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

by Robert J. Crane

  ***

  They had him overmatched. With Arch’s help, Hendricks had overwhelmed the last surviving demon, and they had him on the ground, a sword at his throat. The stink of the weed that had been smoked in the trailer was nearly overwhelming, enough to take Hendricks’s breath away, and he kept pushing the sleeve of his coat up to his nose to stifle it. Problem was, the drover was starting to pick up the smell.

  “You got a problem?” Arch asked him, not taking his eyes off the demon.

  “Stinks in here,” Hendricks said. “Let’s kill this guy and get out.”

  The demon’s dark eyes widened, but the blade was at his throat and Arch had one of his hands pinned down with the switchblade at the wrist. All it would take would be a little poke …

  “Wait, wait,” Arch said, and Hendricks could feel him picking up the hint. They exchanged a look, but it was almost unnecessary. He’d play good cop by default. “We’re not going to just kill this guy.” Arch stared down. “Let’s burn him a little first.”

  Oh. So he wanted to be worse cop. Hendricks could play with that. “You want to torture him first?”

  “Yeah, see what he knows,” Arch said. “How do we do that?”

  Hendricks pretended to think about it. “Well, fire doesn’t rupture their skin on its own but hurts like hell, I’m told. Probably a lighter around here somewhere, based on the smell. Cook a little of his shell, I bet he’ll be singing up a storm as his essence starts to get all hot and bothered.” Hendricks paused. “Not THAT kind of hot and bothered, you understand—”

  “I got it.”

  “Waaaaiiiit!” the demon said, eyes starting to return to human from the slitted, snake-like glowing ones he’d shown while fighting. “If you let me go, I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

  Hendricks poked him in the neck with the sword, just a little. “And you end up breaking down my friend’s door like your buddies did last week?”

  “Oh …” the demon’s voice was subdued, kind of scratchy. “Was that you? I heard about that. Awfully sorry. I didn’t have anything to do with that, really. I mean, I’m not into assault and murder type stuff—”

  “No, you’re into petty larceny and possession,” Arch said, glancing back toward the living room. Hendricks caught his meaning; there had to be some paraphernalia out there, probably some pot as well. Maybe it was all used up, though. “I don’t think our criminal justice system is quite designed for demons. It’s supposed to be for people, not things.”

  “I’m … I’m a people,” the demon said, and his human-looking eyes were wide. “A person.”

  “Really?” Arch said. “Prick you, do you not bleed?” He made a move like he was going to stab the switchblade into the demon. “Let’s find out.”

  “No, no, no,” the demon said, shaking his head. “Look, I’ll talk. Please, just let me walk away afterward. I won’t be any trouble.”

  Arch and Hendricks exchanged a look. Hendricks could see the conflict in the cop’s eyes and made a note to ask him about it later. “All right,” Hendricks said, like he was resigned to it. “You talk, we let you go. Fair’s fair. What do you know about these slaughters that happened in town?”

  “Oh, yeah, righteous feast, huh?” The demon cracked a little bit of a smile that fast disappeared. “You know, if you’re into that sort of thing. He rested his head on the dark, brown shag carpeting as they sat in the half-light of the trailer bedroom. “Uhm, yeah, it was a bunch of Tul’rore.”

  Hendricks nodded. “Not Spiegoth?”

  “No,” the demon said, looking blank. “They were eating and feasting. Moving from one house to the next, all in a row.”

  “Where are they now?” Arch asked, and Hendricks could see him tense as he asked the demon the question. The words came out pretty low and harsh considering the guy was cooperating.

  “Dead, I think,” the demon said. “Word was they got toasted in a raid by two OOCs.” Sounded like moooo-k to Hendricks. Without the M.

  Arch gave Hendricks the sidelong. “What’s an … OOC?”

  “Office of Occultic Concordance. They ride herd on demons,” Hendricks replied, mind racing. “Keep ’em from making too big of a splash. I’ve heard it’s to keep things from getting out of hand, so humans don’t get wise to the threat in their midst and start killing them off.”

  “Ever run across them?” Arch asked.

  “No,” Hendricks replied. “I’ve talked to other hunters who have. As far as I know, they tend to give us a wide berth.”

  “So if the things that killed all those people are dead,” Arch said, focusing back on the demon lying upon the shag carpeting, “who caused that accident outside Midian earlier?”

  The demon’s eyes were blank, still wide. “That … I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything about that.”

  Arch nodded. “I believe you.”

  He poked the demon in the arm with the switchblade, and the black fire crawled over the demon. He was gone within seconds.

  “Why didn’t you lie to him from the outset?” Hendricks said, sliding his sword back into his scabbard. “You start threatening them with being tortured to death, it makes them desperate. Might get us in a world of hurt.”

  “I don’t like to lie,” Arch said, pushing the blade back into the handle of the switchblade. “There’s this whole commandment that tells you that you shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t think your God had talking to demons in mind when he scrawled that in the stone,” Hendricks said, trying to be nice.

  “It was on the tablet,” Arch said, and to Hendricks’s ears he sounded a little testy about it, “and I think if the good Lord had had a caveat in mind saying it was okay to lie to the servants of evil, he would have added it.”

  Hendricks chuckled. “I don’t think these guys are serving much evil. More like serving themselves.”

  “Serving none but yourself could be considered a very great evil,” Arch said, and Hendricks felt the buzz of annoyance at the sanctimony.

  “Whatever,” Hendricks said and kept just this side of rolling his eyes. He turned and headed back toward the living room.

  “Where are you going?” Arch asked as Hendricks hit the door leading outside and opened it.

  “I gotta take a piss,” Hendricks replied with a tight smile.

  “They’ve got a perfectly good bathroom in here.” Hendricks could hear Arch say it even with the door standing between them, blocking the passage to the bedroom where the police officers still stood.

  “I’ve seen the rest of the house, I doubt it’s anything approaching ‘perfectly good,’” Hendricks said as he let the door slam shut behind him.

  He wasn’t even off the steps when he felt something hit him solidly in the back of the head. He was dimly aware of his hat tumbling off, of strong arms taking hold of him, but he never saw his attacker.

  Which, he had just enough time to think, was strange, since the area around the front door of the trailer was awfully well lit.

  Hendricks passed into unconsciousness, feeling the weight lift. His head throbbed in pain, not for the first time this day, as he faded away.

  11.

  “Heavy bastard,” was Duncan’s only comment as they loaded the cowboy in the back seat.

  “Probably the sword,” Lerner said, pulling the blade off the cowboy as he reached in. “Or maybe the gun.” He pulled a black-steel pistol with wooded grips out of a holster on the man’s belt. It looked vaguely familiar, like something he would have seen before in a movie, but Lerner didn’t know guns. They were nearly useless in his line of work.

  “Or it could be he’s a solidly built guy,” Duncan replied. Lerner heard him click a pair of cuffs around the cowboy’s ankles. “Swords and guns don’t weigh all that much.” Their voices were hushed, and the rain had once more quit. Lerner was trying to keep quiet so as not to tip off the police officer in the trailer that there was something going on out here.

  Lerner didn’t respond to Duncan’s observation. Instead he wa
lked up to the left rear tire of the police cruiser SUV and jabbed the sword in delicately until he heard a hiss. Then he withdrew it, gently, and watched the black rubber deflate slowly to the ground. “Hope you got a spare, Officer.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Duncan said from behind him. He didn’t have to say it twice. Lerner got in the car, started the engine, then put it in gear, all very slowly, as though the cop could hear him from the trailer. He didn’t switch on the lights, either, keeping them off and the engine low until after they were over the flooded tracks and back onto the main road.

  ***

  Arch got outside just as a sedan disappeared onto the trail. He would have cursed, but he didn’t allow himself to say anything strong enough to count in a situation like this. He’d wondered what was taking Hendricks so long, but he got a little caught up looking around the trailer. He’d forgotten how bad it smelled until he stepped out into the fresh air of the rain-cooled night. The chill, from the air and from what he’d just seen, ran over his skin, and he bolted for the Explorer.

  He was just about to yank open the door when his conscious mind realized what was wrong with the scene before him. The left rear tire was flat, and the Explorer was sagging in that direction.

  Hendricks was gone; somebody had probably grabbed him. Though he couldn’t rule out the possibility it was someone like Starling, giving him a lift. No, that didn’t fit.

  His first instinct was to pick up his mike and call it in. Then he thought about the sweep pattern that was going on, the traffic diversion of the interstate, and hesitated. This would throw a wet clump of dirt right in the middle of the sheriff’s plans, and he’d have some manner of explaining to do. Explaining that he couldn’t do. And that’d be in addition to pitting unwitting sheriff’s deputies against something they were absolutely unready for.

  He sighed and hurried to the hatchback of the Explorer. It’d take him a while to change the tire and get in pursuit. Two questions bounced along on infinite loop in his head as he went.

  Who had taken Hendricks? And why?

  ***

  Erin was still up at midnight, pulling into the sheriff’s station in the sheriff’s own patrol car. She could see the lights burning within. Normally this would have been an all-hands-on-deck kind of meeting, but there wasn’t really time for that. Not with everyone on patrol and Arch gone to God knew where.

  She parked the car and walked stiffly across the parking lot, her head still reeling from everything she’d found in Hendricks’s hotel room. There’d been one last thing that’d absolutely knocked her back, and she rubbed her hand over her hair, pushing it off her forehead.

  She was glad the rain had stopped but was not loving the chill it brought with it. When she opened the station door, it only got worse.

  She got hit with a blast of cold air that told her the ancient air conditioner wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. That was no great shock; it only worked when it wasn’t needed. There was a scent of stale coffee lingering in the air as she passed through the waiting area. All was quiet. As it should be.

  Reeve was waiting in his office. His wife, Donna, gave Erin a faint smile as she passed through the area behind the counter where all the desks were lined up. The place was always quiet at this time of night, but something about the events of the day made it seem even grimmer than usual. Donna was a well made-up Southern belle, her hair steel grey and short cropped. She had the lines that Reeve wasn’t showing yet but still had a stately look. She didn’t wear any sort of sheriff’s deputy uniform, because she wasn’t deputized. She was admin when they needed the extra help.

  “Come on in,” Reeve called out as she passed his open office door. The man looked worn out, rubbing a hand over his bald head and down through the grey that remained on the sides. His eyes were normally clear, but she knew he’d been on overnight shift last night, and it showed. She suspected he’d be sleeping in his chair soon enough.

  “Hey, Chief,” she said and gave him a wan smile. She sat in the nearest chair to the door and looked around the office. It was usually in disorder, but today it was even worse. There were scrawlings on the white board near the door, new patrol schedules and phone numbers for crime labs, as well as for that colonel from THP.

  “It’s been a day, huh?” Reeve asked, leaning back in his wooden chair. This was how he usually looked, all leaned back, but not quite so tired.

  “Yep,” she said, not really sure what else she could add to that. It was cold in here, too.

  “I got nothing on Arch,” Reeve said after a minute, and he was looking down the whole time. “Talked to his wife, but she ain’t seen him.” He looked up, and his expression was a muddle. “Between you and me, she seemed a little too cool about the whole thing.”

  “Did you tell her that her husband was missing?” Erin found it hard to believe Arch was actually missing. Almost as hard to believe as him just turning off his phone and disappearing during a crisis like this.

  “I stopped short of that,” Reeve said. “I just said he was off the grid for a little bit, probably pursuing a lead on things, and that I’d surely appreciate if she heard from him first, that she’d tell him to call me.”

  Erin sifted that for a minute. “He ain’t up in the hills, though, is he?”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Reeve said, and it was the admission of a man completely perplexed, like he was ready to throw up his hands. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here. I got eight people murdered this morning in some shit right out of a serial killer movie, I got a traffic accident this afternoon that wasn’t actually an accident at all, and my best deputy has decided to turn off his radio and stop answering his phone even though he’s on duty.”

  Reeve made a grimace, and he ripped a piece of paper off his desk and balled it up before throwing it, hard, against the wall. It made little noise as it fell onto the carpet. “Oh, and by the way, the TVA is calling me up to let me know that Tallakeet Dam is probably going to have water flooding over the top tomorrow, so get ready for the river banks to overrun if this fucking rain doesn’t stop.” Reeve put his face in his hands. “Like I don’t have enough shit to deal with without having to sandbag the fucking Caledonia River.”

  “I’ve never even heard of anything like that happening,” Erin said, frowning. “Don’t they open the sluice gates to let more water out in case of something like this happening?”

  “I guess they are, but the rain is just coming too damned fast,” Reeve said. “As for hearing of this happening before on the Caledonia River, you wouldn’t have. It’s called a once-in-century flood, and you’re not exactly close to a century of age, are you?” He ran fingers over his face, like he could just massage the tiredness away. “We’re going to need to build a sandbag line along the most vulnerable flood plane.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Erin said. “When do we start on that project?”

  “Not until tomorrow. The TVA is working on putting a crew together.”

  Erin felt her face crumple in a frown again. “Didn’t you say it was going to start flooding tomorrow? Shouldn’t we start tonight?”

  Reeve threw his arms wide. “No sandbags. I got nothing to do until they come up with it. And honestly, murderers and psychos slaughtering people and causing multi-car pileups on the freeway is more my area of expertise than flood control.” Reeve’s hands came back down to rest on the arms of his chair. “Which is a grim thought. Honest to God, it’s like this whole damned town is just going straight to hell.”

  Erin felt a flash of discomfort at that turn of phrase, remembering Hendricks’s books on demons. “Sounds like we’re just in the middle of a run of bad luck,” she said, hoping that was really was the case.

  ***

  Gideon knew he needed fertilizer. Tons of it, probably, though he’d need some other things too. He was spending his time splayed out on the bed, his tablet computer in front of him, just doing research. He couldn’t sleep, not after today’s excitement, and especially n
ot with the prospect of what he might turn loose tomorrow.

  So he just kept reading, page after page. Nothing about it looked too difficult, and after the scouting run he’d done earlier, he was excited. A couple of rent-a-cops were the only thing standing between him and his objective. He’d probably be able to just drive right in.

  The even better news was that there was a fertilizer dealer right here in town. Set up for big accounts, too, according to the website. He’d just have to pretend he was a farmer, looking to set up with someone, and then he could get all the fertilizer he needed.

  Then he got a little further down the page and stopped. He could feel the frown creasing his forehead.

  Where the hell was he supposed to get THAT?

  ***

  Hendricks started to come to, his head pressed against the hard plastic edge of a door handle. It took him a minute to realize what it was because it was dark, and only the sight of lights whipping by occasionally above him cracked through the blackness outside. There was a faint glow above him, over the seat, he realized after a minute. By that time he’d figured out he was on his back in the back seat of a car.

  And his head ached like a motherfucker.

  His eye throbbed as he started to sit up. He felt pressure on his wrists and ankles when he did, realizing that he was wearing handcuffs. That paused him for a moment, and a voice came from the seat in front of him.

  “He’s awake.”

  “Oh, good,” came another voice, this one a little more droll. Sounded a little like a Boston accent. Or Jersey. Somewhere Northeast. “Maybe now we can get some answers.”

  “Answers to what?” Hendricks asked, shifting his body to try and sit up. He was in the back seat of a sedan of some sort, not exactly luxury. Cloth seats rubbed against his cheek as he dragged himself up. His ribs were still protesting against the rough treatment they’d received two fights ago.

  “You’ll find out,” the guy in the driver’s seat said. There was a shift as the car started bumping along, and Hendricks realized they’d left the paved road behind.