A Snake in the Grass (26 page)

The hood of the pickup was warm, and the
engine ticked softly as it cooled. I couldn’t be too far behind
him.

The path seemed even more tangled than the
first time we were there, almost like the vines and bushes and
closed in behind Estéban as he passed. I knew I sounded like a herd
of drunk water buffalo, coming through the brush, but I didn’t
really have time for stealth. And with two hundred and seventy-five
souls riled up and beaming, it wasn’t like I could hide from
anything magical anyway.

The souls were on fire. Had been since I tore
out of the little clearing, leaving the sly little demon behind.
Whether my passengers truly understood what was happening, or were
just reacting to my emotional state, I couldn’t say. Regardless,
whatever cloaking powers Axel’s spell had given me, they were
pretty moot now. Even I could tell that much.

The foliage gave way abruptly to the wide
meadow, the surface of the tall grass swaying in the twilight
breeze. I stumbled to a halt, trying to quiet my breathing so that
I could hear. To my left, there was a path through the grass, and
on examination, the stalks had been sliced neatly through. He had
seriously used my sword as a weed whacker. I was so going to kick
his ass.

I heard the voices first, and once I had a
direction, it was easy to see the three dark heads sticking up over
the weeds, halfway across the clearing. They’d gone further in than
we had before, had to be standing almost dead center in the midst
of all the fallen stones.

The shortest one, the one that I hadn’t
expected, was Reina, standing just behind Paulito. There was a
strange excitement in her dark eyes as they flicked between the two
men. Just what the hell was she doing here? The tattoos on my skin
writhed and burned white hot, and I had a sick feeling that I
wasn’t going to like that answer when I got it.

Paulito must have been standing on one of the
rocks, head and shoulders taller than his younger cousin. Even at
that distance, I could see the sneer on his face. They were
speaking Spanish to each other, and while I couldn’t follow it all,
the mocking was obvious. He was taunting the kid, no doubt for
falling for such an obvious trap. He gestured with one hand, and I
realized he had the machete with him, flailing it around like a
magic wand.

In the wide open clearing, it wasn’t like I
was going to approach unnoticed, so I didn’t even try. I took the
trail Estéban had cut, noting where he’d skirted a few of the aging
stones. Wouldn’t do to go tripping over one of those and splatting
on my face in the midst of the fast escape I was sure we were going
to have to make.

I came up behind the kid, making enough noise
that he’d know I was there, but stopped about ten yards away. The
kid’s head twitched slightly in my direction, acknowledging me, but
he kept his eyes on Paulito. Reina’s gaze, though, it found me, and
a pleased smile curved her very pretty lips.

“Having that blade doesn’t make you a
champion, Paulito.”

The switch to English was for my benefit, and
Paulito’s eyes flicked to me and back to his cousin with a smirk.
“Just because your papa was champion doesn’t mean that you are one
either. You’re just a boy, and you have no
idea
what kind of
power I have at my disposal.”

“I know you’re using blood magic, black
magic. It will kill you, sooner rather than later, and your soul
will be damned with it. I don’t know what she’s told you,” His gaze
darted to Reina and back quickly, “but she has lied to you.” The
kid still had my sword, I realized, pointed down but held in a
position he could easily fight from if necessary. “Just come home.
Mama will forgive you, we can talk. You can still walk away from
all of this.”

Paulito threw back his head and laughed.
“Reina doesn’t lie. Reina doesn’t
need
to. What makes you
think I want to walk away from this? This will get me everything I
ever wanted.”

“It won’t.” Estéban shook his head, and I
could see his shoulders droop for just a second before he squared
himself again. “I am taking you home. You get to choose what
condition you’re in.”

“Is that a threat,
primo
?” Paulito
hopped down off his perch with a dark chuckle. “You really going to
use a sword on me?
Tu familia
?”

“
Si tengo que.
” Estéban brought The
Way up, settling into a ready stance just like I’d taught him.
“Jesse. Whatever happens, stay out of it. This is family
business.”

Dammit, kid.
Not that I really knew
what I was going to do anyway. I was unarmed, without even my boot
knife, and my sword…well, it was being borrowed. Even at my very
best, going up bare-handed against a crazy dude with a machete was
probably not going to work out very well for me in the end. All I
could do was stand back and watch. The Way wasn’t Estéban’s weapon,
it wasn’t even one he’d practiced with extensively, and I could
only hope I’d taught him enough to get him by.

As Paulito advanced on his cousin, Reina
moved too, so I mirrored her, circling the pair until we formed the
four points of a square. There was a stone directly behind me, and
two small ones the size of softballs to my right. The small ones
still had enough magic in them to cause my souls to lean that
direction, making me feel off balance. Across the grass, my eyes
met Reina’s, and she gave me a small grin.

It was Paulito who broke first, and I felt a
glimmer of pride for my student as he stood his ground while his
cousin charged at him, bellowing with rage. The machete came down,
a clumsy overhand strike, and Estéban calmly stepped out of the
way, deflecting the blow and sending Paulito stumbling off-balance
into the weeds. The kid came back to center, simply waiting.

The older man whirled, charging again, and
again the kid parried, using his cousin’s momentum against him.
With Paulito’s back to him, Esteban had the perfect opportunity to
strike, to end this, but again he waited, simply bring the sword
back up into a ready stance.

“
Puta! Cobarde!
” Paulito spit at him.
“
Pelea, cabrón!
”

“No.”

Paulito came at him again, and this time the
blades clashed in earnest, the longer katana keeping the shorter
machete at bay. The kid’s form was shit, his balance too far
forward on the balls of his feet, but he still had more training
than his cousin and it showed. The pair of them trampled an
ever-growing ring in the tall grass as Paulito tried frantically to
get inside the kid’s guard, trying anything to reach him. For his
part, Estéban kept mostly to defensive maneuvers, and after his
second counterstrike where Paulito came away with stinging knuckles
and nothing more, I realized he was using the flat of the blade
instead of the sharpened edge.

“Kid, we don’t have time to play! The sun’s
going down!” It was something I felt more than saw, the green glow
of the spellstones brightening with each passing moment. We were
maybe fifteen, twenty minutes away from serious darkness. Whatever
“the first” was, the middle of a dark, spell-trapped hole in the
woods was not where I wanted to meet it for the first time.

“Come on,
kid
!” Paulito’s chest heaved
as he tried to catch his breath. “Run home to mama before dark,
because the monsters will get you.”

They came together again, and the sound of
clashing metal and grunts of exertion filled the clearing. Paulito
was pushing harder, realizing that his cousin wasn’t about to hurt
him, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he closed on
the kid and forced some kind of end to it. I seriously feared that
when it came down to it, the morals I’d instilled in the kid were
going to get him killed.

Almost as soon as I’d thought it, there was a
surge in the fight, and somehow the two cousins wound up in a close
clench, the two blades pinned between their wielders as they stared
at each other from inches apart.

Paulito grinned, a filthy, dark expression.
“You cannot defeat me,
primo
. You will
have
to kill
me, or I will gut you and leave your body here for the animals. And
then I will cut the head off of every brat your mother spawned, and
end with her.”

Wow. That was some world-class
super-villain-level hatred there. I saw the moment the words
registered with Estéban, saw the switch flick behind his dark eyes.
Don’t kid, don’t do it
. But I knew better. Of all the
buttons for Paulito to push, that had been the one. Whatever
training I’d managed to instill in the kid, that was about to go
right out the window.

With a roar that surprised even me, Estéban
gave a heave, shoving Paulito back with a force that sent the older
man staggering. And instead of waiting, the kid followed with a
flurry of blows that Paulito blocked only through blind luck. There
was no finesse, no style, only rage behind those strikes, and if
any single one of them landed, they were going to remove body
parts.

Estéban backed his cousin through the grass,
Paulito just this side of outright running away. They got so far
away that I realized I could only see them illuminated by the green
glow of all the stones around us. Night had fallen, and the pair of
idiots had fought their way into the dead center of the clearing.
It was only a matter of time before Paulito tripped on a rock and
went down, and then the kid really was going to kill him. I was
sure of that. He’d kill him, and spend the rest of his life hating
himself for it.

“Kid!” There wasn’t even a flinch to show
he’d heard. “Estéban! Let it go! Stand down!”

Maybe it was the sound of his name. Maybe it
was just that he’d been conditioned for so long to obey my voice.
But for a split second, he hesitated. And in that second, I saw the
machete come up, the blade ominously dark in the green light.
“No!”

There was a clang as The Way met the machete,
the kid’s block coming up impossibly fast, and then a grunt as
Estéban executed a nearly perfect spin kick and took Paulito square
in the chest, launching him off his feet.

Silence fell over the clearing as all eyes
watched Paulito, sprawled on his back and gasping like a landed
fish. He’d dropped the machete, and it lay at Esteban’s feet,
though I’m not sure the kid even realized it. Reina, silent for so
long I’d almost forgotten her, inched forward to see better, and
but my eyes were all for Estéban.
What are you going to do now,
kid?
The next few moments were going to tell me just what kind
of teacher I’d been. Would he let him live?

And suddenly, Estéban’s decision didn’t
matter anymore at all, because Paulito started screaming.

Chapter 17

I thought at first he’d landed on a fire ant
hill or something. Paulito flopped around in the trampled grass,
tearing at his shirt with frantic fingers. His screams grew higher,
breathier, cries of agonizing pain and fear. But in the dark, we
couldn’t see anything assaulting him.

Estéban took a step forward and I held a hand
out to him. “Don’t. Stay back.” Something… Something was
happening.

It was the smell that caught me first. It
wasn’t cloves. It might have been, at one time, but now it was old,
mildewed, rotten. There was something sickly sweet about it, like
rotting meat, and something behind even that that was…ugh. Clotted
blood, my mind told me, though why I knew what that smelled like, I
couldn’t say.

Old magic.
The moment I thought it, my
vision started that dizzying flicker, showing me the real world in
one breath and the magic beneath it in the next. The spellstones,
even the ones that didn’t glow to the naked eye, sprang up all
around us, and the on-again-off-again sight gave them a strobe
effect, flashing in the corners of my vision.

Paulito had fallen into a pool of leftover
magic. I could see it, surrounding him like a green cloud of gas,
the tendrils of it winding around his chest, his arms and legs. The
ancient power, long since altered from its original intention,
crept into his mouth like invading vines, and his voice choked off
as his back arched painfully.

The first crack of breaking bone was like a
gunshot in the clearing. Paulito’s left arm suddenly jutted at an
impossible angle, a jagged spur of bone gleaming whitely in the
dark. No blood though, I realized, and even worse, the bone seemed
to be growing, lengthening.

“
Madre de Dios
…” The kid crossed
himself.

In the dark, in the tall weeds, it was hard
to see everything that happened. There were more sounds of breaking
bone, of muscles and tendons tearing. Paulito occasionally let out
an agonized gurgle. Something dark sprouted from his skin, looking
almost like scales, only to have them slough off and fall away,
leaving raw, weeping sores behind. The fingers on one hand fused
together, while the ones on the other hand grew four extra
knuckles, and the newly sprouted claws dug deep furrows in the
soil.

His joints snapped and reformed at angles
that weren’t natural in human anatomy, and his spine had grown,
that much I could see, adding at least another foot to his height
if he were able to stand upright. He made it to his feet once,
tottering on knees that bent backwards as he howled his agony to
the night sky. The voice was no longer human. After that, he
collapsed in a heap and was still. The wisps of magic around him
died away, soaking into the ground as if they’d never been.

Estéban swallowed hard, and I had to admit I
was doing my best not to vomit too. “…Paulito?” He had to be dead.
No one could survive…whatever that was. “
Primo
?”

I was just about to call it, advise coming
back in the daylight to tend to burial duties, when the mass on the
ground twitched, stirred.
Oh shit.

What rose to its feet wasn’t Paulito anymore.
Only the T-shirt hanging in ragged tatters off its spiked shoulders
revealed that this had once been a human man. The oozing skin had
hardened in places, forming a shell that gleamed in the green spell
light. The arms were longer, spikes of sharp bone jutting from the
elbows in such a way that they’d never be able to straighten. One
hand had melted into something like a pick, and the other was all
spidery fingers and claws.