A Shot in the Dark Read online

  My boots were cast in full shadow. The church bell tolled again. Quarter ’til. Time. With a flick of my thumb, I launched the coin into the air and watched as it sparkled on its descent, sinking into the bottom of the koi pond with a tiny splash. Smirking to myself, I murmured, “No magic on my person. Yessir, Mr. Demon, whatever you say.”

  Next, I turned to Junior and offered him a respectful bow. “With your permission, sir, I’ll get this show on the road.”

  “Um . . . yeah, sure . . . What do I need to do?”

  I adjusted the heavy leather bracers on my wrists, rolled my shoulders to loosen them up, and did one or two deep knee bends. My armor jingled faintly. I was ready. “You don’t need to do anything but stay out of the way. And whatever you do, keep out of the shadows.”

  With a startled look at his feet, Junior took two big steps back from the wall’s advancing shade. Me, I stood right at the boundary, that wavering line between light and dark.

  As the last distant bell died away, the shadows in front of me . . . rippled. It’s the only way I could think to explain it. Like tiny waves lapping, they rippled in a way that had nothing to do with the texture of the ground beneath them, or the breeze that still stirred the evening air. With each subtle pulse, the darkness gathered substance, grew, solidified. Something oozed up from the earth itself, and the grass turned brown and withered as I watched.

  And up from the ground come a-bubblin’ crude. Oil that is. I smirked at my own humor, but kept it to myself. The kid probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway.

  The oily-looking substance took on form, rising up like a liquid serpent, and swayed in front of me, its “head” at eye level. A sickly parody of a rainbow colored the dark surface, shifting and changing with the viscous fluid beneath.

  It was a Snot demon, as I classified them, lacking the power to hold a more complex form, and barely sentient enough to negotiate for the souls it required. The amorphous head dipped and turned as it eyed me, the body stretching out into the yard nearly to the wall. It had to be a good twenty feet long, and as big around as my thigh. The smell of sulfur and ozone overrode the lilac in the air.

  I slid my katana out of its scabbard and took one step forward. “I am Jesse James Dawson, here to champion the soul of Elliot Eugene Effingham.” The kid’s mom musta hated him. I vowed to never bitch about my own name again. “Are we in agreement?”

  The black tattoo covering my right arm from knuckles to elbow said that we were. The contract had been negotiated as tightly as possible, considering the Snot’s lack of communication skills. I’d even managed to work in a few sly tricks of my own. I hoped. I flexed my left wrist, feeling the empty place in the bracer where the coin had once been. I had to trust that I’d bargained well, or this was going to be a short fight.

  The ooze creature rose up to tower over me, no doubt to be intimidating, but it misjudged the height of the wall behind it, and the last rays of the setting sun caught it. It ducked back down with a hiss of displeasure that caused tiny bubbles to rise from its innards and pop on the surface. The smell of sulfur got stronger, and I had to hide my smirk.

  Yeah, these things weren’t too bright, and as long as the sun was in the sky, this thing was confined to the shadow of the wall. It could advance only as quickly as the sun set, following the absence of light over the grass. It would take time to get it where I wanted it, but hopefully it was enough time to let me really piss it off, which was just what I needed.

  A face formed at the end of the long serpent, with barely enough definition to even be called a face. There were indentations that could be eyes, an opening that might be a mouth. The nose was . . . well, a lumpier lump among the rest of the lumps. The faux face stretched into a broad smile, appearing inordinately cheerful. Okay, that was just plain eerie. “We are ___________. We are ready.”

  First off, the mere sound of the creature’s name, impossible to spell or pronounce with any human tongue, made things inside my head seize up and quiver, quietly calling for Mommy for a few moments. And second, the oily sheen on the creature’s surface seemed to taint its voice as well, and my stomach rolled as the strangeness slithered into my ears and coated my tongue. I forced myself to swallow the sour taste at the back of my throat. The first time I heard a demon speak, two years ago, I’d puked. I was past that now.

  The kid wasn’t. I could hear him ralphing up his breakfast behind me. It may have even been last week’s breakfast. And his sneakers. And someone else’s sneakers. Ew.

  “Elliot, if you could move back toward the patio when you’re done?” The shadows were creeping ever forward, and I needed room for what I had planned. It was either going to be freakin’ brilliant, or the stupidest thing I’d ever tried.

  “You must come out of the light.” The thick serpent’s head bobbed up and down, feeling out the limits of its shadowy confinement.

  I couldn’t help it—the smirk finally made its escape. “Go into the light, Carol Anne.” And I struck.

  It wasn’t a hard blow by any means. More of a love tap, really. But when I drew back, a thin slice of demonic ooze flipped off my blade, vanishing into a wisp of black mist before it hit the ground.

  The oil serpent reared back more in surprise than pain, then whipped its tail around to take a swipe at my legs. I jumped and it missed, passing beneath my feet. The demon recoiled out of the stinging sunlight, massing for another attack in the safety of the wall’s shadow. Me, I was just impressed at my air time, considering how much my gear weighed.

  When it lunged at me again, I sidestepped and flicked my sword, slicing off another thin layer of . . . whatever it was made out of. The wound just filled in, leaving no trace, but that wasn’t the point. The second tiny wisp of blight vanished, but I knew it wasn’t gone. When there was enough of it, free-floating demon essence, we’d have a portal, and then I could get rid of Monty here.

  Y’know, Monty? As in Python? ’Cause he’s like a snake? Oh come on, that was funny.

  To the untrained observer, it looked like I wasn’t doing much at all. A slice here, a nick there, dodge, duck, parry. To a trained observer, it was blatantly obvious that I wasn’t doing much at all. The damage I was inflicting was healing up as soon as the blade came free, and the blight I was draining out was minimal at best.

  But the sun kept setting, and the wall’s shadow kept advancing. I lurked at that edge, careful to never dart into the darkness for more than the length of a thrust, retreating across the carefully manicured grass one step at a time.

  The Snot demon left a trail across the greenery, burned dead and brown like a snail trail from Hell. (Mrs. Effingham wasn’t going to be pleased at all when she saw that.) Twice, it braved the waning sun to try to wrap me up in its slimy coils, but I was too fast and it was too wussy to handle the light. Bubbles rose to its oily surface, bursting against the air with the stench of sulfur, the sound creating a distinctive hiss of frustration. It was getting pissed off.

  Good.

  The sky was sunset red when my heels hit the tile border around the koi pond, and I had to grin. Sure, I had no more room to retreat, and in about ten seconds, the sun was going to drop down below the top edge of the wall, casting the entire yard in darkness and giving the demon free rein. I had Monty right where I wanted him.

  In an eyeblink, the sunlight was gone, and the angry demon rose above me, swaying as it towered. The face at the end was pocked by bursting bubbles of agitation, but there was no mistaking the snarl on the mockery of a mouth.

  Come get some, bitch. I took one step back, into thin air, holding my sword safely to the side as I fell back.

  I hit the water hard enough to almost knock my carefully gasped air from my lungs and sank straight to the bottom. From there, I watched through the riled waters as the enraged oil serpent dove headfirst after me.

  It intended to crush me, I think, the heavy mass of black sludge spreading out to fill the shape of the pond, its entire body pouring into the water. For a split
second, I thought it was going to succeed, and I know I felt my ribs creak under protest. The natural human demand for “Air!” registered in my brain, certain I was about to be smothered or drowned, or both, but before I could even think of flailing in panic, the weight suddenly lifted, and the demon launched itself out of the koi pond with an inhuman shriek.

  I fought to the surface despite the weight of my armor (and the padding beneath that had soaked up its own weight in water), to see the Snot demon writhing on the grass like a salted earthworm. Over and over the coils rolled, like it would tie itself in knots, and a thick oily smoke rolled off its transparent skin.

  I’d be lying if I pretended I wasn’t a little smug. “That’s right. Holy water, bitch. Suck it.” The glint of gold caught my eye, and I bent to retrieve my coin from the bottom of the pool. My fake, absolutely worthless, magically blessed coin. Thank you, my love. One of my wife’s brilliant ideas. I couldn’t wait to tell her it had worked.

  A hand entered my vision, and I looked up to find Elliot offering to help me out of the koi pond. Probably not a bad idea, considering how much heavier I was now than when I’d gone in. “Thanks, kid.”

  I grabbed his forearm, intending to haul myself out, when I heard it. It was the sound of bacon sizzling, the sound of water boiling furiously. I looked over, dreading what I already knew I was going to see.

  There was Monty, swelling up like the world’s biggest blood blister, its surface straining to contain the rolling boil within. Even as I watched, a thin slit appeared, and the oil slick spurted from it, driven by the unbelievable internal pressure. Monty was about to blow.

  “Fire in the hole!” I grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt and dragged him into the water, falling on top of him to protect him further. Problem being, there was room for one man at the bottom of the pool, but not two. Half submerged as I was, the explosion was enough to deafen me, the sound wave skipping across the top of the water to smack me upside my very thick skull.

  I waited as long as I could, until bits-o-Monty stopped raining down on me, before I fought my way into standing, letting Elliot scramble for air. Drowning the client would be bad, m’kay?

  He threw himself facedown at the side of the pool, gasping and coughing, while I examined the state of my demon-splattered self. Already, the boiling droplets had eaten through my leather bracers, and were currently burning into the skin beneath. With a hiss, I plunged my forearms into the water, sighing at the soothing relief. I dunked the rest of me for good measure, surfacing with a splutter and shaking myself like a wet dog.

  “You okay, kid?” I glanced at Elliot who had become strangely quiet, then turned to follow his stunned line of sight.

  The portal was there, hovering just against the back wall, swirling in shades of black and blacker. All over the yard, tiny gobbets of Snot demon were dissolving into their base component, blight, and drifting through the planar tear. It looked like an eerie black river running uphill, finally slowing to a trickle before the portal snapped shut with an audible pop and the reek of ozone.

  Just to be sure, I stripped off my right bracer, and scrubbed the remnants of the tattoo flakes off with the blessed water. “There we are, Elliot, all nice and shiny again.”

  He examined his left arm, bare now too, then bent to scour it off as well. He scrubbed and scraped until the skin of his arm was blistering pink and I was afraid he’d draw blood. I caught his hand. “Hey. It’s cool, okay? It’s all over.”

  He stared at me with wide, shock-filled eyes for a long moment, then nodded. There were tears glimmering in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall, and I pretended I didn’t see.

  Instead, I turned to eye the destruction left in the wake of my battle. The yard was essentially burned barren, the grass withered and downright charred in places. I was still standing knee-deep in the once-pristine koi pond, which would probably never support life again. Already, the large ornamental fish were starting to float to the surface, eyes gone cloudy in death.

  I managed to clamber out of the pool, flopping on the dead grass with a wet squishing sound. It was going to be days before the padding under my mail dried. Hell, it might be days before I decided to stand up again.

  The arrival of my archnemesis, Mitzi the poodle, was heralded with a string of high pitched yips and yaps that threatened to burst my eardrums. The vicious little rat came streaking out of its doggy door, tiny needle fangs bared and aimed right for my face now that it was within its short little reach.

  I waited until it was almost on me, then roared “Boo!” at it. The pink dog almost flipped itself completely over, scrambling to reverse direction, and it disappeared back inside with the high, “yi! yi! yi!” of fear. I laid my head back on the ground, folded my hands across my chest, and just watched the dim light of the stars appear overhead.

  I hate poodles.

  2

  Now . . .

  Nothing says the end of summer like the annual Dawson family barbecue and snarky T-shirt contest. I won, by the way. I always win. It’s my contest. (We used to have a dirty T-shirt contest, but that got awkward once the kids started learning to read.)

  My own little five-year-old censor, Annabelle, was playing on the patio with her cousin Nicky, closely supervised by my brother’s wife, Stephanie. Mira, the light of my life, and Melanie sat close by, the women no doubt having some in-depth and disgusting discussion about Mel’s very large belly, due to pop in about three months.

  The sire of said impending spawn, Marty, hovered in a small protective circle of other males, made up of myself, my brother Cole, our friend Will, and my live-in student Estéban. The general theme seemed to be making sure Marty knew just how that happened, and much off-color advice on how to prevent it again. But really, we teased. Marty was gonna be an amazing dad.

  He wasn’t what you’d think of as the quintessential “dad” figure. Short and squat with biceps the size of my damn thighs, Celtic tattoos from wrist to shoulder on both arms, scruffy black beard and a shaved head . . . Honestly, if we lived in some fantasy world, he’d be the surly dwarf character and that’s the truth. He’s even a blacksmith, an honest-to-God blacksmith. How’s that for a stereotype?

  But what most people didn’t see was the genuinely good heart and fierce loyalty he could show. Marty was good people.

  He’d dragged me aside earlier in the day to get some of my deep thoughts on being a daddy. Personally, when I’m being held up as the bastion of fatherhood, the world’s in sad shape, but I did what I could, and he seemed grateful. Nervous as hell, but grateful.

  The winning T-shirt of the day proudly proclaimed MEAT IS MURDER. TASTY, TASTY MURDER. Evidence of my convictions was sizzling on the grill, and I stood over it like a king over his domain. Or something.

  Estéban reached out a hand toward the lid and I swatted him with the flat of my spatula. “Ahht! No touchy the burgers!”

  “But I’m starving!” My seventeen-year-old protégé had hit a growth spurt sometime over the summer, topping my own six feet by a good couple of inches now, and it was entirely possible that he was about to faint dead away from not eating in the last thirty seconds.

  “They’re not done, but if you think you can get past me, by all means, take one.” I smirked and picked up a pair of long tongs in my other hand, dropping into a fighting stance.

  Will started up a chant of “Fight, fight, fight!” and Estéban made a grab for the long grill brush, arming himself. We moved out into the yard, never taking our eyes off one another. This was not the first time we’d done this. Hell, this wasn’t even the first time we’d done this today, much to my wife’s annoyance.

  Right from the start, I had Estéban at a disadvantage. Sure, he had the longer reach on me, and both of my “weapons” were much shorter than my preferred katana. But I had two weapons to his one, and I hadn’t even started teaching him how to counter a dual-wielding opponent. Not many demons used swords; it didn’t seem a priority skill to teach.

  The teen e
yed me for a moment, trying to figure out the best way around my double threat. I stood, balanced on the balls of my feet, and just waited. He had no patience; it was one of his key flaws. He’d make the first move.

  He tried to go on the offensive, I’ll give him that. But there was no way I was gonna let the upstart get the jump on me. He feigned a lunge that I pretended to fall for, and when he tried to reverse under my guard, I whacked the brush aside with the tongs and went for his throat with the spatula.

  Just like that, it was over. He blinked, feeling the edge of the utensil pressed just below his jaw. If I’d put any force behind it at all, I could have drawn blood. I wouldn’t, of course, and that wasn’t the point. He understood the lesson. In a real fight, he’d be dead by now, just that quick. His shoulders slumped in defeat and he dropped his eyes to his sneakers.

  “Hey.” He looked up. “You can’t be expected to know everything yet. We’ll work on dual-wielding next week, okay?”

  After a moment, he nodded, and I pulled him into a headlock to noogie him good. Trying not to laugh, he pushed free and rolled his eyes, pretending to be too cool for such antics.

  It had taken us the better part of the summer to get to this point, where he didn’t get all pissy and butt-hurt when I beat him and where I realized how to work around his stiff pride. I hadn’t killed him yet. Things were looking up. Now if I could just repair things with the rest of my crew.

  Jesse hadn’t been the most jolly of sorts this summer for a variety of reasons. Okay, really, I’d been a right bastard for a lot of it. My temper flared at weird times, and even I’ll admit I was surly on my good days. Part of the object of this party was to convince the guys I really wasn’t a raging asshole. Maybe to convince me, too. It had been a rough six months, since that mess back in March.