Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Daddy!” Abi said, starting to show impatience. Braeden was feeling a little cool himself, and did wonder just a little when this party was getting started. He reached down to check his cell phone and frowned. They were running about three minutes late, which probably wasn’t much to a county employee, but was about six seconds short of infinity to the parent of a four-year-old.

  “I know, baby,” Braeden said, trying to reassure her. She was tugging on his hand hard, like it was a leash and she was ready to run. She did that sometimes, wanting to break free, and he was tempted to let her go here, let her run a little bit. He knew all the faces he was seeing, after all, but there was just that little bit of nagging residual fear that kept him holding her tight, even though their hands were starting to get slippery from sweating together. “Soon, I think. Just a couple more minutes.”

  Abi let out a puff of disappointment, then started leaning hard, pulling on his hand and putting her weight against it, using him to keep herself from falling as she started walking at a 45-degree angle. She giggled and went in a little circle around him, pumpkin dragging the green grass beneath their feet as his daughter entertained herself in the only way she had available to her.

  *

  Chester was watching it all unfold, waiting, feeling the moment draw near. He had seen the sheriff, Reeve, enter from down the street to his left, had watched him come through with some of his associates, including the doctor. Then from his right had come the others—Deputy Stan, his bride Alison, the man in the black cowboy hat and coat, and two OOCs.

  Chester hadn’t been sure any of them would show up, since he knew the sheriff had been cast out of his job in disgrace and the others had been swept out of town in the aftermath of the last attack. But he considered this a fortunate happening; he’d meant for them all to find out about this later, thinking the agony would be sweet, that he could watch from the eyes of someone innocently delivering the message to them all, that perhaps even he himself would deign to leave this body to tell them—and then, perhaps, kill them all. Or let them live with the knowledge, because that would be a reward of its own.

  This, though, was even better.

  He counted their numbers and knew he had them beaten before this particular game even began. Even if they stopped him, there was no possible way for them to escape this without horrible cost. Chester had been around for too long, had seen too much, and had too many bodies at his own disposal, united against these little people, wandering in their own directions.

  His army was not so divided, not encumbered by their own thoughts and worries and agendas; in this, they were united, and their union was driven by a single purpose.

  “CRY HAVOC!” Chester shouted, repeating one of William’s favorite lines of Shakespeare at the top of his lungs. The crowd noise died for only a moment as his voice rang out, signaling the start of this battle he had planned carefully—and the end of all things for so many people standing around him even now, basking in the light of hope that he was about to snatch away with their lives.

  11.

  “Shitballs,” Reeve said as the voice echoed across the square, loud as though it had come out of a speaker mounted on the monument. He knew a sign when he heard one bellowed out, and this was sure to be the thing to kick it all off. He waited, frozen, having just nicked Pete Walker in the left buttcheek with his sword tip and watched the man grunt and fall from the poke, sulfur smell kicking up like someone had farted rotten eggs.

  It didn’t take but a second for Pete Walker’s grunt of pain to get drowned out by things in the square going ape shit. Lauren Darlington belted past, nearly knocking over Casey as she made for the center of the square, and a half second after that, her little blitz looked tea party social compared to the chaos that broke out in the square.

  *

  The crowd noise was the first thing that tipped Alison to all hell breaking loose, at least after that fucking voice yelled, “CRY HAVOC!” from somewhere to her left. She was right behind Duncan and didn’t spare a moment in pulling her knife, because she was pretty sure this party was starting in earnest. She wasn’t disappointed a second later, either, when Duncan deployed his baton right into Max Thomas’s face, breaking his nose and exiling a demon all in one shot.

  “Fucking shit!” Alison yelled as two kids screamed next to her. The crowd started pushing as awareness started rippling through that things were not as they were supposed to be, and that gut-check tension was about enough to drown out her panic as a torrent of it rose around her and the first screams reached her ears.

  *

  Lauren made it about twenty feet from Molly before damnation came raining down around the square. She’d heard the voice and ignored it, her attention on one thing and one thing only: her daughter. She’d knocked people out of the way without apology, linebackered through a twenty-something man that had wandered into her path at the last second, not giving two shits that she sent him sprawling, and had vaulted over a toddler, barely escaping knocking the kid down on the hard concrete edge of the square’s curb. If the kid’s parent was upset about her cavalier disregard for personal safety, they didn’t manage to get their protest out before the screaming drowned out any chance of conversational argument.

  Here on the grass in the middle of the square, where the monument stood in the center of a nice X of concrete sidewalks that led from each of the four corners to the middle, was where the crowd was densest. There were a damned lot of people standing on the roads that lined all four sides of the square, but here was where the speechifying was supposed to happen, where the sheep had come for the feeding … where the slaughter would take place.

  The damnedest thing of all was that Lauren knew that an event like this was exactly what Midian had needed to get off its damned back, and yet here they were, about to get their fucking heads driven right into the concrete without mercy.

  She didn’t bother shouting to people to get out of the way. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway because the Legion was here in however many numbers they had, and people were here with an ungodly number of kids in tow, and the fear was spreading even though Lauren hadn’t seen one act of violence yet that hadn’t been perpetrated by her during her run.

  All she could think about was getting to Molly, about stopping Molly before it could begin, about pricking her before these goddamned demons could do another thing with her body that she’d regret later. They may have gotten her mother and used Molly to do it, but she’d be damned if they were gonna—

  Lauren locked eyes with Molly as she got to within twenty feet. A guy knocked Lauren back a step as he stumbled into her path. He hit her in the arm with his shoulder and she felt a shock of numbness roll down it; he’d hit her perfectly in the nerve, knocked her off balance a step, and she lurched, equilibrium destroyed as she stumbled to try and keep on her feet. She teetered, losing sight of Molly, and then caught herself and came back down, drawing the bright yellow holy water pistol in her left hand and skipping the letter opener because she couldn’t feel her right one.

  Someone pressed against her on the side, pushing slightly, from knee to thigh, and she suspected it was a kid but she didn’t look down to be sure, because her gaze fell on Molly again, and she stopped in shock as she saw the start of the things she’d dreaded.

  The things she’d come here to stop.

  The thing she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to see again.

  Molly’s lips and chin were red with blood, and there was a raven-haired teenager with long black eyelashes and glitter sparkles all done up on the sides of her cheeks, clenched in Molly’s hands, her neck tilted and open, crimson squirting from where her daughter—no, a demon, goddammit—had done incredible damage to tissue and artery and—

  “Oh, God,” Lauren whispered as Molly came in for another bite. No gun, no knives, just demon strength given to a human mandible. The world turned red around her as Lauren focused on her daughter, the demon, and the hell she was unleashing.

  *

 
; Hendricks was about thirty feet from Erin when she grabbed hold of a guy in his fifties that was standing next to her and just ripped his head off with her bare hands, the sound of skin and muscle and veins tearing lost to the first screams of the crowd. He saw red blossom all over in front of him in the growing dusk, lit by the lamps that colored the square. He ignored all of it in his peripheral vision, though, all except for one about three feet to his left, and he threw his sword out almost blindly and was rewarded with a guttural sound that he barely heard and the smell of sulfur that came in hard over the smell of accumulated humanity that surrounded him.

  Erin tossed the head without sentiment or even waiting a second to hold it aloft like a conqueror in a movie, just chucked it and then grabbed a blond lady who was stumbling away from her. Hendricks didn’t get a real clear look at the woman before Erin threw her bodily through the air and she smashed into the stone obelisk that stood in the middle of the square. Hendricks suspected there was a sickening sound as pliable skull met unyielding rock, but he couldn’t hear a bit of it over the chaos. He did, however, see the woman’s body bend unnaturally, her yoga pants accelerating up into her jacket as her bones all lost their fight to stay in their proper places. It was just about as gross a display of demon strength as he could recall seeing, watching that woman disintegrate against the monument in the square like an Empire State Building jumper. He forced himself to ignore the sick feeling it produced in him and fought on, trying to get through the crowd to stop Erin, even as he watched her tear through her next victim’s chest like she was cracking open a watermelon on the Fourth of July.

  *

  Braeden’s whole body froze in panic when things started to go wrong. He heard the shout, then the screams, then the shoving started, and he jerked Abi’s hand to drag her back to him so fast he didn’t even think about how it might hurt her. She squealed but he pulled her to him, unresisting, and folded her against his leg as a whole buffet of crazy opened up around him.

  Hugo Barclay, a guy Braeden knew from the automotive department at Wal-Mart, came lurching along with his mouth open, Kool-Aid red smeared all around like he was dressed to be a vampire, except he was just wearing his jeans and work vest. Braeden watched Hugo grab Ellie Larson from behind and just sink his teeth right into her there in front of him. Braeden heard a faint scream and couldn’t figure out whether it was someone else or Abi. His brain tried to put what he was seeing together, like pieces from twelve different puzzles that weren’t fitting together. First he figured it was a makeup display, something right in line with the spirit of Halloween. But who the hell would do something as scary as this in the middle of a goddamned kids’ trick or treating event?

  Then Braeden watched as Hugo didn’t stop with a simple bite, he ripped and tore with teeth pointier than any fake set of vampire ones he’d ever seen sold in any costume display, tearing Ellie Larson’s neck wide open. Braeden could see muscle in there, and bone, and blood squirting as Hugo damned near tore Ellie’s fucking head off in front of him before he tossed her aside, screams quieted, head barely hanging on at fucking all.

  Braeden didn’t even have time to scream “Jesus Christ!” before Hugo grabbed Betty Larson, Ellie’s mother, by her grey hair and just ripped it harder than Braeden could have believed possible. The hair came off, and so did a pretty good part of Betty’s scalp, and she fell to her knees with her mouth open in a scream lost to the goddamned Armageddon around them. Hugo didn’t stop, though, he reared up and kicked Betty right in the side and she just broke like a piñata at a party, her belly ripping open on her side as she whipped into the crowd like a Frisbee, knocking over kids and showering people with guts and shit. Braeden smelled the shit, like someone had taken a giant fucking dump right in front of him, and it gagged him, raw and nasty, and the screaming around him broke into his world again, cracking through the fear and panic that had his heart in a vice grip and stirring him into motion again.

  Braeden reached down and grabbed Abi under the arms with his left hand as he fumbled under his shirt and coat with his right for the .38 hidden in his pants. He’d be damned if he knew what was going on, but the only things he was sure of right now were that Sheriff Reeve was fucking right about demons, and he had to get Abi the hell out of here before the hell he was witnessing got hold of her.

  *

  Reeve found no damned joy at all in being right about demons, even if everybody could see it for themselves right now. The crowd at the Halloween event had dissolved into a panicked orgy of violence in the space of about ten seconds, and it was hell on his eyes watching people he’d known for years and years dying in front of him in mere eye blinks while there was near nothing he could do to stop it.

  “FUCK!” Reeve shouted as he tried to shove past Monty Franks, who was staring gape-mouthed at Ben Lawler, a guy who had worked at Rogerson’s in the produce section through two decades and a change in ownership. Lawler had his own mouth open, but his was filled with demon teeth about an inch long apiece, and they were descending on Rebecca Crosby’s face. They sank in before Reeve could get past Monty to do a goddamned thing about it, and Lawler just ripped her face right off like he was pulling off a mask, leaving scraps of meat and flesh on the bone as Reeve screamed his way through, leading with his sword.

  He popped Ben Lawler right in the shoulder, ripping through his t-shirt and triggering an immediate response in the man. Lawler seemed to gag, sulfur bursting out of his mouth as he spat pieces of Rebecca Crosby’s face out, bloody flesh mingling with the dark fire in the back of his throat, his demon eyes disappearing in a swirl of darkness as he lurched to the side, hand swinging up to his shoulder wound and a guttural “Owww!” making its way out past the remainder of the gore rolling off his tongue.

  Reeve didn’t have time to even dwell on what he’d just seen, which would have been enough to give him goddamned nightmares for the rest of his life only a couple weeks ago. There was more, and worse, going on around him. “Motherfucker!” he screamed in impotent anguish, not even looking to see if Casey or Father Nguyen were behind him as he waded through a crowd of kids that were crying and covered in blood as he rushed to try and stop this madness before it killed the town he’d sworn an oath to protect.

  *

  Arch would have expected more blood at a massacre like this. There was certainly plenty of it, but he would have thought there’d be more once things dissolved into the chaos. It seemed like every fifth person in the crowd had gone wild like a vampire in a terrible horror movie Alison had convinced him to watch when they were in high school.

  The demons weren’t wasting a second or yielding an ounce of mercy, and in doing so they were proving themselves about the lowest form of devil spawn Arch could have imagined. He’d seen what was left after the massacre on Crosser Street, where cannibal demons had eaten whole families alive and left nothing but the scraps.

  This was worse.

  So much worse.

  His brain was filtering out about as much as it could, trying to focus in on the nearest threat, which was a man in a flannel shirt with a demon face that was tearing Paulina Tomlinson in half with his bare hands, her hands clutching ineffectually at her belly as he ripped her open like she was a bag of candy. There was no danged candy at all coming out, though, just blood and intestines, and Arch watched the scene in front of him like it wasn’t even really happening, like he was just seeing a criminal pulling out a knife and waving it at someone instead of the grisly spectacle of a woman who’d once served him punch and pound cake at a school dance getting disemboweled alive in front of him.

  Arch led with the sword, popping the “man” in flannel in the back with the point. He knew he’d scored his hit, and though he couldn’t hear him scream, the smell of brimstone assured him his aim was true. He had no time to reflect on this success, if he could even call it that, because not five steps beyond that, Anna Quentin had something that looked like a small ham clothed in a little pumpkin suit in her teeth and she was ripping it apart lik
e a dog with a strip of cloth in its teeth.

  “Oh, Lord, my Father,” Arch breathed, not looking too closely at that thing in Anna Quentin’s teeth and instead shoving someone out of the way so he could go low and jab her in the leg, “watch over the innocent and protect them in this hour of need.” The screams and the cries didn’t provide much assurance that his prayer was being answered, so he just kept on as he caught Anna in the leg, and whirled to deal with the next threat.

  *

  Hendricks couldn’t fucking believe this shit. He’d been through demon parties, seen massacres of a sort before, seen all manner of horror, usually after it had unfolded, but this …

  He hadn’t ever seen anything like this before.

  He tried to keep his eyes glued on Erin but he couldn’t because there were at least a half dozen demon-possessed townsfolk between him and her, and there was no way he was gonna turn his back on any of them, not one.

  It was like an orgy of violence, staggered waves of panicked people scrambling to get out of the kill box, writhing to try and escape the ambush, panicking, freaking the fuck out, losing their shit—literally, he could smell it—and losing their lives. He was fighting against a decreasing tide as some of the lucky ones made it out, maybe. He didn’t want to turn around for more than a second every now and again to make sure he wasn’t gonna get bushwhacked from behind in this clusterfuck right outta hell.

  Someone ate shit against a nearby lamp post, knocking out the light and getting damned near sheared in two in the process. It was an ugly thing, and blood showered down as the body slid, unhooking itself from where it had been split at the shoulder, plopping soundlessly onto the sidewalk, the noise lost in the melee. Hendricks saw it and jerked his attention toward the origin of the throw.

  There was a demon not ten paces away from him having a hell of a time. The nasty teeth were bared in a feral grin, and she had someone in her grip right now, ripping ’em up in ways that Hendricks was shocked by even after his tour in Iraq. The sheer power on display and the constant demonstrations of how weak human flesh was next to demon strength was turning this town square into a vile, disgusting sort of meat grinder. He’d fought these things, after all, and this Legion and their possessed were a fair sight stronger than run-of-the-mill demons.