Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “We want …” the voice came again, long and dragging, pauses between some of the words, “… we want you …” the eyes lit up with a sort of furious glee, “… to suffer.”

  Donna’s hand flicked the switch and with a whooshing sound, she ignited, like a piece of tinder thrown on a fire, and Reeve screamed as the burst of sudden heat hit him in the face with all the force of a punch.

  *

  “Molly,” Lauren said, straight to pleading, the shower still washing over her, warm enough to defray some of the cold chills that were covering her from neck to feet and everywhere in between, “what are you …?” She asked even though she knew the answer, even though she was sure that her daughter was possessed and standing before her with a knife to her mother’s neck because of a demon, a goddamned demon that had invaded her home and bathroom and was about to—

  Oh, Lord.

  “Lauren …” her mother said with a shaking voice. Her eyes were brimming with tears that came from absolute fear, from being manhandled by her granddaughter, who suddenly had far, far too much strength for her small frame. Lauren looked at her mother, just a quick glance, enough to see the fear there, to note the bright drip of red under the knife’s blade, working its way down her neck to her old blouse’s flowery collar. There was a dark spot there where it had started to pool, slowly spreading down the cloth.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Lauren said, almost positive that it wasn’t. She was standing naked in her own bathroom, shower pouring down over her, goose bumps running over every square inch of her skin that could pimple up. She dropped a hand to her bare thigh and felt them there, then ran it up to cover her across her chest, trying to reclaim a little bit of her dignity in this moment, almost unconsciously. “I …”

  “It will not be okay,” Molly said in a high voice that was nothing like her own. “You should be honest with her.”

  “I …” Lauren swallowed heavily. “I … why are you doing this?”

  Molly’s eyes bored into her. “You took some of ours.”

  Lauren blinked, droplets of water falling like tears out of her eyelashes. The simple statement hit her in the face. If the watch had taken some of “theirs,” some of the demons’ own, then the logical conclusion to that was that the demons—

  “Please don’t,” Lauren said, shaking her head, her wet, water-soaked hair forming a natural ponytail as it all banded together in thick strands off the back of her head. “Please don’t—”

  She didn’t get any more out before Molly’s hand ripped in a quick motion horizontally. It was done in a second, just a jerk of the hand—

  Blood sprayed across Lauren’s face and head and chest and down her front like there was another showerhead in front of her, and she closed her eyes in surprise at the sudden, unexpected violence of the motion, like someone throwing a punch at your face in order to make you flinch.

  She was surprised at the sudden darkness as her eyes went closed, the afterimage of her mother’s fear just frozen there. Her rational mind watched it all again in the second after it happened, and she diagnosed it—tearing of the carotid artery and the jugular vein, the throat—

  Good God.

  —heavy tissue damage, there was the airway, cut clear to the—

  Mom.

  —almost the spine, the throat opened to—

  Jesus.

  Lauren opened her eyes less than a second later and her mother just hung there before her, the world tinged with sudden red where before it had been pale blues and whites of the quiet, serene, country-style bathroom with its china-white porcelain and deep blue accents. There was blood on the walls, blood on the white tile, already diluted blood on her hands and arms, extended before her like she’d tried to feel her way through a dark room.

  Molly was completely drenched in scarlet, a smile of dark satisfaction turning up one corner of her mouth.

  “Did you like that?” Molly asked with that wicked satisfaction. There was a coldness there that was unfamiliar to her, and she was as familiar with Molly as she’d ever been with any human being, really, even more than any of her lovers who’d known her body inside and out. Her daughter had grown within her for the better part of a year, and she’d wiped her nose, pulled her toes, brushed her hair, taken her everywhere …

  Lauren just stared at her mother, whose jaw was twitching open and shut very slightly, the muscle and nerves so damaged only inches below that she was finding it near impossible to get any motion going. Lauren stared at her clinically, trying to hold back the familiarity that would only result in crippling fear and nausea. Vera, her mom, the one who had done for her all the things she’d done for Molly, stared back at her with undisguised terror, mute and unable to give voice to it.

  Then Yvette and Molly let go of her shoulders as one, and her mother sagged to her knees, out of control. She landed hard on the edge of the tub, the shower sprinkling down on her as Lauren took an inadvertent step back and nearly slipped. Her mother’s hair fell under the shower’s spray and went dark from wetness in a second. Washed-out crimson liquid flooded down into the tub, carried by the shower’s watery spray, and swirled toward the drain like a still frame from Psycho. Lauren watched it happen, watched it go as her mother’s legs twitched, her body hanging half in and half out of the tub, her blouse speckled dark with water spots in the back.

  The horror hit Lauren all at once, her clinical detachment shattered as it hit her that—MOM, oh, God, MOM—her mother was bleeding to death right in front of her. She dropped down in a second, all thought of propriety and decency and all the things her mother would bitch about when she went out wearing a halter top and a short skirt thrown to the four winds, washed down the drain like her mother’s own lifeblood.

  “Mom!” the word burst out of Lauren’s lips as she knelt hard in the porcelain tub, her mother hanging limply beside her. Lauren fumbled to try and grab her at the neck, to frantically stop the exodus of blood, to stem it at least until she could get to—there’s no trauma center within forty-five minutes of here—a hospital, to surgery—there’s no chance—anything to buck the odds against—the blood loss is too severe, it has to be nearing a half gallon by now, surely, maybe more—death, to slow the rushing tide.

  Anything, Lauren prayed, though she wasn’t sure who she was praying to.

  She stared her mother in the eye, because she could only see the right one from where she was kneeling. It was fixed on her for about a second, and then it lost her, wandering down to the red-stained porcelain as the blood dribbled steadily out, washed down by the relentless flow of the shower. Vera’s mouth moved, but it was like a fish gasping one last time, and then she lost consciousness—she’s fucking dead, Jesus, she’s dead for all intents and purposes, you have no way to replace that blood volume, DOCTOR—for the last time, Lauren somehow knew.

  Lauren just stared into her mother’s unfocused eye, and wondered if she’d had enough blood left in her brain before she’d passed out to know what she was looking at. “Did she see me?” Lauren asked, faintly, her training at its end, all thought of what she could do, this treatment or that treatment giving way to the fact that she was naked.

  In her bathtub.

  Demons had just possessed her daughter to slit her mother’s throat.

  And her mom had just died.

  “Did you enjoy that?” the voice came again, from Molly’s mouth but not in Molly’s voice or tone or inflection. Lauren didn’t answer, because she had no answer to give, and strong, impossibly strong, arms grabbed her under the armpits and wrenched her, flailing, over and away from her dead mother as they dragged her, dripping with blood and water, out of the tub.

  *

  Brian couldn’t believe what his eyes had just seen, what his voice had just said, what his finger had just done, and he had control over none of it, not one little bit. He was still screaming from seeing a gunshot blast a hole in his father’s head, opening up the top of his skull and painting the white kitchen ceiling with blood and brain matter and
—oh, God, Jesus—a little piece of what looked like skull that was just laying there on the counter.

  Brian held the gun in his hand as his father tipped over backward and hit the ground, dribble of blood already rolling out the side of his mouth. Bill Longholt wasn’t a small guy, and Brian hadn’t inherited his father’s size, but he’d held him hard in place while he’d fired the gun up through the bottom of his jaw and out through the top of his head. He’d just held him there, a grin fixed on his lips, a scream held back in his head, while he blew his father’s brains out.

  Jesus.

  “BRIAN!” His mother screamed, blown right past panic to horror and shock, eyes pinwheeling around from his fallen father to him and back again, throwing in a blink here and there for good measure and—

  Oh God oh God oh God—

  Something slammed into Brian from behind, clipping him in the knee with stabbing force and agonizing pain set in, screaming pain, like someone had—

  Stabbed me—

  The chorus of harpies was gone in an instant, replaced with screaming pain in his knee as Brian’s leg buckled. A whirling burst of black fire whiffed in the back of his throat and he was suddenly overcome with the smell of wretched sulfur as he hit the ground on all fours, landing atop his father’s legs, hacking and coughing.

  “Jesus, Brian,” Alison’s soft voice came from behind him. He blinked like he’d smoked five bowls and didn’t have a drop of Clear Eyes handy, looking back at her and then down at his handiwork.

  “Dad,” he whispered softly, staring at his father’s face, the soft drip of blood running down his cheek nothing compared the steadily growing pool oozing out the crown of his head and the slow flush of scarlet washing out of the gunshot wound below his jaw, the intensity of the gush fading with each flagging beat of his father’s heart.

  *

  Hendricks was in his car the second he got his jeans on, not even bothering to try and pull a shirt on. Starling was next to him in the passenger seat, silent, her fingers playing over the soft cloth of the rental car. Lonsdale was in the back, moaning and groaning like he had a headache—again, the motherfucker. The air was blowing full blast on cold, the heater not yet fired up as he thumped hard out of the Sinbad parking lot and floored it onto the highway, trying to remember how exactly to get to Arch’s in-laws’ house.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” Hendricks said, shaking his head, watching the road with fearful expectation. They’d fucking come for him, that fucking Legion, and if it hadn’t been for Starling and her patented ability to extract his dick from the teeth and jaws of hellish death, he’d have found himself probably in a pickle. Or with a pickle up his ass. Something like that.

  “I can’t believe I’ve been possessed twice in one fucking day,” Lonsdale moaned in the back.

  Hendricks shot him a furiously nasty look. “This is all your goddamned fault, Lonsdale.”

  Lonsdale was suddenly innocent as a churchboy. “Me? How is being possessed by a demon my fault?”

  “Because you, you fucking lousy sorry fuck—” Hendricks grabbed an empty pop can and threw it right into Lonsdale’s face with all the hate that was bursting out of his heart at the moment, “just had to go and fuck with demons that hadn’t even fucking done anything, you lousy piece of shit—” He threw an old water bottle, only a quarter full, right at Lonsdale’s nose and it hit its target, eliciting a sharp, “Oww!” from the bastard.

  “I weren’t doing nuffing that we demon hunters aren’t supposed to be doing,” Lonsdale said, resentful eyes peeking from behind his hand, which was perched over his nose to prevent any further attacks, clearly. “Killing demons is our thing, innit?”

  “Killing your cunt ass through anal penetration with my sword is about to become my thing, you motherfucker,” Hendricks said, swerving as he put his eyes back on the road and found he’d drifted hard into the other lane. “So help me, if these fucking demons have done any damage, I’m going to kill you myself. Turn your skin into jerky for the local vreetackatharouns.” He looked at Starling. “How bad is this?”

  She stared straight ahead into the windshield, ignoring his diatribe, pondering his words. “Bad.”

  Hendricks clenched the wheel tighter and squealed tires in a tight turn. “Goddammit.”

  *

  Reeve could feel the heat, like a summer’s day, even though summer had long gone. The smell of gasoline burning was distinctive, too, and he had his hands up in front of his face to ward it off. It was instinct, blind instinct; when an explosion went off in front of you, even one so mild and lacking in concussive force as someone lighting up gasoline, the instinct was the shy away from the heat. And shy away Reeve did, for at least a few seconds.

  His next instinct was panic, to freak the fuck out, trying to figure exactly what he should do. He’d seen some crazy shit, especially lately, but his own wife lighting herself on fire while possessed by a demon? That was beyond him, beyond anything he’d seen. The only close contender was that poor homeless bastard who had burned up on the square a couple months ago, and Reeve hadn’t given a great deal of thought to that because—well, because it was one of a hundred bodies he was dealing with.

  Donna stood in the middle of the flame, the fire burning hard around her, and he realized at last that she seemed to be totally fine in there, just standing with the inferno burning up around her, smoke pouring up to the ceiling and giving the room a scent like chem-fired barbecue. He reached out to touch her and pulled his hand back in a heartbeat, remembering all too well how that damned Rog’tausch had burned him on the arm.

  He stared at Donna in the middle of the flames, looking back at him as the flames spread down the gasoline trail, lighting their house as it crept along. Reeve was dumbstruck; he didn’t know what to do, just stared at his wife’s face peering at him from the middle of the raging fire. She took a step toward him and he took a step back instinctively, not wanting to be burned again.

  “Do you see it now?” that angry voice came again.

  “I see fire,” Reeve said, the words popping out before he could give them thought.

  She strolled across the room, leaving flaming footprints in her wake. He gave way for her, and she ran a hand across the top of the dresser, over the doily that laced the top of it, and set that aflame as well, starting a fire among the pictures of kids and grandkids that decorated the top of the piece. The flames ran down the sides of the wooden dresser in seconds and soon it was being consumed as well, more fuel for what the demon was doing to his home.

  “Jesus,” Reeve breathed, and Donna stamped a foot down in his discarded Sheriff’s uniform, setting it a-kindlin’ as well. He might have wanted to burn the damned thing, but not like this. She stared down into the burning cloth as it caught, and Reeve realized he didn’t have his sword on his belt because he wasn’t wearing his pants and that they were right there, next to his shirt—

  “Shit,” he muttered, and she swooped down and drew his own sword. He stared at her, wondering why she’d ignored the pistol on the belt, and then she answered that for him a second later.

  “Fuck you,” she said in that hellacious voice, and turned the sword around, stabbing herself right through the heart before Reeve could so much as open his damned mouth.

  *

  Amanda wasn’t enjoying this fight anymore, and she’d had about enough of this fucking Legion’s shit and crap tactics, and was ready to start splitting skulls. She said as much to Duncan, and he replied, “Please don’t.”

  “Fuck these fleshbags,” Amanda replied, cracking one of them upside the head with a baton hard enough to start a good gusher of blood down the back of the lady’s scalp. She looked like she might ordinarily have been pretty frail, with her crepe-like skin and thick, old-lady glasses and grey hair. “You getting soft on me?”

  “Not as soft as you were when you vaped,” Duncan said, and Amanda could tell he was fishing.

  “Still don’t trust me entirely?” Amanda asked, driving a baton into another one of
the Legion’s drones at the belly. He didn’t break skin there, unfortunately. Hendricks might have had the right idea, using a sword, that cowboy fuck. “Even after reading my essence?”

  “I’d be interested to know what you did to get out of the pits,” Duncan said, throwing a punch that cracked a demon-possessed human’s head around. It didn’t stop the real face of the demon from showing through, though, and two more jumped on Duncan right after he spoke. Stupid, Amanda thought. This whole approach was just stupid.

  “Not much,” Amanda said, tossing an elbow of her own. She was through fucking around with these pricks, no matter what Duncan said. Innocents got hurt in life, that was just a fact. She whipped a baton around with enough force to split a skull, and when the blow landed, she did. A line of blood splattered the hotel room’s wall and the human dropped, black fire surging through the eyes and gaping mouth as the guy hit his knees. Amanda kicked him right in his flapped-open jaw and sent him crunching backward into a wall. “They came to me, told me I was going back.”

  Duncan was under a mountain of opposition, but Amanda heard the reply even through four or five bodies piled on him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Amanda leapt across the room, capping her damned head on the ceiling and ripping a five-foot gash across the popcorn white as she came back down. Her hair was trailing little pieces of the ceiling behind her, but she drove her baton hard into the back of a human’s exposed neck, busting skin and breaking the spine. She tossed the limp body, demon still vaping inside, off Duncan and smashed another one in the side of the head with a similar lack of mercy. This one was a woman, probably in her thirties, blond, and that was all she noticed before she added her to the “don’t give a fuck” pile and threw her, unresisting, through the nearest wall. She was probably dead, and either way, she was out of the room and thus out of reach of another possession attempt.