Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted (48 page)

Duncan jumped the softball field fence, just barely clearing it. Hendricks could hear the fence rattle, felt the heels of his boots click-clack the metal top of it as they passed. Duncan straightened him out after the landing, though, setting him back on his feet instead of just letting him drop. “Time to run, cowboy.”

Hendricks blinked as the demon started off at a brisk run toward the nearest bleachers. Bereft of any other good suggestions, he tossed one last look back at the doctor, who just stood staring at him through the chain-link, and then he ran to follow the OOC.

Alison bounced as the truck hit a rut, the whole cab jouncing her a good foot in the air. She fumbled for her seatbelt when she came down, the uneven ground of the hillside they were running not doing her any favors. Her daddy was at the wheel and the rifles were stowed not very ceremoniously in the back, which was worrying. They were plunging down the thinly tread trail that Ed Claskey used to reach this part of his property, going at a speed that Alison knew her father hoped would keep them ahead of Ernesto Reines until they got to the main road. That was safety, that was escape, but until then, she had a feeling it was going to be a rough ride. They hit another rut and she bounced again, the pickup’s shocks protesting the rough treatment.

“You’d think this wasn’t your first time evading the law,” she said to her father as he jerked the wheel, following the old rutted trail.

“That’s definitely a first,” her father said, his face screwed up in concentration, eyes darting to take in everything he saw ahead, “but it’s not exactly the first time I’ve driven off road in a hell of a hurry.” He spared her just a moment’s look, a little glint in his eyes before the road ahead got his attention once more. Alison just braced herself and held on as they went, keeping one eye fixed in her rearview mirror, hoping against hope not to see red and blue flashing lights there.

Arch watched Duncan and Hendricks clear the fence in a jump just as Reeve got into view to see for himself. He didn’t know how much of that the sheriff caught, but he was pretty sure he saw them hoofing it off into the night. It wasn’t like a guy in a long black coat and cowboy hat was the sort of thing that just slipped the mind.

Reeve wheeled on Arch with a look that suggested betrayal, fury, and a mingling of a hot mess of emotions that Arch didn’t even want to dip into. “What the fuck was that?”

“Guy in a cowboy hat running off into the night,” Arch said coolly.

“You just stood here and watched it happen,” Reeve said with a glacial reserve of his own.

“I may be a decent athlete, but I’d have a hard time leaping that fence to pursue,” Arch offered.

Reeve’s lips contorted long, like his jaw clenched. “You think I don’t recall your friend the cowboy? Who I met the night your apartment was broken into?”

“I’m sure you recall my friend,” Arch said, feeling a surprising level of calm. “I’m sure you also saw him climb the Ferris wheel just now, and not shoot a rifle from the hillside, not cause screams from inside the car—”

Reeve’s face contorted again, but somehow he held back his spitting rage. “You’re relieved of duty, Deputy Stan.”

“For not pursuing someone who wasn’t committing any crime except climbing an apparatus not designed for climbing?” Arch didn’t even feel resentful; it wasn’t like this was unexpected. He snapped out a response anyway.

“I’ll let the district attorney craft the official charges,” Reeve said with a rough satisfaction. “But I’m thinking aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice, some sort of corruption charge—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arch said with a surprising amount of calm.

“I know a dirty cop when I see one,” Reeve replied.

“You wouldn’t know your
ass
from a hole in the ground,” Arch said and just dismounted the platform right off the side, over the railing and Jesus help anyone below. Thankfully for their own sakes, they moved.

“You better run, Arch,” Reeve shouted from somewhere above him. “I’m coming for you!”

Arch just turned and looked up. “Why don’t you try and catch a glimpse of what’s really going on around here?” He met Reeve’s gaze for a split second to let the man know he was serious and then started shouldering his way through the crowd with a purpose.

Lauren stood in the dark after she watched the cowboy and the FBI agent—or whatever he was—retreat over the fence and flee into the night. She turned back to the Ferris wheel to watch it descend, her eyes on Molly, but she started catching snatches of conversation from the platform. It was about five feet off the ground, clear as day in front of her on the lit, raised metal structure, just through the crossbars of the Ferris wheel. Impossible to miss. And so dramatic, she couldn’t help but look, even as she waited for Molly—thank God she looked all right, sweeping in a slow arc back toward the platform—to descend.

“I know a dirty cop when I see one,” Reeve said to Archibald Stan, clear as if he’d just fired a gun.

“You wouldn’t know your
ass
from a hole in the ground,” Arch replied, testier than he’d even been that afternoon at the mine. The man looked strained, and he’d—had he actually just
cursed
? Holier-than-the-Pope Archibald Stan? He disappeared over the far edge of the platform, and she caught a glimpse of his legs under the metal girders that held the platform aloft. He’d jumped. Just walked away from the sheriff. From his boss.

“You better run, Arch! I’m coming for you!” Lauren listened to the words dully, blinking, and she looked down at her feet again.

Where that man—that rapist—she’d meant to kill—meant to stab right through the heart—had disintegrated into nothingness, eaten by what looked like … black flames.

Demons.

She blinked and folded slightly again to see Arch Stan’s legs as the man disappeared into the crowd.

He hadn’t lied.

There were
demons
.

“MOM!” Molly dropped from a height of about five feet as the Ferris wheel car swung around, her Chucks clunking against the metal as she hit the platform and then squirmed around, charging through the slow-turning spokes—and damned near giving her mother a heart attack—as she followed the path that FBI guy had to get to Lauren. Lauren opened her arms and Molly slammed into her amidships, rocking her back. She did not care. Not a bit.

“Dr. Darlington,” came Sheriff Reeve’s voice from through the spokes of the wheel, his near-bald head looking almost as wrinkled as his forehead. “Are you all right?”

Lauren felt the weight of Molly in her arms, her daughter in her grasp, the full significance of what had just happened causing her emotional mind to tremble even as the logical, careful, assessing, doctor part of her tried to assemble it into something rational. “I’m …” She didn’t take her eyes off of Molly, and she didn’t answer. She just didn’t have anything to say that made one damned lick of sense.

“Will you hold the fuck up?” Hendricks said, gasping for breath and feeling like he’d been gasping most of the day. He didn’t feel much in the way of pain from the drop, which was fortunate; this was more from the flat-out, haul-ass run he’d done to try and keep up with Duncan. They’d skated the edge of the carnival, running the fence line, hiding behind cover as best they could, Hendricks wondering all the while exactly how this particular shitstorm was going to make landfall.

“Now is not a good time for stopping,” Duncan said, slowing only a little. They were nearing the parking lot, and, Hendricks figured, some measure of safety.

“When would be a good time to stop and die?” Hendricks asked, barely getting out his smart-assed reply.

“When we’re safely in Moscow, I think.” Duncan ran on, leaving Hendricks cursing as they rounded the last curve in the fence and found themselves staring at the first row of parked cars.

“Fuck that, I ain’t running that far,” Hendricks said, trying to avoid doubling over. “We still got business here, you know.”

“Yeah, well, enjoy your stay in the local jail while this town and county get destroyed by the rising tide of demonic chaos,” Duncan said. “Should be a front row seat for the end of Midian.”

Hendricks adjusted his hat on his head. It wasn’t that bad … was it?

Of course it was. The signs were all there. They’d been watching the water level rising all along; now it was just a matter of when it would pour over.

A car screeched to a stop in front of them, lights flaring. It took a second for him to work out that it was Arch’s Explorer, and the man himself was sitting in the front seat. Hendricks staggered forward a few steps behind Duncan, slipping through the passenger door that the demon graciously opened for him as the OOC slid into the back. Arch did not spare the horses once they were both in, putting pedal to metal in such a manner that Hendricks’s doubts about having to run were erased in an instant. “How bad is it?” he asked once they were out of the parking lot and streaking down a paved road toward town.

“We’re gonna need to get as much of our stuff together as we can pack in ten minutes or less and vacate Midian proper,” Arch said. The tension was apparent in every facet of the man’s reply, from his form as he held the wheel with one hand to the slow delivery of each word with emphasis. “You get that, Alison?”

“I heard you,” Alison said, the line still open. “Everybody made it out?”

“We’re all clear,” Arch replied. “Meet us at the apartment; we’ll need to ditch the Explorer.”

He hung up without another word, and Alison was left speechless anyhow. She did not look at her father as they slid down a back road. She didn’t need to; she watched him unspool the earphone out of his own ear after Arch hung up. Watched him and saw the expression on his face turn to fear, something she had never really seen there before.

“So much for the town car,” Duncan said from the back seat.

“That sucker would draw nothing but heat,” Hendricks said. Arch glanced at the cowboy in the passenger seat. He didn’t bother adding his chorus of assent. “Kind of like the Explorer now, I guess?”

Arch didn’t take his eyes off the road. “You guess right.” He swerved slightly to avoid a pothole. The emotions were roiling inside of him, a thousand—no, a million of them, all warring for space to stretch out and express themselves.

“I only need like five minutes at my place,” Hendricks said.

“Same,” Duncan said. “Assuming you mean for me to come with you.”

Arch glanced into the rearview mirror, saw on the demon’s face a cold, blunt look that wasn’t without a little rage etched in between the lines. “You got anywhere else to go?”

“Depends on what you mean to do,” Duncan said. “If you’re just gonna hunker down and hide until this place slides off the map, I can think of other uses for my time.”

“Oh, no,” Arch said, the answer coming out more playful than he intended. “No, no, no. See, we’re in it now. I just watched my career go up in smoke to save my hometown; if you think I’m gonna do that and just run so the next nasty thing that washes up on these shores can have free rein to finish the job? You got something else coming.”

Hendricks was the first to speak up. “What do you got in mind, Arch?”

“We move out into the country,” Arch said, “find a place where they won’t look for us. Embrace the wide open spaces of rural American life.” He felt his grip on the wheel tighten. “Then we start taking this war to the demons and doing it a lot harder than we have up to this point.”

Hendricks just listened, composing his reply when his train of thought got derailed from the back seat.

“Fuck, yeah,” Duncan said. “When do we start?”

“Are you all right?” Lauren asked. They were riding in the car, shaken, stirred, fucked up, really. Molly was taking it better than Lauren had thought she would. Maybe.

“No,” Molly said, shaking her head. “And yes. Kinda? Sorta? I don’t know?”

Lauren listened to her, and when she stopped speaking, gave her a nod. “All right answers.”

“I know, in the abstract, that a lot of guys are assholes with a one-track mind,” Molly said, and there was no hiding the raw edge of pain in her voice, “but Jesus. I thought I knew him better than that. I guess it was all lies.”

“Some men are demons,” Lauren said, realizing that there was more truth to that than she’d ever thought of before.

“You stabbed him with a sword,” Molly said carefully.

“I did,” Lauren said.

“And he went poof,” Molly said. “Like a product of my imagination.”

“You didn’t imagine that particular asshole,” Lauren said, keeping the wheel even in her hands. Ten and two, and for some reason the wheel looked like a Ferris wheel to her for a second. “He really did go up in a puff of smoke.”

“I’m no doctor,” Molly said with a healthy dose of sarcasm, “but isn’t that supposed to be impossible?”

“Yep,” Lauren said.

“So what’s the scientific explanation for that?”

Lauren made as expressive a shrug as she could without moving her hands off the wheel. “I don’t know. What’s the scientific explanation for Jarrett Barnes spontaneously combusting?”

Molly sat in silence for a minute. “Some men are demons.”

“Yep.”

They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

Her daddy dropped her off a block away and Alison ran, ran all the way to the apartment. They’d talked it over and decided this was for the best; it would keep him out of the obvious scrutiny that was coming. He’d probably still get some of it, but if he stayed mostly out of sight during the exodus, he’d at least be able to help some rather than be forced to flee with them.

And fleeing with them—that was something Alison hadn’t exactly been planning for at the outset of the day.

The Explorer was not in the apartment building’s lot, and she figured for sure that he had not made it back yet. It sent a flutter of worry through her belly, primal concern that rooted there and crept up toward her heart.

She made her way down the side of the building to the apartment. The outside lights cast long shadows on the pavement, and she watched her own slip past smoothly, like a snake, or a slick of oil rolling down a river.