that.” Another walnut pelted him in the head, and he snarled at the branches above. “You’re a furry hors d’oeuvre, I swear…”
I snapped my fingers to get his attention. “Focus, Axel. Why did you come here?” The more I looked at him, the more I thought there was something… off. Something in his usual smile, some tightness around his mouth, or his eyes. The way he sagged against the tree, almost like he actually needed it to keep himself upright. “Are you okay?” Part of me wondered why I even cared.
He ignored my question but seemed to take it as a challenge, pushing off the tree to stand on his own. It didn’t escape me that he wrapped one arm tightly around his ribs, holding himself in pain. “I came to give you a message.”
I saw how he stayed close to the tree trunk, dodging as much of the fading sunlight as he could. Now, I’m pretty sure the light doesn’t physically harm them, but man, demons don’t like it. The forest canopy provided just enough shade where he was standing to throw his face into darkness.
“Step into the light.” Unlike most demons I’d dealt with, Axel had never made special efforts to avoid the sun. Something was wrong. Well, more wrong than usual.
“I’ll stay here, thanks.”
“What’s up, Axel?”
“Let’s just say I’m not at my best today, hmm? Now shut up and let me give my message.” His eyes flashed red and stayed that way. I was pissing him off.
“From who?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He moved one step closer, and as his face passed out of the tree’s shadow, I could see it clearly for the first time. His lower lip was split and swollen, and the right half of his face was a lovely shade of eggplant purple. Axel had obviously had a very bad day.
“What the hell happened to you?” More importantly, how the hell had it happened? I’d never seen a demon with visible injuries. At least ones I didn’t cause myself. Damn, how much damage did it take to bruise blight?
He managed a pained grin, running his tongue over his teeth. “A fairly accurate description, actually. You ever see those videos of family Thanksgiving dinners that turn into all-out brawls? Think of it like that.”
“You had a family food fight?”
He chuckled. I will never get used to hearing my laugh come out of a demon’s mouth, and the muscles in my back twitched as I tried not to shudder. “I guess you could call it food. If it’s any comfort to you, I came out on the winning side.”
“I’d hate to see the other guy.”
“Oh yes. You would.” The smile faded quickly. “You need to get off the mountain.”
Normally, I would laugh in the face of any order Axel gave me, but there was something in his eyes, something in his borrowed voice. It sent another wave of chills down my back. “You’re the one that told me to come up here.”
That earned me a frown. “You ever hear of reverse psychology?”
“Yeah, and you suck at it.” I finally closed the distance between us, just so I could lower my voice. Who knew where the guys were? “Did you flatten Marty’s tires?”
His mouth twisted as he contemplated the answer. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
“And turn Will’s alarm clock off?”
“Hey, that was just him being a moron. I had nothing to do with that.”
I could feel the beginnings of a headache, somewhere behind my eyes. “Any particular reason why?”
“You’ll find out. But get somewhere public. Somewhere you can put your back against something solid.”
“That sounds like a threat, Axel.”
He shook his head. “Not from me. I’ll swear it if you like. Just. .. do as I ask, this one time.”
Everything in me screamed no. You don’t do what a demon asks, period, the end. Even if (especially if) they phrase it to be for your own good. I eyed him warily, as if I could drag secrets from him with the power of my charismatic gaze. Or some shit. “What’s in it for you? You don’t give out information for free.”
The demon’s eyes flared red again in the dappled shadows, and he spat a curse in a language I didn’t understand. Even so, the single word made my vision swim and the trees around me tilt at bizarre angles for the space of two breaths. Demonic speech is not meant for human ears. The cussing that followed in English was easier to follow.
“Damn you for your stubbornness, Jesse Dawson. You are the most infuriating creature on this planet.”
“You been talking to my wife?” When in doubt, resort to being a smart-ass.
Axel was not amused. His gaze swept the forest around us, and he finally pointed at my feet. “There. Pick that up.”
“That” proved to be a small branch, probably fallen off one of the trees overhead. Small, nondescript, definitely not something that could be used as a weapon. I bent to retrieve it, carefully keeping my eyes on him.
He held his hand out to me as I straightened up. “Hand it to me.” Cautiously, I extended the stick out to him, and he snatched it out of my hand. “There, now you’ve given me something. We’re even.”
At the risk of sounding mushy… where was the Axel I had come to know and hate? He would never have let a potential deal go without at least trying to bargain for something bigger, and his insistence on it had almost cost me my life last spring. “Axel, what’s going on? You’re not usually this… accommodating.”
“Don’t worry, Jesse. I still want your soul. But for right now, I need to keep it attached to your body until I can come collect.”
“So you’re saying I’m in danger. From what?” He stepped away from me, started to retreat into the trees. “Dammit, Axel, you can’t just drop this on me and bail!”
“I can’t say more. My hands are tied. If I could-” Whatever he was going to say next was lost as he suddenly stumbled.
I admit, it’s instinct. Someone falls, you catch them. I jumped forward, caught his arms and eased him down as he sagged toward the ground. A bout of wracking coughs shook his wiry frame, ending all conversation for a few long minutes. Eventually, he turned his head and spat something dark and sticky off to the side, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked again. It felt strange, asking him that. Why should I care if the demon was hurt? Damn, could he even be hurt? They could be banished, yes, evicted from whatever physical form they’d taken. But actually injured? That opened up a whole new realm of “evil things Jesse can do to demons” if it was true. I made a mental note to roll this over in my brain later. There had to be something here I could use.
He took a few deep breaths, testing, before he nodded. “Yeah. Just a bit more banged up than I realized.” He raised a brow, glancing at my hands still on his arms. “Are you gonna kiss me, or let go?”
“Fuck off.” I released him immediately, but I had to stare at my hands, rubbing my fingertips together. There was nothing there. No tingle of magic, no scent of cloves, no electric spark. Under normal circumstances, I should never have been able to touch the demon, not with my wife’s spells of protection laid on me. But they protected me only from someone who meant me harm…
“Get off the mountain, Jesse. That’s all I ask.” The voice, my stolen voice, was distant suddenly, and I looked up in time to see Axel fade from view before my eyes. There was a faint scent of sulfur and ozone, and he was gone. His last words were whispered from thin air. “They’re coming.”
Well… fuck. That was as deep and meaningful as I could manage. Who was coming? When? Where? I cussed Axel up one side and down the other as I stood and debated my options. This was all pertinent information I could have used, dammit!
A nut bounced off my paintball mask with a loud clack. Glancing up, I saw my irate rodent friend still watching me. “Yeah, I know. I know. And you better git too, before he does come back and eat you.”
The animal gave me a firm chitter and vanished in a swoosh of fuzzy tail.
I couldn’t just “get off the mountain.” My friends were out there in the woods, and they’d freak if I didn’t show up at the cabin in pretty short order. Not to mention that the Quinns were already up there, and if something bad was coming for me, I couldn’t just leave them.
“Okay, first things first. One, stop talking to myself. Two, gather up the guys.” I’d figure out what to tell them when we were all in one spot. “Hey guys, I got a message that we need to go.” “From where?” “Um… little bird told me?”
