Unearthed (16 page)

“I was in the Czech Republic last week,” Belzer said, looking at him with wide-open eyes that were a strange shade of green.

“Well, this must be a real come-down for you,” Reeve said, finally getting the lock to click. “International, high-flying stories, and now you’re reduced to showing up here in the backwoods of Tennessee.”

“I go where I gotta go,” Belzer said. “You haven’t asked me about my website yet.”

“I know this’ll come as a shock to you,” Reeve said, pulling the door open, “but we have the internet here. I can just go look it up after I leave you on the doorstep.”

“This a public building?” Belzer asked and now he showed a touch of defiance.

“Oh, I was waiting for this,” Reeve said, nodding. “Dickhead reporter wants to swing his balls around.” He stepped closer. “Son, that shit don’t fly in a small town. I will lop them right off.”

Belzer just looked at him evenly. “I’d think you’d be a little more interested since I’ve hinted that I know about what’s going on here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re a real crack investigative reporter,” Reeve said, “working for a website I’ve never heard of and swinging your proverbial thing around.”

“I can just wait in the lobby until after you’ve checked out our website,” Belzer said, “but I think you’ll want to talk to me after you get done.”

“Why don’t you just give me the summary of what you write about and save me the trouble of a Google search?”

Belzer frowned. “You know you can just type ‘Frostwich.com’ into the search bar and it’ll go right to the site, right?”

Reeve felt his face slacken. Computers were not his forte. “Thanks for the tip. The website?”

Belzer hesitated. “I think if you looked it over, it’d be more informative than me trying to hit you with an elevator pitch.”

Reeve’s bullshit detector was screaming. “Try me.”

The reporter’s hesitation was marked, and he seemed to take a breath and hold it. “We specialize in reporting on activities in urban and rural areas that are ignored by others. Suspicious activities. Unexplainable activities that result in brutal crimes and higher death rates.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Reeve said, still staring at the man. There was something to be smoked out here. “If I read these articles, what might I find out about the perpetrators of said crimes?”

Belzer’s lips went flat, and Reeve knew he’d found the weak point. “We have a great deal of highly researched reporting in the area of paranormal—”

“Oh, a crackpot,” Reeve said and stepped into the lobby before clicking the lock on the deadbolt behind him. He didn’t even look back at the man, just left him standing outside and figured he wouldn’t unlock the doors again until he was legally required to. Hell, maybe not even then. He was the law, after all.

Arch awoke just before noon, early for him. The nights-as-day pattern of living had not come easily for a man whose natural instinct was to rise before the sun, but he’d fallen into the routine. His body yearned to get moving, but he was torn between fatigue and the bright sunlight shining in through the window. One called for him to go, the other for him to stay.

He fed the wolf that told him to move, dressing quietly and almost making it out the curtain at the door before Alison spoke: “What time is it?”

“Crack of midday,” he said, looking back to see her with her blond hair curling over her face, which was buried in an old pillowcase brought to them by Bill from her mother’s castoffs. “I need to get going.”

She yawned, jaw opening wide, before she got out a reply. “Okay. I’ll be out in a few minutes, get a start on breakfast.”

“You can sleep later if you want,” Arch said. “We just went to bed early last night, so I figured—”

“No, I should go, too,” she said, sitting up, tank top clinging to her in all the right places. “No point in being idle. I got a rifle to clean anyhow.”

He hesitated, wondering if he should wait for her and ultimately deciding against it. He knew how long his wife took to get ready, and he wasn’t leaving the premises anyway. Just taking a little stroll out to the barn.

He dodged past the curtain as he heard her moving behind him, letting it fall back in place as he headed for the back door. He grabbed the sword as he opened the door and felt the press of the leather straps on the hilt go straight into his palm. He was getting used to the feeling now, that sense of reassurance that came from wielding a sword. Not that he didn’t like his Glock; he’d used it a few times to keep demons at bay. But it couldn’t put ’em down like the simple punch of one of these blades.

Arch carried it down the porch and followed the line of trod grass toward the barn. He’d worried a little about this place when they got here. It was a mess, after all, the family who’d occupied it before not leaving it in great condition. Whoever had come in afterward, though, they’d really done a number on it. It was a good thing that the well didn’t have an electric pump.

Arch cut through the warm grass, feeling the sun shine down on his skin. He was wearing a wife beater—he always hated that name for that kind of shirt, it almost made him not want to wear one at all—and jeans; the sword hung over his shoulder. He looked at the hilt as he walked, paying only minimal attention to where he was going. Long grass didn’t concern him. He wore thick enough boots that snakes didn’t cause much worry.

He got to the barn door and pulled it open enough to slip inside. He’d expected darkness but instead found the back doors, which faced an overgrown corn field, thrown open wide to shed light. This was their hedge: keep anything facing the driveway looking like the house was uninhabited in case someone popped up the driveway for a quick look. They didn’t worry about things that were visible from the driveway, though, because if someone got out of the car and started looking around, they were bound to see signs of life—the trod grass, dishes in the sink, mattresses in the rooms.

Hendricks was in the barn, sword in hand. He was breathing hard, practicing against an unseen opponent. Arch didn’t know much about form, but the cowboy’s moves looked rough, brute strength over skill and finesse. Not that Arch was better; he wasn’t. He’d only had his sword for a few weeks, after all. And it wasn’t like wielding a baseball bat, either.

“You’re up early,” Arch said. “Trouble sleeping?”

“A regular bout of middle-of-the-day insomnia,” Hendricks said, and Arch was hard-pressed to tell whether the cowboy was joking. “You’re up early, too.”

“Went to bed early last night,” he said, holding up and slinging his sword out of the scabbard, taking care to place it against an old wooden beam with gaps between the grain of the wood.

“Sleep well?” Hendricks asked, dipping his sword low. Arch had looked over the man’s sword more than a few times. It was a narrow thing, blade barely an inch wide, but a couple feet long and pointed as heck. It was sharp, too, good enough to break skin—or shell, as the case might be—without much difficulty. Arch’s sword, by contrast, was slightly longer, over an inch thick, and with a bigger hilt and more heft. That was all right, though, because he was bigger than the cowboy anyway.

“’Bout like always,” Arch said. “You?”

“Got woken up in the middle of the night by Starling,” he said, and pointed to his head. “I think she sent me a message in my dreams.”

Arch raised an eyebrow, watched Hendricks walk into shadow in front of the open barn doors. “She ever do that before?”

“Nope. First time for everything.”

“Say anything good?”

Hendricks smiled. “We’re all in mortal peril.”

“She could be a dab more helpful, couldn’t she?”

He seemed to give that a moment’s thought. “Maybe. I don’t know if she’s being actively difficult, or if she’s just constrained in what she can say to us.” He shrugged. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because the effect is the same, but …”

“At least then we’d know where she stood,” Arch agreed.

“She kissed me, too,” Hendricks said. “That was a little weird.”

Arch just stared at him. “She … what?”

“Kissed me,” Hendricks said. “Full on the mouth. Grabbed me by the arm and spun me right to her lips. Told me she needed me. Which was also weird.”

Arch just blinked. “I … don’t really know what to say to that. Is that all that happened?”

“Yeah,” Hendricks said. “I mean … I didn’t sleep with her or anything.” He paused. “I mean, I probably would, but it’s not like I have feelings for her or anything.”

Arch felt his hand rise to his face automatically and rub at his brow. “You’d sleep with a woman you barely know who regularly holds things back from you.” He let out a long breath of exhalation. “You and I are very different people.”

“Didn’t you and your wife have a short spell of not mentioning to each other that you were hunting demons?” Hendricks didn’t even bother to hide the grin.

Arch felt the ringing embarrassment that came from that statement. “All right, fine. What about Erin?”

Hendricks shrugged in a manner that suggested to Arch that he was trying to play the question off like it didn’t matter to him. “What about her? She’s out. Probably safer for her that way. Better she keeps out of this demon hunting business after what happened last time.”

“You are an ass, Lafayette Hendricks,” Alison said. Arch turned to see her silhouetted at the front entry to the barn. He hadn’t even heard the doors open. “‘Better she stays out of this’? If she’d stayed out of it, you’d be dead right now, a greasy spot on the road up on Mount Horeb.”

Arch felt an internal cringe. This was a long-avoided conversation, the idea of how to bring Erin back into the fold. No one had said anything about it, and for danged sure no one mentioned it around Alison. Arch’s natural protective instincts toward women made him blanch at the thought of what happened to Erin up on the mountain happening to Alison instead. He certainly wouldn’t be taking it quite as steadfastly as Hendricks had, but then he was also married. History might have counted for something, but he wouldn’t have been eager to involve her again after something like that.

“She’s better off,” Hendricks said, face puckered. “She can get back to her life without having to worry about demons and … all else.”

“Yes, free from the worry of being able to make choices on her own,” Alison said. Arch recognized the look on her face and stayed silent. “That’s a troublesome feeling, that nagging sense of responsibility as your hometown drifts closer and closer to hell. I’m sure she’s very glad you spared her the trouble of deciding to do something about it.”

“It’s better than dying,” Hendricks said.

“We all die, Hendricks,” Alison said. “The only difference is when—and what we die for.” The way she said it elicited a shudder from Arch.

“Well, her time shouldn’t be yet,” Hendricks said.

“See, you don’t get to decide that for other people—” Alison started.

“Should we talk about Duncan?” Arch asked, causing both of them to look hard at him. “Or Starling. We could talk about her.”

“Sounded like you and Hendricks were already talking about the red-headed slut,” Alison said. She must have read the looks on their faces. “Yeah, that’s what I think of a woman who starts kissing a man while he’s still entangled with a woman who went off a mountain for him a month or so ago.”

“I’m not so sure she’s a woman,” Arch said.

Hendricks waited a beat before he spoke. “You think she’s packing …?”

Arch frowned. “What?”

“You know … like …” Hendricks made a motion toward his groin.

Alison made a scoffing sound. “Honestly, would you even care at this point if you could tap a little ass?”

“Yes, I would care,” Hendricks said. He sounded miffed. “If I was that hard up for it, I would have gone after that demon lady who threatened me last night. Jesus.”

“I meant that I don’t think she’s of this world,” Arch said. “Talking about Starling here.”

“I don’t think you’d get much satisfaction out of that Kitty broad,” Alison said. “Sounded like she was only interested in one part of you, and it wasn’t the one you’re looking to use.”

“She did threaten all of us, you know,” Arch said, looking at his wife.

“Don’t worry, darling,” Alison said sweetly, “I’ll protect you.” Then she winked at him.

“This conversation is going real well,” Hendricks said.

“Duncan?” Arch asked. “Can we talk about Duncan now?”

“Sure,” Alison said. “What do you want to say about him?”

“He’s a traitorous, lying fuck,” Hendricks said.

“I’m a mite concerned about his potentially divided loyalties,” Arch said, wishing that he could LA LA LA really loud whenever Hendricks swore. He’d miss a good amount of what the man said, but he’d cringe a lot less.

“He’s never been exactly like us,” Alison said. “But we’ve needed his help. You think we’d do better without him?”

“Against this duchess?” Arch asked. “Maybe.”

“We could have flattened her last night,” Hendricks said.

“What if you couldn’t have?” Alison asked. They both looked at her. “Just playing devil’s advocate here. What if Duncan was right? What if she is the baddest thing you’ve run across yet?”

“Worse than the ten-foot-tall cow demon?” Hendricks scoffed.

“Gideon breathed fire on me,” Arch said. “Feels like that should be worse.”

“It got you shirtless again, which seems to be your preferred and natural state,” Hendricks said. He shrugged when Alison gave him a daggered look. “I didn’t see enough from this lady to hint she’s any kind of serious. Duncan could be feeding us full of bullshit to cover his own ass on the loyalty thing.”

“What’s he get out of it?” Arch asked. He didn’t know where the demon sat on all this, exactly, but he wasn’t quite ready to toss the OOC out with the bathwater. “Lying, I mean. Cover his own butt, but from what? Us?”

“Yeah,” Hendricks said. “He gets to keep playing with us and jacking up his kill count or bust numbers or—” He stopped. “‘Bust numbers’ doesn’t sound like something a cop would say. Too much like bust size.”

“You desperately need to get laid,” Alison said, into an uncomfortable silence. Arch wasn’t about to break it. “I don’t think Duncan’s lying. This lady, I think she might genuinely be beyond us, if Duncan says she’s that bad.”