“The new sheriff has said nothing so far,” Ms. Cherry said with a shrug. “No one has talked to him or seen him, so for all I know, he hasn’t even visited the crime scenes. He could be fishing on the Caledonia for all we know.”
“Doubtful,” Reeve said, and when everyone looked right at him he said, “Ed’s not much of a fisherman, really. But … I need to talk to him.”
Lauren gave him the same look she gave Lonsdale a few minutes earlier. “Are you nuts? What if he wants you to come in for ‘questioning’?” She made air quotes to show what she thought of that idea.
“I need to at least try to square things with him.” Reeve was still wearing his fatigue on his sleeve, but at least his color was getting a little better. “He’s the law in this town now.”
“He could be possessed by the Legion,” Nguyen said.
“Yeah,” Reeve said. “But if he’s not …”
“Then you’ll just be going to jail where you’ll be a sitting duck for the Legion to possess you and then turn you against us,” Lauren said, and then she flashed a suspicious look at Melina Cherry. “Say …”
Nguyen cleared his throat. “I checked her myself. With holy water.”
“He sprinkled it on my face,” Ms. Cherry said, looking sly. “It was much more pleasant that what usually gets—”
“Sorry I brought it up,” Lauren said, and Ms. Cherry flashed her a smile coupled with a quick waggle of her eyebrows. “So …” She turned back to Reeve.
“I need to at least talk to Ed,” Reeve said. “Face to face, man to man. He’s not a totally unreasonable guy, but he’s probably … not drinking the Kool-Aid, as they keep saying about us.”
“I suspect I know where he’ll be later,” Ms. Cherry said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolding it. It crinkled as she did, and Lauren stared as she opened it to reveal some pumpkin clip art surrounded by words and text, a pretty typical flyer of the sort used to advertise just about everything. Ms. Cherry held it up. “See? The law will be in Midian tonight for certain, according to this.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Reeve said, taking it gingerly as he frowned at it.
Lauren stared at it as well. “A Halloween event? What the hell?”
“Like Duncan said, it’ll be fine,” Reeve said, staring down at the paper in his fingertips. “These demons don’t want to shit in their sandbox, after all. They like conducting their business in the shadows a little too much to ring the dinner bell on this one.” He blew air out from between his pale lips. “And this just might be the chance I need to talk to Ed, face to face.” A ringtone trilled and Reeve looked down impatiently, pulling his phone out and then answered. “Hello?” He looked pretty serious as he listened for a second before replying to the question Lauren was sure she was wearing all over her face. “It’s Hendricks.”
*
Hendricks had the cell phone pressed to his ear. He still wasn’t used to these things, feeling like the crabby old man who was telling kids to get the fuck off his lawn every time he looked at the little device and felt the scorn bubble up. To him it felt like a leash, a chain to keep him hooked to. He’d had one when he was younger, of course, but coming back after Iraq, he hadn’t wanted the tie, preferring to just use a hotel phone when he needed to do a consulting call.
Was the cell phone supposed to be this hot? Didn’t the batteries blow up on these things sometimes? These thoughts were all rolling through his head as he listened to Reeve say, “It’s Hendricks,” to someone in the background, like he couldn’t fucking hear the man.
“Yeah, it’s Hendricks,” Hendricks agreed, subtly jabbing the sheriff and feeling a little bad for it afterward. “Listen … I just wanted to check in again.”
“Mother hen,” Reeve said. The sound was a lot better than Hendricks remembered from his old flip phone, which was the last one he’d had before giving up on that particular branch of modern technology. And most others, actually. “We’re all still here. Ms. Cherry from, uh … well, maybe you haven’t met her …”
“Oh, I’ve met her,” Hendricks said quickly. “Real striking lady. Dark hair, beautiful eyes, rack like she’s defying all attempts of gravity to bring her down, curves like the roads around Mount Horeb, and an ass that means she can probably charge whatever she wants for anal. Stone fucking cougar, and hotter than a stovetop left on high all day.”
Reeve was silent for a long moment, then his voice crackled, kinda tinny. “So I guess you’ve met, then.”
Someone let out a snort in the background, and Hendricks heard, faintly, a woman saying, “So sweet, darling.”
“So, you, uh, put me on speakerphone,” Hendricks said, blushing a little. “A heads up, maybe, next time?”
“Or you could just keep your observations on other people’s asses to yourself,” Reeve said a little stiffly, reminding Hendricks of every boss he’d ever hated. “Anyway, Ms. Cherry stopped by to give us the word on what’s going on after … yesterday.”
Hendricks perked up to that one. “Oh, yeah? What’s the word on the street about what happened to Bill?”
There was a pause, and Ms. Cherry’s European accent came through a moment later. “I haven’t heard much about that. Just the basics, that he was taken away in an ambulance. No one’s talked to the family, so I suppose the rumor mill doesn’t have as much to go on as it does for Sheriff Reeve or Dr. Darlington.”
“Hrm,” Hendricks said. “I guess that’s something.”
“Yeah,” Reeve said sourly, “they can count their blessings that no one thinks Arch or Brian or Alison is a murderer. So that’s good. How’s Bill?”
“He still hasn’t woken up yet,” Hendricks said. This was the second time he’d checked in with Reeve, the first being earlier that morning. He’d been alternating between sitting and sleeping in the waiting room, which had seen decent amount of traffic throughout the day. Arch, Alison and Addy had been allowed into Bill’s room, but Hendricks had stayed out, checking with Duncan every now and again and Brian even less frequently. He’d avoided the hell out of Guthrie, though.
“Is that good or bad?” Reeve asked.
Hendricks didn’t know how to answer that one, and counted himself fortunate when Dr. Darlington did for him. “Probably not good,” she said, her voice a little scratchy. “The longer it takes, the worse it generally is, unless they’re keeping him in a medical coma.”
“I don’t think so,” Hendricks said. “I think they want him to wake up so they can kinda see where he’s at, cognit—err … cognately? Cogn—errm …”
“Cognitively,” Dr. Darlington said. “Yeah. I don’t know. I’m not a neurologist, but my guess is if he doesn’t wake up in the next day or so, and they’re not medically inducing a coma, it’s going to be a really, really bad sign.”
“The hits just keep coming,” Reeve said with a sigh.
“Yeah, sounds like it’s grim all fucking over,” Hendricks said, and heard Father Nguyen make a clucking noise of disapproval.
“At least there’s still Halloween,” Ms. Cherry said, a little lightly.
Hendricks furrowed his brow. “Beg pardon?” What the fuck? was what he almost said.
“Pike’s trying to reinvigorate confidence in the community or something by having a trick-or-treat in the town square,” Reeve said, rolling right on through it with only mild disapproval. “Frankly, I can think of worse ideas.”
Hendricks just shrugged. “I guess.” It was a fair point; demons who preyed on people looked for weak and isolated ones, or families they could overpower in a blitz attack. They damned sure didn’t go charging into town events looking for trouble, because that was fucking suicide, even for demons. People got pretty particular about their kids, after all. “So … basically nothing else to report, then?”
“Not much has changed, no,” Reeve said. “We’re just turtled up here. Might stick our heads out later for a peek around.”
“Make sure you look out the window first,” Hendricks said,
and Reeve grunted in reply. “I’ll call you in a couple hours, or earlier if the Legion makes their play here.”
“All right then,” Reeve said, and the beeps from the sound of hang-up rang in Hendricks’s ears as he headed back into the hospital doors, leaving the cool, crisp fall day behind him.
It had been damned beautiful, he’d give it that. Warm, even, thanks to a strong showing by the sun and an absence of clouds. It wasn’t anything like the Halloweens he was used to in Wisconsin, that was for sure. There were plenty of those nights where he remembered his mom heating up apple cider on the stove so that he’d have it ready when he came in from trick or treating with his dad. Here, they might need that after the sun went down for a while, but it wasn’t anything like Amery, Wisconsin.
He got in the elevator and rode it up to the second floor, waited ’til he heard the ding and stepped out past a couple nurses in pink scrubs. He wasn’t too proud to take a look, though one of them had blonde hair so close to platinum that it made him shudder and take a step away from her. Putting that out of his mind, hand shaking a little unintentionally, he headed down the hall and knocked, that hand still shaking as it rattled at the door. “Room service,” he said in a falsetto, his voice cracking a little unintentionally as he tried to hit the high pitch.
“Hey,” Brian Longholt called, sounding about as weary as the egghead looked when Hendricks came in. He didn’t seem to have taken this whole experience well. Not that there was an easy way to take being possessed by a demon and shooting your father in the head, Hendricks supposed.
“How are you feeling?” Hendricks asked, mostly perfunctory so he could tell Addy when she asked. If he saw her before she came down here; she was developing a pattern of orbiting back and forth between Brian’s room and Bill’s.
“Like shit,” Brian said and plainly felt it. “And they’re taking for goddamned-ever to discharge me.”
Hendricks held on to the joke stemming off the phrase “discharge me,” because it was a pretty nasty one involving Brian’s dad. If his dad hadn’t been in critical condition, Hendricks would have sprung it for certain. But even he would have found the timing tasteless on this one. Instead he sighed, wistful at the loss of a chance to poke at this self-important prick. “Yeah, hospitals are like that,” he said instead.
“Any word from upstairs?” Brian asked, getting serious again.
“Nothing’s changed,” Hendricks said, “at least not as of fifteen minutes ago when I saw Arch.”
“Hm,” Brian said, going back to glum. Not that he’d had a lot of hope pop out, but Hendricks had seen a little just now. “Anything else going on?” There it was, fainter this time.
“Just talked to Reeve,” Hendricks said matter-of-factly. “He and Darlington might be seeing some trouble with the law over what happened. Sounds like you’re in the clear, though.”
“Yay,” Brian said without enthusiasm. “How’d he hear that?”
“Ms. Cherry stopped by St. Brigid’s,” Hendricks said, smirking slightly. He couldn’t help himself.
“Wow,” Brian said mildly.
“I know,” Hendricks said. He found the image of a madam in a church pretty damned hilarious, too.
Brian got all serious and pensive for a few seconds, then he came out with something that burned Hendricks’s ass, of course, because the pencilneck couldn’t keep from doing that for more than thirty seconds. “My town is so fucked up. All small towns are, really, but mine, in particular, seems to be the worst for that kind of … I don’t know, hate or something.”
Hendricks rolled his eyes. “There’s a hooker in a church, man. Just take it in the humorous spirit and move on, don’t use it as a chance to kick the ball toward the goal on your ‘Midian sucks’ agenda, okay? For fuck’s sake, if you hate the place, don’t fight demons for it, all right?” He stared Brian down, and the dumbass meekly looked away. Hendricks suspected he might not have done that a couple days ago, but now here he was, folding without a look at his cards.
Now Hendricks felt bad again. How many people was he going to pistol whip while they were down, anyway? He sighed lightly, feeling the vitriol flow out of him. “You know what else they’re doing?” He asked, his version of a peace offering.
Brian took hold of it real tentatively. “What?”
“Some Halloween trick-or-treat thing on the square,” Hendricks said, almost chuckling. “Sounds like a real hold-hands-and-sing type circle jerk.”
“Huh,” Brian said, frowning. “Isn’t that … I mean, I know we talked about it and Duncan was all, ‘Halloween is safe’, but … is that smart?”
Hendricks shrugged. “It’s probably fine. Demons go after the basket of eggs no one is watching. The people hiding in their houses are probably in more peril than the ones going to this display of chutzpah. The last cop in Midian is probably gonna be there, after all, and if not, you’ve still got a bunch of young twenty- and thirty-something parents, some of whom are bound to be armed.”
“I guess,” Brian said, clearly expressing his skepticism. “I just don’t get it, though. Why not just hide until it’s over? Or leave?”
“What’s the point of living if you hide in your house all the time?” Hendricks asked with a shrug. “And keep in mind, I just asked you roughly the same question, yet here you are.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been asked,” Brian said, shifting uncomfortably in his bed.
“Oh?” Hendricks tried to sound interested, but probably failed. “What was your answer last time?”
Brian looked like he was thinking pretty hard about it. “I don’t know,” he finally conceded. “After everything that’s happened now … I feel like I’m less sure of what I’m doing than ever before.”
*
Chester had found the farm and its sprawling view of hills reassuring when first he’d arrived. But a day of lingering about had left him cold on the whole concept. In truth, it was the same problem as he’d had before; in spite of their triumphs, William was still gone, and Chester was still alone at the top of a dwindling mass of angry essences. They’d lost quite a few now, and of course countless others were spread around the new bodies.
As a result, the voices within Chester’s body felt more muted, quiet and lonely than he could ever recall. The discussion had been tabled, all controversy and argument set aside for the time being. They were of one mind, one purpose, and the recent victories over this watch had left them galvanized, their losses serving as a bitter, ash-tasting reminder that they were in a war, and for all the casualties they’d taken, the pain they’d dealt in return was sizable.
Not nearly enough, though. Not for the loss of William.
Not yet.
Chester stood upon the back porch, watching the day’s light fading away bit by bit, sinking below the horizon. He could see Mount Horeb in the distance, its heights shaded by the coming sunset. It was beautiful, really, the sort of thing William would have loved.
But William would never see it, and to Chester, that was like a gloom that would never end, like a night had fallen upon him of which there would be no dawn.
“The time draws near,” Melba said from her new body, the one named Molly Darlington. Melba always had a taste for the overdramatic.
“We’re almost ready,” Kelly said, having taken control of the deputy called Erin Harris. “We have … so many at hand, ready to do this thing.”
Chester nodded solemnly. He tried to remember when this all had begun, this inescapable cycle toward destiny, and kept coming back to the cave, to the day when he and William had surged out of the broken vase and taken control of this body for the first time. He hadn’t wanted to come out, not at all, and even now, a part of him and his brethren clung to that idea. But William had forced the issue, had forced the move to Tennessee, and he had the majority on his side and so they had come.
But as Chester stared out across the green fields, he thought back to that moment when the first demon hunter had confronted them in the cave, righ
t after they’d come out. “Let it be merciful,” he’d said. He’d felt bad for these people, had felt empathy for them, in their pitiful desperation, their disconnection from each other.
He didn’t feel bad anymore.
Now he was going to make them feel bad. Now he was going to make them suffer the way he’d suffered. Their disconnection mattered not at all to him, for he saw that they were bound—primitively, to be certain, but there was a tenuous web between each of them to the others.
And soon they would feel it, this community. Pain, grief, rage—all the things he felt, he would spread from his flock to theirs. And then they would see how it felt. All of them.
*
Brian lay in his hospital bed after Hendricks had left, twirling the rough sheets between his fingers. Hospital linens weren’t exactly his mother’s Egyptian cotton, and he noticed the difference, though he didn’t have anyone to remark to about it. He suspected there would be an even more dramatic difference between hospital linens and prison linens, and he hoped to hell Hendricks was right and that he never had the chance to confirm that suspicion firsthand.
The guilt was racking him, and the pain in his leg wasn’t enough to keep it at bay. Not that he wanted to keep his guilt at bay, but his mind was busy going in a lot of different directions. Without weed to help, he felt pretty much like he was caught in a spinning rip current, just going around and around. Then again, if the weed had been the wrong kind, it probably just would have hit him with the paranoia, and that wouldn’t have helped at all.
“What the hell do I even do?” Brian asked himself. Why did he get involved in this? Why did he get in the back of his dad’s truck in the first place, setting this whole stupid fucking chain of events into play? Boredom? Immature desire to be an asshole to his parents? Smug superiority?
“Yeah, a superior intellect is really taking me far,” Brian muttered, half-tempted to click the button to turn the TV on. His painkillers were fading and TV was almost the next best thing. After giving it a moment’s thought, he passed. He didn’t deserve to have his pain killed, anyway.
Legion (Southern Watch Book 5) Page 40
