Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  Molly made a disgusted noise, one that held just a hint of concession. She waited a minute then spoke. “Mick. His name is Mick.”

  “Ugh.” Lauren did not even try to hide her distaste. “You cannot go out with a guy named Mick.”

  “Why not?” Molly asked, more than a little umbrage cracking through. Her coffee had stopped steaming, but she had just started, Lauren figured.

  “Because you’d be ‘Mick and Molly,’ and that’s just unacceptably cutesy.” Lauren waited, burying the unease, letting a little smile—maddening, infuriating, she knew, and just a little too close to the edge of ‘Mom trying too hard’—creep up. She just waited.

  Molly’s face softened, her shoulders slumped, and her head pitched forward. “Yes. How could I not have seen it before now? ‘Mick and Molly.’ I’ll call the whole thing off immediately.”

  “As well you should,” Lauren said with a smirk. “When are you seeing him again?” she asked, a hundred degrees cooler than she felt. If this Mick had been in front of her right now, she would have wedged the spatula firmly up his nose.

  “I’m not,” Molly said, a little too coolly herself. “I’m grounded, remember?”

  Lauren took a slow, painful breath. Her lungs felt leaden, like someone had filled them full of air already. “When were you supposed to see him?”

  “Tonight,” Molly said. “At the Summer Lights Festival.”

  “I trust I don’t know this Mick for a reason?” Lauren asked. “I mean, I don’t recognize the name, so I’m assuming it’s not just a nickname one of the boys at your school decided to adopt, like Razor, or Scooter, or—”

  “Strangely, no one at my school goes by the name ‘Razor’ or ‘Scooter,’ though there is one who goes by the name ‘Razor Scooter.’ He’s about as cool as you’d expect someone with that nickname to be.” That was Molly back on her feet, the fun, the snark all flowing out.

  “Sounds like the equivalent of a skater when I was growing up,” Lauren played along. “Totally gnarly dudes, those guys.” She consciously softened her approach as she pushed a little more. “So … Mick. I don’t know him?”

  “He works for the carnival,” Molly said, just a little sheepish. “He’s a really nice guy. He’s leaving town after tonight.”

  Lauren felt her face go ashen inside, that sense that she’d stood up entirely too fast after sitting for a long while, but she kept the smile in place from her last joke. “Your grounding can start tomorrow morning, I think.”

  Molly took it without a sign, save for a little glint in her eyes and a little smile crawling up on her lips. She did walk with just a little more spring as she headed back toward the stairs. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lauren said, and then belatedly remembered the eggs on the stove. They were like pebbles in the pan. She sighed, then sighed again as she threw them into the garbage. The blackened toast followed a few minutes after.

  ***

  Midmorning came and went without a sign of any sort of dwelling. Hendricks felt antsy, Alison looked just tired to his eyes, and Duncan walked on without a care in the world. Hendricks found himself envying the demon, even though he was hardly exhausted at this point. The drover coat was hot, though, with the summer weather in full effect. He could feel the sweat popping out everywhere, and his thighs were sticking together down below. A most uncomfortable sensation.

  “How far?” he asked Alison. The smell of greenery in the air wasn’t too bad. Pine, he figured. It wasn’t as hot as Iraq, that was for damned sure. The humidity was a real bitch here, though.

  “I don’t know,” Alison replied. She just looked worn down, and Hendricks found himself wondering how long it had been since she’d slept. He knew it’d been a while for him, too, but whether it was the waffle place’s coffee or the vial of whatever Spellman had given him, he felt no urge to sleep. “A couple miles, maybe?”

  “Memory a little faded?” Duncan asked. He seemed a bit too chipper.

  “Like I said,” Alison sniffed, her shoulders with a pronounced bow to them, “the last time I came here I was a kid. It was a long walk, I remember that much.”

  “Your daddy brought you here?” Hendricks asked. “Not just a Sunday drive, I presume.”

  “One of his friends had moved down here after medical school,” Alison said. “They were close, talked all the time on the phone. One day he called and got an ‘Out of Service’ signal. He tried a few more times over the course of a year and finally decided to take matters into his own hands.”

  “Didn’t call the state police, I guess,” Hendricks said, taking an uneven step over a shrub that brushed his jeans. The cowboy boots were nice for a fight, but not particularly great for long walks. He could feel blisters forming. Ah, the sexy life of a demon hunter.

  “He couldn’t conceive of a scenario where he’d need to call the state police for this,” Alison said. “So he drove down one day, just me and him. When we got to the fence, he figured it was some kind of mistake. Spent a half an hour looking at the map, then took us back up the road. Once he figured he was right, he decided to cross the fence.” She exhaled softly. “I went with him.”

  “Trespassing?” Hendricks said with amusement.

  “Yep, we were regular lawbreakers,” she said without amusement.

  “I’m getting the hints of that,” Hendricks said. Didn’t really believe it, though, not really, even with her nighttime sniping of late. “So what did you find?”

  “I told you—”

  “What did you really find?” Hendricks shook a finger at her. “No more of this woman of mystery crap. Starling’s got that well and truly covered.”

  He watched her swallow, and almost pale in the faint sunlight. The clouds were hanging a little low, Hendricks thought. “We did find a survivor,” Alison said. “Didn’t really talk to her or anything, but we saw her. And there were creatures. Things.”

  “What kind of things?” Duncan asked before Hendricks could beat him to the punch.

  “Demons, for sure,” Alison said, “though we didn’t really know that at the time. They chased us. Nearly got us.”

  “What stopped them?” Hendricks asked.

  “My daddy goes heeled everywhere,” Alison said simply, like that was an explanation.

  “Heeled?” Duncan asked, his face exhibiting the first hint of curiosity. “Like … in high heels? They were put off by his innate sexiness?”

  “I think it means armed,” Hendricks offered helpfully. “In Old West slang or something.”

  “He carries a pistol, yes,” Alison said. “Everywhere he goes. He pulled his pistol and kept the things off of us while we ran. We saw someone as we hurried out of town. It’s not like we were ready for a fight. But those things … demons … they kept on coming until we were well into the outskirts. Then it was like they had their chains pulled, and they peeled off of us to go back to town.”

  “Dogs?” Duncan asked. “They were like dogs?”

  “Ran on all fours,” Alison said without emotion. “Looked like hellhounds or something.”

  That one sent the OOC to puzzling, and he kept his silence. Hendricks wanted to interrupt him to ask about it, but figured he could wait just a little bit longer before he absolutely needed to know.

  ***

  Lauren arrived at the hospital just a little bit earlier than she had to. The pall she’d felt the night before had more or less vanished, aided not by a burned breakfast that had all gone to waste but by the feeling of honesty and connection to Molly. Yeah, it sounded a little hippy-dippy even for her, but she’d take it. This was how she and her kid got along best; she trusted her to make good decisions.

  And not fuck a carnie who was about to leave town.

  Well, that part was implied.

  Oh, God, was it implied? It needed to be plainly stated, she figured, and made a panicked mental note to have another conversation with her daughter when she got off shift that afternoon.

  Still, it was with a mostly calm
feeling that she rode the elevator up to the fourth floor so she could—person of conscience that she was—check on Deputy Harris before she started her shift in the ER.

  She found the nursing staff absent from the station in the hallway, which was not exactly unusual. They didn’t have a ton of patients to cover, and they were probably out checking around. She just checked the board behind the desk, saw that Harris was in room 412, and whistled her merry way into the room. She found the respirator still going, the heart monitor still beeping, and the poor deputy’s color much improved.

  Lauren grabbed the chart off the end of the bed by sheer habit. Checking the notes, she peered from what she was reading to what she was seeing. Heart rate was looking a lot nicer, and so was the pulse ox. That didn’t necessarily mean anything by itself, but it was a good sign after the way the girl had looked when she’d been brought in.

  Lauren almost made it out without seeing two things of note. Almost.

  One was Sheriff Nicholas Reeve, asleep in the corner of the room with his hat down over his eyes. That made her tread quieter, afraid she’d wake him up. He would almost certainly want to talk about something, and she didn’t really have time for that.

  The second thing was the IV bag hanging from the tree. She almost made it past before something nagged at her and pulled her back. She stepped back and looked at it again, and it just jumped out at her.

  There was no writing on the bag at all. Not a brand, not instructions, nothing.

  “What the fuck …?” she said, so undone by the surprise she did not bother to keep her voice down.

  “What the fuck what?” Sheriff Reeve repeated, hat coming down off his eyes, blinking the bleariness out.

  She told him. The eyes went from bleary to hard in seconds flat, and Lauren had this feeling—just a hunch—that she was going to be late for her shift.

  ***

  Time slowed to a crawl as Hendricks made his way through that half-forested plain that passed for Alabama countryside. It was hillier than he expected, but he kept good time. Alison looked more and more worn out as the time passed, however, and he started to feel sorry for her. “Maybe we should take a break,” he suggested.

  “I’m fine,” she said. She was not quite wheezing, but it was evident from her gait that she was feeling the hike. She looked to be in reasonable shape, but Hendricks knew looks could be extremely deceiving. He’d met a few truly skinny people who were in just awful health, without enough cardio fitness to run across a driveway.

  “Maybe just a little rest,” Duncan said, giving him the eye. Hendricks could see the demon was observing the same phenomenon as he was, and wondered if the OOC was feeling a flash of sympathy. “No point in getting there if we’re exhausted when we arrive.”

  “You planning on running when we arrive?” Hendricks smirked at that, though upon reflection he wasn’t sure that was much of a reason to smirk, really. He felt himself rest a hand on his pistol grip, just to reassure himself the old 1911 was still there.

  “Depends on what we’re staring down,” Duncan said. He lurked, walking slowly across the forested ground, the crunch of leaves under his dress shoes as Alison leaned against a tree. They hadn’t brought water, which had been stupid on Hendricks’s part. He’d been back in civilization so much of the time that the ordinary precautions of war had faded as he returned to a place where you could buy a water bottle in every store if you got thirsty. Sloppy.

  “What do you think we’re up against?” Hendricks asked. “Based on what she saw?”

  “Hellhounds are a broad category,” Duncan said, like he was just recalling it all right up, out of a memory bank or something. “They’re not really dogs, most of them, just four-legged and propel themselves like one. Or near enough so as not to matter.”

  “You people come in all shapes and sizes,” Hendricks said, leaning on the “you people.” He remembered a little belatedly that Lerner had needled him about that just a few days earlier.

  “There is a long history of hellhounds being set loose on earth,” Duncan said in what sounded like agreement. “Not really sure what class they’d be, though. Some of them look more like beetles, and those are a real bastard to dispatch—”

  “Why?” Alison asked.

  “Hard shell,” Duncan replied. “Low essence, low intelligence. Built like tanks, if tanks were low to the ground and moved like a cheetah.”

  “Abrams tank can get up to about fifty,” Hendricks said for no reason he could point to. Except that he hated feeling out of his depth, and marching into some town that had been dropped off the map for probably very good reasons felt like the dumbest move he’d made lately. Which took doing. Why was he buying into this again?

  Oh, right. Starling. If he really reflected on it, putting his faith in a girl who had as bad a problem with ambiguity as she did seemed like the dumbest move of all.

  “It seem like it’s getting … darker to you?” Alison’s voice came out in a low wheeze, like air coming out of a balloon. It was a sneaky, squeaky noise, almost irritating.

  Still … Hendricks looked into the sky and saw a dull grey cloud hanging overhead, wisps of its structure dark with only the vague sense that the sun might lurk somewhere beyond. “It’s just that cloud.”

  “I remember it getting dark early last time I was here,” Alison said, leaning against a tree with her shoulder. It didn’t look like a strong one, and Hendricks surely wouldn’t have trusted his weight to it. “Like midafternoon was black as night.”

  “Gets like that up north in the winter,” Hendricks said mildly. “Back in Wisconsin it gets dark at four in the afternoon in December sometimes.”

  “It’s not winter here,” Alison replied, slumped slightly forward, hands resting on her—dammit, Hendricks noticed, though—shapely thighs. “It’s still summer.”

  “Barely,” Hendricks said.

  “Sounds like an unnatural phenomenon anyway,” Duncan said.

  Hendricks frowned. “A cloud’s an unnatural phenomenon? You’ve been living in the underworld for a little too long.”

  “This cloud is an unnatural phenomenon,” Duncan said. “What she’s describing … midday darkness? That’s not normal. When you couple it with the idea that this town is a hotbed of some sort of demonic activity …” He just shook his head. “I’d say they’re related.”

  “How do you not know about this place?” Hendricks asked. “If this town got wiped out, shouldn’t that have registered on your OOC radar? Or does that not matter to your office?”

  “Not my case, not my department,” Duncan said with a lack of concern that Hendricks found to be the latest un-damned-settling thing in a whole line of them. “Like I told you; the Office of Occultic Concordance is not big on the info-sharing. I know what I see, and I’m told what I need to know.”

  “Any chance you boys gossip around the water cooler like normal working stiffs?” Alison asked, and Hendricks damned near applauded for her asking such a useful question. And for getting his mind off her thighs.

  “We don’t work with others very often, but yes,” Duncan said. “That does seem like a constant. Still, never heard of this place nor anything about it.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much fucking useless,” Hendricks said, just shaking his head and turning back to Alison, who met his eyes without any reluctance. He didn’t know whether to find that to be a problem yet or not, but she was still cool. “You want a few more minutes?”

  “No,” she said and shook her head just once before starting off into the woods. Her t-shirt was drenched with sweat down the back, the cloth almost blackened from wetness. It clung, and so did her jeans. Hendricks tried to put that thought out of his mind and focused instead on the branches of the trees around them. The light that once flooded in from a hot, shining sun grew dimmer and dimmer with each step they took until finally, Hendricks had to admit that there was something mighty damned unnatural going on around him.

  ***

  Arch wasn’t the type who
was predisposed to sit around while there were things to be done. Another body somewhere out in the town was a stark reminder that there was work to be done and he pored over his map trying to puzzle it out. He thought it unlikely—but not impossible—that the bicyclists were still hiding out in the same place. He had that circled on the map, the mine where he figured they’d been up on Mount Horeb. Charging in there seemed like a darned, foolish course of action, so he was resolved not to undertake it unless he had to. He did have a different idea of how he might approach it if another day was to turn to dusk without the rest of his crew—that was the oddest way to think of them, as some sort of crew, like they were all in the mafia together—returning from Alabama.

  Arch took to his feet again. He’d paced around the table in the kitchen, staring at the map over and over. Not even knowing where the latest crime had been committed was a liability to his investigation. But then, he couldn’t exactly call and ask Ed Fries. That might look suspicious, and he needed more suspicion on him like Job had needed more torment.

  Arch gave up the pacing and hit the couch. The soft material, like felt, hit his neck with a loving touch of comfort. It drew his mind to Alison, to that particular brand of relief she’d brought him just the other day. It was the strangest thing, being drawn into thoughts of that after seeing death up close and personal. It was as though a bony hand had reached out and tried to pluck one of their number, had clenched ivory fingers around Erin and ripped her out of their midst. Something about the whole thing had set his mental teakettle to boiling, bringing an unease he was finding it real hard to shake.

  He ran rough fingers over beard stubble, letting out a hot breath that stank of coffee even to his own nose. That velvety sensation of the couch on the back of his neck rubbed at him like he wished Alison was. His eyes wandered to the kitchen counter; he’d started with a full pot of coffee just an hour ago—

  Now it was empty, just the smell remaining. He’d downed the last cup and not even noticed how much he’d shotgunned into his system. He pulled his hand away from his face, waiting to see if it shook. It didn’t, not a whit. A whole pot of coffee, a complete lack of sleep, some crazed events cracking their way through his life like a lobster getting broken out of its shell, and he was thinking about—