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

by Robert J. Crane

  Duncan shook his head. “Not so much.”

  “Oh?”

  “Foot in mouth disease,” Duncan said, prompting Lerner to nod. Human guys were always saying dumb things. Lerner wondered if it was a genetic predisposition or something.

  “Heh,” Lerner said, strangely amused by that. “Sounds like the only play he’ll be seeing tonight is the app store.”

  Duncan frowned as his eyes shot skyward in a reasonable approximation of a man pondering something. “I don’t think he has a smart phone.”

  Lerner sighed—another approximation of human behavior. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

  ***

  Lauren Darlington’s key hit the lock a second before she heard the argument inside. It didn’t sound knock-down, drag-out, which was a plus, but it didn’t sound like the sort of thing that just resolved itself without a storm out, either. Based on the volume of the voices, Lauren figured slamming doors were in the offing in the next few minutes. She was trying to decide as she turned the lock whether to make her presence known, because depending on where she had to land on it, it could either make things better or worse.

  And she wasn’t very sure which it would be.

  She opened the door as the crescendo of yelling spilled out into the hot summer eve, her heels clicking as they left the old scuffed wood porch and stepped into the darkened hallway. She could smell supper on the stove, the low simmer of gravy going and biscuits baking in the oven. It was just a little sullied by the argument taking place in the same room. Kind of cast a pall on the feeling of home that she usually got when she stepped in the door.

  “Young lady, you will mind me—”

  “Oh, I mind you! I mind you plenty—as in you annoy the fuck out of me!”

  “Watch your mouth, girl! Bad enough you show up late, but then you smart off? You’re pushing me to the edge tonight.”

  “So that’s where the edge is?” Lauren could hear her daughter’s voice bubbling over with the usual sarcasm. She did it well, credit where it was due. “I haven’t seen it in a while because you people pushed me over it a long damned time ago with your rules and your bullshit and your sanctimony—”

  “You sure like to throw out the fancy words when you get cornered.” Lauren could hear her mother edging closer to the actual edge. Lauren had pushed her over it more than a few times in her day—and even more recently, come to think of it. It wasn’t a fun place to linger around. “Seems like if you applied your vocabulary and smarts to your schoolwork, you might not be getting yourself into as much trouble as you’re in lately.”

  “Every word sounds like a fancy word to you,” Molly said, and Lauren felt the sting from down the hall. She trudged forward into the fight, even though she didn’t want to, heels clopping quietly on the hallway floor as she edged around the corner into the kitchen. Molly stopped when she saw her. “Mom.”

  “Yeah,” Lauren said. She didn’t sigh, but she wanted to. Long hours, long days, long weeks and months and years had been leading up to this. She stared at her sixteen-year-old daughter and wondered when the hell she’d found time to grow up. The answer was the same—while Lauren was going to college and medical school and doing a residency—but it was somewhat unsatisfying nonetheless. “You’re mouthing off to your grandmother?”

  Molly folded her arms in front of her, dark hair shaking as she moved her head to look away. “Again, yes.” She could apply the sullen look pretty quickly, too. Probably the age working in her favor. “This shouldn’t exactly be a surprise to you.”

  “That you treat your grandmother with disrespect?” Lauren could hear the quiet echo of her own voice as she dipped her head to look at her shoes. They had a trace of blood on the toe from the crime scene, and she felt a rush of disgust. She’d specifically taken them off at work for a reason, dammit.

  “She’s not listening to me,” Molly said, and the self-importance oozed out of every word. “I—”

  “Kid, I don’t care,” Lauren said, looking back up at her. Stern face. She wasn’t very good at it because she didn’t do it very often. She didn’t need to most of the time. Molly had been so good up until lately. She’d been a champ. They’d been like friends. She put the hammer down when she had to, but it was thankfully rare. “I’ve never been an authoritarian with you, and you’ve never acted like this so I’d have to.”

  “No, because you let grandma do it,” Molly said, and again there was that sting.

  “That’s … that’s true,” Vera said, shaking her head. Lauren shot her a Whose side are you on anyway? look.

  Lauren started to open her mouth, and Molly preempted her: “I don’t feel like arguing anymore.” She turned on her heel and headed right for her room.

  “You’re sixteen,” Lauren called after her as she ascended the staircase. “You’re supposed to be ready for a dramatic throwdown with your mother anytime, day or night.” She heard the slam of a door somewhere upstairs. “Well, at least you’ve got the dramatic part down.” Lauren felt the air deflate from her. “I guess I should go talk to her.”

  “I’d give her a bit to settle down,” Vera said, waving her off. “Oh, Lordy, the biscuits are burning.” She went for the oven and pulled out a pan that brought with it a smoky aroma to fill the kitchen. The white doughy biscuits looked fine on top but Lauren knew from long experience that the bottoms were singed to the pan. “Well, what are we gonna do now?”

  “Eat the tops of them,” Lauren said, staring at the biscuits stoically. She just didn’t have enough emotion to channel into anything else. “It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve burned the biscuits.”

  “I meant about your daughter,” Vera said in a huff. “She’s getting—”

  “Worse,” Lauren said, nodding slowly. She thought she could almost feel the color draining out of her face, but it was probably her imagination. “She’s getting worse. I’d ask if I was this bad at her age, but I think we both know the answer is—”

  “You were hell on sixteen wheels, girl,” her mother said, now positioned by the stovetop and working a wooden spoon through the gravy. “At least she hasn’t come home pregnant yet, unlike some people in this kitchen I could name.”

  And there was the color returning to her face. It was still a slightly raw spot to Lauren after sixteen years that she’d gotten pregnant at sixteen. Now she was thirty-two, and her daughter was where she was when she’d had her. Not an appealing thought when you were watching your daughter veer off the road. “I should go talk to her,” Lauren said again.

  But she stayed right there in the kitchen and worked her way over to the pan of biscuits sitting on a towel on the table. She nibbled from the top of one and just kept thinking, because at least if that was all she did she wouldn’t stir up another storm in the house.

  ***

  Mick was hanging out on the town square. Place was quiet as quiet could get, like a thousand other towns in America, time passing them by and moving all the shops out to the freeway.

  He’d seen that a lot lately. Or maybe he was noticing it a lot lately. He’d been around long enough to remember when it was the other way, when everything happening in a town was on the square. There’d maybe be a malt shop, with a buzz of conversation at this time of night, where you could get a tall glass of sweet malted chocolatey goodness slid in front of you with two straws so you could share. Sipping it while you were looking at the person across from you, eyes meeting while you drank it all in.

  Mick missed that. It was an easy setup, and a great way to get a girl loose and ready for the finale. He remembered doing that back in the fifties and it had worked really well.

  It had been a while since the last time he’d done it. Probably at least … thirty years? Something like that. Some town in Alabama, if he remembered right. The thing about Mick was, he didn’t need it that often. He saw the human men in the carnival, and they could go a couple-three times a night, some of them. That was almost obscene to him. Like rabbits to humans, he figured. No, on
ce every thirty years was good for him, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

  But when he let it all go, boy, was it a doozy.

  Mick was swinging his arms as he walked, just a natural rhythm he barely noticed anymore. He’d learned to adapt when he first got here, learned to watch the natives so he could blend in. You walked with your arms straight at your sides, you looked weird. Weird got attention. Normal let you blend, let you fade into the background.

  Which was not a bad place for a demon to be.

  It was a pretty warm night. Mick had been up north a couple times during the winter for winter carnivals, which was a damned asinine idea in his mind. Staying south during the winter was a winning idea to him, but he just worked here, he didn’t run the show.

  The light was fading in the western sky, purple and orange kaleidoscoping together for a fantastic view. Mick wasn’t exactly a connoisseur of sunsets—he tended not to notice them when he was working—but this one was pretty amazing. The town was so quiet that the only thing he could hear was the sound of one other person walking just across the square.

  He caught her eye as he made his way around. She was young, a pretty thing. Porcelain face like a little doll and big eyes. She just screamed with innocence. It was dripping off of her in the way she wore her jeans just a degree too loose for her body, in the way she averted her gaze after she caught him looking.

  He sped up and changed directions. If she noticed, she didn’t panic, which was good. This was small town America, right? Nothing to fear here.

  At least not yet.

  “Hey,” Mick announced himself once he was within a half dozen feet of her. He’d crossed under some statue in the middle of the green space in the square just to get to her. She had been eyeing him warily as he’d approached but pretended she wasn’t. Mick caught it anyway.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, still wary. She’d stopped, but her whole body was held at an angle, like she was about to jackrabbit if he took another step toward her.

  “My name’s Mick,” he said, nodding. He’d updated his wardrobe just for this. He always looked young, but some ragged skinny jeans from a thrift store in the last town coupled with a tight t-shirt and some black nail polish gave him a look he figured might appeal to a girl of her age. He called it his tortured-soul look.

  “Okay,” she said, and he could tell she either wasn’t instantly impressed or she was a little too stunned to fall into the rhythm of a proper conversation.

  “And you are …?” he prompted.

  “Busy at the moment,” she said. She had the arms folded across her chest in a very obvious fuck off! manner. Still looked ready to run, though slightly less so than she had. More aggravated. Gave a little flush to her cheeks that Mick found appealing.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Mick said, nodding his head. He applied the false sincerity like Spackle to try and keep her in place. “I’m only in town for a few days, and I was looking for somebody to show me around.”

  She stared at him, like she was trying to decide how much more she was willing to tolerate from him. “Okay. Well. Here’s the square.” She unfolded her arms and waved them around to encompass the series of buildings around them. “This concludes our tour. Bye, now.” She started to turn but hesitated, and he caught it.

  “Wait,” he said, utterly calm. She was right where he wanted her. “What’s your name?”

  She turned back to him, and here he saw she was torn, like that age-old programming she’d been hit with since she was a child telling her not to talk with strangers was warring with her common sense which was saying, What does it matter? It’s just a name.

  Common sense won the battle. “I’m Molly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Molly.” He smiled at her.

  “I gotta go,” she said. “See ya later.” She walked off but not quite so fast as she had when he’d first seen her.

  Mick watched her go, nodding his head. Yep, she’d do. “Yes,” he said once she was good and out of earshot. “Yes, you will.”

  3.

  Lerner stood on the street in the warm summer night, trying to pretend he gave a shit about what he was looking at. Which was basically just a lot of blood at this point and not a lot else. “You seeing anything here?”

  Duncan didn’t speak. He had his eyes closed, sniffing his way through what was left behind here. Lerner blew out air between his lips and made a raspberry noise that Duncan probably pretended not to notice. Ever since they’d come to this town and started mingling with the humans, Duncan had started acting more like them. It was bad enough he didn’t like to engage in any edifying discussions of the sort Lerner enjoyed, but now he was starting to pick up some eccentricities of the sort that made Lerner feel ill. “No, that’s fine,” Lerner said. “Just ignore me. No big deal. I’ll just sit here on the street and listen to those cicadas bitching in the distance while I wait for you to finish your guided meditation—or whatever these trendy humans would call it.”

  “There’s a lot of blood here,” Duncan said. Quietly, of course.

  “That’s something I could have told you without the need for guided meditation,” Lerner said. He leaned against the town car and tried to look like a government stiff. If he made himself look unapproachable enough, most people—surprise!—didn’t try to approach him.

  “I can see something hit him …” Duncan said, musing to himself.

  “I can see that too,” Lerner said.

  “… but I can’t see what,” Duncan said, and his voice was all ponder and wondering. Which was not quite usual for him. “Runes.”

  “Fucking Spellman,” Lerner swore, spitting little flecks of the saliva he barely produced out of his mouth. “That screen has caused us more problems since we’ve gotten here than any ten fuv’quava or thirty eich’yurn. So help me, if anyone drops a dime on him, I will give them a full-on human kiss on any part of their anatomy they want.”

  Duncan just gave him the look, the one with the raised eyebrow. It was most of an expression, anyway.

  Lerner turned away, fuming. It should have been easy, tracking down Spellman. It wasn’t like they hadn’t tried; the bastard had sold that Sygraath Gideon some highly objectionable shit. The sort of stuff that broke every single law of the Pact with room left over to break ’em again. But he’d also figured out how to dip some conjurings into the deep waters of the internet, and somehow every time Lerner or Duncan—or even Hendricks, when they’d tried to get him to do it for them—performed a search for the bastard, his website flashed nothing but taunting messages in old gril’vech. Which was insulting in and of itself, really, since the fucking gril’vech were a dirty, dirty people that were fully deserving of their special place in hell.

  “I can’t see anything after the hit,” Duncan pronounced, and he almost sounded sad.

  Lerner’s annoyance flashed a little hotter. “Oh, no, another one of the seven billion people on this world has met a tragic end. Whatever will we do?” He snorted. “Oh, right, somehow carry on living like every other person in history.”

  Duncan was staring at the bloodstain, looking fucking solemn. “This man was the only one of them specifically like himself. No one else will ever be the same.”

  Lerner felt his jaw drop slightly. “Did you just … pontificate?”

  Duncan turned his head slowly to look at Lerner. “If each of them is individual, and different, then that makes them special. Special means unique, worthy of preservation.”

  Lerner sucked in a breath that would ultimately do nothing but circulate in his essence before he let it back out. He took it anyway. “So grab a jar of formaldehyde and get to preserving. Where is this soft-hearted Duncan coming from? You’re beginning to alarm me with your thoughts on humans, and I’ve pondered just about every angle I can in this life and the next.”

  “I just see … something special is all,” Duncan said. “Something worthy of upholding and protecting.”

  Lerner felt a grudging, partial agreement to that. “Well
, we’ve got protecting and upholding to do, that’s for sure.” But at least part of it was protecting his own ass, Lerner reflected, because an OOC who didn’t do his job ended up in a much warmer climate. Lerner was about to mention that to Duncan, but he dismissed it as a waste of that breath he’d just taken. Besides, it was easier to just stand here and listen to the faint hum in the night of … something?

  Lerner frowned and jerked upright. What the hell was that?

  ***

  “You want my wife to go to a whorehouse with you,” Arch said, staring at Hendricks, who was standing in his living room. Erin had dropped him off on the way to her patrol. Apparently she’d known why he was coming over—which was to ask this very thing. Arch made a mental note to have a word with Erin on his next shift—and to try very hard not to make it a swear word.

  “When you say it like that,” Hendricks said, standing in the middle of the living room, shrinking inside his big black drover coat and cowboy hat, “it sounds …” His voice trailed off.

  “Wildly inappropriate?” Arch asked. He cast a look over at Alison, who was watching the proceedings with muted interest. She did pretty much everything with muted interest lately, at least since that blow-up they’d had after the dam. Actually, before that, even. The fight after the dam was just a short moment where things had seemed to be different.

  Although what she’d done to him in the car earlier had been a pretty big departure from the norm of late, too.

  “I was gonna just stay simple and go with ‘bad,’” Hendricks said, “but if you want to get specific, I think we could add ‘awkward’ and ‘illegal’ to the billing.”