A Snake in the Grass (20 page)

“But he is not.” Sveta’s eyes watched out the
window as the dark trees whizzed past. “You are the champion,
Estéban. And your brothers and father before you. Paulito is only a
cousin, he is not in line to be a champion.”

The kid frowned even harder, if possible.
“That… That doesn’t matter. The title has passed through cousins
before, it doesn’t have to only come through our line.”

“Then why did it not go to him when Miguel
died, hm?” Sveta finally turned to raise one delicate brow at him.
“He is older. Physically, he is larger than you. He has trained
alongside you, yes?”

“I… His casting ability is weaker, I suppose?
Maybe that is why Mamá decided that it should come to me
instead.”

“And why is it her decision? She is not a
Perez by birth.”

“Because…because it just is. Papa would have
wanted it this way. Mamá is strong, and smart and no one knows more
about magic than she does.” Esteban blinked at us both as if we’d
just asked him to explain what the number nine tasted like. His
mother’s authority was an unquestionable absolute in his world.

“Jealousy is a terrible mistress, kid. And I
have a feeling that Paulito doesn’t give two shits that his magic
isn’t as strong as yours. All he sees is that he got passed over
for something that should have rightly come to him, even if he’s
the only one who thinks so.”

“So…do you think he took Miguel’s weapons
because he is going to use them to become a champion?”

“No. No, I think he took them because he’s a
petty little shit and he didn’t want you to have them.” I gave him
a small smile. “He doesn’t understand that the weapon doesn’t make
the champion. You could pick up anything and be ten times the man
he will ever be.”

Even in the darkness, I could see the blush
color his cheeks, and he dropped his gaze to his hands. “Thank you,
Jesse.”

“No problem, kid.”

Chapter 13

Somewhere on the dark road between town and
home, Estéban sat up and tapped my arm. “Stop the truck. Stop!”
Turning in his seat, he eyed the empty night behind us.

“Did you see something?” Sveta, permanently
wary, already had her gun in her hand, and I honestly couldn’t say
that she’d ever put it away after the cantina incident.

“No, I just…” After a moment, his shoulders
sagged, and he turned to face front again. “Never mind. It was
stupid.”

“No, you had a thought, what was it?”

He ran his hands through his dark hair. “You
asked where a person would go, if they didn’t want to be seen. And
it occurred to me that there is one place that no one goes, and it
would be perfect, except that it’s crazy to go there in the first
place, which is why no one goes. Even Paulito wouldn’t.”

“Sounds like a perfect place to check out.
What is this place?”

“The ruins. There’s a small trail, just back
down the road a bit. But the ruins are dangerous, that is why no
one goes there.”

I tilted my head at him. “Ruins? Like Mayan
or Aztec or whatever? There aren’t any ruins near here.”

“Not flashy, tourist attraction ones, no. But
they’re there, all the same. Well, what’s left of them. They’re not
even really ruins anymore.”

I exchanged looks with Sveta across Estéban,
and she gave me a firm nod. “Sounds like we’re going exploring.
Where’s this road, kid?”

I threw the truck in reverse and backed
slowly down the empty road until the headlights caught a faint
opening in the trees that might have been a cart path, back in its
ambitious younger years. “Thought you said there was a road.”

“I said a trail. You said road. The truck
should fit.”

Quite certain my night was going to end up
with me pushing the truck out of some forest mud hole, I slowly
eased the pickup off the gravel road and into the trees. Me and my
brilliant damn ideas.

“Cart path” had been generous. It was a game
trail at best, and the tree branches made horrible noises as they
scraped over the sides and roof of the truck. Even at low speed,
the rough terrain bounced us all in our seats, and I had to
white-knuckle the steering wheel just to keep us from jolting right
off into a tree. “I think we could get out and walk faster than
this.”

“At some point, we’ll have to. You can’t
drive all the way.”

I gave the kid a raised brow. “If no one
comes up here, how do you know you can’t drive all the way?”

He shrugged as best he could with his hands
braced against the dashboard. “Sometimes we have to come.”

“‘We’ meaning champions, or ‘we’ meaning the
Perez family?”

“It depends.”

After ten minutes of the most excruciatingly
obnoxious drive I’d ever made, we were confronted with a large tree
down across the path, which was going to definitely impede our
progress. There happened to be just enough clear area that I felt I
could turn the truck around and point it facing out, so it seemed
as good a place as any to leave the vehicle.

“Take The Way,” Estéban said, tossing my
sword at me as he slid out of the truck.

“You think I’m going to need it?”

“Better safe than sorry. Sveta, keep your gun
out.” If she thought Estéban’s order strange, she said nothing.

As we clambered over the fallen tree behind
him, I finally thought to ask, “Uh, kid? Just what kind of danger
is up here? I get the idea you’re talking more than just falling
rocks and poisonous snakes.”

The flashlight beam bounced down the trail
ahead of us as we walked, like some will-o-wisp from a children’s
story. The night birds fell silent as we passed, but picked up
again as soon as we were out of sight, all things that were right
and normal in the midnight wilderness.

“No one remembers what the ruins use to be.
If it was a pyramid, or a building, or what. There are only old
stones left now, scattered in the grass. They are very old, and the
symbols on them have been worn away with age. But there is a
legend.”

We had to pause a moment to maneuver around
another batch of deadfall across the path, and I started to wonder
if the obstacles had been put there deliberately. Seemed convenient
that every tree in the place wanted to fall across this narrow,
three-foot trail.

“A legend?” Sveta prompted, once we were back
on track again.

“Yes. The legend says that many, many years
ago, before the Spanish came, one hundred ancient priests gave
their lives at this spot to defeat a great evil. No can remember
what people they were of, and the line died here, with them.”

“What evil?” Legends often had a grain of
truth behind them, I’d found.

“No one remembers.” Abruptly, we stumbled out
of the trees into a large clearing covered in tall grass. The
waist-high weeds provided a smooth surface against the forest
fabric, looking like a grass-filled lake probably thirty yards in
diameter. “But we know it is true, because of what they left
behind.”

“And what did they leave?”

Estéban turned to face us, and flipped the
flashlight off, sinking us into total darkness in a split second.
“Magic.”

For a second, I was really annoyed at him for
what I thought was a prank, but then I realized that I could still
see his face, illuminated by a soft green glow. Sveta on my right
was similarly visible, and I saw her frown as she tried to find the
source of the light.

“Here, look.” The kid advanced a few feet and
bent down to clear the tall grass away from something. Upon further
examination, we found nothing more than a smooth rock. It might
have once been square, but the passage of unfathomable amounts of
time had worn away the angles and corners, and left behind only a
stone, gray and unremarkable except for the faint green glow
emanating from its surface. “Some of them still shine. Most have
gone dark by now. The spell is older than anything anyone
remembers.”

My skin prickled across the back of my neck,
and the souls stirred a bit. Old magic wasn’t always the most
stable thing in the world. Though spells usually faded with time,
sometimes the magic lingered, warping and going stagnant beyond its
original purpose. Sticking your hand in a puddle of that
was…unadvisable. “Think you should be touching that thing,
kid?”

He stood up and flipped the flashlight back
on. “This one is fine. There are a few, further in, that I would
avoid.”

“This is why no one comes here.” Sveta
prowled a few paces to my right, parting the grass to reveal
another stone. This one glowed as well, though it was much fainter
than the first. “Because of the corrupted magic left behind.”

“Right. It’s dangerous to stumble into it.
It…does things.”

Only a lunatic would wander around this
clearing, Estéban was right. You’d never be able to see the pocket
of bad mojo until you were in it, and then it would be too late.
“Don’t go too far, Sveta.” She gave me a scathing look that I could
see even in the dim light. “You know this place best, kid, do you
see any signs that anyone’s been here lately but us?”

We all looked, Esteban playing the flashlight
slowly over the tall grass. There were places in the weeds, empty
spots that concealed another stone, and I realized that there
wasn’t a single sapling or tree growing anywhere in the large open
circle. Whatever had happened here, the land remembered.

Where we’d entered, the grass was broken and
flattened, marking a clear trail into the trees, but if someone
else had been here, it hadn’t been recently. The odds of someone
making camp at this exact place were slim at best.

“Do you smell that?” Sveta, having ranged
farther than I was comfortable with, stood as a tense silhouette at
the corner of my vision. “Something is dead.” Well that’s never
good.

“Careful,” I muttered, as we all three
proceeded to be stupid and go exploring. Once it was pointed out,
the thick stench of decaying meat was obvious on the night air, and
grew stronger as we circled the outside of the clearing. It didn’t
take long to trace it to its source, another of the glowing
rocks.

This one was the largest we’d stumbled
across, and flat, providing a nice working surface for whoever had
been here before us. Because someone surely had. The chicken
carcass that had been left dismembered on the stone could attest to
that.

Sveta crouched down, wrinkling her nose
against the stench. The kill wasn’t recent, by its advanced state
of decomposition, and the putrid smell hung like a thick cloud
around the stone. “Its head is off, cleanly, and the meat was left.
This was not an animal kill.”

Estéban frowned. “Someone killed a chicken
here?”

“A sacrifice,” I murmured, because it felt
like saying it louder would make it worse.

Sveta nodded her agreement with me, and spat
off to one side. I felt like spitting too. Sure, there were people
in the world who used blood and sacrifice to fuel their magic, but
they weren’t the kind of people anyone wanted to talk about. Or
to.

Again, I recalled Mystic Cindy, and the
impossible lifespan she claimed to have lived. If she was telling
the truth, I had to wonder if magic like this was how she managed
it.
One day, you will ask how I did it, and if you are very,
very unlucky, I will tell you.
I shivered and closed my eyes
for a second, willing the voice away before it could develop into a
full-blown flashback.

“Nothing came to eat it, later. If it was
just a dead chicken, some coyote would have had a meal by now.”

“I must tell Mamá. Whatever spell this was
meant to power, it cannot be allowed.”

Ah, now that was the question, wasn’t it?
What exactly had this dead chicken been meant to conjure up? “Can
you feel any spells at all around it? Anything more than the stone
itself?”

After a moment’s thought, Sveta shook her
head. “Nothing recent. Perhaps it failed, or it was something done
by an uneducated caster.”

I crouched down as well, and Sveta stood up,
keeping watch over us as I extended my hand toward the gore-stained
rock.
Hey in there, you guys see anything here that I can’t?
If there was one thing I’d learned in the last few months, it was
that the slightest trace of magic was guaranteed to set my
passengers off. May as well make use of it.

My back had been buzzing unpleasantly since
we entered the clearing, but they suddenly quieted, almost like
they were pondering the situation. Feeling brave, I leaned closer
to the stone, palm outstretched. In response, goosebumps travelled
down my arm – just one arm, and didn’t that feel weird – and my
hand grew warm for a moment. Before I could examine the novelty of
that, the sensation retreated, and the souls were quiet again.
Whatever was here, it wasn’t enough to warrant their interest,
apparently.

“Maybe it was just a bunch of kids, playing
at casting spells. Saw one too many movies or something.” I
gathered my sheathed sword up again and stood, shrugging to
Estéban. “That stuff happens, right?”

“Sometimes.” His gaze roamed the circle
again, and he frowned. “They’re supposed to know better, even the
people in the town. Everyone knows this is a dangerous place.
Tourists, maybe? Though I don’t know who would have shown them the
way up here.”

“Well, there’s nothing else we can do here
now, and I’m tired as hell, so let’s get moving. Sveta…?” I turned
to look at her, only to find her back to us, her arms up in a
perfect shooter’s stance as she aimed at the dark treeline.
“Uh…Sveta?”

“We are being watched.”

The words froze me in my tracks, and I
strained my eyes to find what she’d seen. “Where?”

“I…do not know. Something is here, though.”
Slowly, she tracked her line of sight along the edge of the trees.
“I can feel it, but I see nothing.”

“She’s right.” Estéban’s voice was barely
more than a whisper. “The birds have gone silent.”