Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Good fucking luck! The town is in the middle of a demon invasion and we live with hookers! Also, I’ve known the word ‘fuck’ since I heard you say it when I was four!”

  “Well, fuck it all!” Lauren screamed, stopping just past the trunk of the cruiser. The back of Ms. Cherry’s car was just sitting there, and so was Reeve, huffing against the side of the vehicle, winded like he’d worked hard, which she supposed he had. “I have had about enough of these demons, this bullshit, your language, and—”

  Something moved out of the corner of her eye, and she caught sight of it as it was slithering toward Hendricks, who was down, on his side, quartered away from the hellcat that was coming at him. He could see it, she knew, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop it from taking his head right off.

  Something flashed between the demon and the cowboy, and suddenly there was a person there where nothing had been before. Red hair shining, eyes hard and furious, dark as the dusk itself, Lucia—no, Starling—lashed out, and the hellcat shattered as it flew backward from the blow, the woman’s fist breaking it into pieces with a single blow.

  “—and her,” Lauren finished, heat boiling off her statement. She stared at the hooker-turned-savior, and felt only loathing for the woman, in spite of how little she knew about her.

  “Wow, Lucia just saved Hendricks’s day!” Molly said, gushing like a groupie.

  “That’s not Lucia,” Lauren said tightly, “and she’s not a fucking hero, okay?”

  Another squeal of tires greeted them, and a car surged around the last curve and blasted another herd of hellcats like tenpins, scattering them. The OOCs came flying out before the thing was practically even in park, throwing themselves into a fight with those truncheons, the weapons rising and falling and drawing a great many hellcat screams.

  Other cars were pulling up now too—Father Nguyen, Chauncey Watson—the rest of the watch were arriving, and the hellcats were on the run.

  “Holy shit, Sam,” Braeden Tarley said, staring at the ruin of Sam Allen’s body. Lauren watched him sag like his wrench weighed a ton, blank eyes on the corpse, nose twitching at the scent of death and shit and piss.

  Lauren’s eyes settled on Starling again, as she lashed out almost absentmindedly and killed another hellcat, sending it back to—well, to where it came from, Lauren supposed. Starling offered a hand and Hendricks took it, and she pulled him to his feet as Lauren watched. The shadow kitties were gone, retreating back into the woods from whence they came, the trees rustling madly up the slope.

  “The fuck that’s not Lucia,” Molly said, wrenching her arm free of her mother’s grasp and hurrying away toward Starling and Hendricks.

  Lauren just stood there, frozen in time like she’d been the one to get slashed in the back by one of those things, not Sam Allen. She wanted to throw her mouth open, put her head back, and howl at the sky like a werewolf, just vent all that fury and sadness and all the other shit emotions right out.

  But nothing came out except a choked noise, and instead she just kept standing there, watching her daughter as Molly threaded her way over to Hendricks—and that goddamned hooker.

  Or whatever she was now.

  *

  “Holy fuck, Lucia, that was badass on a stick!”

  Hendricks turned his head to see Dr. Darlington’s too-cute-for-her-boots underaged spawn walking up to Starling with a fucking glow on her face. It was probably only a notch or two off what Hendricks himself had been wearing only a few hours earlier, but maybe a degree or twelve lower on the lasciviousness scale. This was pure admiration, not the unbridled lust he tended to display when he jammed his face into Starling’s collarbone after the act, wet hair against her skin and neck as he lay, spent.

  Starling cocked her head, as she tended to do, and Hendricks wondered how she’d take the compliment and the wrong name. She seemed to need a second to process, which was funny to him given how fast she moved and thought during a fight. “Thank you,” she finally seemed to decide, which was weird too, because since when did Starling give a fuck about manners?

  “How did you do that?” Molly asked. Hendricks just stared at her; she was acting like he wasn’t even there, like they hadn’t been in the middle of a conversation when she came rolling up. “I mean, you busted that thing up with one hit!”

  Hendricks kept his mouth glued shut like a good grunt, waiting for the answer. He doubted it’d be satisfying, and it sure enough wasn’t: “I just did,” Starling said, sounding a little uncertain, which was also curious. Then she turned back to him, as though that would just close up the conversation with Miss Underage-and-Inquisitive.

  “You are so amazing,” Molly gushed, and Hendricks couldn’t help but grin a little. This was funny to watch, the honor student gushing over the hooker-angel or whatever.

  “Yeah, I bet you want to be just like her when you grow up,” Hendricks cracked, and then saw Dr. Darlington stalking over, a boiling-oil look on her face. He kind of internally shrugged; if the goddamned Al Qaeda insurgents hadn’t killed his ass, what did he have to fear from some bleeding heart, feminazi, mamabear country doctor? Even if she did have an ass that raised her overall fuckability rating up to a hard 8 out of 10.

  “Why would she want to be like me?” Starling asked, head cocked like she was genuinely curious. Another weird one from Starling. Not that she never asked questions, but that was a weirdass question for her to ask.

  “Because you’re a stone badass,” Molly said. “And because you know stuff.”

  “Like the optimal number of times and the angle for ramming a dick in your mouth before it spurts,” Lauren Darlington spat out. “Or the position guys like best during sex. It’s doggy style for most.” She shot her daughter a nasty look. “See, sweetie? I know those answers too, but I’m a little too refined to share them all with you.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real lady in the parlor there, Doc,” Hendricks cracked.

  “Nobody fucking asked you, asshole,” Darlington shot back.

  “Hey, I was just sitting here minding my own beeswax when your daughter came up gushing over Starling,” Hendricks said. “You can go ahead and take your little family squabble on down the road and it won’t pain me a bit.”

  “I can’t believe you won’t let me fucking breathe for five seconds,” Molly Darlington stepped in, “when we just survived that—that—that—”

  “Shitshow,” Hendricks supplied.

  “That fucking shitshow, thank you, yes,” Molly said, pointing at Sam Allen’s corpse, “which you led us into because you were too damned up your own ass trying to keep me from finding out about dicks.”

  “Jesus,” Hendricks said, fighting the urge to take a step back. He’d known a sixteen-year-old girl or two with the mouth of a trucker—hell, he used to have crushes on them—but this was kinda disconcerting now that he was older and a little more world-weary.

  “I think you know about dicks,” Lauren said. “I’m trying to keep you from thinking that sucking one or fucking one for money is a good career path, that doesn’t involve—oh, I don’t know—drug addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, violence—”

  “Yeah, way to go on steering me out of violence,” Molly said, chucking her head toward the corpse again. “Really dodged that one. Now I’ll never see a person dismembered with my own eyes. Or—and I’m just spitballing here—” the sarcasm was flowing now “—watch my own hands slit a dear family member’s throat.”

  “Fucking shit,” Hendricks said, taking a step back for real this time. This was getting goddamned dark, fast.

  Lauren visibly paled, like she’d had milk poured all over her face, or been filming a bukkake. Then she got mad, also like she’d filmed a bukkake, but unknowingly. “This place … it’s going to kill us. Destroy us.”

  “You’re just now realizing this?” Hendricks asked. “Fuck, did you graduate last in your class or what? For chrissakes. And I let you treat me as a patient? Fuck.”

  She ignored him. “
Get in the car, Molly.”

  “You sure?” Molly’s voice still dripped with sarcasm. “Because last time you tried, that worked out real well, since we ended up here—”

  Lauren reached out and grabbed her daughter by the upper arm, latching on and digging in like her fingers were claws. Molly grunted, but Lauren started pulling her away.

  “See you later, Lucia,” Molly said, going along with her mom pretty submissively, though the look on her face said defiance was in the cards. Probably, also, a cold spell once they were in the vehicle, if Hendricks had to guess. “You can tell me more about sucking cock back at the house.” She mimed the dick sucking motion, popping her tongue into her cheek while holding up her hand with thumb touching her forefingers like it was wrapped around a big shaft. It gave Hendricks an instant boner kill, because it looked gross and goofy when the schoolgirl did it. “And maybe I’ll see you later too, Marine.” And she made the motion another couple of times before Hendricks jerked his head away, wincing at the image.

  “Are they going to fight now?” Starling asked as she watched them walk away in silence. “Should we stand back and let them?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to fight the way you’re thinking,” Hendricks said, “but yeah—I ain’t getting involved in that. No way.” And he shuddered again. That teenager was fucked in the head—and hopefully nowhere else, for her sake, her mom’s sake, and hell, everyone’s sake. “Grow the fuck up,” he muttered, and meant it.

  *

  “Man, I did a number on my back, crashing like that,” Casey Meacham’s voice echoed down over the road and the ditch, “and not a good number, like 69.”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Melina Cherry breathed softly, causing Arch’s ears to ring a little and his nose to curl like he’d smelled something terrible. Which he had, because Sam Allen had been ripped open, bowels exposed to the air, but that wasn’t what he was reacting to when his nose curled.

  “You weren’t even fucking joking about those things,” Braeden Tarley said breathlessly. The mechanic’s shoulders were heaving with his recent exertions, traces of blood drizzling down the side of his face. What had happened there? Arch wondered and then discarded the question, realizing he didn’t much care. The man seemed all right, and that was good enough.

  “No, Arch was dead serious,” Pastor Jones said, offering Braeden a hand. The mechanic took it, and Arch realized he was limping slightly, putting some weight on Jones.

  “Let me help you there,” Arch said, hustling over to relieve the pastor. He took up some of Tarley’s weight as Tarley threaded an arm around his shoulder. There was a wide gash up the mechanic’s thigh, and Arch wondered how that had gotten there. He hadn’t seen anything take a slice out of him, but then, there had been a lot going on.

  Jones eyed Arch, a little mischief mixed in with his smile. Arch had an idea there was a message Jones wanted him to get, but Arch ignored it and turned away. He flicked his gaze over to where Duncan and Guthrie were chasing off the last of the hellcats, truncheons held high like cowboys—or a cowgirl, in Guthrie’s case—running off a pack of wolves.

  “Those guys are demons, right?” Tarley asked him.

  “Yessir,” Arch said.

  “But they’re helping us?”

  “Demon law enforcement,” Arch said. He still wasn’t entirely sure that he understood the idea behind the Office of Occultic Concordance, but he couldn’t deny that Duncan had made some use of himself in this fight. He was a little less sanguine about Lerner—now Guthrie—but she’d done some good once upon a time as well. “Reckon this sort of thing we just saw violates some demon law about keeping trouble on the down-low.”

  “How’d that shit on the square fit into demon law?” Tarley asked, storm clouds and resentment brewing not far beneath his surface.

  “Probably blasted it all to heck and gone,” Arch said.

  “Hmph,” Tarley said, and that told Arch all he needed to know about Tarley’s feelings on demons and their law.

  “They’re helping, Braeden,” Jones said diplomatically.

  “They’re demons,” Tarley said. “Thought you’d be against that sort of thing on general principle, Reverend.”

  “You might think I’m supposed to be against hookers, and murderers, and idolators and adulterers as well,” Jones said, “and I am against all of those things. I hate the sin, hate it with the fire of conviction.” He jerked a head toward Ms. Cherry. “But I love the sinner, because He loved the sinners. There’s an act, and there’s a person, and I can see the difference between the two because I have eyes and a mind of my own that reasons and thinks and learns. Yes, perhaps our friends over there are demons. Perhaps they’re even evil, I don’t know. But they do acts of good right now, and when I see them commit an act of evil, well, I’ll call them out on it, just the same as I might call out you for getting a little too wrathful and a little hastily unwise just now.” He gave Tarley an arched eyebrow. “Next time, perhaps we should get you an instrument of God if you want to fight the devil?”

  Tarley just nodded, and Arch started to help him shuffle back to the truck. “Reckon we should have the doc take a look at this,” Arch said, peering down at Tarley’s calf, where the gash was dripping on the pavement.

  “That might be a problem,” Jones said, staring straight ahead.

  Arch looked up to see where he was looking. Sure enough, there was Dr. Darlington behind the wheel of her car, her daughter visible through the passenger window, fury on her face as the vehicle peeled out, heading back down the road toward town.

  Arch did a frown of his own. “Hope she don’t run into that trap we found.”

  “She’ll be fine so long as she doesn’t cross the lane and run into the ditch,” Tarley said, grunting from his wound as he fussed with his pants leg, “and, really, she’d have bigger problems than her tires if she did all that.”

  “I suppose,” Arch said, brow still furrowed in thought. He’d mostly forgotten that nasty little trap while they’d been in the fight. Now that they were out of it, though, he found his mind heading back to it, and wondering …

  What happened to the woman from that car?

  He looked around. Come to think of it … what had happened to Mack Wellstone?

  *

  “How’s he doing?” Addison Rutherford Longholt asked as she walked into the hospital room. She asked that every time she came in, and Brian dutifully answered it every time, always the same way.

  “About like always,” Brian said, not looking up from the magazine in his hands. “Sleeping, for now.” He still had a dull ache in his leg, probably from sitting too long, but standing up and exercising it now would just make the problem worse. They were up on the fourth floor, and he could see the quiet Chattanooga streets outside the curtains, the street lamps snapping on.

  “Did you hear the ruckus on your phone a little bit ago?” his mother asked. “Thought mine was about to explode like one of those James Bond devices while I was driving.”

  “You’re getting the watch’s text message alerts?” Brian raised an eyebrow at that. His mom was not much of a fighter, at least not with weapons.

  “Seems wise to pay attention to what’s going on around you, doesn’t it?” Addie wore a thin smile that vanished when her eyes played across the room and settled on her husband’s sleeping form. The whole place had that antiseptic hospital smell to it, and Brian was sick of it. He felt like he could almost taste it, and it disgusted him all the way down to the base of his stomach.

  “Better than walking into an open manhole, I guess.” Brian let his eyes dance over the Entertainment Weekly lying across his lap without absorbing a single word from the page. He’d been trying to read it for a half hour now, but he kept having to reread the same paragraph over and over. He still didn’t even know what it was about. He looked at the picture. Oh, right. Another gushing profile of Kate McKinnon. Well, she was funny, he supposed, though he hadn’t seen her in much.

  “How long are yo
u staying?” Addie asked, causing Brian to forget what he was reading again. “Not the whole night, surely?”

  “I dunno,” Brian said, taking a breath and triggering an inadvertent yawn. “The nurse says Dad doesn’t do so well when he wakes up and no one’s here.”

  Addie absorbed that, unmoving. “I suppose that makes sense.”

  Brian leaned his head back against the vinyl headrest on the visitor chair. “Really? Because it doesn’t make much sense to me. He’s a fucking vegetable.”

  His mother’s face went stiff as a death mask. “You take that back.”

  “Why?” Brian asked, exhaustion seeping out. How long had it been since he’d slept a full night? Hell, even a half night? “His brain ended up on the ceiling, Mom, or at least a lot of it did. I should know; I saw it happen. Now it’s just a question of which kind of vegetable he is. I’m leaning toward maybe a stewed cabbage or something, myself. Soft and mushy—”

  “What a disgusting thing to say about your father,” Addie snapped, making her way over to the window and drawing the curtains violently, the rings clicking against the rod. “And he is still your father, in spite of whatever you might th—”

  “No, he’s not,” Brian said, putting the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger squarely against the bridge of his nose and leaving it there, massaging his temples as he did so. “My father was a man with thoughts of his own. Lots of them. Opinions. Insights. Persuasive arguments, even. This?” He pulled the hand off his face to sweep it toward the sleeping figure on the bed. “This guy … this vegetable … he doesn’t have opinions. Persuasion? Insights? Pffft. He can’t even feed himself.”

  “You don’t know what’s going on in that head of his.”

  “Very little. I know very little is going on in there.” Brian laughed mirthlessly.

  His mother stood there, looking at him, her expression impossible to read. He’d known her his whole damned life, imagined he knew her well, but this … he had no idea what she was thinking now. How could he? She’d never lost her daughter before. Never had her husband reduced to this. Brian had seen her go through a lot—the loss of her own parents being the biggest thing he could think of, but … this?