Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Sometimes there just ain’t nothing else to say.” Alison rested her hands on her hips, frowning. “Why hasn’t this Legion made their move on us yet? We’re sitting ducks here.”

  “Hmm,” Hendricks said. “Might be they’re capturing fresh manpower. Last attack could have left them thin.”

  “Or maybe they went after the church after all,” Alison said. She had a fierce gaze, showing no sign of fatigue. Hendricks did not feel the same.

  “I suppose I could go check on the rest of the crew back at St. Brigid’s,” Hendricks said, yawning again.

  “Or just call them,” Arch said again, like he was ready to throw his hands up in the air.

  “That’s what I meant,” Hendricks said with a good-natured grin. “I’m not driving all the way back to the middle of nowhere right now.” He held up a hand to stifle another yawn. “I’d be a road hazard.”

  “As opposed to the ordinary kind you are the rest of the time,” Alison said. She didn’t smile this time, though, as Hendricks took Arch’s proffered cell phone and made to head outside, away from the signs that proclaimed, “NO CELL PHONES,” presumably because they made the waiting area an inhospitable environment or some such. Hendricks just didn’t understand that; it felt to him like if you were waiting for bad news, listening to some obnoxious jackass having a conversation in public might be a good distraction … But then again, it wasn’t like anything would have distracted him when he’d had one of these tragedies himself.

  *

  Braeden Tarley was not having the best of days. He was up to knuckles in grease again, and he’d had to wash his hands so many times already this morning that the Zep TKO dispenser was running low. Seemed like every five minutes Abi had some urgent need for him in the office. He didn’t let her step a single toe into the shop for safety reasons, so naturally he was obliged every single time she had an urgent “Daddy, I need you!” moment, to stop, wash his hands, dry them off, come inside, and try to ignore that his skin was raw and white with dryness even though that was typically a winter problem, not an autumn one.

  “Daddy!” Abi called again, pretty singsong. She was getting used to making that her clarion call, and Tracy wasn’t doing much to stop her. Tracy was a shit babysitter, and if Braeden hadn’t been paying her ten bucks an hour already, he might have cut her pay. There was definitely not going to be a raise this year, especially if he couldn’t get some engines serviced and fixed. He’d almost have wanted Haskins or Tucker to take over, but Tucker had the day off and Haskins had run to Chattanooga for parts. Which was a shame, because Abi loved both of them to pieces.

  “Baby doll,” Braeden called, glancing back to make sure she was hovering at the entry to the garage and hadn’t crossed that line out of the office. If she had, he’d be obliged to shoo her back, forcing him to halt his work again and putting him even further behind. “Daddy’s gotta work, sweetie.”

  “But Daddy,” she said, and by her tone he knew that whatever she had for him, it was clearly the most important thing in the universe right this minute, “I need to tell you something.”

  Braeden had heard this particular song before. The last thing she’d needed to tell him was a pretty long-winded explanation about how she’d drawn a caterpillar while Tracy watched and answered the phones, nodding along with insufficient enthusiasm. This Braeden couldn’t fault her for; there was only so long he could handle these moments of inane babble before he tuned out, too, no matter how hard he pinched himself trying to pay attention. “I’m sure you do,” Braeden said, “but it’s gonna have to wait an hour until lunch.” He worked the wrench, then realized he had lost focus and was turning it the wrong way. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath, barely keeping it from sailing out at full volume.

  “But Daddyyyyy!” The sound of a four year-old with utter disbelief echoed in the garage. He glanced back again to make sure she hadn’t crossed into the garage. “That’s so long!” She had her little mouth slightly open and was playing with one of her pigtails that he’d styled for her before they left the house. He’d packed them both lunches, peanut butter and jelly for her, bologna and mayo and mustard for him, with some chips and dill pickle slices. She liked to take a bite of the pickle and then wrinkle her nose up at the sour taste. “That’s forever.”

  “It’s actually an hour,” Braeden said, going literal on her. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope it would persuade her, but then, her attention was flagging harder by the minute. He suspected she’d about run out of things to do in the office, and he was starting to lose faith in Tracy’s watchful eye, damn her. It wasn’t like the phone was ringing off the hook or they had scads of paperwork that needed doing.

  Abi stomped away, and Braeden chortled to himself very quietly at the sound. Hell had no fury like the pouting of a four-year-old. He couldn’t even help himself sometimes, because she looked so darned cute when she got mad. She was the miniature version of Jennifer.

  “Well, hello there,” came a drawling voice from just outside the garage door. Braeden looked around the truck to see County Administrator Pike smiling, silhouetted in the bright sunlight from outside.

  “Got another petition for me to sign?” Braeden asked, peering into the sunny day.

  “Nah, no petition this time,” Pike said, grinning as he stepped into the garage. “Some good news, though. We got enough signatures to start the recall process, and I got a judge to issue a temporary restraining order that pulled Sheriff Reeve right out of office until the election decides things.” He sidled on up, walking along the side of the red diesel truck that Braeden was working on. “I reckon it’s not gonna be pretty, but for now Ed Fries is sheriff, and he’s working real hard on restoring order, getting things back to normal. Which is the reason I came here to talk with you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Braeden stopped and set aside his wrench.

  “I expect you’ve probably noticed it’s Halloween.” Pike ran a hand along the dusty cab of the truck, pulling it up to look at his palm. He didn’t evince any sign of distaste at the fact he’d been dirtied, just a quick shrug as he brushed it off on his jeans.

  “That hasn’t escaped my notice, no.” Braeden waited for him to come around to the point. The fact Reeve had actually been yanked out of office didn’t make Braeden feel any safer, strangely. He figured he’d have been ecstatic about it, but he was definitely muted. If it paved the way for this crime wave to end, though, he was all for it.

  “I know people are pretty tentative right now,” Pike said, his grin fading away like it had never been there. “Hell, I don’t blame ’em. But if we’re gonna start rebuilding Midian, making people feel safe again, we need to come together. Really draw a line against the darkness. So …” He pulled out a piece of paper from his back pocket, smudging it with his dirty hand. “I’m circulating these around, trying to drum up support of a different kind than I was yesterday. Yesterday was about pulling out the infection. This is about stitching up the wound and letting the healing begin.”

  Braeden peered at the page in Pike’s hand. He couldn’t see it terribly well until the Administrator took another few steps closer, and then he saw emblazoned across the top, “Midian Halloween Party—Bring your kids to a safe trick or treat experience!” It had a little pumpkin graphic right in the middle of the flyer. “The hell?” Braeden muttered.

  “I figured trick or treat this year couldn’t run like it has in years past,” Pike said, now starting to smile a little more, sort of warmly. “People are scared. The idea of putting their kids at risk is a bridge too far for most of us. But let’s face, all this shit that’s happened, it’s all been in the shadows. Well, I figure we put this front and center, hold it out on the town square, make sure all our adults are there, the new sheriff’s gonna be there, we all turn out in force. Make a stand. Show up as a community, shine our light kinda thing.”

  Braeden stared at the paper, feeling a little churning in his stomach. Pike was right; all the bad shit happening in Midian seemed to be goi
ng on in the shadows, in the quiet. People getting run over in the streets while no one else was around, people getting murdered in their homes in the dead of the night when no one heard it. Hell, even that mess where the east side of town got torn up, no one seemed to have seen exactly what was happening.

  “In a time like this,” Pike said, real quiet and solemn, “our kids need to feel … comforted … by the routine little things we take for granted, you know? We all know what’s been going on, and hell, most of us adults are scared. It’s natural for that to trickle right on down, until everyone from young to old is petrified. But these people doing this shit to Midian … they’re just hiding. They ain’t got the balls to come out and show their faces, which is why Reeve could say it was demons, or boogeymen, or the monster under the bed, because no one could argue it. But if we all show up, and we do this, and we make our stand and link arms, give our kids a sense of feeling safe, of the normal routine of life going on again …” He shrugged. “Well, I reckon it might be a good turning point, a chance to unite us all again on the same goal—bringing Midian back from the scary-ass brink.”

  Braeden looked around. The thought of doing something as touchy feely as this might not have appealed to the younger him, but damn if it didn’t sound good to the man who dreaded telling Abi that trick or treating wasn’t going to happen. Everything Pike said was true, and if they could get fifty or a hundred people all together in the town square to hold hands and sing “Kumbayah,” well, that wasn’t exactly Braeden’s scene, but he’d do it if it meant Abi could get a little candy and he could feel a little normal in his hometown again.

  “So, whaddya say?” Pike asked, his Yankee accent bleeding through. He was back to grinning, but it wasn’t a cocky sort of grin, more like one trying to corral Braeden into making the right choice.

  “Hell, we’ll be there,” Braeden said. “With bells on.” And a .38 snubby he kept in the top of his closet, too, but he didn’t need to share that part, even if it made him feel a hell of a lot better. This was Tennessee, after all, and he doubted he’d be the only parent to show up armed to this shindig.

  “Damned good,” Pike said, nodding his head. “I think we’ll have a real good turnout for this.” He sauntered over to the toolbox where Braeden had set his wrench, opened a drawer, sliding the flyer in and then shutting it so it wouldn’t blow away in a breeze. “We’ll look forward to seeing you then. What’s your daughter coming dressed as?”

  “She’s a princess,” Braeden said, and he couldn’t help but smile a little, too. Now he wouldn’t have to watch Abi’s face fall, or deal with the tantrum from missing trick or treating. And he could feel good about it in the process. That was all win to him.

  “Aren’t they all?” Pike asked with a wide grin, as he started to head for the exit. “We’ll see you tonight.”

  *

  Lauren woke up staring at the wooden beams of a church, her back aching, and for a moment she wondered where she was, and then where Molly was. The answers to both questions came back to her a second later and she wished they hadn’t. The old smell of the church had settled over her, the stink of hymnal and Bible pages with their oniony thin paper a poor substitute for the scent of baking biscuits as her mother cooked breakfast.

  Then she remembered what happened to her mother, and the appeal of breakfast in any form fled just as quickly.

  Lauren sat up, got the head rush from doing it too fast, and held her skull as she steeped in the shit that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. How the hell could everything have gone bad so quickly?

  She heard quiet voices behind her and turned her head, trying her best to ignore her cobbled-together clothing. There was bright sunlight streaming in from the stained glass windows, including the broken one, but it looked to her like the sun itself was way, way overhead by now, and it was chilly enough in the church that she shivered, and probably not from her memories.

  She looked toward the narthex to see Father Nguyen standing there, looking a little disheveled, Sheriff Reeve sprawled out on a folding chair, his neck cricked back and his mouth open, gentle snores coming out of his mouth every few seconds. It wasn’t loud, more of a quiet gurgling that told her he was alive even though he was in a position that seemed utterly impossible for sleeping. He was also wearing the most ridiculous attire, old man clothes with corduroys and a cross-striped shirt. The only thing missing was suspenders to complete the getup.

  “Finally, the princess awakens,” came that hard British accent as the demon hunter, Lonsdale, sat down in the pew in front of her.

  “God, I hope you’re calling yourself the princess and not me,” Lauren said, massaging her neck. Just looking at Reeve made hers hurt all the worse.

  Lonsdale’s eyebrows soared and he made an O with his mouth in amusement. “Feisty, too, aren’t you?”

  She gave him the stupid look so she didn’t have to say anything. It felt better than mincing words with this moron. “You’re bored, aren’t you?”

  “Well, everything seems a bit of comedown after having your brain possessed by demons twice in one day,” Lonsdale said.

  Lauren stared at him for only a beat before turning back around to look at Father Nguyen. He was talking to someone it took her a second to recognize, but when she did, Lauren came to her feet and found herself carried over to the front door, watching the conversation happening in the narthex with rapidly growing astonishment.

  “I’ll just sit here alone, then,” Lonsdale called after her. “Maybe find something to entertain myself with. Do some drawing on the back of these offertory envelopes, perhaps.”

  Lauren didn’t respond. She passed Reeve and brushed him, stirring the sheriff out of sleep with a gasp and a groan as he apparently realized he was in pain. The folding chair squeaked under him as he readjusted himself, his moan and that of the metal reaching some sort of harmony. “What the …?”

  She nudged him and pointed at the conversation going on not ten feet away, not daring to speak yet. She was still a little stunned at what she was seeing.

  Melina Cherry was talking quietly with Father Nguyen, their heads close together, the priest listening to something she was saying just above a whisper, and nodding along as she spoke.

  “Well, this explains why he favors her above Protestants,” Reeve said, getting out of his chair. His entire body sounded like it was crackling as he did it, popping with enough volume that Lauren looked at him in involuntary alarm even though she knew full well that it was just air leaving his joints. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Oh, hello,” Father Nguyen said, either tipped off they were watching by the loudness of their conversation or Reeve’s joints, she couldn’t be sure which. “Melina here was just telling me the scuttlebutt around town.”

  “Never would have figured you for the gossiping type,” Lauren said.

  Nguyen reddened slightly. “I hear all manner of things in the confessional, but this is, perhaps, a bit different.” He indicated the madam with a wave of his hand. “In this case, Melina came to tell me about what’s being said around town regarding the sheriff’s house burning down and your, uh …” He looked right at Lauren. “Well, the incident at your home.”

  Lauren’s stomach did the plunge from the top of the Empire State Building, no elevator. Of course they were gossiping about it in Midian. Why wouldn’t they be? “What are they saying?”

  Melina Cherry apparently decided to speak for herself. “Well, the sheriff,” she directed a muted smile toward Reeve, “is probably under investigation, but who can say? The deputy in charge now—”

  “Ed Fries,” Reeve said, interjecting that without much in the way of feeling.

  Melina Cherry rolled her eyes and made a scornful noise. “A preposterous man. Everyone seems to think you are under investigation for the murder of your wife and for your house burning down.”

  Reeve looked about half-stunned, in Lauren’s estimation, like maybe he’d seen this coming but couldn’t fully dodge or digest it. “
That about figures,” was all he said, and he looked chalky white.

  “No one seems to know what happened at your house,” Melina Cherry said, and it surprised Lauren how much discretion the madam spoke with. It probably shouldn’t have, since on a daily basis she dealt with matters Lauren wouldn’t have felt comfortable broaching even in the context of a doctor/patient relationship. “Other than that Albert Daniel was shot on your lawn, and your neighbors tell some … very confusing stories. At least they’re confusing to those who don’t believe in demons as an explanation.”

  “Well,” Reeve said, still looking pretty grey, “demons are the only explanation that makes sense. Wish everyone else would just get on that page already.”

  “You can’t blame them for not coming around so quickly,” Melina Cherry said with an impressive amount of dignity. She was wearing a coat that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any soccer mom in town, though her jeans were kinda tight and she was wearing some fabulous open-toed shoes that caught Lauren’s eye for a second before she snapped back to the reality at hand. “You ask them to change their view of all reality in less than a week, darling. The thought of demons makes people feel … out of control of their lives. Everyone’s live are out of their control to a certain extent, but the illusion is what makes it bearable. You ask them to give all that illusion up, and of course they fight to keep it, like having a tug of war over sheets.” She smiled, but there was a hollow look in her eyes that slipped out for a second. Lauren caught it and wondered if anyone else did.

  “I don’t blame ’em, but it’s not doing us any favors having people think we’re responsible for this shit,” Reeve said, and he sounded like he’d been woken squarely in the middle of the nap, even though a minute ago he’d been a lot more energetic. “And now we’re probably being thought of as murderers.”