Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  The voice was a lie. An effect of the delirium. Alison wasn’t here; just this thing. This baby stealing thing. And it was licking him, tasting him, about to eat him whole—

  “ARCH!” someone shouted, feminine but loud and angry and urgent—

  Someone hit the demon and sent it reeling just as it was about to open its mouth and take a chunk of him. He saw a flash of dark hair and a length of pipe, and Dr. Lauren Darlington rocked that demon and sent him flying off of Arch with a perfect golf swing the like of which would have sent the sonofagun’s head arcing off to the green if he hadn’t been a demon.

  The good doctor stumbled a little after her hard swing, almost looking like she might go pitching forward from overdoing it. But she caught her balance and looked back at Arch, her white lab coat swinging in her wake. She looked right at Arch and shouted, “Get up!” and he felt compelled to obey.

  “I’ma do it,” he muttered, barely making sense to his own ears as he hurried to his feet. Dust and little pebbles of rock crunched beneath them as he used the metal tunnel edge as a brace. Something glinted in the dark, and he hustled over to retrieve it—

  His sword.

  *

  Lauren couldn’t believe she found him, especially since all she did was run straight into the tunnels after she’d gotten the text message and gone straight ahead, forgoing the left or right branch and running right up the center. She’d driven like the fires of hell themselves were sweeping in behind her, from Chattanooga to here, and she’d made it. Looking at that text, somehow, she’d known where she was supposed to be.

  Here.

  And she’d made it just in time to save Archibald Stan’s life.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Arch said, a little muffled, as he scooped up his sword. He sounded like he might have a head injury; she’d need to check him later to be sure. She couldn’t see him very well in the dark, but she could hear the confusion in his voice. “How did you find me?”

  “Just ran right in,” she said, now fixed on the demon ahead. Her tire iron wasn’t consecrated, and the demon was working back to his feet, too.

  Arch saw him move. “Now listen here, you—you ain’t taking these babies.” And he stepped to the side, interposing himself between the demon and the children, whose cries Lauren could hear, whose cries ripped at her heart. She shuffled to the side like Arch, working her way around to form a wall with him against the demon. She couldn’t really see his face, and his shape was obscured as it lay in the shadows down a little side spur. There was no light in that direction, but it was cut off nicely from where the children were.

  Lauren stepped right next to Arch, bumping shoulders with him. “You want them? You’re going to eat holy steel, motherfucker.” Arch stiffened at her side. “I mean,” she said, suddenly flustered. “You heard me.” To Arch she whispered, “Sorry.” She actually was, for once.

  “It’s all right,” Arch said, and she could tell by his voice that it was. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “You don’t understand,” the demon whined as it staggered to its feet. “I have to eat. I have to try. To sample.” Its voice was a shuddering mess. It stepped toward them out of the spur tunnel, and she caught a glimpse of a face racked with desperation. She braced herself; if desperate people did the craziest things, she didn’t want to know what desperate demons might do. “I need them … I NEED THEM—”

  The demon rushed them, and Arch met him, a hard slash greeting the demon, who squealed and flinched back, lacking an arm. The arm fell to the ground and thumped on the dry dust, stirring up a little cloud as they all stood there, status quo ante—well, almost. The demon was now missing an arm.

  “I will butcher you like a spring lamb,” Arch said, holding his sword out front. “Take you piece by piece if you’re a greater, if that’s what I have to do. You aren’t getting those babies.” The cries of the children were subsiding.

  The demon was almost crying with them, his breath coming in sobs. The desperation was matched by pain now, the arm missing, a reminder of his mortality, maybe. She caught a glimpse of his eyes in the shadowy light, and they were wild. He stood there, staring at them, one more second, then he broke and ran down one of the tunnels. His cries were pathetic, like a wounded animal, and Lauren almost—almost—felt sorry for him.

  But the cries of the children behind them convinced her otherwise.

  She lowered her tire iron once she was sure he was far enough gone. Then she hurried over to the children, kneeling next to them. They’d been bound together by a rope around their little torsos, and she checked pulses, checked each of them. She couldn’t even see faces hardly, in the light, but what she did see were tears, streaking tears, big eyes, watery and scared. “It’s okay,” she whispered, and the sobs came again, renewed, like hope had given them breath in their lungs.

  “It’s going to be all right.” Arch was there next to her, and he was patting the child that thrust itself into her arms. A little boy, she thought, clamoring for comfort. Here came the others now, still crying, starved for love in the last minutes, so scared by being dragged and herded and taken from a place of loving care and pulled down here into these tunnels. They had to know on some instinctive, animal level what it was doing.

  “Holy shit,” Duncan’s voice cracked over them as he skidded out around a corner. “Doc?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Lauren said, stifling her emotions. She was the doctor now, and she made a cursory exam of one of the toddlers. No serious injuries, no obvious broken bones. No blatant traumas. She’d need to do this for every single one here, before they could move them. “The demon went that-a-way.” She pointed where it had gone.

  “We might need Duncan more here,” Arch said, trying to scoop up as many of the kids that were crowding around him as possible. He was enfolding them all in a hug, his sword put down behind him to avoid any injury to the children. They smelled, diapers filled, so sad, so scared. Lauren’s heart broke for them. “To watch our backs while we get these kids out.”

  “Right,” Lauren said, going about the business. She was checking one of the children for a hernia. Why? Because it was her job.

  And it felt good to be back to doing what she was supposed to be.

  “How’d you know about this place?” Arch asked, toddlers crowding in his arms, crying over him, and he was holding them tight, whispering softly between his questions to her.

  Lauren blushed in the dark. “I, uh … lost my virginity down here.”

  “You tell him this in front of the children?” Duncan sounded darkly amused.

  “We, uh …” Arch didn’t sound amused. He sounded like he wanted to change the subject with rapidity. “We probably ought to get them out of here.”

  “You find them?” Barney Jones called out, coming around the corner with his weapon out. He took one look at them and sagged against a wall, putting a hand to his heart. “Thank the Lord.”

  “It’s not safe down here,” Duncan said, touching Arch on the shoulder. “We need to—”

  “Get out, I know,” Arch said, and looked right at Lauren. “Can we move these children?”

  She was wrapping up her feeler exam. It was hardly conclusive, but she wanted to linger around the storm drains like she wanted to stick her ass in a demon’s mouth and wait for it to take a bite. “I don’t think any of them are hurt badly. We should be able to move them.” She tucked the pipe awkwardly in her coat and grabbed up two of the toddlers, one in each arm, and stood, balancing them on her hip like she used to do with Molly. They were still crying, of course, because she was a strange woman to them, but she made a soothing sound—like she had for her daughter—and one of them quieted. “It’ll be okay.” And she meant it, all the way through.

  “Come on then,” Arch said, and handed off one of them to Jones, who didn’t relinquish his weapon, but took up the weight of one toddler easily, perching him against his shoulder. Arch beckoned to Duncan, holding out one of the children. “You too, Duncan.”


  Duncan brandished his baton. “I can’t.”

  Arch just stared him down, baby in hand. “You’re stronger than any of us. You can carry one and beat a demon off with the other if need be.”

  Lauren held in the snicker at Arch’s unintentional faux pas. He didn’t know what he’d said.

  Duncan seemed to consider it a second, maybe braced for argument, but ultimately, he leaned down and accepted the child that Arch offered him. When he stood, Lauren caught a glimpse of his face; it was infused with curiosity, a kind of quiet wonder, as the child stared back at him.

  Both toddler and demon were utterly quiet.

  “And I’ll get the last two,” Arch said, sheathing his sword and rising, two children cradled in his arms. The noise was quieting down, the children—not soothed, perhaps, but not as fearful as they had been minutes earlier. “Come on,” Arch said, and started to lead them out of the darkness, the three adults and the six children, heading toward a distant pinprick of light that, to Lauren’s eyes, heralded safety.

  And home. Home lay beyond the light. How curious, she thought, a child on each hip, that she’d forgotten for so long what home had felt like.

  *

  Drake staggered toward the end of the tunnel, the grey sky glaring in at him, an unfathomably bright light. He was blinded, in pain, his arm gone—carved off like he was no better than the meat he served.

  Something about that moment had charged him, inflicting a desire for self-preservation like nothing else ever had. The little cutlets were no longer top of mind, his desire to be sated giving way to desperation to live, for he knew charging that man with the holy blade—that tasty man; he should have taken a deep bite and ended him when he had the chance—that he, Drake, would die.

  There was nothing for it now but to escape. There would be other days, other days when he could claim a cutlet of his own. He wouldn’t stop. He’d just flee, retreat, find another place to lay low for a spell. He staggered out into the light, the cool air prickling at his shell. Yes, he’d be back for a child sooner or later. He’d eventually get that taste he craved—

  Something struck him from the side and it was as the coming of death upon his head. A cracking sound evinced itself within his shell and Drake tumbled to his knees. It sounded as though he’d just split open a human ribcage to get to the succulent organs within, roasted and ready, as though someone were dressing a meal for him.

  “You like taking children, you sonofabitch?” A grubby man stood over him, wearing a mechanic’s overalls with the name Tarley on a white patch over the left breast pocket, stitched in red thread. Spots of oil dotted the denim, and he brandished a wrench over his head and brought it down again and again, rocking Drake with each hit, his greater shell cracking and shattering with the blows. “You like taking children? You motherfucker!”

  Drake cried into the ground, his sobs disturbing the dry dust between his fingers. He just wanted to eat … to be filled …

  A rain of blows fell upon Drake, and the mechanic shouted, “This is for Abi, you godless piece of shit!” And he smashed him again.

  Drake could taste a fine meal somewhere in the distance, but coughed dirt. His face was in it now, and there was an oily residue that hung in the air. “For Abi!” he heard, and another blow rained down on him, and another, shattering his shell in the back, the neck, the buttock, the leg … he could feel them all taking the hits, and he thought about a meat tenderizer being applied to his flesh. It was a little poetic, wasn’t it? He thought so, with what thoughts he had left. But it was getting hard to think. Drake didn’t bother, instead recalling a pleasant rump roast from a week prior. Or was it two weeks? He couldn’t recall. But the spices … the delicate flavor of the meat …

  It was all to die for.

  *

  Arch emerged from the tunnel first to find Braeden Tarley beating the snot out of the one-armed demon. The mechanic had gone to town on the thing. Its clothing was torn, cracks were present all over the shell, black shadowy substance threatening to leak out. “Holy smokes,” Arch said, pausing in the grim autumn light, and trying to shelter the eyes of the toddlers from the scene.

  “I guess that’s a little poetic,” Barney Jones said, holding his sword at one side, and trying to shy his own toddler’s eyes away as well.

  “Aren’t you going to counsel against wrath or something?” Lauren asked. For her part, the doc looked to Arch like she was more horrified than surprised by the scene unfolding before them.

  The cracking noises were sickening, reminding Arch a little of the time he and Alison had gone to a seafood restaurant in Chattanooga for their first anniversary. She’d showed him how to crack the crab claws, busting open the shell and pulling out the sweet meat inside.

  There wasn’t any sweet meat being revealed here, just pooled shadowy essence, but Tarley was surely exposing a lot of it. The demon was whimpering.

  “Goodness,” the other demon whispered—the tall, British one that had led them here. “This is … quite appalling.”

  Tarley paused in his downward swings, and looked over his shoulder at the thin demon. “You get the fuck out of here, y’hear?” The Brit blanched, maybe at the perceived threat, maybe at his crass use of language. “Go the fuck on … or you’re next.” And Tarley hoisted the wrench again, and got back to just beating the tar out of the kidnapping demon.

  The tall, sniffing demon didn’t have to be told twice. “As you say,” he said, and off he ran, blazing fast.

  “What the fuck is this all about?” Guthrie emerged from the darkness behind them, passing Lauren and scowling at one of the kids that she caught looking at her. She turned in time to see the tall demon beating feet across the street. “We’re letting that one get away, huh?”

  “He did help us,” Arch said, by way of explanation.

  Guthrie just shrugged. “Okay then.”

  “You like that, you motherfucker?” Tarley screamed, and everyone watched as he seized the demon and rolled it over. There was almost nothing identifiable or human about it anymore, the shell cracked in a thousand places like a boiled egg that had been busted but not stripped yet.

  “Go on, Braeden,” Jones said quietly. “Finish it. Go for the heart.”

  “Wrath, wrath, and more wrath,” Lauren muttered.

  “Braeden is just delivering us from evil, that’s all,” Jones said, but he didn’t seem to be enjoying it too much.

  Tarley raised the wrench high, and then jammed it down with a hard thrust into the demon’s face. The shell spread and broke apart, and he shoved it in deeper, like he was force-feeding it to a newly created orifice. It was an ugly, brutal thing, and for some reason it didn’t please Arch the way it might once have.

  But it didn’t bother him either.

  There was a final cracking noise, and the demon lurched. Then Tarley ripped the wrench free, raising it above his head—

  With a desperate sucking sound, the demon collapsed in on himself with a vortex of noise and hell, louder than a normal demon, but disappearing all the same. When it was over, there was nothing left to mark the passage but a scorched section of ground, blackened grass and dust.

  And in that moment, with nothing but the heavy breathing of those around him in the quiet fall air … Arch knew it was over.

  *

  Brian had heard the last battle at the quarry, faintly, through the radio. He’d pumped a fist in exultation, cheering quietly for the victory. The shadowcats were done, their wrecking reign of destruction brought to an end in a uniquely Southern way. He could get behind that, and definitely wanted to applaud Casey for the idea.

  His phone buzzed; a text came through: CHILDREN RETRIEVED. ALL ACCOUNTED FOR. ALL SAFE.

  Brian slumped against the back of the chair.

  They’d done it.

  And by “they,” he meant … everyone but him.

  A strange sort of self-pity took hold of him then. He should have felt more excitement. They’d won, after all—a rare victory these da
ys. In the three weeks since the Halloween massacre on the square, hardly a day had passed without more losses. They’d lost dozens of townspeople, maybe even a couple hundred. It was impossible to tell without going door to door—and nobody had proposed that yet.

  All they had to go on were the calls that came in. And he had a sheet in front of him listing them all. Right at the top was the daycare, because they’d yet to send anybody out to that. A dozen more followed after it, from a call of strange noises from a house on Tavern Drive all the way to the last one, which came from downtown.

  Brian lowered his head, taking the list in with despair. The question occurred—the same one he kept coming up with, time after time.

  Was any of this … making any kind of difference?

  Of course. There were parents that would get their children back tonight because of what the watch had done today, people whose houses and lives would be saved because they’d wiped out those goddamned hellcats.

  Of course they made a difference.

  But he looked over the list again, and realized … the watch might be making a difference, but …

  Coldly, analytically … he was making zero impact.

  That might have bothered him more, but he looked up at the clock and saw he only had twenty minutes left until his relief showed up. He’d go to the hospital again tonight; his mom needed a break, had already texted him that she’d left, so he’d go relieve her. Sit with his dad for a spell, stare at the ceiling, smell the disinfectant, listen to his father’s grunts if he was awake.

  Did that make a difference?

  Probably not, no. But he’d do it anyway.

  He gave that list of crimes in front of him another look. As soon as the watch got back, he’d start farming these out to them. From the nuisance calls to the last one, that one about someone screaming in an old factory off the square … they’d get looked at, every one of them. Checked out. Investigated.