That sinking feeling in her stomach was getting worse by the minute. “You’ll keep us in the loop, right?” Erin asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ferris said, and doffed his hat again. She watched water drip down his collar and he made a face. Any other day, under any other circumstances, she might have found it amusing. Today was not that day.
* * *
Arch felt like he was snowed under. The call about the multi-vehicular catastrophe had come in a couple hours ago, and part of him wanted to rush right out there, but dispatch—played currently by the sheriff himself, still at the Hughes house crime scene—had told him to sit in town and keep writing tickets between patrols.
He was doing this now, stuck in place along Old Jackson Highway with about a million cars crawling along in front of him. The traffic shunted from the shut-down interstate was plugging Midian’s main thoroughfare, a string of headlights that went for miles and miles, with very little movement.
Arch had the itch under his skin, sick of the smell of the Explorer’s heater, tired of hearing the slow hum of the engine idling and the rain tapping on the roof. He’d heard of Chinese Water Torture and was sure as he could be that it had to be employed in some manner in Hades. He wanted to drive, but he was trapped in a parking lot on the side of the road, waiting for the mess to clear.
He wasn’t likely to be writing many tickets here, either, unless it was for parking violations.
He considered riding the shoulder and probably would when the time came for his next patrol in a half hour or so. Until then he was stuck in place.
It only took a short time for him to connect the dots and start thinking of that as a metaphor for his situation with Alison, with the demon hunting he was undertaking and all else. By then the itch to move had settled into a slow, painful burn, and he just ground it out for as long as he could—another five minutes—before he flipped on the siren and lights and headed down Old Jackson Highway toward the Sinbad motel.
* * *
Hendricks was a little surprised at the knock on his door. He figured Arch would be a lot later getting there, taking at least a few more hours on patrol. That would have suited Hendricks just fine, because he was sleeping through the dulled sensation of pain racking his side and the ache around his eye. The good news was that he was able to open his eye slightly, and his vision was clear. Holding it open for long resulted in some discomfort, though, so he shut it until such time as he’d need it.
Hendricks made his way across the chill motel room, hip still bothering him. He rubbed his face as he got up, a bleariness settling into his head. The heater wasn’t working; he’d already checked before he’d gone to sleep. Some kind of seasonal bullshit, he figured, to keep customers from cranking up something they shouldn’t and letting it run all day and night. Probably affected the motel’s narrow profit margin.
Hendricks opened the door and said, “Weren’t you expecting you quite this early.” He reddened after he said it, because he’d spoken without seeing who it was. It didn’t occur to him—like he was some kind of moron or something—that it could be anyone but Arch. It could have been Erin, back to apologize for what she’d said, or to rip into him again.
It wasn’t, though. It was a woman, but most definitely not Erin.
“You were expecting me?” She had her head cocked to the side, the very picture of curiosity. Her eyes were studying him fiercely. Her hair was long and red, not a hint of moisture on it even though she wore no raincoat. In fact she didn’t seem to have much of anything on besides a tank top covering her small breasts and a pair of blue jeans that looked tight on her thin figure.
“Ah, no,” Hendricks said, fighting for the words. “I was … uh … actually expecting someone else.” The eyes were piercing, watching him. They felt like they were boring into him, trying to drag out an explanation. “I thought you were Arch.”
“No,” she said, almost singsong, still staring at him, a little less blankly now. “I am not Archibald Stan.”
“Well, yeah,” Hendricks said at last, “I know that now, Starling.”
Chapter 9
“What’s going on here?” Arch asked as he strode up to the door of Hendricks's motel room. That red-haired woman, Starling, who’d saved his and Hendricks’s bacon a week or so earlier, was standing out front, looking at him with those eyes. Arch found them kind of intimidating; it was like they anchored on to you and didn’t let go. He looked and realized he couldn’t tell what color they were even in the light.
Hendricks stood in the door, leaning against the jamb. The cowboy looked like he was still half-asleep to Arch. “I was about to ask her when you came walking up, actually.” Hendricks was in a black t-shirt and jeans, and his face still looked like all heck, but his swollen eye was partially open, so that was an improvement at least.
“You got any idea what’s going on out there?” Arch jerked a thumb toward the direction of the interstate, just a few hundred feet away. The rain had started to slacken, waning into a drizzle now. The parking lot of the Sinbad was under a good quarter inch of water even still, and Arch had passed more than a few drainage ditches on the way here that were full and still rising.
Hendricks looked past him and shrugged, looking surprisingly nonchalant for a man whose face bore all the signs of being caved in only last night. “Rush hour?”
“Murder,” Starling breathed, and it really wasn’t much more than a breath the way Arch heard it. It was low and throaty, hissed out as she narrowed those striking eyes. He watched her, and if he’d had to make a guess, he’d say she wasn’t too happy about the whole situation.
“Murder?” Hendricks had a scowl in place now. “Not those Spiegoth again?”
Arch waited a second to see if Starling would explain. When she didn’t he took a step closer. “What do you mean, murder? Last I heard it was a multi-vehicular accident—”
“Open your eyes,” Starling said, and her face was back to the normal, placid expression now. “Too much death. Too much blood.”
Arch let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and shot a glance at Hendricks. “It does appear awfully coincidental. Can you prove that something’s going on with this wreck?”
Starling cocked her head at him, and Arch suddenly felt mighty small. “Do you need proof? Can you not find it in you to take such an extraordinary occurrence on faith?”
Arch looked back at Hendricks to find the cowboy looking back at him. “Don’t look at me for faith,” Hendricks replied quickly, his arms folded over his black t-shirt, “but that does seem like a big coincidence, this coming after those murders.”
“What kind of demon would kill people this way?” Arch asked. It was a good question to his mind. “The … Spiegoth?”
“No,” Starling said, and she paused to look away as though she were sniffing the air. “There are no Spiegoth in this town. Yet.”
“Yet?” Hendricks said, coming off the door frame. “Does that mean they will come eventually?”
Starling turned to look at the cowboy, and her answer was glacially cool. “All things will come here eventually.”
“If it wasn’t a Spiegoth that did this,” Arch said, trying to wrap his brain around the whole situation as he leaned in to rest a palm on the facade of the Sinbad motel, “what did?” He wondered if he’d recognize the demon name were she to spit one out.
“Hard to say,” Starling said after she appeared to ponder his statement for a moment. “Come with me.” She turned without another word and began to walk through the parking lot. Arch noticed for the first time that she wore cowboy boots too, and then turned to look at Hendricks, who was still poised in the doorjamb, looking like he was still deciding whether to move.
“I guess we should go with her,” Hendricks said as he met Arch’s gaze. “You know, at least see what she’s got to say.” He waited a minute before saying anything else and Arch did too, trying to figure out what protest seemed reasonable under the circumstances. “We do owe her our lives.”
“Yep,” Arch said, but he could hear the resignation in his own voice. Nodding, he turned to follow the red-haired woman across the parking lot. She did not look back to see if they were following her.
* * *
Lerner was about to hit the breaking point when Duncan opened his eyes and finally spoke. “Something’s going on. Something big.”
That was music to Lerner’s ears. A tapping noise in the depths of the motel’s rank air conditioner was slowly driving him batty. Even the shade of the walls was violently disagreeable at this point. “What and where?” he asked as he grabbed his keys off the dresser at the front of the room.
“Toward the freeway,” Duncan said, unfolding himself from the wood and cloth chair that was one of a matching set sitting in front of the motel’s window. He gestured vaguely, pulling his suit coat off the back of the chair. It was one of the milder ones, a deep purple one that looked almost navy in low light. Duncan seemed to have made an effort to coordinate it with his tie. Lerner let it pass.
“I’ll drive,” Lerner said, shocking neither of them. He liked to be in control. Driving gave him time to think, which probably annoyed Duncan, but who cared? Duncan, probably, but Lerner didn’t. He slapped the door with an overly enthusiastic rap of the hand as he passed through and held it for Duncan.
The rain was slackening off. This was a good thing. A sign of better days to come, hopefully.
* * *
It didn’t take Gideon long to get another rental. He had a bank account with a lot of money in it, the byproduct of years of taking money from the accounts of people who didn’t need it anymore. He waited until they were dead, and using that little bit of contact he had with them as they were passing him, took an ATM number here, a bank account number there, a passcode or credit card or social security number every now and again. He always got a complete sense of them as they passed through and him, so it seemed a shame to let their money go to waste when he was clearly in need.
And he was in need. In more ways than one.
The drive back to Midian was hell, a slow, dragging ride. The rain was starting to lighten up, for which he was thankful. He was still trying to figure out how best to top his last move, and it wasn’t coming to him. Feeling the twenty-eight people who had died that afternoon had been the single most thrilling and satisfying experience of his entire earthly existence.
And it had been a long existence.
He’d lingered near wars before, but it was tough to predict a battlefield and get there quickly without exposing himself to danger. During most of World War II, he’d stayed in the U.S., just feeding off the slow misery and dying that naturally happened in the cities. Things had picked up in the sixties and seventies but had started to quiet down in the nineties. New York was boring now, so passé, and even some of the hotspots hadn’t been very exciting over the last few years. Sure, New Orleans and Detroit could be counted on in a pinch, but where was the excitement in that?
No, Gideon needed something new. What he’d done this afternoon by spurring the accident, that had been new. That had been thrilling. That was still making him tingle in the right places. He fought to keep his hand off himself as he got a reflexive erection just thinking about it as he drove. He’d jerked off again and again as he took the rental to Cleveland to ditch it, making a bigger mess of the car. By that time, who cared? It was already fucked. And he needed to get it out of his system so he didn’t fuck up the new car.
He figured he’d have some excitement reliving this one, but then he’d be spent. The urge would start rising. The thirst for something greater would start to build, and just jerking off to the same old souls spilling the same old blood would lose its thrill. He needed a new mountain to climb. Metaphorically, of course.
He just had to find a way to kill lots of people in a massive hurry.
And it was that thought he entertained as he kept driving down the interstate, back to Midian.
* * *
“Where the hell are we going?” Hendricks asked as he and Arch hurried to catch up with Starling. His whole body was still aching, in spite of having taken a couple Percocet that he had from the time when he’d broken his arm. He’d been holding onto them a year or so, knowing that, given his profession, he’d need them eventually. He didn’t really like to take them unless he had to because they fucked with his body, making him sleepy and shit. He was probably at the tail end of the effect, but he still wanted to just sleep. Not much chance of that.
“This way,” Starling said, just a little ahead of them. Hendricks watched her go and marveled at her ass. It wasn’t bad, all out on display in her tight blue jeans. She hadn’t been wearing those last time, had she? He didn’t think so, but it was tough to remember. Seemed like she was mostly around in the darkness and turned up when he was in a scrape, which didn’t exactly lend him to paying attention to her choice of wardrobe.
Hendricks shot a look at Arch and adjusted his hat, tipping the brim back and out of his eyes. He liked wearing the cowboy hat, liked the feel of it, liked the fact that he used to be able to hide the switchblade in it before he’d handed that off to Arch, but it did occasionally get in the way. Arch seemed not to notice, keeping his attention on Starling ahead of them.
There was a little bit of a scent trailing in Starling’s wake, though, Hendricks had noticed. It wasn’t exactly sweet, but it wasn’t bad. Kind of nice, really. He’d been in a car with her the week before and hadn’t noticed it. It wasn’t like any perfume he’d ever caught a whiff of before. Maybe something new.
They headed on up the bridge over the interstate, following the slight grade up. Hendricks looked to his left and saw the road closed ahead, like they’d just shut the damned interstate completely down. What the fuck?
The whole damned bridge was shut down, actually, no traffic either way. Hendricks kind of boggled at it, and looked down the on-ramp again to see a shit ton of blue and red lights down on the interstate. His head involuntarily leaned forward, like he was a duck about to peck the ground. He could feel his jaw fall open.
It was damned mess of epic proportions. Ambulances, cop cars—mostly the multicolored mess of Tennessee Highway Patrol, he could tell at this distance, and wreckers, dragging cars away. “How did I miss this?” Hendricks asked.
“The painkillers coursing through your blood have dulled your senses,” Starling answered without turning around. Her long, red hair swept as she moved, sashaying with the natural motion of her body. “I am surprised I was able to roust you out of bed.”
Hendricks shot a look at Arch, who gave him a sidelong glare. “They’re prescription,” he told the cop.
“Yours, I hope,” Arch said.
“They’re mine,” Hendricks replied. Arch looked a little put out, but then he’d looked like that a lot lately. That should maybe have worried Hendricks more, but he was still feeling drowsy.
“Over here,” Starling said, approaching a yellow line of police tape. There was a man in a Tennessee Highway Patrol uniform covered by a rain slicker waiting there, eyeing them cautiously. Arch nodded at the man and the trooper lifted the tape so that Starling could pass, followed by Arch and then Hendricks. He didn’t say anything, just followed Starling’s ass in those tight jeans.
“Here we are,” Starling said and stopped about a quarter of the way up the bridge on the shoulder. The ground was still damp beneath them, but at least there wasn’t a flow of water running down the bridge.
Hendricks looked over and saw that all the police presence was down below, buzzing around like bees on a damned honeycomb. He could see a few stretchers covered over with white sheets and it stopped him. He knew all too well what that meant. “Damn,” he breathed.
“What is this?” Arch asked, drawing Hendricks to look back onto the bridge instead of over the edge to the catastrophe below. He took a few steps closer to them. Starling was standing upright but looking down. Arch was bent over, his fingers extended toward the ground as he reached down to touch the roa
d.
“Do not do that.” Starling was bent double in a second. She caught his shoulder, pulling Arch back up.
Hendricks got over to them and looked down at a little puddle of black goo that looked like oil had fallen on the ground. He cocked his head and started to ask Starling what was so important when he saw it.
The goo was burned into the pavement.
“What the fuck?” Hendricks asked.
“It’s oil,” Arch said, frowning. Hendricks could hear it in the cop’s voice.
“No, it’s not,” Hendricks said. “It burned into the pavement before it stopped.” He squinted to look closer. “It’s like an acid or something.”
“It is an emission,” Starling said.
“Seems like that’d be the sort of thing a carburetor is supposed to catch,” Hendricks said. He tried to put amusement into the way he said it, not really sure if it came out like it was intended.
“It is an ejaculatory emission from a male demon who feeds on the death of humans for his own emotional and physical gratification,” Starling said, and by the time she got to the end of what she was saying, her utter passivity was disturbing as hell to Hendricks. “A Sygraath.”
There was a beat of quiet as Hendricks waited to see if Starling would say she was joking. He was pretty sure she wasn’t the joking type, but …
“Excuse me?” Arch asked.
“Was something I said unclear?” Starling was looking at Arch with a hint of curiosity, her head cocked at him.
“I think it was the part about a demon ejaculating,” Hendricks threw in. He looked at Arch and shrugged. “Demons … uh … do that?”
Depths: Southern Watch #2 Page 11
