*
Hendricks just rode with Duncan. “You getting any tingling on your spider-sense?” he asked the OOC, wondering if the demon actually ever felt anything these days. Time was, it had felt to Hendricks like Duncan had been able to read his damned mind. Now, he mostly seemed to crab about that guy Spellman and his runes. Surely this new player hadn’t gotten runes from Spellman, had he?
Duncan stared straight ahead, steering the car onto a quiet street. Hendricks saw the green street sign flash by, the sun hitting it perfectly so he couldn’t read it. Duncan probably could, though, and he knew where he was going. “My ‘spider-sense,’ as you call it … is not tingling, no. It’s not so much a sense, either, as it is a—”
“Yeah, I don’t really care how it works so long as it does,” Hendricks said, easy and breezy. Maybe a little cranky. He’d had a couple plans for how he was going to spend this afternoon, and it mostly involved trying to sleep with the curtains wide open. Something about sleeping in the light felt better to him lately, though he wasn’t under any illusions about the idea of monsters being somehow averse to the light. He’d seen them come in the day before.
“Well, it’s not working real well right now,” Duncan said, as close to tense as Hendricks had ever heard him get.
“Why’s that?” Hendricks asked.
“Probably for the same reason that home office wanted demons with the ability to possess others sent back to the pits,” Duncan said. “Because OOCs can’t read them effectively. They get all churned up in whatever human they’re possessing and it’s almost impossible for us to see them. Like hiding a red ant in a carpenter ant’s hill.”
“You’re not expert enough to pick ’em out?”
“It would take a lot more time and patience to sift than I’ve got at any given moment,” Duncan said. “I’m still struggling with the idea that this thing, whatever it is, is a possession demon. Could just be strong with the power of suggestion, like a vardwall.”
“The fuck is a vardwall?” Hendricks frowned. The tires bumped against the curb as Duncan parallel parked on a near-empty street.
“It’s good you’ve never met one,” Duncan said, throwing the door open and getting out. “They tell you to jump, you don’t even ask how high before you go a-leaping.”
Hendricks got out of the car, adjusting his brim against the cool, sunny day. “Seems to me a demon like that would be a pretty powerful nuisance.” He fell into step next to Duncan as they started up toward what he assumed was the address Arch had given them. “Figure I would have heard about a demon doing mind control.”
“Not mind control,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “Suggestion. They can’t make you do anything you don’t already want to do at least a little. It’s not like they could convince a perfectly healthy and normal person to go jump off a bridge or anything.”
“Then what do they do with that pow—”
Duncan slapped a hand across Hendricks’s chest and halted him in his tracks. The OOC was frozen there on the sidewalk, the smell of autumn briskness in the air, and he looked ahead at the door of the house they were walking up to. That sucker was open, and not just a little bit. Wide open, like a barn door. “Shit,” Hendricks said.
“Yeah,” Duncan said, and he pulled his baton out. “Follow behind me.”
The made their way up onto the porch, the floorboards squeaking loudly under their weight. It made Hendricks cringe, standing there all exposed with a woodwind section announcing their arrival. He paused, listening for a second, and watched Duncan peer intently at the open door. “You think there’s—” Hendricks started to ask.
He saw the shotgun barrel pop out the door less than a second before it fired, splitting the air on the quiet street and dragging his ass back to his time in Iraq in the most uncomfortable damned way possible.
*
Arch was helping Alison, leaning close to the kids as she talked to them, soothing, all quiet and pleasant. She was good at it, he thought as he watched her build a little rapport with them.
Then the sound of gunfire echoed across the playground and caused everyone to look up, Arch and Alison with a hell of a lot more alarm than the kids.
*
Hendricks saw Duncan catch the full load right in the face. He didn’t stagger or fall over, but his t-shirt shredded in a hot second under the fire and the demon seemed to blink and raise his hands in surprise. Hendricks, for his part, didn’t need any coaching on what to do. He drew and fired through the window into the house on pure instinct, emptying four rounds out of his 1911 before he even realized he was doing it.
“Get out of there!” Duncan said, shoving him backward off the porch. It came just in time, too, as the window he’d just fired into exploded over him. Someone was blasting out of it, and Hendricks could just about feel the bullets whistling over him as he landed in the bushes. A hard branch landed right around his kidney and a dozen other ancillary pains sprouted all across his ass and lower back, but he managed to keep his legs low and flip out of the shrub that had broken his fall and just about busted his anal cherry.
There was a wet slap of bullets hitting something and it took him a second to realize, face in the grass, that they were hitting Duncan as he stood there. Hendricks was keeping well out of the line of fire, head down, and when a pause came for their attackers to reload, he let off a couple rounds and then rolled hard to his right, back toward the stairs. No reason to wait around for return fire, after all.
*
“Shots fired,” Arch said into his shoulder mic, staring transfixed into the distance. Whatever was happening, he was at least a minute’s run away, and he felt frozen in place. Whatever kind of trouble Hendricks and Duncan had wandered into, he couldn’t risk leaving Alison and these kids alone to try and intervene.
“Damn,” Alison whispered, clutching Abi Tarley and that Creek baby close to her. The other two kids were shaking a few steps away, and Arch was torn between offering them some form of comfort and running off half-cocked, trying to get to Hendricks and Duncan before something bad happened. If it hadn’t already.
*
Bentley came bursting up just as Chester was about to send Charity to see how things were coming for their retreat. The good news was that Bentley was not alone, and had two others with her, clearly now turned to their will. “We have an escape vehicle,” Bentley announced as another round of gunfire exploded in front of the house. “I’m having someone bring it around now. We’ll need to run these supplies over to—” She pointed past one of the houses behind them to a road running through the green lawns.
“Very well,” Chester said with a curt nod. “Begin, and I will join you momentarily. I need to inform Charity and Mary to cover our retreat for another few moments before they withdraw.”
Bentley nodded once and then sprung to action without a word, snatching up several bags and running them across the backyards, her new additions assisting her. This was the way it should be; all Chester needed to do was get the others and they could make good their escape—but perhaps do a bit of damage first.
*
Braeden Tarley heard the gunfire start when he was still about a block from the park, his windows down and his Ford F-150 growling as he kept his foot to the accelerator. He let off for a second, just to confirm for himself that it was gunfire he was hearing. He wasn’t a stranger to it, having put a couple bucks on his wall as a young man, but it had been a year or two or more probably four since he’d gone hunting, and probably at least that long since he’d fired a gun. It was unmistakable, though, that staccato sound, and damned sure not fire crackers.
He pushed that accelerator down again and blew right through the four-way stop just before the park, screeching to a halt when he pulled up and tearing toward Abi and the other kids, who were all standing together next to the playground, Alison and Arch Stan right next to them, everyone looking off into the distance like they could see the guns being fired.
“Daddy!” Abi’s gaze swung over t
o him and she slipped out of Alison Stan’s grip without much of a fight. Ms. Stan gave him a quick once over and he turned his entire attention to Abi, dropping down to scoop her up, making a mess of her dress in the process. “Miss Cweek left me here,” Abi said, very bluntly. She did that. She had red eyes and looked like she’d cried some recent tears down those big, adorable cheeks.
“I heard,” Braeden said, trying to keep it cool in front of his kid.
“I just don’t know what she was thinking,” Abi said, sounding a little too grown up and precocious, or more likely playing parrot and spitting back something she’d heard an adult say.
“Neither do I,” Braeden said, shifting his attention to Arch. “What the hell is going on here, Arch?” Braeden asked as he came up. He was in school with Arch and Alison both, and though he didn’t know the man very well, he knew him well enough to ask a question like that.
“I don’t know exactly,” Arch said, quick and glib, and not really like him, so far as Braeden knew, “but I expect it’s linked to the troubles we’ve been having around here lately.”
“So that means demons to you, right?” Braeden asked, giving him a stinkeye. He wasn’t being particular where he directed his grief at the moment.
“It means demons to all of us, whether you accept it or not,” Arch said, and the sound of a couple more rounds popping off echoed down the street.
“Like demons from the devil, Daddy?” Abi asked in a hushed voice.
“Don’t you worry about it, princess,” Braeden said, meeting Arch’s hard gaze with one of his own. He wanted to stroke her hair but he’d have a bear of a time getting the grease out of that later. He’d probably already ruined her dress.
*
“What do we do?” Brian asked, feeling like the whole world had started to shake around him. “What do we do?”
“Stop looking like you’re going to pee yourself for one,” Lauren Darlington said as she came in the door behind him. It damned near sent Brian through the white Styrofoam tile ceiling, because he had no idea she’d come in. Clearly he’d missed the bell in the excitement that came after Arch’s breathless, “SHOTS FIRED!” call. “What’s going on?” Lauren said, settling next to him at the counter for a second while she looked the place over.
“A little help here, please, Doctor,” Reeve said, beckoning her over. She took heed and headed toward him, but Brian caught a flash of reluctance as she did so, like she didn’t fancy being ordered around. “I got a cracked rib.”
“If you’re so sure about it, what do you need me for?” Dr. Darlington quipped, making her way around the counter. Brian watched her go, and it settled him down a little from the energized, frenetic state he’d been heading toward.
His dad stirred, catching his attention. “Not much we can do,” Bill said, gaze catching Brian and calming him a little. Brian wouldn’t have cared to admit it out loud, but hearing his father say so was a little reassuring. “We need to stay here.”
“Seems we might need some of our new volunteers sooner than anticipated,” Reeve said as Dr. Darlington crouched next to him and gave him a good push to the side. “GODDAMMIT!” he howled.
“Yep,” Dr. Darlington said, cool as ice, “you’ve got a cracked rib there.”
“I fucking told you that!”
Darlington shrugged her thin shoulders. “Had to be sure.”
“God,” Reeve said, plainly still feeling the pain, face red like he’d just had all the blood run to it, “I bet your malpractice insurance is through the roof.”
“You’re not wrong,” Dr. Darlington said, “but you know what they say—malpractice is the best kind of practice.” She looked up at him. “I’m going to need to tape these ribs.”
“What about Arch and the rest?” Brian asked again. “Can we find some help to send them? In case they need it?”
Reeve looked pretty damned distressed, and Brian couldn’t tell whether it was from the pain, the feeling of being utterly out of control of the situation, or both. “Bill … I think you need to get on over there, now.”
*
The next round of gunfire out of the front window came twice as hard as the last, and Hendricks had no damned idea where Duncan was. He’d rolled right past the front stairs and was behind the bushes on the other side of the porch, pretty sure the volume of fire coming out that front window was coming from not only the shotgun that had ripped Duncan’s shirt apart, but also an AR-15, which meant there were at least two shooters. They were doing yeoman’s work blanketing the front lawn with lead, too. Hendricks had doubts about exactly how many blades of grass were going to survive this massacre, but he would have laid odds that this house wasn’t going to need a mowing in that area for a while.
Hendricks listened to a last round of rifle fire crack and then rolled hard to his left again. He had it in his mind to get to the side of the porch so he could peek up and take a look sideways. It wouldn’t be a great angle to fire from, but it’d be a great place not to get shot by a demon with high-capacity rifle, and he was all about that. Besides, Duncan was probably fine. Bullets didn’t hurt him.
Did they?
*
Alison heard round after round fired off and knew she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She should have been over there with Hendricks and Duncan, rifle at the ready, but here she was holding a baby and trying to clutch two other kids around her legs while she and Arch listened helplessly as that rifle cracked off in the distance.
“You should get her out of here, Braeden,” Arch said, standing restlessly, looking like he was ready to charge at any second.
“Not a bad idea,” Braeden Tarley said, and he started hightailing it back to his truck, Abi clutched in his arms. She was peering over his shoulder like she could get a look at what all the adults were trying to see. It would have been cute if it hadn’t been so terrifying to Alison, who was wondering if Hendricks was a couple blocks over, lying in a pool of blood.
“That’s some sort of high-capacity rifle,” Arch said.
“An AR-15, I think,” Alison said, listening intently. It could have been other types of rifles, maybe an AK-47 knockoff, but the odds were good this was it. It chattered in the distance, round after round firing off.
Arch was in a state of high tension, and Alison could see him ratcheting up to do something about it. He wasn’t the sort to abandon a teammate in trouble, that was sure. “Arch,” she said, reaching out a hand and running it down his arm, from just below the khaki sleeve down to his hand, “we’re playing defense right now, okay? Not offense.”
That didn’t exactly settle him, but she could tell it got through. He may have wanted to run, but he stayed there with her and the kids. It wasn’t like there was any kind of safe ground presently, anyway, even if they’d had car seats to move the kids out of here.
*
“I don’t think we should leave,” Bill Longholt said, and it was like someone using a cheese grater on a steel rod next to Reeve’s ears. Not that the man had an annoying voice; it was that Reeve was already irritated and in pain, so anything he didn’t want to hear right now was bound to aggravate him. “Arch said—”
“Arch wanted you to watch me so this demon didn’t come a calling and snuff me,” Reeve said, holding his side as Dr. Darlington stared at it, probably trying to figure out exactly what she was going to do without a single medical supply. Reeve caught the slightly guilty look on Bill’s face. “I know what he was up to, Bill. I’m not in trouble right now, and if I get in trouble, I got a sword that can be used to stop it.” He pointed toward town, even though there were plainly walls between him and his target. “They need help right now. No maybes about it, unlike here.”
“As you say,” Bill said with a nod, and started for the door. Brian started to take off after him.
“Brian,” Reeve said, just about grinding his teeth. “Maybe you should stay here.”
Brian paused just outside the door and his dad stopped just ahead of him, shooting Reeve a
relieved look. “I …”
“We might have some use for you here, son,” Reeve said, and pointed at Donna’s desk. “We could use someone to man dispatch.”
“What about my mom?” Brian asked, nodding at Addy.
“Oh, darling, you know I don’t know anything about technology,” Addy said, demurring both quickly and effectively. She was, Reeve figured, lying a little bit, too. But it worked.
Brian Longholt had a chagrined look, to say the least. “I am become Felicity Smoak, the sitter of desks.”
Reeve just stared at him. “I got no idea who that is.” He nodded at Bill. “Give ’em hell. Or help. Give help where needed and hell everywhere else.”
“I might be able to aid in that.” That demon hunter Lonsdale came to his feet, still looking he’d been through a crap press, but a little better than he had right after they’d de-possessed him.
“I will do my best,” Bill said. He cast Lonsdale a look. “You coming?”
“I’m on my Marvin,” Lonsdale said, jumping up and sliding over the counter to join Bill.
“You’re gonna have to speak better English if we’re gonna work together,” Bill said.
“What the fuck does ‘gonna’ mean?” Lonsdale asked. “That’s proper English, is it?”
“More proper than replacing the word that means something with another phrase that means something else entirely,” Bill said and disappeared beyond the glass doors.
“It’s gonna be okay, Nick,” Donna said, leaning closer to him. Brian Longholt was standing over Donna’s desk frowning, like it was going to leap up and attack him.
“I need something to tape these ribs with,” Dr. Darlington pronounced and got to her feet. She gave Donna a look. “Medical supplies?”
“With the other emergency gear in the closet over there.” Donna pointed. “In the back, I think there’s a box for first aid and a kit for first responders. There’s a good chance it’s been picked over, though, because we ain’t had the budget to restock since—”
Legion (Southern Watch Book 5) Page 19
