since faded out of my awareness, and the burns had passed into a dull throbbing ache. By morning, they’d be set, and I’d feel no more pain.
Kidd watched the entire proceeding in a kind of dumb silence, finally electing to have a seat near the truck’s front tire. Maybe he even dozed a bit.
The demon vanished like the Cheshire cat, its toothy white smile remaining long after the rest of it had rejoined the night. “Under the full moon… I will be seeing you, champion…” The insidious voice drew a shudder from me, despite my resolve not to let it rattle me.
Kidd startled when I nudged him with one knee. “C’mon. You missed curfew.”
The old ballplayer blinked up at me with bleary eyes. “What happens now?”
“Now you go play your ball games, Mr. Kidd.” I hauled him to his feet with one hand. “Go live your life for the next two weeks. Hug your wife, call your daughter, and tell her you love her. Then, come back.”
Either that answer satisfied him or he wasn’t fully awake for most of the trip back to the hotel. He didn’t say a lot until we pulled into the parking lot.
“I’m not the only one, right?” “Hm?” The lights in the lot cast blue- gray shadows over everything, giving Kidd a cadaverous appearance, deep shadows hollowing out his cheeks, ringing his eyes. I’m sure I looked just as bad. It wasn’t flattering lighting.
He stared at his hands in his lap. “I mean, that… thing… It has other souls, right? Other people?”
“Probably.”
“So… what happens to them, once you beat it?”
Not many people ask. They usually didn’t see beyond their own fate. It made me think better of him. “Well… nothing. Unless they find a champion and ask for help, they’ll just go on with that thing owning their soul. If they do decide to get out of it, the next champion that comes along will have an easier time of it, with the demon being weakened.”
That was, of course, a theoretical assumption. Since we’d started keeping track, none of us had fought the same demon twice. None of us had even fought a demon that someone else had encountered. It seemed their population was legion. That was a little depressing, if you stopped to think about it.
“I wish we could help them, too,” Kidd murmured, echoing my own thoughts.
I’d often wished for a way to get a roster of all the souls a demon held. Ivan insisted that, if a person was interested in saving himself, he’d find a way. But I’d always wondered-what if people just didn’t know they still had a choice? Maybe, if we could contact those people after a demon’s defeat, they’d be more willing to seek redemption, knowing the fight would be easier. Maybe they wouldn’t care at all. I was continually surprised by the foibles of human nature.
“Get some rest, Mr. Kidd. It’s late.” Or early, maybe. The clock in my truck said two thirty. I’d quit resetting it for daylight saving time years ago, so it was either right or an hour off. Either way, it was past time for good little boys and girls to be in bed. “Call me again in about ten days so we can make arrangements.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dawson.” He slid out of the truck and disappeared into the hotel. Wandering sleepily toward home, I was very pleased not to see any blue Ford Escorts in my taillights.
11
Wednesday morning dawned, not with my wife in my arms and my daughter catapulting into my bed, but with the shrill clamor of the alarm clock.
“Buh? Muh…” I beat on it several times before I realized I was abusing the phone by mistake and corrected myself. I blinked at the offending luminescent digits for some time before they finally obeyed and became 7:00 a.m.
Why was the alarm going off so early? Where was Mira?
It finally occurred to me that it was Wednesday-truck day at the store. Mira had gone in early and no doubt taken Hurricane Annabelle with her. So why was I getting up at seven? After how late I was out last night, why was I getting up at all? On about four hours sleep, I was not even human. Someone should know this.
Zombie-me wandered to the bathroom to do all the usual morning things, and found a note taped to the mirror. Doc appointment, 10:30 a.m. Don’t forget! Work at 3 p.m.
Groaning, I knocked my head against the wall next to the sink. Of course I’d forgotten. I had intended to forget. Face it, no man wants to go to the doctor. It just isn’t bred into our DNA.
I’d only just gotten up, and already my day was jam-packed with fun and frivolity. It wasn’t like the night before involving mundane things such as demon challenges, snippy agents, and soulless baseball players. No, today I faced true terror-a doctor’s appointment and an afternoon shift at It. I suppose it says something about me that I find the banality of real life more taxing than the really freaky stuff. I often wonder whether I could function without having an adrenaline high for more than a week or two.
I actually do my doctor an injustice. She’s a really good doctor. She patches me up; she puts up with my crap. Most of the time, when I don’t have to be hospitalized, she takes what I can pay her and doesn’t fuss too much if I have to carry the bill over for a month or two. Most important, she doesn’t ask too many questions. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t buy the security consultant line, but she doesn’t know about the demons. Maybe she thinks I’m a spy or something. That’d be cool.
Hospitals, of course, are beyond her control, and those cost an arm and a leg. You can imagine that insurance companies really don’t want to take me on. Two had dropped me already, and the most recent one was charging a small fortune to insure me as a “security consultant” (I doubt they had a category for “demon slayer”). It was only a matter of time before they dumped me, too.
For the pittance they paid out on my last hospital adventure, I should have just let the docs cut the damn leg off.
Since getting up at the butt-crack of dawn meant I had some time to spare, I fumbled into my sweats and grabbed my katana. It was time for us to become reacquainted after our long separation.
As I passed the patio table, I saw that Axel had made another move, countering my knight. I paused long enough to put a rook in harm’s way, then stepped into the grass.
My usual katas, performed unarmed, I did for exercise and to keep my skills sharp. My sword katas, I did for love. There was just something so right about feeling that weight in my hand, moving with the balance point just below the guard, feeling my own reach extend to the tip of the sharp blade.
The logical part of my mind ticked off the forms as I passed through them. Upper form was to block an overhand attack or bring the blade down with force on an opponent. Lower form was to flow into an uppercut or to block across the body. Step here, step there, move, shift, turn. But my mind’s eye saw the hellhound, and each strike countered an imaginary attack or took advantage of a potential weakness.
The demon-hound outweighed me and out- massed me. I had to keep it at sword’s reach and move fast- slicing wounds, not stabbing. There was too much risk of being disarmed that way. Many small wounds would bleed as much as one big one, and that was what I needed. I had to drain away the blight, the physical embodiment of the creature’s will. Only its will kept it here. The thing had to bleed.
I fought my imaginary opponent for an hour and a half, trampling patterns in the dew-soaked grass through my phantom battle. But in the end, I felt confident that I knew how to defeat it-not certain, never certain, but confident.
And you’re probably thinking I should just take a gun and shoot the damn thing. It’s a good idea, in theory, until you realize that when you’re shooting something that doesn’t have a kill point, a vital organ to hit and incapacitate or kill it, your only recourse is to cause massive amounts of damage. Most firearms don’t cause enough damage, and you’ll run out of bullets before you poke enough holes in it. The guns that do cause enough damage- the large calibers, the huge automatics-well, you can never be sure where those bullets are going to stop, after they pass through your target. And I’m not a big fan of collateral damage, so blades are best in most cases. Though, there was the flame-thrower incident. That was a hoot.
At the appointed hour, showered and clean-shaven in honor of spring, I appeared at the office of one Dr. Bridget Smith, who happened to be sitting at her receptionist’s desk when I walked in. It was a small family practice, cozy and comfortable. The chairs, in soothing pastel colors, matched the artistic watercolor prints on the
