Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Our parts aren’t soft and squishy,” Hendricks said. “They’re hard and—”

  “I was talking about your brain, numbnuts,” Guthrie fired back before Hendricks even finished. “Not your throbbing micropenis, which I’m sure is nature’s way of overcompensating for your breathtaking desire to leap into idiotic action without so much as a single forethought.”

  Hendricks took Arch’s sword sourly, still staring sullenly at Guthrie. “You don’t know me, OOC.”

  “Sure I do,” Guthrie piped up. “We got to see footage of Kitty Elizabeth’s party down in the pits. It was kind of like showing a starving man one of those gourmet cooking shows. Admittedly, they cut away after the part where you charged into a room that was supposed to have eight or so demon guards in it, along with royalty, but not before we got to watch you get clocked from behind by Kitty’s butler and then pulped a little by her.” Guthrie didn’t smirk. “So … how does demon royalty taste, exactly? I’m guessing you found out, and I’m guessing the answer was ‘sulfuric.’”

  Hendricks paled under the parking lot lamps. “Congrats. You got to see me at one of the lowest points of my life, and now you get to deliver commentary on it. Kudos to you, OOC.”

  “It’s all right, kid,” Guthrie said, wheeling away from him, “whatever she did to you, I assure you that after our little watch break, they did ten times worse to us.” She almost sounded like less of a dick there.

  “What’s the plan?” Duncan asked, a little more muted than before as Arch started back toward the hospital entry. He checked to make sure Hendricks was following behind, and he was, but he was lagging a bit.

  “You two on perimeter, if you can stand being around each other,” Arch said, nodding at Duncan and Guthrie.

  “We can stand each other a lot better than the cowboy can probably stand me at the moment,” Guthrie said. “If shit goes down out here, we’re not likely to have time to call you on the phone, so better just be listening for a scream.”

  “Are we likely to hear a scream from inside?” Arch asked.

  “You’ll hear it if we do it,” Duncan said, exchanging a look with Guthrie, who nodded. “We can make ourselves heard in a crunch.”

  “All right, then,” Arch said, and headed through the emergency room doors, Hendricks a few steps behind, holding his coat close against him like he was warding off the cold night.

  *

  Reeve was sitting in front of the door, waiting in case this Legion decided to pay another, stronger visit to St. Brigid’s. Part of him hoped they would, because he had a debt to repay to those fuckers, and there was a sharp pain in his belly that made him want to get right to settling that account. It had been all quiet so far, though, and so he’d just been stuck sitting in front of the door, stewing in his juices, listening to the baptismal font built into the floor make its burbling noises.

  Father Nguyen came by again, on his umpteenth lap around the church. He was chanting and had some kind of incense burner on a long brass chain. He was saying something in a language Reeve had no clue about, and he shrugged it off as Nguyen continued to walk past, eyes nearly closed, speaking softly. Somewhere across the church, Lonsdale cleared his throat loudly enough to annoy Reeve, not that it would take much from that asshole.

  “I’m sorry about Donna.” Lauren Darlington’s voice came from behind him, prompting Reeve to take his eyes off the doors for the first time in an hour and look back to the dark-haired doctor. She came up behind him and stopped a few steps off, her arms folded, her face as tired as he’d ever seen it. She was wearing some pretty mismatched clothes, and there was dried blood in specks all over her. Part of him wanted to do the sheriff thing and investigate the obvious crime, but he knew damned well he wasn’t sheriff anymore, and he knew who was responsible for the crime and what had happened. She lingered at his shoulder, quiet, but only for a few seconds. “We got hit the hardest.”

  “Ayup,” Reeve said. What was there to disagree with? “I’m sorry about your mother, and Molly. She was a good girl.”

  “Is,” Darlington said in a near-whisper.

  “Of course,” Reeve said. “I’m sorry.”

  “They still got her.” Darlington eased around him and pulled out a metal folding chair with a cloth padded seat. She sat down, and it squealed against the tile floor of the church. “Your kids all moved away, didn’t they?”

  That had been a particularly unpleasant fact for Reeve for a long time, like a piece of chicken bone stuck in your throat. Now, suddenly, with Midian all gone to hell, he felt lucky his kids had moved away. “Yeah, they did. Still come to visit on holidays, though I think I’ll wave ’em off this year if hell hasn’t left by Thanksgiving.”

  “Why do you think they hit us the hardest?” Darlington asked, her face china white, her dark hair hanging in stringy ringlets. He’d never seen the doctor this taken apart, not just in terms of how she looked but how he suspected she was doing inside. “You and me, I mean. We lost more than—”

  “We don’t know if Bill Longholt is gonna live,” Reeve said. “That’d be a … a sizable blow to that family if he dies, especially if Ed decides to go after Brian for his murder once this all settles out.”

  “You really think he will?”

  “I would, if I were him,” Reeve said. He left out the part where he suspected Ed would be coming after both of them as well. Well, maybe not the doctor. Ed always did have a soft spot for a pretty lady. Reeve frowned at her. Well, they’d get her cleaned up before she talked to Fries, and everything would be just fine for her, at least. Maybe.

  “Still,” she said, “they didn’t go after Hendricks or Arch like that. Just us.”

  “They mighta gone harder after Arch if Brian hadn’t gotten taken out pretty quick,” Reeve said. “Mighta had Alison kill herself in front of him, since that sounds like something they enjoy.” It was a gruesome thing, what these bastards did. He kept seeing Donna, over and over, on fire, her eyes aglow with demon hate up until they slid that sword right into her and made her human again. It killed that demon in the process, and they knew it was coming, but they hated him so much that they did it anyway, the ultimate act of spite. “And Hendricks … hell, he ain’t got much else to lose, I suppose.” Reeve straightened a little. “Maybe Erin, come to it, though they been strained lately.” He shook his head. “No, I think they intended to hit the whole watch that hard. They maybe only just succeeded so well with us.”

  “What’s the difference?” The doctor stretched, uncomfortably, straightening her back in the chair. “I mean, really, when it comes down to it. They might have tried with all of us, but you and I ended up getting it the worst.”

  “Yeah,” Reeve said, “but the difference is … the next time? They probably won’t back off it until they hurt the rest of them just as bad.” He looked right at Darlington and saw the horror in her eyes as that one sank in.

  *

  “Arch!” Alison’s mother bounded up from where she was sitting in the waiting room, practically running across the space between them to hug Arch hard around the neck. Alison watched with detached disinterest, feeling a vague relief that her husband was present and that still-nagging feeling that he was too late because they still hadn’t heard anything, and no news, in this case, was awful news.

  “Ma’am,” Arch said, Hendricks trailing a little behind him, coat all buttoned up and snugged, lurking behind like the world’s most conspicuous shadow. He looked suspicious as hell, like he was all set to open his coat to reveal himself wearing nothing beneath. She had a vision of him waggling his penis at some poor, unsuspecting old lady, and it almost caused her to giggle.

  Alison picked herself up, the cloth pattern of the chair just about etched into her arm at this point, and made her way slowly over to Arch. He looked at her tentatively, like she might break, and she gave him a big hug as her mother made way, thank the Lord. “Hey, Arch,” she said, burying her head into her husband’s shoulder.

  “Hey, honey,” Arch sai
d, quiet and reassuring, perfect timbre and warmth, like he almost always was with her. “How you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, and she knew he got what she was saying with that: I’m as okay as I can possibly be given the shit going on.

  She held him there tight for a few seconds longer than necessary, then broke. “What’s the word?” She kept her tone level, but she needed to know why he was here, because she wasn’t expecting to see him, and certainly not with Hendricks following behind.

  “The word is that these demons are madder than a nest of ticked-off hornets,” Arch said with his usual gift for cleanly phrased understatement. “We think they’re going to try and hit y’all here.”

  Alison frowned. “Really?”

  “Can you think of a better place to strike?” Hendricks asked, easing up next to her mother, who gave him a frowning once over. “St. Brigid’s is all locked down by now, the father is doing something to it to keep the demons out.”

  “But this isn’t in the hotspot,” Addy said, like she was repeating the rules for proper etiquette.

  “This demon doesn’t seem to give a fuck,” Hendricks said in his usual crass way. It didn’t bother her at all, but Arch cringed. “He wants to put a spike in all our asses, and he’s doing a mighty fine job so far.”

  “We came down here to protect you,” Arch said, a little more reassuring.

  “And to use you as bait,” Hendricks said, causing Arch to twitch.

  “Might want to check on Brian, then, Hendricks,” Alison said, looking past Arch to tell him.

  Hendricks didn’t look enthused and said so. “I can think of some things I’d rather do, like put my junk in an electrical socket.”

  “There’s one right over there,” she pointed to the corner, “and it looks like all you need to do is just spring your coat open and you’ll be all set.”

  He looked down at himself. “What are you saying?” He asked it a second before he caught it for himself.

  “That you look like a pervert about to expose yourself,” Alison said, “so why don’t you go do that to Brian, who will surely appreciate it more than any of the rest of us?”

  Hendricks gave her the smirk. “All right, then,” and started to saunter off.

  “I’m going to go with him,” Addy said, rubbing a hand over Alison’s arm. She was all covered in blood, and when her mom’s hand came away, it was tinged with crusty red at the tips of her fingers. Addy looked down at it in disgust, her faint smile disappearing quickly as she realized it belonged to either her husband or her son. She meandered off after Hendricks, still staring at her fingers.

  “You want to sit?” Arch asked, gesturing to the chairs where he’d found her when he came in.

  “I’ve been sitting for hours,” Alison said, “but … yeah, weirdly enough. I do.” They wandered over and sat down, both of them walking like old people.

  “Lerner’s back,” Arch said, which was a jarring piece of news that had Alison sit up and take interest.

  “Is he?”

  “Doesn’t look the same, in that he’s a young black lady now,” Arch said, “but indeed, Lerner has rejoined us—in a way.”

  “In what way would that be?”

  “In a different form and with a slightly different disposition.” Arch was bullshitting her and she knew it.

  “Something’s wrong with him that you’re not saying.”

  “He’s different, that’s all.” Arch hesitated, then it came out. “A mite more hostile. It appears going through hell might have changed him slightly.”

  “If he came back a black lady, I’d say it did, yeah.”

  “Personality is different, too. He was always a bit of a peckerwood who liked to cause a ruckus, but now she’s flat out cold. Duncan suggested she was excessively brutal to the possessed when they got attacked.”

  “You could have been a touch more brutal when Daddy got attacked and I would have been fine with it,” Alison said, surly as she thought about her brother. “I don’t reckon I can fault Lerner for that without tarring myself at the same time.”

  “I suppose,” Arch said and got quiet again. “Erin got possessed. Dr. Darlington’s daughter, too. This demon has ’em both now, and he killed Donna Reeve and Darlington’s momma.”

  “Shit,” Alison said quietly.

  “I was thinking something along those lines myself.”

  She leaned across the arm of the chair to rest her head on his shoulder. It was awkward and a little painful and worth it for the small measure of comfort it gave her. “So the demons are gonna come here?”

  “Stands to reason, since they’re all-fired mad at us. Duncan and New Lerner are outside.”

  Alison wrinkled her nose as she frowned. “They had no cause to be mad with Erin or Darlington, or even Duncan. None of them were there when we killed that possession demon.”

  “Seems they’re mad at the watch as a whole entity, then,” Arch said, explaining it away.

  Something about that didn’t sit right with Alison, either. “Blaming us all and killing the ones we love … and not holding it to just the ones directly responsible.” She shook her head. That was crazy, and she couldn’t quite get her head around it. But it was demons, so she really didn’t have to. She felt reassuringly for the holy knife on her belt under her coat nonetheless, though, and gave it a reassuring touch as she laid there with her head on Arch’s shoulder and hoped she’d hear something soon that was not just the beat of her husband’s heart.

  *

  “Goddamn,” Brian said after Hendricks had run through it all for him. He didn’t feel any better knowing he’d not been the only one snookered, not at all, strangely. “They donkey punched us good, didn’t they?”

  “What’s a donkey punch?” Addy asked.

  “Yeah, they slipped it in the backdoor hard without even a courtesy finger first,” Hendricks agreed. The cowboy was a profane motherfucker, and really, that was just about the only thing Brian liked about him. “But now we know their game.”

  “Uh, their game?” Brian asked. His leg was bandaged like crazy and he was resting in a bed behind a curtain in the ER at Red Cedar, waiting for them to admit him. “Their game appears to be bowling, and we’re the tenpins.”

  “Yeah, and once you know that, you can start dodging the ball and knocking it into the gutter,” Hendricks said. “And I don’t know about you, but I want to knock their fucking balls in the gutter.”

  “Oh, goodness,” Addy said with a noise of distaste.

  Brian gave that a thought. “Yeah, maybe. Seems weird that they came after me and shot my dad, though, doesn’t it? I mean, he was only at your second showdown with them, right at the end. And none of this Legion got out alive with a look at him, did they?”

  “They’re coming at the whole watch,” Hendricks said. Brian cringed. He hated calling it ‘the watch.’ It was so melodramatic, and it reminded him of Christopher Walken’s speech from Pulp Fiction. “They took our hits personally and responded in kind. Not that hard to understand if you’ve got a little bit of a head for vengeance.” Brian caught the implication, dripping with scorn, that apparently he was too soft to understand wanting revenge.

  “Yeah, I get reciprocity,” Brian said, “but … this is like … widespread. You’d think this demon would have gone a little tighter focused with his anger. Do more damage that way, right? Like, a, uhh …”

  “A rifle versus a shotgun?” Hendricks asked, arms folded, unimpressed.

  “Yeah, like that.” Brian gave a little ground on that one, hoping the cowboy would take his point.

  “Demons are demons,” Hendricks said, “and they’re usually not the smartest.”

  “This isn’t just one demon, though.” Brian gnawed at his lip. They’d given him painkillers, and the knee was down to a dull ache now with the occasional sharp pain when he moved it. He’d be on crutches for a while, but it wasn’t hellacious right now. “This is a whole society of demons, all in one body. That would suggest there�
�d be some intelligences in there, even if the median was—”

  “Yeah, well, anyway,” Hendricks said and turned away from him, heading for the curtain that marked off Brian’s little space in the ER. “I’ll check on you again in a little while.” He pushed aside the curtain without much in the way of grace and was gone.

  Brian stared after him for a second then just let his head sag back on his pillow. “Nobody listened to me before,” he said to his mother, “and I suspect it’s only going to be worse now.”

  “Well, darling,” his mother said, “maybe it’s the way you go about it.”

  Brian had heard that so many times that it surprised him how much it stung. Even through the painkillers, he felt tears threaten to spring up in his eyes. “Why don’t you go check on Dad?” He tried to look strong for her. “Let me know … how it goes.”

  She smiled faintly at him and gave his hand a squeeze, then left him there among the tangled, cheap sheets, carefully pulling the curtain closed behind him. Brian just sat there alone, under the bright fluorescent lights, thinking about what had happened today, and wondering if there was any way at all he’d be able to fix it … or at least do something, anything to make him hate himself less than everybody else did.

  9.

  “Daddy Daddy Daddy!” The guided missile that was Abilene Tarley came soaring into his bed at a little after six, thumping hard right on his belly and just barely missing Braeden’s groin. He made an involuntarily “oof!” sound as he was ripped out of a pleasant dream involving a pretty girl who was much, much older than the one that had just cannonballed him into wakefulness.

  “Ohhhhh,” Braeden moaned, turning sideways to hide his mammoth erection as his daughter wiggled across his chest. The dream had been oh-so-pleasant, too, and seemed to be heading somewhere that Braeden hadn’t been in entirely too long. Abi’s little bombing was letting the air out of that balloon, though, and quickly, he hoped, because it was uncomfortably awkward for her to be snaking her way across his chest right now. “Yes, my dear?”