Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (32 page)

He’s dangerous
, Ygrusibas told her, and Creampuff nodded, though it was in time with her jaw moving to chew the grass. Food was a higher priority to her than the uniformed man, after all. Food was more important than anything.

NO
, the voice told her, this thing that was so loud, so commanding, this thing that swore it could make her hurt worse than the fence in the far pasture. She doubted that as the fence was very painful.
Nothing is more important than Ygrusibas
.

Creampuff didn’t want to argue with that, so she didn’t. She just kept chewing and watched the moving building with the uniformed man in it speed off down the road behind the fence. She nodded along with Ygrusibas, though, just in case. What else was she supposed to do about it?

Hendricks awoke to a pounding on the door that was almost perfectly matched to the pounding in his head. He was disoriented, and for a moment he thought he was back in New Orleans, on a dock, waking up for what seemed like the first time, bright sunlight streaming into his eyes.

It turned out that the sunlight was coming from behind the curtains, which were drawn but had an imperfect seam where the two met and were letting in outside illumination. Which would have been fine, if not for the pounding in Hendricks’s head. “Just a minute,” he said, realizing it was someone at the door. The stale air of the motel was heavy in the room, and it was already hot, the air conditioning fighting a losing battle against the Tennessee summer. He struggled into his boxers, the sweat on his body and the throbbing ache in his skull and somewhere much lower making the fit more difficult than it needed to be. The hammering sound at the door came again, relentless this time, and he shouted, “Hold your goddamn horses, I’m coming,” as he pulled on his jeans.

When he pulled open the door a minute later, after closing his eyes from the blinding burst of light, he managed to wrench them open to find Deputy Arch staring at him, looking a little nonplussed to his admittedly hungover eyes. “What the fuck is it?” he asked, more than a little nonplussed himself.

The deputy’s level of tension was clearly higher than his because the man just barged in, bumped past him and into the room, ignoring the fact that Hendricks didn’t even have a shirt on yet. He caught a whiff of himself as he started to close the door and realized that showering hadn’t been on the list of things to do before he’d passed out last night, apparently. And it probably wouldn’t have made a difference because the air conditioner wasn’t doing shit to alleviate the heat in the room, and he was already covered with a thin sheen of perspiration. He closed the door and stared at Arch’s uniformed back as he stood in the middle of his room. “Well, what? It’s a little too early in the morning to be paying a courtesy call, but you ain’t slapped cuffs on me yet—”

“It’s afternoon,” Arch said, turning to face him. The man looked beleaguered, to say the least. Spooked would be another way to say it. He was sweating, and Hendricks got the feeling it wasn’t just from the heat.

“Sorry,” Hendricks said, not really apologizing so much as being polite. “It was a late night and I had way more to drink than you.” He brushed past Arch and found his soiled t-shirt on the counter next to the sink and put it on. “What brings you to my door at this hour?” He flinched a little. “Which admittedly is more unholy to me than to you, I suppose.”

“Demons,” Arch said.

Hendricks just let that lie there for a minute, waiting to see if he’d elaborate. “What about ’em?”

“They’re here,” Arch said, like that explained everything.

“Yes, I know that,” Hendricks said mildly. If this was what he’d been awakened for, the lawman was lucky he had a badge. If he’d just been some schmoe, like an IT help desk worker, Hendricks would have flattened him with a punch to the jaw for this shit. Especially if he’d been an IT help desk worker. Smug, unhelpful fucks. “It’s why I’m here.”

“No, I mean,” Arch said, shaking his head like he could shake it into making sense, “I went out on a call from my boss, a— not a missing person, exactly, but like a friend who they couldn’t reach—anyway, I go up to the door and there are these good ol’ boys I know from way back. Stupid guys, real idiots, three or four misdemeanors each, maybe a petty felony or so apiece, and they’re hanging out in these people’s house.” His hands were moving when he talked, like an Italian. Hendricks tried to hide his amusement because clearly the big man had been rattled by what he’d seen. “I swear, when one of them peered out of the curtain at me, I—I
saw
him.”

Hendricks waited to see if it was a pause in the conversation that Arch was using to take a breath. After another moment it was pretty clear he was waiting for a response, so Hendricks spoke. “Yes, that’s generally what would happen when someone stares out at you through a window, you would see them.”

“No,” Arch said, head shaking again, “I mean I
saw
him. Saw him saw him. Like his demon face.”

Hendricks felt an ashy sensation, like he’d swallowed something he shouldn’t have. Which he had, but he didn’t think it was the beer doing this to him. “Look,” he said, trying to be sympathetic, “what I told you last night, maybe it’s got you kind of rattled. It’s not like everybody’s a demon, okay? Even in a hotspot, they’re pretty few and far between. Most people are just honest citizens—or citizens, at least—and if you saw these guys getting into trouble, the odds are good that they’re probably just the petty criminals you were describing, no demonic influence necessary—”

“So then they tried to surround me and I shot each of them in the face and ran.”

“Oh, fuck!” Hendricks was already cursing himself for his stupidity. Explain the demon world to someone for the first time in five years, and the next day they go and commit multiple homicides … “Look, those guys … they probably weren’t demons …“ He felt like shit and not just because of the hangover. Were these his fault? It felt a little like they were.

“Well, they chased me down the driveway after three head shots each,” Arch said, his eyes were burning. The man was pissed, deeply so. “I would say that unless you know a lot of petty criminals that can take a few .40 rounds between the eyes and then catch up to a car doing thirty—”

“Oh, shit, you ran into demons!” Hendricks said.

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Arch said, well, archly. Hendricks couldn’t blame him.

“Sorry, I thought maybe you were just a little overzealous,” Hendricks said. “You know, first day after I turned your world upside down, thought maybe you were still acclimating. I know my first day after learning about demons, I was seeing them everywhere, looking in everybody’s eyes trying to figure out if they were one. I’m told it’s a natural response, especially when you’ve witnessed something traumatic involving—” He shut his mouth and bore the scrutiny of Arch’s curious and furious stare while he pondered how best to change the track of the conversation. “Where were they?” That was easy.

“Old Man MacGruder’s dairy farm,” Arch said. He seriously was pissed, like these demons had called his mother a whore or something. “Three of them that I saw.”

“This MacGruder a friend of yours?” Hendricks asked with more than a little curiosity of his own.

“What?” Arch said, like it was a question out of the blue. “No, I barely knew the man. What do we do now?”

“We?” Hendricks asked, a little dumbfounded. “I don’t know what we do, but I’m gonna try and go out there and kill them in a bit. Might have to get a little breakfast first, though.” He patted his stomach, felt the rumble of displeasure. “Or maybe not.” He tapped on his forehead then stopped when it hurt. “How many of them did you say there were?”

“Three.”

Hendricks got a pained look that wasn’t just from how he was feeling. “Shit.” He waited for a beat, thinking it over. “Okay, maybe this
is
a ‘we’ thing instead of a ‘me’ thing.”

+ + +

Arch didn’t love the thought of involving Hendricks, a near-stranger, in what was really department business. But when a demon hunter wanders into town the day before you nearly get overrun with demons, it narrows your options right down: either tell the people around you that you think there are unearthly creatures involved in unpleasant dealings in your town or go to the supposed professional about them. Part of Arch was wondering if Hendricks was jerking him around, but it seemed mighty unlikely. The cowboy was leaned against the door of Arch’s patrol car, looking like he was suffering just from being up and moving, and mighty displeased to be awake even now. “You gonna be all right?” Arch asked him.

“I’ll manage,” Hendricks came back.

They rode along toward Kilner Road in silence, Arch not really wanting to say much of anything, on account of how pissed and suspicious he still was, and Hendricks staying quiet, Arch assumed, because he was still hung over. Arch didn’t know that he’d ever been as hungover as Hendricks was now, and he reckoned he’d be pretty okay with going to his grave without ever knowing how it felt, thank you very much.

“It’s down here,” Arch said as they turned on Kilner Road. “Got a plan?”

Hendricks sat up in interest. “Where there’s three, there’s a possibility of more.”

Arch watched Hendricks unbuckle his seat belt and lean forward to look down the road. “How many can you take at once?”

Hendricks appeared to consider this for a moment, while still staring down the road. “Three, maybe, depending on what kind they are. While I’m fighting two of them, though, the third will probably be killing you, since you don’t really have a good way to hold them at bay.”

“Bad plan,” Arch pronounced. “I veto that one.”

“Agreed,” Hendricks said, and motioned for Arch to stop the car. “It’s pretty sub-optimal. Anything head-on is, really. I think we should make this a reconnaissance mission, take a look around, see what we can see, and be ready to hoof it on back to the car at the first sign of trouble.” Arch had drawn the car to a stop on the side of the road and Hendricks opened the door, letting the summer heat seep in, humidity and all. “I doubt they’re gonna be going anywhere, and it ain’t like they’re up to much here. It’s a dairy farm, after all, not a chemical weapons factory.” The cowboy sniffed and then made a face. “Well, maybe …“

“They’re up to murder, in all likelihood,” Arch said tightly, and his hand went to his pistol. He ejected the magazine and checked to make sure it was topped off again. He carried spare bullets in a gym bag in the hatch back of the Explorer, and he’d filled it up before picking up Hendricks at the motel. He listened to the satisfying click as he pushed the magazine back into the Glock and then opened the back of the car and pulled out a shotgun, too. When Hendricks gave him the
What-the-hell-is-that-for
look he just said, “it may not kill them, but it seems like it hurts them, and it for sure puts ’em down for a few seconds.”

“True enough,” Hendricks said, and they were heading for the fence.

“Careful,” Arch said, pointing at the low wire. “It’s electrified.”

“I suspected as much,” Hendricks said, easing over it after using the second wire as a brace to land his big cowboy boot. “Being from Wisconsin, I’ve been in a cow pasture or two.” He gave Arch a grin, this one pretty real.

“Y’all ain’t got much else for entertainment up there, huh?” Arch pondered what to do about the shotgun before finally just handing it over to Hendricks and keeping an eye on the man until he got over the fence and got it handed back to him.

“I think that’s the North’s joke for the South.” Hendricks squinted. “Actually, that’s mostly our joke for Iowa. We don’t think of much south of that or Illinois.”

They made their way through a copse of trees just past the fence. It was a grove of pines, tall ones, with rough patches of bark that made it look like each tree was patterned like a turtle shell. The thick smell of them in the heat wasn’t quite overwhelming, but it did make Arch long for a nap. By the look of him, Hendricks was feeling the same, though for different reasons. Instead, they were sneaking up on a passel of demons that were hiding out in a dairy farmer’s house. A thought occurred to Arch. “Do you think Old Man MacGruder is still alive?”

Hendricks didn’t halt his walk, but he did look back from where he was leading the way. “That the guy that owns the place?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s dead,” Hendricks said, his voice flat. “Demons aren’t big on hostages or prisoners.” He waited a second then spoke again. “I shouldn’t say that—there are some species of demons that are big on prisoners, but only because they like their food fresh. Like, really fresh. Basically live and still squirming while they eat it.”

Arch felt his grip tighten on the shotgun. “These things … they eat people?”

“Some of them, yeah.” Hendricks kept on going, kept his stride. “Sometimes only certain parts, depending on what kind of demon they are—you know, eyes, noses, butt cheeks. Sometimes it’s a specific cut of meat, like the human version of the sirloin or some shit like that. Some will just eat the intangibles, like your soul.” He looked back and Arch knew by the dark look on Hendricks’s face he wasn’t bullshitting. “Some don’t eat people, and they’re peaceable enough, integrated into human society without a hitch. I don’t run across many of those, but there’s probably a reason for that.”