A Snake in the Grass (21 page)

Oh hell, why couldn’t a walk in the woods
just be a walk in the woods? Slowly, I drew my katana from its
scabbard, feeling the spells on it as they sent my senses tingling.
“Backs together, keep an eye out. Douse the flashlight.” There was
a faint snick as the light was extinguished, leaving us in only the
green glow from the ancient spell stones.

There was nothing. No sound, no scent save
the decaying chicken. The night air was oppressively still, and the
only thing I could detect was my own heartbeat and Estéban’s quiet
murmuring next to me. Even in Spanish, I recognized Psalms 23:4.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil.
Yeah, I’m not religious, but I had a T-shirt
that ended the phrase with “Because I’m the baddest sunofabitch in
the valley.” See? Educational.

The odor of cloves burst into the still air
suddenly, and the souls in my back surged toward my left, toward
the kid. Whatever he was casting, they’d noticed.

Long moments passed. Very long, tense
moments. Finally, even Sveta was forced to lower her arms, frowning
in confusion. “And it is gone. Whatever was here has vanished.”

“Perhaps I frightened it off?” There was a
note of hopefulness in Estéban’s voice, but we all knew his tiny
little prayer hadn’t been enough to scare a flea.

I finally forced the muscles in my shoulders
to relax, rising out of my fighting stance. “Or maybe it just got
bored.” Glancing to my left, I looked Estéban over critically. “You
okay, kid?” His spell, whatever it had been, was tiny by casting
standards, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be feeling the
effects.

“I’m fine.” It was hard to see the pallor of
his skin in the darkness, but he seemed steady on his feet, so I
dropped it. “We should go now before it comes back.”

I wholeheartedly agreed.

We followed the bouncing flashlight beam back
through the trail we’d already broken in the grass, all of us
keeping a wary eye on the trees around us. I think I only truly
relaxed when I heard the first of the night birds resume calling.
Whatever had been with us, it was gone now.

The walk back to the truck seemed shorter
than the trip in, and I was inordinately relieved to see it sitting
right where we’d left it. Maybe I’d seen one too many horror
movies, but I’d half expected it to be gone, or the tires slashed
or something. Still, there was the chance that something horrible
was going to jump out of us right as we reached the safety of the
vehicle, and I tightened my grip on my sword. Because movies, you
know?

Right on cue, the brush to our right rustled,
and all of us spun to point weapons and flashlights in that
direction.
Too small
, my brain was telling me as the bushes
shook and rattled at knee level,
too low to be human
.

What finally broke cover was…well, I’m not
sure just what it was. I think it had been a raccoon once. There
was something left of the roundish shape, the gray fur, the
waddling walk. That was about all that was identifiable, however. A
row of spikes had sprouted from its spine, glistening with wet
scales, but as it passed under a low hanging twig, the protrusions
bent aside, soft and floppy. The lower jaw had grown grotesquely
outsized, sharp pointy teeth curving up to form a cage around the
upper part of the snout until the thing couldn’t even open its
mouth anymore. The eyes were milky white and filmed over, but tears
of something dark stained the fur beneath them. One back foot had
become twisted around to face the wrong direction, and the thing
hobbled with a labored wheezing to its breath.

It should have been terrifying, but instead
it was unspeakably pitiful and sad. The creature staggered vaguely
in our direction, its feet moving it along without any real purpose
or direction.

“What the ever loving fuck is that?” At the
sound of my voice, the beast stopped, trying to raise its head only
to find its attempt hampered by the pseudo spines growing out of
the base of its skull. It could hear, then, if nothing else.

“This is why we don’t come up here. This is
what can happen if you wander into a pocket of the old magic.” The
kid shook his head a little, sounding grim. “There have been more
and more of these in the last few years. Animals horribly changed.
They wander out to the farms, or into town, and we usually get
called in to take care of it. Mamá thinks that something here is
breaking down, barriers are weakening that used to keep the
creatures out, or maybe just more of the magic is going bad.”

“Kill it.” Sveta’s voice was choked, and a
small part of me marveled that we’d finally found something that
could rattle the hardened killer. The other part of me totally
agreed with her.

“May I?” The kid held his hand out for my
sword and passed me the flashlight in exchange. I held the light
steady as he advanced toward the pathetic creature, the thing
managing a respectable hiss of warning as he approached. Estéban
paid it no mind, though, and with one clean swing of the blade,
lopped its head off. The body twitched for a bit where it lay, and
then was still. After he was certain it was dead, he knelt to wipe
The Way off on the grass and handed it back hilt first. “Let’s go
home.”

It was a quiet ride back up the mountain.
Oddly, I think that pitiful little former raccoon disturbed me
worse than the rest of the evening’s events. The ability to use
magic wasn’t common in the overall population, but it wasn’t
exactly rare, either. And the thought that so many people were
wandering around the world, callously wielding powers that could
eventually turn into
that
was sobering to say the least. Not
for the first time, I wondered at the price the human race would
have to pay for dabbling in things like that. Years, even centuries
later, one spell could still linger, wreaking havoc on people who
might never even know it had been cast.

I don’t think I want to live on this planet
anymore

.

Chapter 14

The kitchen light was still on when we pulled
into the drive, and Estéban sighed. “We’re in trouble.”

I snorted as we all piled out of the truck.
“You mean
you’re
in trouble. She’s not my mom.”

“You really think that’s going to stop
her?”

As if on cue, the kitchen door slammed open,
revealing Carlotta wearing a bath robe and a look that could have
melted titanium. “And just what did you think you were doing?”

“I had to try to find him, Mamá.” As the kid
tried to argue his way out of whatever trouble he was in, Sveta
slipped off into the shadows, abandoning the kid and I to our fate.
Gee, thanks. “I had to try to get the machete back.”

She smacked him upside the back of the head,
and he just hunched his lanky shoulders. “They are things,
niño
. They are not special in any way. You can pick up any
weapon and be a champion.” I must have twitched or made a noise or
something, because she rounded on me next. “And
you
! What on
earth possessed you to leave the safety of the wards? Do you know
what happens if they find you undefended?”

“No, and neither do you.” That seemed to take
the wind out of Carlotta’s sails and she just blinked at me. “I
don’t think the demons have any more idea how to get these things
out of me than we do, else they’d have been at your door already.
Now can we please go inside? We’ve got some things to talk
about.”

It took us a few minutes to get settled
around the kitchen table, and involved the kid going to roust
Terrence out of his bed, too. The old champion grumbled as he
shuffled out into the bright kitchen, but did manage to mumble
thanks when Carlotta pressed a cup of tea into his hands. When did
she learn to make his tea?

“We didn’t find Paulito,” Estéban started,
“but we found the ward he was using to bind the demon.”

“Oh?” Terrence raised his scraggly head and
looked to me.

“Yeah. It was pretty much nonexistent. A
show, nothing more. Which means…”

Carlotta sighed, inexplicable sadness in her
eyes. “Which means that he is working with them.”

“Yeah.” And because I didn’t know what else
to say… “Sorry.”

Estéban wrapped his arm around his mother’s
shoulders and leaned his head against hers, the pair of them
sitting in silence for a few moments. Finally, she patted his
hands, took a deep breath, and drew herself up straight. “In the
morning, when we are all rested, we will do a scrying to locate
him. He cannot hide from that without more magic than he
possesses.”

I’d seen Mira do scryings before, but they
required something intensely personal from the person being sought.
“Do you have something of his? Some way to track him?”

Carlotta gave me a ghost of a smile. “We keep
hair from every member of this family, just in case it is needed.
Finding him will not be difficult.”

Estéban leaned his elbows on the table again.
“There is more. We went to the ruins tonight.”

The look his mother gave him was nothing
short of horrified. “You did what? At night? You could have walked
into anything, up there!” At that point, she switched to Spanish,
because apparently English was not sufficient to express what a
very bad, very stupid idea it had been to go walking around those
glowing stones in the dead of night.

The kid took it for a while, then placed his
hands on hers. “Mamá! English, please. Our guests can’t keep
up.”

Carlotta pressed her lips together firmly,
but gave a short nod. Her eyes fixed on me sternly. “I can excuse
you, because you did not know. But
he
knew better. It is
dangerous
up there, even in broad daylight. There is an evil
in those stones.”

I raised a brow at the kid, and he just
shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what the history of the place is, but
someone else has been messing around up there. We found a
sacrificed chicken.”

That drew grim looks from both Carlotta and
Terrence, and the old man made a disapproving noise in the back of
his throat. “Blood magic…” I think he might have spit, too, but he
didn’t want to make a mess in Carlotta’s kitchen.

“Neither Sveta nor I could feel any spell
work around the carcass.”

I nodded my agreement. “The…
they
didn’t even twitch.” I lifted my shoulders in illustration.
“Whatever someone was trying to do with the chicken, it failed.”
When Carlotta continued to look deeply disturbed, I went on. “It
was probably just some dumb kids, trying to do something they’d
seen in a movie or something.”

She shook her head quickly. “Even untrained,
even without any magic behind it, every death has power. Even a
small death like a chicken. I will need to go there soon, and see
if anything has changed. The ancient spells there have become
unstable in the last decade or so. They are decaying.”

Terrence winced. “You be careful, missus. Old
magic isn’t anything to trifle with.”

Carlotta cast him a quick smile, and there
was no mistaking the fondness behind it. “All right, everyone to
bed. After breakfast, we will scry for Paulito’s location.
Estéban…” The kid paused in mid-motion as he was standing up. “I
would like you to help with that. The more power we have behind it,
the more precise it will be.”

“
Sí
, Mama.”

“I would like your help as well, Señor
Smythe, and Sveta’s.”

“Yes mum.” The old curmudgeon levered himself
up out of his seat. “Best get myself some rest then.” Together, he
and the kid wandered off down the hallway.

Carlotta and I sat in silence for a bit. Most
of me really wanted to go fall onto my rock hard cot and get some
shut-eye, but she looked like she needed to talk. Sure enough,
after a few minutes, she sighed. “He has not sold his soul.”

“No,” I agreed. “He doesn’t have the
look.”

“Then what is he
doing
?” There was
anguish under her words, the kind that mothers get when their kids
have wandered off the right road. “I cannot fathom what has
possessed him to behave like this. His poor mother will be
devastated when she finds out. Paulito was not raised this
way.”

“The human heart is a weird thing. You never
know what’s gonna settle in like a little thorn and get all
infected. Something’s eating at that kid, and it’s just all blowing
up now. Festering to the surface.” She sat there, looking all
distressed and I had to say something else, something that would
give her hope, even if I didn’t really believe it. “Maybe…maybe
it’s for a good reason. My own brother sold his soul to save his
son’s life. It’s possible to do bad things for good reasons.” Did I
believe it? Hell no. But for Carlotta, I’d say just about
anything.

She finally looked up at me. “What will you
do when you find him?”

“What do you want us to do?” That was an
excellent question, actually. We couldn’t exactly arrest him. We
couldn’t keep him tied up and gagged so he couldn’t summon any more
demons. In fact, bringing him back into his family’s stronghold
while he still had that ability might be…inadvisable.

“I don’t know. I honestly do not know what to
do.” She twisted at the wedding ring on her finger. “I wish
Estéban’s father were here. He always knew the right thing to do. I
feel as though I am simply inventing things as I go along.”

It was hard to remember that Carlotta was not
a Perez by blood. She had married into the powerful family, and was
doing her best to see that it continued in its proud tradition
until one of her sons could take the helm. Until Estéban was old
enough to take over. If he survived that long.

“That’s what we’re all doing, Carlotta.” I
patted her hands as I got up off the bench. “Just making shit up.
See you in the morning. Don’t stay up too late.”

I left her there, staring at her hands, and
went to collapse onto my cot. Estéban wasn’t asleep – I could tell
by the stiff way he was laying on his bunk – but he didn’t say
anything, so I didn’t either. We could talk in the morning.