Unearthed (11 page)

“You get ’em duckin’,” Hendricks said, “we’ll do some—”

“Killing,” Arch cut him off. He saw where it was going, thank you very much. “Rifle shots distract them, we come crashing in and make their night unexpectedly wild.”

“It’s a demon party,” Duncan said, voice crackling with static from the earpiece, “it’s already wild.”

“Are we sure this is a demon party?” Bill asked. “Before we go busting down the door of some poor souls who are just here to have a good time?”

“I see cages with people in ’em,” Alison said over the radio. “Dad, you’re gonna need to hold your fire.”

“Copy that,” Bill said. “I might move back to your side to provide cover on the back porch.”

“If there are people in cages, we’re on legally clear ground here,” Duncan said. “This place is in violation of the Pact, and we’re free to burn it to the ground.” He gave that a moment before adding, “Metaphorically speaking, I mean. You light this place on fire, I’m sure you’ll piss off your sheriff even more.”

“Oh no,” Arch said, trying to look in one of the lit windows. There was motion there, but he couldn’t quite see what he was dealing with. People-shaped demons were a fair sight better than the non-people-shaped ones, at least in his experience. “However will I cope with his disappointment in me?”

“Arch, that almost sounded like sarcasm,” Hendricks said, and clapped him on the shoulder before he got off his knee and ran, bent double, toward the edge of the porch. “Proud of ya. I know it took a lot to find that within, but I’m glad you let it out.”

“Smart aleck,” Arch said, following behind him.

Hendricks climbed up on the porch and jumped over the railing. It was cracked and peeling, like this place hadn’t been well taken care of in quite some time. It didn’t look like an abandoned house, though, and that made him wonder how the demons had picked it out.

He didn’t worry about the squeak of the floorboards as he moved up to the door. He heard Arch land behind him as he dodged past a window and glanced inside, seeing a well-lit front room, with shadows denoting bodies moving back and forth inside. He couldn’t tell how many, but it was a reasonable number. Enough that he would never have tried this on his own. This was beyond ballsy; this was letting your testicles hang out in the warm air and inviting a three-hundred-pound karate champion to take a running kick straight at ’em.

Hendricks put his back against the left side of the front door and took a deep breath. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Arch matched his movement on the right and they stood there, the door between them.

“Duncan, you ready?” Arch asked.

“We are go for turning some pricks into warm, stinky air,” Duncan came back.

“Alison, Bill?” Arch asked.

“I’m moving ’round the side of the house,” Bill said. “In position in about five seconds.”

“I’m ready,” Alison said, calm voice ringing through the air. “I have a target. Firing in five … four … three …”

The roar of the Barrett tore through the night, echoing across the hollow they were in. Hendricks felt like the compression of the shot rippled through his heart even at this distance. He waited, and a moment later there was another shot, then another.

“I’m knocking ’em down,” Alison said. “They’re panicking. Running. Idiots. Watch the doors.”

Hendricks heard it, too, feet pounding on wooden floorboards, hauling ass straight for him. The door flew open, light from inside flooding out into the night, and Hendricks stepped back and swung as the first person came running out the door.

Arch watched the first guest make the door turn into a black vortex of darkness, collapsing in on himself when Hendricks’s blade hit him, and breathed a sigh of relief. This was a demon party, full of the spawn of the underworld, and that made Arch a mighty happy man. He reared back with his sword and landed a hard strike to the next guest, a man in a white, 40's-era suit with a fedora, turning him into a brimstone blast of darkness as well.

“Oh, what a lovely tea party,” Duncan said over the earphone. “Looks like you’re late, though, so you might as well go on back home to your—” Here he pronounced something that was heavy and mixed with an intonation that Arch didn’t understand.

“Did you just speak the language of Mordor?” Hendricks asked, ramming his sword through two demons in a row, watching the dark fire consume them like an eclipse covering the sun.

“Something like that,” Duncan said.

The window behind Arch shattered, and he watched a figure go flying through a storm of sparkling glass, the light sending tiny reflections through the night. The demon hit the front porch rail and smashed it, hitting the grass below and rolling, coming up in a run.

“Alison,” Arch said, but before he even got it out a deafening boom belched through the night. The demon launched sideways, spinning like it had gotten punched in the side by a Cadillac doing ninety. Arch descended, sword in hand, and raised his weapon in the air. Dark hair moved in the light from the house, whipping around to show him a greyed face, jagged teeth, and dead eyes.

Arch plunged his sword in as the thing drew breath to scream, planting it through the torso. He watched the furious face dissolve in the moonlight, falling in on itself like it was turning to ash before his eyes. He hadn’t seen one of those before.

“Shallow cuts,” Hendricks said from behind him with a grunt as he kept jabbing demons with his weapon. It was a steady pool of ebony vortexes, countless—Arch didn’t want to say souls, but it was sort of like those—sent back to the depths. “No need to waste your energy like that.”

“Felt good, though,” Arch said, taking the three steps back up to the porch. The door was nearly clear now, one last running soul and it was done, a final blast of sulfur to mark its passage. “You reckon that’s the last of them?”

“Still have movement inside,” Bill said. “Lots of motion upstairs. I’d bet y’all are gonna get rained on any second now, what with them being able to—”

The sound of breaking glass came from above, the tinkle of it falling on the eaves of the porch. They came, all right, a half dozen of them leaping off the roof and tearing in different directions, a shotgun scatter that was bent on one thing: escape.

“Well, hell,” Hendricks said, looking back. The demons were on foot, hauling butt, faster than any track star Arch had ever seen. “That’s that, I guess.”

“Upstairs,” Arch said and bolted into the house. “It ain’t over yet.”

Arch took off into the front room, passed right through without a sideways look. It was empty anyhow, all the demons cleared out. There was a small door into a dining room that had some kind of food on it. The smell hit Arch’s nose, and he knew he didn’t want to be invited to any banquets these things were catering. It was a buffet of foulness, something that couldn’t possibly appeal to any living person.

“Man, they got the appetizer platter, huh?” Hendricks asked, shoving Arch out of the doorway and into the dining room. He started forward again, avoiding the black table-clothed feast, glancing to his right into the kitchen to see a demon on the ground, writhing across the linoleum.

“Tango,” Arch said, trying to speak Hendricks’s language. The Marine peeled off and headed that way to deal the deathblow. “Duncan, I’m heading up the stairs.”

“Waiting for you at the top,” Duncan said.

Arch burst through a swinging door into a parlor, and the staircase was to his left, an old wooden thing. It was clear, so he charged up, catching sight of Duncan’s dark suit up at the top. He was standing with a metal folding baton in his hand, head swiveling from side to side, a look of intense concentration on his face.

The upstairs was a series of doors off a hallway that ran in a rough rectangle around the staircase. Old farmhouse design, nothing fancy about it. Arch started to go past the OOC, but Duncan held out a hand to stop him.

“Some of them are waiting,” Duncan said, like he was sniffing the air. “For us. I can feel them.”

“Didn’t think you could do that anymore.”

“I can when they’re not carrying one of Spellman’s fucking runes,” Duncan said. “Maybe this group is new in town. Maybe they’ve gotten complacent and don’t carry them anymore. Either way, there are five up here just waiting to take a poke at us.”

“Three on five is good odds,” Hendricks said, finally arriving, cowboy boots clomping on the wood steps.

“Not for us, idiot,” Duncan said.

“Well,” Hendricks said, “we should definitely sit here and debate what to do about this for a while, then.” He nodded like it was a smart thing to do, face all serious, then he shoved past Arch and shoulder-charged right into a door, busting it wide.

Arch could see dark faces beyond, black eyes and fangs for teeth. They were wearing their game faces already, that was for sure, and Hendricks’s idiot charge carried him right into them. He poked one on the way in, Arch saw it dissolve in the black fire, but the other two were all over the cowboy.

“Shit!” Hendricks said as one of them ran a claw down his coat sleeve, ripping the fabric.

Arch was ready to charge in to help, but a strong arm pushed him aside. Duncan did the pushing, sending Arch right into the wall. He bounced off, but not before the OOC got into the room first. Arch made it into the doorway in time to see Duncan jab his baton right into some demon’s eye, prompting a swirling darkness that looked like a smear of black paint on the white walls until it faded away.

“Idiot,” Duncan said, shouldering his way past Arch back into the hallway.

“That’s three down,” Hendricks said, grinning through bloodied lips. There was a trickle out of his nose, a pencil-thin line of red. “Two to go now, right? Our odds are improving.”

“You’re fucking odd, and it’s not improving,” Duncan shot back then hurried to kick down the next door. Arch could see a bathroom, tiles falling off the walls.

“Can’t you sense them?” Arch asked.

“Only fuzzily, for some reason,” Duncan said, coming the closest he ever got to a frown. He turned, heading for the next door, but Hendricks beat him to it. “Dammit, no—”

“I got this,” Hendricks said and shoulder charged through into a bedroom then paused, raising his sword.

Arch saw a woman lounging on a bed. She looked to be in her forties, platinum blond hair, a lazy look on her face as her shining eyes gave Hendricks the once over. Her back was set at a forty-five degree angle, held up by one hand while the other had a champagne flute in it. Arch tilted his head in confusion; he hadn’t seen any of those elsewhere in the party.

“Pardon me,” said another man in a Chicago accent, standing a few feet away from the bed with a bottle of champagne in his hand, “but you’re interrupting a private party.”

“I’m about to do a lot more than interrupt,” Hendricks said, raising his sword. He had that unmistakable aura of glee, like he was ready and happy to make some harm happen. “I’m about to turn you and your lady friend into short-lived clouds of smog.”

“No, you’re not,” Duncan said, shoving past Arch and catching Hendricks’s wrist before he could charge forward. The cowboy went off balance and stumbled back, catching himself before he could topple over.

“What the fuck, Duncan?” Hendricks said, throwing his angry gaze from the OOC to the occupants of the room. “They’re demons. We kill—”

“We don’t kill these demons,” Duncan said quietly, and his voice sounded … off.

“Hello, Duncan, darling,” the lady on the bed said, raising up to wave at him with her fingers, like a princess acknowledging her subject. She had big fat rings on every finger, gemstones and cameos and insignias, enough gold and silver to pay Arch’s salary for a lifetime. “Where’s Lerner? I miss his nasty brand of sarcasm.”

“He’s gone back,” Duncan said simply.

The woman made a face. “Oh, yuck. Pffft. What a waste.” She thrust out a hand, fingers down. “Advance.”

Arch took a second interpreting the meaning on that one, but Duncan didn’t. He walked over to her and sank to his knees in front of the ring and kissed it, careful not to touch her as he did so.

“Duncan … what … the … actual … fuck?” Hendricks asked.

Duncan rose from his knees, turning back to Arch and Hendricks with his eyes downcast. “May I present to you Archibald ‘Arch’ Stan and Lafayette Hendricks,” he indicated each of them in turn, “the Duchess Katlin ‘Kitty’ Elizabeth …” He sighed, a noise that sounded very strange coming from the OOC, inhuman, really. “She’s demon royalty. We can’t touch her.”

“Do you want to touch me?” Duchess Kitty Elizabeth asked, looking over the two men. They were big, strong guys. One black, one white, nice little variety. “Because arrangements could be made, but only in the one place.” She pointed to her crotch. Humans were dumb, especially the men, so she erred on the side of being obvious.

“You want us to fuck you?” the one called Hendricks asked. His eyes were locked on her, loathing clearly visible. What was up with his coat and hat? “Are you kidding me?”

“You’re not worthy of fucking me, skin suit,” she said with a little laugh. “Aside from Duncan’s introduction, do you have any idea who I am?”

“A cloud of sulfur stink waiting to happen?” Hendricks asked. He had a gritted-teeth manner to him, like he was ready to come charging any second.

“You want a whiff of my sulfur?” She stood and grabbed her crotch like a baseball player. “Come right on over here and take a lick, cowboy. I could watch the top of your hat all fucking night.”

“Holy smokes,” Arch Stan said.

“No,” Kitty replied with a grin, “he’d be smoking my hole. Get it right.” She giggled then took a step past Duncan toward them, taking a sip of champagne as she did so. “This is so surreal. I haven’t met a legitimate demon hunter since … Paris? Turn of the century?” She glanced at Rousseau, then back at her audience. “1900, I mean, not 2000.”

“And here I thought a lady never revealed her age,” Hendricks said snottily. He was holding himself back, just barely—or at least that was how it looked to her.

“I’m not a lady, you walking hard-on,” she said, looking him up and down. “I’m fucking royalty, okay? I say what I want, I do what I want, and little fish like you just swim around my feet unnoticed.”