Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  The smell of the river, the faint sulfuric scent of the paper mill to the east hung in the air. Erin rolled her flashlight beam over the picnic area. She heard a rustle, and her beam fell upon a cat hissing from behind a toppled trash can.

  “Geez, kitty,” she muttered as the cat screeched and bolted into a nearby bush with a rustle of branches. “Give a girl a heart attack, why don’t you?”

  She could hear the thudding of her heart, thumping in her ears as she stared at the empty picnic area. She felt an annoyed need to chastise herself, like she’d done something wrong. It was true, having a gun in her hand would make her feel better during this search, but it would also be damnably against regulations to pull her weapon just because she was in a park at night and had an eerie feeling.

  The law made no exception for Midian, Tennessee, being the current draw of the underworld, after all.

  She thought about thumbing her radio mike, calling in and telling dispatch—the sheriff’s wife was occupying her glorious former day job at the moment—that there was nothing here. She stopped herself before she did, though. “One last look around,” Erin muttered under her breath. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look at the path down by the river.

  She felt a chill as she even dared to think that. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that those were famous last words in a situation like this.

  Shrugging off the sudden sense of goose bumps that made their way up her arms, Erin started toward the river. She looked up just in time to see clouds rolling in to cover the moon. Ominous.

  ***

  Hendricks let Alison drive, mainly because he didn’t have a car and didn’t want to rely on Arch to be involved in this errand, which he so clearly opposed. They went along in silence, Alison’s little four-door coupe doing little better than rattling as they rolled through the Midian streets. It all looked sorta similar to Hendricks, though he supposed the town was far from cookie cutter like the newer planned developments he’d seen in suburban neighborhoods. It was just that all the houses in this part of town looked so … old. That gave them a uniform look in his eyes, even though there was a wide variety in what they actually looked like.

  “So,” he said, trying to cut the silence.

  She glanced over at him from the wheel. She was a cool customer, this one. Hendricks was betting she was a real pro at the silent treatment. Probably even better at the riot act, when she was of a mind to read it. “Oh, are we talking now?” she asked.

  That one caught Hendricks by surprise. “Were we … not … at some point?”

  “Just figured you were more of the silent type,” Alison said, turning her attention back to the road ahead. She was keeping the car easing along at the speed limit, which was pretty low here in town. “Spending years on your lonesome hunting demons.”

  Hendricks nodded along to that. “I was a loner for a long time. Didn’t mean I was anti-social, though. I’d talk with other demon hunters some.” He paused to think about that. “Every once in a while, anyway.”

  “But you’re not anti-social?” she asked, like it didn’t matter a whit to her.

  “Just had a mission was all,” Hendricks said. Now he was feeling a little tension. “Something to get accomplished.”

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I had it in my mind to kill a lot of demons,” Hendricks said, and now he was staring straight ahead, too, the dark night broken by the headlights of her car, luminescence seeking out the darkness and destroying it for mere seconds as they passed.

  “Well, now you have,” she said. “Right?”

  “Yeah, I’ve killed a lot of them,” he agreed. He had. Hundreds. Probably a thousand or more by now, all told.

  “But you’re not done yet?”

  That one halted him again. “No, not really,” he said. “See, demon hunters are the line when it comes to a town like this—”

  “Keep the demons on one side and the good folk on the other?” she asked. She still had a dull voice like nothing she was saying mattered. Maybe it didn’t—to her. “Doesn’t seem like you’re doing a very good job around here, all these people dying.”

  “I’m the only demon hunter in town here,” Hendricks said. “Usually there’s a lot more of us.”

  “Right,” she said, like she was just repeating something she already knew. “Because now there are eighteen hotspots instead of one.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Did Arch tell you—”

  “He told me everything,” she said, cutting him off, but not harshly. “Just assume he told me everything. I’ll let you know if you start talking about something he might have missed.”

  “So he talked about Starling, about Hollywood, about Gideon—”

  “Yes, yes and yes.” She didn’t give any hint of emotion about any of these.

  Hendricks sat there for a second before deciding to go fishing. “What do you think about Gideon?”

  She blinked a little at that. “He was a pretty twisted little fucker.”

  Hendricks did a little blinking himself. “That he was.”

  ***

  Erin started to hear a sound she couldn’t shake. Faint, like buzzing bees in the far distance. She used to go to concerts and she listened to her iPod with the music way up, so she’d heard more than a little ringing in her ears from time to time. This was a lot like that, like the volume just cut out on one ear and was replaced by something that almost hummed.

  She turned toward the noise and felt her face scrunch as she tried to focus in on it with all her senses. It was coming from the path down along the Caledonia, a noise in the distance. She could see the lights down the path for a spell and then realized that past a certain point, they just stopped.

  Had they always been like that? She wasn’t sure, hadn’t spent much time down by the river since she was in high school. It was a decent bicycle path on a spring or summer day, or a good place to walk and talk. Hell of a view of the Caledonia. She glanced up at the clouds now covering the sky and reflected it wasn’t a terrible place for a moonlit stroll, either, if there was moonlight.

  One of the lights in the distance winked out. She blinked, trying to decide if she’d really seen it do that. There had been one there a minute ago, hadn’t there? She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, and then she could swear there was another lamp missing, like they were impinging closer and closer to her, like the path was gradually losing all light …

  It took one more light to blink out before she realized it was not her imagination. Something was taking out the lights on the trail, one by one. The buzzing noise was getting louder, an unearthly sound. Were there demonic bees? She wondered this as she backed up off the path back up the slope a few degrees. The wet grass beneath her feet was slick, and she felt a bead of sweat in the warm summer night, starting to slide down her temple.

  To hell with regulations. She pulled her gun and kept it at her side, wishing like hell she’d gotten Arch to part with that consecrated switchblade Hendricks had loaned him. She hadn’t pressed on any of that, though, not really considering that they were coming up with more and more people who wanted to fight the demons coming to Midian, but they had a severe bottleneck when it came to making sure they had people equipped to fight said demons.

  That wasn’t technically Hendricks’s problem. But she had a feeling it was about to be hers in less than a minute.

  Whatever was coming, it was moving fast. Another light went down, and ten seconds later, another. The buzzing noise was louder now, more mechanical, and it almost sounded like she could hear the low grinding of metal on metal as it came. It didn’t sound like a car or like a train, but it was devilishly loud, raising in pitch and intensity on a regular cycle as it ebbed and flowed in a circular pattern of wicked sound.

  Erin stumbled as she backed off the path. She pointed the gun toward the darkness encroaching upon her. It was only a few hundred feet away now and the buzzing was a low roar, like the devil’s own servants were coming at her in a swarm. The darkne
ss was near total, and the only movement she could see in the light that was left was pure-black motion in the night, like she was watching earthworms writhe in the shadows. She could see the movement but that was all, shapes against the faint backdrop of the river.

  She hurried backward, still aiming down the barrel of her pistol. It wouldn’t do any good, but if they surged at her she might be able to at least back them off, hold them at bay. She thumbed her mike and then stopped herself; calling in Fries or Reines or even Reeve would just get them killed.

  She needed Hendricks or Arch.

  Another light popped—and this time she was close enough to see it happen. Sparks rained down and guttered out as they fell like fireworks dropping out of the sky. Before they’d died out, they’d done nothing but shed light on motion, giving her only the briefest glimpse of red eyes in the dark, moving fast toward her.

  Only one lamp left.

  Erin lost her footing on the slippery grass just as she pulled her cell phone out. Whether it was the wet grass or an uneven patch of ground or just simple clumsiness in her fear, she didn’t know. Her ass hit the soft dirt, and she cried out more from fear than because it hurt. She almost felt like she was sinking into the ground, like something had grabbed her and was pulling at her, groping her.

  Then the last light went out, covering her in darkness.

  ***

  Hendricks stood on the porch, Alison next to him, a single light shining down on them from a gothic-looking sconce to the side of the door. He was waiting and realized his breath had caught in his chest. Nerves, most likely. He couldn’t recall ever having been to a brothel before, not ever. He wasn’t really looking forward to it, and he kept his hand outside his coat, running over the rough outer skin. It felt like canvas, rough and stiff, but it was treated cotton. Treated with what? He had never bothered to find out.

  “You shouldn’t have worn that,” Alison said, not even looking at him.

  “What, this?” He tugged on the drover coat. “Why not?”

  She gave him a look that was bathed in patronization. “It’s summer in Tennessee and you’re wearing a full-length duster with a cowboy hat. I can’t imagine anywhere outside of Montana where that wouldn’t stick out, but I think it’s going to be especially obvious in a whorehouse.”

  Hendricks started to open his mouth to argue that with her but stopped as he heard the lock slide back on the door. “Brothel,” he muttered under his breath. “Don’t antagonize the madam.”

  When the door opened, a woman with black hair and green eyes stood before them wearing a silken gown that revealed a surprising amount of—to Hendricks, at least, and he’d seen some wild shit over the years—cleavage. He saw at least the top of her dark nipples, and it might have been more like half. “Darlings,” she said in a deep, throaty voice. “What can I do for you?”

  Hendricks resisted the urge to tell her she could do damned well anything she pleased. She had a look about her—late thirties but still smoking hot. Probably trying all she could to fight off the effects of age and possibly hard living. The makeup was a little thicker than he liked, but she was undeniably still a beautiful lady underneath the extra layers of plaster there to hide the wrinkles.

  “We’re here to see Lucia,” Alison answered before Hendricks could say something—in the words of Arch—wildly inappropriate. Nothing of that sort would even have been on his mind, but Erin had left him pretty damned frustrated and more than a little stiff in the crotch after what had seemed like a promising start to the night. Based on her attitude when she left for the rest of her patrol, he didn’t hold out much hope for later, either. Hot and cold, the two of them.

  “Oh?” the lady asked, not sounding like it was anything but a rhetorical question. “For business or pleasure?”

  Hendricks looked sidelong at Alison, who still looked dulled. “We kinda figured it’d be both.”

  “Come in, come in,” the woman said, waving them forward as she stepped aside to let them pass. “My name is Melina Cherry.” She looked Alison up and down as she walked by, Hendricks noted as he waited on the porch for her to go first. “Will you be participating or just watching, my dear?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Alison said, and she added just enough of a flutter to her voice to make it sound like she was a little nervous. “I guess I’m just not sure what I’m comfortable with.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Melina said, rubbing a hand over her shoulder. “Lucia will do everything she can to set you at ease. Just let her know what you want from her, and she’ll find a way to accommodate you. She’s very good with couples.”

  Hendricks exchanged another look with Alison, this one much less certain. He was beginning to feel the edges of his comfort zone in the execution of this plan, and they were approaching rapidly. For the first time, he was beginning to wonder if taking another man’s wife to a whorehouse was really all that great of an idea.

  “Lucia!” Melina called out, and clapped her hands as if she were summoning a dog. That drew a frown from Hendricks at the mere symbolism. Though it wasn’t his place to say anything.

  “You have a lovely home,” Alison said, her sweet Southern accent drawling along as she said every word of it.

  “Why, thank you,” Melina said, every bit as sweetly back to her. “What is your name, dear?”

  “Alison,” she said. “This is Hendricks.”

  “Oh?” Melina said as a knockout redhead entered from a parlor that was curtained off just to the side of the foyer they were standing in. She brushed through the red velvet partition with a slow grace that wasn’t diminished one bit by the fact that Hendricks had seen her beating the ass off a cow demon in the middle of a field not that long ago.

  She didn’t look exactly like Starling, but the differences were subtle. Hendricks could see the eyes on this girl, could see them clearly, and they were a deep green, like the madam’s. This Lucia was wearing make-up, enough to accent her natural beauty, but not overdone like Melina Cherry’s. She didn’t have age lines to hide, not yet anyway. She wore a gown, full length, black cloth that damn near shimmered. Hendricks wondered if she was overdressed, just sitting in the back waiting to see if a customer would show up. Or maybe she put it on the minute she heard a knock on the door. Either way, the effect was not bad. Not bad at all.

  But she wasn’t Starling. He could tell by the eyes. And it wasn’t just the color, either.

  This girl had a soft look around the eyes. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen shit—she plainly had. But she maybe hadn’t seen the hardest, meanest parts of it. Insulated somehow from the worst of humanity, or else it just hadn’t gotten to her the way it infected some. He’d seen someone who’d been burned up inside by evil before; they had a wary look about them, always expecting someone to hit ’em, no matter where they were or who they were with.

  She didn’t carry that world-weariness. Starling didn’t either, but her gaze was always on something, on everything. She watched attentively.

  This girl only had eyes for Alison and Hendricks, and she was young—he’d never been able to pin down Starling’s age exactly, because her eyes threw everything off—this girl was probably twenty-two at most. Maybe younger.

  And somehow, she still looked just a little wide-eyed. A little innocent.

  “Hello,” Lucia said, and Hendricks was shocked to realize he was already thinking of her as Lucia, not Starling.

  ***

  The buzzing noise was a frenzy now, a parade of some hellish sound in front of her. Erin was struggling against the strangely sodden ground and its grip on her. Coldly, rationally, she knew that the ground wasn’t pulling at her, that it was just her fighting against it to try and get back to her feet, but in the dark and in the moment she still had that clawing feeling like everything was reaching out for her.

  There was a smell in the air, the scent of sulfur. Flashes of red, like rubies catching a reflection, were there in front of her as something moved in the darkness along the path. She faintly heard t
he shatter of glass as the next light down the path away from her broke. She could see the sparks shower in her peripheral vision, but her eyes were firmly anchored straight ahead.

  She might have had an easier time getting up if she hadn’t had her gun pointed at the writhing darkness in front of her. That was her assessment, anyway, that little voice in the back of her head that was being shouted down by the screaming, What the fuck?! fear bouncing around in her brain as she finally pushed up to one knee. She’d dropped the flashlight and it had rolled away, pointing upslope back toward the park instead of down toward the path, where it might have given her some idea of what was currently scaring the living hell out of her.

  The buzzing reached a crescendo, and she heard it move a little closer to her, like it was coming up the slope. She was only a few feet off the path at best. It was close, so close. Something buzzed by only inches away from her, less than a foot. She heard a ticking noise and felt a blast of wind in its wake that caused the sleeve of her uniform to flap in the breeze. She jerked it back out of instinct, like she was afraid a car was going to take it off if she left it hanging out there.

  This was no car, though. It sounded so eerie, like a swarm of creatures from hell was passing right by, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, the stink of sulfur stuck in her throat and nose.

  The buzzing started to lower in volume, and Erin knelt there on one knee, paralyzed, her gun hand shaking as the sound started to subside. No more gusts of wind passed her, no more strange, scary chattering. The buzzing faded, like the demonic bees had moved down the trail. The angry noises, the ticking, the feeling that something was moving over the ground like a plague of locusts beneath her, all of it was gone.

  She finally took a breath and lunged toward the flashlight, still pointing upslope. She grasped it in a dirty hand and pointed it back toward the path, beam lighting the black asphalt below to reveal—

  Nothing.

  She had just about caught her breath when something touched her shoulder from behind and she screamed, spinning and pointing the gun into the midsection of a figure behind her. The flashlight’s beam caught his face just before she pulled the trigger, and she stopped a hair’s breadth from riddling him with bullets. “Jesus!” she cried.