Starling (Southern Watch Book 6) Read online

  No, it had to be something else. Her most loyal friends were here. But a lot of her most loyal friends …

  Well, they had grandkids and kids, and those folks … they’d been disproportionately represented on the square at Halloween.

  They’d lost their kids and grandkids in some cases, had watched other people dear to them die. Midian of late was a buffet of grief, a gluttonous all-you-could-eat-until-your-belly-exploded sort of affair.

  How many funerals had been held in the last week?

  Too many to count.

  How many people had lost someone? More than one someone? A friend, a spouse, a close family member?

  Almost everyone.

  Who wanted to go to a steady number of funerals? Who wanted to spend every day like that?

  Apparently not the people of Midian. It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand; Lauren hadn’t been to any other funerals either. But looking around the few remaining pews, she counted eleven people. Less than a dozen.

  This church should have been full! They should have been celebrating her mother’s life in force, with stories and testimonials about the effect of Vera Darlington’s life on those around her.

  Instead they sat in a mostly empty church, Lauren weeping delicately into a tissue as she puzzled her way through the mystery of the poor attendance.

  “… I think Vera would have been glad to see the faces gathered here today,” Pastor Richards said, and Lauren cringed. That was a line he used at every funeral, and it irked her that he’d trotted it out given the shitty attendance. Richards didn’t take any notice of her cringing though, just looked down on her and smiled. “Lauren, why don’t you come up and say a few words?”

  Lauren blinked. She’d met with Richards a few days ago and he’d mentioned something about having her say something, hadn’t he? Fuck. She hadn’t thought about it since. Living in the whorehouse, trying to fight with the watch, she had enough to keep up with. The only thing she hadn’t had to deal with was work, but that was because she’d let them know her mother died.

  Robot-like, Lauren made her way up to the pulpit, wondering what the hell she was doing. What the fuck was she even going to say? She put her hands on the sides of the pulpit unsteadily, gripping the white-painted wood surface, and stared out at the small assemblage. She knew all of them, every single one—

  Except for one guy, dressed in a black suit and tie with a white shirt for contrast, who was sitting at the end of the second row on her left. He had jet black hair, was probably somewhere in his thirties, and watched her attentively, giving her an encouraging smile when she took notice of him. He straightened in his seat in the pew, his long face immediately going back to the typical look of a mourner, with eyes downcast.

  “I knew my mother … all my life,” Lauren finished lamely. Constructing a sentence at this point was like shitting a brick, with all the strain that would entail. “She was … a good woman. She taught me … lots of things.” But not how to avoid being a moron when speaking in public, apparently, Lauren almost said, feeling a couple beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead just above her hairline.

  “I … I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said honestly. She picked a spot on the side of the white-painted church wall and just stared at it. It was easier than looking down at the audience. Miss Cherry was in the second row behind where she and Molly were sitting. “I guess I’m kind of like a millennial, because I never left home. After I had a kid, I needed all the help I could get, and Mom … she was always there for me.” Lauren looked at Molly, but only for a second. If they locked eyes now, she’d become a weeping mess, Molly would become a weeping mess, and Lauren just needed to get through this. “She raised my daughter so I could become a doctor.” That hurt to say out loud because she couldn’t remember if she’d ever made that confession to her mother. Lauren blinked, a profound realization dawning on her. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if my mother hadn’t been there. I’d be … I don’t even know. Working at the paper mill, maybe, which would have sucked because yellow hard hats are terrible with my complexion. Not in my color wheel at all.” She stopped. What the hell had she just said?

  Molly was looking up at her, shaking her head. No, that didn’t make sense. What were you supposed to say at a funeral? You were supposed to give comfort or something, right?

  “Uhm, well,” Lauren said, stumbling to get back on track, searching for her next thought. They were in a church; maybe some scripture from her youth would make some sense right now. “As Jesus said,” she began, “uh …” Nothing came to mind. Mental constipation again? Dammit. Something sprang up and she just said it: “‘The night is dark and full of terrors.’”

  Lauren froze, catching the puzzled looks from her audience. Molly had her head down again, just shaking it, somewhere between disappointment and laughter. “That, uh … might not have been an original Jesus quote,” Lauren had to admit.

  “Pretty sure that’s from Game of Thrones,” Pastor Richards chimed in from where he sat behind the pulpit. “The Red Woman says it.”

  “Christ, Reverend,” Lauren said, looking back at him, “is that really appropriate for a man of God?”

  Richards shrugged. “You have to relate to your flock, Lauren.”

  Lauren turned back to the small crowd in the pews. “Uhmm … I really suck at this. No lie. You all can tell. I don’t do a lot of public speaking. I haven’t exactly committed my life to Jesus either, at least not since I got re-baptized when I was twelve. I’ve spent years learning how to treat broken legs and diagnose a sinus infection. I … I don’t think I’ve believed in God since I was a teenager. I got pregnant doing something that’s—I dunno, I hear it’s a sin, but it’s fun, more fun than going to church, so I keep doing it—and so we parted ways, and I haven’t looked back, and, for all I know, God’s not sorry to see me go either.” She stared down at the red carpeting that adorned the floors. “My mom still went to church though. Almost every week. She was faithful. Probably prayed for my soul, even though I didn’t care to hear about it. I’m sure she did, now that I think about it. I’d catch her praying sometimes—not like she hid it, but she’d do it mostly at night, before bed. She gave up on saying grace around our house a long time ago.” Lauren blinked, just staring blankly at the floor. “I wasn’t nice about her belief. I made fun of her for believing in some man in the sky that told us what to do. I thought it was stupid, and I had to make her feel stupid too. Had to let her know how smart I was, how I was in on the scam and she wasn’t …” She blinked. “I don’t … I don’t mean to insult anyone here, because … well, I was just … I was a bad daughter. I was an asshole. My mom gave and gave to me, raised my daughter, and I … God, I was an ungrateful shit.” Lauren’s eyes watered. “I wish I could tell her … that I’m sorry. I still … probably … don’t believe like she believed … but I hope for her sake … she was right.”

  Lauren sniffled and walked away from the pulpit. There was scattered applause, light as the audience, the strongest clapping coming from that man in the second row at the end with the long face. He only met her eyes for a second; then she had to look away, because her tears were blurring everything, and she just needed to get back to her seat so she could weep without worrying she was going to fall on her damned, ungrateful face.

  *

  Hendricks found his way back to the hotel, driving a purloined SUV. He was doing a lot of that, lately, taking cars that didn’t belong to him. It didn’t really matter, because the one he had taken belonged to people slaughtered in the fucking Charlie Foxtrot on the square on Halloween. But it felt sort of blasphemous, even to him, a decided unbeliever, to fuck with these peoples’ car by removing the child safety seats in the back.

  Yeah, he left that shit alone, adjusting himself so that his sword’s scabbard ran conveniently out of the way. It twisted at his belt, bending it at an unnatural angle and making him glad it was a short ride from the sheriff’s station to the Sinbad motel where he was staying.
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  “This whole town is a shitshow,” Hendricks proclaimed to the empty car, catching sight of one of the child seats in the back of the SUV as he looked in the distorted, child-watching addition to the rearview while making the turn into the motel parking lot. What had happened in Midian had been a sick, fucked-up experience from start to finish, one that had gotten under his skin in a way that no previous adventure in demon hunting had. He’d seen some fucked-up things since picking up this job, but now he was past cow demons, past demons that burned hookers with their flaming, acidic jizz, they’d galloped past the demon that knocked up every woman in a small town with his super sexual demon powers, met a real royal of demon blood who’d … well, she’d fucked his shit up bad, he knew, and had suffered through an attack by a collective of demons that possessed human bodies in an effort to massacre the whole town. That was to say nothing of the other minor shit they’d dealt with, like the stupid goddamned bicycling demons. Those pissant fuckers; he wished he could shoot down their flock with an M-16 again, the stupid cheesedick fucking flock of wannabe birds.

  Hendricks left the keys in the ignition as he turned off the SUV. He didn’t care if anyone stole the already-stolen car, frankly, but he doubted anyone would. Part of him hoped for it just so he could stop looking at the car seats in the back every time he glanced in the rearview, because the guilt that sprang on him every goddamned time was almost like acidic demon jizz, eating him alive.

  He unlocked the door to the motel room and stepped into the shrouded darkness. It was grey and overcast outside, and the Sinbad had blackout curtains. They looked like they had been manufactured in the seventies, but they still worked, although they stank of years of smoke and industrial-grade cleaning products. They kept the light out good though, and Hendricks stood there in the darkness, waiting for a sound.

  “You here?” he asked, calling out to the darkness. He hoped she was; he had a yearning for her.

  “I am here,” Starling said, already in the bed. She stirred, slipping out from between the sheets, another shadow in a room full of them. He could see the slight red glow to her hair, the dusky shadow of her eyes as she caught a line of light that escaped the gap between the curtains. Her breasts were illuminated for a second as the light slid across her chest, and he caught a hint of her totally shaved pubis as she stepped through the beam slowly, lingering probably to rev him up. She did seem to like revving him up.

  “Good.” Hendricks shed his coat, tossing it aside, then set his hat on the dresser. That left him with a t-shirt and jeans, once he’d kicked off his boots. They had a little dirt on them from hoofing it through the woods this morning, but he didn’t care. Housekeeping did a shit job in this place, but a little dirt and sand hadn’t bothered him since he’d done that tour in the sandbox.

  “Why is that good?” Starling asked, hesitating just out of his reach.

  “Because I want to bend you over and fuck the shit out of you, that’s why.”

  She stripped off his t-shirt for him, unbuckling his jeans, her lips on his. They were soft, not something he would have anticipated when they’d first met. She caught his earlobe in her mouth and it drove him wild as he worked his way down her neck. He had been semi-hard before he’d even walked in the door, anticipating this. She greeted him like this as he came in over half the time lately, about as much as his poor, worn-out ass could handle.

  She didn’t make much noise, barely a breath taken, and when she did, it was almost like she was doing it as a cue for him. She didn’t really require much warm-up either, almost always slippery as a lubed-up rubber whenever he put a finger in her to check. She smelled different than the other girls he’d been with too, had a musk about her that was a couple degrees off. Not that every woman smelled alike or anything, but the way Starling smelled …

  Well, it was good enough, not off-putting at all. She could have smelled like a rotten carcass when he’d first started fucking her and it probably wouldn’t have put him off until he’d gotten his fill of getting laid with her.

  So far, that wasn’t even close to true. He still loved her pussy.

  He bent her over the bed, already out of his jeans, and entered her. She made a little noise that approximated satisfaction—he supposed; it was hard to tell. She was a perfect fit for him as his cock slid into her. There was a slight height mismatch, but Hendricks just bent at the knees so it worked. He could have had her get on the bed, but he wanted to stand, wanted to put his hands on her, wanted to pull her to him, ram his rod home over and over again.

  He did too, giving it to her. She was mostly silent, her breath a little less steady than usual, punctuating her apparent enjoyment with the occasional noise to mark her arousal. Hendricks had a hard time getting a full read on this lady, but if she was acting, it didn’t bother him too much; she at least seemed like she was enjoying herself.

  Hendricks was damned close, pushing those last few long, sweet strokes until he clutched tight to her hips and held himself inside, that biological reaction along his dick compelling him to finish ejaculating here, deep inside her, where it felt the best and where it would be most likely to produce a baby, presumably. He’d wondered about that, whether he was imagining it when he felt that momentary urge to pull out and ignored it in favor of the pleasure his member sought. He’d perhaps enjoyed the thought of what that biological reaction might result in a hell of a lot more when it had come with his wife. He’d tried to ignore it when he was fucking Erin, but now …

  Now, with Starling … he just didn’t give a damn anymore. He answered the call of his cock and blew his load in her every chance he got. Why did it even matter at this point, after all? The town was all gone to hell, he was halfway gone to fucking hell himself …

  What did it matter anymore?

  “Goddamn,” Hendricks whispered, his breaths coming as hard and fast as his thrusts had been a moment earlier. He’d gotten some cardio done here. He and Starling had done more exhausting workouts, ones where they’d started on their feet and ended up against the wall with her on his cock, holding her up as he slid in and out of her, or ones where they’d moved all over the bed, taking turns riding each other. She did pretty damned well on top compared to other women he’d known, but she didn’t seem to have much trouble switching it up either.

  “Why?” Starling asked, and it took Hendricks a moment to decode her reaction.

  “Just a saying,” Hendricks said, his dick still in her, though it was losing its fullness now. He could feel his penis retreating, its work done, load expelled. He exited, cringing as he did so, the edges of the head sensitive to the bare friction, though Starling was still fully wet. Some days he could get recharged for another go, some days he couldn’t. Getting old, he thought as he finished pulling out of her, tapping the head of his penis on her ass as he straightened his knees, which ached from being bent uncomfortably during their fuck.

  He could see the glistening drip of cum he’d left on her ass, catching the light and sparkling slightly. It was small, just a few little dots left behind, the majority sitting inside her. He collapsed past her onto the bed, body protesting as he ground his dick into the sheets. He didn’t care about that either; it annoyed him to pick the flakes out of his body hair later, but that was a problem for another time, inconsequential next to the sudden desire to sleep that had been dumped on him by the hormonal release that had swept down after climax.

  He waited to see if Starling would say something else. She usually didn’t. There wasn’t much need for words between them, though Hendricks was starting to feel the desire to talk to her, just because he could sense her in the darkness, standing there, watching over him. She did that, and it felt good, helped him sleep sometimes when he imagined other shadows in the night, things lurking in the inky darkness.

  He drew a long breath, sinking into the cheap, thin mattress, looking at the shadow of her lingering above him. “You can lay down with me, you know. It’s not like we didn’t just do the most intimate damned thing we
possibly could.”

  She cocked her head at him in the way that she did. Studying him, maybe. “Do you feel intimate with me?”

  “I …” Hendricks didn’t know quite how to answer that, so he fell back on being crass. “Well, I did just stick my dick in you and blast off a few good squirts of baby juice, so, yeah, I’d say we’ve been pretty intimate. You’ve had my cock in your mouth, in your ass, and I’ve been fingers deep in your snatch.” He had done that, but had stopped short of using his mouth at any point with her. Not for that. “Not sure how much closer we could get, physically.”

  “Is physical intimacy the only kind you know?” Her voice was as toneless as ever, but Hendricks froze in bed as he was about to adjust himself.

  “It’s … I mean …” He felt himself grow a little flustered. He’d blown a wad in her; what more was there? Long walks on the beach, reading poetry to each other, waking up on Sunday morning and eating brunch after a leisurely fucking romp in the sheets? “It is what it is,” he mumbled.

  He’d had those other things with another woman, after all. The thought of revisiting them now, those feelings, those emotions … here? In the middle of Midian, and the storm of hell blowing through? It wouldn’t be too long before the only leisurely brunch would be demons snacking on the few fucking survivors, if things kept going the way they were.

  “What is ‘it’?” Starling asked. Damn, she had that way about her. Naive or something.

  “I mean we are what we are,” Hendricks said.

  “And what are we?”

  “Lovers, I guess, is the polite term,” he said, getting more exasperated by the second. Why did she have to define this? Erin had gotten the same way after a while, but at least he’d wanted something then. Now …

  The specter of Kitty Elizabeth—that goddamned cunt—was like a shadow behind him, and Hendricks turned his head, just to make sure she wasn’t there, that she hadn’t somehow come back to Midian just to lurk over him in the darkness, stick a hand on his face, push him against the bed and—