Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  Hendricks watched him go, watched the hellfire recede, his outline still visible like an afterimage. He sighed, long and heavy, before he turned back to the hillside, where one, two … now three figures threaded their way down, not in much of a hurry since the job was done.

  “Alison,” Hendricks muttered under his breath, low enough so that only the two OOCs could hear him.

  ***

  Alison Longholt Stan wasn’t much for this wilderness stuff. Her daddy had taught her to hunt when she was young, but she’d never really taken to it. She’d mostly sit in the tree stand with him during the season because he liked it, but she passed up most of her shots to let him do it. It was the gutting and the blood and all that mess—just not for her.

  The shooting, though? That she didn’t mind.

  The Barrett rifle she’d borrowed from her daddy’s gun cabinet kicked like—well, like something kicked her. An elephant, probably. Something big. She braced it against her shoulder and carried a pad to place between her and the butt of the big rifle, but it still wasn’t no peach. Left a bruise on her shoulder that Arch had noticed when they’d had their confrontation after the dam.

  She didn’t care. She wasn’t no little peach herself. No shrinking violet; she’d taken a shovel to a wild dog’s head one time when it had rabies and it got after her dog. It was all she had handy, so she did it.

  Everything she’d seen since the night those animals had busted down her door reminded her of that moment when she grabbed the shovel. See a wild beast foaming at the mouth, you lay your hands on something heavy and hard.

  The Barrett was a fair sight better than a shovel, but the things she was swinging at were a click or two meaner than a rabid dog, too.

  She’d watched the cowboy, Hendricks—she was still getting used to him—poke the demon in the belly with his sword. For some reason she didn’t understand, that sword or the knife Arch was carrying or the batons those two demon fellows had were the only things that could pop a demon open. She hadn’t run across much that a .50 bullet couldn’t solve, seeing as it was bigger than her damned finger, but it only put these down—it didn’t put ’em out.

  She’d come down the slope in the car the OOCs had driven up to the house. She’d waited for them in the back seat until the demon came busting out the back window, then she’d jumped to the front and started the car because it was GO time. She’d stopped about three quarters of the way down the slope and set up, prone, waiting to see if she’d get a clear shot.

  Sure enough, they’d let the runner get onto the clear field, and he’d turned to get a load of Hendricks. It hadn’t even been tricky at this distance, less than a hundred yards. She’d just plugged him right in the ten ring, square in the middle of the chest. On a human, it’d have been a kill shot.

  The fellow certainly felt it, but it didn’t kill him.

  Alison slid off her belly and adjusted the pad to keep it from falling off her shoulder once the demon was dead. She didn’t have much interest in getting up close with one of them again, but greeting them from a distance to put a hurting on them? That was just up her alley, played right to her strengths.

  She cased the big Barrett and carried it. Damned thing was heavy, and she struggled a little under the burden. Still, it was her burden.

  “Nice shooting, Tex,” the slick one—Lerner—said as he caught up with her while she was making her way down toward the field.

  “I’m from Tennessee,” she said, trying not to take it as an insult. How much could a demon know about geography, anyway?

  “Nice shooting, Ten,” Lerner said.

  She frowned at him. “I don’t think they usually call people from Tennessee that.”

  The corner of the demon’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “I bet you’ve been called a ten once or twice in your time, though.”

  Alison blushed at that, but she told herself it was because the weight of the rifle was getting to her. She stopped just shy of the edge of the woods, lingering near a tree. She could see across the field where the carnival was setting up, Ferris wheel already sticking off its spoked center, metal bones hanging half-exposed. She didn’t mean to, but she felt a little smile coming on. Summertime was usually real nice in Midian, and the Summer Lights Festival was the capstone. Felt like the town could use a little happiness, seeing how grim things had been lately.

  Especially considering how grim things had been lately.

  “That was a little too out in the open,” Lerner said, holding up near Alison. His eyes were on the carnival in the distance, too. She wondered if he could see anything going on over there.

  “Thankfully, it’s Tennessee, where rifle shots ring out in the middle of day all the time,” Hendricks said dryly. The cowboy was wearing a deep frown, and he seemed like he was doing all he could not to look at her.

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” she said, feeling a little irritation springing up from inside.

  “I had—” Hendricks started.

  “No, you didn’t,” Lerner and Duncan—that other demon—chorused. Hendricks looked even more irritable.

  “I thought you were a professional demon hunter,” Alison said. Part of her felt a perverse joy in ribbing the cowboy. Things had been going great before he showed up, after all.

  “Yeah, professional demon hunter, not sprinter.” The cowboy chewed on that for a moment, looking like he was seething before he finally said, “Thank you.” She just nodded at him; she’d already said “You’re welcome” after all.

  “This is spinning a little off-axis,” Lerner said, and Alison didn’t quite take his meaning. He glanced at her, probably saw it on her face. “Things are getting out of control.”

  “It’s a hotspot, right?” she asked. “That’s … normal for a hotspot, right?” This time she looked to Hendricks. “Things being out of control?”

  The cowboy kind of shrugged. “This one’s not been like any of the ones I’ve been to before. The demons here are a little wilder and more aggressive than past hotspots I’ve parked in.”

  “For us, too,” Duncan said, his quiet voice and lime green suit making Alison want to giggle a little at him. He seemed so totally strange and harmless that she couldn’t really believe he was a demon. “Can’t recall a time when anyone’s gone and sold runes to keep demons off our radar—and so methodically, too.”

  “Does seem weird,” Hendricks said, suddenly a little tense. Alison wondered if she was imagining it.

  “Weirdness is deniable when it’s on the fringe,” Lerner said, expression dark. “A few deaths here and there can be explained away. But this town is going full-on powder keg, and people dying in droves is not making it any easier to keep the damned match away from the fuse.” He looked straight at Alison. “I’m assuming your hubby’s current problem is something of the sort that’s going to fall into that category.”

  Alison felt a little heat on her face. “I don’t really know; he had to leave pretty abruptly this morning. Something bad happened, but I don’t think the sheriff told him over the phone before he took off.”

  “Erin said something about another body,” Hendricks said, and that made Alison blush even more. So Erin had told the cowboy something Arch hadn’t told her. She couldn’t help the rush of resentment; their argument after the dam was still fresh in her mind, still an open wound. This would probably come up later tonight. Even when she wanted to hold something like this in, it tended to float its way up. Keeping the secret about following Arch with a rifle was the only thing she’d been able to keep from him in their entire marriage. Other than that one credit card she was slowly paying off.

  “Nope, this ain’t getting any prettier,” Lerner said, and the demon was awfully dour. “Come on, let’s get out of here before someone reports a gunshot.” He glanced at Alison, and he didn’t even have to say anything.

  “Already picked up my brass,” she said, and patted the pocket of her jeans where the massive .50 shell casing hung out just slightly. It still felt a little warm
in there. There was a buzz in her other pocket and she fished her phone out to find a message waiting. “Arch and Erin are away from the crime scene—they want to meet in ten minutes.”

  “Let’s get outta here,” Lerner said, waving toward where she’d parked the car up the slope. Duncan hesitated, looking toward the carnival setting up in the distance. “What?” Lerner asked. “You got a sudden urge for a funnel cake?”

  “No,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “Just thought I felt something for a second.” He caught Alison looking at him and sent her a reassuring smile as they started to pick their way back up the slope toward where she’d left the car. “Probably nothing.”

  ***

  Mick watched ’em go from where he stood close to the half-finished Ferris wheel. He could see ’em a long ways off, those two OOCs and the demon hunters. He’d heard the crack of the rifle and watched the rest. That was a new one for him, he had to admit, seeing someone blast a quantel’a with a big gun so they could get popped by a sword. Not a terrible idea, as far as ideas went.

  “Hey, Mick?” A voice came from behind him. It was Jim, that ornery old fucker. A real slavedriver. Not the literal kind, though. Mick could actually still remember those from back in the 1800s. “Need a little help here, man.”

  “Sure thing,” Mick said, tearing his gaze away from the quartet disappearing into the woods. His hand went to his pocket instinctively, and he felt the cold smoothness of the rune he’d bought from that vendor just outside town. Looked like it had been a smart investment after all. And he’d worried as he’d handed over the money that he was getting taken for a ride.

  Mick chewed his lip as he stretched like he was hurting. He wasn’t; demon flesh had no muscle beneath it to ache, just essence to strain. He just wanted another moment to mark what he was seeing.

  Two OOCs, two demon hunters. His fingers traced the lines of the rune stone. It’d keep him out of their way until he got what he needed. He wasn’t looking for trouble, after all; he was just feeling the ache, the need to let loose, to dump a wad and taste some innocence. He could almost smell that in the air.

  Nope, he didn’t need OOC trouble, nor demon hunter trouble either. He’d keep his nose clean, avoid the hell out of them, get his dick wet, and blow town. Just like he always did when he needed to let it loose.

  And he needed to let it loose. Oh, how he needed to.

  2.

  Arch was parked next to Erin’s borrowed sheriff’s car in the driveway of the MacGruder farm out on Kilner road. The house was up just a little ways, looking empty—as it damned well should, given that its occupants had been killed by demons a couple weeks back. Arch hadn’t gotten out of the car like she had; he was just sitting inside filling out his patrol log, waiting for the others to show up. This was about as private and quiet a place as they were going to find without venturing farther out into the county.

  He could see Erin out there, just kicking around in the dried, rutted driveway. She was probably waiting for him to get out, or maybe she just enjoyed the pleasant heat of the summer day. Either way, the only thing waiting for Arch out there was more awkward small talk, and he didn’t have it in him right now. Not today.

  He saw the car coming up the drive as he crossed a “t” on his paperwork. He still didn’t get out, though, taking a last breath of the leather scent of the Explorer’s interior as the town car pulled up in front of him. All four doors opened, and the trunk popped, and he let out that breath he’d been holding when he saw Alison with them.

  Arch could feel the tension running through him as he watched her walk around the black town car to the trunk and haul the big rifle case out. Having her go with them hadn’t been his idea. Hadn’t been their idea either, he knew. Hendricks had looked a little flummoxed when it all came out, not sure what to say.

  Arch wasn’t sure he knew what to say, either.

  After he’d smelled the gunpowder on her hands after the dam, he’d made a beeline out to the trunk of her car. Popped it open, found the case for a big dadgummed rifle inside. When he’d come back inside and confronted her about it, she hadn’t tried to deny it.

  “Why would I deny it?” she asked him. “I’ve been saving your life.”

  Arch couldn’t deny that, but it still felt unseemly somehow that he’d put his young bride in the middle of his dangerous activities of late. Arch considered himself a gentleman of the South, and although he’d never consider anything less than absolutely equal treatment for someone like Erin, who worked with him in a somewhat dangerous profession, he also was the type to still hold the door for her. It was a dichotomy he was still struggling with in his head. And it mainly bothered him because he’d had it driven into his skull from a young age that you were supposed to protect your woman.

  So how did that jibe with her picking up a rifle and providing covering fire against the onslaught of demons that had been rolling through Midian?

  Arch just shook his head. There was no easy answer on this one. And the arguments thus far with Alison hadn’t been pretty. He was man enough to admit that he might have a double standard when it came to how he wanted to treat her versus how he thought others should be treated.

  But he didn’t have to like it.

  ***

  Hendricks caught Erin lightly in a hug as she came up to greet him. He went for the light kiss on the lips, but she didn’t break it off immediately and he didn’t stop her. It felt good—long and slow, full of feeling and promise for what was going to happen later. He would have kept going, too, if not for that goddamned wiseass Lerner.

  “Humans,” Lerner said. “Leave it to you people to come up with creating an intimate greeting using your mouths instead of your genitals.”

  “Oh, that greeting will come later,” Erin said, breaking off from Hendricks long enough to glance at Lerner. “Didn’t want to make y’all jealous, after all.”

  “I’m surprisingly not jealous of your exchanges of unclean bodily fluids filled with viruses and bacteria,” Lerner said with more than a hint of amusement. “I mean, don’t you think about the smells and the possibly fatal diseases you could be swapping back and forth while you’re doing it?”

  “With sweet nothings like that to whisper, I’m guessing you’d be really bad at it,” Hendricks said and caught a sly grin from Erin. Lerner was a dick most of the time. A useful one, he supposed, but a dick.

  Arch was finally stepping out of his car. The guy had been off his game a little lately, ever since the dam. Hendricks hadn’t been around him as much, partly because of all the shit landing on Arch from the Sheriff’s Department and partly because of their own personal dealings—Arch with his wife and Hendricks with Erin. He just looked glum. Hendricks supposed he was probably besieged on all sides. He cast a sidelong look at Alison as she came up to her husband; Arch gave her a kiss on the cheek that wouldn’t have been out of place if she’d been his sister.

  “Did you get him?” Arch asked, and even his voice sounded down to Hendricks. Poor bastard.

  “Thanks to your wife,” Lerner said, doing some sort of exaggerated, dickish bow, like it was some great ceremony. “Sonofabitch rabbited. Nearly got away, too, but not before he decided to take a chunk out of John Wayne over here.” He gave Hendricks the nod. Hendricks just rolled his eyes.

  “So he was a demon,” Arch said, low and pensive.

  “He evaporated like one, so I’d say so,” Hendricks said, a little tense himself. The new girl in the crowd was a little weird, and adding a couple demons to the mix made things even more uncomfortable. The whole scene just felt strange. They’d never gotten together like this—at least not all of them—ever. He left his arm hanging around Erin’s waist and cast his eyes around between the two OOCs, Arch and Alison.

  What the hell kind of group was this, anyway?

  Lerner was watching Duncan, who was just taking it all in. They’d never had humans working with them before, but then again, they’d never quite dealt with anything like that Sygraath who decide
d to kill a whole town, either. Something was different about this place. Different vibe, different feel. Lerner had been to hotspots—more than his share, really—and every one of them was a hellhole. Some came out of it better than others, some didn’t come out at all. Even in those dark spots, though, when the shit hit the fan there were elements of predictability.

  Here, it wasn’t even shit hitting the fan. It felt like an entire septic system hitting a jet engine. One hell of a mess was coming, seemed like.

  “It was a quantel’a,” Duncan said quietly, just like he did everything. “Lower-level hellspawn, if you want to call them that. Strong but not terribly bright. Lot of them have gone criminal because they can’t blend easily in polite society.”

  “Why’s that?” This from one of the ladies—Deputy Harris, Lerner thought of her as when he was being formal. Skinny ass, no tits was how he thought of her when he was applying everything he’d learned on earth. It had been an interesting journey.

  “They like to eat human meat,” Duncan said apologetically. “It’s a delicacy, and they go through it like your people go through steak.”

  There was a dead silence, punctuated by the cowboy’s uncomfortable grimace as he looked away. He knew. Lerner knew he knew what was about to come down. He’d probably had this conversation at some point himself.

  “I’m sorry … they eat people?” Harris asked. “Does that happen … often?”

  “It’s what happened in that lovely scene you found a few days ago,” Lerner said. He couldn’t help himself, he was grinning. Opening innocent eyes to the truth of the world made him deliriously happy for some reason. It was seeing the awareness settle in, the shock etch the lines of their faces. A grim business, he supposed, but one he enjoyed. “Perhaps you recall?”