A Snake in the Grass (2 page)

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.

My throat and nose burning with my own
stomach bile, I finally managed to force myself to my feet. Meeting
a demon on my knees seemed like a shitty first impression,
especially given the deal I intended to offer him.

The first thing I noticed, aside from the
fact that Cole was still crouched down, trying to regain control of
himself, was that the night had gone absolutely still. The birds
that had been serenading us just moments ago had fallen silent, and
the insects that were feasting on us had found somewhere else to
be. Even the breeze had stopped, and the late spring air felt heavy
with the night’s dew still settling onto the foliage around us.

If it hadn’t been so still, I’m not sure I’d
have noticed the faint movement across the clearing, and I murmured
“Incoming” to Cole as something stepped from the trees. It looked
like a man, at first, dressed in nondescript green hospital scrubs.
But as the thing drew closer, the scrubs melted away, first into a
suit and tie combo, and then into faded jeans and a black T-shirt,
and I realized that it was trying to look like me. Trying to set me
at ease. ’Cause yeah, magical melting morphing clothes was
normal
.

The thing stopped a good ten yards away,
giving me a slow smile for a moment before turning his eyes on my
brother. “Cole Younger Dawson. I have come to your call.”

Ew. Ew ew ew! Cole was right, there was
something in the voice, something that tasted like rancid lard at
the back of my throat and felt like an oil slick over my skin. No
human sounded like that. I wanted to spit until that taste was
erased from my mouth, but I didn’t have time for such nonsense.

Cole, on his feet again, visibly flinched
when the thing said his name, his shoulders up like he was
sheltering from an incoming blow. I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t
let this thing beat him down without even raising a finger.

“Hey, tall-dark-and-devilish. Over here.” I
snapped my fingers to get the thing to look at me, which it did
with a raised brow. “You’re here to talk to me, not him.”

“I am listening.”

“Oh I just bet you are. Well listen up good,
Sparky, ’cause it’s time to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal’.”

The thing grinned at me, showing pretty much
more teeth than a human head holds. “I will hear you.”

“You have his soul, yes?” I nodded toward
Cole. “You possess the soul of one Cole Younger Dawson.” The thing
had said Cole’s full name. That seemed important.

“Yes. I am in possession of such.”

“I want it back.”

The demon – I was still having trouble
thinking of it like that – chuckled, and its eyes flashed a bright
red, lighting up the night for a moment. Okaaaay. That was…weird.
“And what do you offer in exchange?”

“I will fight you for it.” I brought my other
hand out from behind my back, displaying my sheathed sword. “If I
win, you will return his soul to him.”

“And if you lose? What is my prize?”

He knew the answer already, he just wanted –
maybe needed – me to say it. “You can have my soul, if I lose the
fight.”

It hissed in displeasure, the human-ish face
wrinkling up in a way that no real human could. “Your name! You
must give your name, fool!”

Oh. Oops. “Jesse. Jesse James Dawson.”

“Jesse James Dawson…” My name from that
thing’s lips just made me want to cringe like a kicked puppy. There
were things inside me trying to crawl out and away to safety at the
sound of that voice caressing the syllables of my name. No wonder
Cole had cowered away from it. “This is your wager, then. A soul
against a soul, on a challenge of combat.”

“Yeah, I can’t play the fiddle for shit.” It
gave me a slightly puzzled look, and I sighed. Nobody gets my
jokes.

“Accepted.” The thing’s eyes flashed red
again, and I felt something hot slice down the back of my right
hand, a sharp line between the first two knuckles.

With a startled cry, I looked down to find a
scorched black mark there, the edges glowing faintly like embers in
the darkness. The smell of smoke reached my nostrils, my own skin
cooking as the glow died out. Oh, that was just nasty.

“Name your next term, champion.”

Terms? Oh hell, we got to set terms? This
could either be really good, or really bad. “I’m guessing that
every time we agree on a term, I’m gonna get another line branded
into my skin?”

“This is how the contract is sealed,
yes.”

“Great.”

“Unless you wish to withdraw. I am willing
cease this now and depart, if you have…doubts.”

This was gonna hurt like a mother fucker. I
could tell that already. I glanced once toward Cole, his eyes large
and glassy even in the darkness. He looked back at me, and the
emptiness behind his eyes was like a kick in the gut. No. There was
no withdrawing.

“Okay, my first term. You don’t get to use
any magic. No spells, no hocus pocus, no blipping in and out of
existence. Just stand there and have a physical fight.”

The thing paused, like it was thinking it
over, then nodded. “I require the same of you. No spells of
protection or enhancement, no blessings upon your person or your
weapon.”

Shit, I didn’t have any of that stuff anyway.
Joke was on him. “Done.” Another black line burned its way across
my hand, this one ending in a cute little curlicue. My breath
hissed between my teeth, but I bit back the cry that wanted to
escape.

Every time it hurt, every time I wanted to
gag on the smell of my own scorched flesh, I would look at Cole,
and I kept going.

This is what you do for family.

Chapter 2

Now…

The sound of glass crashing at around five
o’dark in the morning was followed by several other distinct
sounds. The first was a woman’s voice snarling in Ukrainian from
the living room, the second was the slide on a semi-automatic
racking, and the third was the gallop of large, guilty puppy
feet.

“Do
not
shoot the dog, Sveta!” My feet
hit the floor a second after that, and I didn’t even bother to pull
on my pajama pants. Everyone in the house had seen my boxers by
now.

Chunk, our canine midnight vandal, was
disappearing into my daughter’s room as I padded down the hallway,
and the door slammed shut behind him. I heard the scraping sound of
Anna’s toybox being shoved against the door, and nodded to myself.
We’d practiced, for just this occasion.

At the end of the hallway, I paused, pressed
against the wall for safety’s sake. “Sveta? Can I come around?”

There was a long moment of silence before a
woman’s heavily accented voice answered. “Slowly.”

With both hands raised, I stepped into the
kitchen, turning to face the living room door with supreme caution.
“It was just the dog. You can stand down.”

The barrel end of a gun, no matter what kind
of gun it is, looks goddamn big when you’re staring down it. Add to
that the pre-dawn darkness and the fact that I was the next best
thing to buck-ass naked and “vulnerable” didn’t even begin to
describe my situation. But I was sure she wouldn’t actually shoot
me. Pretty sure. Eighty-five percent sure. Maybe.

There was no wavering of the weapon as I
looked past the dangerous end to the woman holding it. Her dark
hair was back in a loose ponytail for sleep, and she was dressed
only in a light tank top and panties, but there was no hint of
sleepiness in her pale blue eyes. She focused on me, calm, cool,
and entirely capable of blowing my brains out if she thought it
necessary. “You are certain? Only the dog?” Her lilting Ukrainian
accent even managed to sound menacing.

“You can sweep the house if you want, but
stay out of my bedroom, and give me the gun. Deal?” I held my hand
out expectantly, but kept my voice level. We’d done this dance
before in the few months since Sveta had come to live with us.
Nothing like having a paranoid, trigger-happy demon slayer sleeping
on your couch.

After a moment, she flicked the safety back
on the gun and spun it in her hand, handing it to me grip first.
The knots in my shoulders relaxed. “I will get my sword.” Turning
on her heel, she disappeared back into the living room to retrieve
one of her other weapons.