There was a variety of interesting headlines in several news-type publications in the days and weeks following my pseudovacation.
The first one made national news, all the way from Fort Collins, Colorado. Apparently, an oxygen tank exploded in a storage room at the local hospital, damaging a hallway and causing the evacuation of the entire facility. Everyone was so thankful that it wasn’t a tank in a patient’s room, and that the injuries were minimal. No one could figure out just why the tank exploded, or what it was doing in the storage room where it didn’t belong. Investigations were ongoing.
It took Cole a week (and most of a six-pack) to tell me what really happened.
“You’re going to think I’m insane, big brother,” he mentioned quietly one night. “Absolutely out of my ever-loving mind.”
The Yeti had walked right into the ER in his human guise, like he owned the place. At his heels were two of his minions, scuttling along like the good little pets they were.
“It was like nobody saw them. Like they couldn’t see them.” Cole shook his head. “Why could we see them, and no one else?”
“People see what they want to see. You guys kinda had it crammed down your throat.” Really, I had no idea what I was talking about. Philosophy I could explain. Mystic shit, not so much. Despite my eerily accurate dream, I was not a magic user. I knew this. I believed this. So what the hell had happened to me up there?
“Anyway… I saw him come in, before they saw me, and I yanked the curtains shut around Zane’s bed.”
They’d retreated out the backside of the ER, into the maintenance hallways of the hospital, wheeling Zane’s bed between them. Duke padded along silently, like he understood the risk they were taking.
Why no one stopped them, I don’t think any of us will ever know. At Will’s direction, they turned away from the patient room elevators and toward the operating rooms. There was only one way in or out down there, to keep it sterile, and Will figured there’d be fewer innocents present so late at night.
They might have gotten away clean, if the bed’s wheel hadn’t gotten caught on a sharp corner, jostling it. In his pained delirium, Zane moaned.
Demons track by sound, or so Axel said. I think he must have been telling the truth, because all it took was that moan, several hallways distant, to alert the Yeti and his zombie pets.
“We tried to stay ahead of them, but the kid was half awake by that point, and kept hollering. They came right to us. We could hear their claws, scrabbling on the floor tiles.”
They weren’t going to reach the operating suites in time, so the guys crammed the bed into the nearest storage room they could find and barricaded the door with whatever they could get their hands on. They combined what little weaponry they had left-Cole’s gun with two bullets, and one hopper full of blessed paintballs-and prepared to make their stand.
“He knocked on the door. Just tap tap tap, all polite like.” Cole shook his head. “Cameron kept insisting that he couldn’t hurt us, wasn’t allowed to, and all I could do was look at Zane in that bed and think that Cameron was either crazy or stupid.”
There were things Cole didn’t say. Things that I maybe made up in my own head, but I could picture how it went so clearly. Oscar’s hand, pressed so tightly over his son’s mouth, trying to stifle the boy’s cries. Will, pawing through the shelves of supplies to see if there was something, any thing there they could use. Marty with the loaded paintball gun, just waiting for the door to come flying open.
“He said, ‘I’ll give you two minutes to decide what to do with the boy, and then I’ll send my pets in to retrieve him.’” My brother blinked a bit. “He really thought we’d give the kid up to save our own skins. What kind of person does that?”
“He’s not a person, little brother. He’s about the furthest thing from it.”
The Yeti didn’t give them two minutes. Almost immediately, they heard the ceiling tiles in the hallway go crashing down, and the minions were in the drop ceiling above them. The brackets that held the fiberboard tiles dipped and swayed dangerously, even the zombies’ slight weight too much for the light support system.
“If they came through the ceiling, we were gonna be trapped in close quarters with them. But if we opened the door, the demon was gonna get Zane.” Cole drained what was left of his beer and reached for another. “I took aim at the ceiling, thinking maybe I could shoot through the tiles and at least cripple them. We could let Duke finish them on the ground or something.”
This was the part of the story where, unbeknownst to anyone at the hospital, I came in. There was a sudden silence above them, and out in the hallway, the Yeti chuckled. “I have been called away on unexpected business, gentlemen. I’ll leave my pets here for your amusement.” And just like that, poof, he was gone.
Of course, the guys had no way of knowing he’d really disappeared. They didn’t know I’d just shouted out a name I’d sworn never to say, that I was about to fight for my life on a mountain far to the south. They did know, however, that the creatures in the ceiling paused for long moments, then exited the way they’d come in, tiles crashing to the floor out in the hallway. They heard the claws clacking on the floor, hurrying away.
I suppose it’s possible the creatures remembered the guys. Maybe what little intelligence they had left recalled that tangling with my buddies meant excruciating, horrific pain. More likely, they just smelled the blood down in the OR and decided it was Zombie-Starbucks. Either way, once the Yeti wasn’t there to boss them around, the two minions went scampering off into the hospital.
My brother knew they couldn’t let those things go running off willy-nilly into the general populace. At the very least, having half-rotting animated corpses in the OR was so not sterile. I mean, there isn’t enough hand sanitizer in the world to cover that mess.
So Cole left Marty and Duke to stand guard over everyone else, and went chasing off into the hallways alone, armed with two bullets. Yeah, I know. He’s growing up to be just like me. Ain’t I proud?
“I chased them almost all the way to the surgery suites, but I didn’t realize until we were almost there that there was actually an operation taking place. I could hear the beeping machines, and people’s voices.” He paused there for a long time. “I knew I was gonna die, y’know. Knew I couldn’t take them out with two shots, and it didn’t matter. I had to stop them no matter what. Had to keep them from hurting anyone else.”
He fired after those fleeing abominations, one bullet sending one of them cartwheeling into the wall. It didn’t kill it, though, and they both turned on my brother, hissing as they bounded down the hallway toward him. With one bullet, he faced them both down and silently said his good-byes.
“I don’t know what happened next, Jess. I mean, I can tell you what I think I saw, but…”
From behind him, a searing white light lit up the hallway, bright enough to blind him even with his back to it. He dropped to his knees, hands slapped over his eyes in agony, and the Yeti’s pets shrieked in their death throes. The light eclipsed everything, its brilliance so great that Cole couldn’t make out the pattern of the floor tiles, even with his nose pressed against them. When he was finally able to raise his head, there were only ashes in the hallway, drifting along in the breeze from the air vents.
“And what do you think it was?” I had an idea. I’d sent them help, after all.
“Honestly?” I waited while he mentally talked his next words over with his beer. “I will swear to you, Jesse. Swear until my dying day. I swear, in that hallway, I saw an angel.”
I didn’t believe in angels. Demons, yes. One demon in particular. Axel had come through for me, and it didn’t seem important to tell my brother the truth. He’d be happier, believing in angels. We finished our beers, and neither of us has spoken of it since. That’s how we roll, my brother and I.
The next headline that caught my eye, though it never progressed past a local piece in Fort Collins, was the story of a teenager bitten by a rabid badger while on a family camping trip.
You heard me. Somehow, some genius looked at the human bite marks on Zane’s arm and decided that it looked like a badger. Trust me when I say that badger bites don’t even remotely resemble human. (I Googled it.) I had to wonder if that was some deep conspiracy cover-up, or just the human penchant for explaining the unexplainable, no matter how ridiculous.
Zane was expected to make a full recovery. The guys got Mira on the phone with Cam, and together, the two of them magicked up a cure. The last I heard, he’s had a full round of rabies vaccinations, and he’s going to have to do some physical therapy to regain full use of the arm, due to muscle damage. It’s been a while since I got an update, though. Oscar made it very plain that he doesn’t want us (me) anywhere near his son, despite the fact that I saved the kid’s soul.
I don’t honestly care so much for my own sake, but I feel bad for Marty. The Quinns were longtime family friends of his, and it’s my fault he’s lost them now.
I haven’t seen Marty in a few weeks either. He says I’m supposed to stay away while he works on this new sword he’s started constructing for me. I can’t tell if he’s pissed or not. Guys, we don’t typically sit around and talk out our feelings and stuff. Eventually, I’ll head over to his house with a case of beer, and he’ll either punch me, or he won’t. Then we’ll both know.
It’s not like he doesn’t have every right to be ticked. Stuff could have gone real wrong up there. Stuff did go real wrong up there. It would have been real easy for Mel to be a widow and a single mom, all in a split second. That’s not the life she married for. Marty either. So… how do you blame the guy if he’s a little skittish now?
At least I’ve still got Will. I mean, Will is Will. He takes whatever I throw at him, and he keeps on ticking, and cracking really bad jokes. I don’t know what I’d do without Will, and it’s more than his ability to tie a mean tourniquet. I have realized that I never gave him enough credit. He’s good people.
The last headline made me laugh, and then glance around sheepishly. It was a little blurb on the cover page of one of those supermarket tabloids. You know the ones. BIGFOOT AND SWAMP CREATURE ELOPE! Those kinds of stories.
Only this one was about claims that there was a miracle stream flowing down Pikes Peak. The creek wasn’t always there, but when it appeared, it had healing qualities. Obviously, someone had stumbled across my little blessed stream after I’d left. Part of me hoped that anyone who could find it would find the cures to their health woes. The rest of me was pretty sure I was gonna get my butt kicked for violating some esoteric magic law I didn’t even know about. Surely, leaving magic stuff lying around can’t be proper spell-casting etiquette.
When Cameron showed up on my doorstep, I was pretty sure that was what he’d come to talk about. I was wrong.
Thankfully, my girls weren’t home and Esteban was out on a date. I led Cam through the house and into the backyard. Call me paranoid, but I had no idea what was coming and I didn’t feel like being confined.
“I owe you an apology,” the priest began before I was ready, and the unexpected sentiment brought me up short. Cameron examined the stone chess pieces on my patio table-recently retrieved from storage-as he spoke. “I wasn’t honest with you, or your friends. To say that I was only following orders is not a defense.”
I folded my arms over my chest, curious to see where this was going. Cam talked like a man in need of confession, ironically enough. Men like that will spill all kinds of things if you just let them keep babbling.
“I told you I got in a car wreck last spring, right?”
I nodded. I vaguely remembered that conversation. That was how he got his limp, and the scar on his forehead.
He took a deep breath. “I hit you.”
For a few seconds, that statement made absolutely no sense. My confusion must have shown on my face, because he went on in a hurry. “We were supposed to try and scare you guys off, see if we could get you to quit taking challenges. We thought it would eliminate you from the demons’ hit list.”
He picked up the bishop, turning it in his fingers. “I didn’t know you were already contracted, at that point. I never would have tried. .. In all fairness, I didn’t expect you to slam on the brakes. I wasn’t going to hurt you, but you caused that wreck, and…”
And I remembered suddenly the sound of tortured metal, the squall of brakes, the pain as my head smacked into the window of my truck. “You hit my truck.”
“Yes.”
“You were in the blue Ford Escort that tried to run me off the road.”
“Yes.” To his credit, he didn’t back up (much) as I came around the table, advancing on him.
“You dented my truck.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to punch you in the face now.”
“I thought you might.”
And I did. If wagering my soul with demons doesn’t cinch my place in Hell, I’m pretty sure punching a priest in the schnoz does.
By the time Mira and the kids got home, Cam was sitting on the patio with a bag of frozen carrots on his swollen nose, and I was doing my best to look perfectly innocent. Don’t think my wife bought it, but she’d had a long time to get used to my quirks. She just shook her head and went back into the kitchen to start on dinner.
Things weren’t all unicorns and rainbows between me and Cam by any means. As far as I was concerned, he and the Order both had a lot to answer for. Whether this prophecy thing was true or not, their Sooper Sekrit Book of Dooooooom meant that the Order had known about and believed in this impending crap for a long time. At the very least, they’d known since last spring, since they were trying to spook Ivan’s champions into quitting, clear back then. Which meant that, for at least six months, they could have warned us, could have prepared us.
Instead, seven champions were attacked the same night that the Yeti cornered me and my guys in the cabin. Six of those champions had priestly shadows and managed to turn back their attackers. One of them did not, for the simple reason that Father Gregory didn’t know about him. If the bastards had just asked for a roster, or even let us police our own… Scott Marks, formerly of Brisbane, Australia, might still be alive.
I didn’t know Scott. I didn’t even know of him until after the fact. He was one of the champions I never even knew existed, one of Ivan’s closely held secrets. Let me tell you, I was getting damn sick of them, and Ivan and I were going to have a very long talk when I could pin him down again. I think Viljo must have told him, ’cause both Ivan and the geek were avoiding my phone calls for the moment.
My other lingering grudge had to do with Cameron and Dr. Bridget.
The priest finally got up the stones to ask, “Are you going to tell her?”
“No.” He looked surprised, behind the bag of frozen veggies. “She’s happier now than I’ve seen her in a long time. I’m not going to be the guy responsible for fucking that up.” Relief flared in his eyes (nicely blacked, thank you very much) then died as I shook my head. “You’re going to tell her. It may be just a cover for you, but this is her life you’re messing with.”
He thought about that for a little bit, then nodded slowly. “I want you to know… for whatever it’s worth… I didn’t intend this. This thing with Bridget. And I have never lied to her about caring for her.”
“No, you just lied to her about being a priest, ignoring that whole celibacy thing you’re supposed to have going on.”
He stiffened, jaw going tight. “I have remained faithful to my vows, throughout all of this.”
Oh merciful Buddha, I didn’t need to know that. “Yeah, good luck keeping that up. She’s gonna expect some kind of something, eventually.”
Cam dropped his gaze to his feet and sighed. “I know. I… don’t know what I’m going to do, then.”
“You’re going to break up with her now, and save us all the trouble.”
“Yes. It would… probably be best.” He finally looked up again, meeting my eyes. “But if I was going to break my vows, it would be for her.”
Another thing I didn’t need or want to know. “Just remember, your biggest worry isn’t me telling Bridge. It’s me telling Mira.”
Truthfully, I’d already told Mira all about Brother Lies-a-Lot and his order of backstabbing assholes, but what Cameron didn’t know could terrify him. Really, after the hoodoo she’d walked him through with Zane, I wasn’t going to be able to pass him off as just an amateur caster anyway. Much to my disappointment, she wasn’t nearly as pissed off about the whole situation as I’d expected her to be.
“But he’s lying to Bridget. He’s using her.”
Mira just shook her head at me, giving me that amused “I know more than you” smile. “I don’t think he’s lying to her about the important parts.”
Still, I hoped he would just walk out of our lives. Yeah, Dr. Bridget would be heartbroken, but Mira could do that girl-bonding thing that women do when one of them gets dumped, and things would go back to normal-ish.
Speaking of normal-ish… Somehow, I expected Axel to waltz back into my life like he hadn’t been gone the past six months. I left the chess set out on the back patio, thinking we could play again, or that it would at least give us an excuse to open up talks. He didn’t show.
Often, when I came outside for my morning katas, I found the pieces moved. For a month, I played against a nonexistent opponent, attacking, feinting, countering, but the demon never showed himself.
But then, I suppose he was busy. No matter how things had turned out for me up on that mountain, stuff around the world wasn’t any different. Winter was coming on, and the droughts had turned to blizzards. The wildfires had given way to mudslides, and the riots had become terrorist actions. Seemed like the entire human race was pissed off about anything and everything. Signs of the conflict seeping over into our world, I guess.
Halloween was looming on the horizon and I was out back bagging up pumpkin guts from our jack-o’-lantern frenzy, when Axel finally appeared. There was no fanfare, no flashing lights. He didn’t even bother to hide inside a squirrel or other domestic pest. He was just there, at the edge of my water garden, when I looked up.
“Axel.” I set the trash bag aside and wiped my hands on my jeans as I walked across the grass.
“Jesse.” He offered a bit of a smile, but there was weariness to it.
“Kinda expected you sooner than this.”
“Yeah, well… busy social calendar. You know how it is.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. If the chilly autumn air bothered him in his light T-shirt, it didn’t show. “You’ve been well?”
“I’m still here. What’s up with you?”
He shook his Mohawked head. “I can’t stay long, Jesse. Don’t waste your questions.”
I nodded a little. I’d expected as much. “Fine. How about I start with telling you what I know, and you just say hot or cold, hm?”
After a moment, he nodded. “That could work.”
“There’s some kind of split Down There. Y’all are feuding amongst yourselves.”
That earned me a nod and a “Hot.”
“One side wants us champions out of the picture, for some reason.”
“Hot.”
“One side… wants us to stay?”
He frowned, mouth twisting as he tried to find an answer he could give me. “Warm.”
“How warm?”
“Lukewarm.”
This was getting us nowhere fast. “Look, are we still in danger? Are they going to come again?”
The demon kept frowning, and added pacing to his repertoire. “It’s complicated, Jesse. Yes, someone, sometime, is going to come again. But you have to realize that you’re dealing with creatures that have no sense of time. They could come tomorrow. They could come two centuries from now. And it would make absolutely no difference to them.”
“Makes a helluva lot of difference to me,” I muttered, and he smirked. “So what do we do?”
“What have you been doing for the last month?” He shrugged. “You go on.”
“We go on, and just wait to see if some big fight that isn’t even ours comes running over our head like a freight train?”
“Sounds like a plan.” He scuffed the toe of his boots through my shaggy lawn, finding something on the ground suddenly fascinating. “There have been lines drawn over this, Jesse. Sides chosen. Things you didn’t even see or know were happening. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better.”
“And whose side are you on, Axel?”
“Mine, of course. That was a foolish question.” He smiled a little, never raising his eyes to meet mine.
Of course. It had been a foolish question. I’d known the answer before I ever asked it, and I expected nothing less of him.
The weird thing was, in all the years I’d known him, I couldn’t think of a single time Axel had ever lied to me. Ever since he made that comment on that dark road, I’d tried to think back, wracked my brain to find a single instance. He omitted, yes. He evaded. But he’d never told me a straight-up bald-faced lie. And I had no idea what that meant.
“Hey, Jesse? Hold still while I try something, okay?”
Against my better judgment, I held still.
With a puzzled tilt to his head, Axel reached out and pinched my biceps hard.
“Ow!” I yelped, and reflexively socked him in the chest, hard enough to make him grunt. Then we both kind of stared at each other.
It was the first rule, the one inviolable rule that governed what we, as champions, did. A demon could not harm a human without that human’s permission. That was the whole point of the contracts, of the bartering souls. It was the thin line of civility that protected us, the humans, against them, the demons.
But my arm hurt, and was going to bruise. He’d hurt me. And I’d hit him back with no mystical repercussions. “What does that mean, Axel?”
“I… don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.” The fact that even Axel was flummoxed bothered me more than anything else. Before he faded out of view, he reminded me, “You owe me a favor, champion. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
Yeah. That. I had to wonder just how that was gonna come back and bite me in the ass later.
Cameron hadn’t left town, of course. Big jerk. And as far as I knew, he was still dating Dr. Bridget, which was pretty high on my “not happy” meter. Still, it was handy to be able to ask him to dig through the Order’s Library of Books Not Accessible to Mere Mortals. (I slay me, seriously.)
He found no trace of anyone named “Architect.” No demon, no spirit. No angel either. Whatever Axel was, he hadn’t been documented. Which meant he was either nothing notable at all… or he was some serious badass shit. I was starting to suspect it was the latter.
I couldn’t help but think about what Axel had said. I had known the Yeti’s name, and for whatever reason, that was threat enough for him to try to kill me. How many other names were swimming around in my brain? In my four, almost five years as a champion, I’d had fourteen challenges. More than any other champion in the same time period. Granted, two of them were with the Yeti, but that still left twelve other demons with some kind of special grudge against me. I needed to find out about this whole name thing, and fast.
I also knew that Handless was still out there. I suppose it was possible that she hobbled off into a hole and died, but… deep down, I knew better. She was out there, and she was something I’d have to deal with eventually. I entered everything I could remember about the Yeti’s minions into Grapevine, so that any other champion who might run into them would have a fighting chance. I told them about Handless. I wouldn’t be the only one looking for her now.
Ultimately, I could only take Axel’s advice, scary as that was. I went on. Esteban kept taking lessons with me, sparring in the rain and the early-autumn snow. Mira renewed the protective spells on the house, and on all of our friends whether they wanted it or not. When my neighbor’s mastiff had another litter, I took one of the puppies for Annabelle. Marty’s Duke had proven invaluable against the Yeti and his minions. I wanted that kind of protection for my daughter.
He was a cute little fawn-colored thing, all paws and floppy ears. Anna named him Chunk.