A Shot in the Dark Read online

  “Are you having any more pain?” She jotted down some notes in my file as I hopped back up on the table.

  “Nope. Everything seems to be fully functional.” Her hands were ice cold when she started groping my calf, and I jumped. “Geez, Bridge! Did you go juggle snowballs or something before coming in here?”

  She smiled sweetly at me over the rims of her new glasses. “Iced them down just for you, Jesse dear.”

  The scars on my calf were still nicely pink and hairless, circles the size of fifty-cent pieces adorning both sides where a crab-demon had stabbed me last January. I didn’t think that was a body-piercing fad that was going to catch on. Innocuous in appearance now, that wound had almost cost me my leg, the demon’s poison invading my body despite all medical intervention. Only my wife’s magic had kept me from having Stumpy as a nickname.

  Of course, it was the torn muscle on the inside of that same leg that had landed me back in Dr. Bridget’s office. That particular injury was earned by falling on my ass on a wet floor (speaking of bruised dignity). Well, and the running around fighting hellhounds and dodging tornados after that hadn’t helped either.

  But I’d been a good boy ever since, I promise! I’d given up walking with a cane (most of the time) only two months ago, and I’d been diligent with my physical therapy. I was hoping I’d get credit for time served.

  I wasn’t sure what Dr. Bridget was looking for with the poking and prodding, but she found it. Or didn’t find it. Whichever one was the good one.

  With a sigh, she stood up and leaned against the counter. “You know I’m not in favor of this trip, right?”

  “You may have mentioned it once or a thousand times.” I put on my best begging eyes. Hey, it works on Mira. Sometimes. “C’mon, Doc, please? Pleeeeeeease?”

  She tried real hard not to laugh, and finally managed to keep it to an exasperated chuckle. “You have no shame, do you?”

  “None.”

  “Yeah, I guess you can go. Just make sure you pay attention, and if it starts hurting, take it easy. Go get dressed.”

  I gave a little “woo-hoo!” of celebration, and ducked into the tiny curtained alcove to get my pants back on. I expected to hear the door open and close as the good doctor left the room, and when that didn’t happen, I knew she wasn’t done with me. “Something on your mind, Bridge?”

  “Mira says you’re still not sleeping well.”

  “Why is it that I always seem to come up in conversation between you two?” Annoyance made the words a bit sharper than I’d meant. But dammit, why was my business everyone’s business? Deep breath, Jess. No reason to rip her head off, she’s just doing her job.

  “She’s worried about you.” Even without seeing her, I could hear the frown in her voice. Part of it was the doctor in her, being irritated at a stubborn patient. Part of it was my wife’s best friend, being pissed at me for upsetting said wife. “Are those sleeping pills not helping?”

  Fully clothed, I pulled the curtain aside so I could at least look at her while we were talking. “Wouldn’t know, I didn’t take them.”

  She sighed again. “Jess—”

  “No. Just, no. I’m not going to drug myself out of my gourd. It’s not that bad.” Truth was, I hated the fog the sleeping pills caused. I was still very aware that someone had tried to run me off the road last March. That person was still out there. I couldn’t afford to be anything less than alert.

  Of course, the lack of sleep wasn’t helping that cause either. I always dreamed about my fights. It’s just the way my brain processes my bizarre excuse for a life. But in the past few months, the nightmares were getting worse. One of them was being particularly persistent, and when that one ripped and clawed its way through my head, there was no sleeping for the rest of the night. I called him the Yeti. It was almost four years ago that I’d faced him, and while he hadn’t killed me, I sure as hell hadn’t gotten out unscathed. There wasn’t a single night in the past month that I hadn’t woken up in a panic, flailing against something that wasn’t even there. In general, I was averaging about five hours a night. On a good night.

  And doctor or not, it was none of her damn business. “Am I cleared for the trip?”

  She eyed me for long moments, pursing her lips like she really wanted to say no, but eventually she nodded. “Yeah. Knock yourself out.” With one last scribble in my file, we were done.

  I was bending to lace up my combat boots when she paused again. “Hey, Jesse?” There was a change in her voice. Hard to describe, but in my mind it always signaled her change from Dr. Bridget, to just plain Bridge. I looked up. “Thanks for taking Cam along. It’s been hard for him to meet folks here.”

  This was the moment in those strained conversations where you either continued the argument, or let it go. I took a deep breath and opted to let it go. Part of me was absurdly proud of myself over that. I offered her a small smile, showing her I had no hard feelings, before turning back to my bootlaces. “He met you, didn’t he? How’d that happen?”

  “Church.” That made me chuckle, though I carefully hid it. I was not surprised at all.

  Finished with my boots, I stood up, flipping my hair out of my face. “Well, just remember, he does anything hinky and I’ll whup his ass. You just say the word.”

  The doctor chuckled, and even blushed a little. “Thanks, Jess.” That even earned me a one-armed hug. Go me!

  I followed her out to the front desk to do all the pertinent paperwork, signing my name with a flourish to celebrate my release from doctor’s care. I hadn’t had insurance for months, and while Dr. Bridget didn’t really expect me to pay full price, I felt guilty about shorting her any. I mean, this was her livelihood. Not her fault insurance companies didn’t cover demon slaying.

  “Bridget!”

  “Cam!” I looked up in time to see Cam-short-for-Cameron appear out of nowhere and sweep my doctor into a deep kiss. Quickly, I averted my eyes. Just . . . don’t wanna see stuff like that, y’know? After a suspiciously long time, I heard her giggle—actually giggle!—and assumed it was safe to look up again.

  “I thought I’d see if you had time to go to lunch, since I’m here.” Mr. Romance. Ugh.

  Bridget patted her dark hair back into place and straightened her shirt a little, blushing bright red. “Is Lisa done with you?”

  The tall former priest nodded. “Clean bill of health. She says I should be able to get up and down the trail just fine.” Finally, someone remembered I was standing there. “Oh! Hey, Jesse!”

  “Cameron.” I was polite. Civil. I even smiled. I just couldn’t bring myself to greet him with the same kind of enthusiasm he showed me. I’m sure it was some kind of psychobabble alpha male BS, but . . . I still wasn’t sold on Mr. Not-a-Priest. Not yet.

  He looked my T-shirt over and chuckled. “TRUST ME, I’M A JEDI, hmm?”

  “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” Look, I could joke, see? “You ready for tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, looks like it. Marty said that he had some paintball equipment I could borrow. I’ve never played before, so I’m really looking forward to it.” His dimples showed when he grinned. Could he look any more preppy?

  “We’re gonna head out real early in the morning, so be ready when we swing by.”

  He nodded. “Marty gave me all the details. It sounds like a lot of fun. It’s great that his uncle lets you use his cabin.”

  Marty’s uncle Douglas, though well beyond any age to go hiking into the wilds himself, was more than happy to let our bunch of miscreants crash there for a few days every year. We’d even made friends with the caretaker’s family, and they’d be joining us once we got up there. It usually made for hijinks and hilarity.

  “It’s a goodly walk, but if I can make it up there, I’m sure you can.” I tilted my head to look at his leg, though under his khaki slacks it was impossible to see what was causing the limp. “It didn’t seem to hold you up any when you were at my place.” Bridget slipped away while we talked, pres
umably tidying things up before her lunch, and inconveniently leaving me without a good way to escape. Dammit!

  Cam nodded. “It’s a lot better than it was when it first happened. I was on crutches for months.” That at least I could sympathize with. When I didn’t say anything else, he seemed compelled to fill the silence. “Car accident. Last spring.” With one hand, he lifted his gelled spikes away from his forehead to reveal a small pink scar disappearing into his hair. “Head, meet windshield. I was lucky.”

  “I can tell.” Obviously, he expected me to elaborate on my own injury. I didn’t feel like it. “Well. Guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Sure thing!” He grinned at me with perfectly white teeth, and some small, petty part of me wanted to punch him in the mouth.

  The good doctor chose that moment to join us again and I used it as my excuse to duck out.

  Okay, he seemed like a good guy. A really good guy, and Dr. Bridget obviously had the hots for him big time. So why did I have the urge to snatch him up by the collar of his designer polo shirt and shake him like a rag doll?

  The strangeness of my reaction bothered me the rest of the day, enough that I looked at my punk-haired boss halfway through my short shift at my real job and asked, “Am I an asshole?”

  The music was blaring some kind of death-metal-techno crossbreed crap, and of course I had to repeat myself three or four times before she could hear me.

  Kristyn grinned at me from under her locks of pumpkin-orange hair. “Is this an essay question?”

  “Come on, I’m serious.” I stuffed my armload of novelty T-shirts on the appropriate shelf and reached over to turn the music down. “I’m pretty easygoing, right? I don’t fly off the handle for no reason, do I?”

  There was a long pause there, one of those that answered more than her words could. “You’ve . . . had your moments, lately. Why?”

  “Yeah, but . . . general grumpiness aside, do I normally dislike people immediately? I mean, I like to think I give people a chance, y’know?”

  She paused to think that one over, clicking her tongue piercing across her teeth. “Nope. Normally, you are one of the mellowest people I know, old dude.” She tilted her head curiously. “Why?”

  “Just . . . thinking.” I went back to rearranging the novelty wall, and she let it drop. I, on the other hand, couldn’t.

  I pondered on it all the way through a really domestic dinner with my wife and the kids (It was just easier to think of Estéban as ours. It saved time in the long run). I mean, I’m normally an easygoing guy. You don’t bother me, I don’t kick your ass. That kinda thing. But the events of last spring had changed me, and not for the better.

  A guy tried to kill me. That was a given. Two people, actually, though only one of them remained at large. So I suppose I was entitled to a bit of natural wariness. But somewhere along the way, this cynical, borderline paranoid grouch took my place, and he was starting to annoy even me. I was trying to manage it through my usual meditations and katas, but . . . it wasn’t working. So, was my reaction to Cam just a byproduct of post-traumatic stress disorder, or was there really something wrong with the guy? God, I hated not trusting my own instincts.

  Later that night, Mira and I lay in bed together, her head nestled in the crook of my neck where I could smell the strawberry-ness of her hair. Still bogged down in my brooding of the day, I mentioned my less than charitable feelings toward Cam-short-for-Cameron.

  Mira chuckled softly, her breath warm on my chest. “It’s like a new dog in your territory. Go sniff each other’s butts, you’ll be fine.”

  “That’s . . . distinctly unappetizing.” I tilted my head to look down at her and she gave me a grin. “But seriously, you don’t get a weird vibe off of him or anything?”

  She rolled her green eyes. “I don’t scan every person that I run into, Jesse. Next thing I know, you’ll be having Cole run a background check on the guy.” I know my eyes lit up, and when I opened my mouth, she put her hand across it. “No. Do not do that.”

  There was a very disappointed little boy deep inside me. “But it would be cool!”

  That earned me another roll of her eyes. “Leave it alone. This is the first guy Bridge has dated in forever, and I kinda like seeing her happy, okay? Try to get to know him before you call out the dogs.”

  My head flopped back to the pillow and I sighed. “I’m just being a jerk again, aren’t I?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that . . .”

  “You were thinking it.” I rubbed my gritty eyes, trying not to think about all the sleep I would not be getting that night. “Maybe I should skip this trip. Stay home, get some sleep, do some stuff around the house.”

  Mira sat up and looked down at me, her wealth of sable, curly hair falling around my face like a curtain. “Jesse, I’m going to say something, and I want you to understand that it comes from a place of love, okay?”

  Slightly worried, I said, “Okay?”

  “If you don’t get out of this house for a few days, I’m going to do you grievous bodily harm.” She leaned down and kissed me once, then rolled over and turned off the bedside lamp.

  In the darkness, we curled up together, both of us knowing it was only a matter of time before I woke us both with my nightmares and spent the rest of the night on the couch. Mira’s fingers traced up and down my forearm where it rested across her waist, like she could memorize it just by touch.

  She was right. I was being a jerk. I’d been a jerk all summer, touchy and quick to anger. Part of it I could chalk up to frustration at being injured, but . . . not all of it. I mean, I’d been hurt before, and worse. I’d been blown up, stitched together, taped down, and stapled shut. I couldn’t blame it all on that.

  Deep down, I knew it was the fear of the unknown. It was the lingering mystery of who tried to run me off the road a few months ago, of where my last client had disappeared to after the tornado took us on our brief tour of Oz. It was the uncertainty, the inability to do anything. I was great with an enemy to fight. Just point me and I do the slice and dice thing. But with just doubts and what-ifs? Not so much.

  That’s where the dreams came from. Always the same one, with silver claws and red eyes materializing out of nothing, killing me again and again because I simply couldn’t see it in time to save myself. He was the Yeti, and the ugly scars down the left side of my rib cage were only a small part of what he’d left me.

  I’d tried to find something in my bushido texts, some snippet of wisdom or piece of advice to set me back on track. The Hagakure said that a samurai should never joke about being afraid, lest their true heart be revealed. Since humor was one of my chief defense mechanisms, I was pretty much screwed.

  Of course, it also said that in order to ease nervousness, you should rub spit on your ears and kick everything in your path. Hadn’t tried that yet. Maybe next week.

  “What did he really want?” Out of the darkness, Mira’s voice startled me, and I jumped a little. She sounded smaller somehow, and I held her tighter without really knowing why.

  “Who, Cam?”

  “No. Him. The . . . thing, yesterday.”

  “Ah.” She wouldn’t say a demon’s name, not even the mocking one I’d assigned to him. But I knew who she meant. Last night, we’d carefully avoided mentioning Axel and his party crashing, but I guess my reprieve was over. “I don’t know. Like I said, he was being weird, even for him.”

  “What did he say?”

  I frowned a little, though she couldn’t see it. “Not much. He seemed really excited that I was going on vacation. Enthusiastic, even.” Too enthusiastic. Yet another thing that had bothered me ever since.

  “How do you feel about that?” Her hand was still stroking up and down my arm, and it finally occurred to me that she was looking for goose bumps. I was and always would be the magic-less wonder, but my earlywarning system was finely tuned.

  “I don’t know. My first instinct is to do exactly the opposite of whatever makes him happy. But the
n I think, maybe that’s what he wants me to do, and I should go after all, and then I get all confused after that.” I nuzzled her ear a little, hoping to distract her. “Ignore him. He’s a douche.”

  She turned in my arms, facing me though neither of us could see in the darkened room. “You’d tell me, right? If you thought something was wrong, you’d tell me?” Her fingers stroked through my hair, combing the strands out straight over and over.

  I had to think long and seriously about that. Lying by omission had become all too easy for me of late, and I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t do it anymore—not to her. So, was something wrong?

  I really thought about it, bringing Axel’s face to the front of my mind, rolling the idea of the vacation trip through my head. There was no twisting of my innards, no painfully cold goose bumps along my arms. Just my natural antidemon revulsion where Axel was concerned.

  “I got nothing, baby. No shivers, no nothing. I think we’re okay. Besides, you’ve got like fifty layers of protective spells on me. What could happen?” That seemed to appease her and we both settled down to sleep.

  Well, Mira settled down to sleep. I lay awake, watching the streetlight outside cast weird shadows through the blinds and replaying the strange conversation with Axel over and over. My brain kept coming back to one sentence again and again.

  “We always come back, Jesse.”

  Then the goose bumps came, peppered over my skin like tiny needles of ice. I didn’t know why that one statement triggered my danger-sense, but I was pretty sure I’d get a chance to find out.

  4

  Morning comes damn early on two hours’ sleep, especially when “morning” starts at three a.m. But we had a long drive ahead of us, and the early bird gets the . . . oh screw it. It was freakin’ early.

  I kissed Mira’s forehead and slipped out of bed without waking her. Bonus points for me. I’d packed the night before, and left my clothes in the living room so I could dress without waking anyone else.