smirked. “And as your friend, I’m reminding you that Mira says not to forget your mom’s birthday present.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, dressing after the doc left the room. Was there anyone Mira hadn’t told? This was getting ridiculous.
I wandered back out to the front to find Bridget at the receptionist’s desk again and three people in the waiting room. The doc glanced up at me once. “I’ve got you down for another checkup in a month, Jess. Keep doing the therapy; maybe get some swimming in this summer.”
That earned a grimace. I don’t swim. I do sink rather well, though. “I’ll see what I can manage.”
She grabbed my hand when I went to leave and lowered her voice. “God watches out for you, Jess. I firmly believe that. But you can’t keep testing him this way.” She had that look in her gray eyes, the one that said she truly believed. How my wife the witch and this devout Catholic became best friends, I will never know.
“You worry too much, Doc.” No doubt, she would spend her next visit with Mira detailing just what kind of a worthless sumbitch I was. There were times when I wondered if she was right.
The sun was bright when I walked out into the parking lot. There wasn’t a cloud in the steel blue sky, and it looked as if that sky went on forever. Sometimes I wondered how the world could look so cheerful, knowing what horrible things existed there. Then I thought of people like Bridget-good people, with faith in a greater power, in absolute good. I hoped I wouldn’t let them down.
12
As I was clambering into my truck, my hip buzzed. I was learning to hate my cell phone. It never brought good news. There was some wriggling involved, but I finally got it out of my pocket. “Hello?”
“Dawson.” In just that single word, I could hear defeat in the old Ukrainian’s gravelly voice. My stomach tied itself in knots in anticipation of bad news.
“Hey, Ivan. What’s the word?” I rolled the window down and got comfortable. It wasn’t like anyone needed my parking spot.
“Is there to be any chance that you are to be hearing from Archer, of late?”
I frowned at the odd question. I’d met Guy Archer only once, and we weren’t what I would call close. He was a stocky man with black hair graying at the temples, stick-straight posture, a faint French accent. Stoic didn’t even begin to describe his expression. Ex-military, I thought, or possibly Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In plaid shirts, blue jeans, and worn work boots, he looked like a lumberjack, and he bore that impression out when I saw him pin a playing card to a tree trunk with a thrown hatchet. Lumberjacks did that kind of thing, right?
We had exchanged nods and not much else. I stuck to the United States mostly, and Guy sat up there in Toronto, doing his own thing. Miguel, yeah, I kept in touch with him, but Guy-not so much. “No, not for months. Why?” There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Ivan? You still there?”
“I was to be managing to receive one message from Grapevine. Archer was to be checking in last week. He has not.”
Ice ran down my spine, despite the rapidly warming day. “Maybe he just forgot.”
“Maybe. But I am not believing that. Neither are you.”
He was right. I didn’t believe it for an instant. You always made your check-in call. Always. Ivan drilled it into our heads from the moment he turned up on our doorsteps. “In this day of technology miracles, there is no reason we are to be fighting alone.” There was no acceptable excuse for missing a check-in.
Champions died. It was a fact of our existence. But in the last four years, we’d lost three total. To lose two, within weeks of each other? It was unthinkable. And these weren’t rookies, either. Both men were experienced fighters. “What the hell is going on, Ivan?”
“I am not to be knowing.” That baritone voice quavered. I think that was when I really knew it was bad. Ivan had seen it all. Nothing was supposed to shake him.
“Did you ever find Miguel’s weapon?”
He took a deep breath, causing static on the line. It gave us both a moment to collect ourselves. I was getting more scared by the moment. Ivan was our rock. If he was crumbling, the rest of us were in deep shit. “Ah… that. It is possible that mystery is to being solved. Miguel’s younger brother is to also be missing.”
That was supposed to solve the mystery? “And?”
“We are believing that Miguel’s contract was for the machete to be delivered to the brother. If Miguel has perished, perhaps he has taken it and gone in pursuit of Miguel’s soul.”
That made sense, in an incredibly stupid teenager kind of way. For Miguel’s family, demon hunting was in the blood. To hear Miguel tell it, they’d done it since before the Christians conquered the Aztecs.
Of course, the kid was also next in a family who had a history of getting eaten by demons. I might have bugged out, too, at that age.
“Shit, he’s what, thirteen?”
“Seventeen.” Easily old enough to get himself killed and have his soul stolen. Also old enough to know he didn’t want to die like that.
“And you still don’t know who Miguel worked for last?”
“There are leads I am to be tracing. It is being difficult, from here. Signals are bad, in the hills, and the power is not to being steady.”
“You gotta find that kid, Ivan. If he has gone hunting, he knows who Miguel was working for.” And he was about to be in way over his head.
“I am to be trying my best. I fear it is to be taking time we do not have.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Please, let there be something I could do. I hated sitting here, thousands of miles away, feeling useless.
“You said you were to be having a mission?”
For me, they were paying clients. For Ivan, they were missions to save worthy souls. I won’t even get into Ivan’s objections to me charging money for what I do. “Yeah, here in town.”
“Do not be taking it.”
I sighed and resisted the urge to bang my head against my steering wheel. The black marks on my skin proved it was already too late for that. “The contract’s already set. I can’t back out now. But I’ve got two weeks until the challenge. I’m in no immediate danger.”
“How powerful is it to being?”
“It’s a Skin.”
“A what?” Okay, so not everyone is up on my lexicon.
“A beast type. A wolf-hyena thing big enough that I could ride it to work.”
He said something that was undoubtedly a Ukrainian curse. “I am to be coming there, then. As soon as I am to be finished here. Things are to being very wrong.”
“Do you need me to track down any of the others, make sure they’re all accounted for?” I’d met three champions, besides myself and Ivan. I had no doubt that two of those were dead now. The rest… their names and contact information lay within Grapevine, and though they were only pixels on a screen for me, I’d do anything in my power to protect them.
“ Tak. That would be most helpful. Do be telling them do not take on more missions until I am giving the word.”
I scratched my jaw. It itched where I’d shaved. “You think something’s taking a swipe at us?” Immediately, the blue Ford Escort leapt to mind. Yeah, something was after us.
“It is not to being possible. The contracts must be followed. They cannot to be attacking without permission.” He said it forcefully, as if sheer will would make it so.
In all honesty, it should have been true. Rule number one: A person had to consent to any harm a demon brought him. There was no such thing as an unwilling victim; unwitting, yes, but never unwilling. That rule was older than anyone’s memory, and inviolable-until now.
“Well, ’til we figure this out, you watch your own back. Nothing would cripple us faster than losing you.”
He sounded grim when he said, “ Tak. I am to be realizing this more and more.” I didn’t like the sound of that. “I will to be calling you at this time tomorrow, if not to being earlier.”
