Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (40 page)

“This is… not bad,” Starling said, presumably making a pronouncement about the experience of driving rather than her performance at it. She had her hands where he’d told her to put them, at ten and two. Or rather, where he’d helped her position them, because she didn’t know what he meant when he said, “At ten and two.” Her hands had been cold like they’d been sitting in the freezer, which just gave him more grounds for the suspicion that she’d chill his cock if he ever got it near her. Erin was warm, though. And unconscious, which he was quick to blame himself for (and might have been even more of a douser to his libido than Starling).

They sped along the highway toward Midian’s downtown, Starling tugging the wheel a little more than was necessary. It was causing the car to—not quite swerve, but close. “Whoa,” Hendricks said. “Take it easy.” She gave him an inquiring look, and he knew she had no clue what he was saying. “With the wheel. Don’t jerk it so much to correct. Be gentle with it.” Starling corrected the next time in a much smoother manner, and he nodded approval. “How did you know they were coming for me?”

“Word spreads,” she said coolly, as she did everything else.

“Well, thanks for the help,” he said, trying to push the gratitude before the next thing he was going to say. “But didn’t it occur to you to mention that they might also be going after Arch?”

She didn’t look up from the road before speaking. “My concern was you, not anyone else. In this, I fulfilled my aims.”

“Don’t think I’m not appreciative,” Hendricks said, “but I’m not the only one in this particular fight.” He paused as they came into the town, Starling riding the brakes harder than she needed to before they came upon a stop sign. “Mind telling me what this is all about? You show up before, all mysterious, and—” He looked back as a red and blue light flashed through the cab. “Shit. Pull over.” He looked back and waved her to the side of the road. “Pull over.”

“Why?” She gazed at him with wonder, like she was genuinely curious.

He stared back at her. “Because that’s what we do when a cop pulls up behind us with lights on.”

She stared back, impassive, as she guided the car to the shoulder. “I thought we were going to save the other police officer?”

Hendricks took a breath. “Yeah, that was the sentiment. Unfortunately, I don’t know where he lives.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him but had no time to say anything else before there was a knock at the window. Starling stared for a moment at the door before Hendricks gestured toward the mechanism and Starling rolled it down.

“You must be Sheriff Reeve,” Hendricks said, before the man could say a word. He was older, balding, a little paunchy. Hendricks hadn’t talked to Arch about his job much, but the way the man wore his seniority, he had the feel of a guy in charge. Hendricks hadn’t even caught the name from Arch; it had been plastered all over campaign posters in the town square that had yet to be removed.

“Yeah,” Reeve said, leaning over just slightly to look at Hendricks. “And?”

“Sorry,” Hendricks said. “We were just on our way to see Arch.”

Reeve gave them a perplexed look, narrowed eyes and all. “And you’re doing this in one of my deputies’ cars because?”

“We’re just visiting town,” Hendricks said, trying to lay it on smooth, “and I was drinking with Erin over at Fast Freddie’s. Well, she had a little too much, so she’s sleeping it off over at my motel. I gotta go talk to Arch, though, I was supposed to meet up with him after his shift was done at three and I think we missed connecting because I ended up hanging out with Erin—” Hendricks was talking as fast as he could, trying to show he was a little wasted. It played into the next part of his plan.

“That’s a real fine story,” Reeve said, and Hendricks could tell he was weighing all the stuff that had just come out. There was definitely a heavy air of doubt, like the man didn’t want to accept what was being said at face value. Hendricks suspected he had the run of the man, though; loyalty would mean something to him, and dropping the names of two of his deputies would at least give Hendricks some breathing room. Maybe. “But you were still doing fifty in a thirty-five.” He gazed from Hendricks to Starling. “And swerving. Ma’am, have you had anything to drink?”

Starling cocked her head at him, still serious. “No.”

Hendricks could tell she was ready to say something else, but he stopped her. “She’s my designated driver.”

“Uh huh,” Reeve said, staring down at them. “Tell you what,” he seemed to decide. “We’ll head on over to Arch’s, see what he has to say about all this.”

“That sounds great,” Hendricks said with a smile. “You mind leading the way? I’m pretty wasted and she doesn’t know this town for shit.”

Reeve gave him something just short of a leer—trying to keep the politeness on until he knew for fact that Hendricks was a lying scumbag. “All right,” was the measured response that came back, but the implication it carried was,
Fuck you. Try and run and I will own your ass for all time
.

Hendricks gestured for Starling to roll up the window and start the engine. They waited in silence as the red-and-blue lights flashed past them, going slow, and after a moment Starling brought the car back on the road to follow the police cruiser.

+ + +

Arch rolled into the bathroom, managing to turn the tables on the demon that was on him like a duck on a June bug, slamming the thing’s head into the bathroom sink. It bared its teeth at him, demon teeth, like pointed canines you’d see on a vampire in a movie. He brought its head down toward him in a sudden jerk after holding it back for just a moment, and let it clip the top of its head on the sink. He heard the cracking of the ceramic countertop, the demon’s face looked dazed, and he drove it back toward him again with so much force that the lip of the counter broke with the impact and the demon went limp for a moment.

It was all Arch needed to get a leg up and shove the thing, hard, into the shower curtain, where it got entangled. He got to his feet and pulled the shattered bowl of the sink out of the small pedestal, holding it like an awkward baseball bat, water spraying out of the plumbing at him. He took the whole thing and swung like a champ at the demon just getting up from the tub. He aimed at the neck, figuring it was the weakest part of the whole body. The sink shattered upon impact, raining fragments into Arch’s unprotected skin. He was rewarded with a hiss like the one he’d heard before, then the room was lit up by a flare of orange light. The thing disappeared in a burst of dark flame, leaving behind the smell of sulfur and brimstone.

The sink was ruined but Arch didn’t give a damn. He looked for a weapon and came up with the shower rod, since the sink was too fragmented to do him much good. The rod was already ripped out of the wall from where the demon had torn it down in landing, and he readied himself for the last of them, the woman, whom he could hear out in the kitchen still, and he saw red thinking about what she might be doing to Alison. If Alison was even still alive. He felt a lurch in his stomach and started toward the door. As he passed the gargantuan hole in the wall, he looked out and saw the switchblade just waiting on the carpet up ahead.

“Did you get him?” came a female voice, kind of husky, and he couldn’t remember her name. Severson? Amanda, maybe?

“Yeah,” Arch said, lowering his voice, making himself cough. “I got him.” He wanted to be wearing clothes, but this wasn’t the moment, not with what was at stake. All hell had broken loose upon his house, his home, and he could feel the rage covering all the aches and pains that ought to be wearing on him. He wondered if anyone would have called the Sheriff’s Department yet. One of his neighbors was elderly, the woman below him. Doubtful she’d hear much of anything but
Wheel of Fortune
at this time of night. The ones on the other side of his kitchen were younger, though, and from out of town originally. They might call 911 if they heard what was happening in his place.

“Let’s get them out of here, then,” came the voice of the female demon. He was almost certain her name was Amanda. He remembered the mug shot. “Hollywood’s waiting.”

Arch pondered his course. “Gimme a hand,” he said, rough and low. He heard movement out in the kitchen, footsteps coming toward him along with something being gently set down on the floor outside. He hoped it was Alison. He hoped Amanda wasn’t giving much thought to his request, that she was dumb. He was betting on that, actually. Smart people generally didn’t become common criminals, after all. If they went to crime at all, they generally became uncommon ones.

He saw her turn the corner at the door and come in, not even bothering to be cautious. He wondered if she was high right now, strung out on something that could make a demon dulled and slow. She twitched in surprise when she saw him, but he was already coming at her, driving the end of the shower rod into her midsection. It didn’t pierce the skin, probably because it was too dull, but then, he hadn’t meant it to. Arch ran her as hard as he could forward, and she fell back, pushed into the bedroom door that was directly opposite the bathroom.

While she was falling, Arch leapt sideways through the hole in the wall, diving for the switchblade. He came up with it after face planting, hard. He wasn’t a martial artist, more of a brawler, so rolling wasn’t something that came naturally to him, but he didn’t care. He had the blade and he was turned around, coming to his feet in a lunge toward the bedroom door.

He caught a furious look from Amanda as she rounded the corner heading for him, a serious mad-on coming through the haze of whatever she was on. The blade caught her beneath the sternum and it slid in as her anger turned to surprise. Arch was face to face with her but he dropped to his knees and put all his weight into it as he slid down, ripping the knife into where her guts would be. She stared down at him, kneeling before her in his nakedness, a stunned look on her face, like she couldn’t believe she’d gotten gutted by a nude black man. It lasted for about a second before the flames broke loose, starting at the place where he’d torn her open, progressing swiftly over the exterior of her body and flaring in her eyes and mouth as she screamed her way back to oblivion.

Exhausted, all his adrenaline blown out in one good burst, Arch fell back and crawled on his hands and knees to the kitchen, to Alison, and picked up her head and clutched it against him. He was listening for breath, and when he finally heard it, he thanked his God in a whisper that was ragged with worry and relief.

+ + +

“How do you think he’s doing?” Hendricks asked, more to cut the nervous tension in the car than because he thought she’d be able to tell him. He didn’t want to be responsible for someone else, which was why he’d never taken on a partner in the demon-hunting game. It didn’t have to be a solitary occupation, after all, and lots of people liked to team up on either a short or long-term basis. That wasn’t for him. He knew there were others like him, too, loners, and he could read the looks in their eyes. No entanglements, that was the rule. Just blow around from hotspot to hotspot, doing their thing, not having to worry if anyone else got hurt. It was sweet enough, for a while.

Starling didn’t look at him as she answered. “Fighting a demon without a blessed weapon puts a heavy burden upon your friend.”

“He’s not my friend,” Hendricks said out of rote habit. When Starling looked over at him, her face close-guarded silence and accusation, he elaborated. “I don’t have any friends.”

“You seemed friendly enough with the woman who was with you outside your dwelling.” There was no accusation there, just a flat tone, a statement of fact. He thought.

“That’s a different kind of friendly, Miss Starling. A whole different kind.”

+ + +

Arch had caught her steady breathing now, like she was just asleep, and when he pinched her hand he saw her eyelids flutter, which was a good thing, he remembered from his first aid training. She let out a soft moan and he tried to gather an explanation of what he was going say to her when she woke up. It wasn’t going to be a fun explanation, he knew that much. He was considering the fact that he hadn’t heard a mess of sirens to be a mark in his favor, but then he looked out the window and saw the flash of red and blue, and he had a feeling his night might actually be about to get worse.

+ + +

They pulled into a parking lot for a duplex apartment building, a small one that looked like it maybe had four units all together—two upstairs, two downstairs, with the doors to each of them obvious on the front of the building. One of the doors was blown clear open, off its hinges, which Hendricks generally considered a bad sign. “Too late,” he muttered. “Fuck.”

Starling shifted the car into neutral before figuring out how to put it in park, and the sheriff was already out of his car by the time Hendricks staggered out the passenger door of his. “Hands in the air!” Reeve shouted at Hendricks, who complied quickly. He had turned his back on the door to the second-floor apartment, probably trying to make sure that there wasn’t a threat at his back before he dealt with the possibility of one at his front. Hendricks kept his hands up then glanced to Starling, who was also out of the car, her red hair slung over one shoulder like it had been braided there. Her hands were not remotely up, and Reeve had taken notice of that. The sheriff’s gun came around accordingly, and Hendricks got a bad feeling about what was about to happen.

“Hold it,” came a shout from the second floor, and Reeve turned his head just for a second to take in the sight of Arch, wearing only his work pants, running across the balcony toward the stairs on the right side of the building. The whole place was an older brick building, with redwood for the guardrails across the balcony. It gave the place a different feel, a little homey, a little woodsy, even though it was only a block or two from the center of town. “It’s all right, sir,” Arch said, coming down the steps.

Reeve gave him an
Are you fucking kidding me?
look but held his tongue. Hendricks just stood there and waited, wondering how best to avoid the conflicting stories that were about to come pouring out in an attempt to untangle this mess that was sitting in front of them. He didn’t like the thought of that, not one bit, and would probably have been quicker about finding a way out of it if not for the fact that he was still very, very drunk, and the sway in his head made him acutely aware of it.