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

by Robert J. Crane

  He wondered, just briefly, if his reticence about burgers had anything to do with having “seen” and eaten so many heart attacks. He shrugged mentally and went back to studying his menu. If he was lucky, what he was here to eat would happen before he had to order, thus saving him both money and the prospect of eating something he didn’t want to.

  He glanced behind the counter as a waitress in her mid-fifties placed a little square of paper bearing an order onto a spike in the window that separated the area behind the lunch counter from the kitchen. He watched her, her grey hair tied back in a ponytail, her jeans a little too tight for what she was carrying underneath. She wore a peach blouse, and Gideon kept a close eye on her as she came back around the edge of the lunch counter, heading toward a booth in the corner.

  He could feel it starting and knew she’d never make it. He watched her walk anyhow, caught the first hint of a stumble, and his hand went to his pocket immediately.

  ***

  Linda Richards was in for a double today. She’d had a faint headache since she woke up that morning, but damned if that wasn’t a consequence of waking up and forgetting to get coffee within the first hour of starting. The headache was in hour six of rearing its ugly head, though, and four cups of coffee hadn’t done a thing to help.

  The diner was buzzing like it always did during weekday lunch rush. She was doing all she could to keep up, but she wasn’t as young as the other waitresses. She’d heard ’em talk about her behind her back, but she was old enough to brush most of it off. She could still nail more orders than any of them could anyway, prissy little bitches. They wouldn’t do half as well as her when their tits were sagging and their asses barely fit in their jeans.

  She bumped an empty table mid-thigh as she passed, like it had just jumped out at her. She looked at it a little perplexed, and it blurred in her right eye. Not the left, just the right. Left was still clear. She tried to reach up to check her glasses, see if she’d gotten something on the lens, but her arms felt weak, like she couldn’t lift them.

  Her head was light, and she wondered if she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. She started to take another step, try to turn around to get back to the counter, but her legs faltered. The ground came rushing to her face, and she barely felt it when her cheek hit. The table she’d run into overturned, but she watched the whole thing like it was happening real far off.

  She saw faint figures over her head, but they were out of focus, blurry. She couldn’t move anymore. Not arms, not legs. Everything seemed to be drawing away.

  The ceiling above was all white, lit by the grey day, and it blurred, bit by bit, until that color was all that was left of her world.

  Everything else just faded away.

  ***

  Gideon was out of his seat within seconds of her hitting the floor. It was so overwhelming, having her right there. It flooded his consciousness with the low buzz of what she was hearing, echoing as he heard it too. Her pain was sweet delight to him, all the better for his proximity. He got hard without prompting and jerked on the doorknob of the men’s room with enough force to fling it open.

  He could hear the cacophony of screams and cries behind him, the desperation of people unsure what to do next. Gideon knew there was no doctor that could save Linda Richards now, even if there had been one right there in the diner. She was past the point of saving, heading into death not twenty feet from where he was in the bathroom.

  He shouldered into a stall, almost too overcome to bother shoving the lock into position. He whipped his fly down and started beating off, short strokes as the woman’s last, dying senses came through to him in the bathroom.

  He could feel her breaths coming slowly, her body fighting for the last ones, rasping for them …

  His breaths came in short gasps, hand working up and down in regular rhythm …

  He smelled the aroma of burning meat on the griddle as she smelled it …

  He tried not to breathe, the pungency of the old building’s unclean toilet wafting up at him as he stroked his cock harder …

  The faint hum of people talking around her was like distant voices, whispering just out of sight …

  His breaths were heavy, in triumph, his essence threatening to explode out of his body the way he heard the heart pounding on some of those close to death …

  The bitter taste in her mouth was like acid working its way up from her last meal …

  He could taste the desire for it to finish, to come, to cum, to explode. It built inside, throbbing in his body. He looked down and could see through her eyes for one last second, the light fading into black. He stopped the movement of his hand and the shell of a penis ejaculated. It shot black fluid that spattered the white tiles, simmering as it hit. Drops fell on the toilet seat and sizzled, fell into the water and smoke wafted out.

  He tried to control his breath, the steady, hard intakes of air that were just pumped into his essence and came back out again. It was pointless; he didn’t need oxygen, but his shell made him breathe like a human, make the noise, take in the breaths, and his excitement caused it to speed up.

  Gideon tilted his head back. He was still hard, still dripping. The sound of a drop spattering on the floor hissed and he shook his cock, trying to get the remainder in the toilet. He’d give it a few minutes, make sure it was all out before he put it back in his shorts.

  In the distance, somewhere beyond the stall, he could hear the sirens coming. The sound made him hard again, and he took himself in hand and started to stroke up and down once more to the memory of what had just happened.

  ***

  Erin was soaked in spite of her raincoat, drenched to the skin and surprisingly chilly for a summer’s day. The summer had turned cold. Or maybe it was just what they’d found that morning.

  Reeve called them all together inside the entry hallway of the Hughes house once they’d finished searching the street. They’d found one more house in the line that was filled with remains. This one was a house of bones, too, not a slaughterhouse like Corey Hughes’s place. It still reeked, and she could smell it on herself through the plastic coat.

  Or maybe it was just the smell of the Hughes house.

  “This is fucking unbelievable,” Reeve said as a member of the crime scene unit from Chattanooga went past them in a suit that was designed to keep the contamination of the crime scene to a minimum. Reeve seemed not to notice the stink eye that the guy gave them. “We’ve had more murders in this town in the last week and half than we’ve had in the entire time I’ve been alive.” His voice quivered, his eyes were turned down in hard lines. “I’d give you all the ‘not on my watch’ speech, but the goddamned horse has already left the barn on this motherfucker, so instead I’m going to give you the ‘find this cocksucker and let’s pin their asscheeks to the wall’ speech.”

  Erin looked over at Arch; he seemed desperately uncomfortable, like someone had put itching powder in his uniform. He shifted left and right, unable to keep himself still while Reeve was talking. She, on the other hand, felt no desire to do anything other than stand there frozen.

  More dead than she could count. No clues. No sign of who could have even done such a monstrous thing.

  “I want suspects,” Reeve said.

  “No one saw anything,” Fries said with a shrug of his massive frame, jowls shaking as he turned his head.

  “Don’t give me that shit. Someone saw something,” Reeve said, and put a finger up, pointing it Fries. “Something. A car. A person walking down the sidewalk. You can’t tell me there’s not some busybody in this neighborhood that didn’t hear something.” He turned and pointed toward the back of the house, where Corey Hughes was laid out. “You can’t tell me he died without screaming while whoever did that to him … did it.”

  Erin had seen a bloody rag in Corey Hughes’s empty, gaping cavity, and suspected he’d been gagged to keep him from making any noise while he was eaten alive or vivisected or whatever had happened happened. She’d seen similar rag
s in the other houses

  It wasn’t something she felt compelled to mention right now, though.

  “I want suspects,” Reeve said, a fury lighting his eyes. “We got a lot of new people in town lately.” He turned to Arch. “What about that cowboy?”

  Arch looked a little stunned. “He was with me last night until about nine.”

  Reeve leaned forward, eyes alight, jaw stuck out. “And after that?”

  Shit. Erin coughed, and four sets of eyes came to her. “He was with me,” she muttered.

  “He’s just an example,” Reeve said. “Anyone else notice we got a shit ton of tourists in the last couple weeks?”

  “Diner’s been fuller than usual,” Reines said, running a finger over his soul patch. “Thought maybe it was tourists.”

  “Tourists don’t come to Calhoun County during summer,” Erin said. It was true. They came during hunting season, hoping to get one of the wide-bodied bucks with a big rack that lurked up in the national forest around Mt. Horeb. “Not a damned thing to do here except hike, and most tourists go to the Appalachian trail for that.”

  “Well, there’s sure as shit a lot of strangers here,” Reeve said and pointed out the door, where the rain was still coming down. Erin could hear it on the roof. “And they ain’t here for the weather right now.”

  “Maybe they’re from England,” Fries said with a low chuckle. His smile disappeared when everyone looked at him. “Sorry.”

  “Start shaking the trees,” Reeve said. “Question everybody. Stop any cars that look suspicious.”

  “What if it’s a local doing this?” Arch asked, and every head swiveled toward him. Erin had to blink a couple times.

  “That’s crazy,” Reeve said. “We know everyone around here, and you’d think if someone was going to go around and completely eviscerate random people, we’d have had a hint of it before now—”

  “Maybe not,” Arch said, and Erin could tell he was holding his ground. His back was straight, his whole body was stiff. “Think of how many farmers we have around here. Serial killers often start with animals. Someone could have been practicing for years.”

  “What the hell are you saying, Arch?” Reeve was looking at him with narrowed eyes.

  “I’m saying it could be anyone, so singling out strangers is kind of a futile strategy.” Arch folded his arms, and Erin could tell by his posture he was done.

  Reeve seemed to chew on this for a moment, looking at Arch in disbelief, like he wanted to say something but was holding back for some reason. Erin suspected it was because of race. If Arch had been a white deputy of the same age, Reeve would have taken his head off right then and there, called him stupid—to put it mildly. The problem was, the more Erin thought about it, Arch was right. She said as much.

  “Corey Hughes looked like he’d been slaughtered, right?” she asked, and Reeve’s red face turned to look at her, his eyes smoldering with rage. “Arch is right. We could have had a farmer ripping up his animals for years to practice up for this. It could be someone from here in Midian, or just the county. Or it could be someone from a neighboring county. Could be a total stranger from Colorado for all we know.”

  “Why Colorado?” Fries asked, his jowled face scrunched up.

  “Just picking somewhere at random,” she said. “Point is, we don’t even know what we’re looking for. This fucker, whoever he is, slaughtered three houses full of people. If he’s some kind of cannibalistic sonofabitch and came for the meat—and the bones being picked clean mean he probably did—he’s got a whole freezerful of it now, and we may not see him again for a while.”

  “Y’all been watching too many serial killer movies,” Reeve pronounced, running a hand over his bald head. His face was lessening in its redness, expression softening. “I just can’t believe anyone in Calhoun County would do something like this … this … atrocity.” He said the word atrocity like it was worse than any curse he could have breathed. And since Erin had heard him casually throw out the c-word, he knew some pretty bad curses.

  They waited in the circle until Reeve spoke again. “All right, fine. Maybe it is someone local. We need to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. We should troll through town on patrol at night, make our presence known. I want a light shined on every house. People are gonna go ape shit when they find out about this.” He breathed out, almost sounded like he wanted to spit. “They may even send the news trucks from Chattanooga to cover this mess. This shit just doesn’t happen around here.”

  “You know people are gonna be asking questions,” Erin said.

  “Yeah,” Reeve said and ran his hand over his slick head again. “You’re gonna be our department’s official communications coordinator.”

  Bullshit, is what she thought, but caught herself before she said it. “That’s not in my job description, and I’d be terrible at it.” She saw him start to argue at the first part of it then deflated at the second half. Reeve knew she was a shitty liar. Couldn’t keep a straight face during a poker hand for anything, they’d discovered that at the last department Christmas party. And that was without even any booze running through her.

  “Yeah, you’re right, dodging press questions ain’t your forte,” Reeve seemed to give it some thought. “Well, I’ll have the wife handle it, maybe funnel the really important ones to me.” He looked up at her. “I’ll need you on patrol, then, helping pick up some of the slack.”

  She felt the rise of excitement. “I’ll need a car.”

  Reeve scowled. “You can use mine. For now,” he hastened to add.

  “You need me to leave my keys behind so you’ve got something to drive?” Erin felt the rush of near-giddiness. Finally. One of the team, doing something other than answering phones, filing bullshit paperwork, managing time cards and fetching coffee.

  “Uh …” Reeve looked a little red in the face now, but for a different reason. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll borrow my wife’s car if I need to get around.”

  And he was calling her car a piece of shit. She sighed. At least she was moving up.

  ***

  Arch hit the street as soon as Reeve was done with his inspirational talk. The direction he got out of it was basically to catch the guy responsible and keep an eye—and a lid—on things. There wasn’t much more they could do, really, other than pull over anyone acting suspicious and look out for broken windows and such. It wasn’t like they could go house to house, even in Midian. There were something like ten thousand people in the burg and surrounding area, after all, and that was a lot of doors to knock on. Even if they called in the cavalry and left the outlying areas of the county unpatrolled.

  Which was a bad idea. Too much meth moving out there to leave it unobserved for long.

  What he’d seen was still rattling in Arch’s head, and the new car smell didn’t come close to erasing the stink of what he’d gotten on him in those houses. He put the Explorer in gear and felt the pressure of the accelerator pedal as he pushed down. He took a breath and could almost taste the fetid, rotting smell in the back of his mouth. What he’d seen this morning was truly the sickest thing he’d ever seen.

  He wanted to curse, but he didn’t allow himself to say any of the ones that would have counted. To him they’d have been as rotten and unwelcome on his tongue as the smell of that house was.

  Demons.

  It all came back to demons.

  He steered the Explorer along the rain-drenched streets of Midian. When he hit Old Jackson Highway, he took a right toward the Interstate. He needed to talk to somebody. It was pressing on him, Alison not really saying anything lately. Not that she would have been the one to talk to about this, anyhow. Demons were something so fantastical it was probably beyond his wife’s comprehension.

  There was no way in Arch’s mind that what he’d just seen had been caused by a human being. Sure, people had done things like that in the real world, that and worse, he would acknowledge. But to come to Midian now? When it had just become a mystical hotspot and demonic
tourist attraction? Surely not a coincidence.

  He blazed past the Sheriff’s Department office without even slowing down. He didn’t habitually speed, but he suspected he would today. He’d need to hurry if he was going to squeeze this conversation in before he got back on patrol. Reeve probably wouldn’t care where he was, so long as he was moving. Now wasn’t the time to get caught taking a long lunch, that much was certain.

  But there was a serial killing demon wandering the streets of Midian, eating its way through the populace, and that meant Arch needed to take action of a different sort than his standard patrols would allow. He needed help. An expert.

  As he pulled into the parking lot of the Sinbad motel, part of him wondered why an expert on demon hunting would be staying here, but dismissed the thought without putting much into it. The sandy brown exterior of the motel wasn’t much to look at and the inside was even worse, but it was almost all they had in this town. Almost.

  ***

  Hendricks was lying on the bed, just savoring the pain that was racking him, when the knock came. He grunted and sighed, feeling his injuries come to him in an inventory as he rolled his way off the side of the bed into a crouching pose. He thought about answering with sword in hand, but it was daylight and unlikely that a demon was going to be attacking him now. He was more or less anonymous here, after all, having killed every demon he’d run across since coming to town.

  Still, he pulled the chair his coat was resting on to within arm’s length of the door before he even looked out the peephole.

  It was Arch. He opened the door a moment later, not bothering to throw on a shirt. The sheriff’s deputy made a low whistle that caused Hendricks to tilt an eyebrow at him. “You’re all bruised up,” the deputy explained.

  “Though maybe you were admiring my physique,” Hendricks said with a half-hearted smile as he headed back to the bed. “What’s up?”