Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Ouch,” Brian said, leaning back in his own chair, head still bowed and focused on his coffee. “You’re basically just saying—”

  “I’m saying it’s over for me,” Lauren said, folding her arms across her chest, clutching her coffee in one hand. “The town is sinking. For me, it’s past the point of sunk, and … I don’t want to drown with you, Brian.” She stood up, chair scraping across the cafeteria’s old tile floor. “I’ve got a daughter to worry about. A life, maybe, if I can rebuild it … I don’t know.” She shook her head. “And if I were you … come on. You’re a bright guy. You never wanted to come back to Midian after school. Get out while you can.”

  Brian sat there for a long while after she left, staring at his shitty coffee but not daring to take another sip. He couldn’t bring himself to; the taste was just too unpleasant for him to digest. Not unlike Dr. Darlington’s words, which were almost as unpalatable. And yet he knew, somehow, just like the coffee—which he took an experimental sip of and made a face; God, it was fucking gross—he needed it, and so he took another sip, and mulled over everything she’d said, and with time, it got easier and easier to take in.

  *

  Arch followed the sheriff’s car, lights no longer blazing. He rode in silence, the Explorer’s tires ripping at the dirt and gravel driveway as they took the turn into the Widow Wrightson’s place. Thick trees had canopied over the path to her home long ago, and overhead he could see the leaves had turned, the last vestiges of summer green given way to autumn oranges, red and browns as they fell, one hitting him squarely in the middle of the windshield.

  If that wasn’t a metaphor for the death and dying all around them, Arch didn’t know what was.

  “‘To everything there is a season,’” he muttered to himself, remembering Ecclesiastes 3. “‘A time to be born, and a time to die …’”

  Felt like the season for that was approaching pretty quickly. Heck, it was in the air, wasn’t it?

  The road stretched in front of him, telescoping as his heart thudded in his chest. He wanted to get to the widow’s house, but he also didn’t. He hadn’t seen a text update from Casey while he’d been waiting with the others, and now that they were moving, he wouldn’t have dared check. Others probably would though. Even with the tightening embrace of evil wrapping itself around Midian like a python, Arch didn’t truck with texting and driving.

  Besides, he hadn’t heard the buzzing to indicate one had come in.

  He took the last corner, and the trees started to open up. Ahead he could see the sunny skies, a meadow past the woods that led up to the Widow Wrightson’s small, white house, situated in the middle of those fields of grass …

  Or, at least, it had been when last Arch had been here.

  There was no house there now; just a foundation where a house had been, debris spread out for a hundred yards to the east, as though a tornado had plowed right into the structure and ripped it up by the roots. Boards and sections of roof were laid out unevenly along the path, torn from the house and spread like a picnic buffet across the field.

  Sheriff Reeve tapped the brakes, then stomped them, and Arch brought his car to a sudden stop. He’d left enough following distance that it wasn’t a problem, but felt the telltale jerk of Erin hitting his bumper as she came to a stop, a whole lot less warning because she’d been riding his tailpipe. He turned around, the light thump of the impact still rocking its way through him, and saw her throw up her hands in a mea culpa-type gesture. Someone hit her from behind as well, and Arch felt the thump of that impact roll through to his Explorer, though somewhat reduced, and sighed, then turned back to look at the spectacle ahead.

  “My goodness,” he said. Because what else was there to say?

  *

  “Holy fucking shitballs,” Hendricks said. He’d just knocked bumpers with the car in front of him, and why not? The shit he’d just seen was crazy as hell, a farmhouse ripped into pieces like it had been slammed into by a swarm of demons and then shredded like fucking lettuce for a taco. It had been just spread across the field, all in one direction too, which suggested bad fucking things to him.

  “That’s ugly,” Duncan said, “and unexpected.”

  “Well, goddamn, I fucking hope it’s unexpected,” Hendricks said. “If you were expecting this shit, I hope you would have told me it was coming.”

  Duncan just raised an eyebrow. “If you had seen this coming, would it have mattered?”

  “Maybe,” Hendricks said, but they both knew a “no” was buried in his tone. “I could have known to clear the fuck out of town before the demon tornado hit.”

  “You’ve known a lot worse than a demon tornado has been coming for a long damned while now,” Duncan said, still staring out the window passively. “I haven’t seen you tuck tail and go yet.”

  “Any day now, I’ll wise up,” Hendricks said, waiting for the line of cars ahead of him to move. “Any fucking day now, I’ll grow a damned brain and get while the getting’s—well, before it at least gets too damned bad.”

  “Liar,” Duncan said.

  “I thought you couldn’t read shit anymore,” Hendricks said.

  “I can’t read much, but I can still tell a lie at a hundred paces, cowboy,” Duncan said, “and as fucked up as it sounds, your ass wouldn’t go running from this shit even if you knew a demon orgy tornado was blowing right toward your hotel room—”

  “Sounds kinda like a conga line of demon banging.”

  “—and you were pinned with your wrists bound to your ankles, bent over without a stitch on,” Duncan finished. “Your crazy ass is in for the long haul, that’s what I’m saying.”

  The cars ahead of him started to move, and Hendricks took his foot off the brake and allowed the SUV to creep forward slightly. “Maybe,” he allowed, not wanting to commit. “Maybe.”

  *

  They parked in a nearly literal circling of the wagons, Reeve directing it as best he could from the front of the pack. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d imagined orchestrating, a tight circular formation around a spread-out field of debris that was the wreckage of Mary Wrightson’s house, torn apart by a pack of demons who’d—well, hell if Reeve could figure out what they’d done to it, other than maybe run into it all at once and just torn through like it wasn’t even there.

  He opened his door tentatively, Pike next to him with gun drawn, and—thank God—the sense to point the firearm straight up rather than at something valuable, like Reeve’s head. Still, bullets sent into the air had a nasty way of returning to earth. “Mind pointing that toward the ground? Just to be sure.”

  Pike did just that, angling the barrel off toward the woods as he lowered the piece, still leaning toward Reeve’s side of the car, not looking too eager to step out. “You see anything?”

  “Shit load of building materials that’ll probably be sold at an extreme discount,” Reeve cracked. He felt bad about it after he said it; Mary Wrightson had been an all right enough lady, and here he was, being an ass at the site of her probable grave.

  Well, hell, if he didn’t embrace gallows humor right now, he’d never fucking laugh.

  Pike smiled tightly. Maybe he was thinking the same thing, maybe he appreciated being in the shitty situation, who knew? “What do you have in mind here?”

  “Covered search and rescue,” Reeve said. “We take a quick survey of the house, see if we can find our 911 caller, and then we hightail it out of here before these things come back.”

  “I’ve seen Jurassic Park,” Pike said. “I don’t know that your plan is going to turn out real well.”

  Reeve frowned. “Well, I haven’t seen that movie, but I have to assume it’s about dinosaurs, and we’re dealing with demons here. These things aren’t as big as a T-Rex.”

  “They apparently ain’t got to be in order to tear down a house,” Pike said. “That’s a mite concerning, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I am concerned more than a mite,” Reeve said, bringing out his sword. “But that’s
why you came, right?” He kept a straight face, twisting the knife. “To watch my back, right?”

  If Pike knew he’d been challenged, he didn’t give any sign of umbrage, nor of backing down. “I’ll give you a shout if I see anything coming.” And he turned to watch the fields, opening the door a crack and getting out, weapon still at low ready, almost like a professional. Almost.

  Reeve headed for the house, ducking his head down like incoming fire was going to start whipping at him at any second, or maybe he was running for a chopper.

  “You expecting to find Mary Wrightson in this mess somewhere?” Arch called after him, catching him in no time flat. Reeve had always admired the man’s speed, even back when he’d been on the football field. Now, perhaps, even more than then.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to find,” he said, looking over at Arch, who was running with his sword out too. They’d be fools not to. Their eyes met and Arch seemed to get what he was thinking at the same time. Reeve said, “I don’t reckon running with sharp objects is our smartest move ever.”

  “Smarter than running without ’em around here,” Arch said, proving that yep, he was thinking the same thing.

  Hendricks met them both shortly, doing his own awkward, sword-at-the-side run, accompanied by Duncan, who was wearing a suit and tie again. Reeve would have thought it uncharacteristic, but Duncan had been doing some posing as a fed lately to keep the citizenry from asking awkward questions about demon law enforcement and what role it might have in this whole mess. It seemed simpler than trying to explain everything at once, like drinking from the fire hose. Yes, there are demons, and they do seem to be evil, but there’s also a demon law enforcement agency that’s doing us a few favors of late, and—wait, no, they’re not necessarily evil—

  Best to avoid the explanation, Reeve figured.

  “This is going to be an interesting dig,” Hendricks said. “Duncan, you think these things will come back?”

  “Well, I haven’t correctly predicted anything they’ve done so far,” the OOC said, “so … let’s go with yes, since if I’m wrong again at least we’ll be prepared for the worst.”

  “Shit, man,” Hendricks muttered, “that’s awfully complicated.” He shook his head and grabbed a six-foot section of siding, shoving it aside with one hand.

  “I like how no one is complaining that this is fruitless,” Erin said, lifting the shattered remnant of a window frame by her lonesome. Broken glass tinkled free, and she grimaced, taking a step back as she let the wreckage fall. It made a shattering noise as it landed.

  “I don’t know about fruit,” Arch said as the big man waded in, grabbing a section of a dislodged subfloor and lifting with both hands, his sword back on his belt, “but I don’t think this is going to end with much point.”

  “I could do without any point,” Guthrie said, looking meaningfully at Arch’s sword. “Not for me, not for any of these things, because I hope they decide to beat feet for the fucking hill country after this, never to return.”

  “That seems kinda unlikely,” Reeve said, wiping his head. He’d just moved a piece of a shattered armoire. These demons had done a damned fine job of spreading the damned house out, that was for sure. If a house fell over—something he’d seen a time or two in old, abandoned homes—then it all ended in a massive pile, like a Jenga from hell. It became a sort of new structure all its own, and removing pieces resulted in other shit falling down.

  This, though … this was just a spread-out mess of wreckage, no structure to it at all. Oh, sure, some of it was attached to something else, and moving a section of roofing here meant that the dresser beneath was going to rattle and slip a little lower. But it couldn’t go much lower, because the wreck of the house wasn’t very deep, thanks to the thorough job the hellcats had done of ripping it apart and spreading it out over a hundred-yard segment of the property.

  “I think I’m coming around to Arch’s way of thinking,” Hendricks said as he tossed aside what looked like it might once have been a TV, one of the old, thick, heavy ones with a cathode ray tube instead of those fancy new flatscreens. It rattled, the lump of twisted plastic that was all joined together, pieces of glass and electronics hanging out of the middle. “This lady has gotta be deader than Osama Bin Laden.”

  Erin shook her head. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to find—”

  A rumble caused everyone to freeze, and Erin stopped talking mid-sentence. A little chill warbled its way down Reeve’s spine. He started to ask, “Did anyone hear that?” but it was obvious by the way they were all listening, waiting, wondering from whence it had come that, oh yeah, they all heard it too.

  No one spoke, the moment stretching into an eternity. “Hey, you guys!” Keith Drumlin called from the perimeter of cars circled around them, and the guard waiting with them. “Did that come from y’all’s way?”

  “I don’t know,” Reeve called back.

  “Maybe we should get back to the cars,” Erin said, but damn, she sounded uncertain, like she was more afraid of making the wrong call than of getting caught out in the open by the things that had done this to Mary Wrightson’s house.

  “Because they’ll protect us from demons who tore apart a house like it was cabbage in a Cuisinart?” Arch asked, shaking his head. He had his sword back in his hand. When he caught the funny look from Reeve, he said, “Don’t tell me your momma never made coleslaw that way.”

  “I don’t reckon she did,” Reeve said with a faint smile, “because I don’t think they had a food processor like that back when I was a kid.”

  Another small rattle jolted them all, and Reeve turned, listening. This time he knew it came from the debris. “Shit,” he said, taking up his own sword and readying himself. “You think one of these things stayed behind?”

  “Nastier things have happened here lately,” Duncan said, his baton like a black beacon shining in his hand.

  They were forming a circle around the movement in the wreckage, this little group of them. Reeve glanced around; it was funny how they’d unconsciously formed the group—it was the two OOCs, Reeve, Erin, Arch and Hendricks over here. All the newer folks who’d joined the watch were in the perimeter ring, with the cars. Here it was all the old-timers, the ones who’d been working this thing since before the town square had blown it up in a big way.

  The creak of wood somewhere in the pile caused Reeve to snap his head around. “Could just be debris settling,” he said, strangely hopeful. He’d seen what one of those things had done to his car. The last thing he wanted to deal with right now was one springing from the wreckage and eviscerating three of them before they could scramble the fuck out of the way.

  “That ain’t the way our luck runs around here,” Arch said, and shit, he sounded dour in a way Reeve couldn’t recall hearing him before. Arch had always been a little more … restrained, but he’d never been morose. Reeve made a mental note to check on him. Hell if he hadn’t been through the goddamned ringer of late. Reeve mentally cursed himself for not thinking to check on the deputy sooner, but …

  Well, they’d both lost, hadn’t they? And they both had this duty sitting in front of them too, this thing keeping them from focusing on all the pain and loss that’d probably be burning a hole in them otherwise …

  That was who they were though, wasn’t it? Reeve didn’t cotton to all this touchy-feely nonsense that men went in for nowadays. They bled their feelings everywhere, these skinny-jeans-wearing nancy boys, ejaculated them all over the place like one of those sick pornos he’d heard about where the men squirted their jizz places he couldn’t even imagine. That wasn’t Reeve, and it didn’t seem to be Arch either. They were steady, traditional, buttoned-up, coloring between the lines types. There were only a few appropriate places to show those feelings, and it was almost entirely with their w—

  Dammit. Now wasn’t the time to get sentimental. Or weepy.

  Siding crackled as something moved, again, in the rubble. It sounded like scratching had been added to
the mix, maybe demon claws against wood, and Reeve readied himself. His fingers pressed into the leather wrapping of his sword hilt and a faint sheen of sweat started to form on his fingers.

  Fear crept in with the uncertainty. Seeing one of those hellcats bursting out would be better than this quiet waiting. He’d seen one chop Sam Allen into pieces like he was a dead deer in need of processing in the middle of hunting season. It was almost definitely one of those damned things; why couldn’t it just show its fucking face so they could get on with it?

  “Get on with it already,” Hendricks said, earning him a nod of Reeve’s approval. The Marine might have been a pain in the ass, but he had the stoic thing down too. You didn’t see him crying everywhere, even after the shit he’d apparently gone through at the hands of that demon duchess. He kept it all tight inside. Sure, he was a dickhead every now and again, but at least he wasn’t weeping like a little millennial bitch and pouring his feelings out anywhere. Hell, even Brian Longholt wasn’t doing that shit, and if anyone in this crew had the disposition for it, that Ivy Leaguer who hadn’t done a hard day’s work in his life was the one he’d have put his money on.

  “That ain’t us,” Reeve muttered, and his words were obscured by another round of rubble shifting, debris clinking as broken glass moved in the layer of housing material spread over the green grass.

  He inched closer to where the noise was coming from, at once tentative about one of those things leaping out like a breaching whale with fucking claws and shearing him in half, but also pissed that this just kept dragging on, like one of those boxing matches where they couldn’t seem to wrap up the bullshit and stop hugging long enough to beat the hell out of one another properly. “Let’s get to it,” he said.