Unearthed (30 page)

But he’d listened, and when the shots came, he thought about chancing it again. Reason stopped him once more. Now he’d be blundering about in the woods at night while people were shooting. He might have been paranoid, but that would have seemed like a bad idea even if he wasn’t still just a little stoned. Instead he’d decided to lie back down in the bed, listening to his heart race in his ears.

Eventually, he’d heard someone coming back. He’d not chanced a look, not wanting to get caught, but they were bustling. In a hurry. He heard his father gasping from the run when he got close enough, and Brian had snuck back under the tarp just before he heard a rifle get laid carefully but hurriedly in the bed. A few seconds later the door had opened and closed, and the ignition started about a breath later. The engine revved and the tires slung rock and gravel in the air, the truck taking off in a hell of a hurry. He bounced around some more, again bracing as best he could against one side of the bed, but when they hit a hard curve, the rifle slid toward him, hitting him on the elbow.

“Ouch,” he breathed to himself.

The bouncing was maybe the worst part of it, his head thudding every now again against the hard, metal ridges that lined the bed. He was left to wonder why the hell they were even there; wouldn’t they scrape the shit out of any kind of cargo you tried to haul? Idiots.

He just sat back there and bounced as the truck kept going, tearing like hell down the backroads, and he tried to plot out exactly what he would say to his father when—if—they got to wherever they were going.

Reeve came back to the blockade of the Plantation driveway to find Erin sitting on the hood of her car, the lights illuminating the road between them. Reeve took his time, didn’t bother to get all fussed or hurried about his return, didn’t get himself worked up over the casual way his deputy was sitting on her own car. It wouldn’t do much good to get all in an uproar about it in any case, he figured, because she was still taking a good look around every few seconds, and there was no one else here to see her looking a little unprofessional. He was of the mind that a deputy should stand at a crime scene, ready for anything. Then again, he’d been raised in a time when there were no women deputies, and this new generation sure as hell seemed to need some accommodations that he’d had to give. He’d likely to have to make further accommodations to replace the people he’d lost, too, which was not something he was looking real forward to.

“Find anything?” Erin asked, jumping lightly off the hood. The girl was short, no doubt. Reeve tried to walk in side profile to her; he didn’t trust himself to keep his annoyance off his face.

“Some blood on the floor,” Reeve said, “broken doors, some overturned chairs. Drugs everywhere. No one left to tell a story, that’s for sure. Whoever rented that place flew the coop.”

“That’s a little strange.”

“Maybe not,” Reeve said, ducking his head slightly to peer at Arch, who he could barely see through the back window of the Explorer. “If someone started shooting at you, you’d probably get to running too, wouldn’t you?” He knocked against the window. “Call Chattanooga and have them send a forensics team down.” He paused, feeling the reluctance rise within. “Again.”

There was a moment’s hesitation from behind him. “You talking to me?” Erin asked.

“No, I’m asking Arch to make the call from the back of the police cruiser,” Reeve said. “Yes, you. Then go about a hundred yards out there to where there’s a big damned rifle laying on the ground. Bag it with care so they can run ballistics on it. I want to be able to match it up with the shots fired at the festival a few weeks ago, and I want fingerprints from the trigger and the rest of it.”

“You think it was used in foul play?” Erin asked.

“Well, right now,” Reeve said, “I’ve got Mr. Stan here cold on two counts of discharging a firearm, some reckless endangerment, a few other things. Enough to hold him for a while, until I can get some answers to burning questions.”

“Such as?”

“What the hell is going on in this town,” Reeve said, opening his door and easing in. “Get that done for me, will you? Fries is looking over the scene. He’ll be back soon. I gotta get our prisoner booked in.”

He saw the subtle nod of agreement from her. “Will do,” was all she said.

“Thank you kindly,” Reeve said and shut his door, starting the car and beginning a three-point turn to bring the Explorer around. “What about you, Arch? You got anything to say?”

Reeve waited for the answer, and was a little surprised when it came so quickly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Arch said, looking more than a little morose. That wasn’t exactly shocking, though, since he was headed to jail.

“That’s probably the truest thing you’ve said in ages,” Reeve agreed. “But then, that’s the problem with constantly filling the air with lies.” He felt himself smile with just a little satisfaction. “Makes it awfully hard for anyone to believe you’re not spilling bullshit all over them every time you open your mouth.”

The farmhouse was a shithole, the kind that Lauren had seen from a distance but never wanted to get close to. It was a product of the recession, she figured, but then she remembered that she’d known farmers that had lost it all in down years when she was growing up, too. She remembered one family, the Goodners, that had moved to Atlanta after a bad year. Generations of living in Calhoun County, and they’d just packed it all up and left when the bank took over, too humiliated to even look the townfolk in the eyes. She remembered her dad talking about it at the time, about the damage to a man’s pride that losing a house to foreclosure had probably caused.

Now it was common, as evidenced by the house she was looking at. Plenty of houses in town had the signs out front, too, with the tall grass and lack of care that came from being bank-owned property that was not at all in demand.

Lauren set up in a makeshift bedroom, which was really the living room with a sheet pinned to the ceiling to divide it off from the entry. The house smelled of harsh, stinking oils of some kind. It took her a minute to realize that someone had been cleaning a gun in here, and whatever they’d used just reeked. She remembered that aroma from when her daddy used to toy with his guns, but it had been a long damned time since she’d smelled it for herself.

“What are you gonna do?” Duncan asked, stopping her about two seconds from shoving her fingers up her nose to stop the stink from overwhelming her.

“Bandage the scalp laceration,” Lauren said. Alison was responsive, coming back to herself now, which was a good sign. “We need to keep a close eye on her, though.” She turned her attention back to Alison. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Alison said. She looked like it, too, Lauren thought. She had her eyes partially closed. “Headache, but it’s getting better.”

“Squeeze my hand,” Lauren said, offering it to her. Alison stared at her for a moment and then reached out, gave her a squeeze. “Harder.” The pressure increased on command. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Got whacked by a demon,” Alison said. “Hendricks?” She looked up, eyes bleary.

“Taken,” Duncan said.

“Fuck,” Alison said and let out a low breath. “And Arch is in jail?”

“Yep,” Duncan said.

There was a pause. “Well, fuck-a-duck,” Alison said. “What now?”

“I’m thinking a lawyer might be a good idea,” a man said as he entered the room. He was older, heavyset. Lauren knew him by sight.

“Mr. Longholt,” she said.

Longholt registered a little surprise when his eyes fell on her. “Dr. Darlington. How do you do?”

“A little off-kilter at the moment,” Lauren said. “You’re in this too, huh?”

His expression relaxed a little. “Indeed I am.”

“Can I ask some questions now?” This from Dave Belzer, who was leaning against the cabinets.

“No,” said Lauren and Duncan at the same time.

“Who is this gentleman?” Bill Longholt asked.

Belzer took a step toward him, hand extended. They were roughly the same height, but Belzer was decades younger than Longholt. “Dave Belzer. I work as a journalist for Frostwich.com covering demon oddities.”

“Oh, great,” Duncan breathed.

“I can’t say I’m familiar with your publication,” Longholt said, taking the offered hand.

“Because it’s a blog dedicated to a bunch of demon-suspecters running around sniffing at things that usually are completely unrelated to any actual demon goings-on,” Duncan said—sourly, Lauren thought. “Every once in a while, like a broken clock, they get one right by pure luck. Back in the day, you’d have better luck sifting the
Weekly World News
for true stories.”

“We’re trying,” Belzer said, more than a little defensively. “Maybe if an expert like yourself would like to set the record straight—”

“No,” Duncan said.

“Baby,” Mr. Longholt took a couple steps over to where Lauren knelt next to Alison and lowered himself to her side with the air of a man who didn’t move quite as lightly on his feet as he used to. His hair was still dark, his skin only wrinkled lightly, but his large frame was showing signs of age in the way he moved it. “How are you doing?”

“Feel like I got hit by a train,” Alison said, shutting her eyes tight, “run over by a car, flung off the Tallahatchee Bridge—maybe all of those, actually.”

“What kind of party was going on there tonight?” Belzer asked. “And what were you doing there?”

“Will you knock it off?” Longholt looked daggers at Belzer. “My daughter’s recovering here. If you want to ask him questions, do it elsewhere.” In the moment of silence that followed, Longholt looked straight at Duncan. “What do we do about Hendricks and Arch?”

Duncan appeared to consider it. “For Arch, hire a lawyer. Pick one that’s mean and nasty, that likes the taste of cop blood.”

“Lex Deivrel,” Alison said, barely opening her eyes. “Reeve hates her.”

Longholt chewed on his lip. “That can be arranged. What about Hendricks?”

Duncan was silent for a moment, and again there was no expression on his face. “If you’re a believer … this is the part where I’d tell you to pray. Because the likelihood we ever see him again alive is somewhere south of zero.”

A heavy, pronounced silence settled over them that Lauren didn’t dare break. It was filled with significant looks, air so thick with tension that she could have picked it up with forceps. Even Belzer shut up.

And it was broken in about a cold second by the sound of the front porch squeaking under a foot.

“You led someone here?” Duncan asked, and she watched his inscrutable face take on a hard look, the lackadaisical expression gone in a hot second.

“Maybe we were followed?” Longholt was on his feet. “Could it be Kitty?”

“I need a gun,” Alison said and reached up to her father’s waistband, pulling out a pistol that was hanging out of his pants. It was a big one, and the petite blonde’s thin arms wavered with the heavy metal in her grip as she pointed it through the archway into the living room, where the front door waited.

“Are you out of your goddamned mind?” Lauren asked, repelled by the weapon in her patient’s hands. “You can barely hold that thing!”

“I only need to hold it long enough for it to go off once,” Alison said, sounding a little more alert.

“Only if it’s human,” Lauren said.

“What the hell is going on here?” Belzer was almost up on the cabinets, like he’d seen a mouse run across the floor. His phone was clutched in his hand like it was a life raft and he was about to fall into a deep ocean.

The
chunk!
of a baton snapping into full extension dragged Lauren’s gaze back to Duncan. He was focused on her again. “Did you lead someone here?” His voice was deeper, more serious.

“N-no.” She shook her head.

Duncan snapped his head around to Belzer. “Did you?”

Belzer flinched, face growing darker. “No. I don’t even know anyone around here but her!” He pointed the phone at Lauren. “I just got to town!”

“Steady your aim, Alison,” Duncan said. “If you kill it, it’s human. If it’s not, I’ll take it out.”

“What if it’s a cop?” Lauren asked, feeling horrorstruck at how fast this mess was rolling downhill.

“No flashing lights,” Duncan said, pointing at the curtainless windows. The night outside was impenetrably dark. “No cops.”

The porch squealed again under weight and pressure, and Lauren’s head jerked around to look at the entry to the house. The door hinge made a squeak of its own, the unmistakable sound of it opening. It came in concert with the sound of Alison Stan cocking the hammer on her pistol, a cold clicking that echoed through the kitchen like she’d already fired a shot.

“Steady,” Longholt said. “Aim small, miss small.”

“I didn’t hit my head hard enough to forget how to shoot,” Alison muttered. Lauren saw her aim waver just a hair. The weight of the piece was plainly getting to her.

“Do not shoot that,” Lauren said quietly. “You have no idea who is about to come through that door.”

“I know they’re uninvited,” Alison said. “That’s about all I need to know at this point.”

Lauren started to say something but held her tongue. She just sat there, holding her breath with the others, and waited. She didn’t have to wait long.

A young man popped his head around the corner, just an eye at first, hanging around the edge of the archway, tanned features and blondish hair spiked up in what looked like—what did Molly call it? A faux hawk?

The silence hung, pervasive, deep, and stunned, until Mr. Longholt spoke. “Brian?”

“Hey, Dad,” the young man said, edging out, hands up. He wore a smirk and looked straight at Alison. “Guess you found my missing sister.”

The world was dark around Lafayette Jackson Hendricks, and his mouth was dry and dusty like he hadn’t had a drink of water in forever. His head hurt like someone had caved the goddamned thing in with unceremonious glee, doing a tap dance on the heinous skull fracture with leaden feet afterward.

Hendricks tried to pry his eyes open, but failed. He’d once been thrown, pretty well dead, into Lake Pontchartrain, and he’d come out of that experience feeling—physically, at least—a good deal better than he felt right now. At least with the lake, he woke up spitting up water, and under the influence of grief and a choking rage like he’d never experienced. When he’d opened his eyes—and they had come open—he had looked straight into the dead eyes of his wife. Unmistakably dead, too, with that dull look, that thousand-yard stare that went into the distance well past the space he occupied.