The Southern Watch Series, Books 1-3: Called, Depths and Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  Erin was a little surprised she’d gotten that heated that fast with Hendricks. The bastard had pushed a button, though, and she’d let him have it and stormed off. She could feel the tension across her skull and back, a forming storm of a headache, maybe one of those migraines she got every now and again. It was hard for her to believe some drifter passing through and making a stop of her was worth that much aggravation.

  She kept the pedal down, though, the rain coming down in sheets across the windshield, and headed back toward town. There were a thousand mysteries about Hendricks running through her mind, questions that she still wanted answers to even though she’d told him “fuck you” pretty clearly. It was itching at her, causing her stomach to rumble. Or maybe that was just the lack of breakfast combined with the coffee doing the talking.

  She kept on into the rain, the trees barely visible on either side of the road, not really caring where she was going.

  ***

  Arch had wanted to go home. Getting around two o’clock he started feeling the urge, like it was a normal day and a normal shift. He’d started around seven, but he wasn’t clocking out at three this time around. He’d exchanged brief words with the sheriff a couple hours earlier, and it had been made clear to him that he was on a double today, straight through until eleven.

  He’d left Alison a message telling her, but she hadn’t called back. This was not a huge surprise, given how much talking she’d done of late when they were at home. She was clearly of a mind to give him the silent treatment, and he was not all that sure of how to deal with it just yet. It was tough for him to wrap his mind around the idea that she’d gone so cold so quickly. She’d always been the warm half of the two of them, always the lovey-dovey one, while he was the cool, collected, aloof one. It worked for them. She brought him out; he stayed pretty well clear of entangling with anyone but her.

  He was sitting in his Explorer on the side of the road close up by town. He had gotten eight speeders in the rain so far today between patrols. The weather just pounded the Explorer, gusts of wind rocking it from side to side every now and again. Arch sat there, smelling the new leather with every other breath, fingers drumming on the center console, listening to the roar of Mother Nature’s fury and thinking how it compared to Alison’s.

  They’d fought before, of course. They’d been together since high school, after all; it wasn’t like they’d been perfectly happy every day of it. Usually it stemmed from Arch making some emotional misstep. Alison was sensitive, had lots of feelings and emotions. She was a songbird, shifting emotional states and making it clear by whatever tune she was warbling at the time. When she was mad, it came quick and obvious. When she was happy, the music was lilting, her affection was sweet and perfectly timed—and a little over the top.

  But this dead silence for over a week? This was new.

  Arch glanced at his dashboard clock for the first time in three minutes. He thought it had been an hour, but when he checked it was only three minutes. He sighed then wondered how quickly he could get to Hendricks and start hunting the things that had done this. They’d made a heckuva mess, after all, killed a lot of people. There was no way the sheriff’s department was going to be able to stop these things, whatever they were.

  Next to that, mending fences with his wife just didn’t seem quite as important.

  Or so Arch told himself as he kept thinking about what to do next, wondering if he should just go get Hendricks now. All the while, every here and again he felt the urge to drive to Rogerson’s to see Alison, but he snuffed that thought like a curse word about to pop out of his mouth.

  ***

  Gideon was done waiting. He’d watched the old clock by the bed, the jointed red numbers gradually creeping up. It was four forty-five and he couldn’t wait any longer. It had been hours of anticipation stifled, of desire pent up. He hadn’t gone this long without gratifying himself in a year, probably. And that was after an orgy of shootings had been followed by a serial killer torturing someone to death. He’d been exhausted.

  The Sinbad’s rooms were extra shitty, and it didn’t take him long to change into some new cargo shorts and a fresh shirt. Lingering around on the bed in nothing but boxers hadn’t made his resistance of temptation any easier. He liked to play with his belly a little, though, since it hung over his waistband some anyway. He pulled the cargo shorts over his hairy, spindly legs and zipped up, getting a little thrill at the thought of the zipper coming down again soon.

  He walked out the Sinbad’s door once he was dressed, pausing only to grab the short blade knife he kept in his luggage. He’d never needed it before, but he carried it just in case. He pocketed in his shorts and stepped outside, his shoes still squishing with wetness. That didn’t really matter, though, because within a minute of walking out they were soaked through completely, and he couldn’t hear the squishing over the sound of the rain pouring down anyway.

  He headed across the parking lot, back toward the diner where he’d left his car. He was walking faster than usual and could feel himself twitch with anticipation.

  Soon. It would be so good. Very, very soon.

  ***

  Lerner was sick of sitting around the hotel room. It was nice enough, but he’d been staring at the white walls forever, taking only occasional breaks to look out at the rain. The whole place had the smell of a hotel, that scent of laundry done in bulk and the aroma of dry air recently run through a vacuum’s filter. Lerner was standing, pacing, trying to think. “Any word of activity?”

  “Nothing,” Duncan replied, staring straight ahead at the wall. It’s what he did. Like he was trying to somehow memorize the colors to add to his palette for later use in something appalling for his wardrobe. “All’s quiet. Everyone’s probably bedded down with this storm going. You know demons are like cats; they don’t like getting wet any more than humans do.”

  “My kingdom for a Vernosh attack,” Lerner mumbled under his breath. He glanced back at Duncan. “Anything, really. A Urunock infestation.”

  Duncan shuddered slightly. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Probably not that one, no,” Lerner agreed. Urunock were just nasty and could burn through even the shell of a demon in seconds. “Something, though.”

  Duncan just sat there. It’s how he did what he did, Lerner knew. Communing. Taking messages. Sensing. It didn’t make it easier on Lerner, though, whose mind cried out for someone to talk to, someone to spitball with.

  “You know,” Lerner said, “I’ve always wondered about hotel maid service—”

  “No,” Duncan said.

  Lerner sighed. These days were the worst.

  ***

  Gideon paused at the car. The sky was nearly black, like night had fallen early. It did that shit up north, in the winter, but this was Tennessee in summer. Dark clouds were blotting out almost any trace of light and the rain was falling in sheets, making it hard to see more than a few feet in front of him. He was buffeted by the wind, which had gotten much worse since he’d walked back to the motel earlier. There were even a few moments when he worried crossing the interstate bridge that it was just too nasty for him to pull off what he’d planned.

  But then things would clear for a few minutes and he’d start to think he could pull it off again. It damned sure didn’t hurt to try.

  He approached his car from the rear. He thought about giving himself extra deniability, maybe stabbing the knife into one of the tires, but that meant he’d actually have to change it. What were the odds a rental car tire was going to get traced back to him anyway? They were all the same, weren’t they?

  He found he didn’t really care. The cops had enough going on right now, probably still dealing with what the Tul’rore had left for them. They’d had to have found it by now, right? If things got too intense, all he’d need to do was to vanish for a while. He knew there were explanations, ways to get out of it, but he found the thought of what he was going to do way more exciting than what would happen if shit went wrong.
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  Planning was for other people. He needed to act, now.

  Gideon got in the car, felt his wet clothes soaking the cloth seats. He started her up and wheeled around to make the left turn out of the parking lot. This part was something he’d thought about over and over.

  He looked down the highway, saw traffic getting heavier. There was a break in the downpour, just enough to allow him to see a hundred feet to his left and right. Cars were moving slowly, the rain too much for their windshield wipers to handle.

  He pulled out when he had a chance, and after about thirty seconds he hit his emergency blinkers. The steady clicking sound was drowned out by the rain hammering the roof of the car.

  Gideon pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate bridge, taking care to position the sedan so it obstructed part of the right lane. He parked on the far side of the bridge, trying to place the car exactly where he needed it to be.

  A semi roared by, heading toward the entry ramp for the southbound lane. Gideon’s car shook, but whether it was from that or the rain, he didn’t know. He held his breath and counted to five, watching his rearview mirror to make sure he didn’t get blindsided by another truck as he got out.

  He opened the door and the cold deluge hit him immediately. The temperature had dropped from the steady rain, and now that it was after five p.m., the sun was lower in the sky behind the clouds.

  He was already soaked and not getting much wetter, though, so out he sprang and started walking around the car. When he reached the trunk he fought to put the key in and unlock it. The yellow hazard lights beat out a steady rhythm of flashes, occasionally coinciding with the lightning overhead.

  Gideon smiled when he opened the trunk. He looked back as a minivan passed by on the highway bridge. He couldn’t feel the people inside, but he knew they were in there. Just like below him. He couldn’t see the cars traversing the interstate beneath him, but he knew they were there.

  Gideon pulled back the matting in the trunk of the sedan, exposing the spare tire. It was bolted down, and he removed the tire iron that functioned as the crank for the jack as well as the bolt loosener and starting to unscrew the tire. The rain continued to douse his back, droplets rolling down his nose. He ignored them as he worked, wet shirt hanging off of him. He could feel it riding up behind him, exposing the small of his hairy back to the motorists passing by.

  He didn’t care.

  When the bolt popped free, he lifted the tire and dragged it out of the trunk. He kept the tire iron in one hand and carried the tire in the other. He might need both. After a moment’s thought, he put them both down, went back around and grabbed the jack and the restraining bar out of the trunk as well, setting them against the concrete barrier at the edge of the bridge.

  When he came back around after shutting the trunk, he could barely feel the rain anymore. His skin was on fire with the anticipation. He busied himself while he waited for another semi to pass, the engine noises barely reaching him through the rain.

  After that, he could see no one coming from behind him on the bridge.

  Gideon took a breath of wet air and picked up the spare tire. He could feel the weight of it as he hugged it close, heavy in his hands. The treads pushed into his hairy arms, and he could feel the gaps with his fingers. He took one last look to make sure no one was coming over the bridge, and then looked down over the edge to the interstate below.

  Cars and trucks whizzed by every few seconds. The rain was still pouring, but the visibility was good enough for him to see a couple hundred feet below. A Buick was emerging out of the curtain of rain just at the edge of his visibility, and he timed it purely by gut. He tossed the tire over the edge of the bridge.

  ***

  Jerry Bryan was on his way home from work. He was just doing his shift down at the distribution center a few miles down the highway, passing through, one exit to go, and counting the miles till home. The rain was an absolute hell today, the blacktop on the interstate slicker than shit. Jerry knew a little about this stuff, and he would have sworn the oil and sediment that made it all so dangerous was supposed to wash off in the first half hour or so of a good rain,

  But they were on day two, and it was still slick as hell.

  Jerry had been on a couple long shifts the last few days. Lots of heavy lifting. Lots of carrying. Lots of packages going out the door. He had only had the job a month, the warehouse opening a boon to Calhoun County. Jobs were getting rarer out there, especially ones that paid eleven bucks an hour in this area.

  The rain was just slamming down, running across the windshield like someone had poured a bucket over the glass. The wipers were at max but barely keeping up, giving him a clear view for a second before they got overwhelmed again.

  He was trying to keep his eyes on the road, but his head was drifting to think about the baseball game he’d stayed up to watch last night. The Braves had taken the Phillies in the ninth, and there was—

  Jerry saw a shadow overhead and then something hit the windshield. It shattered, spraying him with glass before whatever it was dropped in and bounced off the steering wheel to hit him in the face.

  It was like he got smashed in the teeth and nose by a concrete block. The pain was immediate, and Jerry slammed his foot onto the brakes on instinct. His head was spinning and he could feel cold rain mix with warm blood on his face. The car jerked and locked into a spin.

  Jerry felt the world shift around him as the Buick’s back end swept around. The rain kept coming and he saw a faint shadow ahead of him through the blood that was dripping into his eyes.

  ***

  Gideon listened as the tire fell. The sound of it hitting the Buick’s windshield was like a gunshot. Like he was back Chicago again.

  Gideon had already reached down and grabbed the jack. It was heavy, the steel edges biting into his eager hands. He was already shaking from the thrill of it. Now it wasn’t just anticipation, it was the beginning of the stirrings. He could feel Jerry Bryan suffering down there, and he saw the semi truck emerge from the rain below and knew that the driver wouldn’t have enough time to stop, even if he tried.

  Still, he flung the jack anyway and waited with shaking hands and his breath held to see what happened.

  ***

  Jerry ran a hand over his face to clear the blood, and that turned out to be a real mistake. He saw the black shape emerge from the haze of the downpour. It was just out his window, at a perfect forty-five degree angle to his left. He heard the brakes squeal and the engine make a noise like it was downshifting, but that stopped a moment later when something hit the truck’s windshield.

  He saw the spiderweb cracks like it was happening in slow motion, then the whole thing caved in like someone had chucked a brick through it. The next thing Jerry saw was the windshield of the truck disappearing as the front grill of it became his whole world, and he barely felt the impact when it slammed into his Buick.

  ***

  Gideon could hear the collision, the semi eating the Buick with Jerry Bryan in it. He’d felt the trucker actually die from the jack hitting him, the steel edge catching him in the temple and breaking his skull open. It didn’t happen immediately; these things never did, but he was rendered insensate and unable to stop the truck. Gideon knew that even if a paramedic had been on scene with a doctor, the trucker—named Jack Benitez, lately out of Miami, Florida—would still be dead in minutes.

  It was locked in, now. Nothing to do but wait and savor that one. Those were the best, in Gideon’s opinion.

  Of course, the one that Jerry Bryan had experienced, the mostly sudden type, those were good, too. Jerry Bryan was just barely dead now, splattered on the road underneath Benitez’s semi. Parts of his brain were still working, even though they were spread out over several lanes of traffic. Bryan wasn’t anywhere near conscious now, though, so most of the satisfaction was gone.

  Gideon had the tire iron in his hand and heaved it over at a delivery van detouring below to avoid the accident. The left-hand lane was sti
ll mostly clear. Mostly. Gideon’s throw ended that, though, as the delivery driver caught it right in the chest. Gideon had the demon strength, fortunately, though he rarely had cause to use it.

  He chucked the last piece, the brace that kept the tire mounted in the trunk, and aimed it a little farther out.

  ***

  Sarah Glass was in a hurry. She was supposed to start babysitting fifteen minutes ago, but her mom had been late in getting home from a shopping trip to Knoxville. They shared the car on days when Sarah had to work, like today. It was a tough gig, and Sarah knew she was in the shit as she drove along way faster than she should with the rain coming down like it was. Her fingers danced over the keys of her iPhone, tapping out a text message, a hurried apology to her boss, Anna, who was actually a very lovely lady to work for. Anna had given Sarah a fucking amazing bonus last Christmas, which she’d used to get her first tattoo, a little flower on her ankle.

  Sarah was texting one handed, one eye on the road and one on the screen of the phone. The car was warm, the heater working overtime to banish the chill the rains had brought it. This shitty weather was going to totally fuck with her plans, because the kids she watched would be confined indoors tonight. On nice nights, she could take them out to the park near their house. On a night like this, it’d be episode after episode of Bubble Guppies.

  Anna wouldn’t get home until after midnight, because she was on a permanent hybrid shift at her job. That was the name of the game. Sarah would put the kids to bed at eight-thirty, work on homework until eleven and fall asleep on the couch or watch TV until her boss came home, and then she’d drive home to sleep a little longer. Anna had long offered for her to stay, but it was fifty-fifty whether Sarah would even get to sleep in the house. It was hard to sleep anywhere but her own bed, the smells of Anna’s home just not-quite-familiar as her own. The couch was kinda shitty, too. It had a spring that always poked her in the back.