Unearthed (23 page)

“Demons don’t wear prostheses.” Duncan screwed up his mouth. “Except for that one greater who lost a leg. What was his name …?”

“Well, shit,” Hendricks said. “Uh … maybe I will keep that knife.”

“Your blade is narrow enough we could fit it into a cane,” Bill said. “I’ve got a friend who could probably fashion one with a hollow center in his wood shop.” He looked at Duncan. “Do demons carry canes?”

The OOC looked almost amused. “Some of them wear monocles and top hats, too. It’ll fly.”

“So we’ve got a plan,” Hendricks said. “We take this bitch out.” He looked at Duncan. “To a … fancy restaurant, or … uh …”

“No,” Duncan said, “we take her out. We just find the evidence that allows us to do it legit.”

“Are we sure about this?” Arch asked. He had a nagging voice of caution running through his head.

“We fight the bad guys, and she’s one of the worst,” Duncan said. “I’m all in for helping you get her—this way. Otherwise? I have to leave her alone.”

“I don’t want to leave this lady to stir up shit in our neck of the woods,” Hendricks said, but he was awfully stiff about it. “She’s not even a loose cannon; she sounds like a loose nuke. I want her gone, one way or another.”

“This is the sort of screwy mission that could make the rest of us gone,” Arch said. “We are all of us stepping outside our comfort zones here. You’re putting our best sniper up front, you’re taking me out of the fray, and the three of you are going to try and creep your way through a demon party without getting caught. This is a cluster-flop waiting to happen.”

Hendricks grinned. “I’d go with Charlie Foxtrot if I were you. Even you could say that.”

Arch felt that worrying, nagging feeling pushing at the back of his mind. The cowboy had proven himself crazy gung-ho, and everything about this sent chills down Arch’s neck. “I think we should pass. Either let her run or find another way to get her within the bounds of Duncan’s laws.” He turned to the OOC. “What?”

Duncan looked stricken. “I can’t enter her house if there’s not a party going on. If there are other demons, I can … stretch things. Claim I’m there for one or more of them, because it’s almost a guarantee that one of them is doing something untoward or has human parts on them, something. If I go just for her or her household staff?”

“The repercussions will be worse?” Alison asked.

Duncan wore a look of great discomfort. “She’ll have my essence in fire in no time flat.”

Arch felt his head drop, felt the fight go out of him.

“We’re an army, Arch,” Bill said. “You said you wanted a war. Well, armies don’t just fight when they think they can get away with zero casualties or when there’s no danger.”

Arch felt the roiling emotions settled in, felt them sluice down into his guts, and he looked up. His eyes fell on each of them in turn, from the cowboy to the OOC, to his father-in-law and finally, to his wife. He saw the hope, the buy-in, that all of them were on board with this crazy scheme, that he was the only one not committed.

But it was a war, wasn’t it?

“All right,” Arch said, shoving his misgivings deep inside and ignoring them. “Let’s figure out a way to make this happen.”

Lauren made the call in low tones, with her door closed and a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her palms were sweating, and each ring in her ear made her want to jump up and hit the end button. Hanging up the phone would have been so much more satisfying.

“Hello?” Dave Belzer’s voice came on at the other end of the line, a sharp shock that jolted Lauren into action.

“I got something,” she said, almost breathless.

There was a pause on the other end. “What is it?”

“Demon party,” Lauren said. “Tomorrow night at a local plantation. Lots of drugs. I’ve been assured it’s not a local thing.”

She could hear furious scratching of a pen on paper on the other side. “That does sound a little like things I’ve heard in the past. This demons love their meth and coke.”

“Pot, too, apparently,” Lauren said, feeling like she was having a furtive conversation with a boy. Which, technically, she was. “Anyway … I figured you should know.”

“You gonna come with me?”

That was a bolt out of the blue. “You actually want me to … go to a party with demons?” Lauren asked, a little dumbstruck.

“We could watch it from outside,” Belzer said. “Though I gotta admit, I’ve always wanted to see one from the inside. Maybe chat up some of the other guests.”

Lauren felt her face dissolve into hard lines. “You want to be their dinner? Because you told me they eat people.”

“Some of them do,” Belzer said. “But can you imagine getting an interview with one of them? Being able to publish an article on what happens at one of these things?”

“No,” Lauren said. “I can’t imagine it. I don’t want to imagine it. I’d like to forget it’s happening.”

When Belzer spoke again, he almost sounded disappointed. “This your town, not mine, I guess. If it was mine, I might want to get a better look at who’s who in the destruction of it. Can you at least give me an address so I can take a look? I mean, maybe it’s nothing.”

You motherfucker
, Lauren thought. “I’ll show you where it is. Meet me at the diner tomorrow night.”
Because I really do care who’s causing this fucking chaos,
she told herself. And that was all. Really.

“I’ve made the arrangements, madam,” Rousseau said with a little bow. “Invitations out there to the right people. Catering handled. I used Detmar Lawrence’s contacts to provide entertainment and refreshments, and I’ve made … other arrangements as well, the ones you requested.”

Rousseau leaned low over where Kitty sat on the couch, watching her two new toys play together, and proffered a tall glass filled with dark brown liquid and ice cubes. It was a little dissatisfying, watching the leg try to stand. Even with the arm’s help, it was somewhat pointless. It’d stand up and then fall down with a thump, echoing across the wood floor. She took a sip of her drink—human blood mixed with diet cola—and let out a low, “Ahhhh. It really was a struggle to cope without you around, Rousseau. I almost had to clean up blood myself a time or two. Can you imagine me on the floor, licking it up? Or maybe even with a rag in hand?” She laughed. “No, I can’t either.” She glanced at him. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rousseau said with a smile of his own, and then retreated from the room. He really was a good servant. Always considered all the angles.

Kitty sat there for a while longer, plotting out her endeavors at the party. So much to accomplish in such a finite time. Not that her time was finite; she could practically live forever. But the world … well, its time was running out. And this town? It had practically no time left at all. She watched the hand crawl around, inching more like a worm than a snake, and shook her head. Soon.

Very, very soon.

Lauren was dreading the end of her life, sitting in a parked car in the middle of nowhere. Night was heavy against the windows, oppressive darkness that crawled in and felt like it was going to smash the glass, drag her out in the woods and lop her damned head off just for being out in it. It was a paranoid feeling, sitting out here with a man she didn’t really know and didn’t really trust, but she was doing it anyway.

Also, Belzer’s rental car smelled like … Cheetos?

Belzer was looking through binoculars at the house. They’d parked with a bunch of other cars, in a lot paved here for events such as this. There were valets closer to the house, she saw. Fucking valets, with coats and tails and such. She wondered if they were demons or not and was about to voice this thought to Belzer when he spoke.

“I think this is the real deal.” His voice had that excited, kid-like quality to it. Which was a little strange, coming from a grown man. He had the binoculars pasted to his eyes, was scanning the plantation house in a constant pattern. “I can see through the windows, and it’s like … it’s almost like some of these people … like their faces aren’t right every now and again. Like they’re letting the illusion slip.”

“How does that work?” Lauren asked.

“I don’t exactly know,” Belzer said, “but I’ve heard demons have faces that don’t look human sometimes. Like it’s an illusion pasted over the top.”

“Like new paint on a wall,” she said. “The old lines show through.”

“Yeah,” he said, and she could hear the uncertainty. “Something like that.”

Brian made the decision to jump to the endgame. It made sense to stop pussyfooting around, to get right to the business at hand and just confront his dad once and for all. He was pretty tired of the chase, anyway. So when he talked to his mom and found out that his dad hadn’t even mentioned the party, Brian figured this was as good of an opportunity as he was going to get.

So he’d smoked a quick bowl and gotten in the back of his father’s truck a little before four, ready for whatever the night brought. His dad had left around five, and Brian had heard him coming, the thick-soled boots against the driveway before he’d opened the door. Then Brian had endured a thirty-minute ride filled with more bumps than a roller-coaster, laying flat and high as fuck under a tarp that felt like it was constantly in danger of slipping off. The truck had stopped, his dad had gotten out, and Brian had chanced a look around.

It was a farmhouse. A really shitty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, trees blocking it from a decent view of anything. He’d heard voices right away and got back under the tarp with barely a look. Not two minutes later his dad had gotten back in the truck, and there was a thump as something ended up in the bed with him. Then a second something. He inched the tarp up just enough to see.

A rifle case? Two rifle cases, and one of them was
big
.

“Venus Plantation is only … what? Ten miles from here?”

Brian froze at the voice.

His sister’s voice.

“Something like that,” his father replied, and there was a slamming of doors. He heard the truck engine start, heard another car start a little further off, and then they started to move again.

They drove for another few minutes of horrendous bumps, and came to a slow, coasting stop. Brian listened and doors opened. A car pulled up behind them and doors opened there, too.

“How far?” another voice asked. Was that … Arch?

“You and I can hike it through the woods,” his dad said. “Let the others take the car up and park it.”

“Yeah, my happy ass is a lot happier not walking,” came another male voice, one that Brian didn’t know. Was that the guy in the cowboy hat? “Especially in this monkey suit.”

“You look good, Duncan,” Alison said. The voices were muffled by the tarp. Who the hell was Duncan?

“What about me?” came that voice again—the cowboy, Brian was pretty sure. He sounded rough and young. Cocky, too.

“You don’t look like you’re ready to hit the old dusty trail, so that’s an improvement,” she said.

“Will you get going?” Arch asked. Brian just listened, felt a little thrill. What the hell were they up to? Dad was harboring Alison and Arch? And they were in some kind of … what the hell were they doing? With rifles at night near the Venus Plantation? “Best we finish this as fast as possible.”

“Don’t worry, Mother Hen,” the cowboy said, a real dick. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

There was a sound of a car starting again, then driving off down a road, tires making a crunching sound as they went. The noise of the motor disappeared into the night, and Brian heard footsteps up to the side of the truck. He lay there under the musty tarp, not moving, as the rifle cases were opened with a series of clicks, then shut. He could hear Arch grunting with one of them, crickets giving a background symphony a little ways off.

“It’s gonna be okay,” his dad said.

There was a short pause before the reply came. “I hope so,” Arch said, but his voice was already fading as their footsteps carried them away from the truck.

Brian sat up quietly, looking over the edge of the truck bed in time to see both his father and Arch disappearing into dark woods with rifles slung over the shoulders. He craned his neck to look through the cab toward the road, in the direction the car had driven off. He could see brake lights flaring in the distance as they made a turn.

Brian sat there, alone, in the dark of the Tennessee night, feeling a smile break through that disappeared almost before it was formed. This wasn’t exactly the gotcha he was looking for, after all.

What the hell was going on out here?

Hendricks felt the subtle shift in gears, the revving of the engine as it sped up again. He was in the back, though he wanted to be driving. Duncan was driving, though, which was a kick to the fucknuggets. Hendricks had to wear a damned tux and slick his hair back, and he didn’t even get to drive the nice car. Bill and Duncan had picked it up earlier in the day from a rental car place down in Chattanooga or somewhere. It was one of those new Mustangs, and it purred like a kitten. Hendricks was still irritated that the OOC got to drive while he got stuck in a backseat that he didn’t even have enough room to fuck himself in, let alone another person.

“Turn here,” Alison said, and Duncan braked. It was smooth, though, just like the whole ride had been so far. Hendricks was just stewing the whole time. He wasn’t much of a gear head, but a sports car? Come on. And the OOC got to drive. What a rip.

Darkened trees slid by outside the windows. Duncan was not sparing the horses, especially when he was on straightaways. Hendricks might have given it even more gas if he’d been in the driver’s seat, though, so he couldn’t fault the demon for that. They probably didn’t get to drive nice cars very often, either. He’d been in their sedan. It was okay at best.

They came around a curve and the plantation was just there. Big, white building, like something you’d see in a movie. White columns, big porch, and a line of cars out front, waiting to be valet parked.

“I can take the car if you want to—” Hendricks started.

“We all go in together,” Alison said, turning to look at him around the black leather headrest. She had that mother look in her eyes. “Or do you really want to leave the two of us to fend for ourselves in a whole heap of demons?”