The storm itself seemed to grow quiet to listen to Paulo-or, not Paulo apparently, but Esteban, Miguel’s younger brother. I know, I probably should have seen that coming. What can I say? I’m a bit dense at times.
The rain stopped as if a faucet had been turned, and the swirling wind died. In its place, the air grew heavy and still, and I struggled to breathe through the pea soup atmosphere. The immense pressure of some great and invisible hand pushed down on us. Only the wail of the storm sirens remained, strident and ululating. Maybe you’ve never been through a tornadic storm. Trust me when I tell you, all of the above are bad things. We were running out of time.
The thunder in the distance was a quiet rumble, barely distinguishable from the demon’s throaty growl. “Deceit, treachery. To bring another to fight your battle. The bargain is broken, Jesse James Dawson. Your soul is forfeit.”
I laughed, leaning against the wall to get what rest I could. My right leg was throbbing, and the cuts down my left thigh stung fiercely. Any moment I could use to collect myself was vital. “The deal is broken, you’re right, but you don’t get my soul. The deceit was yours, and Kidd’s. His soul is yours to keep.” In case you’re wondering, that makes me a hard-hearted bastard. But the man had gotten two good men killed.
To prove me right, the tattoo on my right arm abruptly crackled and flaked away, leaving unmarred pink skin beneath. I was free.
I could see now how it had played out. “Mascarena. It’s just over the border from Arizona, isn’t it.” The baseball schedule, dammit. I’m so fucking stupid! “Kidd just drove down from spring training. And he had an exhibition match in Toronto. That’s how he found them. And how the boy found us.”
I’m sure Kidd’s demon promised him all kinds of things if the man would help lure champions into combat. They set seemingly innocuous terms, then sprang them when Guy and Miguel were unprepared. “Under the full moon” my ass. Good men, good fighters, and they never had a chance.
The hellhound snarled, but it knew I was right. Blight dribbled from its mouth, no doubt from the stump of broken fang. Its concentration was wavering. “Then our business is concluded.”
“No!” We yelled in unison, Paulo and I. Esteban! Dammit. The boy tried to open his mouth, and I silenced him with a glare. He was a child, comparatively. He had no place here. “You have something I want. I propose a new bargain.” I had no time for this. The air was hot and muggy beneath the low-hanging clouds, and no rain fell. No wind stirred. We were in deep shit. But I couldn’t let it get away. I couldn’t let it lie in wait for me again, springing when I wasn’t ready. This had to end now.
“I listen.” The hound’s eyes flashed red, reminding me of Axel. If I lived through this, I was going to throttle him. Damn you, Axel, why couldn’t you just tell me?
“I offer you the soul of Jesse James Dawson, in exchange for the souls of Miguel Alejandro Cristobal Perez and Guy Thomas Archer.” Full names have power. They’d known mine as well, just in case. Ivan planned for everything.
The demon barked a laugh, and more blackness escaped its maw to wind away through the concrete columns. Somewhere out of sight, a portal was forming. “One soul for two? Even yours is not worth so much, Jesse James Dawson.”
“Then add mine. I offer my soul.” Paulo- Esteban needed to learn to keep his mouth shut. “I offer the soul of Esteban Paulo Juan-Carlos Perez.” Man, I bet he hated learning to write all that as a child.
Before I could come up with a suitable objection, the demon nodded. “Done! Name your terms!”
Fuck fuck fuck. I didn’t want to be responsible for the kid’s soul, too, but it was too late to quibble now-too late in more than one way. “We fight here and now, as we are. We finish this now.”
In a perfect world, I would have named some time in the future. I would have let myself heal, found my sword, something. The odds weren’t in my favor, in the rain-slicked mud, armed as I was with pipes, and already gimped in both legs. But I stood a better chance, fully aware and as prepared as I was going to get, than letting this thing get the drop on me again. Guy, Miguel… I hope I’m doing right by you guys. I couldn’t afford to be wrong.
That hellish muzzle wrinkled in a grin. “Done.”
The contract mark burned bright and fast across the back of my hand. No elaborate tattoo, this, but an ugly black slash of burned flesh. I heard Esteban gasp when his own seared in, but I didn’t even notice the pain.
I pushed off the wall, my improvised tonfas held at the ready. This was going to hurt. Paulo- Esteban stepped up beside me, worn machete still leveled at the hound.
“What are you doing, kid?” I didn’t dare take my eyes off the hound to ask.
“You said ‘we’ fight here and now. I am part of ‘we.’ ” He was pale under his dark skin; he was terrified. His brother’s armor was too big on him, a boy who hadn’t yet seen his full growth. Had he watched Miguel fall? I wondered. Had he seen his brother’s soul ripped from his body? I had to give the kid credit, though. No matter his age, or experience, his hand was steady on his brother’s weapon. I felt bad for ever thinking he’d run away.
And damn, I was proud of the boy. He was right. At that moment, I could have called in an army to send the hound back to Hell, and it couldn’t have done a thing about it. Even demons can fuck up contracts.
The black hound’s hackles came up in a rage- filled snarl, but it didn’t even bother protesting. It was caught in the haste of its own negotiations, and it knew it.
Beyond the walls of our concrete arena, the storm sirens blared on, and the light trickling through the clouds was a vomitus green. The thunder was gone, chasing the front to the east. All that was left was the oppressive calm, the harbinger of something catastrophic.
Neither Esteban nor I moved. I waited, holding my weight gingerly on my right leg. I could lunge to my left from there, and though my blood had soaked the torn denim of my jeans, I wasn’t crippled yet. The kid stood to my left, a thrum of tension in my peripheral vision, maybe waiting for some signal from me.
I never had a chance to give it.
The hellhound sprang without warning. I dove right, Esteban dove left, and just like that we were separated. The black nightmare whirled, faster than before, proving it had only been toying with me all along, supremely confident in its own ability.
I couldn’t get near it without meeting fangs, that wedge-shaped head snapping from side to side impossibly fast. Every time Esteban moved in behind it, it would spin, sending the boy darting back out of reach, then turn again to meet me coming. I got no more than a handful of glancing blows in, and I’m not sure the kid hit it at all.
Something tickled my cheek, and I realized it was a strand of my damp hair, stirred in the smallest of breezes. To the west, I could hear what might be the murmur of traffic on the highway, except for one crucial fact. The highway was directly to our east.
It was coming. The time for smart fighting was through.
There was no more dodging or feinting. I kept the pipes whirling and moved in. Black fog wisped away where they landed, and the demon was forced to put its full attention on me. One gleaming fang laid my knuckles open to the bone, but I kept my grip and used my other hand to clout the thing across the eyes. The copper scent of my blood was overpowering in the heavy air, and the quiet hum of traffic had grown to a tiny roar.
The hound lunged against my unsteady right leg, and it finally crumpled. Traitor, I thought, bringing my arms up to shield my throat. Instead of following to rip me to shreds, the demon let out a bellow of pain and spun, one massive clawed foot planting right in my guts. “Oof!” My breath left me in a rush, but I could see the handle of the machete sticking out of one muscled flank. Esteban had buried it almost to the hilt.
The hound forgot about me. I heard the kid scream as it lunged, and beneath that, the sickening sound of breaking bone. The black essence seeping from the blade trickled across the muck, wafting dangerously close to my legs. I scrambled, still on my rump, to get clear before that numbing blight could touch me.
Esteban screamed again, out of my sight, and the hound shook its head like a terrier with a rat. I grabbed for the machete hilt, and dragged myself to my feet with it, wrenching it free. The black fog poured from the wound, a deadly river flowing over the mud toward the unseen portal. The demon had Esteban’s arm in its hideous maw, crushing the bone in those powerful jaws. Even then, the kid tried to fight, fingers gouging at the beast’s eyes in desperation.
There was grit in the wind and it stung my cheeks. I would remember that later. Now, I only ducked my head to keep my vision clear. Grabbing a handful of mud-matted fur and stabbing the machete in with the other, I climbed those hulking shoulders, ignoring the burning cold that came as the blight ran freely.
The hound reared up to its hind legs, almost standing upright, and I clung tight, wrapping my legs around its throat. Esteban, wounded as he was, still managed to grab hold of a furry ear and yank, wrenching the creature’s head to the side. It thrashed and writhed, trying to unseat me with no success, but managed to stomp right in the middle of the downed kid’s middle. Esteban retched loudly, and I stabbed the machete in again for a better hold. For all those massive corded muscles in its neck, the demon dog could not turn its head to get at me, no matter how it snapped and slavered. “Yee-haw, motherfucker.”
I raised the machete in one hand and brought it down at the base of the creature’s skull. There was a satisfying crack of bone, but it refused to concede, bucking and flinging itself into the wall. My head cracked against the concrete, and I held on only through sheer stubbornness. The moment it landed on all four feet, I hit it again-and again. Each time, the river of blight grew, flowing over my legs where they were locked around the hound’s throat. I may as well have been standing up to my knees in ice, the only consolation being the relief from pain in my right leg.
The creature quit snarling after the third hit but refused to leave its feet, drunkenly staggering this way and that. Four more blows were needed for the head to come free from the hulking shoulders. I went with it, tumbling over and over in the mud with the grisly trophy still held in one hand.
By then I could no longer hear the tornado sirens under the storm’s roar. The head, a snarl fixed forever on its vicious muzzle, dissolved into blight between my fingers. I couldn’t wait long enough to watch the rest of the body dissipate back to its hellish origins. There was no more time.
Esteban stared blankly at me with eyes glazed in pain and shock, and I grabbed his good arm, dragging him to his feet. “Run!” I screamed in his ear, but he couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t hear myself. The tornado was here, and we had nowhere to go.
The deafening roar blotted out all else. It became the be-all and end- all of our existence. Large chunks of gravel peppered us as we stumbled for shelter, wherever that might be. Something heavier hit the center of my back, staggering me, but I managed to keep us both moving. Out of the darkness and storm-blown debris, we crashed into a concrete barricade and simply couldn’t see to go any farther.
Huddled at the base of the pillar, I tried to shelter Esteban as best I could, almost wrapping myself around him. Mira’s spells were forfeit for fighting the demon, but I prayed to anyone listening that they’d still protect me from an ordinary, everyday tornado.
Sharp things bit at my exposed skin, drawing blood in what seemed to be a hundred places. The kid screamed. I think I did, too, until the tornado sucked away all air and the ability to breathe.
It felt like we were there for years, with nothing but noise and pain in that horrible vacuum. I wished for my eardrums to burst, just to relieve the immense pressure. Every breath was full of dirt and grit, and we choked and gagged on what little air we got. And just when I was certain we were dead where we sat, it was gone.
In the abrupt silence, I thought I’d gone deaf. Then I heard water dripping somewhere nearby. One beam of sunlight found us, amidst the mud and the shambles of concrete and twisted rebar. The breeze, once so punishing, flirted around us, smelling freshly scrubbed, like spring. I think somewhere, a bird was singing tentatively.
Esteban was curled around his injured arm, and I wasn’t sure he was even conscious until he moaned and mumbled something in Spanish. “Hey, kid… You with me?”
He said something else, something I knew wasn’t polite, but nodded, and finally raised his head. His skin was a sickly gray, his dark eyes wide and staring. I eased his hand away from his broken arm to have a look. The thick leather bracer had protected him from the ravages of fang and claw, but it was bent at a wholly unnatural angle.
“Boy, when you do it, you do it right, hey, kid?” I smiled at him, and he rallied enough to give me that “Are you nuts?” look. He was going to be okay. Getting to my feet, I decided I was going to be okay, too.
Sure, I felt like shit. Blood trickled down my stubbly cheek from a cut I didn’t remember getting. My right leg was done with me, and refused to hold my weight. I was going to have scars down my left thigh, and the small vain part of me briefly mourned the marks. Luckily, I couldn’t feel either of them, the blight- numbness extending almost all the way to my hips. The knuckles on my left hand were going to scar, too, but I flexed them and they still worked. Most important, I was alive and I had my soul. My right hand was bare of all marks.
As I glanced around the wreckage, I came to appreciate how unlikely that had been. The pillar that sheltered and protected us had been sheared off two feet above our heads. The shattered remnants were strewn about us, a jagged garden of concrete chunks and mangled rebar. Any one of those would have cracked a skull, ending all our troubles in an instant. Bless Mira and the powers that sent her to me so many years ago. “One of us is the luckiest sumbitch on the planet, Paulo-er
… Esteban.”
A gleam atop the broken column caught my eye, and I limped closer to have a look. Perched there, sweetly as a centerpiece, were two pale white river stones, shot through with clear quartz veins. Matching nothing else in the debris around us, they lay nestled together as if placed by a careful hand. I picked them up, rolling them over between my fingers. They were warm and dry.
I’m not sure about religion, or God, or where we go when we die. But wherever it is, I think it must be a good place. And I decided Guy and Miguel were there. I pocketed the stones, to be placed in my garden. I’d take my signs where I found them.
“Be at peace, guys,” I murmured.
Esteban finally struggled to his feet and immediately blanched. “I’m going to throw up.” And he did. I think he felt better afterward. At least, he had more color to his ashen face.
“C’mon, Paulo… er, whatever I call you. Let’s go see what’s still standing.”
With my arm around his lanky shoulders, we hobbled out of the wreck of a parking garage, to find that Sierra Vista looked as bad as we did. The ground was littered with shards of plate glass, the storefronts gaping like toothless mouths. The cheerful neon signs were tangled in impossible ruins, if they weren’t gone altogether. Water sprayed from a fountain that no longer existed, and only one hardy sapling swayed in the spring air. One building had collapsed in on itself, and I thanked the powers that be that the tenant hadn’t moved in yet. Okay, so maybe sometimes I believe in God.
All in all, it looked like a war zone, Esteban and I being the walking wounded. I wiggled a finger through the shreds of my jeans and sighed. “Mira’s going to kill me.”
“Quien es Mira?”
“My wife. These were my good jeans.” I was probably in shock, and I’m allowed a warped sense of humor. I just chopped the head off a hellhound that was trying to eat a seventeen-year-old boy.
“Jesse? Jesse!” Funny, that didn’t sound like my wife’s voice, but sure enough, a woman was frantically calling my name. Kristyn pelted toward us, multicolored hair standing at sharp angles like a terrified hedgehog. I wasn’t even sure she’d known my real name, until that moment. “Ohmigod! Ohmigodohmigod! Did you see that?” For one horrifying moment, I thought she was going to hug me, and I braced for the excruciating pain. Instead she skidded to a halt, all but vibrating, she was so worked up, and blinked at our obviously injured state.
“Is that… blood?” Kristyn went as pale as Esteban and slumped toward the ground.
Somehow, I caught her with one arm. “Aw crap. C’mon, Kristyn. I can’t carry you. Don’t do this to me now.”
She whimpered, doing her best to keep on her feet, but she was now covered in the very blood that had her swooning. My day just wasn’t getting any better. It was Murphy’s Law at its finest, right here. This crap only happens to me.
I glanced at Esteban and chuckled. Then he snickered. Then we both burst out laughing. Groggy, Kristyn eyed us as if we’d finally lost it. I guess maybe we had. But under the circumstances, I think it was excusable. We laughed until our eyes watered and we were gasping for breath. We laughed so hard it hurt. We were still laughing when the ambulances started arriving.
There was a minor incident when I refused to leave until I checked on my truck. It was going heavily against me, but about the time one paramedic had a syringe full of sedative pulled out, the other one relented. I was allowed to hobble to the parking lot, leaning on Kristyn, who seemed to have recovered her moxie.
My truck was there, all beautiful in her rain-washed glory. And miracle of miracles, she was untouched (barring all previous damage, of course). In a tornado’s inexplicable way, the same forces that had trashed the shopping center had neglected the employee parking lot. All twenty or so cars sat there just as they’d been parked. I made a mental note to send Will and Marty back out to pick her up, then went along with my captors like a good boy.
Esteban and I had one brief moment alone, as the paramedics got us loaded into the same ambulance. He glanced at me, steadier now that his arm was secured to a board. “What happened to the baseball man?”
“Tell you the truth, kid? I don’t give a rat’s ass.” And that’s all I had to say about that.