by SM Reine
“He didn’t disappear,” Hendricks explained, keeping his cool though he felt his mouth go dry. He really, really didn’t want to spend a night in jail. Or two. Or three. Anything more than possession of the sword would be hard to prove, but the sword was pretty rare and he didn’t want to risk losing it. Or have shit go down out in the outside world while he was sweating away in county jail. “Most demons don’t have bodies like us, exactly. What they have is like a shell, a kind of a veneer of human flesh on the outside that hides their true appearance. When I stabbed him in the neck, I was breaking the shell, which caused his essence to be drawn back to wherever the hell it came from. Kind of breaks their hold on this … dimension? Realm? Whatever, I’ve never really understood the explanation I’ve gotten on that one.”
The bar was smoky, but Arch’s gaze was smokier. “You went after this thing to kill it, but you don’t really understand what happened to it?”
“Actually, I went up to the guy to ask for directions to the cheapest motel in town, but I recognized him, he knew I recognized him, and he knew I knew, which caused him to have to throw down, because that’s how Chu’ala demons act when they feel threatened in the slightest. I would have been perfectly happy just to get my directions and be on about my evening, but once that happened, we kind of got locked on course.”
“Still doesn’t explain why you’re carrying a sword to fight these things when you don’t really know what they’re all about.”
“I know enough,” Hendricks said, keeping his irritation under wraps. “The full explanation is somewhere between a genius-level physics problem and something involving mystical elements that are way more spiritual than I give a fuck about. I know the mechanics, I know how to kill them, and so I stick to what I know. And I carry the sword because the sword kills them.”
“How?” Arch asked.
“Mystical stuff,” Hendricks said. “Breaks through—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Arch waved him off.
“So,” Hendricks went on after a pause in which Arch stared at his beer for what felt like several minutes, “you still haven’t answered me about what you think it was you saw tonight.”
“See, I don’t have to explain it to you,” Arch said, and it was damned obvious he was cross as hell. “I have to explain it to the sheriff, my boss, about how I think I witnessed a murder, except I don’t have a victim, I don’t have a body, I don’t have anything except some cowboy with a sword and a pistol.”
“Hey, the pistol’s legal,” Hendricks said. “My carry permit is valid for Tennessee.”
“The sword ain’t, though.”
Hendricks gave a weak shrug. “You’d let me carry a gun but not a sword? So you charge me with … uh …”
“Let’s not go there,” Arch said darkly. “I could charge you with any number of things. That’s not at issue, me finding nominal violations of the law. My issue is whether I want to believe some jackwagon who steps into town and his first night starts stirring up some deeply dark mystical juju of a kind I don’t even know I believe in. If I let you walk, is this gonna become a pattern? You gonna go out and raise some more havoc, kill some more of those things?”
“I try to keep it out of the public eye, but yeah,” Hendricks replied, and finished his beer with a long pull. “Trust me when I tell you that these demons are not the sort of thing you want walking around your town, in human skin or without. They’re killers, murderers, and cause all manner of mischief that goes unreported. Mysterious disappearances follow in their wake like fleas trail a dirty old hound dog. Things burn when they’re around, mental illness leaps right up through the roof. Murder rates skyrocket. “
Hendricks leaned across the table. “Things don’t turn out so well for these hotspots. Look at Detroit, look at New Orleans. Both of them have had flare-ups at various points in the last fifty years—hell, Detroit’s been a hotspot some twenty five times, some worse than others. Small towns, though, they get real bad. Turn to ghost towns in some cases.” He lowered his voice. “There was a town in Alaska last year, just dropped off the map, five hundred people gone by the time it was done flaring. You don’t want this thing going unchallenged, not here, not anywhere.”
Arch stared back at him. “There gonna be more like you coming?”
Hendricks took a long, slow breath, let the tobacco smoke in the air waft in. He didn’t smoke, but when he was drinking it didn’t bother him like it did when he was sober. He almost kind of liked it. “Probably, but not for a while. There’s kind of a lot going on for my kind right now.”
“Oh, yeah?” Arch asked. “You a … what? A demon hunter or something?”
“Something like that,” Hendricks said. “And there are definitely demon hunters, and some of them might even come this way, though I’d suspect it will be a long while before they do.”
“Why’s that?”
Hendricks took another breath of the secondhand smoke, and could almost feel it calm his nerves. “Because this is the eighteenth hot spot in the world that’s flaring right now.” He wanted a cigarette and he didn’t even smoke. It had been a long day.
“You say that like it should mean something to me.”
“Sorry,” Hendricks said with some genuine contrition. “Didn’t mean to be so damned vague. So, this is number eighteen. That’s kind of unusual. There are usually less.”
“Less?” Arch’s hands were back behind his head now, and he waved off the waitress when she came by to make another pass to see if they wanted another round. “Like, ten?” Hendricks shook his head. “Five? Four?” He kept shaking his head, and used his index finger to point down, tapping at the table the entire time.
“More like one,” Hendricks said, gingerly, and he shook the empty beer bottle, wishing it was full again. He looked up at the deputy with all seriousness, though. “Usually, there’s only ever one at a time. So, as you might guess with eighteen going at once … we’re in some new territory, here.”
+ + +
Hollywood didn’t want to stay at the dairy farm, not with the smell. He hated it, and it was in his suit, his fucking ten-thousand-dollar suit that he’d gotten on Savile Row in London. He knew it was in his ponytail, too, and he was going to have to exfoliate like crazy to get the smell of it off his skin. He had Sleeveless driving his car for him, chauffeuring, and had made sure they’d gotten towels from the farmer’s house for Sleeveless to sit on. No point in soiling the town car any more than was necessary, after all.
They were heading toward the interstate, maybe even as far back as Chattanooga, because he doubted there was much more than a fleabag motel in this town, and frankly, there was a lot to be said for being able to get a meal with some decent organic produce. You didn’t know what you were getting, after all. If his body was going to be the temple of Ygrusibas, it made sense to feed it things that would make it better, not worse. Also, none of the local motels had a gym. Or Wifi. Fucking hicks, fucking sticks.
“Something going on up here,” Sleeveless said as they drew close to the interstate. It was an hour or so to Chattanooga, and there had to be at least somewhere he could stay there, somewhere that would take his Black Card and give him some semblance of order, something approaching—maybe like a lesser version, like tier one instead of tier five—the treatment he got in L.A. They knew how to do shit right. They should, after all. The whole place was built by and for demons.
Sleeveless slowed the car as they drove past the parking lot of a neon-lit hellhole that a sign proclaimed to be Fast Freddie’s. Hollywood looked out the window, staring into the dark night as they went on, taking in the scene in the parking lot. It was almost nothing, really, something so subtle that only their kind would notice.
There were two men standing next to a cop car. It wasn’t so much what they were wearing in terms of clothes—though one of them wore a cowboy hat, like he was what? John Travolta or something? No, it was what they were wearing over the clothes that caught the eye. It dusted them and clung to them like skin, s
o obvious that it practically glowed to those who knew what to look for.
“Looks like those boys just killed them a demon,” Sleeveless said from the driver’s seat.
Hollywood couldn’t find it in him to disagree. It was obvious; they were just doused in the essence. “One of the locals?”
“Could be.” Sleeveless slowed the car further, and rolled down the window. “There were a decent number of us around before things started heating up, and lots of strangers been coming into town lately with the rising.” The smell of sulfur was obvious even at this distance, and Hollywood wanted to gag even more now, needed to get to something approaching a five-star hotel, preferably one with multiple shower heads. “Should we stop, maybe put ’em down?”
Hollywood shook his head. “No. Not right now. Probably just some brain-dead, thrill-killer demon hunter in town because of the flare. Doesn’t mean anything to us, necessarily.” He brought one of his well-manicured hands up to his mouth, pondered chewing the nail. It was a nasty habit he had, something his manicurist hated but was paid good money to repair. Too bad she was in L.A. “Have one of the boys keep an eye on them, though, maybe watch them in town, see what they’re up to. Find out where they stay.” He motioned for Sleeveless to roll up the window, which he did, and the car accelerated toward the on ramp, taking the turn and heading south toward Chattanooga. “If it turns out they’re going to be a problem, well, hey … I could use some more warm bodies, at least until I figure out this ritual. After that … they won’t so much be a problem for any of us.”
3
“I’m going to let you go—for now,” Arch announced as they walked out the door of Fast Freddie’s, Arch wondering how much beer he’d had. He decided he’d breathalyze himself just to be safe before he started his car. He’d waited an hour after finishing his beer, just chatting idly with Hendricks. The fact that the cowboy was ex-military weighed in his favor. They’d talked about the war, how Hendricks had been in Iraq, and somewhere between that and the crazy talk about demons rising, Arch had figured on letting the man go. None of it made any rational sense, but then again a great many things Arch believed in required some level of faith. And Arch was definitely a man of faith. The stuff Hendricks was talking about was straight out of the Bible, things the preacher even usually shied away from talking about at the pulpit on Sundays. Arch wasn’t sure he believed it was happening, not now, but explaining it to Sheriff Reeve would be a trip in and of itself. Assuming it was even possible.
“For now?” Hendricks didn’t grin, not this time. “Well, I appreciate that.”
“You’re not leaving town anytime soon, are you?” Arch asked him. Hendricks just shook his head, big cowboy hat brim waving left and right. “Good. Where you gonna be staying?”
“Cheap hotel?” Hendricks asked him.
“The Sinbad, down by the off ramp over there,” Arch said and pointed his finger. He caught a glimpse of a sedan slowing down as it passed by on the old highway. He gave it a glance but not much more. He was standing by his Explorer, after all, and people tended to slow down at the sight of a cop car. Probably wise. Most cops might not have leapt up into the car to pursue and give them a speeding ticket, but Arch wasn’t most cops. “Cheapest place around. It’ll run you about twenty-five a night. A word of caution, though—”
“Let me guess,” Hendricks said. “It’s not fancy.”
“That might be understating it just a tad.”
“I don’t need much,” Hendricks said. “A bed, running water.”
“It’ll have one of those,” Arch said. “Probably.”
There was a brief awkward silence, then Hendricks spoke again. “Can I have my stuff back?”
“Right,” Arch said and reached into the passenger side of his car. He tossed the big black drover coat to Hendricks. Once he had it on, Arch handed him the .45. Hendricks waited expectantly, a little anxious. Arch hesitated as he picked up the sword and looked at it. It wasn’t terribly long, probably a two-and-a-half-foot blade, but razor sharp, only an inch wide. It could put a hurting on a person, but obviously not as bad as the pistol, which there was no doubt Hendricks was cleared to carry. Arch had seen the Wisconsin permit, and it was current. Arch ran a finger along the side of the blade, taking care to stay away from the edge. It almost looked silver in the light, but he would have guessed stainless steel and wicked sharp. It was an elegant thing, with twists and runes added, probably to make it look extra cool. “If this ends up in somebody’s belly, I will track you to the end of the earth and make you pay for my mistake.”
“The end of the county, you mean?” Hendricks said without a smile. Arch was expecting one, like being flippant was just second nature to the ex-Marine. “Don’t worry, I don’t use it on people, just demons, which means, by definition, you’ll never see a corpse with a stab wound from it.”
That didn’t make Arch feel much better. He didn’t cringe but definitely winced on the inside. Demons were a hard thing to swallow, harder than the idea of a murder taking place in Calhoun County. Those did happen, every once in a while. Demons were a little too far off the wall. “Just keep out of trouble, okay?”
Hendricks gave him a look like, Yeah, right, and Arch didn’t even bother to argue. “Thanks for the understanding,” Hendricks said finally.
“I don’t think I do understand,” Arch said and got in his car, slamming the door behind him. He watched the cowboy walk off back toward the hotel, wondering if he’d come even close to doing the right thing here.
+ + +
Hendricks was walking along in the hot Tennessee night, betting the temperature was still somewhere north of eighty, even after midnight, listening to the slap of his cowboy boots crunching against the gravel on the shoulder of the road and keeping his eyes fixed on the sign for the Sinbad motel. “Heh,” he said. Sinbad wasn’t a terrible name for an off-ramp motel like this. Back home they used to derisively call the local one the “Fuck-and-Run.” It was a fairly accurate representation of what happened there. Hendricks decided he liked the Sinbad better. It winked at the purpose of the place, removed the need for a nickname like the “Fuck-and-run.” Probably didn’t stop it, though.
He hadn’t stopped drinking when Arch had, preferring instead to have a few more. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it had made him want to hang around the bar a little longer when the cop wanted to leave. Since he’d been in the custody of Arch at the time, technically, that wasn’t sound thinking. So even though he’d have preferred to stick around, maybe keep an eye on that blond, Erin, see what she was up to, he didn’t. He went with Arch to hear the verdict. After that, he’d realized he was too tired to keep going.
On reflection, getting drunk in front of a deputy sheriff who’s trying to decide whether or not to release you maybe wasn’t the sharpest thinking. On the other hand, going to jail sober didn’t sound like much fun either.
He was on the overpass when he realized he was being followed, the sound of footsteps behind him in the quiet night being occasionally drowned out by the nighttime semis and cars passing underneath the bridge on the interstate below. He cast a quick look back and saw a silhouette, a small one. He knew immediately that it wasn’t Arch, this silhouette being practically half his size, or more like three-quarters and thin. Petite. Like a woman.
He took a quick breath and hoped for the best, that it was Erin following him. He wouldn’t complain. It had been a damned long time, almost a half-decade, since he’d felt a woman’s touch. The alcohol and the fact that he’d already had one human conversation today was loosening him up, making it worse, if that were possible. He was too used to being isolated, which made it easier.
“Hey,” he said to the figure he thought was Erin. She got a little closer and a passing car’s headlights illuminated her as she stopped about ten feet from him, just a little ways back. It wasn’t Erin. Damned sure not.
In the light of the headlights he saw red hair, deep red, and cold, pale skin with fierce eyes that he couldn
’t tell the color of in the dark. She was cute, damned cute, but looked a little hawkish, and she had a bit of a standoffish attitude as she halted about ten feet away from him. The truck blew past them and he was left looking at her silhouette again, just the side of her face visible in the light of the neon sign from the motel behind him. His hand went for the hilt of his sword automatically, but she spoke before it got there.
“You won’t need that.”
“I won’t?” Hendricks didn’t relax at all; he kept his hand right where it was. “Why not?”
She studied him like he was nothing more than a specimen, something peculiar and barely worthy of note—no emotion, no interest, but like a predator keeping a wary eye on prey that was about to run off. “Like you, I am not looking for a fight.”
“Well, if you’re like me,” Hendricks said, keeping his hand right where it was at, “then you don’t always get what you’re looking for, especially as it relates to fighting.”
“That probably says more about you than it does about your opponents,” the woman said.
“What’s your name?” Hendricks asked, still wary.
She hesitated. “I’ve been called many things but most recently Starling.”
“Starling? Like the bird?”
She cocked her head, her red hair even more aglow in the neon light. “Close enough.”
“Why are you following me, Starling?” Hendricks asked. “I mean, normally I wouldn’t mind if a pretty girl followed me back to my hotel, but it feels a little strange when she’s doing it while walking behind me instead of at my side, you know?”
“No,” Starling replied. “I don’t know.” She paused. “I followed you to tell you that the reason you think you are here is not the reason you are here.”
Hendricks watched her, trying to decide exactly how drunk he was. “So … you’re saying I’m not here for the hotspot? Did I catch your drift correctly?”