Depths: Southern Watch #2

by Crane, Robert J.

  “You think you’re better than us?” Suit and Tie stood up, all uppity and filled with the sort of piss and vinegar Hendricks was looking for. Well, it might work out after all.

  “I ain’t better than anyone,” Michael McInness said as he walked back to the bar. “But no one’s better than me, either.”

  “I think I’m better than you,” Suit and Tie said, and Hendricks watched him clench the beer bottle in his hand. He tipped it up and took it all down in one good drink. Hendricks was about ready to interject to say something to stir the situation up a little more when Suit and Tie smashed his empty bottle against the table and held it out in front of him. “I think I’m a hell of a lot better than you, you backwards fucking hick.”

  “You’re gonna have to work to convince me of that from a rhetorical standpoint,” McInness said. “A man who’s got to break a bottle and threaten another man with it to prove his point seems like a man with a weak argument, like someone who just keeps repeating the same untrue shit over and over until he believes it’s true.”

  “How about me and my buddies here just beat the shit out of you until you drown in a puddle of your own blood?” Sweater Vest said with a smirk. “I think that’d establish superiority.”

  “Not of intellect, that’s certain,” McInness said with a sad shake of his head. “I don’t suppose you’ve noticed you’re outnumbered.”

  This was the point where Hendricks started to get dry mouth. It was nerves, sure as shit. Trying to provoke these three into getting into a bar fight with the locals seemed like a good idea when he’d thought of it a few minutes ago. If it turned out they weren’t actually demons, it’d be a damned stupid idea.

  Upon further consideration he realized that if they did turn out to be demons, it might be even worse.

  “Who have you got backing you up?” Sweater Vest said, nodding at the boys over at the bar. There were four of them, every one with a beard at least halfway down his chest. “Duck Dynasty?”

  As one, the four men at the bar stood up, pushing their stools back from underneath them. McInness cringed. “I hope weren’t being insulting there, because—”

  “I was,” Sweater Vest said, and Hendricks watched as Hipster Glasses stood, sending his wooden chair skidding back.

  “That’s a damned shame,” McInness said, shaking his head. “Now, this is my establishment, and I’m asking you boys to leave.”

  “Make us,” Suit and Tie said.

  “That’s a very kindergarten response,” McInness said. He drew a stinging look from Suit and Tie in return. “You realize I’m going to have to call the law, since you’ve threatened me and failed to leave my property when I’ve asked you to. I even asked nicely.”

  Sweater Vest took two steps toward McInness and poked him in the chest with a long finger. “You won’t last long enough for them to get here.”

  McInness gave Sweater Vest a slow nod. “I see. And you, Cowboy?,” McInness looked past Sweater Vest at Hendricks. “Where do you stand in this whole thing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know these guys,” Hendricks said, still sitting in his chair, beer in hand. “I was telling a joke, playing to my audience. Figured some shit-hot city wankers would get a good laugh out of the one I told. Turns out I was right.”

  McInness gave him the once-over. Hendricks was a little surprised Sweater Vest hadn’t made his move yet. None of them had presented a hint of their true faces yet—if they had them—which was concerning. “So you came into my bar just to stir up shit.”

  Hendricks looked at Hipster Glasses and saw a twitch at the eye, a little hint of darkness within. He set his beer down, not taking his eyes off the guy as his hand crept slowly into his coat. “Sorry, but yeah. I did.”

  “Well, my patrons here enjoy a good fight,” McInness said, nodding to the crew behind him. One of them was even wearing a bandana. Seriously. “But I think it’s gonna end up causing some damage to my establishment, and I’m wondering who’s going to pay for that.”

  Hendricks let his hand go inside his coat, felt the hilt of his sword and tightened his grip around it. “I think this one might have to go to insurance, sir.”

  “I’m gonna take it out of somebody’s ass if my place gets torn up,” McInness said. Now he was looking Sweater Vest right in the eye. There was a pause. “Son, you got something wrong with you? Been smoking the wacky tobacky?”

  “What?” Sweater Vest asked.

  “Your eye.”

  Hendricks caught the glimmer from Suit and Tie on the left. Shit.

  Sweater Vest struck as Hendricks pulled his sword. McInness went flying through the air, shouting all the way. Suit and Tie went for the men at the bar on all fours, like a fucking wolf that had just been let loose from a kennel.

  Hendricks buried his sword right in Hipster Glasses’s gut. The resulting blaze of hellfire filled the air with the sharp stench of brimstone.

  Hendricks coughed and stumbled back. Surprise attacks were the best on these motherfuckers. They were the only ones guaranteed to work, really.

  Sweater Vest and Suit and Tie were tearing into the boys at the bar now, and Hendricks felt a tug of remorse. This was his fault. His stupid plan to get them to reveal themselves in a crowd so he didn’t get blindsided had backfired on the locals. Guilt was gonna beat his ass down later, especially if any of these guys got hurt.

  Hendricks threw himself forward with a recklessness that was probably at least partly the fault of the shitty beer’s effects. He wanted to bury the sword in Sweater Vest’s back, but Suit and Tie saw him coming and charged him. He took a shoulder to the midsection and all the air came rushing out of him. He felt it in the ribs and hoped nothing was broken.

  They slammed into the floor. Suit and Tie moved a hell of a lot faster than Hendricks did. Hendricks realized his cowboy hat had fallen off in the scuffle as his head cracked against the floor of the bar. His eyeballs rattled in their sockets as the dirty, scuffed wood hit the back of his skull.

  That wasn’t enough for Suit and Tie, though. Hendricks’s sword was out of position, his arms extended over the demon from where he’d gotten caught in the tackle. He couldn’t reverse his hold on the sword quickly enough and a serious pain in his chest almost caused him to drop the blade. He was still injured from where another demon had done a number on him just a week or so earlier.

  For a flash, Hendricks considered trying to stop the demon as Suit and Tie got up into a schoolboy position to start punching the shit out of him. That idea fled quickly and instead he tried to block. He caught the first punch with his left wrist and nearly screamed from the pain as it hit. His arm went numb from the wrist down, and it ached all the way up, like he’d gotten a shovel smashed into it.

  “Get the fuck outta here!” Hendricks heard somewhere, and the heavy footfalls of boots fell around him. He dimly realized that it was the boys from the bar exercising the better part of valor. He wished he could join them.

  The next punch from Suit and Tie caught him in the nose, and he felt the blood start running. His head got hazy. There were two of that fucker on top of him, weren’t there?

  Hendricks’s eyes alit on Sweater Vest. He was standing just past Suit and Tie’s shoulder, past the white shirt that was now a little spotted from blood. Hendricks knew some of it was his.

  Hendricks’s mind slipped back to him long enough to remember he had something in his hand. Something that might help. He looked over at it, blinking as the next blow descended.

  Oh, right. A sword.

  He jabbed up and poked it into Suit and Tie’s ribcage. He put some power into it, like he needed to bury it up to the hilt to get the job done. It didn’t go all the way in to the hilt, but he got it in a good three inches, and that was enough. Suit and Tie’s bloody ensemble was engulfed in the shadowed fire that came from a demon’s demise, and Hendricks felt the belching of the cloud of heat as he passed.

  Hendricks wanted to sag to the floor and just wait, but McInness was in Sweater Vest’s grasp. T
his was not going to end well, but still Hendricks could not compel his body to get off the damned floor.

  There was a noise behind him, but he couldn’t turn to look. Thunderous steps moved past him, heavy footfalls, like the boys from Duck Dynasty were back with friends, but—

  No. That wasn’t it.

  A mountainous black man stood over him, wearing a sheriff’s deputy’s khaki uniform. He only glanced at Hendricks for a second before he grabbed Sweater Vest from behind and pulled him backward, throwing him out of Hendricks’s sight.

  Oh, thank God.

  Arch.

  * * *

  Archibald Stan didn’t like his first name, so he went by Arch. It didn’t have the ring of a name to his ears, not a traditional one, but it worked. Easy to say, easy to remember, and distinctive. He didn’t really care that it was distinctive, but it worked in his favor so he didn’t dislike it.

  Arch had seen the regulars go bolting out the door of the bar from where he’d sat in the parking lot, soaking in the silence in his patrol car. Rain tapped at his windows as the front door to the Charnel House Bar opened and men started spilling out. That was about as much signal as he needed to know that things inside had gone downhill. He’d been waiting for Hendricks to come out and get him once he’d confirmed that the out-of-towners inside were, in fact, demons. But the cowboy never did come out. If Arch had been any other deputy on the force, he could have just gone in with Hendricks.

  But everyone in Calhoun County knew that Arch Stan didn’t really drink, and if he did he wouldn’t come to a backwoods joint in the south end of the county to do it. So instead he waited to charge in until the Charnel House had suffered a rapid exodus of its usual patronage.

  Arch took one look around as he burst in the door. The bar in the corner was a mess of shattered beer bottles. One of the patrons was on the floor, bleeding from the mouth, and Mike McInness, the proprietor, was in the hands of a demon wearing a sweater vest.

  Arch hadn’t run into too many demons yet, but he’d seen one in a suit. A sweater vest? That was new.

  Arch pulled the sanctified switchblade Hendricks had given him a week or so earlier and heard it click open before he stepped forward. He spared a passing thought for Hendricks and realized that the crumpled pile of black to his right was actually the man in question. He looked like he’d been roughed up good, but he didn’t seem to be in immediate danger.

  McInness, on the other hand, looked like he was about to get his head yanked off. That made him Arch’s priority.

  Arch moved to bury the switchblade in the back of the sweater-vest-wearing demon, but the guy moved at the last second. Arch caught the demon’s shoulder with his free hand and pulled him back. The demon let go of McInness, who fell to the floor with a thud that echoed through the bar.

  “Well, if it ain’t another human,” the sweater-vest-clad demon said with a wide grin, his true face revealed.

  “Yep,” Arch said, standing off with him. The demon was blocking passage through the door, not that Arch had any intention of walking through it right now.

  “But you’re not scared, are you?” The demon was still grinning. Like he didn’t see the knife in Arch’s hand. Or didn’t know what it meant for him.

  “Of a devil spawn like you?” Arch shrugged. “Can’t see why I should be. You’re just a little balloon of sulfur stink waiting to get popped.”

  “You think you got it in you to do it?” Sweater Vest leered at him. “Because I think you’re gonna be dinner for me and my boys—” He looked left, then right, seeming to realize he was alone with Arch. “What the— Where my boys at?” He turned his fiery eyes to Arch.

  “Seems like somebody let the fire out of them already,” Arch said, trying to hide the switchblade, turning his body so the demon in the sweater vest couldn’t see it. “But I’m sure you got nothing to worry about.” Arch felt himself smile a little. “You’re not scared, are you?”

  Whether it was him turning the demon’s words against him or just the accusation of being yellow-bellied that caused the demon to charge him, Arch didn’t know. The demon came at him, though, and Arch jabbed him right in the heart with the switchblade. The air filled with the smell of brimstone and those hateful eyes just burned up right there. Arch had a hand on the sweater vest and felt the faint tingle as the black fire crawled over his skin while dissolving the demon.

  Arch took a long look around after that, making sure that there wasn’t another demon waiting to jump him from behind the bar or in the bathroom. Once he knew there wasn’t, he checked on Hendricks, who was mumbling into the floor. “You all right?” Arch asked him, kneeling next to the man in the black drover coat.

  “Feel like someone stomped my ass and then scraped me off their boot,” Hendricks said, looking up at Arch with half-lidded eyes. “Gimme a minute and I’ll get up. Check on McInness and the other guy, will you?”

  “Yeah,” Arch said and moved over to McInness. His steps creaked the uneven floorboards of the Charnel House as he went. The bartender was a little out of it, but Arch gave him a gentle slap to the face and his eyes flickered. “You in there, McInness?”

  “Is it opening time already?” McInness said, his red face a little bloody. “Sweet Jesus, is that you, Arch?” The older man’s eyes were open now, and when he parted his lips Arch noticed the upper one was split good. “What the hell are you doing in my bar?”

  Arch stared into McInness’s eyes and waved a hand over his face. “You might have a concussion, Mike.”

  “I think someone had a fight at my bar,” McInness said. “I should probably check on the place before I go to the doctor.”

  Arch looked around him. “Uh … you’re in your bar right now, Mike.”

  McInness blinked, his expression perplexed. “I should probably go on to the doctor, then.”

  Arch couldn’t disagree with that sentiment, but before he could voice it, he heard someone else grunt from the floor next to the bar. It was a guy he barely knew, Ellroy was the man’s name, long-bearded fellow who worked a farm out near Culver, a little unincorporated town that Arch drove through every few days on patrol. He only knew the guy because he’d gotten flagged down once to help with some out-of-towner who was tearing up and down the man’s road twice a day like a maniac. It had turned out to be a local high-school boy who’d been visiting a girl up the road. A warning had taken the lead out of the boy’s foot, and Ellroy had been mighty grateful.

  “What the hell …?” Ellroy said, his lips oozing blood.

  “You got in a bar fight,” Arch said, watching the man struggle to a sitting position. Ellroy was wearing denim suspenders with a camouflage t-shirt underneath.

  “Am I going to jail?” Ellroy asked. Arch could see the crow’s feet at the sides of the older man’s eyes as he blinked. He had the look of a man who laughed a lot.

  “Not tonight,” Arch said, keeping his eye on Ellroy. “I don’t think you started it.”

  Ellroy nodded, seemed like he understood. “Did I win?”

  Arch gave him a look. The good ol’ boys did seem to enjoy a fight. “I don’t think so. The guys who did it ran off, though.”

  “Aw, man,” Ellroy said, holding his head. “How’s McInness?”

  “Needs to go to the hospital.” Arch stood. “You sober enough to drive him?”

  “I only had one,” Ellroy said. He was a big son of a gun, not much shorter than Arch himself. The broken beer bottles left the place drenched in a smell that was more than a little disagreeable.

  “Help me get him up,” Arch said to Ellroy and gestured to McInness. The barman wasn’t a small fella, either.

  “Okay,” Ellroy said, and on the count of three they each put an arm over a shoulder and lifted McInness up. The barman didn’t say much about that, his eyes still fluttering. “Say, what about that cowboy?” Ellroy said, and pointed to where Hendricks lay on the floor.

  “Oh, him?” Arch shuffled along as he and Ellroy dragged McInness out of the bar. He swung t
he door open and held it as they carried the big barman out into the night. Arch tossed a look back at Hendricks, who still lay on the dirty floor of the bar, hands holding his face. “I’ll deal with him in a few minutes.”

  * * *

  His name was Lerner, according to his driver’s license, and that was what his partner called him as well. He tended to stick to suits, the blander the better; his color palette was admittedly not as creative as his partner’s—Duncan, he was called. Duncan would have worn wild, lime-colored shit if he were allowed to. Lerner didn’t let him, though; it just wasn’t appropriate.

  The humidity was thick in the air as Lerner stepped out of the town car. It was a rental, but they’d gone with it because it looked like a cop car, smelled like a cop car, and Lerner always tried to look like a cop, everywhere he went. Made his life easier. He sidled along through the sweltering night with Duncan at his side, ambling down a city street. Houses were lined up along either side, tall trees swaying in an ineffectual breeze. “Hot out tonight,” Lerner said. Duncan just grunted acknowledgment. He was like that. The quiet type. Lerner made up for it.

  The smell of someone’s fried chicken was still hanging in the air, though Lerner couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to cook with the windows open. “Like a fucking sauna out here,” Lerner muttered to himself as he paused next to a white picket fence that ringed a white house. He sniffed the air; there was something under the fried chicken smell. “Here?” he asked.

  Duncan nodded, his brown eyes narrowed under heavy brows, stray hairs jutting in all different directions. “You could fucking say something, Igor,” Lerner said, but Duncan just shrugged. Lerner ran a hand over the gate of the waist-high fence, feeling the smooth, painted wood in his hand. “Even I can feel something amiss here.” There was definitely some essence in the air, some hints of something that shouldn’t be this strong.

  They took the front steps off the walk, dress shoes sounding like the ticking of a grandfather clock. Same rhythm, too, Lerner thought, perfectly timed. He reached under his jacket, a nice little pinstripe number he’d picked up at Men’s Wearhouse that came with matching trousers. When his hand emerged, he had a truncheon clutched tightly in it, a six-inch length of metal enclosed in a rubber grip. He could feel the checkering of the grip in his hand, and that little flutter within told him it was almost time. He stepped onto the porch and up to the front door where he stood in front of an oval window that was tinted with some crystalline highlights in a pattern. He could see a lacy curtain behind it.