Cole was two bites into the best pie he’d had all week when the sheriff walked in and ruined it.
Hibbing, Minnesota.
Population thirty-seven hundred.
One stoplight.
A diner called the Bluebird that had four booths and a counter and a waitress who refilled coffee without asking.
The pie was blueberry.
He clocked the sheriff fast.
Late thirties, five-foot-six, badge on the hip, sidearm seated right.
She swept the room the way a cop sweeps a room, and her eyes stopped on him a half-second longer than they stopped on anyone else.
He was the stranger.
She let it go and kept moving.
She sat two stools down at the counter.
The waitress poured her a cup without a word.
Cole finished the pie.
Left a ten on the table and stood.
The sheriff’s eyes tracked him in the diner window glass.
He made it to the truck before she came out.
“You’re not from here,” she said.
Cole turned.
She was standing at the edge of the lot with her thumb on her belt, easy and level.
Not a challenge.
An observation.
“No ma’am.”
“Passing through?”
“That’s the idea.”
She looked at the truck.
Iowa plates.
A toolbox in the bed that did not match the rest of the paint.
“What brings you to Hibbing?”
“Bad pie,” Cole said.
The sheriff smiled.
It was a small smile and it did not reach her eyes.
“That pie’s the best in three counties, and you left a ten on a six-dollar tab.
Try again.”
Cole looked at her.
She was waiting.
Not impatient.
Just waiting.
“I heard there was something strange happening up here,” he said.
“Strange how?”
“The kind of strange that doesn’t make it into the official reports.”
The sheriff’s smile went away.
She studied him for a long time.
The lot was empty except for three cars and a patrol SUV.
A school bus went past on the main road, heading west.
“You got a name?” she asked.
“Cole Brenner.”
“Sheriff Donna Hanscum.” She did not offer her hand.
“What kind of federal are you?”
“I’m not federal.”
“Then what are you?”
“Someone who works the cases nobody else will touch.”
Donna’s weight settled back onto her heels, thumb finding her belt.
“You a hunter.”
It was not a question.
“Yeah.”
She was quiet for a long time.
The school bus turned the corner two blocks down and disappeared behind the hardware store.
“There’s a deputy,” Donna said, finally.
“Rick Olafson.
Good kid.
Twenty-four.
He’s been acting wrong for three days.
Came back from a traffic stop outside of town and he’s been wrong ever since.”
“Wrong how?”
“Meaner.
Colder.
His eyes don’t track right.
And he smells like sulfur.” You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Cole went still.
“You know what that means,” Donna said.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been writing two-line incident reports for two years that don’t square with what I’ve seen.
You gonna give me the words for it, or you gonna tell me I’m crazy?”
“You’re not crazy.”
“Then what is he?”
“Possessed.
A demon’s wearing him.”
Donna’s hand went to her sidearm.
Not a draw.
Just a touch.
“Can you fix it?”
“Yeah.”
“Without killing Rick?”
“That’s the idea.”
Donna looked at him for another long beat.
Then she nodded.
“He’s on shift right now.
School route.
That bus that just went past that’s his.”
Cole was moving before she finished the sentence.
The bus was stopped at the edge of the elementary school lot.
The driver’s door was open and Rick Olafson was standing on the bottom step with his hand on a kid’s shoulder.
The kid was maybe seven.
He was crying.
Cole parked the truck across the lot entrance and got out.
Donna pulled in behind him.
“Rick,” she called.
“Let the kid go.”
Rick turned.
His eyes were black edge to edge.
“Sheriff,” he said.
His voice was warm and easy and wrong.
“Just having a word with young Ethan here about respect.”
The kid was shaking.
Cole pulled the flask of holy water from his jacket and crossed the lot.
Rick’s eyes tracked him and the black flickered.
“You’re new,” Rick said.
“Let him go.”
Rick smiled.
“Make me.”
Cole threw the holy water.
It hit Rick square in the chest and his skin hissed and smoked.
He screamed and shoved the kid hard.
The kid fell and Donna was there, pulling him back, her body between the boy and the deputy.
Rick lunged.
Cole stepped in and caught his wrist and the contact burned cold up his arm.
The demon was strong.
Stronger than Rick had ever been.
It twisted and Cole twisted with it and slammed him into the side of the bus.
“Donna,” Cole said.
“Get the kid out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you with”
“Now.”
Donna hesitated.
Then she pulled the boy to his feet and hauled him toward the school.
Cole did not watch them go.
Rick’s eyes were solid black now.
The thing inside him was done pretending.
“You think you can exorcise me, little hunter?”
“Yeah.”
Cole pulled the folded paper from his pocket.
Latin, phonetic.
He’d practiced it twice in the truck on the way up from Iowa.
He started reading.
The demon screamed.
It was a sound that did not come from a human throat.
Rick’s body convulsed and his head snapped back and black smoke poured from his mouth in a thin stream.
The words pulled at something in his chest, a tide going out, and the demon fought every syllable.
It took forty-five seconds.
When the last line landed the smoke was gone and Rick collapsed.
Cole caught him before he hit the ground.
Rick’s eyes were brown again.
He was breathing.
His pulse was there.
Donna came back across the lot at a run.
“Is he”
“He’s out.
The demon’s gone.”
Donna crouched next to Rick and checked his pulse herself.
Her hands were steady.
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“The black smoke.”
Cole looked at her.
Donna looked back.
“I saw it,” she said, quiet.
“I saw the smoke come out of his mouth and I saw it go into the ground.
Don’t tell me I didn’t.”
“You saw it.”
“Okay.” She stood.
“Okay.”
An ambulance pulled into the lot.
Someone from the school must have called.
Donna flagged them down and gestured at Rick.
Two paramedics got out and loaded him onto a stretcher.
Donna spoke to them low and fast and they took him without asking questions.
The ambulance left.
The lot was quiet again.
Donna walked Cole to his truck.
She did not say anything until they were standing next to the driver’s door.
“Next time you come through Hibbing, Brenner,” she said, “you bring better cover.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
She put her thumb on the side mirror and looked at him for a long time.
“It barked,” she said, finally.
“Two months ago.
Killed a man outside of town and I got there first and the thing that did it barked.
I’m gonna remember that it barked.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
She stepped back.
Her hand brushed his wrist.
Just for a second.
Then she turned and walked back to her patrol SUV and got in and drove toward the station without looking back.
Cole got in the truck.
His hands were steady.
The Latin had pulled something out of him and left a faint ache behind his sternum but it was fading already.
He started the engine.
In the rearview mirror the elementary school sat quiet in the afternoon sun.
A kid’s backpack was still lying in the lot where Ethan had dropped it.
Cole drove south with the windows cracked.
Donna Hanscum had his face now, and a standing invitation, and she’d seen the smoke come out of a deputy’s mouth and walked him to his truck anyway.
That fact rode with him for the first twenty miles before he set it down.
He added her name to the notebook under Contacts, in handwriting that was only his, and didn’t write anything about the half-second her hand had spent on his wrist.
Iowa was four hours out a missing hiker, a cave closed thirty years and that was as far ahead as he let himself look.
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TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.