“And you too, Archibald Stan?” She just grinned at them. It was fucking unsettling.
“It’s Lerner,” Duncan said, stealing the thunder. Hendricks was kind of relieved, because he was already getting annoyed.
“Yeah, I can’t figure out why I couldn’t recognize you,” Hendricks said. “When you went to hell, you were a tall, pasty white guy, now you’re a pretty damned fine black lady. Makes perfect sense.”
“I identify as Amanda Guthrie now,” New Lerner said, coming around the town car. “Clearly I’ve transitioned.”
Hendricks shut his mouth before he could put a foot in it up to the knee. Lonsdale apparently did not possess the same self-restraint. “So before this one was a white bloke and now ’e’s a black bird? This bloody world’s gone mad off its axis, I tell you.”
“Yeah, I’ll be woman of the year anytime now,” she said, stepping up the curb onto the lawn and kicking a piece of bumper out of her way. It flew like a soccer ball across the lawn and came to rest about a half foot before tearing up a flowerbed. “Looks like I came back just in time, though.”
Hendricks frowned at her, then gave Duncan a glance. “I thought you said he wasn’t coming back.”
“She, now,” New Lerner said. What was the name again? Amanda Guthrie?
“Fine, she,” Hendricks said. “I thought she wasn’t coming back.”
“I’m totally fucking with you, cowboy,” Guthrie said, with that unsettling grin. “I don’t give a shit what you assign to me, I’m as much a woman now as I was before, which is to say—not at all, except for the pieces.” She waved vaguely toward the Y of her yoga pants. “Which I also don’t give a shit about.”
“Right, well,” Arch said, clearly uncomfortable. “Did you get attacked by this possession demon, too?”
“We had a few visitors, yeah,” Duncan said tightly. Was it Hendricks’s imagination or did he look like someone had given his balls a few solid twists? “Fought ’em off, fortunately.” He puckered his lips. “We might not be able to go back to our hotel, though.”
Hendricks frowned. “What happened?”
Duncan gave Guthrie a sidelong look. “There were casualties. Dead, I should say, and some that will need a hospital.”
“Good heavens,” Arch said, stirring, his arms still crossed in front of him. “Did you call an ambulance?”
“I did,” Duncan said pointedly and then nodded at the car wreck in front of them. “I expect they’re busy at the moment, though.”
Hendricks just shook his head. That was another point in the favor of his argument that emergency services in Midian were about to break down, but he didn’t want to bring that up at the moment. It was a pretty downer argument. He turned to say something to Arch, and noticed something for the first time in the distance. “What’s that?” He pointed at a pillar of black smoke on the horizon.
Arch turned to look. “I don’t know. Looks like a big fire, though.”
“I figured before I left that this place was going to go straight to hell,” Guthrie said. “I actually thought it would get there a little faster, but it seems to be well on its way now.”
“I’m starting to think coming here was a bad idea,” Lonsdale said.
“We regrouping?” Arch asked Hendricks, who shrugged. “You gonna call about it?”
“You don’t have a phone?” Hendricks asked. “Because I’m using Lonsdale’s, and I’m beginning to worry that the stink of loser is going to rub off if I keep touching this thing.”
“Fuck off, Hendricks,” Lonsdale said.
Arch just sighed and drew his own phone off his belt. The man was still wearing his uniform. Shit must have gone down before he’d had a chance to change. He dialed up a number and waited. “Hmmm,” he said after a minute. “No answer from Reeve.” The big man frowned, and then turned to look at the black cloud in the distance. “I suppose it could just be coincidence, but Sheriff Reeve lives in that direction, I think.”
Hendricks raised an eyebrow. “Uhh … are we believing in coincidences at the moment? Because when a coordinated demon attack goes off, I don’t believe in random black clouds of smoke on the horizon.”
Arch hesitated only a moment. “Lemme call Erin.” He dialed and put the phone up to his ear and got an answer a few seconds later. “Hey.” Hendricks tried to listen in, inching closer to Arch, but the big man turned away and stuck a finger in his other ear, maybe to hear better. “You’re kiddin’ me,” Arch said, which was his version of, “Are you shitting me?”
“That sounds bad,” Duncan opined.
“I’ll put an Archer on it being the sheriff’s house that burned down,” Lonsdale said.
“You fucking ghoul,” Duncan said.
“That’s a dick move,” Hendricks said, “considering you were following him so close a couple hours ago that if he stopped too fast you would have been able to give him a visual colonoscopy, no camera necessary.”
“I’ll take that action,” Guthrie said. Yeah. That was Lerner, all right.
“Dang,” Arch said, muted. He turned around and looked at Hendricks. “It was Reeve’s house.” Guthrie made a face at losing the bet. “Donna’s dead,” Arch went on, looking pained as he said it.
“Fuck, they did bushwhack us,” Hendricks whispered.
“I guess they did something to the doctor, too,” Arch said stiffly. “Meacham and Father Nguyen are over there now. They said Darlington’s a wreck. It sounds bad.”
“You wanna take odds on how long until this town slides into a perfect hellscape?” Guthrie asked Lonsdale. “I’ll give you two to one on anything outside of a fortnight.”
“Nobody says fortnight anymore,” Lonsdale said, peering at Guthrie suspiciously. “You’re a bit of an anachronism, aren’t you?”
“He’s an OOC, Lonsdale,” Hendricks said, and watched the Brit jump back. “Given how hard this possession demon has hit us, I got a suspicion this fight ain’t over. That was a hell of an opening gambit.”
“This is a nasty fight, that’s for sure,” Duncan agreed. “Whoever’s running this show, it sounds like they’ve come out of retirement or hiding like a bear out of hibernation.”
“What the hell did you people do?” Guthrie asked, frowning. It was a very un-Lerner-like expression, and once again Hendricks felt disturbed looking at her. Even more disturbing, he traced her curves with his eyes before he jerked them back up to look at her face. “We had possession demons all wiped out, and here you go unleashing one.” She shook her head. “I told you this was a special kind of hotspot when we came here. You guys have been fighting hard to keep it out of the fire, but what’s going on here … there’s no holding back this tide. Not with the kind of things that have been coming out of the woodwork here.”
“You weren’t even here for the Rog’tausch,” Hendricks added coolly as Arch hung up the phone in the background.
“I heard about it,” Guthrie said, equally coolly. “Something like the Rog’tausch being reassembled tends to produce a shockwave or two, even in the demon world.” Duncan just frowned at his partner. Ex-partner? Hendricks sensed some tension he hadn’t seen from them before. “I take it you took care of those fucking bicyclists?”
“Oh, yeah,” Hendricks said. “We got ‘em.”
“Good,” Guthrie said, nodding with a certain satisfaction. “I fucking hated bicyclists before, but now … I see some motherfucker ride by on one of those and I’m at the wheel, BAM! They’re done. Human, demon, I don’t even give a shit.”
“We’re regrouping at Father Nguyen’s church,” Arch said, re-entering the conversation. “ASAP.”
“I’m driving,” Duncan said, snatching the keys out of Guthrie’s hands with a frown.
“Pussy,” Guthrie said with a taunting smile. “You’re a real humanitarian, Duncan.”
“I’ll catch a ride with you, Arch,” Hendricks said, hurrying to catch up with the man as he strode up the driveway to where Alison’s car was parked.
“Hey, wait up
!” Lonsdale called, now attached to his ass like a tick. Hendricks just rolled his eyes. Now Lonsdale was on him so close he’d fall in if Hendricks stopped too fast.
*
“Lauren, we gotta go,” Casey said softly. Lauren was sitting on the lawn, ass in the grass, the blades faintly tickling her undercarriage. She gave not one shit about that, though, because she had way too much on her mind to even process everything going on. “We’re meeting at the church.”
“Which church?” Lauren asked, mind weirdly blank. It felt impossible to think, to plan, to string more than a random thought or two together before her head jumped to something else. The song “Get Me to the Church on Time” tinkled a few stray bars through her head and then disappeared like dust in the wind.
“My church,” Father Nguyen said from behind her. He and Casey were both at a shoulder, like Casey was the devil on one and Nguyen was the angel on the other. Casey had saved Molly, though, at least for a minute, tomahawking Yvette before she could gut—
Lauren’s brain jumped the track again, and she felt the faint tickle of a blade of grass against her bare butt cheek. She reached down to scratch the itch, not even caring. There was sand everywhere, all over her, and her hair was still drying in the steadily worsening chill night. “I don’t think you need me for that,” she said.
Casey put a hand on her shoulder, pushing the soft, smelly flannel against her skin. Her shoulder had dried a while ago, the cloth picking up the moisture and locking it in so she still felt damp. The cutoff flannel covered her down to her backside, not that she cared. She suspected her eyes were puffy as hell, probably red as Brian Longholt’s had been up until recently. She glanced in through her open front door, and then looked away suddenly. Albert Daniel was still lying on the grass, splayed off the sidewalk. Yvette was gone, probably run off in panic once she got her head on straight. Lauren should have run, too, after what she’d seen but she seemed to have lost the ability to move.
“Lauren, you ought to come with us,” Casey said. “We can’t just leave you here.”
“Why don’t I go get you some clothes from inside?” Father Nguyen wheedled. He was so nice, so very nice.
“You can if you want,” she said. She didn’t want to go inside. He started forward, and she called after him, “I’d stay out of the bathroom if I were you.”
Nguyen looked back at her quizzically, then walked up the front steps and into the house. She stared after him for a second and then looked away from the gaping front door, staring at the begonias in the front flowerbed, the trellis that stretched up to the second floor. She took in the whole house, the place where she’d been raised, and it left her cold.
This wasn’t home.
Not anymore.
“GOOD HEAVENS!” Father Nguyen came scooting out the front door a moment later, crossing himself fervently, some clothes in his hand. He looked like he’d seen the Holy Ghost, or maybe the opposite, and he was motoring fast enough that even Lauren’s broken mind found some amusement in seeing it. He came to her side and stuck out his hand. A pair of pants was clutched in it, as well as a jacket and some socks.
She just stared at them blankly. “Shoes?” she asked, wondering why she even bothered. She lacked the energy and motivation to even get dressed at this point.
“I … I don’t want to go back in there,” Nguyen said, shaking his head. He looked sick to his stomach.
“What?” Casey asked, getting to his feet. “What is it? What’d you see?”
“There’s … my heavens, it’s …” Nguyen stammered.
“My mother,” Lauren said, dimly aware she’d spoken but surprised at the cogent sound of the content. “My mother is in the bathroom, dead. Molly—the demon in Molly—slit her throat right in front of me.” She sounded flat, uncaring, like she’d just observed a surgery and was speaking clinically about the results. She held up her hands and showed them, the faint traces of dried blood still crusted here and there on her palms.
“Is that where all the blood came from?” Casey asked, sounding like he was musing it over. “I was wondering, because those cuts all up and down you didn’t look like enough to cover ye.” He said “ye” instead of “you.” He stood up, seeming to steel himself. “I’ll get you some shoes.” And he headed for the front door, casting a look back. “You need anything else?”
Lauren just shook her head. She stared at the socks Nguyen had thrown at her, along with a pair of panties and jeans. “A shirt,” she said, and when he looked back, she tugged on the cut-off flannel. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Casey said with a shrug, and she realized he was wearing a stained wife beater that hugged his skinny body. “I’ll get you a bra, too.”
“Oh, uh, yes,” Nguyen muttered, “I forgot that for, uh, some reason.”
“Lack of experience,” Casey said with a grin and disappeared inside.
“Uhm, Dr. Darlington,” Nguyen said, and she looked up at him to find his face filled with discomfort. “We should … you should start getting dressed.
“Right,” Lauren said, taking hold of the socks. She took hold of one of her feet and gently brushed the sand away. It reminded her of how she’d brush the sand off of Molly when she was a little girl on the playground. Lauren would stroke her fingers through those dark locks, finding granules hidden all in there, and—
She sobbed, unexpectedly, frozen halfway through brushing off her foot. There was still blood half-dried on her ankle from one of her cuts, and her hands were shaking now.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Molly …”
Father Nguyen, perhaps wisely, said nothing, as she put her socks on one by one, ignoring the dirty, gritty feeling. Then Lauren got to her feet on her own, on wobbly legs, and started to dress herself so that she could go find out what the hell she should do next.
*
The sun had set and Chester felt a small burst of elation coupled with bitterness. The elation sprang from the returns, or at least the few who had returned. Some expected, some unexpectedly, but most bearing at least some good news. He stared at his growing convocation, standing in the near darkness on the porch of their newly seized headquarters, and Chester smiled.
“This is both a sad and glorious day,” he said and saw a chorus of nods. He nodded to one of the new returns, Melba, who had taken over the body of the doctor’s daughter. “We’ve struck some blows that they will feel.” He looked at Carisse, who had been responsible for the attack on the sheriff. That man deserved a healthy amount of pain for his part in all this. “And we are not done yet.”
“What should we do next?” Melba asked, through that teenager’s mouth. She had reported the clearest victory. Chester suspected others had gouged some wounds in these people, too, but he hadn’t heard back from Ygritte, who’d attacked the house with Deputy Stan or heard a peep from Winston, who had inhabited the sheriff’s wife, though that was always intended to be something of a suicide mission. He’d seen the pillar of smoke and it hinted that things had gone well for them there. The sounds of distant sirens, they had been music to his ears.
Chester had been thinking about the answer to that question as the sun had fallen below the horizon. In planning things, the start of things, he’d been so very focused on the most responsible parties. Reeve and Stan, and the cowboy, Hendricks. He’d branched out a little to include others who had been part of their little group, but as the sun had set and the cold grew hard and settled on his bones, he’d had a little revelation that chilled him.
Chester had tried to respect the humans, to live among them, to see the good in them. He’d watched them live their disconnected lives, pitied them for their lack of community even as they attempted congress in their small way. He’d believed that they were doing their best, but now … all he could think about was how loathsome and pathetic they really were. In that regard, he felt William’s view had been right.
And if their failure of community was responsible for what he had suffered, what William had suffere
d … then didn’t it make sense for their whole community to pay for their sins?
“Next …” Chester said, smiling faintly, “… we’re going to broaden things a bit.” He held out a hand, and they formed a little chain, exchanging essences, knowledge, and a plan. And along with all that, he felt the warmth of knowing spread among them as well, the sweet satisfaction of feeling that revenge, bitter, nasty, and wonderful, was soon to be at hand.
*
Braeden Tarley felt like even though this day had landed squarely in the middle of a diarrhea-filled shitter, at least it was closing out on a reasonable note. He was sitting on the edge of Abi’s bed, about ready to fall asleep himself after dealing with a busy four-year-old all afternoon, fighting to keep those eyes open, doing his damnedest to try and figure out what kind of bedtime story he ought to tell.
“How about something with a gunfight?” he asked, only about half-serious and knowing how that was going to play.
Abi gave him a frown, clearly taking it way more seriously than he had. “No, Daddy. I want a princess story.”
Braeden didn’t make a disappointed sigh, but not because he didn’t want to. Abi was very picky about her princess stories. He’d told the Disney ones about a thousand times, and while she never seemed to get tired of them, he did. She also tended to call bullshit when he got too cheesy or too close to something she didn’t want to hear about. “Okay,” he said and started racking his brain to try and come up with something new-ish, something that would make her smile instead of frown. She’d done a fair amount of frowning today already, still worried about Miss Evelyn.
“Once upon a time,” Braeden said, mind racing, “there was a princess …” This prompted the anticipatory smile from his daughter, something just shy of a full-beam smile. “… And this princess lived in the magical land of, uh … Tenzee,” he said, speeding up Tennessee so he thought it would be unrecognizable.
“Where’s Tenzee, Daddy?”
Legion (Southern Watch Book 5) Page 33
