Depths: Southern Watch #2

by Crane, Robert J.

  What the hell was going on now?

  * * *

  Gideon stepped into a world upside down. He’d seen farmhouses on TV; they were simple, quaint things, filled with homey samplers on the wall, quilts on the back of overstuffed furniture. For some reason he imagined the smell of gravy cooking, the smell of every greasy spoon restaurants he’d ever been to.

  This was nothing like that.

  Every wall was red. Deep red, not quite blood, but a heavy maroon of the sort you’d see on a weather map. The smell was all herbs and spices, or something of that sort. Maybe incense. Damned sure wasn’t vanilla, though. And the furniture wasn’t homey. At all.

  There were cages to his left, animals within, but not a trace of the smell he might have associated with them. He could hear the rattle and noise of some of the chickens—and there had to be a half dozen of them alone. He could see some dogs below that, in bigger cages, staring out at him with hopeless eyes. Gideon had to concede that if he was a human, it might have moved him. But he wasn’t, so his eyes moved on.

  There were other animals, too, the cages stacked floor to ceiling on three sides of what had once been someone’s sitting room. The last three cages, the ones closest to the open arch leading to the entry hall, had humans. The cages were kind of small for their occupants, heavy metal bars fencing in two men and a woman. They were dirty and naked and didn’t project one third of the sad-eyed pathos that the dogs did.

  “Come in,” came the voice from ahead. Gideon stared forward, looking away from the spectacle of the cage room, and started walking down the hall. Every step in his shoes made a lovely, resonant thump against the hardwood floor that echoed through the quiet house. If the animals were making noise, it was masked by a conjuring of some sort. And that was fine with Gideon. If they were screaming toward death, he’d hear it anyway. If they were just screaming, he didn’t give a fuck.

  He walked down the long, red hall, keeping his eyes on the space ahead. The hall was longer than the house, at least as he remembered it from outside. The occasional shelf and end table that could be found along it was filled with curiosities, orbs, jars with light and darkness enclosed within and shelves laden with arcane, leather-bound books.

  “Come further,” the voice commanded. It was cold and clear, reminding Gideon of a winter wind in Chicago for some reason. It felt like it was blowing down the hall at him. He didn’t shiver, but it was a near thing.

  He could see the hall widen ahead, another room to his left, a stairway leading up to his right. It had an old wood banister with a thousand nicks in it that he could see even at this distance. The smell of incense was stronger here. It reminded him a little of an Indian restaurant in the neighborhood he’d lived in in Detroit.

  “Ah, I see you now,” came a voice from just around the corner.

  Gideon entered a large dining room complete with an oval wood table and six place settings. A man sat opposite him, with a small smile, one that barely wrinkled the corners of his eyes. He looked small somehow, with greying hair at the temples, and solid, thick hair. There were no teeth in the man’s smile, and he wore a Nehru jacket, which seemed totally at odds with his utterly Caucasian look. It reminded Gideon of the movie villain in Austin Powers.

  Gideon halted in front of the table, staring at the man opposite him. “You could see me, huh? Like through a conjuring?”

  “No,” the man said, his smile widening. He put out a hand, open palm gesturing to the staircase behind him. “I have a mirror over there.” Gideon looked and saw it, mounted just above the staircase—one of those distorted ones that stores put high up in their corners to keep watch for shoplifting. “No, you’re not really the type that’s within my power to keep an eye on easily, are you?”

  “I guess not,” Gideon said. He shifted on his feet, side to side. There wasn’t much decor in the dining room; a couple paintings on the wall, a six-foot grandfather clock with gold pendulum halted in the middle of its chest in the corner. There were a couple incense burners, and the light was dim. “So.”

  “So,” the man said and stood, pointing to the chair opposite him. “Have a seat?” He extended his hand as Gideon took a step forward. Gideon took his hand and found it cold, desperately cold. When Gideon looked up at the man, his smile was back to practiced and small, any hint of his teeth gone. “My name is Wren Spellman. And you are?”

  “Gideon,” he replied. It was an assumed name anyway. “Wren Spellman?”

  “An appellation some locals gave me in Kansas once,” Spellman said, taking a seat. That same, unmoving smile remained maddeningly perched on his lips. “I liked it so much, I kept it.”

  “Uh huh,” Gideon said. He was itching to know Spellman’s real name, but that was an itch one simply didn’t scratch in their world. “I’m looking for some things.”

  “I see,” Spellman said, and the smile was gone, replaced with all seriousness. “May I ask how you came to find us? Was it by word of mouth, an ad, our website—”

  “Website,” Gideon said, frowning.

  “Ah, good,” Spellman said, and Gideon realized he had a pad of yellow paper in front of him and was writing on it. When Spellman looked up and caught Gideon looking at him, he smiled again. “Just making a note; we like to make sure our marketing dollars are being spent well, you know. I had a man from Russia design the site and give it some SEO.” Spellman laughed. “Oh, how things have changed since the days when you just hung entrails outside a tent. But in this modern world you have to adapt to maximize profitability, you know?”

  “I guess,” Gideon said, a trace uneasy. “Listen, I’m looking for …”

  “A conjuring? Some sorcery, perhaps?” Spellman said with that same false smile.

  “Yeah,” Gideon said and ran a hand through his thinning hair.

  “I have many of those that might interest a man such as yourself,” Spellman said and started ticking off his fingers one by one as he listed. “Glamours, potions, runes. Something to increase your potency, perhaps?” There was a twinkle in Spellman’s eye at that one.

  “My potency is doing just fine, thanks,” Gideon said matter-of-factly. It was, after all.

  “Sorry, that’s the most popular request,” Spellman said with a shrug of the shoulders. His Nehru suit was green now, though Gideon could have sworn it was grey only minutes ago. “And sometimes it takes people a while to admit it, so I like to just get that out there in the open at the outset.” He steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. “So, what’s it to be, Mr. Gideon …?”

  “Just Gideon.”

  “What’s it to be, ‘Just Gideon’?” Spellman wore a pensive look, like he was trying to stare down Gideon’s eyes and look behind them.

  “I need something … really particular,” Gideon said, and Spellman leaned forward. Gideon had a feeling the reaction would be good.

  * * *

  “We need to hold up here a minute,” Duncan said as they got out of the car.

  “Why?” Hendricks frowned at Duncan. The man in the purple suit was mysterious as all hell, and it was getting on his nerves. There was a chill in the parking lot of the Sinbad that was settling on Hendricks’s skin, a chill he hadn’t felt since he’d blown into town. Summer had been in full force when he arrived. Now it was starting to feel like autumn in Wisconsin.

  “Because your girlfriend is in the parking lot of the gas station across the street, watching us,” Duncan replied as neutrally as if he were reading a passage out of the car’s manual.

  “She— what?” He started to turn his head to look and sure enough, a sheriff’s car was sitting across the street, lights off. He could see the exhaust puffing out of the tailpipe because of the gas station lights. Hendricks felt his stomach growl and realized he hadn’t eaten in a long damned time. For a second he thought about going over there—to talk to her, maybe grab a hot dog afterward.

  That thought got squeezed off when the cruiser’s headlights came on and it eased across the street and into the Sin
bad’s lot. It rolled up real slow, like she was taking her time to build the suspense. Based on how their earlier conversation had gone, Hendricks didn’t have high hopes for this one. “How’d you know it was her?” he asked Duncan, who stood with his arms folded, eyes closed. “Could you sense her when we were on our way here?”

  “No,” Duncan said, not opening his eyes but swaying slightly as a gentle wind blew through the parking lot. The cruiser eased closer, stopping in a spot just next to the sedan. “I can’t read humans from a distance. There are just too many of you.”

  Erin stepped out of her car and had her flashlight out immediately. He could tell it was her in the instant before she clicked the light on just by the profile. He’d seen her in the dark enough to recognize it, though usually it was when she was astride him.

  “Hey,” he said, as tight-lipped as he could be. This had the potential to be a really awkward conversation, especially in front of Lerner and Duncan.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, and she didn’t sound any more pleased to see him now than when he’d seen her earlier. Plus she was shining the light in his eyes. He had a hand up to block her, but still, that maglite was damned bright. “Where have you been?”

  He felt his face crease with annoyance. “Out. Why?”

  She ignored his question and took her light off of him to illuminate Lerner, then Duncan, one at a time. “Who are your friends?”

  “I don’t have any friends,” Hendricks shot back. He layered on the sarcasm nice and thick.

  “They’re not demons, are they?”

  Hendricks felt his throat tighten, and his eyes felt like they were about to bulge out of his head. She still had the flashlight pointed at Duncan, who was staring back at her, cool as an icy spring, apparently indifferent to her jibe. Hendricks, for his part, was mentally scrambling to figure out how to answer that one when the light came back to him and damned near blinded him again. He got his hand up a little late and tried to blink the spots of out of his eyes.

  “Demons?” This came from Lerner, chuckling. He came off folksy, even with the accent. “That’s an unkind thing to say to a total stranger, ma’am.”

  Erin took a step toward Hendricks, and he still couldn’t really see her. He held out his hand to try and block the flashlight’s beam, but it didn’t work. “Could you put that down?”

  “No.” Erin’s voice came back at him, cold. She took another step and was within arm’s reach. He just stood there, wondering if she was about to cuff him or something. Not that she’d have much on him, but he didn’t want to give her a reason; his weapons were still in the trunk of Lerner and Duncan’s car. She took one step closer and Hendricks felt something hit him in the gut, a light slap. It had some weight to it, and he lowered a hand to catch it by instinct.

  It was leather, square-like, and took him a minute to realize it was a book. No, two books. He pulled them closer to his face and recognized the spines in the blinding light. “Hey, these are mine.”

  “Yeah, I took ’em out of your room earlier,” she said, and there was more than a little growl to what she was saying. “Along with this.” She held something out, something that looked a little like a piece of paper.

  Hendricks took hold of it between his thumb and forefinger and blinked the lights out of his eyes as he turned it over.

  He knew it by heart. It was a picture, and he was in the tux on the left hand side. He looked younger, a little better kempt. He should have been, he was only nineteen when it was taken. On the right hand side was her. The spots in his vision from the flashlight worked in his favor this time, because he couldn’t see her face clearly.

  Without the photo, though, he couldn’t ever see her face clearly anymore.

  “You’re married,” Erin said, in a low note of accusation. Hendricks didn’t answer, just felt the sting, felt the blood rush through his head at the thought of her going through his room, searching his things. “Deny it.”

  “Why would I?” Hendricks said, and he did not even recognize his voice as he said it. “You’ve got photographic evidence to the contrary.”

  He could see the silhouette of Erin nod, felt the fury boiling off of her, but it was nothing—not a drop in the goddamned bucket—compared to his own. “Did you get a divorce?”

  “Nope,” he said, with zeal born of rage. He felt it coursing through him, wanted to stick it to her, make her feel the pain. He hoped like hell she was humiliated, at least as much as he was from the thought of her going through his things.

  There was a pause. “So you’ve been cheating on her with me.” This came out quiet.

  “I’ve been fucking you,” Hendricks said, and he felt the spittle fly from his mouth. “Like you wanted me to.”

  He could feel her tense, see it in her silhouette. His eyes drifted down to her other hand, the one not holding the flashlight. It was tough to tell with the maglite still shining in his eyes, but he was pretty sure it was on the butt of her gun.

  “Lover’s quarrel,” Lerner’s voice came over at him. “This is so cute.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Erin said, low and slow. He’d wanted to say much the same, but she beat him to it.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lerner said and pretended to tip an imaginary hat to her.

  “I trusted you,” Erin said after another minute of unfiltered quiet.

  “I’m a stranger that blew into town on the wind,” Hendricks said, and he laughed, feeling a little cruelty come spitting out from that rage, from his sense of violation. Now he just wanted to hurt her so she’d get the hell away from him. The sooner, the better. “You were just looking for a good time. Something to cut the boredom, someone new to fuck—”

  She stepped toward him like she was going to hit him with the maglite but stopped a foot away. He could smell the coffee on her breath, see her eyes. They weren’t red. They were cold. Damned cold. “You’re a fucking asshole.”

  “And you’re a police officer who executed an unwarranted search and seizure of my property,” he said and held up the books. “Which makes you a fascist and a—”

  “Let’s keep it polite,” Duncan said, drawing Hendricks’s attention to him for a second and breaking his train of thought off the blinding rage he was feeling.

  “Remember,” Lerner said, voice tinged with amusement, “even here at the lovely Sinbad motel, a veritable mecca of refinement, you have an audience.”

  Hendricks stared in her eyes, she stared back at him. It was cold fury on both sides, Hendricks realized, and he did not give a fuck. All he wanted was her to get away, now. He took a step back. “I don’t have time for this shit.”

  Erin took a step back of her own. “Stay out of trouble, and stay out of my way, you crazy, cheating fucker.”

  Hendricks doffed his cowboy hat to her. “Your wish is my command, you possessive, sneaky bar slut—”

  “Hey,” Lerner said, and Hendricks saw his lips were pursed like he was shocked. “Why go there? Like it’s some kind of mark against her that she was stooping to sleep with you?”

  “Whose fucking side are you on?” Hendricks found himself asking.

  “Not yours,” Lerner said with a shrug.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Erin said again, and Hendricks looked back to see her almost to her car. “Stay out of my way.” She opened the door to her cruiser and got in, slamming it behind her. She didn’t click the light off right away, and Hendricks could see her face illuminated by it as she started the car and backed out. There wasn’t an ounce of give in her expression; it was hard as a block of granite. She squealed tires at the edge of the parking lot, taking the cruiser back on the highway.

  “Women, huh?” Lerner said. “And men, too.” It took Hendricks a minute to realize he was talking to Duncan.

  “Should have just told her the truth,” Duncan said softly, and Hendricks looked over to find the demon staring at him, looking through him again.

  “Fuck that,” Hendricks said and thrust the books into the side pocket of his coat. �
��And fuck her, too.”

  * * *

  Erin could feel her hands shaking as she drove away. She didn’t cry when she got upset like some did; she just got more furious. The cabin of the cruiser felt hot and stifling, and she rolled the window down a crack to let the cool, humid night air come in. Motherfucker. Hendricks had used her, played her, made her a party to his cheating, and when she confronted him about it, he didn’t even have the decency to lie.

  What an asshole.

  She pushed down harder on the pedal and the car gave back a satisfying roar as she headed toward the lights of town in the distance. Driving when she was pissed was a favorite activity. Doing it in a squad car was even better.

  “Shit.” Her voice sounded low and rough, even to her. She’d slept with a married man once before, and it pissed her the hell off in the light of the next morning when she’d found out. Cheating wasn’t a thing she did. She just didn’t do it.

  “That motherfucker.” She saw her knuckles turn white on the wheel, gripping it tight with every finger. She’d gotten played and it burned.

  She kept the car going seventy in a fifty-five the whole way back to town. She’d slow down when she hit the city itself.

  Maybe.

  * * *

  “I love you science guys,” Lerner said as they stood in the parking lot of the motel, waiting for Hendricks to unlock his door. “I love your explanations for things. Like, for example—I bet you have a doozy when it comes to explaining what happens to our kind when you stab us with a sword.” He loved the night air. His skin had a natural burn to it, so the cool was just fine by him.

  “Yeah,” Hendricks said as the lock clicked. The cowboy adjusted his hat and looked back at Lerner. “It’s like popping a balloon, I guess. Or pulling the plug out of a drain.”

  “Oh, is that how you explain it to yourself?” Lerner asked, and he almost felt giddy. “Why does it happen, though?”