A Snake in the Grass
Read A Snake in the Grass Online
Authors: K. A. Stewart
Tags: #Samurai, #demon, #katana, #jesse james dawson, #Fantasy
A SNAKE IN
THE GRASS
A JESSE JAMES DAWSON NOVEL
K.A. STEWART
Published by Pirate Ninja Press at Smashwords
Copyright © 2014 K.A. Stewart
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design, Inc.
www.gobookcoverdesign.com
Table of Contents
Dedicated to Dedication
Acknowledgements
So many aspects of my life would be impossible
without my family, and I’m lucky enough to have more than one. So,
for the family I was born to: Grammy, Butch, David, Gary, Eric,
Laura, Jimmy, Lora, Jackie, Jason, Chase, Rylee and Cashlee. For
the family I chose: Scott, Gita, Paul, Jayson, Dawna, Melissa,
Caron, Faith, Josh, Jenn, Erin, Andy, Ethan, Rachel and Will. And
for the writing family that chose me: Anne, Ginger, Alice, Caleb
and Janet.
Thank you.
Also, a special shout out to Paul Henri Alanís Noyola
for his diligent efforts in correcting my gawdawful Spanish.
Gracias
.
Chapter 1
Forever ago…
It’s no secret that I was a hell-raiser as a
kid. Well, more teen than kid, but you know what I mean. If there
was trouble, I found it. If there was petty crime, I committed it.
If there was a drug, I did it. A lot. Seriously, I did my fair
share of drugs. Hell, I did my share, and your share, and a couple
other people’s shares. If I hadn’t been arrested at fifteen, I’d
most likely have been dead before eighteen.
In contrast, my little brother had known he
wanted to be a cop from the time he was three years old. While I
embraced the reputation of my outlaw namesake, Jesse James, my
brother Cole Younger Dawson was destined to be the exact opposite
of his. Straight A student, honor society, volunteer work, you name
it, he was there. He was the kind of guy that you just knew was
going to rip open his shirt to reveal a Superman emblem underneath.
Still is, to this day.
You’d think that such a disparity in
personalities would cause friction, and yeah, we did our damnedest
to kill each other on several occasions, but in the end, it always
boiled down to blood. He was my blood, and there was no power on
earth that could help the person who laid hands on my little
brother. We were close, even when we absolutely didn’t understand
each other. That’s what brothers do.
So like I said, I tore up the town with some
buddies one night, and I got arrested while my so-called friends
high-tailed it over the chain-link fence out back. Can’t even
remember what I was running on that night, but I tried like hell to
take a chunk out of the cops that put me down. I failed, of course.
I seriously weighed maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Bet it was
like getting attacked by a broom straw. Those guys probably still
laugh about it, and I deserved it.
Judge Carter, known for his unusual sentences
especially in juvenile cases, opted to suspend any time in Juvie
for me, so long as I attended a court-selected martial arts class
twice a week. Everyone around me, including me, expected it to be a
spectacular failure. Turns out, it wasn’t.
If Judge Carter saved my life, then Carl
Bledsoe set my path from that moment on. Sensei, disciplinarian,
smacker-of-hard-heads and later, friend. He taught me everything I
would need to know to become the man that I am today. He drove the
tenets of
bushido
into my head until I could recite them in
my sleep (and have). He taught me to value honor and integrity. He
taught me that there are things greater than just one man, and that
sometimes, doing the right thing may suck, but it’s always worth
it.
And of course, he taught me to kick a lot of
ass. That’s one of those things I’m not supposed to say, but hey,
it’s come in handy in the years since. Sometimes, when I have
nothing to do but think back on what my life has become, I have to
wonder what would have happened to all the people that I’ve helped
if I’d never learned the skills that I have. If I’d have dropped
the classes, or if I’d climbed over that fence after my friends, or
if I’d just stayed in that night and smoked another bowl. If I
wasn’t who I am, where would my baby brother be now?
He was young when he came to me for help, but
we were both old enough to be fathers. My Annabelle and his Nicky
were less than six months apart in age, just at the age where they
should be toddling. Well, Anna was toddling. Nicky, so frail and
weak, had spent the best part of his first year in and out of
hospitals with so many ailments that I think the doctors despaired
of ever discovering them all.
Nicky was five months old the first time they
called the priest to perform last rites. He pulled through that
time, somehow, but the next time was barely a month later, and even
Mira was convinced to bless the tiny little life that was surely
passing on to the next world right before our eyes. Mira held
Stephanie, Cole’s wife, as she sobbed silently, and I couldn’t do a
thing but stand next to my brother, watching the grayness of sick
certainty settle over his face. Parents aren’t supposed to outlive
their children, and we all knew it, even as young as we all
were.
Finally, he ducked out of the room, unable to
stand and listen for the inevitable long tone in his tiny son’s
heart monitor. I wanted to go after him, wanted to take some of
that horrible, inexorable burden off his shoulders, but I didn’t.
For probably the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of the
right words to say, or even the wrong ones. All I could think was
how I would feel if that was my Annabelle in that bed, and the sick
dread of it threatened to choke me to death. So I let him go to
face whatever he had to face all alone.
I hate myself every day for that. I probably
always will.
That night, the night that should have been
the end of the world as we knew it, Nicky’s vital signs suddenly
got stronger. His oxygen came up, his heart rate stabilized. He
opened his eyes, and when they landed on his mother, he smiled
around the tubes that were taped to his face.
They were able to take him home two days
later, and everyone thanked whatever god or goddess they believed
in for the miracle. We didn’t know, back then. We had no idea what
had actually happened.
Cole withdrew. I saw it, and I chalked it up
to stress over bills, over Nicky’s health, over a lot of things. He
found excuses not to hang out with me, to skip family gatherings.
He took extra shifts under the pretense that they could use the
money. On the few occasions I saw him, the hollows in his cheeks
seemed deeper, the shadows under his eyes darker. Other than our
hair color – his chestnut brown to my blond – and the fact that he
packed on about thirty pounds more muscle than I had, we were
supposed to look alike. In those days, I thought we still did,
though he looked fifteen years older than me instead of three years
younger.
Nicky had been out of the hospital for five
months, growing stronger all the time, though he still had a lot of
ground to make up. Through rampant bullying, I managed to get Cole
to my parents’ house for a shindig, convinced that some good
old-fashioned family shenanigans were just what he needed to
lighten his spirits.
We stood off to the side and nursed beers as
the kids played, Anna taking charge of Nicky with a watchful eye
that said she understood even then that he wasn’t capable of the
same things she was. Mira and Steph calmly navigated the sea of
Dawson family lunacy, setting out the giant barbecue dinner we were
going to have if my parents could ever quit arguing over the proper
settings for the grill. There was no venom behind my folks’
grumbling. We’d been hearing the same old snarks for decades at
that point. It was just…normal. This was how life was supposed to
be.
Up until the moment that Cole cleared his
throat to get my attention. “Jesse?”
That made me look at him sharply. We never
used our names. It was always little brother and big brother.
Sometimes Beavis and Butthead. Occasionally asshole and dipshit.
But never, never ever Jesse and Cole.
There was something strange in his blue-gray
eyes, something I had never seen there before. A flatness, maybe,
or just… Something not right. Something was missing. “What’s up,
little brother?”
“Can you…can I talk to you for a minute?
Inside?” With a raised brow, I followed him into the house,
stopping in the living room where he rolled up his long shirt
sleeve. “I think… I think I’ve done something really bad.”
He revealed what looked to be a black tribal
tattoo on the inside of his left forearm, stretching from wrist to
elbow, and I swear, I busted out laughing. “Oh shit, little
brother. The nineties called, they want their tattoo back.” He gave
me a pained look, but I was on a roll, there was no way I was
letting that one go. “Seriously, how drunk were you? Did you
actually pay money for that piece of crap?”
“
Jesse
!” He grabbed my arm and gave me
a good jerk, one that went beyond just playful. When I stopped to
give him a “what the fuck” glare, he thrust his arm before my eyes
again. “Look closer. Really look.”
And I did. I looked.
Really
looked,
and the black marks on his arm swam before my eyes. They writhed
and stayed still all at the same time, they intersected at
impossible angles and dipped in and out of view in a way that was
simply not possible. I stared at it until my eyes watered, until I
felt like someone had driven an icepick up into my eye socket. It
was
wrong
in a way I had no words for at that time (and have
failed to find words for in the time since). “What the ever-loving
fuck, Cole?”
Only then did he drop his arm and release his
grip on me, a shudder passing through his body. “You see it. Thank
God, you see it too.”
“Well yeah, you let someone tattoo…what the
hell is that? It’s kinda hard to miss.”
“Steph can’t see it.”
I snorted. “I think it’s going to be a bit
hard to hide it from her, little brother. It’s not exactly
subtle.”
He shook his head, obviously frustrated at my
lack of understanding. “No… She isn’t
able
to see it. It’s
just…not there for her. The…wiggling, the movement. I wasn’t sure…
I wasn’t sure if you would be able to.”
“I think maybe you better sit down and
explain yourself, little brother.”
We found ourselves staring at each other over
my parents’ coffee table as Cole laid it all out for me. “The night
in the hospital…The night Nicky almost…” I nodded quickly. Yeah, I
knew which night he meant. He didn’t need to say it. “When I left
his room, I was going to go to the hospital chapel. But when I got
close, I just… I couldn’t go in there. I was too angry with God to
go asking him for favors at that moment, y’know? I mean, why would
he help us when he’d allowed Nicky to suffer so much already? So I
just kept walking.”
I could understand it. I wasn’t a confirmed
believer in God-with-a-big-G myself, but we’d been raised with the
church in our lives and Cole was more comfortable with his faith
than I was. I totally understood being angry with God in that
moment. I would have been too.
“So, like, I went out to that big courtyard
they have, y’know where the smokers all go. And I sat down on this
bench and I just put my head in my hands, and I tried to cry,
’cause it seemed like the thing to do. But there weren’t any tears
anymore. I was all dried up, all numb. All I could see ahead of me
was this long, black, cold tunnel, y’know? No light anymore. The
world was never going to be the same again.”
I just sat and let him talk, knowing this had
all been coming a long time.
“So I was sitting there, and suddenly, there
was this guy in hospital scrubs sitting next to me. I didn’t see
him come out the doors, or walk up, but he was just…there. And I
looked up at him, ’cause I figured he was the one who had come out
to tell me Nicky was gone.” He shuddered again, and I reached
across the table to rest my hand on his shoulder. “But that wasn’t
what he wanted. He looked at me, and he smiled, and he said ‘what
if I told you that you could save him?’”