Barnes frowned at me, clearly suspicious about my motives. Then he hit me with a bomb. “What is Midnight Ground?”
I had it together enough not to start screaming incoherently at him, but not together enough to come up with a passable half-truth. Instead, I opted for playing dumb.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Midnight Ground,” he repeated. “You were saying it over and over again.”
“No idea,” I lied. “Must be something I heard in a movie once.”
His expression didn’t change, but I somehow knew that I’d said the wrong thing. My playing dumb act, an act that had served me so well and often, pushed a button in Barnes. I felt the change in him and watched his stance shift in a number of small, subtle ways. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and they hung loosely at his side. His center of gravity shifted downward and one of his feet slid back a little. His eyes went slightly out of focus, and he wasn’t looking at my face anymore. His eyes took in my whole body.
It was that last part that tipped my wariness into full-fledged alarm. Even among people accustomed to physical violence, there was a tendency to focus on the other person’s face. The incorrect reasoning went that a change in expression would cue you that they were about to make a move. People with serious training in hand-to-hand combat know better. A person’s face may or may not cue you, but their body will always cue you. If you let yourself stay aware of what a person’s body is doing, it can give you a critical fraction of a second to block or evade a blow. Barnes looked at me the way a trained fighter looked at an opponent. All those slight changes, taken as a whole, told me he was on the point of violence.
My mental impression of him as some kind of caricature evaporated. He didn’t look amusing anymore. He looked like someone who could very well take my head off. We were about the same height, but he had thirty or forty pounds on me. Some of that weight looked to be the result of a healthy appetite, but he was broad in the shoulders. His hands were heavy and powerful. I bet he did something demanding in his off time. Maybe he farmed a little, or did some kind of carpentry. Maybe he was just built that way. Whatever the reason, he was probably stronger than I was. In an otherwise even match, even a little extra strength on one side could tip the scale.
On the flip side, I had the advantage of comparative youth and fitness. At least I would have had those advantages under normal circumstances. The adrenaline burst that always accompanied violence would probably let me ignore the pain from my burn, at least for a few minutes, but my lungs were a different story. They were a long way off from a full recovery. Under those conditions, a fair fight that didn’t last too long could go either way. If it went on for any length of time, my damaged lungs just wouldn’t be able to supply the ridiculous amounts of oxygen a serious fight required. I knew what I was doing, but so did he. If we fought, it wouldn’t be over fast. I wasn’t in a good mental place to be fighting. Plus, he was armed with more than just fighting know-how. I didn’t necessarily believe he’d pull his service weapon on me if he started a fight. That didn’t mean he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, should things go my way.
I slowly raised a hand. “Take it easy. It doesn’t need to go that way.”
Barnes blinked in surprise. “No, it doesn’t, but it will if you don’t play me straight right now. I cut you a lot of slack. Let you poke around. Let you kick up hard feelings. Time to come clean.”
I yearned to get into my car and drive away. The sheriff wasn’t talking tough. He meant it. If I tried to leave without giving him an explanation, he would probably kick my ass. Might even toss me back in jail for whatever reason he could trump up, just to lean on me. He had intuited something bad was going on and that he didn’t know what he needed to know to figure it out. So, he turned me loose and let me do my thing. I probably owed him something for that.
“In simplest terms,” I said, “this place is cursed.”
Barnes didn’t move or speak, but the way he didn’t move or speak told me that answer wasn’t good enough. I ground my teeth.
“There’s something trapped in, or possibly under, that building,” I said, pointing at the school. “There isn’t one damn thing I can do about it, either. Maybe, somewhere else, with something less potent, I could. But I can’t do anything here. I want to. I just can’t. I’m not good enough.”
“So what happens when you’re gone?”
I looked away. “Sooner or later, it gets out. Probably sooner, but that’ll happen whether I’m here or not.”
“And then?”
“People start dying. Maybe not immediately, but they’ll all die in the end. It’ll use their deaths to give itself more power.”
Barnes narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Blood sacrifice, sheriff. It’s how you make a god.”
I was only guessing at that last part, but it was an educated guess. Demons could be terribly powerful when compared to a human practitioner, but not next to the old powers. A few thousand deaths wouldn’t give a demon enough power to join the Roman Pantheon, but it’d be enough to make a good start.
Barnes very calmly drew his weapon and aimed it at me. “Turn around, put your hands on the car, and spread your legs.”
“Sheriff, this is…” I stopped talking as he clicked the safety off.
“Now,” he said.
I did as I was told. He cuffed me and shoved me into the back of his cruiser. As he pulled away from the school, I gave him a dirty look in the rearview.
“Do you mind telling me what I’m being taken in for?”
Barnes gave me a flat look in the mirror. “For not having a good-enough answer.”
“I told you the freaking truth,” I objected.
He looked away. “I know. I know your type, though, Hartworth.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that you’re going to sit in that cell until one of two things happens.”
“What things?”
“You die with the rest of us, or you come up with something to save your own ass.”
Damn, I thought. He really did know my type. In most circumstances, he’d even be right that I’d come up with something. Only, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop what was coming. No one could.
“You’re murdering me,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”
He looked at me again and I saw it in his eyes. He knew. He knew it and he didn’t care.
“Doesn’t sound like I’ll have to live with it very long,” he answered.
God, I hated people with commitment sometimes.
Chapter 35
“Sheriff,” I said, even as he closed the cell door on me, “this is pointless. I can’t do anything.”
“I don’t believe that. I think you just need some time to think about it.”
Patty had stared in utter shock when Barnes hauled me into the station and all but threw me into the cell. She gave me a questioning look. I rolled my eyes and shrugged. I mouthed the word conspiracy in her direction. She narrowed her eyes at me and then turned the same look on Barnes. He managed to look a little uncomfortable when she walked over to him.
“Jeremy, what the hell are you doing?”
“What I need to do, to protect the town.”
“How does locking him up protect the town?”
“He knows what’s happening here. I think he knows how to stop it. I’m providing him,” the sheriff looked at me, “an incentive to do it.”
I seized the bars of the cell in my hands and gave him a dirty look. “Fine, you want to know how to stop it, I’ll tell you the only way I know. Evacuate this town and never, ever come back. That’s it. That is the only,” I rattled the bars, “God damned,” I rattled them again, “way.”
Barnes wasn’t impressed by my impotent display. “I think you can do better.”
Patty looked torn, her eyes moving between me, the guy who technically hadn’t done anything, and her boss. It was a hell of an ethical pickle for her. If she raised too much of a stink, Barnes could
probably just fire her. On the other hand, she was technically aiding and abetting him in a crime if she let him keep me in that cell without charging me with something. She wore the same expression I’d seen on people who got a mouthful of something that didn’t agree with them.
“You can’t just keep him in that cell until he talks,” she said. “You either have to charge him or I’m letting him out. He hasn’t committed any crimes that I know about. He isn’t obstructing an investigation, unless you opened one I don’t know about. Have you?”
“No, but the law says I can hold him for forty-eight hours,” said Barnes.
“Not without a reason. Is he a suspect in a crime?”
“He has knowledge of a crime that’s going to happen.”
“What crime?”
“Mass murder.”
Patty blinked and shot me a look. She shook her head. “Carried out by whom, exactly?”
Barnes shrugged.
“This wouldn’t be a demon or some other supernatural cause, would it?”
Barnes said nothing.
“Did he use the words ‘mass murder’?”
Barnes continued saying nothing. Patty sighed, gave me another look that said, “I will beat you to death for this,” and picked up a key. She walked toward the cell.
“Damn it, Patty, he knows something!”
She stopped with the key a bare inch from the lock. She closed her eyes, inserted the key, and turned it. She looked over her shoulder at the sheriff and it seemed to age her.
“I know he does, or thinks he does. You think he does, too. But it’s nothing that any district attorney would believe. Any lawyer with a cup of coffee in them could have Hartworth out of here in two seconds. It’d be a disaster for you.”
She swung open the cell door. I looked at Barnes. He was staring at me. The desperation in his features was something truly ugly. He knew something. I’d bet he’d known something for years. He couldn’t ever put his finger on it, or maybe he had put his finger on it. That fit better. He’d figured out that something otherworldly was at work and that he didn’t have the knowledge or resources to deal with it. He thought I could. He was ready to torpedo his career, his reputation, maybe even his freedom, if it meant he could stop it somehow. I felt for the man. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing in his position. Well, okay, I could have said that, but most people couldn’t have said it. I’d have helped him if I knew how. I stepped out of the cell.
“You’ll have to live with this, Hartworth,” said Barnes.
I shuddered. “Sheriff, I swear to God, if I could do anything to stop what’s coming, I’d do it.”
“Then help me, damn it!”
I looked away. “I honestly can’t. I don’t, I just don’t have the power. What’s coming is,” I tried to think of something appropriate. “What’s coming is Biblical in proportions. I’d be less than nothing in its way.”
“Then who does have the power? You must know someone, somewhere, who can help.”
I shook my head. “You think I didn’t think of that? It isn’t an option.”
“Why not?” He growled at me.
“Because, believe it or not, right now there are actually worse things happening in the world than this. I’m sorry, sheriff, there isn’t anything to do or anyone to call. It’s just a matter of when it happens, not if it happens.”
Patty had stood there in silence listening to us and she finally broke in. “Would either of you care to explain to me what you think is going to happen.”
Barnes shook his head and walked over to a window. He looked smaller to me, as if the lack of a solution had deprived him of something that had once given him extra mass. I couldn’t give him what he wanted or needed, but I wanted to give him something.
“If you have anyone here that you love, sheriff, people you truly care about, I think there’s still time to get them clear. Convince them to leave. It’s all that you can do.”
He didn’t turn or even speak, just kept staring out the window. If willpower alone could have averted the impending disaster, I’d have given him good odds. I’d have even given me good odds if pure will could get the job done, but will alone wasn’t enough. Patty put a hand on my shoulder.
“Come on, Hartworth, I’ll give you a lift to your car.”
I nodded and followed Patty to the door. I glanced over my shoulder at the sheriff and thought he cut a striking figure silhouetted in the window. It’d make a good campaign poster, I mused, the thought both accurate and irrational. As Patty drove me back to the school, my mind skittering away from my haunting quasi-memories of the building’s interior, she was very quiet for a few minutes.
“You said you can’t do anything,” she said.
I glance at her. “I did.”
“Is that true?”
That was a tricky question. As far as I knew, it was true. It was objectively possible that there was some action I could take that might avert disaster, but I didn’t know what it was. The Twins were quite certain there wasn’t anything I could do to derail the hell train on a collision course with the town.
“Yes, it’s true.”
“But you had to think about it.”
“It’s not a simple question.”
“What isn’t simple about it?”
I snorted. “I don’t know everything, for starters. Do you know if you can bench press three hundred and fifty pounds?”
“Of course I can’t.”
“Okay, but how do you know? Have you ever tried under extreme conditions? Have you ever tried even under regular conditions?”
She hesitated. “Well no, but that’s different.”
“It isn’t different. You think you can’t, because people with more information would probably tell you that you can’t. As far as you know you can’t, but you don’t actually know, absolutely, that you can’t do it.”
She got it. “You’re pretty sure you can’t do anything. People you think would know told you that you can’t. You believe them, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a theoretical way for you do something.”
“Bingo.”
“Is there a way for you to find out?”
“Well,” I thought about it, “shit, maybe if I had twenty years. It’s not like anyone is running a deep magic lending library I can go to to do the research.”
She blinked a few times. “Deep magic?”
“High level, high-intensity magic.”
She gave me a blank stare. I thought for a minute, looking for an analogy that might work.
“Okay,” I said. “How good of a shot are you?”
“I’m pretty good.”
“So, somewhere along the line, someone taught you how to shoot. How to stand and hold the gun? How to aim? When to pull the trigger? All that stuff, right?”
“Well, yeah, sure. Why?”
“Once you knew all that stuff, were you a good shot?”
“Oh, hell no. I spent years practicing on the range. Still do.”
“Now, do you still think about all those things when you shoot? How to stand, hold the gun, aim, and so on?”
She thought for a minute. “I guess I don’t give it a lot of conscious thought. It’s all ingrained now.”
“Okay, but you’re still improved. You’re still learning. Your insight into how to shoot well gets better over time, yes?”
“Yes, I guess that’s true.”
“You might think of that as deep shooting. You’ve gotten to the point where your intuition is becoming more important to improving your shooting than any specific training.
“When it comes to magic, anyone with a bit of talent can learn how to stand, hold the gun, and pull the trigger. I’ve got that part down, and I’ve more or less gotten to the point where I don’t have to think about it every time I want to do something. Basically, I’ve achieved competence. Deep magic is the stuff that only people who are absolute masters can even grasp. I might get there if I live another thirty or forty years. What’s ha
ppening here is the kind of thing that only a few of those masters would have the vaguest idea how to deal with. An even fewer of them would have the power to deal with.”
Patty thought in silence for a moment. “So, what you’re saying is that you’re the kind of guy who can hit a target at thirty feet, pretty consistently, as long as things don’t get too distracting and you’re using your favorite handgun.”
“Yeah, that’s probably accurate.”
“And you’re saying that what we need here is the sniper who can make a headshot from a mile out, in high winds, while there are bombs exploding nearby.”
I frowned. “I don’t actually know that much about guns. I assume that’s one of those very difficult things that only a couple dozen people on the planet can do?”
“Probably more than that, but yes, that’s the idea.”
“Then yes, that’s who I’m saying you need here.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Those are the people you told the sheriff aren’t available. Really? There’s isn’t one anywhere?”
“It’s a tiny group. And no, there isn’t one.”
Patty shook her head. “I don’t know how you got the sheriff to buy into this.”
I looked out the window and didn’t say anything. I felt her eyes on my head.
“What?” I asked.
“You didn’t, did you? Get him to buy into this?”
“I told him less about all of this than I told you.”
“Then he,” she mulled it for a second. “He already believed it. That’s why he let you run around town without interfering.” She took it to the next step. “Jesus, that’s why he let you go in the first place. He was hoping you’d get involved.”
“I don’t know about that last part, but I think the rest is true.”
“But it’s crazy. All of it. You’re basically harmless crazy, but Jeremy? He’s never been one to buy into mumbo-jumbo.”
I gave her a look that said, we’ve had this conversation before. She held up a hand in acknowledgement.
The Midnight Ground Page 23
