Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted (28 page)

Oh, Molly.

“I’d like to see you again,” Mick said. He’d done it right, he knew it. Her face was all aglow, the overhead lamp hanging above them, the skies dark outside the window, lights of the square the sole guard against the blossoming night. The proprietor of the café was the only one left, and he was giving Mick the eye again. Not a good look. Every time he passed near, though, he was all smiles for Molly.

Molly’s face was flushed, and she had a good look to her, at least to Mick. She’d had fun. He’d made her laugh. That seemed important, making her laugh. Those pale cheeks pink with the laughter, like she’d brushed them with a rose, leaving traces of the color behind on her snowy skin as they passed. “I’d like that,” Molly said, her lips fighting not to turn up in the corners.

Oh, yeah. Mick had this one. It was almost in the bag. “How about coming to the carnival tomorrow night? I’ve got the evening off, and I could show you around.” He just tossed it out there. Like bait. Waited for her to go for it.

She stared at him soberly, looked down for just a second. Thinking it over, he figured. “All right,” she said finally.

“Want me to pick you up at your house?” he asked. Fishing again.

Her eyes darted to the proprietor. “No,” she said, hushed. “Not unless you
don’t
want me to go with you.”

He nodded like he was some kind of sage. “Parents. I get it.”

“Just a mom,” Molly said. The cheeks weren’t quite as red now. “She used to be cool, but lately she’s just … ugh. Anyway. Meet me here? In the square? Say around sundown?”

“Sundown, tomorrow, here,” Mick said, spelling it out. He forced a smile. “Sounds good. I think you’ll like the carnival. I might be able to show you some things you haven’t seen before.”

She didn’t answer in words, just a slight nod, and a partial smile that hid a subtle enthusiasm. Oh yeah. Mick knew he had this. Right in the damned bag.

“How long do you think it’ll take to work?” Hendricks asked, staring at the banana bag skeptically. He’d already paid, figuring something was better than nothing. He gave it a squeeze, and the clear liquid seemed to glimmer with the motion, like there was something hidden inside it.

“It’ll begin working immediately,” Spellman said. “It just won’t have as sudden of an effect as what you’ve taken. This is a watered-down version of the compound. Slow burn instead of … raging forest fire.” He shrugged. “It’s an imperfect metaphor. The point is, it will begin to heal her as soon as you manage to trade this for her present IV.”

“Great,” Hendricks said, and started to leave. He didn’t wait to see if Alison was at his side, just turned on his boot and felt the slip of the ornate rug underfoot.

“A word of caution,” Spellman said, and Hendricks turned back to look at him. Alison was behind him, between him and Spellman, just watching the screen where she’d entered the hall outside the archway to the dining room. “Even if you administer the dose, she may not recover in time.”

Hendricks felt that rampant desire to grab the man by his jacket again, to smash his head through the glass curio cabinet on the side of the dining room. To ventilate his skin, just a little, to let the essence run out. “Clarify, please.” He said it with restraint.

“You might want to settle down, just a little,” Spellman said. “That threatening mien may work all manner of wonder when you’re out in your role as demon hunter, but it does so little good for your complexion in this light.”

Hendricks took a step and stopped when Spellman held out a hand. “I’ve given you the best I can; what I mean to say is that your … lover? Paramour? Fling? She’s in a terrible condition, putting it mildly. She may die regardless. I want to warn you, because I’d hate to have you angry at me because of some perceived failure on my part. So I’m giving you the product warning.” He moved his hands as if he were indicating a marquee of some sort: “Warning: you need to get it to her in the next couple hours to have a chance, and even then…this may not save her life.”

“Then give me the one that does,” Hendricks said in a low growl.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Spellman said. He wasn’t quite gleeful, but he was way, way too close to it for Hendricks’s taste.

“Then I’m afraid you’re about to feel the embrace of the warm summer air in your innards,” Hendricks said, and started for his sword, pushing aside the rough fabric of his coat.

Spellman laughed, looking skyward. “I don’t think you quite understand what you’re up against here, but putting that aside—even if you could somehow compel me to part with the potion … what makes you think you could get your poor, unconscious lady friend to drink it?” He stared back at Hendricks, who had a hand on his sword’s hilt. “You need something that works intravenously.”

“I’m about to give you something that works intravenously,” Hendricks said and made to draw his sword.

The lights darkened and the fixtures rattled, and Spellman’s eyes went red. “I’m not a garden variety demon, and I think you’ll find that my bite is worse than any vembra’nonn.”

“Hendricks,” Alison said warningly.

Hendricks kept his eyes locked on Spellman but didn’t draw his sword. He realized that the lights had not flickered, had not dimmed; there was some sort of darkness in the room, a pervasive aura of blackness that seemed to be pushing against Hendricks, wrapping his chest, squeezing him. He struggled for breath like he was in a bear hug. “You know, I’ve got a couple friends that would just love to know where you are.”

Spellman made a sound like a squeal, but lower and more violent, like a breath hissing out of a balloon with vibrato. It made his ears ache. “I wouldn’t go confusing any OOCs in your acquaintance with friends. I suspect there won’t be too many days until it’s driven home to you in agonizingly obvious ways that those … things … are not on your side.” Spellman’s eyes faded. “Besides, they couldn’t find me if they wanted to. My invitation is open to you and only you.” Spellman paused. “Well, you and one other member of your … entourage. Your … association? Your …”

“Watch,” Hendricks said. “My watch.”

“However you like it,” Spellman said with a flowery bow. “Are we now settled in all the matters of discussion between us?”

Hendricks kept his gaze on the screen, his hot, resentful eyes the only expression of the gut-level emotion churning in his belly. He wanted to throttle this motherfucker, put his face against the tread of a tire and peel out until the skin—or shell—was all gone. He was fairly sure that Spellman could see all this as he looked into those mildly glowing red eyes, but that smile never dimmed. “We’re settled, all right.”

“Then I look forward to seeing you again when we have further commerce to conduct,” Spellman said with that trace of a smile. “Good day, Corporal.” He smiled more broadly at Alison. “Mrs. Stan.”

Hendricks didn’t turn away from the bastard, just kept his left hand cupped around the IV bag, right on the sword hilt, letting his fingers play on the leather that wrapped it. He gestured for Alison to get moving, and she did, not taking her eyes off of Spellman either. “Yeah,” Hendricks said. “I’m sure I’ll be walking through your door again real soon.”

“I’m sure you will, too,” Spellman said without a trace of irony.

Hendricks let the door close behind him, avoiding a last look at that room by the entry as though his life depended on it. The deal was done, but he felt less than satisfied. That was how a deal with a devil went, didn’t it? Feeling like you got fucked, but your pants were still on?

As the door closed behind him, shutting out that smell, those sounds, and giving him the curious sense that a gateway was shutting to something like another world, he was left standing on the porch of a farmhouse next to Alison, staring out at the messed up town car that they’d taken from Lerner and Duncan.

“Now what?” Alison asked.

As if he knew. Other than getting the IV bag to Erin, he had nothing. “This,” he said, waving the banana bag, the liquid within catching the light and sparkling as he waved it in front of her face. “This and … hell, I don’t know. Find those bicycling bastards somehow.”

“You think they’re just gonna stick around and let us run them over again?” Alison asked. She didn’t look all that impressed with his plan.

“Seems like they came out of it hurting less than we did,” Hendricks said, a little stiffly. He could feel his pride burning, still, from the confrontation with Spellman. It was sticking in his craw something fierce that he’d backed down. Hendricks hated backing down. The only thing he hated worse was losing, and he’d gotten a real good sense that losing was approaching on the horizon if he kept sailing toward Spellman.

“In the sense that there are probably still forty of them left to the four of us, yes,” she said. “But we killed a lot of them. And I don’t think they’re going to flee town just because we ran a few of them down. Unless that’s usually how it works with these hotspots?”

Hendricks felt his eyelids flutter at her a few times. She had a damned annoying point. “No. That’s not usually how it works. Demons don’t typically flee hotspots. I don’t know how these vembra’nonn work, but … no. With things going like they are around here, they’ll probably stick around for a while yet.”

“Your flock of vembra’nonn are irrelevant, Lafayette Hendricks,” came a voice out of the darkness. He spun to see her there, under the porch light, pale as a fresh Wisconsin snowfall, her red hair blazing behind her and those dark eyes threatening to out-blacken the night sky. “There is a greater danger approaching this town than some kamikaze cyclists.”

“Well, hello, Starling,” Hendricks said with as much aplomb as he could gather to him on the short notice afforded by her appearance. “Is it the end of the world again already?”

“You mock, but it comes nonetheless,” Starling said, and Hendricks would have sworn the shadows around her eyes moved in a way that the light shining on her face couldn’t have supported. “And soon—only a day away.”

Alison stood there, under the porch light, staring at the redhead. She felt it build inside, that pressure, the need, and then she could hold it back no longer. She let out a long, cackling laugh that split the night, echoing over the flat grass surrounding the farmhouse, corralled by the trees that edged the horizon, barely visible as sentries against the surrounding night. It was a good laugh, a hearty one, and when it drew the frown from Hendricks and the cool look of surprise from Starling, she found she still couldn’t quite get it under control, the wracking hilarity bubbling up from within like its origin was somewhere in her toes.

She was doubled over, feeling the pull and tug of muscles warring over her direction. Consciously, she wanted to be upright again, but the humor—God, the sheer humor of it!—pulled her earthward. Why was it so funny to her? Even as she laughed, she knew it wasn’t really
that
funny.

“Care to share the joke with the rest of the class?” Hendricks asked. He looked odd without his cowboy hat, his brown hair pointing in every direction, matted down in front where the Stetson had pushed it flat and spiked in back where his stint on his back at her parents’ house had given him a wicked case of bed head. This, too, gave her an inescapable bout of giggles, adding right to what was already a losing battle with mirth.

“It’s funny because she’s a redhead, and she said—” Alison felt her lips stretch, her belly feeling that slow ache from the hilarity of it all. “Like Little Orphan Annie, because she’s a redhead and ‘only a day away’… Never mind.” She drew herself upright again. “It was probably one of those things you can only appreciate in the moment.”

“I do not understand,” Starling said, staring coldly at her.

“I figured the meaning behind that one might go sailing over your head,” Alison replied. Why would a super-powered hooker know the words? “It was just …” She sniffled a little, her nose running in the night from the laughter of the moment. She could look back on it now with the appropriate perspective; it wasn’t that funny, but everything else was just too crazy for it not to have made a strange, hilarious diversion.

“There is a threat at hand,” Starling said.

“Is this the one that’s gonna cause me to lose all hope?” Hendricks asked. He didn’t sound too impressed to Alison. “Because I can’t keep track of all these scary things anymore.”

Starling just kept those dark eyes nailed on him. Alison didn’t like that look, it was just a little too appraising for her taste. “This is the next of your trials.”

“I don’t really go in for trials,” Hendricks said with a low sigh. He was walking upright now, like a real boy and everything. Already a far cry from the shattered mess that had required her help just to get into the house a few minutes earlier. “I’m just a demon hunter. Trials mean someone’s putting me through something I don’t care to go through. I just fight.”

“You will experience trials,” Starling said, like that was the last word on the matter. “You will be tested.”

“This conversation is doing a mighty fine job of that,” Hendricks said.

“The town is in danger,” Starling said, like it was some kind of conclusion. Alison just watched her, feeling a little like a kid while her parents were arguing, talking adult stuff in serious tones.

“This town is always in trouble,” Hendricks said with a sigh. He was recovered enough to drop that wall of anger that had cropped up when Spellman had been telling him how it was. Alison had watched that, too, wondering if the cowboy was going to push the man. (Was Spellman a man? The OOCs kept calling him a screen, whatever that was.) She hadn’t cared for the odds, but she also had a contingency plan in case things had snaked in a downward direction on that one. She eased her hand onto it now, a slapjack she had ready to hammer Hendricks on the head if he got stupid again. She was not signed up to die if the cowboy got a sudden case of the moronic.

“And it is in trouble again,” Starling said.

“I saw this episode last week,” Alison said, “and the week before.”

“The threat is new,” Starling said.

“Please tell me it’s the bicyclists,” Hendricks said.