Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted (4 page)

Now he was damned near pinwheeling his arms to keep from getting that weightless sensation as each foot left the ground. It was a steep fucking hill—foothill, he guessed—somewhere near the bottom of the King Daddy mountain in these parts, Mount Horeb or something stupid. His mind defaulted to calling it Mouth Whore-ebb, though that wasn’t exactly how the locals said it.

All this kept flashing through his mind as he ran. Busting down that door, sword in hand, ready to deal damage to a demon only to have the scrawny bastard flash those eyes at him and cannonball out the nearby picture window into the gulch below the house—all of it played along with a commentary in his head that said,
Holy shit, what the fuck am I doing?

And the answer was:
Trying to make this town a safer place, one demon sonofabitch at a time.

The wind kicked up a little as he came over a slope. He grunted and adjusted his feet to compensate. He still felt like he was out of control, but his legs were keeping up so far. It was a crazy fucking feeling, not quite as bad as tear-assing down a steep road on a bike but close, and his quarry was at least a hundred feet ahead of him, busting branches of the trees with his arms as he ran. Hey, it cleared a path for Hendricks, and he wasn’t choosy about the kind of help he was getting, especially lately.

Especially lately.

He didn’t have enough breath to shout insults at the thing or he would have. All he had was the focus to keep his eye on the damned ball, on the damned demon, and his mind out of the possibilities for all the shit that could befall him should he fall. He wasn’t sure if there was a tonic that could undo all the fucked-up damage his body would take if that would happen, and he didn’t want to find out.

The wind kept a coming, blowing in his eyes and making him squint. It was a hot damned day, and he was sweating like he was on Parris Island again, just wishing it was some morning PT. It wasn’t quite as bad as Iraq, though, that was certain. The ground was all dried up, too, which was weird as hell, he thought idly as he went, because only a couple days ago it had rained hard enough to flood the fuck outta the whole county.

“On your left!” came a voice from—big surprise—his left. Hendricks would have tossed a look of disdain but instead he tucked his left elbow again, even as he kept dodging down the slope, his big black drover coat billowing behind him and his cowboy hat still clinging to his head.

Lerner surged past the cowboy without much effort. Hendricks had a good lead time because the dumbass had jumped out the window behind the fleeing demon—a quantel’a, as near as Lerner could see—and Lerner wasn’t willing to do something that stupid. It wasn’t exactly a point of pride, like he was too good to go leaping out a window. It was more like he just shook his head at the two of them for being fucking morons and made his way down with his partner, Duncan, in tow. Like civilized people and not fucking animals.

They were running like animals now, though, he and Duncan. And cursing like men. Well, he was, anyway. Duncan was still stoic and approaching on Hendricks’s right, though he hadn’t bothered to announce himself. He’d often pondered why Duncan was such a mild-mannered sort of fellow when he really could have cut loose—like Lerner did every now and again. He hadn’t come up with any answers on that front, not even after a hundred-plus years. That was probably some sort of answer in and of itself, but as long as Lerner had pondered it he hadn’t gotten to the bottom of it in any way that satisfied.

Now Lerner was watching the world whip past him as he ran down what felt to him like a mountain, hoping he didn’t take a misstep. Smashing into a tree at this speed could be potentially career ending for him. And by career ending, he meant breaking open the shell that held his happy demon essence in that rough covering he called a body. It would not make for a joyful day, not for him. He could kind of imagine showing back up in the underworld, earthly form busted and burned up, and imagined the reception he’d get. It made him watch his steps just a touch more carefully.

The fucking quantel’a that had started the whole foot chase wasn’t getting away, but the strung-out dipshit was damned sure making a good show of it. Whatever he was on was letting him run a lot farther and faster than he should have been able to. Fear would probably do that to a quantel’a. Fear and meth.

“You getting a reading?” Lerner called out to Duncan and saw a shake of the head in return as Duncan passed Hendricks. The cowboy started to do a double take and halted as he cut left around a tree, its big-ass, low-hanging branches causing him to swing wide just behind Duncan. “Sons of bitches. I catch that fucking screen Spellman selling those fucking clouding runes to anyone, I’m gonna expose his empty-ass innards to the light of day.”

“Would it do any good?” Hendricks had started to gasp now. Lerner wondered how much longer the cowboy could run.

“It’d do my heart some good,” Lerner said blackly. That screen—just an empty vessel that could talk like a man, used as a veil by someone from the other side to transact business with earthly creatures—that sonofabitch was the cause of all his problems for the last few days. All of them. And they couldn’t even find his ass now, nor the asses of most of the other troublemaking demons in town, because the fucking screen had been selling runes that hid them from Duncan and his sensing powers. “Yours too, based on how much huffing you’re doing, meatbag.”

“I’m not used to running mountains every day,” Hendricks answered, and Lerner could hear him trying to rein in his heavy breathing. He hadn’t known the cowboy for more than a few days, and already he could see the pride just oozing off the bastard.

“Wouldn’t matter if you did,” Duncan answered matter-of-factly, missing Hendricks’s look of ire, “he’s faster than you.” Duncan turned on the jets and blew down the slope.

Lerner wanted to laugh at Duncan’s sudden burst of speed, but he had enough charity in him that he decided not to rub it into the cowboy. Poor bastard. Instead, he just sped up himself.

They were outpacing him like mad now, Lerner and Duncan, and Hendricks could feel his face burning not just from the heat of the run but from shame. Sure, they were demons, and they damned well ought to be stronger and faster than him.

That didn’t make it burn any less, though.

Duncan broke loose a tree limb ahead of him, sending it spiraling down the slope with a hard hit of the wrist. The crack echoed down the mountain. Hendricks could see a field somewhere through the trees up ahead.

He knew they had to catch this bastard soon. Duncan was closest, was closest and almost there—

The demon juked right as Duncan was almost close enough to lay a hand on him. Hendricks would have held his breath if he hadn’t needed every one of them at the moment. Duncan missed a step and tumbled, his shoulder hitting the ground hard enough to break bones.

If he’d had bones.

The demon burned hard right like a receiver in a football game. He snaked out of view for a second behind a low fir tree. Hendricks picked up on him again as he turned back down the slope.

Hendricks was beyond winded now, beyond tired. He wanted to go back to his hotel room and pass out and wake up without any of the pains he knew he was going to. Beyond any rationality, he wanted Erin to massage his hurts away, wanted to get down and nasty with her. That second bit would probably happen anyway, based on how often they’d been fucking the last couple days.

He filed that thought away for later as he rounded the pine and swooped down the slope after Lerner. He didn’t look back to make sure Duncan was all right. He was sure the demon was, though he’d probably messed up his lime-colored suit.

Lerner was a good twenty yards ahead of Hendricks by now, and about ten behind the demon. The fucker was doing everything in his power to not run a straight line, and he could have been going anywhere based on his movements. Hendricks half expected him to double back and head up the slope.

“Nowhere to run,” Hendricks breathed.

“He’s proving you wrong on that one,” Lerner tossed over his shoulder. Hendricks frowned. He hadn’t expected the demon to even hear him. What were they called again? Oh, right. Office of Occultic Concordance.

OOCs.

Lerner was closing the gap with the speedy, dodgy bastard. The slope got sandy and the ground went a little soft, forcing Hendricks to look for better footing. Lerner didn’t, though, and missed a step.

Whoosh.

The OOC went sideways down the hill, smacking into a tree with a noise that told Hendricks he did feel pain.

“And then there was one,” Hendricks muttered.

The trees thinned ahead and the demon was slowing. Whether it was because he thought he’d gotten away clean after dodging two OOCs or because he had smelled Hendricks coming and didn’t think he was much of a threat—well, it didn’t matter.

Hendricks passed the last few trees as the last boughs vanished and uninterrupted sky appeared above them. The demon wasn’t exactly pulling a Run Forrest Run anymore. He’d slowed and was jogging backward lightly, like he was just leading Hendricks on at this point, standing at the edge of a meadow that stretched all the way up to a fence beyond. There was activity there, but it was far enough off that Hendricks didn’t pay it a bit of attention.

“Moves like that, you oughta be playing for the Titans,” Hendricks said, slowing to a walk as he entered the meadow. The grass was ankle deep, green and uneven, whispering as he stepped on it.

The guy was all thin and rangy, had meth teeth and black-as-night demon eyes. “OOCs don’t let us play sports, can you believe it?” He grinned. “Damn near killed me when I found out as a teen. I was pretty good at football.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t really have the build to be taken seriously as anything but a kicker,” Hendricks said, keeping his distance. The sun was damned hot above now that the trees were behind them. The demon was just treading in place, looking more like a boxer practicing footwork than a runner about to sprint off. “So … we gonna throw down now?”

“Looks like a fair fight to me,” the demon said, still grinning with those spotted teeth. “Now that you’ve lost your friends.”

“Oh, they weren’t my friends,” Hendricks said. Draw the sword or draw him in? Guy could run, no doubt, and pulling the sword tended to make demons antsy. Wait too long, though, and this bastard was fast enough to put him in a world of hurt.

“You’re a human demon hunter hanging out with OOCs,” the demon said, shaking his head. “That’s not even strange bedfellows man, that’s like … a cat sleeping with a giraffe.”

“God, I hope I’m the giraffe in that scenario,” Hendricks muttered.

“You’re about to be the cat,” the guy said, and he lunged for Hendricks.

Hendricks knew in the second the guy came at him that he should have pulled the sword. The demon already knew he was a hunter, already had a feel for what he was capable of, and knew he was hanging out with OOCs. The rumors—they’d damned sure gotten around, and fast, considering he’d just met Lerner and Duncan a couple days ago.

Hendricks knew even as he got his hand on the hilt that the demon would be on him before it was out, would have his teeth buried in Hendricks throat before he could even—

BOOM.

The sound was louder than thunder, like artillery called in from the hill, like an airstrike dropping in from above. The demon that was coming at Hendricks dropped—more like flipped backward, upper body rocked like he’d been hit with God’s own hammer right in the chest. Not that Hendricks believed in God, but the way that fucker flipped, it might as well have been an act of His.

The sound of the shot faded as Hendricks closed on the demon. The guy was hurting, plain as anything. Hendricks thought about making light of it, but why? He drew his sword as he stood over the bastard, and smelled the strong scent of smoked meth hanging in the air.

“Not your friends, huh?” the demon asked, with black eyes.

“You know a lot of OOCs that carry a .50 cal Barrett rifle?” Hendricks asked. He smiled, shrugged, and slammed the sword through the demon’s chest.

Black fire crept out from the hole, from his eyes, from his mouth, and swallowed him whole like he’d been pulled back into the black depths of hell. The grass beneath him waved lightly with the passing of the storm of ebony flame, then settled undisturbed, the blades just a little shorter in the shape of the demon’s figure than the ones around them.

Hendricks watched him go, watched the hellfire recede, his outline still visible like an afterimage. He sighed, long and heavy, before he turned back to the hillside, where one, two … now three figures threaded their way down, not in much of a hurry since the job was done.

“Alison,” Hendricks muttered under his breath, low enough so that only the two OOCs could hear him.

Alison Longholt Stan wasn’t much for this wilderness stuff. Her daddy had taught her to hunt when she was young, but she’d never really taken to it. She’d mostly sit in the tree stand with him during the season because he liked it, but she passed up most of her shots to let him do it. It was the gutting and the blood and all that mess—just not for her.

The shooting, though? That she didn’t mind.

The Barrett rifle she’d borrowed from her daddy’s gun cabinet kicked like—well, like something kicked her. An elephant, probably. Something big. She braced it against her shoulder and carried a pad to place between her and the butt of the big rifle, but it still wasn’t no peach. Left a bruise on her shoulder that Arch had noticed when they’d had their confrontation after the dam.

She didn’t care. She wasn’t no little peach herself. No shrinking violet; she’d taken a shovel to a wild dog’s head one time when it had rabies and it got after her dog. It was all she had handy, so she did it.

Everything she’d seen since the night those animals had busted down her door reminded her of that moment when she grabbed the shovel. See a wild beast foaming at the mouth, you lay your hands on something heavy and hard.

The Barrett was a fair sight better than a shovel, but the things she was swinging at were a click or two meaner than a rabid dog, too.