Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  It bumped down the uneven trail, divots washed into the ground long ago now empty, perfect places to catch her tires and send her thumping from side to side. Erin gritted her teeth at some of the bumps, bringing the Explorer around in a solid turn to match the trail. It reminded her of an ages-ago moment where she was racing down a different hill a lot quicker, and to a much more perilous finish.

  She came around a gap in the trees and saw a shadow down the hill, closer to the hollow. It was just a brief movement. She almost thought she’d imagined it for a second.

  Then she came around another corner, and deeper into the hollow, she saw it again—shadows moving into the trees, fading into them. Small things, dotting across her view, darting between the trees.

  The last corner and she came into a straightaway, and then there was no doubt.

  They weren’t shadows.

  “Holy hell,” Casey said. “You seeing this?”

  “I’m seeing it,” Father Nguyen said. “The small ones are like a swarm. But … those big ones … does anyone see—?”

  Oh, Erin saw, all right.

  It wasn’t just the little shadowcats they’d been dealing with all this time. There were bigger ones, ones that were the size of her Explorer, and bigger still. They were galloping along and suddenly they all sort of … bristled; looked over their shoulders and saw Erin and her little convoy, coming down the hollow after them.

  “Game time,” Erin said to herself as she stomped the pedal to the metal and tore down the trail toward them.

  This was it.

  *

  “You know I’m a human being, right?” Pike asked Hendricks. Hendricks, for his part, listened to the man, not quite ready to charge. “You saw your little friend give me a cut on the hand?”

  “I saw it,” Hendricks said. He had seen Alison give the man a little slice to the hand, but that didn’t mean much to him. He’d been in Iraq, had dealt with insurgents who’d lie right to your fucking face while they dealt under the table with any number of assholes hostile to US soldiers.

  “So what are you doing here?” Pike asked. He sounded smug; the fucker couldn’t sound anything but smug, could he? Hendricks doubted it.

  “Watching you try and summon up a demon,” Hendricks threw right back at him. He had his sword clenched tight in hand. He had a feeling he knew what was coming—Pike would try and talk him out of doing what he was heading toward doing. Hendricks was okay with him trying, because he’d never yet killed a human being on American soil and he’d long drawn that line pretty effectively.

  But then, he didn’t often run into humans who were plainly giving aid and comfort to demons.

  “That’s what you think you’re seeing,” Pike said, keeping his hands out at his side. “But I’m telling you that ain’t what’s happening. So … whatcha gonna do?”

  Hendricks watched the man stare him down, and he knew—knew—Pike thought he was going to talk his way out of this. Why wouldn’t he, after all? The fucker probably hadn’t ever met a situation he couldn’t talk his way out of before.

  *

  Drake was already sick of the dark and he hadn’t even been here that long. The smells of this storm drain, the echoes down the dry corridors, they were like poison to his cultured soul. He wanted to be back at his cooking station, working on the perfect slices of cutlet …

  He had them strung around him now, the cutlets. The … children, he thought grudgingly. They were so loud, so obnoxious, but he didn’t want to soil their freshness by killing them yet. It might come to that, if he had to silence them to get away, but thus far he was running, running away from the people in pursuit of him. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have caught a whiff of OOCs, and definitely a few very perturbed humans.

  He supposed that was what happened to any animal when you threatened their young.

  Drake had the children draped over him, the rope aiding him in keeping them together. Some were suspended around him, some were under his arms—he had them all over, the six of them, and he was willing to yield exactly zero of them, even though they were weighing him down.

  This would be his Beethoven’s Fifth, he knew, his masterpiece of culinary achievement, meat that would melt in your mouth, and he wasn’t going to let some OOCs or angry humans keep him from greatness.

  Footsteps behind him sounded thunderously, making him pause for only a second to take stock of what was coming, and then Drake was off again, hurrying faster, needing to find an exit and make his escape before they caught him, caught him and stopped him from doing what his very essence called out to do:

  To make art of these children—and consume their flesh.

  *

  “That motherfucking hellcat is the size of a single-wide,” Nate McMinn said dully into Erin’s earpiece. The car was bumping along hard down the last hundred yards of the trail into Shade’s Hollow. She could picture the map in her head, how it was laid out. The quarry was probably a quarter of a mile ahead.

  No chance they were going to get to it without a fight now. Not with these shadowcats turning around.

  “Looks like a pure black cattle drive from hell,” Keith Drumlin said, a little bit of awe leaking into his tone over the staticky channel.

  They were all out there, hanging between the trees, looking back at her as she looked at them. Almost like they were scenting the wind, trying to get the read on what was after them. These were creatures that had torn through houses in great fucking herds, just run through Mary Wrightson’s house and Hickory Lane and others. They’d torn up the sheriff’s car on that night in the woods, ripped right into it and made it into a wreck.

  “They killed Sam,” Erin said under her breath, then gunned the engine.

  One of the house-sized ones was turning now, and damn if it wasn’t the size of a double-wide. Maybe bigger. It was snaking its way along on legs the size of a bridge support, and powerful too, as it started to spring at her, turning the herd her way.

  “Here they come,” Ms. Cherry said over the channel.

  Erin froze for just a second, seeing the herd start to come for them, ripping up the trail toward her, streaming around the trees on their way toward the new target—this line of cars that was pursuing them, trying to turn the hunters into prey.

  She stomped the pedal. The engine raced. Dirt spun beneath the tires, then they caught and she was off.

  Erin gripped the wheel tightly, going for them. She didn’t bother to signal the others; they’d wait and see what happened to her. But she wasn’t going to sit there and wait for them to charge.

  She was going to go right for them.

  “Heeeeeere we go!” Casey said, sounding a little thrilled about it all.

  “Dude, you sound excited,” McMinn said. “We’re about to—”

  Erin tuned him out. She was running down the road, engine throttled up, going about sixty. She didn’t want to go any faster than that for fear of what might happen if things went really wrong.

  Hell, with this many shadowcats racing at her, she didn’t even want to think about how she might define “really wrong.”

  The biggest hellcat was bounding toward her. It had the scent of danger in its nose, and it must have sensed she was unafraid. She couldn’t read its dark eyes. But she wanted to believe it sensed …

  Not prey. But not a hunter either.

  And it was right. Erin might have been a cop, but she was no hunter.

  She’d sat a desk for two years. Until the demons had come to Midian.

  She’d done every shit detail the sheriff could come up with. Been the low girl in the totem pole.

  Last bird on the lowest wire.

  Not because Reeve hated her, but because she was new.

  And now—she might be just about all there was left of the sheriff’s office.

  Definitely the only one facing this.

  “I’m gonna show you, motherfucker,” she said as the black hellcat stared her down, coming at her, head down—

  And hit
the ramming bar mounted on the bumper that Father Nguyen had sanctified.

  She burst out the other side of the shadowcat like it hadn’t even hit her more than a jarring blow, skidding slightly before she got the Explorer under control. She coughed, the stink of brimstone heavy. The car slewed a little, and she straightened it out.

  “Erin, are you okay?” Father Nguyen called over the radio.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Might want to put your air on recirculate though.” She coughed lightly. “But … yeah. It worked.”

  She turned her head to look at the herd of shadowcats ahead of her; they were tentative now, unsure.

  The big one maybe thought it could smell her fear.

  But now … she could smell theirs.

  She threw a look back over her shoulder. The others were parked back there, still in a line, though Ms. Cherry was starting forward now, her Range Rover covered with another rammer welded to the bumper, Casey behind her with a pickup similarly doctored. McMinn and Drumlin had just affixed some holy blessed objects to their grills with duct tape; some knives and swords.

  But Father Nguyen … he’d borrowed a monster truck from a parishioner and sanctified the whole thing—including each tire, according to the sleepy priest, who’d told her this with a grin.

  Now they were charging down the hill, toward the waiting shadowcats.

  And yeah … she could smell their fear.

  “SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!” Casey called with glee over the radio. “It’s a demolition derby, live from Calhoun County! Come on down and watch the fiends from hell catch a car up the ass! HAHAHA!” He broke loose from the pack and shot down a side trail, blowing past Erin and plowing into a thicket of them as they spooked and started to move, running back downhill.

  “Fuck yeah!” Drumlin shouted over the radio. “You messed with the wrong fucking people, assholes! We are rednecks, and we will not put up with your demon shit! Vehicular mayhem is our jam, you bunch of cheesedick shitbirds!”

  “Damn straight,” McMinn hooted. “Let’s get these fucks!”

  “Y’all made a big fucking mistake coming to the South if you thought we were just gonna sit back and take this shit,” Erin said, gripping the wheel. The shadowcats were running now, spooked like cattle or some shit. “Drive them toward the quarry! And let’s end this,” she said, determination running from the top of her head down to her foot on the pedal, which she punched down even harder, the Explorer howling along after the damned cats from hell.

  *

  Arch found himself in darkness, wondering what he was thinking.

  No, scratch that. He knew what he was thinking. All he had to do was listen.

  Kids were crying in the distance. The echo in the tunnel was so bad he couldn’t tell exactly which direction it was coming from, but he could hear them.

  It might have been the saddest sound he’d ever heard.

  It made him remember John 8:12, and he spoke it aloud: “‘Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’”

  Something about that reassured him, and Arch picked up the pace, running flat out into the darkness of the tunnel, knowing that somewhere ahead were children he could help.

  Children he could save.

  The way he hadn’t been able to save his own.

  *

  Pike still kept from grinning. It was tough though, smelling the indecision on this dumbass. Here was a man who had one purpose in life—to be the lackey for others. Pike had met a million like him.

  They stood in the warehouse, quiet pervading as Pike took a step, his wingtip scratching its leather sole against the bare concrete. “What are you going to do, cowboy?” Pike asked, keeping his arms wide and unthreatening. It wasn’t like Pike had a weapon on him, so there was no point in acting like he was going to draw on the man. In addition to the sword, he had a gun, plainly. “I’m standing right here. You going to go ahead and shoot me for chanting some weird words in a warehouse? Without even taking into account my side of the story?”

  The redhead behind him spoke up, then, and in a voice that was … all too familiar.

  “I think we did it. I think by killing Reeve—we fucking got ’em.” It came out in his voice—Pike’s voice, loud and clearly, words he’d said to Darla without anyone else around to hear them.

  Hendricks didn’t even look back, kept his eyes right on Pike.

  And the bastard smiled.

  Pike just stared. The redhead hooker had just perfectly voiced him—had he said that? It sure as hell sounded familiar. “Now wait a second,” Pike said, feeling the heat rising in his face. “That’s not—it’s—”

  He saw the look in the cowboy’s eyes.

  He wasn’t buying a thing Pike was selling.

  “Shit,” Pike said, and threw down the last few words of his ritual, raising his hand—

  The smell of brimstone blew out in a black cloud from the floor as Asgorath the demon rose from a hole in the floor. Coal-colored skin, glowing red eyes, horns—he was the picture of a perfect demon. He floated up out of the ground and stood easily a foot taller than Pike himself, clenching a six-fingered fist to let sharp protrusions on his knuckles be seen. Ugly things, looked like they’d tear a human being apart with a good punch … and he was pointing them right at Hendricks.

  Pike looked at the cowboy and smiled. “You should have killed me when you had a chance.”

  *

  Arch stopped at another intersection, faint grey light streaming down from above. A storm drain was up there, a mail-slot-looking opening to a street. He couldn’t see much other than a leafless tree and grey skies, but it gave him a second to rest in the light, then turn his eyes forward.

  Something moved ahead, and the squawling of children was much closer. Arch knew now that he had picked the right passageway. He brushed against one of the corrugated steel grooves that made up the pipe, leaning against it for support as he made his way along.

  He came to another cross passage, looking for that shadow that had moved. It was so dang dark, how could he even tell? The crying seemed like it was coming from up ahead, just a chorus of pitiful wails that sent his heart pittering in a way he hated. He wanted to find those babies, snatch ’em up, make them feel safe, get them out of here.

  Arch broke into a jog. He had his sword clutched in hand, tight, fingers digging into the leather that wrapped the hilt. He had to—

  Something hit him from the side and sent him wheeling. He slammed into the side of the tunnel and his head flashed with unnatural light. He spun back around, swinging wide, clumsy, and didn’t even see it when something clipped him again in the side of the head.

  “You couldn’t just leave me alone,” a voice said, quiet and effete in the darkness. He was a little overweight, gut overhanging his belt, clad in jeans that didn’t fit him well at all. They were far too tight, but the man—demon—had a prissy, angry look on his face. He lashed out at Arch with a kick, hammering him down.

  Arch hit the ground hard and thrust the sword out again, but it was knocked aside easily. The demon caught him with a punch to the mouth that sent Arch back against the wall. The corrugated metal thumped against the back of his head, aiding that swirling feeling he was getting. His mind spun. He felt like he was floating, legs rising up over his head, as though he were weightless and floating in space.

  “I just wanted to eat in peace!” the demon shouted, echoing down the corridors. “I just … need … to eat …” And it was sniffing him, smacking its lips in his ears. “Maybe a little tartare before the veal …”

  *

  Even though Hendricks had heard Starling perfectly ape Pike’s voice, that might not have been enough for him—if Pike hadn’t gone and basically proven himself guilty a breath later.

  Then the damned sonofabitch went and summoned an armored-shell demon.

  Hendricks wasn’t looking forward to this one. The thing looked flat-out mean, had
glowing red eyes, and basically what looked like blackened hull armor from an Abrams tank over every single surface inch of his fucking shell.

  About to swear aloud, Hendricks waited just a quarter second, and then the demon spoke.

  “Whoa,” the demon said, “am I interrupting something here?” He sounded like a fucking Valley Boy, and even with the horns and the hellacious look, it totally ruined it for Hendricks. A fucking support corps puke wouldn’t have been intimidated by this bitchass.

  “Yeah,” Hendricks said, staring him down, “so why don’t you fuck back off to wherever you came from and let us get on with it?”

  “I’ve summoned you to offer you sacrifices,” Pike said. The man’s confidence and smugness had grown even further since the arrival of the demon, which Hendricks did not regard as a good thing. “Exactly the kind you prefer—human possessions of a certain age and gender, if you know what I mean.” Pike was practically winking at the fucker. “I’ll even help you set up the dates.”

  The demon nodded at him. “You’d do that for me? Extra mile, bro. I like that.” The demon offered a fist like he was going to bump with the shitheel.

  “You will leave this place now,” Starling said, and the armored demon did a double-take at her.

  “Whoa,” the armored demon said. “Uhm. Yeah.” He looked down at Pike. “I’ma have to decline your deal, bro. Lataz.”

  And poof, he was gone again, a black cloud of smoke, and when it cleared—nada.

  Pike just stared at where the demon had stood, and the smugness evaporated like a drop of water on a hot sidewalk. He looked right at Hendricks, and his face fell. “Well … shit.”

  Hendricks just grinned at him. “You got that right.”