Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I ought to have gone with them,” Casey said, aw-shucks-ing, “them and those demon fellers. They could have used my fierce moves.” He made to raise the tomahawk with his other hand and moved his hand a little, cringing when the pain hit him. “Ow.”

  “Maybe we’ll need your help here,” she said, giving him a resentful look as she moved his hand back into place and continued her work.

  “Maybe,” Casey said. “Just maybe.”

  They lapsed into what felt like, to her, a comfortable silence. Apparently Casey didn’t feel the same, because he broke it less than a minute later. “What was your daughter’s name?”

  Lauren felt suddenly cold. “Molly.” She’d stopped cleaning his hand without realizing it and nudged herself back to work. “Her name is Molly. She’s still alive.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Casey said. “I should have thrown the tomahawk at her, I guess, but Yvette was right in the way and I worried I couldn’t hit her. Hell, I barely got Yvette.” He lifted the tomahawk up, but more carefully this time. “Throwing this thing is not nearly as easy I thought it would be when I picked it out.”

  “Why not pick a crossbow instead?” Lauren asked, not really thinking about it.

  “You know, I gave that a ponderin’,” Casey said, “but I decided that having Father Nguyen consecrate arrows was too much work, because, I mean, you gotta have a decent number to start with, say twenty—and that’s like two hundred and fifty hours of consecrating right there. And you lose a few to shafts breaking or maybe the heads themselves getting dull, and pretty soon you gotta build up your stockpile again … but with the tomahawk, you just get it done once and forever more you just—” He brought it up and mimed throwing it, but the weapon slipped and smacked, blade-first, into the wooden ridge that made up the pew back.

  Lauren flinched as it chipped wood and sent a splinter bouncing off her jacket. It didn’t hit her hard at all; she didn’t even feel it through the clothing, but she blanched nonetheless.

  “What are you doing?” Nguyen cried from somewhere across the church.

  “Sorry!” Casey called over to him. “Accident! Won’t happen again.” He grabbed the tomahawk by the handle and started to pull it out, but failed the first time. “Shit. That sumbitch is wedged.”

  “Be careful,” Lauren said, “I don’t want to have to fix up any other wounds.” She could feel her ire rising a little, the first feeling she’d really had since …

  … since …

  “God,” she whispered, lowering her head and laying the first butterfly bandage. They had taken Molly, and here she sat, bandaging an idiot who was now threatening to damage himself again. “I need to get out of here.”

  “That’s not a great idea, Doc,” Casey said. “What if they try and get you? If we’re gonna spring this ambush thing, we ought to have only one piece of bait dangling in the water.” He straightened up. “You gotta stay here with us where we can protect youuuuuuuuuuuuu—eeeeeeeeeeeeek!” He moaned in pain as she applied a little extra pressure while bandaging him.

  “I don’t need you to protect me, Casey,” she said, now that he was groaning softly. “I need my water gun so that when the time comes that we go face to face with these demons again, I’m ready … and not stuck in a position to be dragged around by these bastards.” She gave him the look to shut him up and it worked, probably because he hadn’t seen it from her before. But she knew that she’d wallowed long enough, and that was that. No more sitting catatonic while the demons had Molly.

  They might have taken her mother before she could so much as open her mouth about it, but she’d be damned if she let them just walk away with her daughter without fighting someone to the fucking death.

  *

  Duncan was driving through the Tennessee night in the demon town car, doing about seventy on the freeway and probably squeezing a little more out of the old girl. Amanda Guthrie, AKA black lady Lerner, was in the passenger seat, Arch was behind her, and Hendricks was behind Duncan, and it was the tensest fucking ride Hendricks had ever been on, bar none. And that included the times they rode into Ramadi to kick down doors and face certain death.

  The silence was pretty fucking oppressive, even for a stoic like Hendricks who would rather have plucked every single one of his ball hairs one by one rather than talk feelings with a bunch of guys—and Guthrie/Lerner, who he still kindasorta perceived as a guy, new look and all assertions to the contrary. Still, somebody needed to say something.

  “You two don’t seem like you’re ready to kiss and make up,” Hendricks said, drawing a startled head-turn from Arch, who frowned pretty deeply at him, presumably for intruding into his private thinking time with something as bound to stir the shit pot as this.

  “What did I tell you?” Guthrie said, turning to Duncan. “Less than fifteen minutes.”

  “You never said shit to me.” Duncan kept his hands on the wheel, the dark shadowed trees blurring by on either side of them.

  “I thought it real loud and figured you’d pick up on it,” Guthrie said.

  “Doesn’t work that way anymore, remember?” Duncan’s tension was obvious, even if he’d been a normal person. For him, it was fucking over-the-top.

  “Oh, right,” Guthrie said casually. “I forget you can’t read my very essence anymore. You must feel terribly deprived of my killer wit.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly proven the ‘killer’ part,” Duncan said.

  “What is going on here?” Arch asked, clueless.

  Hendricks should have figured the big man had his head up his ass, but this was pretty deep, even for Arch. “They’re in a tiff,” Hendricks said.

  “Really?” Arch was still frowning.

  “We’re not in a tiff,” Guthrie said, “but seriously, shut up while Mommy and Daddy are talking, kids, or I’ll pull this fucking car over and start administering spankings.”

  “She’s not the same,” Duncan said, turning his head to talk back to Hendricks and Arch. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  “No shit she’s not the same,” Hendricks said, cocking an eyebrow. “Because she’s a she. And black.”

  “That shit is all irrelevant,” Duncan said, taking a hand off the wheel to wave it at him, “that’s just a fucking shell. It could be deep purple and with nine hundred and twelve different sets of genitals and I wouldn’t care. It’s what’s inside that changed, not the surface bullcrap.”

  “Oh, come on,” Guthrie said. “I’m still me. Still a sarcastic asshole—”

  “That much seems true,” Arch said under his breath.

  “I can tell you missed me, even if Duncan didn’t.” Guthrie said, turning around and giving him a wink. “Don’t even try and deny it.”

  “I missed you,” Duncan said, “but I missed you. Not this new you, but old you—”

  “Screw you, chew you, frou-frou you,” Hendricks said, getting everybody in the car to look at him again. “Sorry, I’m just … trying to make the word ‘you’ make sense again after all those repeated uses.”

  “Nobody stays the same forever, Duncan, not even you,” Guthrie said, cooling rapidly. “I still remember when you were newly hatched, a true believer—”

  “Wait, you hatch?” Arch asked. “Like … birds? Or lizards?”

  “—and now look at you,” Guthrie sneered. “There’s probably a reason Home Office isn’t sending you orders. Would you even take them anymore?”

  “Does this mean Lerner—” Arch started.

  “Guthrie,” she said, turning her head around to look at him. “You have to call me Amanda Guthrie now. It’s the rules.”

  “—isn’t on our side?” Arch finished, bravely soldiering on over Guthrie. “And … is Amanda Guthrie your real name?”

  “Sweetcheeks,” Guthrie said, “I wouldn’t tell you my real name if you had that sword half a millimeter from my shell and speaking it aloud would blow up your head. You don’t give out names in the demon world. Not real ones, anyway.”

  �
��I think it’s safe to say that her loyalties are compromised, yes,” Duncan said.

  “What the fuck are we riding in the car with her for, then?” Hendricks asked, grabbing for the hilt of his sword. “Why not just—”

  “Don’t.” Duncan shook his head. “Don’t say what you’re thinking about saying. Threatening an OOC is grounds for immediate extermination. Kinda like threatening a royal.”

  “And we all know how well you enforced that one,” Hendricks muttered, still keeping his hand on the sword hilt. He saw Arch mirroring his movement in the seat next to him, but he said nothing.

  “Yeah, that one sounded real tough, that pickle Kitty Elizabeth put you in,” Guthrie opined. “Sit back and let her assemble the Rog’tausch, break cowboy into tiny, beef-jerky size pieces, or go against the edicts of royalty.”

  “In fairness, we didn’t know she was assembling the Rog’tausch until later,” Arch said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s because you’re all idiots,” Guthrie said casually. “Anyway. Tough call. Good work. Lovely resolution, what with her now having to masturbate and torture with only one hand. Happy endings all the way around.” He glanced back at Hendricks. “Maybe not for you, but everyone else … so happy.”

  “What happened to you?” Duncan said under his breath.

  “I fought for your pet cause and burned in hell for it,” Guthrie said, putting a little heat on it at the end then loosening right back up. “Next question?”

  “Why are you coming with us?” Arch asked, into the silence that was broken only by the sound of the highway.

  “Because there’s a Legion on the loose,” Guthrie said, “and I think we all know how Home Office feels about those. There are gonna be some really red faces over this, I’m telling you, and not just because demon skin tends to be more crimson than humans, either.” She readjusted herself in her seat. “Time to nip this problem right in the bud before word gets out.”

  “So you’re a company m—err, woman … now,” Arch said. “That the gist?”

  “That’s more than the gist,” Guthrie said, turning back and smiling sweetly. “That’s the whole enchilada, ballgame and all else. Don’t forget it, either.”

  “Or what?” Hendricks didn’t like it when people made demands. It tended to be the fastest way to piss him off.

  Guthrie just shrugged, no big deal. “We’re all a little too old for cheap threats, aren’t we?”

  “Nah,” Hendricks said, “sometimes it’s good to just get one out there, especially if it’s the real deal. That’d make it not cheap.”

  Guthrie just nodded. “Fine, then. Don’t forget it, or the weight of demon law will grind your fucking bones into dust.” She smiled. “That sound about right?”

  *

  Alison hadn’t even helped Brian into the emergency room when they’d gotten to the hospital. She’d let some orderlies know when they pulled up, and they’d come for him with a wheelchair, helped him out of the car and her mother had gone with him. Alison had held her tongue, gotten back behind the wheel and waited until they’d pulled him out, moaning quietly, and taken him away, before she dared look after him. Then she parked the car.

  She couldn’t help but resent him. He may not have been in charge of his own body when it happened, but her baby brother had pulled her dad’s gun and shot him, with his own damned hands. Demon in the driver’s seat? Yeah, she could buy that. But it still didn’t stop her from being pissed beyond belief and making him the target, at least for now, until she found a better one.

  Besides, it was better this way. Brian needed to be on the sidelines for a while, and this was just the ticket for that. He was sensitive and in pain, and the combination of the two of those things should keep him reeling, make him turtle up. That’d push him off the board, which was exactly where he needed to be with this Legion on the loose, trying to put them all in coffins.

  Alison covered the ground between the parking lot and the Red Cedar Emergency Room without even realizing she was doing it. She had dim flashes of following the glowing ER lights, of feeling the faint buzz of her cell phone ringing and ignoring it, of passing through the automatic open doors with a whoosh, and even of asking about her dad at the front desk and being told to go to the fourth floor.

  The elevator ride she remembered, if only for its clacking and disquieting hum. Red Cedar had been built somewhere around the turn of the 20th century, and its brick exterior was of that old style, the kind that inevitably carried a historical look to it. Alison liked that, normally, but she preferred it on buildings she could appreciate with a clear mind, and not ones she had to enter and navigate while wondering if her father was dead.

  When she came out on the fourth floor, the lady at the desk directed her to a waiting room. The whole place smelled sterile, like someone had just come through and mopped with a strong disinfectant, Pinesol on steroids with a limeade twist. She found herself sitting in an uncomfortably stiff chair a few minutes later without much recollection about how she got there, her arm having already developed a checkmark pattern from the cloth against her skin.

  “Have you heard anything yet?” Her mother came in soundlessly, not that Alison would have noticed in any case. She tried to recall the drive here from Midian, but that was all a blur of sunset fading into night.

  Alison stared at her, then shifted to look at the TV, which was playing a rerun of Friends with the sound off. Subtitles played across the bottom. “No, I haven’t heard a thing,” she said.

  “They’re working on Brian now,” Addy said, pouring herself into the chair beside Alison. “They say he’s going to be just fine, but he’s going to be walking with a limp for a little while. Maybe longer.” She was tense, high-strung, felt like a spring crammed into a confined space. Maybe like a gun spring, ready to burst out the moment it had a chance. Yeah, Alison liked that comparison. It felt right to her, not only about her mother but for herself as well.

  “Ali?” her mother asked, causing Alison to turn her head and look, almost as if commanded. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Alison stared at her blankly. “What is?”

  “About your brother.” Her mom was getting mad now, reddening in the face. “That he’s going to be fine.”

  “Magnificent news, yes,” Alison said, but she suspected she sold it about as well as a nun running a side business as a pimp.

  “Alison,” her mother said stiffly, “this was not your brother’s fault.”

  “He answered the door,” Alison said dully, perfectly happy to deliver that one with all the surly snottiness she was feeling toward Brian at the moment.

  “But he didn’t do any of those things after that. Surely you must realize—”

  “I realize my father had a giant hole in his head because Brian didn’t so much as think before opening the door,” Alison said, keeping her voice down. “That’s what I realize. If Daddy makes it through all this okay, we can talk about forgiveness.”

  “You would have done the same thing in his shoes,” Addy said. She was judging Alison, and Alison could tell. “You don’t just stop answering the door.”

  “In this town?” Alison asked. “Right now? Yeah, yeah, I just might make that a rule I followed, not answering the door.”

  “But it’s not this town, is it?” Addy said, lowering her voice and placing her hands in her lap, concentrating on them. Alison noticed the myriad wrinkles across her mother’s skin. “It’s Midian that’s in hell. It’s home. And it’s hard to shake off the sense of home, of safety, of being able to answer the door at midnight if someone comes calling, without being afraid they’re gonna murder you.”

  “I expect it’ll be a lot easier to shake that feeling off after today,” Alison said.

  “Good grief,” her mother said and rummaged through her purse, coming out with a tissue that she applied to her eyes, which were damp. “Good grief, yes, after today … I expect that’s so.”

  *

  Arch might not have ever been happier to get out
of a moving vehicle than he was when the town car pulled up to Red Cedar. The tension between Duncan and Guthrie had been palpable the last half hour of the ride, after Hendricks had provoked their little confrontation. Arch might have figured demons would have a better way of feuding than bitter silences and angry looks, but no, apparently not, because they both sat in silence and Duncan kept sending dirty looks toward Guthrie, who seemed pretty well indifferent.

  Arch stepped out into the night, the overhead lamps lighting the parking lot and filling the air with a quiet hum. The early autumn air was maddening, just cool enough to cause Arch’s skin to tingle after a moment’s exposure. He started to stalk toward the door, but a raised voice held him up.

  “Hey,” Hendricks said, rushing after him, “hold on.” Arch waited, and the cowboy came alongside a moment later, hat bobbing. “You can’t go into a hospital like that.”

  Arch looked down. He was still wearing his uniform. “Why not?”

  “Because you’ve got a sword on your belt,” Hendricks said, nodding his way down. “They tend to take that shit pretty seriously, hence the drover coat.” He spread his arms wide.

  “Well, shucks,” Arch said, looking down at his sword’s hilt. “What am I supposed to do with it?” He’d be danged if he was going to just leave it in the car. Their plan suggested they would need them, after all.

  “I’ll carry it for you, under my coat,” Hendricks said, waving him over. “That way we’ll have it on hand and it won’t draw as much suspicion.”

  “There’s nowhere you won’t look suspicious in that thing,” Duncan said helpfully from where he and Guthrie were lurking a few feet away.

  Arch ignored them and started to unfasten his belt so he could take the scabbard off. Guthrie made a catcall noise. “Just kidding,” she said, when he paused in unbuckling. “You know, I thought maybe I’d be more interested in the male form now that I’ve got a girl shell, but I still just don’t give a fuck about you peoples’ soft and squishy parts.”