Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (30 page)

“It’s all right,” she said, hugging him again, her head pressed against his uniform, face pushing into his chest. It took him a minute to realize she was sniffing him. “Why do you smell like smoke? And beer.” She came off him in rough amazement, confusion clouding her pretty face. “You don’t even drink.”

“I had one beer,” he admitted, “like I said, I needed to work something out.”

“Uh huh,” she said, just absolutely flummoxed. It wasn’t like he’d ever done this before, or given her reason for suspicion. “You weren’t working it out with Erin Harris, were you?”

“I saw her there, at Fast Freddie’s,” Arch said, “but I wasn’t there with her, no.”

“Okay,” she said, but there was still a little concern there. He knew it wasn’t something she was going to press; the advantage of small-town living was that tomorrow she’d be sure to hear from someone who’d been in Fast Freddie’s that he was there with Hendricks, not a woman. She brightened just a little. “I hope you have some energy left.”

“A little,” he said, hesitant.

“Oh, come on, Arch,” she said, a little plaintive. “I’m on day one of ovulating, and if we want to have a baby, I need you to—”

“I know, I know,” he said, feeling his own discomfort magnify as she rubbed a hand along his chest. “Let me shower first? Been a long day.”

“Okay,” she said and gave him a full kiss. She hesitated and made a face as he started down the short hallway to the bathroom. “Maybe brush your teeth, too?”

+ + +

Hendricks flicked the switch as he dragged into the motel room. It was everything that had been promised for twenty bucks a night. He’d negotiated a better rate for a week’s stay. The odds weren’t good that the hotspot would dry up in less than seven day’s, and cash was the king of all fungible assets. He’d paid upfront and the terms had gotten suddenly more generous.

The room was all done in one shade, something between mauve and taupe, a tragic blend that probably should have died aborning. Instead it lingered here, in a motel on the far edge of nowhere, in a room with a lonely double bed with a threadbare comforter that was just a little too crimson for the rest of the room. Hendricks didn’t know interior design, but he recognized what didn’t work, and this sure as shit didn’t.

The place had a smell like it’d been used for fucking and running a few too many times; a sweaty stink of bodies that had accumulated over years and years that no air freshener could touch. Like a locker room that had been given a cursory cleaning. He fiddled with the air conditioner, a monstrosity stretched out under the window. With a click, it turned on, filling the humid, warm and stuffy room with the sounds of air blowing and machinery humming beneath it. A faintly cool breeze blew out of the vent on top.

Hendricks peeled off his coat and threw it onto the chair in the corner, a sad, faded recliner that was right at home with the rest of the decor. He set the hat upside down upon the dresser delicately and looked at himself in the mirror above the sink, which was conveniently out in the main area of the room. His dark hair was sweated down into place, molded by the hat. He’d seen the guys who pull off a hat in the movies, and their hair was all sculpted perfection underneath. His looked like hell. He didn’t even bother to fix it. What was the point, after all?

He peeled off his black t-shirt, which was stuck to his body after a long day’s ride and then the fight and subsequent time in the bar followed by the walk to the motel. The steady combo of going from hot outside to cold indoors with air conditioning had affixed it to his skin, and it made a noise as he removed it. He was in pretty good shape, the product of a workout routine and calisthenics he undertook every morning. It gave him abs, gave him pecs, some pretty nice ones, too. Not that anyone would notice under the drover coat. That was okay, though, or it had been for the last few years. There was a bruise under his arm from the fight with the Chu’ala. He stared at himself in the mirror before kicking off his cowboy boots.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up. In Tulsa he’d scraped with a really nasty beast that had broken his arm. That’d been weeks of recovery, but he’d been fortunate enough to kill the thing before it had finished him off. It was a close one, though, the most recent of more injuries than he wanted to count. Too many.

Luck was a fickle thing for guys in his profession, and the girls too, few of them as there were. Time was, you’d run across the same people in new hotspots, and most of the time you’d meet with a grudging respect, a professional nod. Same faces, new places. Even before the sudden proliferation of hotspots, the faces he had remembered from the hotspots he’d “grown up” in when he started out had begun to disappear. Every once in a while he’d have beers with some of the other old pros, and they’d talk about how so-and-so had hung it up, retired, but more often how such-and-such had been found dead, killed by a demon if it wasn’t one of the ones that ate you afterward. And there were plenty that just disappeared. They’d tip another back in honor, and that was probably all the acknowledgment that poor bastard ever got. Lonely business, killing demons.

He put his fingers on the bruise and felt himself blanch. It wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t done forming yet. It wasn’t always like this, but it had been this way long enough that he was just about used to being bruised all the time. Fuck. He hadn’t even been looking for a fight. He cursed the Chu’ala. What a bastard, throwing down like that. Having to spill everything to the deputy was worse, though. It wasn’t like it was the first time Hendricks had gotten into a public scrape, but it was the first time he’d ever been confronted about it afterward. By a cop, no less. Most people just thought he was fighting, and tended to skitter off when he pulled the sword. He only pulled the gun when he got truly desperate—and once when a Tuskun demon he’d been after had turned out to have a human sidekick, a partner in crime. That wasn’t much fun.

He blinked at himself in the mirror, his brown eyes looking more than a little bleary. He felt old at twenty-five. He shouldn’t, but it had been a long five years. It felt longer than the two he’d been in the Corps, even with the time he’d spent in Iraq, which was saying something, because that hadn’t been much of a picnic.

In all the time he’d been killing demons, he’d never—not once—spilled it all to anyone like he had with Arch at the bar. It couldn’t even be blamed on drink, because he’d gotten drunk with truckers, with strangers, even a few rodeo cowboys one night after a brutal fight outside Cheyenne. He’d looked worse than the guy that had just gotten ejected off a bull to land on his neck. Took some doing. He’d never spilled to any of them, not even after a ton of beers. But a Tennessee sheriff’s deputy pointed a gun at him—like that hadn’t ever happened before—and he’d folded without even a single drink and just laid it all out. Fuck.

“Must be getting old,” he told the face in the mirror. And lonely. He didn’t say that part out loud, though.

+ + +

Arch usually slept well after being with his wife—in his less guarded moments he would call it making love, but never anything cruder than that—but last night he hadn’t slept well at all. He had the early shift, daytime, and had just fallen asleep at some point after five when the alarm went off at six. He fended off Alison’s gentle suggestions for a repeat of last night’s activities. Not that he might not have been convinced with a little effort on her part, but he knew that she’d be after him for it again that evening, so he took a pass. Normally, he would have gladly gone for it again. This morning, however, he was distracted.

He rubbed his eyes as he guided the Ford Explorer into the parking space in front of the sheriff’s station, shifting it into park and removing the keys from the ignition. He let out a long sigh and started to open the door before he caught motion outside the passenger-side window. It was Hayes, pulling her car into the spot next to him and waving with far too much energy given the hour.

“Hey,” she said, practically leaping out of her car to walk beside him across the parking lot to the entrance. “Who was that hot cowboy with you last night?”

“Just a guy I know,” Arch muttered, avoiding the full truth and an outright lie with one carefully constructed statement. He hated to lie and tried not to. He leaned in favor of just leaving out a few facts when he found it necessary to avoid the whole truth. He cast her a veiled look of irritation. “How is it that I had one beer and you had twelve, and I feel like I got dragged around the farm on the back of a surly bronc and you look like you had eighteen Starbucks this morning?”

“Like I could get Starbucks in this town,” Erin said with a laugh. “Just takes some getting used to, Arch. Your resistance is low. The prescription is more drinking. You should come out tonight. Bring the cowboy.”

“I don’t think so,” Arch said, back to all business—the business of covering up the crazy he’d witnessed and partaken in last night. “I have a feeling Hendricks—the cowboy—is busy. And you know, Alison was put off enough that I came dragging in as late as I did last night.”

“You didn’t tell her you were going out?” Erin gave him a curious look, a half-frown that said,
This is SO unlike you
.

“Didn’t know I was,” Arch said, treading close to the truth-line again. “I didn’t expect to run into Hendricks.”

“I was watching your conversation,” Erin said as he opened the door for her. “You didn’t look too happy with what he had to say,” she suggested delicately.

Arch tried to decide whether to blow off her observation entirely or keep tap-dancing to avoid the truth. He ultimately landed somewhere in between. “You know how it is; sometimes people tell you things you don’t really want to hear.” It was true, and even somewhat applicable to the situation at hand.

She let it drop as they passed beyond the counter. As usual, there wasn’t a soul in the waiting area, putting the lie to the name of the place. Behind the counter was a buzz of activity, though, or at least as much of a buzz as the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department ever got. Which was to say that the sheriff was clearly in his office, probably wrapping up after last night’s patrol that he’d undertaken all by his lonesome, and a couple of the other guys were filling out paperwork they hadn’t done the night before. Arch hadn’t done his, either, and would have to take care of it before he headed out the door this morning, but first things came first. He grabbed his time card and punched in.

“Hey, Arch,” Sheriff Reeve called from his office, “got a second?”

Arch felt a twinge of apprehension at being summoned into his boss’s office, and let his long legs carry him thataway. After Reeve gestured for him to close the door and sit down, he did both, and sat there numbly, that odd feeling of dread hanging over him while Reeve leaned back in his chair, looking ridiculously relaxed and surprisingly alert for a man who’d done an overnight. “Got a call last night about some possible shots fired somewhere around the center of town,” Reeve started. “Figured I’d check with you since you don’t live too far off from there. You hear anything last night?”

Arch felt the tension fill him and tried to keep his face from puckering in reaction. “Near the center of town?” He tried for pensive and thought about praying that it would work. “Seems like that would have been something I’d have heard.”

“Yeah,” Reeve said, not looking too serious about the whole thing, “thought I’d ask you first. Came from the Widow Winslow that lives off First Ave, though, so I figured she might just be a little skittish about kids lighting off fireworks again. Not like it’s the first time she’s called in on some nuisance that turned out to be no big damned deal, you know?”

“Sure,” Arch said. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.” He felt as if he had a big sign proclaiming him a liar hanging over his head and wondered if the heat he felt in his face would give him away.

Reeve kind of squinted a frown at him, still back in his chair like it was a chaise or something, feet up on his desk. “Say, you doing all right? Everything okay with Alison?”

“Yeah,” Arch said, almost fumbling it, but sticking the landing without stuttering. “She’s still … you know, wanting a baby and all that.”

Reeve gave a low chuckle. “You dog, you. Can’t help but rub it in this old married man’s face how much you’re getting laid, can you? Well,” he pointed a finger at Arch, “let me tell you something, newlywed. Your day will come. Sure, it’s all hot and heavy now, in the beginning, but as time goes by and you start adding kids, those legs will close and you’ll start to get laid on holidays and special occasions. Worse yet, you’ll realize after a kid or three that really, that’s about all you can handle.” Reeve’s gaze stayed centered on him the whole time, his cautionary tale just passing right over Arch. “Pretty soon you’ll be over fifty, your hair will be all gone,” he eyed Arch’s nearly-shaven head, “which is maybe less of a concern for you than it was for me, but still—and that habit you’ve accumulated of getting laid only ever so often, it’ll be permanent in your wife’s eyes. So enjoy it while you can, cowboy.”

Arch’s ears perked up at the last part. “Excuse me?”

Reeve looked far-off for a second, then came back to Arch. “I said enjoy it while you can, because life gets busy and fucking tends to go by the wayside when kids start popping up. It’s like the thing that screwing creates destroys its own genesis.” Reeve seemed to ponder this for a moment. “Which, honestly, ain’t unlike the kids themselves in what they do to their parents.”

Arch tried to smile politely at this, nodding as though the Sheriff had unlocked one of the secrets of the universe to him.

“Oh, what the hell do you know,” Reeve said, waving his hand at him dismissively. “I know that look, that nod. It’s a, ‘Sure, old man, but that shit won’t ever happen to me.’ Well, hot shot, I’m here to tell you that it will, but if you figure out how to avoid it without going outside your marriage, Mr. Hometown Hero, please tell us lesser mortals how to do it, will you? Spare a thought for the little guys?” Reeve wore a sidelong smile, with just enough sadness in it that Arch wanted to get the hell out of there rather than delve much deeper into it. “Have a good shift.” Reeve gestured him away, gentler this time, and picked up a patrol report.