Unearthed (35 page)

Alison Stan lay on the bed next to her, eyes half-closed, head back on a thin pillow with a floral covering. She was resting, not sleeping, and tossing every few minutes as she labored to get comfortable.

For her part, Lauren was trying to stay quiet. A patient with a concussion was prone to mood swings at times, and Alison was having a little trouble stringing thoughts together effectively. That much was obvious. The silence was a bitter thing between them, though, and Lauren held in the roiling torrent of thoughts about demons, about captives, about this whole war she seemed to have stumbled into, bottled it all up inside.

“You can talk to me, you know,” Alison said quietly, like she was afraid she’d wake Lauren.

“You should be resting,” Lauren replied stiffly.

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Alison said.

“Oh?” Lauren almost fluffed her pillow but stopped herself. This wasn’t the sort of thing she would normally do, hang by a patient’s bed when there was no treatment to administer, no diagnostics to perform. Nurses tended to handle patient comfort, freeing up doctors to move about to the next patient. “Why’s that?” She kicked herself mentally just after she asked it.

“Well, my husband’s in jail for the first time in his life,” Alison said. “Oh, and I almost shot my brother a little while ago. That’s weighing on me a bit.”

“That is the sort of thing that would tend to weigh on a person,” Lauren said carefully. Of course, if she hadn’t had the gun out to begin with, she wouldn’t have nearly shot him, but that wasn’t an argument she wanted to make at present. “How do you think Arch is handling it?”

“Probably scared,” she said, “though he’d never say so. Arch ain’t never even had a speeding ticket in his life. The thought he could have done something to land himself behind bars is … well, it’s laughable, really. Not funny, but absurd, you know?”

“Yeah, I got that,” Lauren said. She hadn’t been the biggest fan of Archibald Stan, but she couldn’t deny that Mr. Stick-in-the-Mud pronouncer of holy judgments probably was a law-abiding citizen to an extreme degree. “He’ll get out of it.”

Alison shifted her head on the pillow. “You think so?”

“You know that lawyer they talked about?” Lauren asked.

“Lex Deivrel?” Alison smacked her lips together. “I only know what I’ve heard secondhand. She’s a real lioness.”

“I’ve heard the cops around Chattanooga talk about her,” Lauren said. “They call her ‘The Devil.’ When a suspect gets injured and they bring ’em to Red Cedar, Deivrel is there in about a half a second. She’s a lioness, all right, and at this very moment Arch is the one behind her. I can’t see any possibility where Reeve manages to hold onto him.” Of course she hadn’t seen the evidence, only heard the gossip about Arch going bad, but the fact that there weren’t any formal charges announced some six weeks after the carnival was probably a sign that Reeve had nothing, right?

“Not sure we need any more devils at the moment,” Alison said, and her eyes slowly closed.

Lauren waited a moment until the eyes opened again to change the subject. “When did you first learn about demons?”

“When I was a kid,” Alison said. “Went with my daddy to a town in Alabama that had gone down to demons. I remember thinking … everything I’d learned in church was real.” She got a distant look in her eyes. “I liked animals when I was a kid. Dogs, cats, squirrels, whatever. I liked ’em all. Told my parents I wanted to be a veterinarian before I could even pronounce it right.” She shook her head. “I saw demon dogs in that place, saw a girl who had been totally broken by the things that burned that town to ash. I’ll never forget it. I didn’t want to be a veterinarian anymore after that; didn’t want to deal with any animal in the world after seeing those things.” She looked up at Lauren. “What about you?”

“Saw my first at the Summer Lights Festival, really,” Lauren said. “When that scumbag attacked my daughter.”

“Hmm.”

“Were you there?” Lauren asked.

“In the hills,” Alison said. “I was shooting.” Her hand came up to her forehead. “Probably shouldn’t have admitted to that.”

Lauren looked at her, quizzical. “Why not?”

“It’s probably a violation of local statute to fire a .50 cal in the city limits at the biggest event of the year.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Lauren said. “Besides, I picked up a sword at the festival and jammed it through my daughter’s date for the evening. Turned him into a big ol’ black hole for about five seconds until he disappeared. That’s probably murder or something.”

“What’s that legal term? Habeas corpses?”

“Corpus,” Lauren said. “I think it means ‘Give me the body’?”

“Huh,” Alison said. “Habeas corpus de Kate Upton. Because I could use a little more in the bra, if you know what I mean.” She ran a hand over her chest. “Anyway, I doubt they’d be able to prove you killed anyone since that guy disappeared and all. No body, no problem. Tough to convict on murder with demons since when you’re done, there’s nothing left.”

Lauren sat there in silence with her for a moment. “Thank you.”

Alison blinked at her. “For what?”

“At the festival,” Lauren said. “Your shooting helped save my daughter.”

Alison just stared at her. “You’re welcome.” She seemed to relax. “So … you joining the team now?”

Lauren felt that question hit her right in the center, tip her over like she’d been pushed. But it hadn’t been much of a push, maybe a feather-light touch, because she’d already been close to the edge when Alison Stan asked. “Are you gonna save the town?”

Alison Stan stared right back at her. “We’re damned sure trying.”

Lauren just nodded. “Then I guess I’ll try with you, if you’ll have me.”

Kitty sat in the silence, looking at her fingers. They were pale, with little spatters of blood here and there from wounds she’d inflicted on the cowboy. He looked funny to her without his hat. Presumably he hadn’t entered life with it, and it was obviously not grafted onto his head, since he wasn’t wearing it now, but she still thought he looked funny without it. First impressions and all that, she supposed. Maybe she’d scalp him later, make it seem a little more abnormal.

The door opened near-silently, and the sounds that followed were both hands of the Rog’tausch, slapping across the floor, dragging themselves back in. She smelled the light wash of Lawrence’s cologne, something appropriately haughty that she hadn’t noticed the first time around, and looked up from the study of her fingernails to see him standing there with Bardsley in his wake. She’d sent Rousseau for them after her guest had left, and had been waiting with the box for them to return.

“Duchess?” Bardsley asked, appropriately deferential.

“Come in,” she said, but Lawrence was already halfway across the room, the prick. She predicted a bad end for him. He’d started out so promisingly bland and servile, too. Something had changed, and she had no idea what. It wouldn’t have interested her, either, but he’d become a less useful ally since it had happened, whatever it was. It might be worth a few minutes of torture to figure out exactly where this particular dickfish had swum off course. Oh, who was she kidding? She’d enjoy it. But it was a busy time, so that would have to wait.

Bardsley carried the leg. They’d left the torso on the table. Kitty hadn’t even given a thought to them trying to steal it. Outside of her presence, now that she’d said the words, the hands would eventually get homicidal. The limbs of the Rog’tausch would serve her until she was gone from the earth, and she didn’t plan for that to happen anytime soon.

“How does …” Lawrence started to ask. Annoying fuck. “… How does it work?”

“Simply,” Kitty said, staring up at him, the lazy bastard, just standing there and letting the hands slap their way back toward the torso. She lifted the massive thing and cradled it like a baby—her very own, really—and set it upon the floor. There was a subtle reaction from the hands; they started a more fervent crawl, changing course to reach it.

“It’s dismembered,” Lawrence said, a little too cool. He’d given himself away in that moment. Lawrence wasn’t a true believer. He’d chased this because it was cool, because it was an idle pursuit, something to do while in town, maybe. “How do we put Humpty Dumpty back together again?”

She rolled her eyes and caught Bardsley with his mouth open in astonishment. She waited to see what he’d say. “You don’t have to,” Bardsley said. “So long as there remains an ounce of flesh, it can regrow itself.”

Lawrence watched with a practiced disinterest. “And if there was no flesh?”

“There is a ritual,” Bardsley said, “to regrow enough to start with.” He placed the leg in the appropriate location on the torso. “Watch.”

They stood around the pieces of the body as the arms slid closer and closer. Kitty’s eyes were on the leg, waiting to see if the flesh moved, how it would come about, this glorious reunion.

It didn’t take long. Only a few seconds passed before the skin around the massive hip began to shift, to reach out. A similar effect ran along the leg, flesh distending. They reached out for one another, touched, and seemed to absorb into one flesh. It rippled and moved like liquid, uniting. The leg shifted, pulled toward the body by the call of joint to bone. There was a click as it slid into place and the skin moved to shorten, excess flaps folding back down and smoothing out. It took seconds, the reattachment of the leg, and when it had passed, Kitty stood above it, a small smile on her face. The arms came next, without prompting, placing themselves close enough to be reattached. The movement of the pallid skin was similar, that strange bulging as the two sides met, the shifting of bone as everything lined up.

“Huh,” Lawrence said when it was done. “I didn’t think it’d be like that.”

“How did you think it would be?” Bardsley asked.

“I had assumed ritual, honestly,” Lawrence said. “I had sacrifices prepared and everything.”

“Why would you assume that?” Bardsley asked.

“It’s always a ritual with these things,” Lawrence said. “And, I admit, I like rituals. Especially ritual sacrifices. Those can be fun.”

“Fuck a goat and slit its neck on your own time,” Kitty said, staring down at her beautiful acquisition. The body was rolling to its stomach now, revealing massive, muscular butt cheeks. She didn’t go in for that sort of thing, but it was chiseled like a bodybuilder, like one of those human artisans had sculpted it. “We’ve got two more pieces to find.”

“If I may?” Rousseau spoke up from his place in the corner. “The Codex is not being very helpful in the location of the last pieces.”

“And why would it be?” Lawrence said. “Whoever struck the Rog’tausch apart clearly had no desire to see it united again.”

“Oh, but they did,” Kitty said. Lawrence had once more revealed himself to be an idiot. She didn’t take her eyes off the body as it rose. “You must be assuming it was sundered by do-gooders. It wasn’t.” She let that hard satisfaction ooze out as she watched it stand. Her baby, learning to walk. It was just precious.

“Then … why?” Lawrence asked.

“Because it wasn’t time,” Bardsley said. “It wasn’t time for things to end, not yet. The Rog’tausch was not torn apart by the humans in the wars. It was taken apart by our people, who weren’t ready for the end of days to come. The unworthy.” He tilted his head to look at Lawrence. “The frightened. The unprepared.”

Bardsley was speaking Kitty’s language. “They feared the end,” she said. “Feared what would come … after. So a group of our own stopped it before it could finish its task. They cut it apart using strength and means that humans couldn’t hope to muster, and buried it in pieces, writing down the hints for us to find. They didn’t want to close the door to the apocalypse entirely, see …” She smiled. “Because if anyone found out who they were, it would mark them for death. They did this thing in secret, and needed to give themselves an out in case they were caught and, well, tortured.”

“Were they?” Lawrence asked.

“No,” Kitty said, staring at the Rog’tausch, now balancing its massive body on one leg. “And presumably many of the co-conspirators are still out there, somewhere. Enough of them died, though, that some of the hints have bled out into the world. Like the Codex,” she nodded toward Rousseau. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they had agents still out there, trying to stop this from happening.” She stared at Lawrence; he stared back, not flinching. She thought about calling him out on it right here, right now, but held off. He was being too adversarial. If he was working against her for that reason, he would have been smart to be less obvious about it.

“Two pieces to go,” Bardsley said, looking upon their creation in all its magnificence. “It’s so … mighty,” he breathed in awe.

“Except for that bit of missing anatomy,” Lawrence said. “That’s not so impressive.”

“Why is it always about the size of the dick with you people?” Kitty asked. “I find the length of a man’s tongue much more important, especially if you can put it to productive use—it shuts him up and feels good all at once. Cocks are just useless, invasive measuring sticks for you overly obsessed, self-absorbed fools. As though it was some measure of your power?” She made a menacing move, as if to strike Lawrence in the groin, and he flinched away. “Like using balls as a measurement of bravery. Those aren’t measures of bravery. They’re a representation of you covering your weakness with bravado. Show me your balls, big boy. The bigger they are, the more there is to cut off—and you’ll be whimpering all the while, even though you know full well you can survive without them.” She watched Lawrence take a half-dozen unconscious steps backward while she talked. Brave, indeed. “Now … we have two pieces to go.” She turned her head to Rousseau. “The Codex is being unhelpful? Shall I try and find a linguistics expert to help with your research?”

“On one count, there is no need,” Bardsley said, bowing his head to her.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Explain.”

“In my business, I work with the internet quite extensively,” Bardsley began.

Kitty felt her eyes start to glaze over. “I’m already bored. Find a point, quickly.”

“Have you ever heard of Google image search?” Bardsley asked. When she didn’t deign to respond, he whipped out a phone. “I took pictures of the box in my possession and ran those images through the search. It came back with this.” He held up the phone. On the screen was a picture of the smallest box yet, but the wood and the hinges marked it unmistakably as a piece of the Rog’tausch.