Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  Arch took in Tarley’s words, but more the tone, which was like the man coughing up his heart in front of all of them. “We hear you,” Barney said, casting a quick look over his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Braeden.”

  Tarley didn’t say anything for a second, then: “And you, demon—if you use this moment to try any shit, we’re going to smear your God-forsaken guts into the damned atmosphere.”

  “I shan’t be a problem,” the demon said. Arch almost heard him gulp.

  “Here we go,” Jones said, and the atmosphere in the car seemed to thicken.

  *

  “Turn left here,” Starling said, her dusky eyes nailed straight ahead, focused on the task before them. Hendricks was gripping the wheel like it was his life preserver, which—metaphorically—it kind of was, given what he was heading into. He’d wanted something uniquely his, something he could go and do, and here Starling had answered him, leading him into the old brick buildings off the town square, all of which looked …

  Well, they looked like hell. Abandoned for decades, it seemed like.

  He’d seen the town square—hell, he’d fought a demon in it the first night he’d come here—and it was looking rough even before Halloween and all the hell unleashed on it there. But this was a different beast still, this decaying industrial and commercial sector off the square. Here he was in the dying heart of Americana. Back when America had had half the population, these places had flourished.

  Now it had twice as many people, and so many of them had moved to cities and left these dead places behind like scars.

  “Here,” Starling said, and she indicated what looked like it might have been an old factory once. It looked like two different names had weather-stained their way over lighted lettering, and now all that remained were the pockmarks where electrical wiring hung where the last had been stripped off. Broken windows dotted the front of the building. To Hendricks, the whole place radiated a Nothing but trouble here vibe.

  He pulled into the parking lot and brought the car around the side, brick wall slipping slowly by on his right as he drifted along the side of the building. When he reached the back he found a parking lot and a lone car, a nice little sedan, not too old. He pulled in next to it and killed the ignition.

  “Anything I need to know before we go in?” Hendricks asked.

  “If you do not do this thing, no one will,” Starling said, still staring straight ahead.

  “Good enough for me,” he said, and opened the door. It wasn’t quite good enough—yet—but they were getting close.

  He didn’t have to force entry; the door was open, and it didn’t squeak when he pushed through and entered an old office space. The carpet was threadbare and ancient, and he ignored the strips of it that were coming up or simply rotted away. There was almost no furniture left, just a bunch of walls that looked like they’d been stripped of all wiring. It wasn’t the first building in this county he’d seen like this, and he wondered what industrious asshole had adopted this pastime.

  The air was stale, but a few degrees warmer than outside, and Hendricks strolled through the office quietly. He could hear something, faintly, ahead, like chanting.

  He came to a huge, heavy door that must have once done its best to keep the factory noise out of the offices. It was propped open, and he paused at its entry, taking a second to look back at Starling, who trailed silently in his wake. Once he knew she was still there, he took off his hat and peeked out.

  The chanting was full-bore now, a man’s voice echoing in the wide space, talking some demon language, hands wide and voice full of passionate expression. It was a ritual, Hendricks would have staked his life on it, and the man was mid-stream on it, looking like he might start into the chicken dance or something right here, communing with the spirits of evil.

  “Good enough for me,” Hendricks whispered, and now, it was.

  Standing out there, trying to summon the enemy, was County Administrator Pike.

  *

  Drake had been keeping an eye on the car that had raced up to him, another car following close behind, then suddenly slowed as it came alongside.

  This was a two-lane town street. Not a freeway. A car shouldn’t be coming alongside him.

  But there was a turn lane, Drake realized, his eyes back on the road as he approached the stop sign ahead. He slowed as required, staring out his cracked windshield, foot on the brake pedal and feeling the loose tension it offered him in return.

  Then he saw movement in his driver’s side mirror and one of the Buick’s rear doors opened, and somebody moved behind it. Something happened, there was a flash—

  And the van jerked slightly, as though someone had bumped it.

  “What was that?” Drake asked over the mewling cries of children who were in varying stages between whimpering and all-out screaming. The screaming one needed to go first, because the sound was all over Drake’s fucking nerves.

  No matter. He’d done his obligatory stop, there was no cross traffic. Drake pushed down the accelerator, and the van started to move. But—

  The vehicle was sluggish, struggling to respond. The vehicle pulled to the left, hard.

  What was this?

  Looking back, Drake could see men in that car. Several of them. Was that normal?

  They were watching him.

  Drake panicked, gunned the engine—

  The van squealed, the left rear tire like a giant drag, keeping him from moving, as though someone had anchored it in place. He stomped the accelerator, wanting to get away from them. He jerked the wheel to the right in a desperate bid to get away from them, these men—

  He pulled the wheel too far though, and hit the pedal too hard.

  The van mounted the curb to his right and Drake let out a little gasp of panic. Beyond that was a steep slope, and the van went over it as Drake froze. The bottom of the van ground against the curb, mechanical screaming like an angry metal demon ripping his vehicle apart from beneath.

  “Oh shit, oh shit!” Drake gasped as the van went over the embankment and down, down the hill. It bumped, he almost hit the ceiling, and the cries of the children escalated to shrieks.

  The van slid ten feet down the embankment and came to a rest with its nose in a drainage ditch that was empty of any moisture. It was cracked reddish soil, the vehicle nestled at an angle that didn’t lend itself to motion. Drake floored the accelerator, but—

  Nothing.

  The van was wedged, solidly, at a forty-five-degree angle. He opened the door and hopped out, trying to gauge—

  The back wheels were off the ground. The nose of the van was hard against the broken soil and sparse grasses in this drainage ditch. Ahead he could see the back of a brick building, no entry, no doors, no windows even. To his left the embankment climbed back up to the road, as it did behind him.

  Drake circled the vehicle, trying to get some idea of what to do. He could see the men up top now, just above him, could hear them talking—about him. About …

  Children?

  “Oh shit, oh shit …” Drake muttered, reaching the other side. It was no better. He could see a door at the far end of the back of the brick building, but it looked like solid metal. He might be able to break through it, but …

  Wait, was that?

  In the hillside behind him there seemed to be a culvert, like a door under the ground. Maybe it led to the other side of the road, maybe …

  It was a thin hope, but it was all that Drake had. Throwing the side of the van open, the cries of the whining cutlets reached his ears once more, and he seized hold of the rope, dragging them out. That started a whole new round of crying from the ones that had finally started to settle, and he gathered them up in his arms, these tasty little pieces of meat, and started to run for the culvert, his only means of escape.

  *

  Pike was in the middle of a good chant, and according to the book, only two lines away from summoning the demon Asgorath, who was of fire and brimstone and death, but also liked
to make deals, especially ones that allowed him to possess human beings. Pike wasn’t planning on letting himself be possessed, but he was perfectly happy to provide some sacrifices to Asgorath so he could wear human skin for a spell. It wasn’t exactly a hard thing to kidnap someone, scare the shit out of them, have them read a few words of apparent gibberish, and boom, Asgorath had a new temple of flesh to defile for a while. The books all said he had a predilection for possessing teenage girls—something about liking to entice older men to take their virginities. Then Asgorath would slit the old men’s throats post-coitus.

  Pike didn’t judge. He didn’t really care if a few old guys bit the dust. It wasn’t like he was real attached to anyone in this community anyway. If they didn’t want to die that way, they should probably keep their dicks out of teenage girls possessed by Asgorath. Or maybe out of teenage girls in general, because Southern daddies didn’t take too kindly to that sort of shit, he knew just from general conversation with the locals.

  One line away from finishing the chant, Pike heard something in the empty warehouse. It echoed off the walls like a slamming door, except it wasn’t.

  It was artificial, metallic, and loud, and it made him pause for a second to turn.

  The demon hunter in the cowboy hat came strolling in, and over his shoulder was the red-headed hooker from Ms. Cherry’s establishment. What was her name? He’d never been there himself, but Darla had checked the place out once and fairly raved about—

  Lucia. That was it. She could apparently eat pussy with the best of them, or so Darla said. It had made him a little jealous, which Darla had enjoyed thoroughly when they’d fucked afterward.

  “Summoning a demon in the middle of Midian right now,” the cowboy said—Hendricks, was that his name? Pike thought so. “Not exactly sending up a flare that you’re a good guy, County Administrator Pike.” Hendricks put a lot of sneer into the title.

  “How do you know I’m not summoning somebody to help?” Pike had to disguise a smile. There was a gun on the cowboy’s belt, but he had his sword out, which told Pike a lot about what was going on here. If he’d been a hundred percent sure Pike was doing bad, he’d have come at him with the gun drawn.

  “Because I just do,” Hendricks said, certain as the fucking sun setting in the west. He had the moral authority of a young person who was damned sure he was on the side of good.

  It was going to be fun to yank that from underneath him, Pike thought, still keeping the smile off his face only through long practice. All he had to do was keep this dumb, hillbilly sonofabitch talking …

  *

  Arch was standing at the top of the embankment, looking down at where the van had gone over. It was nose-to in a drainage ditch and not going anywhere anytime soon, not that that mattered. The danged demon had grabbed up the kids and hot-footed it for a tall culvert just down the way, and Arch would have cursed if he could, especially as he watched the man—no, not man, thing—disappear into the storm drain.

  “We’ll get him on the other side of the road,” Guthrie shouted, starting to turn back to run back over the road. Because she didn’t know, plainly.

  “There’s no exit on the other side of the road,” Arch said. “There’s no exit for six blocks. That’s the municipal storm drain system.”

  “The what?” Guthrie asked.

  Jones and Tarley knew, both of them showing the same weary, wary distaste Arch did. Everyone local knew the storm drains. Kids played in them all the time. Mostly they weren’t dangerous. It wasn’t like you got flash floods here very often, and even during a hard rain you had plenty of time to get the hell out before they filled. If they filled at all.

  “It’s drainage,” Jones said. “For most of the town. Also provides access to the city sewer for municipal workers. It’s a warren of drain tunnels built under the hilltop part of Midian. Six square blocks of tunnels, a perfect playground for kids during a drought.”

  “Perfect demon hiding place now,” Tarley said, still standing next to that other demon, the stiff British one. He looked right at Arch. “You ever play in these as a kid?”

  Arch nodded. It hadn’t even been forbidden, really, or he might have steered clear. He only got warned away when bad weather was coming, and that was more precautionary than anything. “I know my way around them.”

  “Me too,” Tarley said with a nod. “There’s another exit comes out on Briar Lane. Unless he doubles back, that’s his most likely escape point. I’ll go there.”

  “We ain’t all going to be able to cover every exit,” Jones said. “We’re going to need some help.”

  “Someone needs to send a text letting everybody know where we are,” Arch said, mind whirling as he started down the hill toward the massive culvert. “I’m going in after him.”

  “Same,” Duncan said, pacing right beside him within a step.

  “Well, I ain’t staying out here with you fancy fucks,” Guthrie said, coming one more behind them.

  “Three of us, three branches on this entry,” Arch said. “Left, right, center,” and he pointed at each of them in turn, giving Guthrie left, Duncan right, and him the middle. “Barney, you go to Truman Street, over by Barry Manley’s house. There’s another exit just below his backyard.”

  “I know it,” Jones said with a light in his eyes. “I used to play in these when I was kid, though I don’t think it was Barry’s house back then. The Manley family—aww, never mind that now.” He waved off the memory and disappeared up off the embankment.

  “Hey, wrench monkey,” Guthrie said, and tossed Tarley her keys. “You wreck it, you buy it, you hear me?”

  Tarley caught them without effort. “I can fix anything I fuck up.” And then he disappeared over the top of the embankment with a, “Come on, fuckstick. Let’s go block this shitbird so I don’t have to open you up instead.”

  The thin Brit demon gulped again, and followed obediently behind him. The roar of an engine starting a moment later was obscured as Arch stepped into the square box of concrete culvert. It was rectangular, tall end up, like a door under the road, and he barely had to stoop to enter. It stretched out before him, curving off in three paths.

  He headed right up the center, into the dark, squinting. He could hear the cries of children somewhere ahead, though he couldn’t tell which branch it was coming from. He broke into a run, leaving the two OOCs behind, sword at the ready for whatever came.

  *

  Erin hit the switch on her radio, listening to the click override the steady hiss of static usually present in her ear while it was stuck in there. “This is Harris, testing, testing—we are go.”

  “Meacham here,” Casey’s voice crackled. She could see him driving that big truck of his a few cars back in the rumbling line. “Go.”

  “We should have call signs,” Nate McMinn said. “Why did we do away with the call signs? I want to be BIG MAC.”

  “This is Ms. Cherry,” Melina Cherry’s cool voice broke in. “I would like my callsign to be HOTNESS instead of HARLOT.”

  “We did away with them because it got so confusing with so many members of the watch,” Erin said, bumping off road. Greenery was passing around her, tree branches that hung low occasionally scraping the top of the police Explorer Arch used to drive. She’d taken it over with his blessing, specifically for this. “If we go back to it, I vote for Casey to be designated PERVERT.”

  “Don’t be hatin’,” Casey said.

  “This is Chauncey,” Chauncey Watson’s staticky, awkward voice came through. “Bringing up the rear.” A pause. “Though I guess that’s where Casey wanted to be.”

  “You people know me,” Casey said, almost laughing. “You really know me.”

  “This is Drumlin,” Keith Drumlin broke in. “Man, the going sure is slow. You think they’ve been through here?”

  Erin stared out the windshield at the path ahead. The ground did look trodden, at least to her eyes, the fallen leaves crushed and crunched in a way that suggested to her a herd of something ha
d passed this way. Branches hung off trees in a few places like they’d been hit by something big running through low. “I think maybe, yeah. Seems to me something’s been along this path recently, though it’d be easier to tell if we’d had a rain anytime in the last few months.” She hit the button to roll down the window and tried to listen for anything, but all she could hear was the rumbling of her little convoy—especially Nguyen’s vehicle.

  “Nguyen here,” Father Nguyen finally crackled in. She guessed that talk of Casey and being in back hadn’t exactly made the priest feel super comfortable. “I have a higher view than most of you—I don’t see anything ahead. I’m hitting a lot of tree branches, though.” A clunking noise made it through the mic, and he said, “Like that. Did you hear that?”

  “Yep,” Erin said, looking to her left. There was a sharp slope up the side of the hill, and ahead the path started to bend down toward Shade’s Hollow. She had a feeling this was an old logging trail, something the Alders had used when they’d had men come in and take their lumber for money. That was what the Alders did, sell off parts of their resources, because damned if most of them ever worked an honest job. A few did, but they usually tended to escape Shade’s Hollow if so. She knew three of the cousins that got out and worked in the mill, but they all had houses in town.

  Erin came up over a small rise, and there she could see endless trees, all the way down. This perspective gave her the suggestion of interlocking branches, like the forest was a flat, 2D thing, a painting that all ran together. She knew it wasn’t so, that it was miles of trees that just looked like they were all smooshed together in a great brown and green canvas, but either way it formed a nearly impenetrable wall of forest that she couldn’t see through. The road wended through it, making it tough to discern much beyond the next couple turns.

  “Okay,” she said, maybe trying to get her own courage up as she pushed down on the accelerator. They weren’t going outlandishly fast, because rushing into this felt like suicide, but they were trying to keep a good clip going, trying to catch these things before they got too far ahead. Her eyes flicked to the offroad settings. She was still on the sand, dirt, grass setting, and it was treating her all right. The car was probably using its all-wheel drive.