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

by Robert J. Crane

  Hendricks looked at him with complete disbelief. “Are you shitting me?”

  “I wouldn’t shit you,” Hollywood said, “at least not around here. There’s too much of it already lying on the ground. I just don’t want anyone thinking I’m racist.”

  “You were just talking about killing us a minute ago,” Hendricks said.

  “Oh, I’m still going to kill you—both of you,” Hollywood said with a wide grin. “Just want to make sure we understand there’s no racial animosity to it.”

  Hendricks had to stop himself from asking if the douchenozzle was fucking kidding again. He hated repeating himself. Instead, he decided to probe a little toward the other thing Hollywood had said. “In over our heads, huh?”

  “So over your heads,” Hollywood said with a sappy grin. “I could tear the heads from your bodies right now with minimal effort—”

  The BOOM! of a shotgun going off would have drowned out whatever Hollywood was going to say next, even if it hadn’t blown him off his feet and bounced him off the car to come to rest face-down in the mud. The second round of buckshot hit Munson, and his sleeveless ass took a dive as well. Hendricks didn’t wait for them to get ambitious; he pulled the .45 out of his belt and blasted the tires of Hollywood’s sedan with a shot each, then blew out the front tire of MacGruder’s old truck for good measure. That was all the cars he could see in the drive, and he figured it’d slow these idiots down. He popped Munson in the head with a .45 round for good measure then took off at a run back toward the woods, only a step behind Arch, who’d apparently gotten to same smart idea to haul ass back to the patrol car.

  “How fast can they run?” Arch asked, running a hell of a lot faster than Hendricks. Hendricks poured it on, trying to keep the distance from widening too much. The hill wasn’t too bad, but it would have been easier if Hendricks hadn’t been holding the knife and the gun. Arch had a long sword and a shotgun in his hands, though, and they didn’t seem to be slowing him down at all.

  “Fast enough to catch us if they’re of a mind,” Hendricks said. “Might want to keep that shotgun handy to pepper them if they come up on us too quick.”

  Arch slowed and cast a wary eye back, letting Hendricks catch him. Arch cleared the fence like a hurdler and Hendricks was a step behind him, managing to keep his footing while using the wires to step up, and when they reached the car, Arch already had it moving as Hendricks got in and slammed the door. They would have peeled out if it hadn’t been a gravel road. Instead they flung enough dust in the air to bring to Hendricks’s mind the time he’d been in Arizona when a dust storm blew through. Except that time he’d been fighting a demon in someone’s back yard when it happened. He thought about it for a second more. It was almost exactly like that time, actually.

  ***

  It took Hollywood a few minutes to pull himself up from the mud. Not because he was hurt, but because his ten thousand dollar Savile Row suit that he bought in London had holes all over the front of it. He thought about crying, but one of his minions was still out there. It’d be a bad leadership example.

  “Boss?” Sleeveless asked. Hollywood knew his name was Munson now, but he would always think of him as Sleeveless, because it was just as real of a name to the thug as Munson was. “Boss, you want me to chase after them?”

  “No,” Hollywood said after a moment. “They’re ready for that, ready to fight. Let them go for now. It’s not even close to midnight yet, and we’ll have plenty of time between now and then to sneak up and surprise the hell out of them. Divide and conquer, you know? Hell, even if they hang out together between now and then … you know what?” Hollywood felt a sneer coming on. “Even if I had to put this whole ritual off for a day, it might be worth it to slaughter them in a way that Ygrusibas would find palatable. It’s not like the ritual is specific about how they have to die. Maybe Ygrusibas is looking for something showier, like feeding them their own intestines. Beating them to death with their own forearms, you know, something eye-catching.” Hollywood slipped out of the shredded remnants of his suit coat, almost cringing at the damage. That suit had closed a few deals for him. He looked back to the woods, where the two pains in his ass had disappeared. Now the ones who’d fucked it up were going to close a big deal for him. The biggest, really. There was some sort of symmetry in that. He turned to Sleeveless.

  “So … got any other friends in town?”

  ***

  Creampuff watched through the fence as the two men got the better of four demons and ran off. Ygrusibas wanted to do something about it, but there wasn’t much Creampuff could do, really. Creampuff was feeling awfully bloated anyway, thanks to Ygrusibas and his helpful suggestions.

  The smell of cow dung wasn’t something Creampuff objected to, being around it on a near-constant basis, but now it had turned different, at least in the last few hours. Creampuff could barely stand the smell of herself, but that was becoming less and less important as Ygrusibas was taking more and more control of the proceedings. Creampuff had never cared for the taste of meat before, not that she’d had much chance to eat it. But now, she was eating tons of it. Literally tons. Every other cow in the herd was dead, consumed by Creampuff, and all on the order of Ygrusibas. The skeletons were just over the hill, but now that it was done, Creampuff was stuck in the front part of the pasture, watching the goings-on, waiting for the strength of Ygrusibas to kick in, so she could finally be rid of that accursed gate, finally walk out of this confinement into the world, and—

  There was a patch of grass to her right, and it looked pretty good, so she dipped her head to get at it. Ygrusibas sighed, somewhere within. This was not exactly going the way it had hoped it would.

  ***

  Arch wasn’t all that happy about running away from the MacGruder place twice in the same day. It felt like failure, like losing, and he’d never liked the taste of that—on the football field or off. “Damn,” he said, feeling the knuckles crack as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “We made it out alive,” Hendricks said from the passenger seat, still breathing hard as they turned from Kilner back onto the paved road. “That counts for something. And did you catch the whiff off that Hollywood guy? I smelled power.”

  “I smelled cow dung.”

  “Well, yeah, that too,” Hendricks agreed. “But Hollywood was clearly the brains of that operation. And he wasn’t like the others. They were lessers—”

  “Define ‘lessers,’” Arch said. One of the ‘lessers,’ as Hendricks was calling them, had nearly rung the life out of him without much effort. If these were the lessers, he didn’t want to be around for the greaters.

  “Lesser demons,” Hendricks said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Arch supposed after living this stuff for years, maybe it was natural. Not to him, though. Not yet. “This Hollywood is planning some sort of a ritual that includes human sacrifice.” Now Hendricks was just musing out loud, looking out the windshield, and Arch wondered if the man even knew he was still there. “Not good, not good …”

  “No,” Arch said, “human sacrifice is not good. You think that’s what happened to the MacGruders?”

  “Huh?” Hendricks looked startled, like Arch had just called him back from some place of deep thought. “Oh, yeah, probably. I mean, unless it was some sort of group sacrifice, and he needed more. Yeah, he probably killed them already.” He frowned. “What kind of a ritual needs multiple sacrifices? What kind of a ritual can you pause right in the middle and go get more sacrifices?”

  Part of Arch wanted to let him just muse it out until he had it figured. It was not the same part that worked for the Sheriff’s Department and needed answers to go with this annoying mystery that had washed up in his town from somewhere south of hell. “Are there a lot of these sort of rituals done?”

  Hendricks gave an equivocal left-to-right bob of his head. “Some, mostly in hotspots. Demons have all sorts of rituals, praying to greater demons than themselves for fortune, luck, fame—�
�

  “Fame?” Arch looked at Hendricks skeptically. “What does a demon want with fame?”

  “Half the cast of every show on reality TV are demons,” Hendricks answered. “More if you’re watching MTV.”

  Arch thought that one over for a minute. “Makes sense.”

  “Anyway,” Hendricks went on, “there’s lots of reasons for a demon to do a ritual. They do them all the time. Most are innocuous and involve pretty innocent components. Maybe cadaver parts at worst, greenery at best. Something involving human sacrifice, though …” He frowned, deeply. “Doesn’t sound too good. That’s pretty far out of my league, though.”

  “Of course it is,” Arch said, and he knew he was strained because he was being sarcastic, “because we couldn’t have all the answers just conveniently at hand.”

  “It would make things a little more boring,” Hendricks said with a smile. “I have someone I can call for help, but she’s a little tough to get ahold of. I’ve also got a couple books I can read through, see if there might be any specifics in there.”

  “What about this Hollywood guy and the other two demons?” Arch tried to keep his eye on the ball.

  “I only saw one other.”

  “There were two before,” Arch said. “Munson wasn’t there when I showed up the first time, Krauther was the one who answered the door.” He paused. “I wonder where he was.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Hendricks said. “I’m concerned about that Hollywood guy. I don’t think he’s a lesser.”

  Arch didn’t care for that assessment, either. “Can you kill a … what would he be then, a greater?”

  “Might be,” Hendricks said. “Might be worse.”

  Nope. Arch didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  “Fifteen,” came Erin’s voice out of his car radio, “this is Dispatch.”

  Arch wanted to curse but didn’t. Instead he thumbed the mike. “This is Fifteen, go ahead, Dispatch.”

  “We have reports of a black SUV weaving around out near the interstate. What’s your twenty, over?” Harris’s voice was alert.

  “I’m heading that way right now,” Arch replied. “Fifteen out.” He hung up the mike without another word. He knew a moment later it was brusque, especially for him, but he had other things on his mind.

  Hendricks waited about five seconds before speaking. “Was that that Erin girl we ran into at the bar last night?”

  Arch looked at him sidewise. They’d just been set upon by a pack of demons who were sacrificing human beings and the cowboy wanted to make time? “Yeah.”

  Hendricks just nodded, like he was assimilating that piece of information for later. He waited another minute before he spoke again. “She got a boyfriend?”

  Arch sent him a look that was beyond pointed. “You serious?”

  Hendricks shrugged, trying to deflect it. “This is what I do, you know.”

  “Like a job you go home from every day?” Arch asked, still letting loose the heat. “It’s life and death for the rest of us. At least it seems like it was for MacGruder and his wife.”

  “Isn’t your job life and death?” Hendricks asked, and Arch didn’t look at him. “Pretty sure I’ve heard of cops killed in the line of duty.”

  “Not around here,” Arch said tightly.

  “You could die any time,” Hendricks said, voice sounding awfully far away. “Life’s a serious business, if you want to be serious about it all the time. You could be walking down the street in New Orleans with your wife and get set upon by demons, killed, and tossed into the harbor.” He gave Arch a sidelong look of his own. “Yeah, killing demons can be serious. I’ve been pretty serious about it for a long time. Made it more than a job, I made it into something I was called to do.” He rubbed his face, like there was some way to get the tired look off of it. “Been wondering lately if I’ve been a little too serious about it.”

  Arch waited, thinking over what had just been said. “That didn’t actually happen to you, did it?” He didn’t look at Hendricks, but could see him in his peripheral vision. “That thing in New Orleans?”

  Hendricks took a minute to answer, and he wasn’t convincing. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  Arch decided to let it go. “I gotta drop you off and go look for some dumb sonofagun that’s not able to find a designated driver to keep his stupid self from weaving all over the road. What’s the next move?”

  “I’ll do some research,” Hendricks said. “Demon rituals usually happen under cover of night.” He chewed his lip as he thought. “I’m not loving the thought of assaulting the farm again, especially not at night, when those guys are at their strongest.”

  “If we don’t stop them,” Arch said, “they’re gonna grab some other poor bastard and throw them into the hot seat we were supposed to be in tonight, right?”

  Hendricks didn’t have to think long about that one. “Probably.”

  Arch gritted his teeth to keep from swearing. It was an old habit and seemed likely to come in handy in the immediate future. “How do we stop them?”

  Hendricks gave that some thought. “I don’t know.” He didn’t sound too down about it, more resigned. “If that guy Hollywood is as badass as he looks like he is, I don’t know that we can.”

  6.

  Hendricks wasn’t a fan of being a bearer of bad news, and Arch didn’t take it too well, either. They turned on the main stretch through town and the tall man said nothing as they beelined toward the interstate. “We just put a pretty hurting on him, killed two of his thugs,” Arch said, breaking the silence. “Why would you think we can’t take this Hollywood guy out?”

  “We got lucky with the thugs,” Hendricks answered patiently, remembering he was instructing someone with no experience in the demon world. “They were slow and stupid; they should have broken our necks before we could have even gotten our hands on our weapons. They didn’t, and the fact that you blew off a couple shotgun rounds at Hollywood and Munson helped our cause a lot. But he was playing possum, I’m telling you. He didn’t need to stay down as long as he did, he should have been up on his feet and after us in hot pursuit. The fact that he wasn’t is worrisome.”

  “You gonna worry about it?” Arch asked.

  “Maybe later,” Hendricks said. “Anyway, if he’s a greater, we’re not just talking about the power to choke us out in seconds, we’re talking about the ability to rip a human body apart with his bare fingers in just a couple of eyeblinks. I’ve seen whole teams of demon hunters wiped out by greaters, and we’re talking people with serious experience.”

  “What about the shotgun?” Arch didn’t want to let it go, apparently. “I put them both down with it.”

  “Guns can be helpful as a delaying tactic against demons,” Hendricks said. “But they don’t have enough force to be able to break through the veneer of their human forms, which is what you need to have happen to let their essence leak out and get swallowed back up into hell.”

  “You telling me you can stab with that sword harder than a bullet can hit?” Arch plainly didn’t believe that either.

  “No,” Hendricks said with a grin, letting his hand dangle from the “Oh, shit” bar on the door frame. “But my sword—and the switchblade—are consecrated, so it’s like jamming a flaming torch against a demon’s skin. Rips them right open, lets their essence come spilling out through the hole I make.”

  Arch looked like he wanted to argue it further, but he didn’t. He pulled up in front of the Sinbad Motel and Hendricks hopped out. “I’ll be here for a little while, trying to get some answers. Might pop out later, though, for some food.”

  “Fine,” Arch said, and his expression was all unhappiness. “I gotta go run down this drunk when I oughta be trying to figure out how to kill these demons.”

  Hendricks didn’t smile though he wanted to. “The call of duty, huh?” Arch didn’t seem to find that funny. Hendricks shut the door and the cop drove off, still looking unhappy.

  ***

  It was an
hour or so later that Arch got the call, after finding the black SUV tooling along Gordon Lane at the far end of town. It was a realtor from Knoxville, looking around for properties for one of his clients in Midian, because it was, in her words, “So much more affordable.” And only an hour’s commute. The commute was too rich for Arch’s blood, but then again, he did spend most of his days in the car, so his perspective was probably skewed.

  When Arch’s phone rang, it took him a minute to realize it wasn’t his duty cell; it was his personal one that was going off. He looked at the caller ID and saw Alison’s name. She’d talked about personalizing her ring tone but had never got around to it, which was just fine with Arch. He knew that the guys at the station would tease him about it if she did.

  “Hey,” he said once he’d pushed the button. There was a pause before she started talking.

  “Hey, I have to work late tonight,” she began.

  “Okay,” he said but ended up going unheard as she kept talking.

  “I’ll be home after midnight, and you’d better still be up.” She wasn’t demanding so much as teasing and coy. Her voice lowered, as though she were afraid someone would overhear. “We’ve got a baby to make.”

  “Right,” Arch said, not quite sourly but close. Making a baby was almost the last thing on his mind right now. Almost. Practice wasn’t unwelcome, but the sole focus on the end result over the process was beginning to irritate him.

  “Okay, well, see you later,” she said, omitting any one of a dozen cloying nicknames she had for him. “Love you.” There wasn’t a click, but the call ended, and he put the phone back in the pocket in which he’d been carrying it then frowned. Who knew that making a baby was going to be such a chore? Or come at such an unwelcome time?