Unearthed (31 page)

He felt something tapping him on the head, a dull, constant sensation. There was a pressure, too, like there was a steel weight there, keeping him from sitting up. It was tough to draw a breath, and he only managed it through steady effort. The air held a thick scent of must and dryness, like a shed that time forgot. There was a smell of oil in the background, the distinctness of the aroma filtering into his mind.

The tapping started again, sharper this time, straight to the top of his forehead near where his hat normally rested. It felt pointed, a poke rather than a dull hit, but still somewhat light. It got more insistent, stinging, until he finally opened his eyes and shadows unveiled themselves before him.

He was in a shed. There was a lone lamp dangling overhead, casting light on dull, dark brown boards that made up the ceiling.

Something was on his chest, something that was stopping him from standing, from getting up. There was other pressure, too, on his legs around his ankles and knees, and at his wrists. He moved and heard the rattle of chains.

It took him a moment to realize that the something on his chest was actually
someone
. At that point, it felt like the blood fled his brain and left his whole body cold.

The tapping was a knife, the point covered in red. It came back to his skull once more, harder this time, and he felt the prick of it like a pin, watched his captor bring it up to lick the crimson off the side of the blade. She took care with it, forming her lips around it like some sort of vampire. She suckled it, blade to her mouth, eyes open and staring at him all the while. She worked her tongue across the flat edge, her eyes wide and depraved, and as she withdrew it, her lips twisted upward in a cruel, disturbing smile that made him wish he could rip the blade out of her hand and just run it across his own throat now to get it over with.

“Well, well, well,” Katlin Elizabeth said, grinning at him so wide that her cheeks dimpled. “You’re awake.” The demonic look was full out on her face, the red eyes glowing and a shimmering veil of darkness twisting her features into something distinctly hellish. “Looks like that’s my evening’s entertainment sorted.”

Brian looked around the room, and even though he had not fucking one clue what was going on, he couldn’t help smiling. Whatever his dad was into, it was deep, man. Alison was there, holding a frigging gun, no less, looking like she needed to lie down on the mattress she was sitting on. Some guy was in the corner with his hands up like he was surrendering, and the whole house had huge holes in the walls. It looked like a remodeler’s wet dream.

Then there was the weird guy with the suit and Lauren Darlington. No lie—as a teenager, he’d had a few yanks about his thing with Dr. Darlington in his mind. She was hard to miss and always had that BITCH vibe—with capitals—as in Babe In Total Control of Herself. She took zero shit from anybody, and Brian dug that. He’d watched her personally tear a strip off some guy in Rogerson’s who said something dippy around her. Just stuck her hands over her pre-teen daughter’s ears and turned the air blue as Babe the Ox reading that guy the riot act. Brian didn’t even remember what it was over at this point, just that he was covering his mouth and saying, “Oh, shit!” behind his hand, 95% amused by the quality of her diatribe and 5% aroused because that’s just how he rolled as a teenage boy. Strong women turned him on.

“What’s up, Doc?” he tossed out at her, instantly regretting both the familiarity and the line.

“Concussions,” she said, completely unamused. She had a frozen look on her face, lips a flat line. “Concussions are up in this house. Also, asshole sightings. It’s like a proctology convention slideshow in here.” She turned to look daggers at Alison. “Put the gun down before you shoot your baby brother.” Brian felt the sting at the word
baby
. “I don’t need any more business here, okay?”

Alison looked down at her hand and seemed almost surprised to see the gun in it. She lowered the pistol, and there was a click as she de-cocked it before turning it around to offer it to their father, grip first. “What are you doing here, Brian?”

“Oh, I was in the back of the truck,” Brian said, pointing back the way he came.

“Why were you in the back of my truck?” his dad asked.

Brian smiled. “I kinda caught you in a lie.”

There was a stark silence for just a beat. “Do you think that really matters to me right now?” his father asked.

Brian gave an exaggerated glance around the scene in the kitchen just for comic effect. “You do seem busy at the moment. Doing what, I’m not really sure. Shooting rifles, running from the law, apparently—”

“You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into,” the guy in the suit said.

“Uhm …” Brian started, searching for a witty repartee. “Guns, head injuries, wanted fugitives, flight to avoid prosecution … I’m gonna go with ‘Redneck Saturday Night’?”

“You are such a prick,” Alison said, sighing with a little disgust.

“Maybe I’m guilty of that,” Brian said, smirking. His dad wouldn’t even look at him. This was probably gonna be worth some currency. “But I’m presently police-pursuit free, unlike others in this room. Feel free to explain what’s going on.”

“I don’t want to go stepping on this touching family moment—” the guy in the corner with his hands up said.

“Who are you?” Brian asked.

“Dave Belzer. I write for Frostwich.com—”

“What is that?” Brian asked. “Like a frozen sandwich site?”

“It’s an investigative reporting webpage founded by Harrison Frostwich,” Belzer said, nonplussed. “We specialize in paranormal investigations.”

Brian just stared at him before letting out a long laugh. “Get the fuck out of here. I mean, I’m high, but I’m not that fucking high.”

“Brian,” his father said, almost blanching at his admission.

“Sorry, Pops,” Brian said, feeling a little contrite. “Kidding about the high thing, totally. But seriously … paranormal investigations?” He laughed again. “What the fuck is this shit?” He looked down at his sister, and she seemed like she was about to pass out. “You look like you just got back from a first date with Chris Brown.” He pointed at the Belzer guy. “You look like you’re about to piss yourself in fear of your own shadow.” He turned his eye to the guy in the suit. “And what’s up with you? Are you replacing Tommy Lee Jones in
Men In Black 4
?”

“My name is Agent Duncan, and I work for the Office of Occultic Concordance,” the guy said, and started to reach into his coat and came back with a badge that Brian couldn’t quite read. His sleeve was shredded and dangling around his hand.

Brian focused in on the writing on the badge, trying to see what it said. It seemed to swirl in front of him. “Dude, what is up with your badge? It looks like it’s made of the T-1000 liquid metal.”

Duncan pulled the badge back and stared at it for a moment, then looked back at Brian. “You really are high as fuck, aren’t you? Dammit.”

Alison looked up at him. “What does that have to do with it?”

“It doesn’t work on people who are high,” Duncan said, “because they’re already in an altered state.”

Dr. Darlington’s head whipped around to Duncan. “Altered state? What? You showed that thing to me up on the mountain. What the hell did you do to me?”

“Nothing,” Duncan snapped. “Permanent, anyway.”

“I’m interested in the answer to this one myself,” Belzer said.

“Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones, answer the fucking question,” Brian said.

Duncan’s face wavered, and it looked like something was behind it, ready to leap out. It almost made Brian take a step back. “It blurs the memory a little bit, makes it harder for you to remember what you’ve seen recently with much clarity.”

“You really do think you’re out of
Men in Black
!” Brian felt himself giggle a little. “Or something.
R.I.P.D.
, maybe.”

“The hell is
R.I.P.D.
?” Alison asked. She just sounded tired.

“Comic book series about cops policing the dead,” Belzer said. Brian gave him the eyebrow rise of bro-dom.

“Geek shit, then,” Lauren said. “Can we talk about demons now?”

That prompted another moment of silence. Brian felt the temperature of the room changing. Everyone seemed to be taking this way, way too seriously. “Yeah, sure, let’s talk about demons,” Brian said, ripe with amusement. “Should we start with Beelzebub? Lucifer? El Diablo? Actually, Moody’s Roadhouse has some great chicken wings called Diablo wings—”

“Yeah?” Dr. Darlington said, cutting him off a little snottily. “They’re some real culinary masters out there. Where are those on the menu, between the Titty Twister Tonic and the Bare Beaver Bruschetta?”

“Don’t be hatin’, Doc,” Brian said, looking at her soberly. He felt a little stung hearing it from her. Again.

“We’re trying to discuss something serious here,” Darlington said. “Why don’t you go back outside and smoke a bowl, or ride your trike around the driveway until the grown-ups get done talking?”

“You’re … talking about demons,” Brian said, chuckling again. “Standing around, looking all serious. Flashing badges with optical illusions, hiding from the law in the middle of the countryside in the middle of the damned night. Yeah, no, I’m totally the one acting like a kid around here.” He gave them all a quick look and saluted sarcastically. “I’ll just zip it. Talk about demons all you want.”

His dad was rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I need to get a lawyer for Arch.” He looked to Duncan. “Hendricks? No hope at all?”

Duncan looked staid, but he cast a glance at Brian before answering. Why? Brian couldn’t guess, because the guy was completely unreadable, like his face was a foreign language Brian had never studied. “None. Best we just give up now and start to regroup.”

Alison was the first to react to that, to Brian’s surprise. “Motherfucker,” she said to his surprise, and she bowed her head as Brian’s dad took him by the arm and gently led him out the door, back to the truck.

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” Kitty said, her voice rattling around in Hendricks’s head, “because I don’t think I’m gonna be able to sleep tonight.” She jabbed him in the abdomen with the knife blade, just a quick stab that made him jerk against her; he did not move her one iota in the process. “Big day tomorrow, y’see … and I need something to entertain me until the appointed hour comes rolling around.” She dropped the blade to his cheek and let it run across, nearly getting him in the eye when he blanched at the searing pain. “And guess what?” The grin turned positively gleeful. “You’re gonna keep me entertained, sweetie. You and that tongue of yours are gonna keep me company tonight.”

Hendricks just stared at that horrific face, those glowing crimson eyes. “You want me to talk to you?”

She slapped him across the face, and it was hard. He tasted blood, felt a tooth crack in the back of his mouth. He saw two of her perched over him, her thighs like iron safety bars pinning his chest to the ground as if he were on a roller coaster. The metallic tang that rolled over his tongue made him a little sick. He thought back to the buffet table at the party and wished he’d done a few things differently, starting with filling a plate and having something to eat.

“No, I don’t want you to talk to me,” she said, looking a little disgusted at the suggestion. “I want you to lick my clitoris until I tell you to stop.”

Hendricks made a “Pfffffft,” noise. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Good luck with that.”

“You think I’m kidding?” The pressure on his chest increased, like he was in the garbage compactor in
Star Wars
and it was putting the squeeze right on each side of his rib cage. His breath left him first, then he heard a crack. He stirred against the chains, desperate to pry apart her thighs, which were grinding into him with a grip like nothing he’d ever felt before. He realized for the first time as she straightened that she was wearing no pants. Her legs were an angry red shade, like skin that had been pinched and never returned to its original color. Purple veins stood out against the flesh.

The cracking noise in his side was followed by alarm bells of pain that made him writhe against the impossible weight on him. He tried to jerk his body to the side and failed, like he was caught under a fallen bridge, twenty tons of concrete bearing him to the ground and slowly crushing him into nothing more than a misshapen body beset by thousands of angry nerve endings.

What felt like a year, maybe two later, the pain finally started to ease. He watched Kitty’s thighs slacken. She straightened up and heaved herself off him, so that she was kneeling over him. He could see each of her even teeth grinning down at him with feral intensity. Her eyes had gone even more scarlet, and there was nothing of beauty in her face. Purple veins lay across her forehead and on her cheeks now, and the whites of her eyes were gone, replaced by darkness surrounding the red irises. Her hair looked crone-like, straw that lay limp around her shoulders.

She wore a shirt that covered her to just above the pubis, which was nothing but shadow, the faint outline of hair visible in the dark. She loomed over him, thighs still tight around his ribs but not as punishing as they had been a minute ago. “Honestly, this thing with my thighs is like, the least painful thing I can do to you.” She brandished the knife. “You are gonna do some serious licking tonight. How much you hurt before we get to that point is entirely up you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Hendricks said instinctively, bubbling blood from his lips. She brought down a fist again, probably no more than a cuff to the shoulder from her perspective, but from his he felt tendons pop and something dislocate in a rush of excruciating agony. He jerked against the chain involuntarily, triggering further pain that he bit down on, trying to stifle it before it came out.

Hendricks closed his eyes. He wasn’t much of an overly flowery person; he preferred to live in reality. Still, this, he decided, might be his biggest faux pas to date. He’d gone and blundered up shit creek without so much as bothering to check for a paddle in his raft. Now he was in it deep, over his head, and he wasn’t sure what to do next. He’d never gone to SERE—the Survival Evasion Resistance Escape course that was offered for the members of the military most likely to get captured and be subject to torture. In his training it had just been sort of mentioned as a far-off possibility, and he’d been told to repeat his name, rank and whatnot. Not that it mattered here. He opened his eyes, looked into her red ones, and knew that the Geneva Conventions were a far-off concern as well, completely inapplicable in this moment.