Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  Hendricks looked right at him, chalk white, and Brian knew he’d landed on it. The cowboy looked like he was about to pull a knife out of his own gut, pained beyond pain, and he turned his attention to Addy, sympathy coming from him like Brian had never heard from the cowboy, not ever before. “I am so sorry.”

  Brian watched his mother’s face fall, the smile vanishing like it was wiped off with an eraser, it was gone so quick.

  How could it have gone like this? He’d figured it out, dammit, what the Legion was going to do! How could it …?

  “Alison,” Brian said again, and his father’s grunt filled the air, no hint that he understood what was being said, and Brian sagged against his wheelchair back as the second piece of horrible news of the evening hit him harder than anything else ever had.

  *

  Lauren felt like she should be one of the last to leave, but she didn’t want to keep Molly here, in the square, mired in the horror, any longer than she had to. The whole place stank worse than a trauma room after losing a patient, and she suspected it wasn’t going to get any better in the daylight.

  “You should get out of here,” Reeve said to her, passing by on his way through, Mike McInness trailing in his wake. She could see Erin Harris in silhouette on the far side of the square, standing guard by a barricade.

  They had a perimeter set up now, and people were manning it with barricades someone had gotten from the sheriff’s office. She recognized the faces of those standing around. There weren’t too many people trying to get past, really; they’d identified most of the dead already and sent people away in stunned shock and tears. Lauren had heard them while she was treating the wounded, of whom there weren’t that many. When she looked up at Reeve in surprise, he went on: “Nothing else you can do here, Doc.”

  Lauren wasn’t so sure about that. She could help scrape the dead off the square, help collect some of the severed limbs and heads, talk to some of the people still grieving outside the perimeter. Arch Stan, for instance, was still just sitting on the curb, another guy next to him, both of them exchanging a word every now and again, but mostly just staring off into space. She could do something about that, maybe.

  She turned around and saw Molly standing by the barrier near where she’d come into the square when Ms. Cherry had driven her here with the others. Her feet ached, she realized, and the thought of walking miles and miles to get to an empty home … where her mother’s body was still probably laid out in the bathroom …

  Well, that just didn’t sound appealing at all, especially after the day she’d just had.

  “Molly,” Lauren said easing toward her. There were lights on to replace the lamps that had mostly been knocked out during the fray, headlights of cars casting shadows all over the square. The darkness between high beams made it only slightly easier to tolerate looking around. Personally, Lauren doubted she’d seen this many dead people in her entire med school career, maybe even counting pictures she’d seen of cadavers in textbooks. She for damned sure hadn’t seen this many bodies torn up before.

  “Mom,” Molly said, doing her best not to look into the square. She still had blood smears around her mouth, but they looked like someone had wiped them off, at least in the light of the nearest car’s headlamps. Molly quivered as Lauren approached. “Where … where do we go now?”

  Lauren felt a ratcheting tension inside, like someone had planted a corkscrew in her back and twisted it so that every muscle and nerve ending was wrapped around it. With every step it felt like someone was turning it, and everything just got tighter and tighter.

  “May I offer you a place to stay?” The soft voice of Melina Cherry came through under the buzz of a few voices Lauren could hear beyond the headlights. She peered past Molly and realized Ms. Cherry was standing there in the darkness. She hadn’t even noticed her.

  Lauren started to open her mouth to say no, that it was kind of her to offer to put them up in her whore house, but no thanks, and yet she couldn’t find the words to say that. Looking at Molly, she found herself seeing something like a spark of hope in her daughter’s eyes, a plea that said, Anywhere but home.

  “Yes, please,” Lauren said, and she saw the small quiver of relief in her daughter as that sank in. Lauren hugged Molly close, and without a word, Ms. Cherry lifted her arm and put it around both of them. They sandwiched Molly between the two of them as Lauren followed the local madam to her car.

  *

  It was getting close to morning before Reeve felt like the scene of the slaughter was under control, was sorted out enough that he could leave. “There’s nothing left to do,” Erin had said, and she’d been right. The funeral homes had come and collected the bodies, the pieces of bodies, and all Reeve was left with when they were done were streets slick with blood, barricades keeping people out of a square that had been the site of a bloody slaughter, and not a damned clue what was going on.

  He hadn’t word one back from the THP, nor from the ambulance dispatch. No one had shown up but the volunteer fire department. They really were Midian’s Finest, in Reeve’s opinion, and to a man every last one of them had taken countless people to the local hospitals. The worst had gone to Chattanooga, but there weren’t many of those. Most had gone to Calhoun County’s hospital, a half-assed operation if Reeve had ever seen one, but they could stitch and suture adequately enough, and Reeve had been all out of operational thoughts to give on that side of things by the time the question had come up, so he’d deferred to the firemen. They knew this shit better than he did, anyway.

  Then there was also the matter of that one John Doe, too. The one who wasn’t saying a damned thing, whom you could lead around by the hand but that was about it.

  The one who wore a face that Reeve would always know as “Chester.” He’d sent that fellow along with the boys to the hospital, too, once he’d poked him a couple times himself for good measure. Whoever that guy had been before Chester had gotten ahold of him, if he was in there, he was buried pretty deep. Reeve had his doubts that the man would ever speak again, but then, that wasn’t his problem at the moment, and he certainly had enough of his own to be getting on with.

  He got that cold and lonely feeling on his drive back to the sheriff’s station, though, the one that told him that his ass was hanging out in the wind, exposed. Ed Fries’s fat ass hadn’t even shown up, and to his knowledge, Pike hadn’t either, which made him wonder real hard if Pike had been possessed some time between when Alison Stan had poked him with her knife and tonight, because this little Halloween nightmare had seemed awfully damned convenient for the Legion and their revenge plans.

  Something was going to have to be done, and he had a few ideas about that.

  The sun was coming up as Reeve turned onto Old Jackson Highway, and he didn’t think he had the mental acuity to examine the options too deep and pick one just yet. He was holding himself back from going on over to Ed’s place or tracking down Pike and kicking down doors, marching in with gun and holy sword, but it was only because he was hellaciously tired, and he recognized his judgment might just be suspect at the moment.

  That was all right, though, because had another idea, but he’d need some rest before he could even think about executing it.

  He turned into the sheriff’s office parking lot with a pretty small sketch of a plan to solve his rest conundrum. He had an extra key that Pike didn’t know about, and there was a refrigerator with some food, a cot in the back room, a few extra pistols inside, and he meant to make use of all of them, probably in that order. If Ed Fries hadn’t been at the scene of the square, Reeve doubted he’d find him here now, but as he started to pull in, the sight of a car there just about made him think he was wrong.

  The rising sun glared off its windshield as he drove in and parked next to it, behind the wheel of Braeden Tarley’s Ford pickup, which he’d taken from a couple blocks away from the scene of the crime. That fella wasn’t going to be needing it anyhow; he’d gone off with Barney Jones and Arch, and would probably b
e bedding down at the parsonage for the evening, after he got taken care of at the hospital. Reeve doubted there’d be much sleeping between those two, but the idea of Tarley driving after what he’d been through had been frightening enough that Reeve had asked the man for his keys and the mechanic had acquiesced without so much as a word of protest.

  Reeve stared at the car parked next to him. Now this was a bit of a puzzle to him, because he was expecting Ed Fries and his ratty old Toyota, but instead, gleaming in the sunlight, was a Porsche. He couldn’t see who was behind the wheel, but he could tell there was someone in there, and he had a damned sinking feeling, because he only knew one person who drove a car like that.

  When Reeve got out of the pickup, the driver of the Porsche got out, too, and it turned he’d been right. Usually, the mere sight of her would have spoiled his whole day, but there wasn’t a damned thing left to spoil, so he just said, “Morning, Lex. What brings you to my humble doorstep on this gawdawful, shit-ass morning?”

  Lex Deivrel cocked an eyebrow at him. The woman was already made up, had a cup of coffee in her hand, steaming out the little sipping hole, and the expression she wore was pure amusement. “Why, I’m here for you, Sheriff.”

  Reeve felt that old, familiar sense that a safe was about to drop on his head. “Oh, yeah? What the fuck did I do now?” He answered that question for himself a moment later—got his wife killed, presided over the slaughter of more people than he could count—and waited to see what answer she’d give.

  “You didn’t do anything,” Deivrel said, smiling smugly. “I’m here to help you—for once.” She offered him the coffee, which he took, regarding it like it was poisoned, but as soon as it was out of her hand, she rummaged in her briefcase and came out with some papers. She offered them to him, and he took them as she took possession of her coffee once more and sipped it.

  “What the hell is this?” Reeve asked. The sun was in his eyes, and he couldn’t but barely see the legalese on the pages in his hand.

  “That is me shredding the hell out of County Administrator Pike’s temporary restraining order that removed you from office,” she said sweetly. She talked like that almost all the time, and it sounded fucking patronizing every second. “Congratulations. You’re sheriff again, at least until this recall election happens.”

  He stared at her blankly. “I … thank you, I guess?”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said with a passive shrug. “Thank Bill Longholt. He’s the one who hired me.”

  Reeve tingled with a chill. “Bill … hired you?” She nodded. “Before he was shot, I assume?”

  She frowned. “He was shot? Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it was looking too good.”

  She made a disturbed noise. “Glad I already charged his credit card.”

  Reeve just stared at her. “You … you really don’t know what’s happened in this town, do you?”

  She stared right back at him, unflappable. “Other than them trying to eject you as sheriff? And hookers being burned up from the inside? And one of your deputies walking away from an immense and near-certain windfall from your sad employment practices?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t. And frankly, I’m not sure I want to know.” She started back to her car.

  “Wait a second,” Reeve said, calling after her. She paused, dutifully, and looked back. “I … depending on how things go these next few days … I might need a lawyer.”

  Lex Deivrel’s forehead moved subtly. Reeve realized for the first time she Botoxed, and this was her version of surprise. “You mean for something other than what I just did for you?”

  “Yeah,” Reeve said, a little thickly, and Deivrel came back toward him slowly, showing her version of concern. “Why don’t we … go inside … and I’ll tell you the whole story.” He waited for her to nod once, and he turned to go in, the bright morning sun glaring back at him from the Plexiglas window of the sheriff’s station.

  *

  Duncan stared at Amanda. She’d known him long enough to know what he was thinking, what he was feeling, even though he was barely showing a thing. “Is that it?” he asked, into the still quiet of her hotel room.

  She looked back at him implacably, knowing it was driving him nuts. “No,” she said, “but it’s all I’m allowed to tell you.”

  Yep, she knew Duncan pretty well after a century. She certainly knew him well enough to tell when he was scared. She couldn’t blame him, though. If she’d been sitting where he was, feeling what he was … she would have been scared shitless too.

  *

  Hendricks pulled into the Sinbad just after sunup, behind the wheel of another borrowed car. He was missing the SUV because this one was a small car that Reeve had gotten for him when he’d told the sheriff what he’d meant to do. Stony-faced Reeve hadn’t even blinked, he’d just gone to work and five minutes later there were keys in Hendricks’s hand and the sheriff told him what vehicle he was looking for. He didn’t point him in a direction, but it hadn’t taken but a quick circle of the streets around the square to find what he was looking for. And the blood on the key ring? Well, Hendricks just ignored that as the price of doing business.

  He put the car in park and got out, stretching slowly. Mrs. Longholt and her baby boy had taken the news like champs. He couldn’t decide if it was worse than the idea of Bill being a goddamned vegetable for the rest of his life, but he couldn’t help feel that just maybe Alison had drawn the lucky straw on that bargain.

  Hendricks didn’t want to think about Arch or what he was going through at the moment, either. He remembered the feelings, what it was like when Renee had died, and didn’t exactly relish the thought of having to open up and share one damned word of it. He was probably going to, at some point real soon, or at least try, for Arch’s sake, but now wasn’t that moment. The wound was still open and bleeding, and Hendricks didn’t feel up to salting up his finger and pushing it inside right now.

  He opened the door and came in, closing it behind him. He locked it without turning on the light, his breathing long and slow in the darkened room. Sunlight was shining in around the curtains again, and he thought maybe, just maybe he was right …

  “You here?” he asked, and the pause after he asked felt unduly long.

  “I am here,” Starling answered, and he clicked the light.

  There was a strange rush of relief seeing her there, standing in the orange lamplight, her red hair shining and lustrous. Part of him wanted to yell at her, but he wrote that off to the emotion of the moment. “I wondered if you’d turn up.”

  She stared right back at him. “And here I am.”

  “Not here,” Hendricks said, taking a couple steps toward her. “At the square. Where …” He cut himself off because the emotion made it feel like someone had grabbed his voice box and started to squeeze.

  She looked back at him. “I came.”

  “For about five seconds, yeah,” Hendricks said, glancing away. He was having a hard time looking at her right now. It was hot in the room, or at least it felt like it to him. He started to peel off his coat, and he could smell the blood. For a fleeting second, he thought, at least it’s not sulfur … “But where were you during the rest of the … the …” He had a catch in his throat, like someone had put a fingernail clipping in there and it got hung up on the way down.

  “I could not be there,” she said quietly. “I could only come long enough to save you.”

  “I guess that’s convenient for me,” he said, and there was that strange relief again. “Sucks for Alison, though.”

  Starling just stared back at him. “Many more will die, you know.”

  “End of the world, yeah,” Hendricks said snidely, and now he felt the exhaustion. “I think that generally suggests all of us will die, doesn’t it?” He tossed the coat off to the side and kicked off his boots. He’d been wearing them for way, way too long. He peeled off his socks one by one as he stood there in front of her, tossing them and lettin
g his bare feet rub against the thin carpet. It felt pretty good, not that he cared. “So … why save me, then?” He waited for an answer. “You already told me the end of the world is coming. Hell, you showed me. So why waste your time saving me?”

  Her hair fluttered and suddenly she was next to him, looking up at him with those dusky eyes. “Because I need you.”

  “Need me for what?” He held himself back from her, but he couldn’t help feel the strange sense of heat between them. He remembered when she’d kissed him before, before …

  … Before Kitty.

  His hand came up to his lips, feeling them self-consciously, like she could smell the taint of that cunt on him. It had driven him these last weeks, made him ache, made him alone. He couldn’t wash the smell of shame off himself no matter how many times he showered, and he hadn’t had a desire to touch himself once since then, not even when he woke up hard.

  There was a churning in Hendricks’s belly as he stood there, face to face with Starling and she stared out at him from behind those dusky eyes. “I need you,” she said again, and leaned forward, bringing her lips to his slowly, slower than he’d ever seen her move.

  He took the kiss, soft lips against his, not really sure what to do at first. It felt surprisingly warm and tingly, and when her fingers touched his cheek it surprised him that she was not cold to the touch, not at all. Quite the opposite, actually.

  He leaned in, returning the kiss, and he smelled something faintly sweet in her hair, something he’d never caught from her before. She parted his lips gently and put her tongue in his mouth, her left hand coming up and running through his hair, knocking his cowboy hat to the floor.

  He put his hand around her thin waist and it felt good sitting there. He crept it a little lower as they kept going, and felt her snug blue jeans beneath his palms, beneath his fingertips. That sense of burning shame was gone, washed away with her kiss, a faint memory that twinged him in the back of the head and stopped him for just a second. “Wait … I …” he said, but she kissed him again and he did not want to stop.