Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted (40 page)

The last impact produced a hiss after the hit, and he felt the flames of hell lick across his back as the thing on top of him disappeared in rush of the black fire from below. Arch rolled to his back, and found himself looking up at a white face in the dark, lit by the refracted beam of the flashlight.

Dr. Lauren Darlington stood there, a tire iron in her hand. He watched as it slipped from her grasp to hit the floor of the mine, initial thud muted by the sand, followed by a ringing echo when the long shaft of it came in contact with exposed rock. Its clatter could be heard all through the mine, he thought, still stuck on her horrified face.

“What …” Her fingers came up to her cheeks, like she was trying to cover her eyes but not quite making it there, “… the hell … was that?”

Another shot rang out, sweet thundering déjà vu for Hendricks, recalling all those recent incidents where the shot of a rifle preceded his ass getting pulled out of the frying pan it was dangling onto. Except this time the woman who’d been doing the trigger pulling up ’til now was standing just behind him, her back against his black drover coat.

“You been talking with your daddy?” Hendricks asked, “or did he just happen by—you know, decided it was a fine day for a drive down to Alabama to visit a town where the canine fire-breathers run free and wild and there’s no bag limit?”

“I was texting with him,” Alison said, “on the way down.” A light went off for Hendricks, remembering looking back and seeing her peering at her lap. He’d thought maybe she was head down from fatigue or sorrow.

“You were faking that hobble on the way in here, too,” Hendricks said, shaking his head. “You slowed us down so he could catch up.”

“Carrying that Barrett miles over uneven terrain was a bad idea for me,” she said. “But my daddy has lighter rifles, and he’s a deer hunter. That means he can tread the rough ground pretty fair.”

“Nice,” Hendricks conceded as he poked another fire dog in the snout. It whimpered for a half second before it dissolved. “You could have let us know company was coming.”

“Didn’t think you’d take kindly to more people treading in on your demon hunting circle,” she said. She eased off him, back toward the rear of the alley. “We’re gonna need to start getting out of here now.”

“They’re still flanking us,” Hendricks said, turning back in time to see Duncan dispense with one of five (five!) of the critters that swarmed up the alley from behind them. “Unless you think we should run through town.” Hendricks chanced a look toward the square as another bellow of a rifle cracked out. “Your daddy is probably gonna get run down by those things pretty soon, you know.”

“He can take care of himself,” she said.

“Well, as much as I applaud his help, he’s overlooking the square and we’re fucked if we try and work our way to him,” Hendricks said. “So I guess what I’m saying is … he’s bought a couple minutes, that’s all.” He hacked the blade down and took one of the devil dogs’ heads off. They were pacing themselves, he could tell. When they unleashed, it was not gonna be a pretty sight. Still more of them popping out of that bonfire all the time, too.

“Sometimes all you need to do is play for time, Mr. Hendricks,” Alison said.

“I think we’re about played out,” he replied. He was all in favor of hoping for a change in the status quo, but this far from help there wasn’t much hope for the quo to get a status update.

And then there was a brief flash of light and a red-haired, pale-skinned woman wearing jeans and a t-shirt appeared and kicked a hellhound so hard it flew across the road, and Hendricks felt a flicker of doubt that his lack of faith might maybe—just maybe—be a couple degrees off. It didn’t last, though.

“Seriously, what the hell was that?”

Lauren Darlington didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice. It sounded choked, strangled, like that—that
thing
—that had been about to throttle Arch Stan had jumped up and wrapped long, pale fingers around her own throat.

Arch Stan was on a knee now, eyeing her warily, nothing in his hand but a switchblade. She could see his eyes in the dark, the outline of his face, but that was it. He was a shadow, a slow-moving ghost that was crawling up to unfurl itself in her face. She’d had a tire iron in her hands but it was gone now, and she fixated on the knife in his fingers, looking at it with a mix of wonder and horror that congealed together, conspiring to make her want to recoil and run.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice sounding like he’d been a little choked himself.

“I am not fucking okay,” Lauren forced out. “I am not at all fucking okay. I am miles from fucking okay. I am from here to Chicago from okay,
okay
?” She stared him down, took a step back because of the knife—finally, her brain unlocking her legs, though she didn’t dare reach for the tire iron—and then stood there, feeling helpless, absolutely flummoxed by what she’d seen.

Arch seemed unaffected, his shadow moving to collect the flashlight that had fallen by the wayside. He stooped, scooped it up, and she could hear his breath and labor as he did so. It made a scratching noise, scuffing the rock as he retrieved it, a sound that reminded her of a record needle being removed.

She’d followed him to see what he was doing, this rogue, lying deputy who had been on her list, that ephemeral shit list that she’d kept for sixteen years. What she’d found was him getting his ass beat by—by—by—

By some guy in bicycle pants who’d disintegrated in a flash of black fire. She hadn’t imagined that, had she?

She remembered them coming down the hill, those guys on the bikes, remembered wanting to jump the cliff’s edge. What had that been? A delusion? The cry of a mind entering psychosis? This was shit straight out of a psych residency. People did not dissolve into flame when you beat them with a tire iron. That was not normal.

“They were demons,” Archibald Stan said into the echoing darkness of the mine. He kept the flashlight out of her eyes, scanning down the shaft with it, back in the direction he’d been heading when she was following him. Which had been stupid, she had to concede.

“Oh, fuck you, holy roller,” she said, in utter disgust.

That put the silence back in the tunnel. “Excuse me?” Arch Stan wore that shield of aw-shucks politeness like a home-stitched quilt, but she’d seen through it before.

“What kind of cock and bull are you trying to get me to swallow?” Lauren asked.

“You hit a guy with a tire iron, and he got dragged back to hell before your eyes,” Arch said. “You decide if you want to believe me or not, but—” He made a clicking sound as the flashlight beam swept back around and finally hit her, effectively blinding her. “Either way, you might want to get out of here.”

“Why?” She covered her eyes, blinking away from the beam. “Are there more of them?”

“I don’t think so, but I didn’t know there were any to begin with,” Arch said. “No, I’m suggesting you leave because I’m leaving, and I’m taking my light with me.” He started toward her but kept a healthy distance, steering wide of her as he approached.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Lauren muttered, and she started to shuffle back, ready to make for the entry.

“Dr. Darlington?” he asked, and she stopped in her tracks, staring at the shadow hidden behind the flashlight. “Don’t forget your tire iron.”

“Fuck you very much,” she said, and took a few steps forward before dropping to a knee and sweeping her hand around to find it. She ran a palm over the dust before jarring the handle, then wrapped her fingers around it and hefted it to her side. She stood, never taking an eye off Arch Stan as she gestured toward the mine entrance, somewhere out of sight down the tunnel. “Lead on.” She followed him, fuming, through the dark, happy to let the silence between them fester.

“Hell descends and the crazy bitch appears,” Duncan said. His baton was whipping around in a frenzy, fast enough Hendricks’s eyes couldn’t even keep up. Devil dogs were turning black and burning up faster than he could count.

Hendricks heard him and did not acknowledge him, not really wanting to chance offending her. She heard, he was sure. She heard everything. Hell, she’d just dropped into this blazing corner of Alabama without warning, and he would have bet she’d been in Midian just seconds earlier. It was damned curious what Starling could do. Curious and freaky, and not worth contemplating in detail at the moment. “Took you long enough,” he found it in him to sputter out, but he did it with a little gratitude.

“I could not let you perish at the teeth of these things,” Starling said in that flat, emotionless tone.

“Because you’ve got big plans for me to perish elsewhere, in a bigger and better way?” He tried to keep it light, but after the words left his lips he felt a quiver wondering if there was any truth to the question. She did not answer either way, instead sending another demon dog yelping its way back to momma.

Hendricks saw Mandy again now, encircled in a sea of the flaming pups. They were curled around her, a sea of flaming devils she could walk across to get to them, if she was of a mind to. Hendricks did not like that idea, either.

She turned away from them and Hendricks caught a glimpse of her back. The skin on her shoulders was wrinkled and burned on each of the blades, scarred and healed, like a burn crusted over and burned again. He had a vision of them raring up on hind paws, putting it to her from behind in the way that dogs did, and he felt sick to his stomach even as he brought his blade down with unusual violence, lopping the head off one of them.

He got the sense that whatever they had done to fuck her up, it went a lot deeper than just her lack of hair and the black dust that clung to her wrinkled skin like a leotard. Those scars bespoke something twisted and isolated that threatened to bring up his half-digested waffle.

“It would be best for your own survival if you began a retreat,” Starling said, her back turned as she hurled another flame dog back to mommy dearest.

“It woulda been best for my survival if I’d never come here in the first place,” Hendricks said.

“But then you would have missed the truth of things.” Starling punched one of the leaping dogs in the jaw so hard it disintegrated into black flame, the disturbance carrying through ten feet of air before it finished sucking the thing back to its origin.

“You could have just
told me
,” Hendricks said, exasperated. “‘Hey, Hendricks, I know I’m a cold and frosty demon ass-kicker who moonlights as a whore, but I’ve now saved your life on multiple occasions, so listen up: there’s a carnie in town who’s going to have sex with some girl and she’s going to give birth to flaming demon dogs that will destroy the town. Might wanna get on that.’ Boom. And I would have, no day trip into the heart of darkness necessary.”

She paused and looked back at him, her ice-white flesh and dark eyes causing his skin to tingle from the attention. “You needed to
see
.” Without even looking, she punched another demon dog into oblivion. “You needed to
know
. You are being prepared.”

“You make him sound like a meal,” Alison said, pitching in with an even-toned reply of her own.

“Hell would spit such a rough morsel as he from its lips in the trace of a wing’s flap,” Starling said. “He needs to be coarsened.”

“Before hell can properly eat me?” Hendricks asked. “Hell can fucking blow me, and I give less than a damn whether it spits or swallows after that.”

“I’d be careful,” Duncan said. “In case you haven’t noticed, veteran demon hunter, the one thing creatures of the underworld have in common is lack of access to modern dentistry.”

“Oh, fuck all of you,” Hendricks said. He pushed gently against Alison’s back. “She’s right; let’s bail.” He felt her start to move back down the alley and he followed. “Duncan, you coming?”

“A few steps behind, but yeah,” Duncan’s voice reached him, full of strain. “Just gonna keep the redhead company while you two get a head start.” The heavy smell of that sulfur reeked in Hendricks’s nose. Another shot echoed in the distance. Hendricks wondered if he’d lost track or if the shooter had moved in the last few minutes. Probably the latter; it sounded closer now.

“Let’s bug the fuck out,” Hendricks said, rushing the way through the alley with his sword out front. They burst out the other side to find it clear of dogs and the woods looking awfully damned inviting. “Hope you’re in the mood for a run,” he said to Alison as he started humping it over the uneven ground.

She already had her gun holstered and was pacing him cautiously, her hair flashing as she kept her eyes out for danger. Smart girl. She edged over to him and jammed his gun back in his belt holster, the slide still cocked back and the chamber exposed. She never broke stride. “Bet I make it back to the car before you,” she said and hustled up. He hurried behind her, and listened for Duncan’s footfalls from the direction of town. It took a while to hear them, but they did finally reach his ears, along with another set that was lighter.

“I assume you weren’t down that mining tunnel by pure coincidence,” Arch said as they broke out into the daylight. The afternoon sun was hanging high overhead, taking its slow arc around the sky. Wafting white clouds rolled along, and the wind came rolling too, but off the top of the mountain.

“Yeah, I’m not doing a rotation in the local abandoned mine,” Dr. Darlington quipped. The woman had a sour face, like she had just swallowed a dill pickle and maybe took a chaser of the brine as well. He’d seen her around town, and she didn’t always look like that. Just when she was pointed at him.

“Why were you following me?” Arch asked, leaning warily against his vehicle. His khaki uniform bore dark stains down both legs and all across the chest; he looked like he’d been wrangling pigs or at least playing an afternoon football game, minus the grass stains.

“Why are you changing IV bags at a hospital?” She spat it back at him with a hostility that wouldn’t have been out of place in a line of scrimmage with the bitterest rival team across from him.

“I … don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with so little conviction that it didn’t sound like he was within even a hundred miles of honest.