“I’m getting it,” Erin came back, cool but not harsh.
“Great. Thanks.”
Reeve sighed again, then again, then just took a breath in and held it, trying to let the stress bleed out. He turned around to start heading for the house so he could get the fuck outta here and back to the station, but Lonsdale was just standing there, big grin on his face. “What the fuck are you smirking at?” Reeve asked.
“It’s not healthy to hold that all in, you know,” Lonsdale said, and the fucker looked like he was having the time of his life.
Reeve suppressed the urge to find a septic lagoon to drown the man in and let his feet carry him up the road. “Healthier than letting it all out right now.”
*
Chester stared off the back porch and out into the empty, rolling fields behind him. The hill territory of Tennessee offered such a lovely vista for him as he stared over the sun-drenched hills. A chilly wind blew over him, prickling at his flesh.
The plan was simple, and the approval was near universal within him. Only a day ago, they had been fiercely divided, and William’s faction had all their ire. Coming to this place had clearly been the single greatest failure they had ever undertaken, and the condemnation would have been universal—if William and his fellows were still with them.
Instead, within them, there was no argument, only rage. William and his followers were eulogized, their failings forgotten for the time being, and their virtues celebrated over and over in thousands of voices. Chester knew of no other time when the whole of them had been so in uniform agreement. True, they were fewer now with William’s brethren gone, but he had never even heard such universal accord even in his own corner of their little world.
“You all know what to do,” Chester said. He had six good bodies before him, and they had “loaded up,” taking over six hundred souls among them. They had a simple task ahead of them, to propagate and spread, to insinuate themselves where needed. There was a plan, and while its aims were fixed, the methods employed would be loose and subject to change for best possible results. “Does everyone know the phone number for this house?”
“Yes,” came the chorus, nods following. Chester could see their faces, but they were all meaningless to him. He could not see the faces beneath at the moment, just the human flesh atop them. He did not want to know who lay beneath, not truly, because if he did, he might hesitate at a crucial juncture.
“Then go forth,” Chester said, harkening back to a passage he had long remembered, “and spread into the swine of this town, and prepare … to leave our mark upon them.”
*
Hendricks headed into the old brick station with slow reluctance, like his will was forcing him to drag along inside even though the greater part of him didn’t want to be here. He could think of better places to be, had a jonesing to get back to the Sinbad and shower for a spell, trying to let the hot water wash away his memory. He had trouble with feeling clean nowadays. No matter how hard he scrubbed, no matter how often he’d shaved, he still felt—
“You gonna put some get up and go in your step or do we need to fetch you some more coffee?” Reeve asked as he came around Hendricks on the left side. Hendricks watched him go past, the sheriff sending a sour look back at him and getting cool neutrality in response. Lonsdale followed along in his wake, and Hendricks had an inkling where some of that irritation was coming from.
“By all means, go first,” Hendricks said, exaggerating with a hand wave to indicate he should pass on by. He stopped and let both Reeve and Lonsdale enter the station, the sheriff clearly in a great blazing hurry by the force with which he opened the door. It stirred a little wind, probably from the air conditioner, which felt cold as fuck, like someone had piled blocks of ice in the station house. Hadn’t it been boiling hot earlier, that dry furnace air pouring out of the ducts during their meeting? Reeve just barged on in like he didn’t feel it, and Lonsdale trailed along like a toady, which was funny. Just this morning he’d had his own toadies, and now he was one.
Hendricks counted out ten seconds, peering through the entry and mentally counting up who was inside, waiting. It looked like a full house, and there was food spread all along the counter. He could see boxes of fried chicken, and now that he thought about it, he’d probably caught a whiff of it when Reeve had opened the door. Lauren Darlington was hovering near the side items portion of the impromptu buffet, like she was trying to decide if anything was worth the calories. She didn’t even have a plate in her hand, unlike Arch, who was loading up on mashed potatoes, and Alison, who was following behind with a slightly smaller load on her own plate.
Hendricks stared in at the lot of them. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he’d dropped off that trucker’s running board into Calhoun County a couple months back. This was just another hotspot at the time, and making pals with the locals hadn’t been his plan, ever. He’d been pointed in this direction just like he’d been pointed everywhere else the last few years, and he trusted the lady who held his fate in her hands well enough to know that when she said something was there and gave a good shooing toward it, there was something there and he ought to get to it.
But none of the other hotspots had been like this. They’d all been demon kills, plain and simple, where he was the hunter and the demons were the hunted. They fought back, sure, but they didn’t have grand plans, they didn’t go in for revenge, and they damned sure didn’t mix up with demon hunters. They ran like chickenshits most of the time, or stood and fought and died and it was over. They were dumb, they were easily frightened, and you could go get drunk in a bar after a good fight without worrying eight charlagarn were going to come crashing through your motel room door afterward to fuck up your night.
“What’s so goddamned different about this town?” Hendricks mumbled to himself. His eyes flitted again to Arch, and he wondered if he might be the answer to the question. Archibald Stan is the man who will bring about the end of the world. The words went charging through his head again, ping-ponging around a few times before they stopped.
“I keep asking myself that same question,” Duncan said. Hendricks looked over his shoulder; the OOC had snuck up on him so quietly that he hadn’t even realized the demon was there. “Because it’s not playing out like other hotspots.”
“No,” Hendricks agreed, feeling a little stiff next to Duncan, who joined him at the window next to the door, looking in like the outsiders they were. “It’s really not.”
“So why do you think it has something to do with Arch?” Duncan asked, and Hendricks must have blanched a little, because Duncan tapped his own head. “You’re as clear as the sky today, at least right now. A lot louder than everyone else in there, with their mingled relief and barely contained worry about this possession demon.”
“If you guys wiped out possession demons, why would one come here, and right now, no less?” Hendricks folded his arms. “That’s weird, right?”
“It’s weird that one’s still walking the earth at all,” Duncan said, shifting slightly on his feet. “It’s truly bizarre that one would have survived all this time only to come here right now, yes. But hotspots are bizarre, so …”
“Do you even know what kind it is?” Hendricks asked.
“No,” Duncan asked, and here he seemed vaguely uncomfortable again. “I don’t sense runes on them, but when I try and get a read on him—or her, I guess, not that it matters—it’s muddled, like a picture taken of a person running, where it blurs, you know?”
“So you know jack and shit about them, that’s what you’re saying.”
“In so many words.” Duncan folded his arms. “Nice deflection, by the way.” When Hendricks looked at him, the OOC looked back. “About Arch, I mean.”
“Arch prays, fucks his wife and fights demons,” Hendricks said. “There's nothing else about him to discuss.”
“We could talk about how for some reason you seem to think he’s going to end the world,” Duncan said. He turned and looked right at Hendricks. “Lemm
e tell you something about doomsday prophecies, speaking as someone who’s heard one a week for the last few hundred years—they’re all crap.”
“Really?” Hendricks asked, feeling like he had his back up, ready to defend the position he was in. “You charged in pretty quick with us that time Starling said letting that carnie blow his load was going to lead to the world ending.”
“Yeah,” Duncan said, “but not for the reason you’re thinking. The first part of what she said was that Midian would fall. Then she linked that to the rest of the world descending into the apocalypse or something, I don’t really recall, mostly because I don’t believe in it enough to care. She had me at the first part of it, Midian falling.” He shifted, moving his arms to hang by his side. “Towns disappearing off the map is bad business. Bad enough for Home Office to want to stop it. You can mewl all day about the Rog’tausch supposedly being tied to the end of the world, but the end of Midian and a demon smashing his way through is more than enough to get an OOC off the bench and fighting.”
“I’d probably take that better if it was coming from a place of real compassion,” Hendricks said, “instead of you just wanting to make sure demons are kept secret.”
“Full on demon-human wars are no picnic for either side,” Duncan said. “Don’t get me wrong, I like your chances—you bugs have overrun the globe, come up with technology beyond bronze-age swords, and blown up your population by billions since last we scrapped, but don’t kid yourself into thinking it’d be a painless little fight in which you roll over the evil demons by dinnertime.” He cast a wary look at Hendricks. “Demons can use guns and bombs and tanks and WMDs, and they would. An all-out fight between our peoples would leave scars on this world that would never heal.” He waved a hand vaguely. “A possession demon is small potatoes compared to some of the other things on our ‘side.’”
“Doesn’t feel small,” Hendricks said. “Maybe I’m just paranoid after watching it walk two mothers away from their babies and getting another to draft her teen to fight in a gun battle, but this is the sort of shit that makes my brain jump a little. How do we even know where it is? How do we know it doesn’t have one of the people in there in its thrall?” He pointed to the station house.
Duncan frowned. “I could probably read that, if it was the case.”
Hendricks snorted. “I love the certainty.”
*
Lauren was eyeing the fried chicken, considering whether it was worth the effort later to burn it off. She didn’t have the quickest metabolism in the world, and often watched Molly consume delicious and terrible delicacies with considerable envy, knowing her teenage daughter would show little to no sign of her sinful delight. Meanwhile, Lauren was still trying to get rid of that donut hole she’d eaten three years ago, the one that clung bitterly to that spot on her inner thigh, with cat claws, refusing to let go.
“Oh, that’s good,” Arch Stan said, licking some mashed potatoes off his finger. She glared at him and he didn’t even notice. He looked fit enough that he probably didn’t suffer from having to worry overmuch about what he ate, either.
“Yeah, y’all dig in,” Reeve said over in the corner, standing next to his wife. He was holding himself like he’d broken his ribs, favoring that side, clearly. “Then let’s settle it on down and talk for a bit.”
“I feel like we’ve had this meeting before,” Brian Longholt said, still sour as a Lemonhead, from his place behind the dispatch desk. He had a laptop computer set up in front of him, and Amazon’s “Thank you for your order!” screen was emblazoned across it. “Maybe just a few hours ago.”
“Well, the situation has changed, obviously,” Reeve said, plainly strained from more than just pain. “Believe me, I don’t like having meetings for the sake of meetings any more than the rest of you do.”
“Should we wait for Casey and Father Nguyen?” Bill Longholt asked in that soft yet solemn voice of his as Hendricks and Duncan came in from outside, both stoically silent and clearly chewing on something between the two of them. Probably not chicken, Lauren figured.
“No.” Reeve shook his head. “Getting this crew together for a meeting is starting to feel like convening a session of Congress, and we ain’t even added any of the potential new people in yet, like Barney Jones or Mike McInness.”
“Don’t forget Melina Cherry,” Erin said with a gleam in her eyes. Lauren watched the point ding Reeve like he’d taken a poke to the broken rib, and his expression grew jaded. “She’s just aching to help.”
That rubbed Lauren the wrong way. “We should be happy for any help we can get at this point,” she said and watched Deputy Harris bristle a little at her returned poke. “I don’t care where it comes from.”
“I agree with the doctor,” Arch said, making Lauren wish she’d not said a damned thing. “The way things are going, and based on what we saw knocking on doors, there ain’t a real friendly air in Midian toward us at the moment.”
“Yeah, well, anyway,” Reeve said, sallying on past all that argument, “I don’t know where Casey is, and Father Nguyen is consecrating something, I think, so—”
“He’s consecrating something for Casey, I think,” Duncan said.
That drew a moment of silence as Reeve frowned. “What the hell would Casey get consecrated? And who’s paying for it?”
“Not I,” Bill said, not without a little jading of his own. “Casey Meacham is a man of a little bit of means of his own, presumably he would pay on his own account.”
Reeve just shook it off. “I guess I have a hard time imagining Casey swinging any sort of weapon, that’s all.”
*
“Are you sure about this?” Father Nguyen stared at the object in his hands, absolutely sure that no priest in any parish had ever consecrated one of these before. He stared down at it, turning it over a few times. “I mean … it’s a …”
“Tomahawk,” Casey said with a little more pride than Nguyen thought was due. It had a long wooden handle and a steel head that showed signs of long wear. Nguyen didn’t want to know what it had been used for, but the handle was short enough that he suspected it probably wasn’t for hand-to-hand combat of any kind. “You know, like the Ind—errr,” Casey blushed like he’d got caught doing something terrible. “That the Native Americans used,” he finished, plainly pleased with himself at changing his vernacular at the last second.
Father Nguyen just shook his head. “All right. This is going to take a while, though …”
“It’s all right,” Casey said, shrugging his shoulders. “I got a Fleshlight and some magazines out in the truck. I’ll just hang out for a bit.”
Nguyen shrugged and carried the tomahawk off toward the altar. There wasn’t much point in inquiring about what Casey was talking about. Nguyen didn’t know, but he was equally sure after hearing part of the man’s confession earlier that he didn’t want to know. “Ignorance really is bliss,” Nguyen concluded, leaving the strange taxidermist to his wait.
*
“So now we have a real threat at hand,” Reeve said, feeling like he was calling to order his third meeting in less than twenty-four hours. “Duncan, what can you tell us about these possession demons?” The smell of the food was getting to him, and he planned to dig in once they settled things out in some manner. The thought of that thing grabbing people up was worrying him, though, so he fought the hunger back.
“There are several types,” Duncan said, just launching straightaway into it. “We can’t rule out any of them at this point.”
“I hope you have more than that,” Reeve said, frowning when the OOC paused.
“A little more,” Duncan said with a shrug. “So, the way possession types work is—well, it’s a broad category. There are some that just do flat-out mind control, like hijacking your body and turning you into a piece of their hive-mind. There are others that split their essence, inhabiting multiple hosts at the same time. Again, bottom line is that this is a hive-mind type situation, one overarching intelligence putting
its will into others and acting in a coordinated fashion—”
“That’s not what we saw at the first encounter this morning,” Arch said, his plate full and yet untouched. Clearly the deputy was into this shit in a way that Reeve wasn’t. He eyed the man as Arch went on. “Remember? The demon that was in Lonsdale over there,” he gestured at the demon hunter, who was standing irritably close to Reeve, about ten feet away, “called the other one Chester when he got stabbed, and Chester called him Bill or William or something.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lonsdale said, snapping his fingers in front of him. “There were like a thousand screaming voices in my head. There was one that was loudest, true, but it was almost like being in a crowd in there, too much to fathom all at once, like trying eat a bite but ending up with a whole week’s worth of meals shoved in your gullet at once.”
“Oh,” Duncan said.
“‘Oh’?” Hendricks was first to perk up at that. He was just standing there like a big black void in his coat and hat. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Multiple voices with a ‘speaker’ to talk for them,” Duncan said, blinking a few times. “Yeah … that’s probably what we call a Legion.”
“Like … the French foreign one?” Dr. Darlington asked.
“Not exactly,” Duncan said. “Multiple essences without a shell of their own, so they’re forced to inhabit human or other demon bodies.”
“When you say ‘multiple,’ you mean how many exactly?” Reeve asked. “Because if it’s like ten, we gotta be well on the way to wiping them out—”
Duncan took a minute to speak again, and everyone waited with bated breath for his answer. “Impossible to say exactly, but … no. Not ten. More like … thousands. Or … hundreds of thousands. Or—”
“Please, Jesus, don’t say millions,” Alison said quietly into the stunned silence.
Duncan stopped. “Could be. I don’t know.”
“How the fuck do your people lose track of millions of essences?” Erin Harris asked, nonplussed and channeling the question Reeve himself might have asked if he’d had a little better grip on how the demon world operated. “I mean, you said you OOCs wiped these things out, but now you’re saying that this—this—”
Legion (Southern Watch Book 5) Page 23