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

by Robert J. Crane

  Hendricks’s mind raced, feeling a little like he had to think while his heart was causing his brain to throb with each beat. He had a feeling he was heading into a torture situation, something which he hadn’t really had to deal with before. There’d always been the threat, of course, when he was in the service, but it had never actually happened to him. He pulled on the handcuffs and heard them clink as the car hit a bump and his head whacked the door. Shit.

  ***

  Arch thought he’d gone the wrong way the minute he got the Explorer out of the driveway, but he couldn’t be sure. When he got to the point that he doubted himself enough to turn around, he drove a hundred miles an hour with his sirens and lights on back in the opposite direction only to find not a single thing. The road didn’t exactly lend itself to tracking a car, not being a dirt path. And he wasn’t supposed to drive that fast on a spare tire.

  He slammed a hand into the steering wheel and felt the pain in his wrist. He’d pay for that later. He started to reach for the radio—again, for the thousandth time—and stopped himself. The only thing calling in would do was provoke a flurry of questions and land himself in hot water. He made a seething noise as he blew air out through gritted teeth and slapped the Explorer’s plasti-leather interior panel next to the window. It rattled from the force of his strike.

  Where to now? What to do? They were tough questions, and they weren’t going to get answers by driving randomly down Lihue Lane, a winding road that stretched five miles in either direction. Hendricks could be halfway across the county by now, in the hands of the demons—whoever they were—and Arch had no one to ask for help.

  Arch thudded his palm against the wheel again. The shock of pain ran up his wrist, but it put him back in the moment. It was the same feeling he got when he’d hit a guy playing football. He could be dazed, trying to think of the next move, but when that hit happened, it always woke him up.

  The road he was on was taking him back to town. Where the sheriff was waiting, somewhere. Arch looked down at his phone and thumbed the faceplate on. He’d missed twenty calls, all from the same number. Whatever Reeve wanted to talk to him about—and he had a fair idea—he’d probably expressed it in the fifteen voicemails he’d left.

  He hit the outskirts still without any idea. “God … what do I do?” he asked.

  He didn’t expect a literal answer by any means, but he felt the tug of his heart guiding the wheel, and he steered himself down the familiar streets toward home.

  ***

  They’d pulled off into a little wooded area, Hendricks knew, some copse of trees he could see by looking out the window on the other side of the car. His feet were visible, too, cowboy boots up against the opposite door’s panel. He thought about busting up the door, but why? So some poor bastard cop would see it, stop them, and get killed? Pointless.

  He’d probably need all his strength to endure what was going to happen next, anyway.

  Hendricks heard the car stop, felt the subtle shift in momentum that threatened to roll him off his seat. The car dinged as one of the doors opened and the guy in the passenger side got out before it was even shut off. Hendricks heard the driver scrape the keys in the ignition as he pulled them out. Cool, wet air hit him in the face as the driver opened his door.

  One of the seatbelt buckles was right in his bruised ribs, and Hendricks had a feeling it was not going to get any more comfortable from here, fuck it all. He could hear a muted conversation between his two captors just outside the car, but it was too hushed for him to make anything out.

  He could hear his ragged breathing, and he tried to steady it. He tried to scoot, to bring his hands down and around his ass so he could get them in front of him, but the door opened before he could make any progress. Strong arms pulled him out, not even letting him get his feet underneath him.

  They dragged him, one on each side, backwards into the woods. Hendricks wished for his weapon of last resort, the switchblade he’d fastened in his hat until just last week, but he knew that it was out there, somewhere beyond his sight—with Arch.

  ***

  Arch paused outside the door of his apartment before letting the key hit the lock. A part of him resisted going inside. He thought about driving around, aimless. Calhoun County was only three hundred and fifty square miles. Sure, it would be utterly fruitless, but at least he’d be doing something.

  He shook off that feeling like he shook off the chill as he opened his front door and stepped inside. Alison had turned the heater on. Not a big surprise there, she didn’t do well in winter, except for fashion-wise.

  “I’m home,” he said. He didn’t advertise it particularly loudly, but he didn’t have to. Alison was sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead. She looked over at him as he entered, her long blond hair falling around her shoulders. She had changed out of her work clothes into denim jeans and a grey t-shirt. She looked good, he reflected as she stared back at him evenly.

  “Oh?” Her voice was as flat as the look she gave him. “I thought you were going to be working late.” She didn’t seem to care either way, just going by tone.

  “I just came home for a little bit,” Arch said, and now he felt the chill in the room. He took a step toward where she sat in the living room, felt the tension in his body. “Couldn’t, uh … I don’t know, I couldn’t …”

  “Long patrol, huh?” She didn’t sound particularly sympathetic. She didn’t really sound particularly … anything, lately. Just dull, flat, like she had no emotions left at all.

  “Long day,” Arch said and lowered his head. “Did you hear about the murders?”

  “Yeah,” Alison said, and he looked up to find her expression hadn’t changed a whit. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, like she was tired. It wasn’t a look he could recall seeing on her face before. She didn’t look mad … just different. “Never heard of anything like that before. Not in Midian.”

  “No one’s heard of anything like that around here before,” Arch said. “Let alone that thing this afternoon.”

  “Big crash,” Alison said, nodding her head. “Not an accident either, I hear.”

  Arch shook his head. “Nope.”

  Alison looked away from him. “Quite a day.”

  Arch couldn’t really think of much to say to that. “Yep.” He wondered if it’d be capped off with Hendricks dying.

  ***

  For Hendricks, being dragged by the demons was like what he remembered of being picked up by his parents as a kid. He was facing the opposite direction of the one he was being dragged, trying to crank his neck around to look.

  “Little farther,” the one on his left said. It was the guy from the passenger side. He was wearing a dark suit that looked like it was tinged with purple. Hendricks had to look twice to make sure. “We’re almost out of earshot of the house over that hill there.”

  Hendricks didn’t love the sound of that, either. He didn’t love any of this. Not that he could think of anyone that would.

  His heels were thumping with the natural curves of the ground. His shoulder was pissed at him, too, making a little racket, pain firing up here and there. He didn’t know which fight that had come from.

  The air was crisp, and he looked up to see a black sky above. The chill on his skin wasn’t just from the weather, that much he knew.

  “Gonna rain again,” the guy in the purple suit said.

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” the other said. He was the one that sounded like he was from Boston. “When it comes to atmospheric conditions—”

  “Not now,” Purple Suit said. He talked softly, one of the gentlest voices Hendricks could recall.

  They went quiet and stopped after another twenty yards or so. They tossed Hendricks to the ground like he weighed no more than a piece of firewood, and he rolled in a pile of dead leaves. He came to rest face down, hands still cuffed behind him, legs chained together.

  “We’re curious about that redhead,” Purple Suit said abruptly.

  "You want t
o know if she's single? Ask her yourself." Hendricks felt his head rock from a sharp slap from Boston. It stung more than anything. “I’m curious about her, too,” Hendricks said, compressing his neck to look up. He rested his chin on the dirt, and started to roll over. “She’s not exactly forthcoming with the details of her life, if you know what I mean.”

  “You look like you’re cozy with her,” Boston said. Hendricks couldn’t see either of them; they were lurking above him and back a little ways.

  “Not really,” Hendricks said, trying to roll. “She showed up a week or so ago, saved my ass a couple times, then vanished until today.” His shoulder was now super pissed at him for trying to roll.

  There was a pause behind him. “Forgive us,” Boston’s sharp voice came back, “but we think there’s more to it than that.”

  “I’m sure there is,” Hendricks said with a grunt as he rolled onto his back. His arms were now pinned underneath him, but at least he could look the two of them in the face. Boston was watching him, just a few paces away. Purple Suit was a little farther back, standing off to the side, staring into the woods with his fingers on his chin. “But she hasn’t shared any more with me. You got a real woman of mystery there. First time I met her, she jumped off an overpass and disappeared before she hit the ground.”

  “No shit?” This from Boston.

  “No shit,” Hendricks said, staring him down. “Makes me think she might be one of your people.”

  “‘Our people’?” Boston’s voice carried a note of offense.

  “You know,” Hendricks said, with as much of a shrug as he could manage with his hands behind his back. “Demon.”

  “Uh huh,” Boston said, watching him with a thoroughly unamused expression. His lips were tight, eyes slitted. “‘Our people.’ Tell me something, demon hunter,” and the guy said almost like it was a slur, “you ever meet any of ‘our people’ that you didn’t kill?”

  “Maybe a few here and there,” Hendricks said, and felt the wet dirt against his hands. “Never met one who crossed me I didn’t let the air out of, though.”

  “Oh, we got a feisty one, Duncan,” Boston said, looking over at his partner, who was still staring off into the woods. Hendricks could hear the drip of water from the branches above in the gap of silence once the demon stopped speaking. “Kind of a loudmouth considering you don’t have your sword or your gun.” Boston took a step closer. “Don’t know what ‘our kind’ does to ‘your kind’?”

  “Kills us,” Hendricks said, trying to scoot his hands down his back. He rocked and brought them around his ass and started folding his legs one by one under the chain so he could bring his hands in front of him. Boston watched and didn’t seem to care. “Eat us. Disembowel us for fun.”

  Boston shot a look at the one he’d called Duncan, then looked back to Hendricks. “I don’t know any of our people that would disembowel just for fun. Maybe in the course of eating, or playful torture …” He let his voice drift off. “Okay, I guess some would consider it fun.”

  “What about you?” Hendricks asked, steeling his voice, trying to keep it even. “What do you do with humans for fun?”

  Boston took a step closer and peered down at him. His expression was almost totally cold, blank. “I don’t have fun with humans. I tolerate humans. I go around humans. Avoid them. Try to ignore them when they inconvenience me.” He knelt, and Hendricks noticed for the first time he was wearing some cheap looking loafers that were caked with mud. “Right now, you’re inconveniencing me.”

  “I’ve told you what I know,” Hendricks said, and held his hands up, still cuffed. “You can believe me or not, but I don’t know that much about the redhead.”

  Boston narrowed his eyes at him. They became slits then glowed red with a dark fire. “Do you know her name?”

  Hendricks felt himself tense. Unless his handcuffs were blessed by a holy man of some kind, they wouldn’t do any damage to a demon. What was in a name, anyway? “She calls herself Starling. That’s all she ever told me.”

  Boston settled back, then stood, looking down at him, his face bunched up pensively. The fire in his eyes was gone. “Starling? Like the bird?”

  Hendricks shrugged. “That’s what she said.”

  “Duncan?” Boston asked, turning to face his partner. Hendricks watched Duncan, who was still staring off into the forest.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Duncan said.

  “Well, okay then,” Boston said and reached out for Hendricks in a flash, pulling him to his feet. “I guess we’re almost done here.”

  Hendricks heard that and took note. “Oh, yeah?” Boston was way too casual about this. He braced himself to run for the woods.

  “Yeah,” Boston said and promptly hit Hendricks in the kidney, doubling him over. “Almost done.”

  Hendricks hit the ground and looked up. Boston stood over him and now so did Duncan. They were flanking him, and his back hurt like Boston had used a battering ram to bust him open. Hendricks just lay there, looking up at the two of them, as they both reached down for him, blotting out his view of the tree branches above.

  12.

  Gideon had tried to put it all together, tried damned hard. Well, he’d done the research anyway. Ammonia-based fertilizer bombs had sounded easy when he’d looked them up, but then things got complicated fast. Some of the materials would require serious effort to get hold of. And they assumed he’d be able to make a functional bomb out of everything once he was done, which was a big if.

  It took him until nearly two a.m. to settle on what he was doing wrong. He was thinking like a human.

  And he was not a human. He was better.

  The rental car bumped along down a dirt road. He’d had to do a little searching to find what he was looking for, but he’d found it. The web was really a boon for their kind, if you knew what to look for. Need a live human delivered to your apartment in New York for fresh meat? There was a service for that. Funerary rites for a Du’clen’tau demon? All on a webpage, indexed somewhere on a server in the Ukraine for viewing anywhere that Wifi or 4G could reach.

  And if you needed the services of a few of demonkind’s more … elusive and mysterious purveyors, they were there, too. Fortunately for Gideon, some of them liked to follow the hotspots. And updated their web pages accordingly. Or blog, in this case.

  The car smelled new, clean, like a rental should. The last one he’d ditched it wasn’t smelling so good by the end. This one was blowing mildly warm air, which worked for Gideon because he was still in cargo pants and a t-shirt. He was starting to stink, he knew it. A few days of fevered pleasuring without a shower would do that, and he certainly hadn’t had time for a shower.

  No, he had plotting and scheming to do. Research. Shit to think up. Plans to execute.

  He pulled off the road when he saw the mailbox. It was painted red, blending in with the flag that was on its side. It felt wrong somehow, like it was some sort of violation of USPS code, but Gideon just shrugged and turned because that’s what the website said to do.

  He felt the rutted road pitch the car, felt the heat blowing out of the vents on his face, smelled his own stink and the rental car’s cleanliness mix in some perverse blend. He touched himself quickly, just a goose to remind him of what this was all about. Oh, yeah. He was hard again already.

  He stopped behind a green pickup truck that looked almost black in the dark night. A porch light was the only thing illuminating the scene. Gideon pulled the keys out of the ignition and took another breath of himself before he got out. He kind of liked it.

  His shoes squished in the mud and gravel of the road. This looked like it was on higher ground than most of the roads he’d seen. Lots of standing water after the rains. That was good. Lots of ground saturation.

  He headed for the door to the house. It was painted red, too, and when he knocked—four times—he heard a voice within.

  “Enter.”

  It was almost a whisper, but it resonated inside, touched his essence.
He paused and let that feeling linger. It was like someone had run fingers over his deepest insides. It was not something that was done to strangers casually; it was awfully forward.

  Gideon liked it. He took hold of the old copper handle and opened the door. What he saw inside made his head spin.

  ***

  “What are you gonna do?” Alison’s soft voice wafted over Arch with a seriousness that he still wasn’t used to. She could pout with the best of them when she wanted, but she was a mostly chipper person. He tried not to let her change in personality get to him, even as he sat back on the couch next to her, sinking into the corduroy monstrosity. Her parents had gotten it for them when they’d moved into the apartment.

  “I don’t know,” Arch said, leaning his head back and feeling the faint lines of the fabric against the back of his neck. He ran a hand over his short hair, then down the bristly stubble on his cheek.

  “Are you coming to bed?” She asked this with as little interest as she asked anything else, but his ears perked up and listened for hints of something—anything—from her. Interest. Anything to hint she might be the same person who was so anxious to have a baby with him only two weeks ago.

  “Not yet,” he said. There was some pull in him to keep him from answering the way he knew he should, the way he wanted to deep inside. Some stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he maybe needed to bend toward her, even a little. His breath caught in his throat before he spoke. “I just … I think I’ll stay up a little longer.”

  “All right,” she said in a rough whisper. She stood and walked past him, pausing only to reach down and kiss him on the forehead. It was quick, perfunctory, and nothing but silence followed after it.

  ***

  Hendricks was in the back seat again, now with his hands uncuffed. The last few minutes had been strange. He was sitting upright now, in the middle of the seat, his coat on the floorboard.

  “What do they call these handles?” This from Boston, whose actual name, he had found out after he’d introduced himself and helped Hendricks out of the mud, was Lerner. Lerner pointed at the handle hanging next to Duncan’s head. “You know, the ones on the roof of a car by the door. Lunkhead here doesn’t know.” Lerner waved at Duncan.