Arch’s joviality disappeared like it was written in marker erased off a whiteboard. “We got dead bodies.”
Hendricks cringed and not just from the pain. “Damn. Hazard of a hot spot, but I don’t imagine it’s ever easy to see people start turning up dead.”
“We’re not just talking normal dead,” Arch said, and he crossed over to stand by the table. “We’re talking eaten alive, nothing left but bones.”
Hendricks nodded. No wonder the cop was a little touchy. That’d do it, all right. “There’s a few strains of demons that like to eat human meat. How many dead?”
“Eight we know of,” Arch said. “They got a whole family in one house.”
Hendricks closed his functioning eye, racked his brain for what he knew. “They went from house to house?”
“Yep.”
“Hmmm, eating their prey, hitting all in a line,” Hendricks lay back on the bed and put his feet up. “Probably a pack of Tul’rore or a couple Spiegoth working in tandem.” He opened his eye and tilted his head to look at Arch. “They weren’t in the house when you got there?” Arch shook his head. “Probably the Spiegoth, then. They move around a lot, kinda strike a few targets of convenience, then they get lethargic for a while after that. Likely as not they’re gorged, and they’ll be under the radar for a few days.”
“So … what we do?” Arch asked. He was hanging on every word, Hendricks could see that.
Hendricks sniffed. His body smelled like the glue from adhesive bandages. He’d taped gauze over his eye, and the Plasticine smell of the adhesive hung heavy in his nose. “Well, we need to go hunting for their den. They’re likely to choose something warm and damp.” He looked toward the curtains, which were drawn, but he could still hear the rain outside and Arch was decked out in rain gear. “So, pretty much the whole area right now.”
“Storm drains are starting to overflow,” Arch said. “The Upper Caledonia River Valley is getting pretty wet. The reservoir up above Tallakeet Dam is probably pretty full at this point. That means the caves are probably beyond wet right now, probably getting to flooded. The water level is rising around here.”
Hendricks stared at him blankly. “So?” he asked.
“It means that typical underground hiding locations, if you’re talking about warm and damp, are out.” The big policeman seemed overly stiff while pointing that out, like he was annoyed at being called on his explanation.
“Warm and damp doesn’t mean underground,” Hendricks said with a smile. “Caves are too cool. They’d hang out in a swamp, more like. Or a greenhouse, if they could find one to their liking.” He glanced toward the closed curtains again, as though he expected them to be open or he could magically see through them. “The rain dropping the temperature?”
“Some,” Arch conceded. “Probably low eighties.”
“Yeah,” Hendricks said, “they’ll want somewhere hotter than the woods right now, then.” He paused. “If it is Spiegoth.”
“What do we do?” Arch asked.
“Come back when you’re off work,” Hendricks said, stretching on the bed. “Hopefully I’ll be a little more mobile by then, because right now I’m having a time convincing myself to even go to the bathroom. Almost led to a tragic bed-wetting incident earlier.”
“I probably won’t be done until late tonight,” Arch said, and Hendricks watched the deputy’s face sag. “Reeve will keep us on until late. Probably even institute some overtime because of this, which …” he flattened his lips and blew air between them, “… I always wondered what it would take.”
“Okay, well,” Hendricks said, trying to think it through, “I’m not gonna make it far without a car, not in this condition. Maybe we can go on your patrol together?”
Arch’s face got rocky. “Probably not. If Reeve catches you riding along with me on a patrol right now, he’ll throw a fit.” Hendricks waited for the explanation and it came along shortly. “He thinks it’s an out-of-towner that did this.”
“Probably was,” Hendricks said, trying not to take umbrage at the thought of a small-town sheriff taking aim on him or someone like him with an accusation like that. “But not a human out-of-towner.”
“I tried to get him to look at everybody,” Arch said. “Not get so myopic. Figured maybe if he’d broaden his search a little bit it might give him more opportunity to run up some blind alleys while we try and track down the real culprits, reduce ’em to a sulfur stink.”
“Which leaves your cannibal serial killer murders unsolved. Might not be a bad thing,” Hendricks said, focusing on the mauve/taupe wallpaper as he pondered it, “having people extra vigilant for a while. After all, depending on how long this hotspot lasts, they could be in for a lot nastier things than demons that want to eat them alive.”
Arch’s face twitched. “Worse? Worse than this? How?”
Hendricks told him. The big black lawman looked kinda pale when he was done.
***
Gideon walked through the rain, his skin still feeling like it was on fire, flush with heat of what he’d just seen. What he’d just done. It had been so close, so delicious. The cold rain battering him, soaking his t-shirt and cargo pants and chilling his skin, was easily ignored.
The taste of her death was just lingering on his tongue, like he’d gone out there and just licked her right in the middle of it. He could feel himself get hard as he walked, and he didn’t care. That made it even hotter somehow. Being that close to the death drove the sensuality factor through the roof. He imagined himself walking out in the middle of the diner while it was happening. Fulfilling himself right there, his jizz spattering the checkered tablecloths and burning through them, smoke wafting in the air.
It was a pleasant fantasy, but that was all it was. The damp, humid air filled his nose as he walked over the highway bridge. Cars rushed past in the rain below, the noise of tires on a slick road reaching him far above. He looked over the side and wondered what it would be like to—
He’d forgotten his car at the diner. He looked back and could see it over there, the rental waiting in the parking lot. It was such a simple thing to drive a car, but he’d been so distracted he’d forgotten about it.
Gideon stopped and looked down to the interstate again. The traffic flow was steady. Semis raced past, minivans and cars in their wake. It was afternoon, and he’d seen the traffic level rise in the mornings with rush hour and in the evening as well. They were right there, traveling along at seventy miles per hour, a hundred lives a minute. So close he could reach out and touch them.
Almost.
A smile creased his face and he stared off the bridge then looked around. Cars were coming by only occasionally on the overpass. He had an idea. A solid idea, a good one. It maybe pushed the boundaries of what his kind normally did, but there weren’t any real rules, right?
It wasn’t like he was the first to cross this particular boundary, after all. He’d just never needed to in places like Chicago, or before that, Detroit. There were plenty of dead coming all the time in those places. Like New York in the seventies and eighties, before it got cleaned up. That had been like heaven. A handful of murders every day, plus all the deaths of natural causes. Now it was dried up and he was lucky to get one good kill per day. Chicago had been a boon for his kind the last few years. And it wasn’t played out, but he’d fell the draw of the hotspot. Got sick of the snow, the summer, the streets.
The call of the hotspot promised something more. The Tul’rore that had blown into town after him seemed like they were going to deliver, too. It was entirely possible that other demons would come in, step things up, and turn it into a paradise like Chicago for a while, now that the Tul’rore were gone.
But until then, he was high and dry.
Watching Linda Richards die from a room away was a joy, and it had awakened in him a desire to experience it again. It was getting compulsive, and he wanted to reach down and take himself in hand, relive it—his most intense climax yet.
The rain kept coming down, thoug
h, and even though there was no traffic on the overpass, he knew better than to do it here. He didn’t want trouble. Not the obvious kind, anyway.
It’d interfere with the plan he’d just crafted.
Gideon walked on, heading back to the Sinbad, back to his room. He’d go back to the diner and get the rental later. He’d need it around five o’clock.
A loud crack of thunder startled him, and he looked up. The rain was coming down in sheets, and the sky looked almost black to the east. Good. That’d be in his favor if it kept up like this.
He was so gleeful about his plan, about what was on his mind, that he almost didn’t notice the Crown Vic with the sheriff’s markings sitting just outside the Sinbad’s parking lot. He tried not to be too obvious as he walked by, but he caught a glimpse of a blond woman watching the front of the motel. There was a sheriff’s department Explorer parked in a space just outside his room, and Gideon started to get very, very nervous.
***
Erin was watching Hendricks’s door. She hadn’t followed Arch here because she’d made it away from the crime scene about ten minutes after he did, but she’d ended up in the same place as him, sure enough. She was just sitting outside the Sinbad’s parking lot, waiting to see if he came out.
She asked herself again what the hell was going on, but no answer really came beyond the obvious. They were probably just talking about something or other. But what? It wasn’t like Arch had run out here to tell Hendricks about her big promotion. Hell, she didn’t even know exactly why she’d run out here to do it.
Okay, that was a lie. She’d driven out here because her BFF had left town before the curtain had even fallen on their graduation, and she’d done the slow draw away in the year since. Frequent texts became less frequent until they never really came at all anymore, and Erin had been left palling around with the other townies or her coworkers. None of them were really close. More like drinking buddies. Occasional fuck buddies, maybe. Very occasionally, lately.
Hendricks was the first thing to show up in a long time that had interrupted her monotony. This temporary field promotion or whatever was the second. Two breaths of fresh air in a stale town she had gotten a little bored of. So she was pissed at him for being all mysterious.
He was still the only person she could think of that she was actually excited to share this with.
What the hell was Arch doing in there? Why did he leave the scene of the most heinous murder in Calhoun County history and head immediately for a seedy motel to talk to a guy he had just professed not to know all that well?
Erin ran a hand over her face as the rain-streaked window of the Crown Vic blurred in front of her. What the hell was she doing here, anyway? Hendricks was just a guy she’d met less than two weeks ago. A guy she’d made some exceedingly stupid decisions with.
Still, she didn’t put the car in drive and leave. She just sat there in the rain, watching the door to the motel, waiting to see if it would open.
***
Gideon circled around to the other side of the street where a gas station was damned near abandoned. He pushed in through the door and took a quick look around. Bored clerk behind the counter, not a patron in sight, no one filling up out at the pumps. The place smelled a little of mildew and the carpet squished faintly as he walked in. He went over to the candy, picked up something at random and went to pay for it. All the while he was watching the motel to see what the cop was up to.
She was just sitting there. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like she was watching the place. Maybe she was just watching the other cop car. Or maybe she was watching for him.
His mind reeled. What could they possibly be after him for? He hadn’t committed any crimes, at least none anyone knew about. It seemed unlikely they’d already be on him for masturbating in the diner bathroom, even if someone had seen him. Besides, the cops hadn’t even showed up to the diner, just the paramedics.
No, this was something else, and he was straining to think of what it could be. Maybe something to do with what the Tul’rore had done? They had left a hell of a mess, and surely someone had found it by now. Gideon frowned as he pulled out a dollar bill to pay for his purchase. Maybe they were going to try and pin it on him. He was new in town, a stranger, and didn’t these small-towners like to do shit like that? Paranoid, xenophobic sons of bitches.
He stripped the wrapper off the candy bar when he was done paying, told the clerk to skip the receipt, and paused before walking out the exit door. “Hell of a storm,” the clerk said to him from behind the red counter.
“Sure is,” he agreed without thinking about it.
***
Arch left Hendricks a few minutes later, stepping back out into the rain from the shelter of the Sinbad motel’s second floor overhang. It didn’t help much because the rain was now coming sideways. It was a drenching downpour, absolutely soaking everything. The parking lot had been dusty before, the result of an abandoned construction dig just one lot over from the motel. They’d planned to build a restaurant there once, but that was before the recession caused the investment dollars to dry up. Arch didn’t care much about that, except it might have been nice to have another place to eat in town.
He got in the Explorer and out of habit checked the rearview. There was a sheriff’s car just behind him, out of the parking lot a little bit. He thought it might have been the sheriff’s own and turned around to check.
It was. But Reeve had been back at the scene when last he saw him.
The answer took him only a moment to come to—Erin. He wondered why she’d come out here, but only for a second, because it was fairly obvious. Why she was waiting out here was a little more puzzling, until he thought about how things might have looked from her end. He’d taken off on patrol but ended up stopping off here first? He felt an uncontrolled grimace. This was probably going to require an explanation but not until later. He hated lying anyway.
***
Gideon watched the big Explorer pull out of the parking lot and head down the road back toward town. He waited, and sure enough, the Crown Vic pulled into the space occupied by the Explorer only a few moments later. The girl got out and knocked on the door that the other sheriff’s deputy, the big burly black guy, had just come out of a minute before. It only took Gideon a second to remember that the cowboy had been in that room.
What the hell was the deal with the cowboy? He was a demon hunter but working with the law? Was he like a Texas Ranger? But for Tennessee, maybe? Was there even such a thing as a Tennessee Ranger?
He waited, staring out into the rain for a couple more minutes while he finished his candy bar. It didn’t look like they were interested in him, in any case, so there was no reason to hole up over here any longer. He had some thinking to do, anyway. The rain was getting worse, and that was all to the better.
***
“So …” Hendricks said as he sat back down on the bed. When he’d heard the second knock, he figured it was Arch coming back to tell him something else. It wasn’t, and he couldn’t decide if that made things better or worse. When he saw it was Erin, it sent a shot of butterflies right to his stomach, knowing he was going to have to answer questions he didn’t want to. Her raincoat was filling the room with a mildew smell, like it had been with the department since the sixties and hadn’t ever been cleaned. It wasn’t making Hendricks real happy to be next to her.
“So …” Erin said, and she sat down next to him. “What’s the deal?”
Hendricks tried to figure out what he could evade on this one. “With what?”
Her eyes grew wider for a second before narrowing back down again, and her nostrils flared. He got the feeling this conversation might end up having to get cut short. It wasn’t going to be pretty if it went that way. “What were you and Arch talking about?”
Hendricks laughed a little under his breath, and he saw her react again. Well, it wasn’t like he could tell her the truth. His logical mind was shouting the answer to him, and he wa
s connecting the dots pretty easily. She was pissed at him anyway, so she was going to have to go. “You’re not my girlfriend, so don’t go playing like you’re a jealous one.”
He could see that one land, like he’d slapped her, and he felt a hard stab of remorse that he fought to keep off his face. This was why demon hunters didn’t get involved. He’d been stupid to get barnacled onto her as tight as he had so quickly. He wanted to kick himself, but her response did that for him. “Fuck you,” she said.
It was simple, it was direct, and it was followed by her standing, turning her back on him, and walking out with a slammed door that echoed in the room. He stared at the closed door, a wet palm print from where she’d grasped it presenting a dark spot, like she’d bled on it.
He put a hand up over his mouth, clenching his teeth tightly shut, and rubbed his face. Like he could somehow compel the words he’d said back in there and replace them with something smarter, something that wouldn’t have torpedoed the fuck out of the first real connection he’d felt with a woman in five years.
***
Gideon passed the blond sheriff’s deputy as she stormed out of the room next door. She didn’t even notice him, standing by his door, about to unlock it. She’d clearly had a tiff with the cowboy, and that made him feel even better. This really didn’t have anything to do with him.
He smiled as he unlocked the door and strode into his room, dripping on the carpet. He didn’t even bother to lock the door, just started stripping off his clothes. He kept his hands off himself, though, tempting as it was to relive the joy of watching that waitress die of the stroke again. He was going to save himself for tonight.
Because tonight was going to be even better.
7.
Erin raced down the road in the sheriff’s car, sirens flashing. She didn’t need them on, it was a violation of regulations, but by God, did it feel good. She could feel the anger burning through her, pushing her foot down on the pedal as she headed out of town. The Crown Vic smelled of fast food, like the thousand burgers probably consumed in it were still sitting on the back seat.
The Southern Watch Series, Books 1-3: Called, Depths and Corrupted Page 27
