Unearthed by Robert J. Crane

Duncan was a step behind. The cowboy and the OOC—Arch still couldn’t remember what that stood for at least half the time—came into the kitchen.
    The demon took a seat at the folding table in the middle of the room, resting his hands on the checkered white and red tablecloth. He was wearing a suit, as usual, black and white with some grey thrown in for bland measure. Duncan wore those kind of things all the time. It hadn’t always been so, but for the last six weeks, it seemed like he wanted to be as grey as possible, no color. Arch wondered if there was something to that, but he didn’t know the demon well enough to ask.
    “Gentlemen,” Hendricks said, a little wearily, to Arch and Bill then nodded to Alison’s back. “Lady.”
    “Oh, yeah, just ignore me,” Duncan said.
    “Your lips are still moving,” Hendricks said, prompting the demon to make an amused noise that sounded like a guffaw. “It’s probably best for both of us that I do ignore you.”
    “Hendricks,” Bill said, nodding to the cowboy. “You ready for some action, Marine?”
    “Unlike the Army,” Hendricks said with a drawl, “I can find action anywhere I go.”
    “That may be true,” Bill said, a little wry, “in prison, anyway. Personally, I’m looking for a different sort of action.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Duncan said with what Arch recognized as weary, feigned enthusiasm, “let’s go massacre some demons. Whoo. Hoo. Yay.” The demon didn’t talk much, but every once in a while he let off one of these little cutters. His disposition was changing.
    “Got a tip on a good one,” Bill said, folding his arms across his massive chest. “House party tonight just outside Midian. Not of a conventional sort. Had someone say they saw a couple trucks coming from out near your friend Spellman’s place,” Bill nodded to Hendricks. “Looked loaded with … something. Tarps covering over the cargo.”
    “Edibles, maybe,” Hendricks said. “Of the human variety.”
    That turned Arch’s stomach. “Well, if that’s the case, I suppose the Office of—” he glanced at Duncan, “uh, your office won’t mind if we shut that down.”
    “Those sort of dealings are frowned on, yes,” Duncan said, running fingers over the straight lines of the tablecloth’s pattern.
    “Why don’t we go straight to the source and wreck this Spellman?” Arch asked. He felt an itch of impatience.
    “I’d love to,” Duncan said, and there was a flash of anger that twisted his lips and was gone in a hot instant. “Problem was, last time I went out there to do so, I walked through the door and found an abandoned farmhouse.”
    Arch felt his jaw tense. “You didn’t mention that.”
    “Nothing to mention,” Duncan said. “He’s not local, he’s just got a local entrance. But he’s watching it, and if he sees me coming, he’ll roll up the tent and move, then reopen later.” He shot a look at Hendricks. “If only I knew someone who could go inside and kill him.”
    Hendricks looked highly uncomfortable at that. “I would, but—”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Duncan said, looking back down at the table. “You’d die trying, kid. All of you would. Leave the big bads like Spellman to the pros.”
    “But you could kill him?” Arch asked, staring down at the demon. “If you met him face to face?”
    Duncan looked up at him, and there was a flash of unidentifiable color in his eyes. “I’d probably die trying too.” He knocked his knuckles against the table in a sharp knock. “But I’d have fun doing it, and Spellman would know for a fact that he’d had someone crawl up his ass and start tearing chunks out.”
    “Why is it always the ass with you people?” Bill asked. “You a Marine, too?”
    “Oooh,” Hendricks said with an appreciative nod. “Burn.”
    “Beans are ready,” Alison said, lifting the pot off the camp stove and stepping over to the table with it, delivering it right to the thick pad in the middle.
    “Speaking of ass,”