Unearthed (7 page)

Reeve just stared at him, bass in hand, fishy aroma pervading the store. “Casey, the word hello’s got one damned ‘o’ in it, not twenty.”

Casey grinned, uneven teeth showing under that patchy beard. “Why would you ever limit yourself to just one ‘o’?”

Reeve stared at him, trying to ferret out the meaning on that one. Casey was in his thirties if Reeve recalled, but the man was so damned grungy it was hard to tell. “Got something for you. I’d like it stuffed and mounted.”

Casey took a swaggering step up to the counter. “Well, go on then, lay your thang down. Don’t just stand there with your dick in your hand.”

Reeve cocked an eyebrow at him. This was the shit you had to put up with for working with Casey Meacham. The trade-off for the best taxidermist in the county. He put the bass on the counter with a wet plop.

“I never understood that phrase,” Casey said, leaning over the fish and giving it a look. “‘Standing there with your dick in your hand.’”

Reeve stared at him. “It means … uh … sitting there useless.”

“Yeah, but I don’t get it,” Casey said, looking up at him. “Why is it a bad thing to be standing there with your own dick in your hand? Sounds like a fun time to me.” He cracked a grin.

“Jesus,” Reeve said. “The bass, please.”

“I’ll get it taken care of for you,” Casey said, standing up straight. “Come on back here a minute, though, I got something to show you.” He turned on his heel and disappeared back behind the curtain, gesturing with a hand for Reeve to join him.

“God save me from it being his dick in his hand.” Reeve stared at the bass on the glass countertop for a moment, pondering whether he should leave right then, and then remembered the only thing waiting for him back at the office was County Administrator Pike. With a shrug, he walked around the counter and stepped behind the curtain into a darkened room that ran about thirty feet straight.

On either side of the room were terrariums with lights. Reeve could see Casey standing a few feet away, looking into one of the terrariums at face level. Reeve did a quick estimate. There had to be twenty or thirty of the glass enclosures in here, and all of them looked to be occupied by something, at least.

“Dermestid beetles,” Casey said, tapping the glass of the terrarium he was looking at. He glanced back at Reeve, face and beard partially lit by the lamps glowing from within the glass enclosures. “You ever heard of them?”

“Yeah, actually,” Reeve said, stepping closer to the nearest terrarium. It was filled about an inch of the way with sand, and a small animal skull was resting atop it. The skull was positively swarmed by beetles, little dark bugs that seemed to be crawling all over the remaining bits of skin on the carcass. “They use ’em in crime scene investigations for corpses that have been dead a while. Helps ’em figure out the time or day of death sometimes.” He glanced over at Casey, whose face was glowing with pride. “What do you got ’em for?”

“For European-style mounts, that’s what,” Casey said, puffing out his chest. “See, my brethren across the pond can’t get the chemicals for preserving an animal very easily, so they have these beetles, see, and use ’em to clean the animal off and just mount the skull. Takes up less space because there’s no neck.”

Reeve raised an eyebrow at him. “You think people in Calhoun County are gonna give up their wall mounts, you’re a crazy fuck, Casey. People live for the season around here. That shit may fly over in Germany or England or wherever, places where they’ve got queens and shit, but this is the South. We kill animals, we put them on the wall and brag to our damned friends about the day we got ’em. It’s like you don’t know us at all.”

“Okay, you don’t do this for your best trophy, that’s true,” Casey said, “anymore than you leave your best girl home on a Saturday night.” Reeve doubted Casey knew much about any girl, let alone enough to have a best one. “But you know, for your lesser kills—or maybe a varmint, squirrels, raccoons, whatever—this is perfect. People been bringing me things like cow skulls, a fox—you saw that one out under the counter? I think this is gonna catch on.”

Reeve stared back at the bugs picking over the skull. Looked like what it was—pests devouring whatever meat they could lay pincers on. “If you say so. I just don’t see it, I guess.”

“That’s okay,” Casey said. “I am a man of vision. Pretty soon I’m gonna have a line out the door for these, and I’m gonna have to get me some more beetles. It’s gonna be an empire, Sheriff. A damned empire.”

Reeve cast him a look. “All right then, Ozymandias. Better this than methamphetamine, I guess.” He nodded back toward the door. “I can show myself out, if you need a moment alone with your … bugs.”

“Oh, very funny,” Casey said, shaking his head. “I can see you have doubts about the future success of my endeavors. Well, I can respect that.” He stuck out a hand, which Reeve reluctantly shook. “I will give you a call as soon as I get your bass taken care of. I’ll get started on the skin mount today, but it’ll be weeks.”

“That’s fine. Much obliged,” Reeve said. He paused on the way out the door to look at the beetles crawling all over the skull of something bigger, maybe that cow Casey had mentioned. Hard to believe so many little animals could do that much damage. They hadn’t killed the beast, but they were sure picking over the bones now. It made him feel a little sick, and he hurried out past the curtain and tried not to dwell on it anymore after that.

Kitty sat waiting in her rental car while the police officer walked up behind her. She could feel the hint of heat with the window down, knew it wasn’t autumn in New York, for certain. Tennessee felt different to her, and not just hotter. It didn’t even feel like upstate, it felt like a different world entirely. Green hills and mountains were all well and good, but it was the lonely, unoccupied spaces between buildings that grated on her. There was no sense of buzz here, no vibe, just long stretches of peace and quiet.

She hated it already.

The police officer tapped on the window and she looked sideways at him, lowering her shades. He looked Latino; his silver nameplate said Reyes. That had to be unusual in white-bread Tennessee, didn’t it?

“Yes, Officer?” she asked, smiling sweetly at him. “Is there a problem?” Kitty didn’t drive very often, so if she’d been swerving all over the road, it wouldn’t have surprised her much. The problem was likely something simpler, though.

“Ma’am, do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?” Reyes asked. Stern. Serious. She wanted to grab him by his tongue and make him do some serious licking right to her clit, show him his place in the world.

She shrugged indifferently instead. “I don’t.” She smiled guiltily. “Was it bad?” She lowered her voice to a throaty whisper. Men loved that.

“I’m gonna need to see your license and vehicle registration, ma’am,” Reyes said, peering down at her.

“Ooh, okay, let me see here,” she said. She dug through her bag on the passenger seat. She’d been limited by what she could carry through airport security; otherwise she’d already have had a knife in her hand, gouging holes in Officer Reyes’s neck as she pulled him down to straddle his face. Right there on the side of the road, she’d show him who was boss. “Here you go.” She handed her license up to him. “I just flew in from New York and I’ve been on planes all day and driving for the last couple hours. Would you mind if I got out of the car and walked a little?” She could almost detect him about to say no. “I feel like I’m cramping—you know, down there.”

Worked like a charm. He almost flinched back. “Sure, just … stay up by the hood of your car, please.”

“Sure thing, Officer,” she said, smiling sweetly. The smile faded as he walked off. Fucker.

She opened the door and stepped out into the late day sun. It was drifting toward the western horizon, already hidden behind the trees that started only thirty feet from the edge of this road. She stretched her legs, her pantsuit sticky from the trip. At least she hadn’t had to wait at the baggage claim.

“Ma’am,” Officer Reyes called to her. She turned her head to look at him, standing just behind the door of his vehicle. “I’ll only be a minute.”

“Most men are,” Kitty said, making a pbbbbbbth noise with her lips while she waited. She stood, easing out of the seat, then stretched. She didn’t really have muscles, because she was just wearing a shell on the outside that looked like a human body. It felt like her essence would cramp up in certain parts of the shell, though, like it didn’t circulate properly when she was seated for too long. Other times it felt like it rushed to other areas the way blood did. She could feel it in her face sometimes, like at a charity auction, when she’d lost a bid. She’d smiled while her face burned like Rome. She’d made up for it later, though, turning the “winner” into a loser that she commanded for days until she got bored with the poor man.

She stared back at Reyes through the tinted windshield as he sat there, presumably running her driver’s license and the rental car receipt she’d handed him. He didn’t look too bad, she thought. Not that she really cared what a man looked like; she was far more interested in what they licked like.

She stretched, made a show of it, watching Reyes the whole time. She looked at the trees, tried to see the sunset. This was the thrill of nature? She didn’t get the scenic beauty or whatever. It was the color orange. Didn’t humans get used to seeing it in a box with the other crayons at an early age? People were more interesting than this. Demons could be even more interesting still, really, though she hadn’t met one that had truly interested her in a long time.

Power, though, that was the most interesting thing of all.

She sighed as Reyes got out of his car. Rousseau, her butler, had come down here and gotten the lay of the land, and had told her all about it. One thing stuck out: big county, small police force. They’d had some problem a few weeks back and lost a couple of their people for some reason. Short-staffed, scrambling, because of the hotspot. It was a recipe for good times, in her opinion.

She stared at Reyes as he worked his way back toward her, along the dusty shoulder of the highway. She could see he’d come to a decision of his own and had a ticket in hand, along with her driver’s license and the rental car receipt. She plied him with a tentative smile as she slipped on a pair of overly large leather gloves she carried in her bag.

“Ma’am, if it were up to me, I’d let you off with a warning,” Reyes said, clearly trying to win her over to his side, “but unfortunately, it’s a mandate from above. I have to ticket you.”

“That’s okay, Officer,” she said, trying to look as dejected as she possibly could. “I understand.” She cocked her head. “Is that … what’s that on your collar?” She mimed a motion toward her neck, hinting him toward where he should put his hand.

“What?” Reyes lifted his right hand—the one on the same side as his holster, just like she’d figured he would. “I got a string hanging or—”

She lanced out with her superior speed and grabbed his hand and jerked it back, shattering his wrist and brute-forcing him to the ground. She heard his head thump against the pavement, his eyes went glassy for a moment, and then focused on her. “Sorry,” she said, not really sorry, “I would let you off with a warning, but I need to kill as many of you pigs as possible in this town.” His eyes were dull, blinking at her, not comprehending. “It’s a chaos thing. I need it. If I didn’t, I’d just ride your fucking face into the ground until I crushed your skull.”

“Wha—?” Reyes asked, his eyes still unfocused.

“I need to make this look like a man did it,” she said and punched him in the face. She heard bones break, listened to the wet slap of leather against his nose. She forced her fingers around his throat, using the wider profile of the gloves to leave marks bigger than her fingers as she pressed down. She heard his esophagus crunch, listened to him gurgle, slapped his hand out of the way when he flailed it helplessly at her. She pushed harder, lifting him off the ground as she squeezed the life out of him with both hands, just wrung it out like the liquid out of a dishrag.

When she was done, she stood and admired her handiwork. The man’s neck looked comically small compared to the rest of his body; like a true pencil neck. He’d surely have called in his traffic stop, so it was entirely possible she’d be questioned about this at some point by the local law enforcement. That’d be good for a laugh. They’d take one look at her and dismiss any thought that she’d throttled this big, burly deputy to death. They’d shake their heads sadly at the misunderstanding and send her on her merry way.

She got back in the car and shut the door, checking the mirrors. The corpse lying on the ground, no visible blood yet. She started the car and floored it, watched the speedometer climb as she took the car even higher than she’d been going when officer Reyes had stopped her.

She welcomed the thought of another cop pulling her over now; it’d be a fantastic chance to kill another of their dwindling numbers. Their days were rather limited in any case.

“Sundown’s coming,” Archibald Stan said from the door. His words fell on Lafayette Hendricks, sprawled out on an old mattress, cowboy hat down over his head. Hendricks could hear Arch’s deep voice resonate through him as he lay there, boots hanging over the edge of the bed. “’Bout time to get moving.”

Hendricks didn’t even adjust his hat. He’d grown sick of looking at the small, ten-by-ten room, with its peeling paint and cracked walls. The house might as well have been condemned, it had been so terminally fucked. Someone had snuck in and ripped the wiring out of the walls along with the pipes and God only knew what else. This room was no exception; a long gash ran on the wall opposite him, a dark, deep canyon running in a straight line in the plaster.

“Will do,” Duncan said from the mattress opposite Hendricks’s own. They’d shared this room for … what? Weeks now? Two months? It felt like more. As far as bunkmates went, Duncan wasn’t the best Hendricks had ever had. Wasn’t the worst, either, but he was still a demon. A law-enforcing demon of some stripe, but a demon nonetheless.