Unearthed (37 page)

He felt his lower lip quiver, his breath come back in raggedly, and he pondered his future. It wouldn’t end, not until he was carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and in his lightheadedness part of him ultimately welcomed that fate. Losing himself a piece at a time, a section of flesh and bone every few minutes until he was no more, that was what was coming.

But what was he, really? Flesh, bone, tissue, brains, some other assorted stuff. A mind that was certain to end when she either cut too deep or he ceased to be useful in generating pleasure for her. As soon as he stopped giving her something, some satisfaction of one kind or another, he was going to be done, his little flicker of time in the universe at an end. And not for the first time, he wished he had believed like Arch that there was something beyond, some reunion with Renee, because then he’d at least have something to look forward to other than a nasty, brutish end.

His choices were pain and suffering, or to hold his breath and move his tongue, in hopes that the pain and suffering would be done quickly rather than prolonged beyond his capacity to handle it. Hendricks no longer had any illusions; help wasn’t coming. It never had been, not any point in his life. There was nothing for him beyond this moment.

This was the end, and he wasn’t sure he had it in him to just sit back and suffer his way through to it, not if it could just be … over … with a minimum of difficulty.

He looked up into those red eyes, those eyes he hated, that nose and the line of a mouth that he could barely see, just above the pointed chin and jawline, and he felt the waver that signaled his surrender. It was a nod of the head, so subtle he wondered if she’d even seen it.

But she did, and she moved to show that she had. She pushed forward, and he felt himself retch as much from the gut-punch indignity of it, from the sheer violation of his sense of himself as a human being as he did from the sulfur cloud that seemed to hang over him. She was strangely cold, almost room temperature as she pushed her vulva against his chin. It was like some sort of raw, almost chilled sea creature against the bristles, like the scent of a dumpster on a hot summer’s day poured out over him.

He held his breath, and closed his eyes, and he did what the demon told him to do, all the while trying to pretend he was somewhere else, with someone else, even as she ground his head into the dirt under her weight. Her unmistakable, deep, feral grunts filled the air and left him no illusions about who he was with, what he was doing and who had won the battle.

Arch had been let out by Reeve himself, wordlessly, with nothing more than a few hand gestures to indicate that he could go. It had been a nearly surreal experience, having the sheriff merely open the door, come over and unlock his handcuffs, pocket them wordlessly and wave a hand to suggest he get out of the interrogation room. Arch had been expecting something else entirely and hesitated before complying. What if it was a trick? Reeve probably wasn’t the sort to shoot him in the back, but the silence was eerie.

Arch made his way out anyway, though slowly and without taking his eyes off Reeve. He kept his hands raised in front of his chest, out from his body, trying to project as nonthreatening an image as possible. His height and size were threatening enough all on their own.

He made it out of the interrogation room and down the hall without incident. Lex Deivrel was nowhere to be seen when he made it out into the bullpen. The place was pretty empty save for one lone occupant of a desk. He caught a glimpse of the blond-headed bob as Erin looked down at a piece of paper, probably filling out her report from the party. She said nothing as he entered and made his way over to the property locker and found his belongings. Arch assumed Reeve meant for him to handle this on his own since he hadn’t even bothered to escort him the way any other prisoner would have been.

“Hey, should I—” Erin looked up at him, ready to ask a question, but cut it off mid-sentence when she saw it was him. Her already tired features darkened, the curtain falling to show nothing but a moment’s displeasure. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t know you were getting out, but I should have guessed when I heard Deivrel was your lawyer.”

“Reeve didn’t really have anything he could hold me on,” Arch said. “Misdemeanors.”

“Huh,” Erin said and ducked her head back to look at the desk. “If only he knew.”

“Yet you didn’t tell him anything,” Arch said, opening the little metal storage box that held his stuff. It almost looked like a cheap safe deposit box from a bank, the kind that would only cost a few dollars a month.

“You sound like you’re sorry I didn’t,” Erin said, not looking up.

“Just a mite curious,” Arch said. “I tell you what happened to Hendricks, and you basically say, ‘Best of luck.’ Seems if you were feeling that raw about what’s happened with him and the rest of us, you’d be ready and able to contribute to hoisting us up the flagpole by our underpants a little farther.”

“I doubt our shitty old flagpole would support your weight, even if your Underoos did,” Erin said. “But I reckon I’d have a hard time explaining any of what I’ve seen to Reeve, just the same as you struggled with it.” She looked up, and her lips were drawn. “It’s a fantastical explanation, pretty difficult for most to understand.”

“But you know it,” Arch said, “and more than that, you’ve seen it’s true, but you seem determined to … I don’t even know. Bury your head in the dirt? Pretend nothing’s happening out of the ordinary? Write off a man I thought you cared about—”

“Yeah, well,” she said, a little harsher, “I thought he cared about me, too, but I got left in a hospital to make my own recovery without so much as a visit.”

“A miraculous recovery,” Arch said, “unless I miss my guess.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I got lucky.”

“You got help,” Arch said. “Of the non-medical variety. Just because you didn’t see us didn’t mean we didn’t do all we could for you.” He straightened his back, closing the metal box with a little more noise than necessary. “And if you know what followed when you were out of the game, then you know why we didn’t come to you.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know anything about you, about Hendricks, about any of what followed, except what I’ve heard from Reeve.” Her skin tightened around the eyes. “Let’s say I believed you. I still haven’t seen hide nor hair of any one of you since the day I went over the side of the mountain. That’s real decent of y’all, Arch, to maybe aid in my recovery. But you didn’t call, you didn’t write, you didn’t visit me at home once I got out—”

“We haven’t exactly been in town,” Arch said. “And you had to know—”

“I don’t know anything,” she said, and put her head back down, pen in hand, “especially as relates to you, Hendricks, Duncan and Lerner, or Alison.”

“Lerner’s dead,” Arch said, feeling a slight prickling feeling. Erin looked up, not able to quite keep the surprise down. “Or the equivalent, for him. He got cracked when you went over the cliff. Couldn’t fix it. He went down in the black fire later that night.”

Erin’s mouth twitched just slightly, but Arch couldn’t pin down her reaction on it. “That’s a shame,” she said, but it didn’t really seem like she felt it. “Anyway, I didn’t see any of you four Musketeers, so I figured we were all done. You do you, I do me.” She smiled a patently false smile. “And it’s working out just fine for me.”

“Huh,” Arch said, putting his stuff in his pockets. “I guess … it obviously hasn’t worked out quite so well for us.” He shrugged, feeling a low burning inside. He’d been in arguments like this before, this passive-aggressive type fight where someone would come at him with nothing but body shots and haymakers, not a single real jab, just the below-the-radar and back-turned hits. His only solution for those occasions was either to hit back big or take a big heaping helping of humility. “But still, at least you can do some good here. Maybe take what you’ve learned and save some lives. Help the town.” He shrugged and started for the pass at the edge of the counter.

“There ain’t no help for this town, Arch,” Erin said as he passed into the waiting area, “it’s not getting any better. It’s only getting worse.”

He turned and looked straight at her. She met his gaze, unapologetic. “What are you gonna do about it?” he asked.

She seemed to fumble for the answer, looking around the room like she could find it written on the wall. Finally she just shrugged.

“Well, if you figure something out or change your mind, maybe you could give me a call. Reckon I’ll turn my cell phone back on now that I’m right with the law.” He started to leave.

“You’re not right with the law, Arch,” she said. “And there ain’t no ‘right’ in this town. None at all. Helping you, sitting back, I can’t hardly see the difference, because you ain’t been making none. None at all.”

“Then if I were you,” Arch said, and paused as he leaned lightly against the door, “I’d get out of here. Dump or get off the pot. Because if you don’t like the difference we’re making, you’re not going to find anyone else trying anything different.” He shrugged and let his weight push the door open, and he strode out into the parking lot without much of an idea what to do next.

Then a sports car pulled up in front of him, a silver Porsche that seemed to gleam in the first hints of dawn coming over the horizon. The window was down, and Lex Deivrel was staring out at him. “Need a ride?”

Arch just stood there for a minute, really thinking over the alternatives. There weren’t any good ones. “Mind dropping me off at my in-laws?” he asked, and when she nodded he reached for the door handle, only the least bit wary about accepting any more help from this particular source.

“I just find it really interesting that you’ve been aiding and abetting Arch and Alison the last few weeks,” Brian said. He and his father were in the living room at home, Brian leaning back against the soft, stuffed padding of the armchair. It wasn’t the most comfortable chair he’d ever been in, but after riding in the back of the truck for a good portion of the night, it wasn’t bad. “Does Mom know?”

“Your mother is best kept out of this particular loop,” his father said darkly. “What’s been going on in this town has her worried enough.”

“What a load,” Brian said, almost laughing as he scoffed. “She’s been worried sick about her daughter, and you’ve been withholding the truth from her.”

“As much fun as it might have been to explain the world of demons and darkness to her,” Bill said, hands behind his head, recliner on the end of his couch kicked back, “yes, you are correct, I opted for a deception instead of telling her that her only daughter had picked up a rifle and decided to wage war on the armies of hell.”

Brian snickered. “Do even hear yourself? That shit sounds crazy, and I’m not even hi—errr.” His father looked at him mirthlessly, mouth a straight line. “You really did stick it to her, didn’t you? You could have at least mentioned Alison was all right. As a courtesy. Like, ‘Oh, I got a message from Alison and Arch, they’re totally fine and on a Caribbean beach somewhere trying to make you some grandbabies until this shit blows over.’”

“You think that me lying is bad, but replacing it with a different lie would be somehow better? Interesting approach.”

“One of them tries to do some good,” Brian said, “the other just uses your lies as a weapon to keep us in the dark. Don’t try and pretend you’re too dim to see the difference.”

“Oh, I see the difference,” Bill said. “I just question whether there’s much of an effect. I’d go so far as to call what you’re suggesting ‘Truth Engineering,’ but that’s just a newfangled way to describe a concept as old as man. Trying to produce whatever effect I want by using lies.” His body seemed to slacken in his chair. “I guess I wanted to keep my lies simple. I also didn’t want to get mired in the difficulties of trying to explain to your mother what I’ve had to explain to you tonight. But I don’t suppose you’d understand that, since you don’t believe me.”

“Yeah,” Brian said, “you’re right about the ‘not understanding’ bit. But still … don’t you think it’s a little cruel to just leave Mom wondering while you knew they were fine?”

“For now,” Bill said quietly. “They’re fine for now.”

Brian couldn’t contain himself, he rolled his eyes. “Okay. Yeah. For now. Whatever the case, you kept her in the dark.”

“Don’t assume your mother is a dummy,” Bill said. “I have no idea whether she’s in the dark or not.”

“But you know what you told her,” Brian said. “And it was all lies.”

Bill just sat there. The only light in the room came from the back porch light shining into the living room through the patio door. “Yes.”

“Don’t you think that’s kind of—” A hard knocking at the front door interrupted Brian mid-sentence, and he looked to his father by instinct before he stood. “Should I answer it?”

“If you want to know who it is,” Bill said, folding down his chair with a squeal of the mechanism. “Because I don’t reckon sitting here until they go away is going to leave us any more enlightened.”

Brian started toward the hallway and paused, looking at his father as a disturbing possibility came to him. “All the stuff that’s been going on here lately … what if it’s …?” He stopped mid-sentence, because he didn’t know how to finish it.

“What if it’s someone unsavory?” Bill asked, brushing past him into the hallway. “A demon, if I’m right, or a dangerous human being with a very unpleasant disposition caused by deep socioeconomic issues, if you are?” He turned and lifted his shirt to reveal the gun hiding in his waistband, the one that Alison had pointed at Brian when he’d entered the farmhouse. “Then we hope you’re right, because I can shoot some asshole person and kill them. If I’m right, on the other hand, you might want to say … whatever it is you say nowadays in lieu of prayer.”

“Curse?” Brian said. “I think I usually just curse.”

Bill walked down the hallway with a confidence Brian didn’t think he could have mustered in the same situation. Maybe it was the paranoia talking, but he watched the door with a sense of alarm that was completely out of proportion to the simple knock that had come only moments ago. Brian looked around, laid eyes on the heavy lamp that rested on the end table next to him and seized it by its curved base. It was a geometric nightmare, squares and triangles and spheres all welded together. It felt heavy, though, and he just held it there, ready to yank the plug and charge down the hallway. Not that it’d do any good against a gun, but still … it felt better than having nothing in his hand.