Depths: Southern Watch #2 (19 page)

“I’ve never even heard of anything like that happening,” Erin said, frowning. “Don’t they open the sluice gates to let more water out in case of something like this happening?”

“I guess they are, but the rain is just coming too damned fast,” Reeve said. “As for hearing of this happening before on the Caledonia River, you wouldn’t have. It’s called a once-in-century flood, and you’re not exactly close to a century of age, are you?” He ran fingers over his face, like he could just massage the tiredness away. “We’re going to need to build a sandbag line along the most vulnerable flood plane.”

“Sounds like fun,” Erin said. “When do we start on that project?”

“Not until tomorrow. The TVA is working on putting a crew together.”

Erin felt her face crumple in a frown again. “Didn’t you say it was going to start flooding tomorrow? Shouldn’t we start tonight?”

Reeve threw his arms wide. “No sandbags. I got nothing to do until they come up with it. And honestly, murderers and psychos slaughtering people and causing multi-car pileups on the freeway is more my area of expertise than flood control.” Reeve’s hands came back down to rest on the arms of his chair. “Which is a grim thought. Honest to God, it’s like this whole damned town is just going straight to hell.”

Erin felt a flash of discomfort at that turn of phrase, remembering Hendricks’s books on demons. “Sounds like we’re just in the middle of a run of bad luck,” she said, hoping that was really was the case.

* * *

Gideon knew he needed fertilizer. Tons of it, probably, though he’d need some other things too. He was spending his time splayed out on the bed, his tablet computer in front of him, just doing research. He couldn’t sleep, not after today’s excitement, and especially not with the prospect of what he might turn loose tomorrow.

So he just kept reading, page after page. Nothing about it looked too difficult, and after the scouting run he’d done earlier, he was excited. A couple of rent-a-cops were the only thing standing between him and his objective. He’d probably be able to just drive right in.

The even better news was that there was a fertilizer dealer right here in town. Set up for big accounts, too, according to the website. He’d just have to pretend he was a farmer, looking to set up with someone, and then he could get all the fertilizer he needed.

Then he got a little further down the page and stopped. He could feel the frown creasing his forehead.

Where the hell was he supposed to get THAT?

* * *

Hendricks started to come to, his head pressed against the hard plastic edge of a door handle. It took him a minute to realize what it was because it was dark, and only the sight of lights whipping by occasionally above him cracked through the blackness outside. There was a faint glow above him, over the seat, he realized after a minute. By that time he’d figured out he was on his back in the back seat of a car.

And his head ached like a motherfucker.

His eye throbbed as he started to sit up. He felt pressure on his wrists and ankles when he did, realizing that he was wearing handcuffs. That paused him for a moment, and a voice came from the seat in front of him.

“He’s awake.”

“Oh, good,” came another voice, this one a little more droll. Sounded a little like a Boston accent. Or Jersey. Somewhere Northeast. “Maybe now we can get some answers.”

“Answers to what?” Hendricks asked, shifting his body to try and sit up. He was in the back seat of a sedan of some sort, not exactly luxury. Cloth seats rubbed against his cheek as he dragged himself up. His ribs were still protesting against the rough treatment they’d received two fights ago.

“You’ll find out,” the guy in the driver’s seat said. There was a shift as the car started bumping along, and Hendricks realized they’d left the paved road behind.

Hendricks’s mind raced, feeling a little like he had to think while his heart was causing his brain to throb with each beat. He had a feeling he was heading into a torture situation, something which he hadn’t really had to deal with before. There’d always been the threat, of course, when he was in the service, but it had never actually happened to him. He pulled on the handcuffs and heard them clink as the car hit a bump and his head whacked the door. Shit.

* * *

Arch thought he’d gone the wrong way the minute he got the Explorer out of the driveway, but he couldn’t be sure. When he got to the point that he doubted himself enough to turn around, he drove a hundred miles an hour with his sirens and lights on back in the opposite direction only to find not a single thing. The road didn’t exactly lend itself to tracking a car, not being a dirt path. And he wasn’t supposed to drive that fast on a spare tire.

He slammed a hand into the steering wheel and felt the pain in his wrist. He’d pay for that later. He started to reach for the radio—again, for the thousandth time—and stopped himself. The only thing calling in would do was provoke a flurry of questions and land himself in hot water. He made a seething noise as he blew air out through gritted teeth and slapped the Explorer’s plasti-leather interior panel next to the window. It rattled from the force of his strike.

Where to now? What to do? They were tough questions, and they weren’t going to get answers by driving randomly down Lihue Lane, a winding road that stretched five miles in either direction. Hendricks could be halfway across the county by now, in the hands of the demons—whoever they were—and Arch had no one to ask for help.

Arch thudded his palm against the wheel again. The shock of pain ran up his wrist, but it put him back in the moment. It was the same feeling he got when he’d hit a guy playing football. He could be dazed, trying to think of the next move, but when that hit happened, it always woke him up.

The road he was on was taking him back to town. Where the sheriff was waiting, somewhere. Arch looked down at his phone and thumbed the faceplate on. He’d missed twenty calls, all from the same number. Whatever Reeve wanted to talk to him about—and he had a fair idea—he’d probably expressed it in the fifteen voicemails he’d left.

He hit the outskirts still without any idea. “God … what do I do?” he asked.

He didn’t expect a literal answer by any means, but he felt the tug of his heart guiding the wheel, and he steered himself down the familiar streets toward home.

* * *

They’d pulled off into a little wooded area, Hendricks knew, some copse of trees he could see by looking out the window on the other side of the car. His feet were visible, too, cowboy boots up against the opposite door’s panel. He thought about busting up the door, but why? So some poor bastard cop would see it, stop them, and get killed? Pointless.

He’d probably need all his strength to endure what was going to happen next, anyway.

Hendricks heard the car stop, felt the subtle shift in momentum that threatened to roll him off his seat. The car dinged as one of the doors opened and the guy in the passenger side got out before it was even shut off. Hendricks heard the driver scrape the keys in the ignition as he pulled them out. Cool, wet air hit him in the face as the driver opened his door.

One of the seatbelt buckles was right in his bruised ribs, and Hendricks had a feeling it was not going to get any more comfortable from here, fuck it all. He could hear a muted conversation between his two captors just outside the car, but it was too hushed for him to make anything out.

He could hear his ragged breathing, and he tried to steady it. He tried to scoot, to bring his hands down and around his ass so he could get them in front of him, but the door opened before he could make any progress. Strong arms pulled him out, not even letting him get his feet underneath him.

They dragged him, one on each side, backwards into the woods. Hendricks wished for his weapon of last resort, the switchblade he’d fastened in his hat until just last week, but he knew that it was out there, somewhere beyond his sight—with Arch.

* * *

Arch paused outside the door of his apartment before letting the key hit the lock. A part of him resisted going inside. He thought about driving around, aimless. Calhoun County was only three hundred and fifty square miles. Sure, it would be utterly fruitless, but at least he’d be doing something.

He shook off that feeling like he shook off the chill as he opened his front door and stepped inside. Alison had turned the heater on. Not a big surprise there, she didn’t do well in winter, except for fashion-wise.

“I’m home,” he said. He didn’t advertise it particularly loudly, but he didn’t have to. Alison was sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead. She looked over at him as he entered, her long blond hair falling around her shoulders. She had changed out of her work clothes into denim jeans and a grey t-shirt. She looked good, he reflected as she stared back at him evenly.

“Oh?” Her voice was as flat as the look she gave him. “I thought you were going to be working late.” She didn’t seem to care either way, just going by tone.

“I just came home for a little bit,” Arch said, and now he felt the chill in the room. He took a step toward where she sat in the living room, felt the tension in his body. “Couldn’t, uh … I don’t know, I couldn’t …”

“Long patrol, huh?” She didn’t sound particularly sympathetic. She didn’t really sound particularly … anything, lately. Just dull, flat, like she had no emotions left at all.

“Long day,” Arch said and lowered his head. “Did you hear about the murders?”

“Yeah,” Alison said, and he looked up to find her expression hadn’t changed a whit. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, like she was tired. It wasn’t a look he could recall seeing on her face before. She didn’t look mad … just different. “Never heard of anything like that before. Not in Midian.”

“No one’s heard of anything like that around here before,” Arch said. “Let alone that thing this afternoon.”

“Big crash,” Alison said, nodding her head. “Not an accident either, I hear.”

Arch shook his head. “Nope.”

Alison looked away from him. “Quite a day.”

Arch couldn’t really think of much to say to that. “Yep.” He wondered if it’d be capped off with Hendricks dying.

* * *

For Hendricks, being dragged by the demons was like what he remembered of being picked up by his parents as a kid. He was facing the opposite direction of the one he was being dragged, trying to crank his neck around to look.

“Little farther,” the one on his left said. It was the guy from the passenger side. He was wearing a dark suit that looked like it was tinged with purple. Hendricks had to look twice to make sure. “We’re almost out of earshot of the house over that hill there.”

Hendricks didn’t love the sound of that, either. He didn’t love any of this. Not that he could think of anyone that would.

His heels were thumping with the natural curves of the ground. His shoulder was pissed at him, too, making a little racket, pain firing up here and there. He didn’t know which fight that had come from.

The air was crisp, and he looked up to see a black sky above. The chill on his skin wasn’t just from the weather, that much he knew.

“Gonna rain again,” the guy in the purple suit said.

“I’ve been wondering about that,” the other said. He was the one that sounded like he was from Boston. “When it comes to atmospheric conditions—”

“Not now,” Purple Suit said. He talked softly, one of the gentlest voices Hendricks could recall.

They went quiet and stopped after another twenty yards or so. They tossed Hendricks to the ground like he weighed no more than a piece of firewood, and he rolled in a pile of dead leaves. He came to rest face down, hands still cuffed behind him, legs chained together.

“We’re curious about that redhead,” Purple Suit said abruptly.

"You want to know if she's single? Ask her yourself." Hendricks felt his head rock from a sharp slap from Boston. It stung more than anything. “I’m curious about her, too,” Hendricks said, compressing his neck to look up. He rested his chin on the dirt, and started to roll over. “She’s not exactly forthcoming with the details of her life, if you know what I mean.”

“You look like you’re cozy with her,” Boston said. Hendricks couldn’t see either of them; they were lurking above him and back a little ways.

“Not really,” Hendricks said, trying to roll. “She showed up a week or so ago, saved my ass a couple times, then vanished until today.” His shoulder was now super pissed at him for trying to roll.

There was a pause behind him. “Forgive us,” Boston’s sharp voice came back, “but we think there’s more to it than that.”

“I’m sure there is,” Hendricks said with a grunt as he rolled onto his back. His arms were now pinned underneath him, but at least he could look the two of them in the face. Boston was watching him, just a few paces away. Purple Suit was a little farther back, standing off to the side, staring into the woods with his fingers on his chin. “But she hasn’t shared any more with me. You got a real woman of mystery there. First time I met her, she jumped off an overpass and disappeared before she hit the ground.”

“No shit?” This from Boston.

“No shit,” Hendricks said, staring him down. “Makes me think she might be one of your people.”

“‘Our people’?” Boston’s voice carried a note of offense.

“You know,” Hendricks said, with as much of a shrug as he could manage with his hands behind his back. “Demon.”

“Uh huh,” Boston said, watching him with a thoroughly unamused expression. His lips were tight, eyes slitted. “‘Our people.’ Tell me something, demon hunter,” and the guy said almost like it was a slur, “you ever meet any of ‘our people’ that you didn’t kill?”

“Maybe a few here and there,” Hendricks said, and felt the wet dirt against his hands. “Never met one who crossed me I didn’t let the air out of, though.”

“Oh, we got a feisty one, Duncan,” Boston said, looking over at his partner, who was still staring off into the woods. Hendricks could hear the drip of water from the branches above in the gap of silence once the demon stopped speaking. “Kind of a loudmouth considering you don’t have your sword or your gun.” Boston took a step closer. “Don’t know what ‘our kind’ does to ‘your kind’?”