on to the next world right before our eyes. Mira held Stephanie, Cole’s wife, as she sobbed silently, and I couldn’t do a thing but stand next to my brother, watching the grayness of sick certainty settle over his face. Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children, and we all knew it, even as young as we all were.

  Finally, he ducked out of the room, unable to stand and listen for the inevitable long tone in his tiny son’s heart monitor. I wanted to go after him, wanted to take some of that horrible, inexorable burden off his shoulders, but I didn’t. For probably the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of the right words to say, or even the wrong ones. All I could think was how I would feel if that was my Annabelle in that bed, and the sick dread of it threatened to choke me to death. So I let him go to face whatever he had to face all alone.

  I hate myself every day for that. I probably always will.

  That night, the night that should have been the end of the world as we knew it, Nicky’s vital signs suddenly got stronger. His oxygen came up, his heart rate stabilized. He opened his eyes, and when they landed on his mother, he smiled around the tubes that were taped to his face.

  They were able to take him home two days later, and everyone thanked whatever god or goddess they believed in for the miracle. We didn’t know, back then. We had no idea what had actually happened.

  Cole withdrew. I saw it, and I chalked it up to stress over bills, over Nicky’s health, over a lot of things. He found excuses not to hang out with me, to skip family gatherings. He took extra shifts under the pretense that they could use the money. On the few occasions I saw him, the hollows in his cheeks seemed deeper, the shadows under his eyes darker. Other than our hair color – his chestnut brown to my blond – and the fact that he packed on about thirty pounds more muscle than I had, we were supposed to look alike. In those days, I thought we still did, though he looked fifteen years older than me instead of three years younger.

  Nicky had been out of the hospital for five months, growing stronger all the time, though he still had a lot of ground to make up. Through rampant bullying, I managed to get Cole to my parents’ house for a shindig, convinced that some good old-fashioned family shenanigans were just what he needed to lighten his spirits.

  We stood off to the side and nursed beers as the kids played, Anna taking charge of Nicky with a watchful eye that said she understood even then that he wasn’t capable of the same things she was. Mira and Steph calmly navigated the sea of Dawson family lunacy, setting out the giant barbecue dinner we were going to have if my parents c
ould ever quit arguing over the proper settings for the grill. There was no venom behind my folks’ grumbling. We’d been hearing the same old snarks for decades at that point. It was just…normal. This was how life was supposed to be.

  Up until the moment that Cole cleared his throat to get my attention. “Jesse?”

  That made me look at him sharply. We never used our names. It was always little brother and big brother. Sometimes Beavis and Butthead. Occasionally asshole and dipshit. But never, never ever Jesse and Cole.

  There was something strange in his blue-gray eyes, something I had never seen there before. A flatness, maybe, or just… Something not right. Something was missing. “What’s up, little brother?”

  “Can you…can I talk to you for a minute? Inside?” With a raised brow, I followed him into the house, stopping in the living room where he rolled up his long shirt sleeve. “I think… I think I’ve done something really bad.”

  He revealed what looked to be a black tribal tattoo on the inside of his left forearm, stretching from wrist to elbow, and I swear, I busted out laughing. “Oh shit, little brother. The nineties called, they want their tattoo back.” He gave me a pained look, but I was on a roll, there was no way I was letting that one go. “Seriously, how drunk were you? Did you actually pay money for that piece of crap?”

  “Jesse!” He grabbed my arm and gave me a good jerk, one that went beyond just playful. When I stopped to give him a “what the fuck” glare, he thrust his arm before my eyes again. “Look closer. Really look.”

  And I did. I looked. Really looked, and the black marks on his arm swam before my eyes. They writhed and stayed still all at the same time, they intersected at impossible angles and dipped in and out of view in a way that was simply not possible. I stared at it until my eyes watered, until I felt like someone had driven an icepick up into my eye socket. It was wrong in a way I had no words for at that time (and have failed to find words for in the time since). “What the ever-loving fuck, Cole?”

  Only then did he drop his arm and release his grip on me, a shudder passing through his body. “You see it. Thank God, you see it too.”

  “Well yeah, you let someone tattoo…what the hell is that? It’s kinda hard to miss.”

  “Steph can’t see it.”

  I snorted. “I think it’s going to be a bit hard to hide it from her, little brother. It’s not exactly subtle.”

  He shook his head, obviously frustrated at my lack of understanding. “No… She isn’t able to see it. It’s just…not there for her. The…wiggling, the movement. I wasn’t sure… I wasn’t sure if you would be able to.”

  “I think maybe you better sit down and explain yourself, little brother.”

  We found ourselves staring at each other over my parents’ coffee table as Cole laid it all out for me. “The night in the hospital…The night Nicky almost…” I nodded quickly. Yeah, I knew which night he meant. He didn’t need to say it. “When I left his room, I was going to go to the hospital chapel. But when I got close, I just… I couldn’t go in there. I was too angry with God to go asking him for favors at that moment, y’know? I mean, why would he help us when he’d allowed Nicky to suffer so much already? So I just kept walking.”

  I could understand it. I wasn’t a confirmed believer in God-with-a-big-G myself, but we’d been raised with the church in our lives and Cole was more comfortable with his faith than I was. I totally understood being angry with God in that moment. I would have been too.

  “So, like, I went out to that big courtyard they have, y’know where the smokers all go. And I sat down on this bench and I just put my head in my hands, and I tried to cry, ’cause it seemed like the thing to do. But there weren’t any tears anymore. I was all dried up, all numb. All I could see ahead of me was this long, black, cold tunnel, y’know? No light anymore. The world was never going to be the same again.”

  I just sat and let him talk, knowing this had all been coming a long time.

  “So I was sitting there, and suddenly, there was this guy in hospital scrubs sitting next to me. I didn’t see him come out the doors, or walk up, but he was just…there. And I looked up at him, ’cause I figured he was the one who had come out to tell me Nicky was gone.” He shuddered again, and I reached across the table to rest my hand on his shoulder. “But that wasn’t what he wanted. He looked at me, and he smiled, and he said ‘what if I told you that you could save him?’”

  My brother’s face was pasty in an unhealthy way as he recounted the conversation. “He wasn’t…he wasn’t human, Jess. I know you’re thinking I’m nuts, but if you could have heard his voice… It wasn’t like anything you’ve ever heard. It wasn’t something you could ever doubt, if you’d have heard it. He offered…if I would give him my soul, he would make Nicky healthy again. And I believed him, totally and completely. There was no way this guy, this thing, was lying to me. And I thought… I thought, if Nicky dies, I don’t want my soul anyway. I don’t want to live in that world where I go on and my son can’t.”

  “Jesus, Cole…” Ignoring the soul-selling part, just to know that my brother had hit that level of despair was…sobering on a level I can’t describe.

  “So I told him yes. He asked me if I was really sure, and I said yes again. Then he grabbed my arm, and it started burning. I mean, I could smell my own flesh smoking, and this black mark crawled its way up my arm like it was alive.” He rubbed at the tattoo, then snatched his hand away like he could still feel it wriggling under his skin. “About half an hour later, Mom came to find me, to tell me that Nicky was stabilizing. That’s when I came back in, because I knew it had worked.”

  I sat back on the couch with a sigh, running a hand through my long hair. Cole sat with his elbows on his knees, his eyes on the carpet, shoulders tense like he was braced for…something. Finally, I just shook my head. “I don’t know what to even say to that, little brother. That’s the weirdest story I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “I know.” He nodded quickly. “Trust me, I know. I hear myself saying these words, and I want to go lock myself up in a loony bin. But then I look down, and the mark is still there. And you can see it move, too.”

  “So… So it worked, right? I mean…aside from the whole not having a soul thing – and we’re not even going to address how much I don’t believe that at all – you saved Nicky. That’s good, right?”

  “Yeah, that part is good. Except now he can’t stand for me to touch him. He screams, Jess, if I come anywhere near him. Screams and screams and screams like I was dunking him in boiling water. He’ll only quiet down if I give him back to Steph.” He dropped his head, wrapping his arms over it like that was going to muffle the faint sob. “He knows, Jesse. He’s just a baby, but he knows what I did, and he knows I’m a terrible person now.”

  “You don’t have the ability to be a terrible person.” He refused to look up at me, and I poked him in the arm. “Hey. Hey! Look up at me, asshole.” He did, finally, his eyes ringed in red and as empty as a bottomless pit. “There has to be a way to fix this. Right? If it can be done, it can be undone.”

  “I don’t want it to be undone. Nicky is healthier now than he’s been since he was born. I just want him to not be afraid of me.”

  I pursed my lips as I thought, going over the details of what Cole had told me. “So this thing that talked to you, the not-a-man thing. It was…the devil?”

  He snorted a small laugh, and shook his head. “No, nothing so grand. Just a demon. I guess I didn’t rate the Big Guy himself coming up to bargain.”

  “And do you know how to get ahold of this thing again?”

  He nodded. “He gave me his name.” When I opened my mouth again, he held up his hand quickly. “I’m not going to tell you what it is. It’s… It lives in my head now. It crawls around and it feels…terrible. I don’t want that in your head.”

  “Okay. I assume, if books and movies haven’t lied to us all these years, that if you call his name, he’ll come a-runnin’, and he’ll be willing to
make another deal.”

  “What do I offer him? I kinda only had the one soul, and that’s gone now.”

  “I have one. Little dark around the edges, but perfectly usable.” I raised a brow at him and let that sink in for a moment.

  “No. Absolutely not.” He shook his head until I thought his brains might rattle out his ears. “I can’t let you do that, big brother, not after what I just told you about how Nicky reacts to me. Do you want Annabelle to shriek every time you get near her?”

  “Well I’m not just going to walk up and hand it over to the thing.”

  “What, then?”

  I gave him a slow grin. “I have a plan.”

  As plans go, I’ve had better ones. Had worse ones, too.

  A few nights later, I met my brother in the back acreage of some local park land. It was as far away from prying eyes as we could manage on short notice, and one of the few places that I felt I could safely pull out three feet of sharpened steel without getting arrested.

  The sword was one that my blacksmith buddy Marty had made me a couple of years prior, as a Christmas present. It was supposed to just be something to hang over my mantel, if I ever had one, and look wickedly pretty. That didn’t mean, though, that it wasn’t a perfectly functional weapon, or that I didn’t know how to use it.

  I gave Cole a small smirk. “And you said that a thousands-of-years-old martial art wasn’t going to be applicable to my everyday life.” He probably would have laughed at me if he hadn’t been busy looking like he was going to puke.

  After swallowing a couple of times, he said “Are you ready?” and when I nodded, he opened his mouth and the nastiest thing I have ever heard in my life came spewing out of it. Seriously, the thing had no vowels, or consonants, it was just poison wrapped in hate, and smothered in a nice layer of bloody thorns and acid. My body had an instant and violent reaction, and I hit the ground with a sharp pain in both knees as I heaved up my guts into the grass. Cole was faring no better, by the sound of it, coughing and gagging just out of my sight.