It took a few minutes for him to realize he’d only said two words in the whole conversation.
***
Hendricks read his books for about an hour or so. He found it damned hard to concentrate with his stomach growling, though. It didn’t take much pondering for him to realize that he really hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, unless you counted the beers he’d had last night. Which he didn’t. He waited about another fifteen minutes before realizing that really, Arch might not come back for him for quite some time. After all, the big man had been going off-shift when Hendricks had met him at close to midnight last night, which meant he could be hours away from coming back. If he came back. He had looked reasonably pissed at the whole sequence of events before he’d sped away. Hendricks wouldn’t have cared for the idea of balancing a job with the profession of demon hunting. Which was why he was thankful he had a patron.
Well, technically a matron, but still. She paid the bills, such as they were.
He stepped outside his hotel room into the sweltering heat at a little after three p.m. and wondered how much longer it was going to be hellishly humid. He guessed quite a while, based on what he’d felt even after the rain last night. Still, and all, the call for food couldn’t wait. His stomach was crying out for something. Anything, really.
He was walking along the highway, boots kicking up dust as he scuffed them just to entertain himself, when he sensed a car slowing behind him. He was wearing the drover coat; he had to, in order to hide the sword. It was either that or walk around without it, and that wasn’t a palatable option, even if he didn’t have some jackass demon named Hollywood interested in wearing his guts for garters. Possibly literally.
Hendricks turned to see a car slowing next to him, a little subcompact. He leaned down to look in the passenger window and saw the blond from the bar, Erin, the one Arch had introduced him to. They just stared at each other for a minute, and he realized he liked the dimples of her cheeks and the way there was just the slightest gap between her teeth when she smiled. Which she was doing right now. “Need a ride somewhere?” she asked, window rolled down.
“I was just about to get something to eat,” he answered, unintentionally giving her an “Aw, shucks,” grin of his own. It had been called charming, once upon a time. A long time ago.
“Oh, yeah?” She reached across the passenger seat and opened the door for him. “I was going for a late lunch myself, was heading toward the burger joint down the way here.” She pointed to a place a few hundred feet away. “If you’re interested.”
Hendricks didn’t really have to think about it; he hopped in, trying not to trip over himself as he did so, and careful to keep the sword wrapped up in the folds of his coat. He wondered how stupid he looked to her, dressed as he was, but he didn’t worry too much. She had still stopped, hadn’t she? “I’m interested,” he said, and kicked himself a second later for making it sound like he was keen for anything other than a burger. He tried to recover. “I was just heading to Fast Freddie’s myself, but only because it was the only place I knew.”
She giggled, and it was a sweet sound to his ears. “Fast Freddie’s is hardly the culinary apex of our town. Come on.” She pushed the pedal down and the little car accelerated back onto the road as she checked her mirrors. A pickup blew past only inches away and she swore in a southern twang he found absolutely delightful. “Fucking asshole.” He said nothing, waiting to see what she said next. She flushed crimson then jerked her head around, as though she’d forgotten he was there. “Sorry.”
Hendricks shrugged, lightly amused. “That’s not the sort of thing that puts me off. Having been in the Marines, I’ve heard a few things that qualify as worse than that.”
“I just figured since you were friends with Arch,” she said, guiding the car back onto the road a little more calmly, no spray of rubber or gravel as she did so. All told, it was probably the smoothest re-entry to a roadway Hendricks had been involved in, at least since the truck had dropped him off near the overpass only yesterday. “Thought maybe you didn’t swear, either.” She lowered her voice a little at the last, like she was afraid someone would overhear them.
“Fuck, no,” Hendricks said as he shared a grin with her at that. “He really is a serious fellow, though, isn’t he?”
“He’s a good guy,” Erin said, steering the car into the parking lot of a fifties-looking diner. “One of the best, really. You’ve never met a more decent, churchgoing guy than Arch.” She looked over and must have seen the distaste on his face. “What? You got something against someone going to church?”
Hendricks gave it a faint shrug. “Long as they don’t go preaching to me, I don’t care if someone believes in the flying spaghetti monster, no.”
Erin grinned as she pulled the car into the parking space. “Atheist, huh?”
“Among other things.” He waited to see if she would do anything other than grin. She didn’t. “That doesn’t bother you?”
She gave a light shrug of her own, kept smiling. “Doesn’t bother me one bit. In fact, I think it’s a good thing. It probably means you fuck on the first date.” She got out of the car before he could say anything to that. Which was good, because he really didn’t have a clue what to say.
***
It was an early day for Arch, clocking out at three in the afternoon. These were normally pretty tough on him, doing a three-to-eleven the night before and turning around to do a seven-to-three today. He felt a bit wired, though. More than a little bit, actually. He knew the demons were weighing on his mind, and all he wanted to do was jab the switchblade that Hendricks had left him through the gut of that Hollywood sonofagun, and twist it good. Justice served. He fingered the hard edge of it in his pocket as he opened the door to the station house, feeling the stale, semi-cool air come back at him.
When he came inside, there was still no one in the waiting area, and no one in sight behind the counter. This was par for the course on a summer afternoon. Erin was probably done for the day; Arch suspected Reeve would pull his wife in to do an unpaid shift because of the budget. The sheriff did these things to keep the station running, but Arch knew he didn’t like to. It was the same reason the man ran himself ragged rather than parcel out overtime. Reeve ran the department to the best of his ability, and if something had to suffer, he seemed to think it was his responsibility. Arch had to concede it made him a good boss in a tough spot, though he doubted it won the man many points with the voters who elected him. It’s not like they knew.
Reeve poked his head out of his office, looking toward the front desk. “Oh, good, it’s you.”
“Just me,” Arch said as he rounded the front counter. “Here to clock out.”
“Hey,” Reeve said, like he’d just remembered something. “You ever get around to MacGruder’s place?”
Arch had been dreading this question all day. Not so much for his answer, which he’d already planned out, but for the follow-up questions that might come after. “I did. And you’re not gonna believe what I found out there.”
“Oh, really?” Reeve waited a second, like Arch would go on without prompting.
He did. “Yeah. Kellen, Munson, that whole bunch. Said MacGruder hired them as hands while he was away.”
Reeve didn’t scoff but damned close. “Those idiots?”
“I know,” Arch said. “But the place looked clean, and it’s not like MacGruder was around to back them up. They said he was away for a few days.”
Reeve treaded the line between skepticism and an Are-you-an-idiot? look. “You didn’t catch a whiff of anything else? Like them lying or hiding the MacGruders under the floorboards or anything?”
“Didn’t see nothing like that,” Arch said, reminding himself that if Reeve got a bug up his ass and decided to check out the farm for himself, he would almost certainly be killed. “Said they’d be back in a few days, you could check with them then.” On the other hand, when MacGruder never showed up again, Arch didn’t want to have to lie more than
necessary. Pinning the blame on Munson’s crew was honest—though in a roundabout sort of way. Buried in the lies. He didn’t let that bubble up on him right now, though, because there’d be plenty of time for the guilt about it after he’d tidied up the demons. However that was gonna happen.
“All right,” Reeve said, but his face was a mask of dark clouds. “Those boys are low-grade pains in the ass, but I don’t see them making the leap to murder and home invasion and then lying about it.” His hand came down to scratch his chin. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, Old MacGruder’s given second chances to worse workers than those four deadbeats.” He smiled, a thin, wry one. “Hell, I’m gonna have me a laugh later, just trying to imagine those four at the back end of a cow trying to get milk out. MacGruder will be lucky if the whole herd don’t have mastitis by the time he gets back.” He gave it a moment’s more thought and his face turned serious. “It’d be nice if those shitheads got their acts straight. I could stand to go without arresting them anymore.”
“Agreed,” Arch said, turning back toward the time clock. Reeve gave him a vague wave as he finished up and sat down to do his after-shift report. He hoped setting the lies he’d just told down on paper would help him remember them better.
***
“See, I learned this lesson from … Clooney, I think it was,” Hollywood was saying from the back seat, talking to Sleeveless as they cruised along the highway into town. “He was talking about how you always have to get back to being in the character’s head, how it always comes back to motivation.”
“You know Clooney?” Sleeveless said from the front seat, turning his head a little so he could look back at Hollywood.
“Sure, sure,” Hollywood said. It was true, sort of. He’d shaken the man’s hand once or twice at parties. The lesson was from an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio, though. “Anyway, always going back to a character’s motivation.” Hollywood stared straight ahead. It was late afternoon, the sky was still blue, which was disconcerting for their type, though not painful. Like he imagined it was for humans who were awake all night; some were better suited to it than others. “So, I’m looking at these two characters we’re dealing with, and I’m wondering … what’s their motivation?”
Sleeveless didn’t answer at first, obedient, probably making sure he didn’t trip over his boss, pausing before continuing. Good. Very good. Finally, he said, “Well, the cop is just a pain in the ass—”
“The cop,” Hollywood cut Sleeveless off, “may be a pain in the ass, but he’s operating outside the purview of a normal cop. Cops don’t work with demon hunters.” He settled back in his seat and fingered one of the numerous holes in his shirt. He’d shed the coat after it had been ruined. The shirt was in marginally better shape. Still ruined, but probably not noticeably in this shit town. “So you guys go and give away that you’re demons, he runs, and he gets a demon hunter. These are not normal actions for the police, who don’t know the first fucking thing about our world.” He concentrated. “But then, once we get past that hurdle, we arrive at the idea—okay, he knows what a demon is, he knows a demon hunter, he runs and gets said demon hunter after being confronted with demons. That makes logical sense.”
Sleeveless waited through another moment of silence. “So … why would anyone become a demon hunter?”
Hollywood smiled. “That’s a good question, and goes right to the heart of motivation. Because it’s not like it’s lucrative. I mean, even a lesser’s cash tends to get sucked up in the vortex when they get pulled back to the nethers. And they’re almost all bums anyway.” He watched Sleeveless tense up. “You know what I mean. Very little money, working shit jobs, maybe—maybe—slicing off a human for a special treat every now and again, but mostly living under the radar so they can keep their heads down. Even the ones that thrive on hotspots, moving around, preying on humans when the dinner bell rings, they don’t tend to keep much in the way of human money. Bad long-term planners, except for a few.”
“Of course there’s the fundamentalists,” Hollywood went on. “I met a so-called human supremacist one time.” Sleeveless let out a chuckle as Hollywood went on. “Can you believe that shit? Like humans are supreme at anything other than wearing skin better than we do.” He flicked his wrist, waving his hand away. “You get the crusaders every once in a while, though, the ones who do it for religious reasons. ‘Demons bad!’ and all that shit. Which …” he had to concede, “we sort of are, it’s just there’s some of us better at it than others.”
“What about the ones that do it for the rush?” Sleeveless said. “I met one of those a long time ago, outside Detroit.”
“A thrill-killer?” Hollywood said, nodding. “Yeah, I’ve run across a couple. Think they’re hot shit, looking for a way to kill without going to jail.” He smiled. “I guess not leaving a body behind is one way to go about it. But I don’t think that’s this guy. Maybe, but … I dunno, there’s something else there. Doubtful it’s religion, or that he’s a supremacist.” The supremacist hadn’t even talked to him, told him anything, until he’d started peeling the man’s flesh off. Then he’d started spilling his guts. Literally. “Thrill-killers are egomaniacs sometimes. Like to keep trophies if they can, cut off an ear before they finish the job. They know about essence, how it spills out, and lots of times they try to capture it, bottle it for sale.” He thought back to last night. “Those boys were covered in it, like they hadn’t even bothered to catch it.” He thought about it again, saw the look on the smaller one’s face, the white boy, as he was straining against the minion’s arm. “No, I think I’ve got them figured.”
“Oh, yeah?” Sleeveless asked. “How’s that?”
“The cop was looking for the farmer,” Hollywood said, pensive, as the car rattled down the road. “He’s a law and order type, trying to figure out how to adapt to the situation at hand. Simple guy. Doing his best, given what he’s got to work with. But the demon hunter, he’s something else. He’s not into any of those things we just went through. He’s doing this for his own reasons.” He’d seen the guy’s face as he’d tipped the hat off and gone for the knife. It wasn’t just scrunched with exertion. “Something personal.” It was laced with anger, and not just a fury at being restrained, either.
“Oh?” Sleeveless asked. “What, did Kellen insult his mother or something?”
Hollywood chuckled. “No, not that. Not him. No, what we’ve got here is a stone demon killer. Cold heart. Black. Not in it for money, ego, or fun, not religion, nor supremacy.” He didn’t let it get to him, but if he was a chickenshit like Sleeveless, he might have felt a little chill thinking about what this guy was, what was behind him. What he might be willing to do, because of his reason for being here. “No … this guy … he’s here for revenge.”
7.
Arch had dropped by Hendricks’s motel room, knocked on the door, and gotten no response. He was tempted to ask the manager of the Sinbad for a key. He’d talked to him earlier, could see the recognition in the man’s eyes. He was clearly a fan of Arch’s from back in the day. Arch still got that and mostly didn’t mind. It tended to produce cooperation of a kind not necessarily enjoyed by other members of the department. In some cases, that counted for more than others. He considered himself lucky when all it did was make them think of him as a man asking for help rather than a cop trying to get them to give something up.
He didn’t push it, though, not yet. Odds were that Hendricks was elsewhere, maybe getting a bite, and he was all set to drive by a couple of the restaurants when his phone went off again. He picked it up, saw it was Alison, and answered. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” she came back. “You’re off now, right?”
“Just clocked out a few minutes ago,” he said, answering automatically. “Why?”
“Meet me at the apartment?” Her voice was hopeful, honey laced with extra sugar. Not enough to gag him, just enough to recognize it for what it was. “I got a break, figured instead of getting some supper, we’d just … satisfy some other
cravings.”
Arch wasn’t far gone enough on working this demon thing that he was unresponsive, but it did produce a little resistance in him. He shut it up pretty quick by remembering that Hendricks was indisposed in some way right now, anyhow. “Sure. I can drop by home for a little bit. You got a half hour off?”
“Yep,” she said, “and I’m leaving now.”
“Okay,” he said, “you’ll beat me home by about five minutes, probably.”
“Hurry, hurry,” she teased. “See you then.”
Once he’d hung up, he took one last look at the door to Hendricks’s room. The demons could wait a half hour or so. Besides, he needed to eat anyway.
***
“So now we know what our players are up to,” Hollywood said as they rounded the corner of road that was semi-paved. “The next question is, who are they?”
“Krauther’s on the cowboy,” Sleeveless said, pulling off the road onto a gravel driveway. “Seems like he’s new in town. But I know the cop. We’ve had dealings before.”
“I figured that out,” Hollywood said. He was sure Sleeveless missed the irony he had laced the statement with. He wasn’t bright enough to understand concepts like that.
“His name’s Archibald Stan,” Sleeveless went on. “Was a local football hero, graduated and went to UT in Knoxville. Married the head cheerleader—”
“They still married?” Hollywood asked with obvious interest. He felt himself leaning forward in his seat and everything.
“Yeah,” Sleeveless said. “She works down at Rogerson’s, the grocery store in town. Her daddy bought it out from the widow Rogerson after her husband died.”
“Good, good,” Hollywood said, putting all his thoughts into a matrix. “So he’s got vulnerabilities. His little cheerleader wife.” He felt his nose twist. “Not that it really matters. If he’s too problematic of a sacrifice, there are plenty of others. Though I do want to make him hurt for what he did to my suit.”
The Southern Watch Series, Books 1-3: Called, Depths and Corrupted Page 10