Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  *

  Brian lay on his bed down in the basement, eyeing the ceiling balefully. He’d heard Arch and Alison going at it upstairs, and it didn’t exactly thrill him. “Picked a bad month to quit smoking weed,” he said to the empty basement room.

  And he had, on both accounts. Hunting demons would have been a lot easier to tolerate if he were stoned, and stewing in the fact that he didn’t really know what the hell he was doing would probably also be easier if he were fucking lit.

  But no, he’d decided to do the responsible thing and swear it off, because all he needed was for everyone to start rushing out to a demon attack and have him baked out of his fucking mind, swinging a sword and not really in command of himself fully. He’d probably be fine, but when throwing hurt with a Roman gladius, “sorry” probably wouldn’t cover the damage if he fucked up.

  So now he was sitting in his basement bedroom, rubbing lightly against the too-soft sheets his mom bought, staring at the smooth, fog-textured knockdown ceiling, trying to figure out where he fit in on this whole thing. He knew he could swing a sword about as well as he could swing a baseball bat at a fastball—terribly, bordering on not at all. He wasn’t blind to this fact, and that people had had to come save his ass from demons every time they’d gotten overwhelmed was pretty prominent in his mind. It was a worry, even, and Brian didn’t typically do worries. The weed helped with that.

  He took a breath of non-smoky air and longed, just longed for a chance to light up. No, he wasn’t going to do that. Everyone already thought he was some useless stoner, he could see it when they looked at him. But he’d done that ad thing, and that might have made it possible for them to take down those kid-eating demons tonight. Maybe. It was possible he’d saved little Jacob Arnold’s life by his effort.

  Maybe.

  Possibly.

  Ehh, who knew?

  Brian had considered asking the cowboy for sword fighting lessons, or for his dad to teach him how to shoot better. The pride stuck in his craw, though. He could maybe ask Arch to take him shooting, but that took time to learn, didn’t it? He’d given up on shooting a long time ago, like probably when his age was still in the single digits.

  When he thought about the contributions he’d made since joining this little watch, as he’d heard them call it, he had to admit that driving a tractor trailer into that demon had probably been right at the top of the list. But it wasn’t like he owned a truck he could just drive into demons in every fight, so that wasn’t even a valid option.

  Brian took another breath in the faint light of the bedroom, and now, a few days removed from his last smoke, even he could smell the faint residue on everything. He had to do something. He couldn’t just stand idly by, after all. He had a degree from Brown, dammit. There was bound to be something he could contribute to this war. He just had to find it.

  *

  Lauren Darlington came home wanting to toss her keys across the room. It was a weird desire, wanting to toss her keys, but somehow it felt more compelling than putting them on the usual hook or placing them on the table, so she chucked ’em. They skidded unsatisfactorily against the surface of the kitchen table.

  “What is the matter with you?” her mother screeched from the kitchen.

  “I don’t know,” Lauren admitted, mea culpa right out of the gate. “I just … wanted to throw my keys.”

  “You’re killing demons now,” her mother said, rushing over to the table at top speed, which, for her, was something akin to a hobbling walk. “Can’t you just pitch a holy knife at them or something and spare the finish on my home furnishings?”

  “Find me a demon and I’ll do just that,” Lauren agreed, shrugging out of her light fall coat and hanging it on the hook beside the door. She thought about tossing that, too, but figured her mother would just lose her shit again, even though it was improbable a leather coat would do much damage to anything but a sensitive vegan’s self-image.

  “Mom!” Molly called, streaming across the room toward her, peppy as all get out.

  “You’ve been in the Red Bull again, haven’t you?” Lauren asked, peering at her daughter with undisguised suspicion.

  Molly hung her head. “I had a moment of weakness.”

  “Oh, daughter. How bad was it?”

  Molly’s lips curled upward at the side. “It has been three hours since I mainlined two Red Bulls.” She hung her head dramatically. “I need absolution. And probably some sleep, sometime next year, maybe.”

  “I’m gonna need you to say twelve ‘Our Mothers’ and perform an act of contrition—which will probably be vacuuming and cleaning your room.” Lauren shook her head.

  “Y’all are so strange,” Vera said, just shaking her head at it all. “You missed the meeting. I hope it was important.”

  “Emergency calls usually are,” Lauren said, stepping into the kitchen. Why did they always gravitate toward the kitchen? “We got a bunch of demons on a playground, about to … I dunno, do stuff to Jacob Arnold.”

  “Why do you say ‘do stuff’?” Molly was frowning. “Why not just say they were going to kill him and eat him?”

  Lauren’s stomach rumbled unpleasantly. “Because that’s not all this breed of demon does to their victims, apparently.”

  Molly’s pupils dilated slightly. “Oh. Oh!” She made a face. “Gross, I’m assuming.”

  “Can’t get much grosser,” Lauren agreed.

  “Why do we have to talk about this?” Vera asked, shuddering all the way down her body while opening the refrigerator door and pulling out a caffeine-free Diet Coke. “It’s not proper, it’s not natural, and it’s enough to give a body nightmares.”

  “Mom, you say that about everything you don’t understand,” Lauren said. “It’s a long list that includes music made after 1981 and bedazzling.”

  “I get it about the bedazzling, I really do,” Molly said. “I mean, I thought we’d seen the worst, and then it mutated like airborne ebola into vajazzling—”

  Vera stood up straight, slamming the door to the fridge and spinning around, looking like a bee had flown up her bathrobe. “How do you even know about ‘vajazzling’?”

  “Because I have a pulse?” Molly asked carefully. “And an internet connection? And go to school in these modern times—”

  “Lord ah-mighty,” Vera breathed. “The things they teach you these days, I swear …”

  “I doubt that’s part of the official curriculum of the school,” Lauren said.

  “Oh, no, they totally have a class on it,” Molly deadpanned. “Self-Destruction 101. We also practice other forms of self-harm, like listening to Nickelback on repeat.”

  “Cheap shot,” Lauren said. “You know I like Nickelback. Also, hasn’t everybody made that joke by now?”

  “I try not to hold your bad habits against you, since you did incubate me for nine months,” Molly said with a nod. “But between that and the rhinestone-covered shirt in your closet, I have begun to question my parentage.”

  “I question whether either of you are related to me, even tangentially, all the time,” Vera muttered. “I hold out hope that the nurses switched my daughter with the offspring of a baboon that snuck into the ward. Someday my real daughter will come rescue me from this nut house, maybe take me off to live with her wealthy husband and his aging single father, who is actually Rob Lowe’s twin brother.”

  “Ugh, Mom, you’re a cougar swooping in on a member of the Brat Pack,” Lauren said with undisguised horror.

  “I would also accept Judd Nelson’s twin,” Vera said, staring off into space.

  “So, how’d the meeting go?” Lauren put her arm around Molly’s shoulder and led her out of the room, just trying desperately to escape the last thought promulgated into the air.

  “It got ugly,” Molly said.

  “How ugly?”

  “Like if Adam Driver had a baby with Josh Gad,” Molly said.

  “Ooh, that’s ugly,” Lauren said. “And harsh. They’d have to hope some recessive gra
ndparent genes saved the day. What happened?”

  “Sheriff Reeve got threatened with a recall election,” Molly said.

  “I feel like there’s a joke about recall elections and that if I were Mom’s age, I would make it,” Lauren said, looking back to see if Vera was following them.

  She was, and she gave her daughter a scalding look. “I can both hear you and recall the twenty-two hours of painful labor I spent squirting your ungrateful backside into this world.”

  “And thanks for electing to.” Lauren looked back at Molly. “Who did the threatening?”

  “County Administrator Pike,” Vera answered before Molly could. “I never did like him.”

  “I like him,” Lauren said, a little defensively. But then she and her mother had probably never once voted for the same candidate on the ballot. “He really threatened Reeve with a recall election?”

  “Yeah,” Molly said. “It was pretty grim. He called for a show of hands for who supported Reeve, and I bet two-thirds of the crowd were all Luke Skywalker in that moment.”

  “Blond hair, smug face?” Lauren asked. “Whining about power converters?”

  Molly shook her head. “Their hands were not in the air. Because … he lost his hand, you know.”

  “Hmmm, that one was not obvious, and kind of dated. Maybe if you’d gone with a Jamie Lannister joke—”

  “You don’t think the Star Wars reference is mainstream enough? I mean—”

  “Well, Game of Thrones is more modern and topical—”

  “I would have said Lindsay, the lawyer from Angel,” Vera said, sipping her Diet Coke like a boss.

  Lauren and Molly exchanged a look. “That one’s better,” Lauren said.

  “We all would have gotten it,” Molly said. “Anyway, the meeting kind of death-spiraled after that. But you might have some new members of the watch.” She puffed herself up a little but looked away, which Lauren knew was her attempt to act casual. “Speaking of new people in the watch, maybe I could—”

  “No,” Lauren said.

  “Fuck no,” Vera said, drawing Molly and Lauren’s gazes in a comical whip-around.

  “Jesus, Mom,” Lauren said, looking a little aghast at her, “is there one of those Jack Daniels add-ons attached to your Coke can?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry if I feel strongly about keeping my sixteen-year-old granddaughter away from meetings where townsfolk discuss fighting the demon scourge that’s invading our home,” Vera said.

  “It wasn’t that you feel strongly about it,” Molly said, “it was more that you threw out the f-word. I didn’t even know you knew that word.”

  “I hear it from your mother all the time,” Vera said.

  “I wasn’t sure you knew what it meant,” Lauren said snidely.

  “I have an Oxford dictionary, and surprisingly, as your daughter figured out about a decade ago, all the naughty words are listed in it,” Vera said.

  “It was very helpful in furthering my education,” Molly said with a nod.

  “I’m with grandmother on this one,” Lauren said.

  “Use of the f-word?” Molly asked, frowning.

  “Well, fuck yeah, that too,” Lauren said, “but I meant about you going to watch meetings.”

  “Mommmmmmmm,” Molly said, dropping her shoulders, teenage look of frustrated disgust all over her face. “I want to help.”

  “Help me by staying way the fuck out of trouble,” Lauren said, patting her on the shoulder. “Hmm?”

  “Ughhhh,” Molly said, going seemingly boneless and turning away, like her upper body was composed of slime, shoulders all down and her head back.

  “That’s a very flattering posture,” Lauren told her as she moped out of the room. “I like it. It’s like a feminist antidote to all those old exercises at finishing schools where they made you sit with a book on the top of your head.” Another disgusted grunt issued from Molly as she headed for the stairs and up to her room.

  “That girl wants to get herself in trouble,” Vera said, sipping again from her Coke can.

  “At least this kind of trouble doesn’t involve teenage pregnancy,” Lauren said.

  Vera waited a second before replying. “No, it involves death, which, last I checked, is worse than teenage pregnancy. Or, at least, less survivable.”

  Lauren waited a second, relishing her impending reply. “But, Mommmmm,” she said, barely holding back the grin, “when I got pregnant at sixteen, you and dad said it was the worst thing that could have happened to meeeeee—”

  “Oh—oh, get the fuck outta here.”

  Lauren paused, mildly surprised “There’s that word again. Twice in one night, Mom?”

  “Yes, there it is again,” Vera agreed, turning away from her. “If you’re going to fail to be ladylike, you might as well go all out, not half-ass it.”

  “Did you learn what ‘ass’ meant from the dictionary, too? Because it has more than one meaning—”

  “Get out of here and go to bed, you damned donkey—and I mean that in more than one way, too.”

  *

  Amanda Guthrie pulled her rental SUV into the hotel parking lot, under the glaring, bright lamps hanging overhead. Stopping the car, she put it in park, looking around before she got out. She grabbed a travel bag out of the back and rolled it along over the rough, pebbled pavement, the wheels making noise every step of the way.

  As she walked into the lobby, she looked around for a moment before heading to the front desk. The place seemed calm, sedate, and fully made up in the Southern style. It had lush red curtains over the windows, fancy couches set up for people to just hang out and chill, and ice water with orange peels floating in it in the corner, a remnant of the summer which was now gone.

  She strolled up to the counter and looked right at the clerk, a young bearded guy on night duty who squinted at her through thick glasses. “Checking in,” she said, her voice clipped and to the point.

  “Got a reservation?” the bearded clerk asked.

  “Do I need one?” She didn’t take any shit from anybody.

  “No,” he said, backpedaling a little. Probably didn’t want to chance her going ‘angry black woman’ on him. She wasn’t tall enough to be physically imposing, but she knew for a fact that her Resting Bitch Face game was on point, as the kids said. “Uhh, what kind of room do you want?”

  “King bed,” she said. He looked up, like he wanted to protest or suggest or something, but he must have decided this was a bad idea because he returned to typing without voicing a damned thing.

  “Okay, you’re up on the third floor, room 309,” he said, pulling up a couple key cards and practically throwing them at her. He hadn’t even asked how many guests or for her license plate. They probably didn’t do too many tow-aways for improper parking in Midian, Tennessee, anyway. Likely as not the police and property owners had plenty of other things to worry about right now.

  Amanda Guthrie didn’t bother to say thank you, just gave the clerk a stony look, grabbed the door key cards and headed for the elevator. He may have started to tell her where it was, but when he saw her heading in the right direction, he shut up quick. Didn’t even say when check-out was.

  Didn’t matter. She wasn’t checking out for a long time, anyway.

  The elevator dinged immediately, opening for her without needing to make her wait. She got in and pushed the button for the third floor, listening to it hum as it went to the top.

  When it opened, she stepped out into a long beige-yellow hallway. It seemed a little summery, but she supposed it had been painted to appeal to the hotel’s guests, not to play to her personal proclivities, which were somewhat offended by such a damned ugly color. She took a right and headed down the hallway, pausing in front of room 309.

  She caught motion out of the corner of her eye and looked up.

  There was a man standing there—no, not a man, an Officer of Occultic Concordance. He was fumbling with a key card, hadn’t even noticed her. She knew he wouldn’t, but it was fasci
nating to see him going about his business without even realizing she was there, standing in front of her door, watching him. He got the key card to work finally, and opened his door, his ice bucket rattling and full. He was wearing a t-shirt, one of the ones with writing on it, but she couldn’t see what it said before he closed the room door behind him, leaving her out there, still clueless that she was watching him.

  She stared after the OOC for another minute after he’d shut the door, thinking about what to do. She smiled slightly as she pondered it; she had plans for that OOC, but making any kind of disturbance here in the hotel wasn’t among them. She finally just used her key card to open the door and step inside the room.

  It took Amanda less than ten minutes to unpack, putting her things exactly where she wanted them. First she hung the clothes in the closet provided, making sure they didn’t get wrinkled, and setting aside a few of her suits for ironing. Then she undressed, peeling her current suit off and placing it inside the dry cleaning bag provided by the hotel. She was down to bra and panties, and once she shed the former, she felt like she could breathe worlds easier through her shell. That damned tight-fitting thing was like a strap around her chest, like someone had tied a rope around her and squeezed the whole damned while.

  After all that was done, and now that she was infinitely more comfortable, Amanda spent five minutes just setting things up in the bathroom, looking at her own eyes and face in the mirror, and even occasionally letting her gaze wander further down. Her skin was a dark chestnut and her nipples were darker still. She paused in her labors and stared, just briefly, running a hand over the smooth, flat skin between her breasts and the top of her panties. Losing interest quickly, she finished her labors, and then wandered back out to the room and turned the bed down, slipping between the sheets.

  She could feel the cloth under her shell, above her shell, a nice little tent that covered her body from top to bottom. She listened to her own rhythmic breathing as she stared at the ceiling, the light still on next to the bed. She didn’t need to turn it off; it wasn’t like she actually slept, after all. No, she didn’t need to. She had a lot on her mind, anyway.