Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  Reeve looked at her with resignation, wondering how exactly his life had gotten this colossally fucked. Nowhere on his list was figuring out if demons were making up new words, no sir. That had not figured into his goals for being sheriff. Lowering the rate of property crimes, yes. Answering the questions of a sixteen-year-old regarding demon habits and behaviors … no. Just no.

  “Who the hell are you, exactly?” Braeden Tarley asked.

  “Molly Darlington,” Molly said, smiling slightly. “Dr. Darlington is my mom.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Braeden said with a deep frown, like Molly had a disease or had just come down from Mars.

  “Braeden’s got a daughter, too,” Reeve said, trying to figure out how to make Molly go torment someone else for a while.

  “Oh?” Molly brightened, if that was possible. “What’s her name?”

  “Abilene,” Tarley said, softening slightly. “We call her Abi.”

  Molly blinked. “Abilene is a city in Texas.”

  Tarley stiffened, and Reeve watched him get just as defensive as he’d seen the man on every occasion they’d gotten into squall. “We wanted something unique,” Tarley said. “Something nobody else named their kid.”

  “But it’s a city in Texas,” Molly said, frowning. “I’m sure other people have named their kid Abilene.”

  Tarley looked at Reeve, and the sheriff saw the embarrassment burn for a second before the anger took over. “This from a girl who’s named after a club drug,” Reeve said weakly, trying to give Tarley a little bit of covering fire.

  Tarley recovered in a second or so. “Ain’t never met anyone named Abilene, have you?” Molly shrugged, and Tarley got a little self-righteous, clearly vindicated. “Thought not.”

  “I’m actually glad we got to talking about Abi,” Reeve said, not at all glad the conversation had gone this way, and even less so that he’d opened the door for Molly Darlington to just jump right in and make a mess of things further. “Because, really, this meeting, and everything that’s going on—it concerns, you know, the children—”

  Tarley reached up to scratch his face with a filthy-looking hand. “Sorry, sheriff,” he said, plainly not at all sorry, “I have a hard time swallowing this stuff about demons.”

  “That’s fair,” Reeve said, trying to dodge around this semi before it clobbered him, “but you gotta admit some terrible things are happening. And no matter what the cause is, people are worried for their families, their kids—”

  Tarley’s eyes lit up. “Damned right we are.”

  “Of course you are,” Reeve said, watching the anger smolder in Braeden Tarley’s eyes, “because you’re a good parent—”

  “How the hell would you know?” Tarley fired off.

  Reeve stopped dead in his rhetorical tracks. “Well, Braeden, I assume since you’re a single father now—”

  “What happened to Abi’s mom?” Molly asked, then suddenly seemed to realize she’d blundered and clapped her hands over her mouth. She looked contrite, for which Reeve felt blessed, though it was about five minutes too late. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “No, it’s all right,” Tarley said, still smoking from the ears. “She died in a car crash when Abi was young.” He was wound tight as a spool of thread, string eating into the cork. Reeve wanted to grimace, because he suspected this was about to go nowhere real good. Tarley’s gaze whirled around to Reeve. “You’re right, I’m trying to be a good father to my daughter. And you’re right, too, crap is going real wrong around here.” He raised a finger and pointed it right in Reeve’s face, something that would have earned him a disorderly conduct or worse if it had happened in a traffic stop and not here at a meeting about demons gone shitshow wrong. “I don’t buy your line, though. Maybe you know what’s going on here, or maybe you’re just out of your depths or maybe you’re just blaming others for your own screw-ups.”

  Reeve took a breath, then two. “If that’s how you want to see it, Braeden.”

  Tarley’s eyes burned, not like a demon, but like a man reaching the end of his rope. “That’s how I see it.” He drew his finger back. “Reckon I’m not the only one, either.” He turned and started to walk away.

  “Reckon you’re not,” Reeve agreed as Braeden Tarley walked out. “And I hope you don’t have cause to change your mind anytime soon.”

  *

  The name on her driver’s license said Amanda Guthrie, but no one really called her that. No one really called her anything, except maybe “ma’am,” or “lady,” if they were trying to get her attention. That was rare, though, she reflected as she steered the car up the interstate off-ramp. It was an SUV, a rental from Atlanta, where she’d flown in this afternoon. It had been a few hours’ drive through Atlanta rush hour—that town felt like it was always in rush hour to her—and now she was here, pulling past the Welcome to Calhoun County sign. Seeing it didn’t prompt a smile or a frown or much of anything, really. It was just a sign of the times, a sign of where she was now, and how she felt about it was pretty well irrelevant.

  She turned right on the off-ramp and headed toward town, the SUV’s headlights illuminating the road even though the sun hadn’t fully set yet. Everything was in shadow, dusky and dark, the sun hidden behind the horizon, buried beneath the trees to the west.

  Amanda Guthrie, as no one called her, took a steady few breaths and focused her rapt attention on the road. She was passing places now—“Fast Freddie’s,” read a glaring neon sign. There was a diner, a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a fireworks outlet. She took it all in, then turned her gaze back to the blacktop, the neon sheen of the bar’s sign lending a little more color to her life.

  She brought the vehicle to a squealing halt as someone staggered out in front of her, reeling and clutching their midsection. She applied the brakes judiciously, not wanting to run someone over only a minute after entering this town. That wouldn’t make a very good impression, and it’d surely draw attention.

  The poor soul in front of her stumbled, clutching his belly. She could tell he was a he now, by the hair and the beard. He was wearing a coat, too, protection against the cool fall air she’d felt when she’d fueled up outside Chattanooga. The bastard hit all fours in the middle of the road and Amanda Guthrie rolled her eyes, staring past her dark chocolate-colored hands where they gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  A pack of them were on the man in the middle of the road in a hot second, three guys in coats, rough-looking, like they’d come up from the Gulf after rough-necking for a while. Amanda watched out her front windshield, cocking an eyebrow at the spectacle, watching it all coolly.

  “It was a mistake to try and run,” the lead roughneck said, a black man talking in a South London accent. She knew that accent, all cockney. “Now you’re in Barney. Lads?”

  The Brit and his compatriots surrounded the fallen man and proceeded to beat him for a spell. Amanda just watched calmly, waiting. After a few seconds she honked her horn.

  The Brit looked up and held a single finger aloft, and fortunately for him it was the index finger and not a ruder one. “Just a minute, there. We’ll be out of your way in a jiffy. Or you could just drive around,” he made a motion suggesting she steer her car into the other lane, “if you’re in a hurry.” He smiled with what he probably regarded as charm.

  Amanda just hit the horn again, longer this time. She wasn’t going to steer out of her way for this trash, no damned way.

  “Oh, all right, then,” the Brit said, lit by her headlamps, “have it your way.” He spread his arms wide, grinning. “Gentlemen.”

  One of the other two behind him drew a knife and stabbed down, penetrating the fallen man’s back just above the kidney. Guthrie saw his face as the blow struck, pain and surprise flashing in his eyes for a hot second before—

  Black fire crawled up his back and devoured him whole, ripping out of this plane and back to hell.

  The Brit and his two friends eyed Amanda in her car, and she honked again, briefly, watching them and none too
impressed.

  “All right, all right,” the Brit said, not smiling quite as broadly. “Let’s get out of the bird’s way, lads. Give right of way and all that.” He retreated from the road slowly, looking back at her all the while. She wondered if he could see her face through the headlight’s gleam, but she didn’t wonder too hard.

  As soon as he was clear, she put foot to accelerator again, bringing the SUV back up to speed. She watched the three men in her rearview as she drove away, shaking her head, still rolling her eyes, for all the good it did.

  “Fucking demon hunters,” she said, with nothing but contempt as she headed into Midian, Tennessee. The road looked nothing but clear ahead.

  *

  “Why in the bloody hell would we leave everything we’ve worked so hard for behind in order to go to Midian, Tennessee, at the height of a hotspot?” Chester asked the empty air in front of him, the slow curve of Interstate 75 wrapping around a bend in the distance. They passed a sign telling them Knoxville was ahead.

  “Apparently you’re seeing things somewhat rosier than I was,” William replied. He’d changed his name to Bill some time ago, but Chester did not adapt easily to this change, nor any other. He waved the body’s left hand, taking it off the wheel for a second to make his florid point. “We were working in a factory, Chester, for a damnably low wage, living in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens.”

  “We were carving a life out for ourselves, William,” Chester said, losing patience. He kept the hand he retained control of firmly gripped upon the wheel. “Through steady effort we were making headway—”

  “Well, perhaps my brethren are sick of your definition of ‘headway,’” Bill said, a little of his irritability seeping out with his unease. “If you like what we had going in Queens so damned much, maybe I should find a new body and—”

  “Why do you always threaten that?” Chester asked, shaking the head as best he could on his own. It caused a mild, spasmodic jerk since he did not have full control over the neck, and being in a spat they were not sharing well at the moment. “We’ve all been together for longer than any of us can even measure. I know you and yours are growing … restless …”

  “Restless, yes,” Bill said with a nod. “Oh, indeed, my people and I are quite sick of this stagnation you and yours seem determined to foist on us. More and more of your voices are trickling over to my side.”

  “Your little grouping is determined to get us killed like some new rathtala, thirsty for blood,” Chester said, the head jerking in another attempted shake. “We have proven we can live beneath attention for over a century—”

  “Except for all those times we were forced to pull up stakes abruptly,” William said, his part of the lips curling in a half-smile.

  “Perhaps if we were to work in slightly better harmony,” Chester suggested, starting to lose his patience.

  “Perhaps if we were to go somewhere that demons are more expected,” William said, not really suggesting it since they were clearly already on the way, “we might have a better chance.”

  “A better chance at what?” Chester asked quietly, the panel van steering heavily. They’d had it for a long time, and it was no joy to drive, but it was theirs, wholly. “To have opportunities to kill humans? To stand in a place where there are surely OOCs who would love nothing more than to find us and send us back in one large, blessed bundle to the pits?”

  “You’re very black and white about these things,” William said with some humor, probably because he and his faction had already won the argument; they were on their way, after all. “As though the only alternatives are to continue to scratch out a living in New York or meet our tragic end at the hands of the Office of Occultic Concordance. Countless demons live their lives without fear of a consecrated baton sending them back, and a great many do it at hotspots—which is why we’re going. To seek better fortunes.”

  “Go west, young man,” Chester muttered under their breath.

  “We tried west,” Bill said, smiling his half of the smile. “We ended up stuck in a vase for a thousand years, biting and clawing at each other over the most trivial things imaginable. The inner life of a legion of demon souls trapped together is hardly more thrilling than that of a quiet, blending-in factory-working demon, and, as we have argued, considerably less honest, since we’re hiding who we are all the time. Though, I suppose, at least in the vase we could be ourselves.”

  “And in the vase we never had sensory stimuli,” Chester said. “No feel of the wind on our skin, no warmth of a summer night to make us sweat in this vessel. No sound of music—”

  “Your taste and mine veer considerably from each other in this, Chester—”

  “—nor the smell of good coffee on a morning, or a television to watch—”

  “Try to remember that not only did you hate the television when first we saw it,” William said, still pushing his part of the smile, “but you also didn’t want to leave the vase when this body first crossed our path.”

  Chester was silent for a moment as the road straightened ahead of them; the sky was dark, and the stars were coming out. “I don’t recall that at all.”

  “Your collective has a very selective memory, then,” William said. “Though I think I’ve noted that before during our arguments.”

  “And yours has no temperance,” Chester snapped back.

  “Yet we have enough votes to win this particular day,” William said, the half-smile fading as his annoyance rose. He was well tired of this battle, tired of all the battles with Chester, really.

  “Don’t think that means you will win forever, as you constantly proclaim at every decision that goes your way.”

  William’s eye twitched, and the next sign shone under the van’s headlights. Knoxville was only thirty miles away now, and he knew the hotspot was less than thirty from there. “I’ll be quite content just winning this one, I think.” And they fell into silence as they drove through the Tennessee night toward their destination.

  *

  Hendricks unlocked the door to his room at the Sinbad Motel, feeling a couple little aches and pains, nothing that couldn’t be solved with an Advil or two and a night of sleep, probably. He’d come out of this fight considerably better than some of the others, that was certain. Still, this town hadn’t been kind to him, and neither had this particular hotspot. Less kind than any he’d been to, really, and that was saying something since he’d broken his arm a year or so ago in a small town in Wyoming.

  He clicked the light before he walked in. It was a habit he was getting into, that and sleeping with a light on. Lafayette Jackson Hendricks didn’t consider himself a ’fraidy cat—a tour in Iraq that had included busting down doors in Ramadi precluded such possibilities from his mind—but all the same, he didn’t mind sleeping in light or walking in it wherever possible.

  This time, again, the light revealed that his room wasn’t as empty as it should have been. He took a long breath, then stepped over the threshold, shutting the door behind him. “Why am I not surprised it’s you that’s here to greet me like a dog at the door?”

  “I am not standing at your door,” Starling said, red hair gleaming in the motel weak lamps. “Nor have I greeted you yet.” Her voice was dull and flat as the paint on the walls, but it didn’t crack as much.

  Hendricks took off his hat, taking care to check that the consecrated switchblade didn’t fall out and whack him across the nose. It had happened a time or two, and it hurt enough to make him wary. He placed both carefully on the dresser that stretched across the side of the room, working his way through the narrow channel between the furniture and the shitty bed. “Well, you’re here, and that’s about like a sweet greeting for as cool a customer as you. Like Arch saying ‘ass’ or something, it carries more weight because he just doesn’t do that.”

  Starling cocked her head in that way she did. “This is hardly the first time you’ve found me waiting in your room.”

  “No, you’re making a right habit of it lately,
” Hendricks said, peeling off his drover coat. Even though the late October air had been cool during the fight with the broc’aminn, he’d still sweated considerably. Probably not as much as he had waiting outside that kid Jacob’s house while Alison dropped him off and explained what was what to his parents, though. He’d heard some of the conversation and it was enough to give him night sweats, thinking about what those people were about to go through.

  Starling stared at him. “You are troubled.”

  “I’m living in a cheap hotel in the heart of demon country at the moment.” Hendricks flashed her a smile. “There’s nothing but trouble around me right now.”

  “Something happened. Something unpleasant.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that. “Something unpleasant is the very definition of a hotspot. Someone’s dying here practically every day, and that’s with us doing our level best to prevent it.”

  She took a couple steps closer to him while he drifted around her, hanging the drover coat up on the old metal rack in the bathroom area. No closet in this shithole, but at least they had HBO. “What happened tonight?” she asked, lower than her usual tone.

  “You seem to know everything around here,” Hendricks said, shrugging as he wrapped the heavy shoulders of the canvas coat around the wooden hanger and listened to it clink against the rack like a bell ringing in the distance. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “A child was attacked,” Starling said, cool as a Canadian lumberjack in January. “It bothers you.”

  “Yeah, people get antsy when children start getting attacked,” Hendricks agreed. “Even a heart of stone like mine cracks a little when a defenseless kid gets surrounded by a pack of broc’aminn.” He made a face, because he suddenly had a very bad taste in his mouth, like the thought of what could have been made his stomach spit acid up his esophagus.

  “But it was not your child,” Starling said.

  “I don’t have a child,” Hendricks said, working his belt buckle. If she was going to talk all night, he wasn’t really in the mood. He just wanted to shower and collapse for a little while, maybe catch a Game of Thrones rerun until he fell asleep. “Never did.”