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

by Robert J. Crane

  “Back to where?” Arch asked, and Hendricks saw him relax a little. “Hades?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lerner said with a laugh. “You can’t bring yourself to say hell, so you gotta use the Greek god of the underworld’s name?”

  “I don’t swear,” Arch said, and Hendricks thought he bristled less this time. He was probably used to deflecting that inquiry.

  Lerner just frowned at him, one side of his mouth up in a sneer. “True believer, huh?”

  “Leave him alone,” Hendricks said. “Let’s talk about this syger-whatever.”

  “Sygraath,” Lerner said and the frown went complete. “Fine.”

  “Why were you waiting here?” Arch asked.

  “Because he was nesting next door,” Duncan said, leaning against the mauve-taupe wall.

  “Was?” Arch asked, and his eyes got big.

  “We think he got spooked,” Lerner said, dredging up some civility. It occurred to Hendricks that the demon would have been completely in place in a forties noir film. All he needed was a cigarette and for his hair to be a little more slicked back. “Someone might have tipped him we were in town.”

  Hendricks ran a hand over his face to scratch an itch and caught a scent of muddy stink clinging to him from when he’d been clubbed by Duncan. Whenever that had been. A couple hours ago? A lifetime ago, maybe.

  “You could have called and told me you were okay,” Arch said, and Hendricks looked up to see the deputy staring accusingly at him.

  “Sorry,” Hendricks said. “It’s been kind of a blur since I got back here. I don’t think I’m operating on all cylinders.”

  Duncan glanced at him. “You’re suffering from fatigue and your body is trying to heal the cuts and bruises you’ve received in the last few days. Also, you’re operating on a deficit of sleep.”

  “So, what’s the deal here?” Arch said, staring at Duncan.

  “He’s a reader of some kind,” Hendricks said. “Sees into people. Their essence.”

  “Yeah, they got a lady up in the hills that can do that, too,” Arch said, none too amused, from the tone of his voice. “But I meant what’s going on here? You’re watching for this … Sygraath together? You’re working together?”

  Hendricks looked from Duncan to Lerner. “Actually, they kind of bushwhacked me, interrogated me about Starling, and then dragged me back here.” He shrugged at Lerner, who shrugged back. “I don’t know about working together, but this Sygraath has got to go.”

  “He’s broken the laws of the Pact,” Lerner said abruptly. “In absolute violation of the Edicts of 1608, 1705 and a few other subsections. Sygraath are innocuous enough most of the time. They’ll feed on death, but they don’t cause it. They just savor it. You could make an argument they’re making the last moments of the dying more miserable—”

  “Which sounds like reason to kill them,” Arch interrupted.

  “—but they don’t actually do the killing,” Lerner said. “So we let ’em do their business. Now this one, he’s crossed the line. He’s killing people in a hotspot that’s already hot enough to boil over. So, yeah, we want to punch his ticket.” He glanced at Hendricks. “What about you, demon hunter? You want him bad enough to let us sit here for a while until he either shows up or we get another lead on him?”

  “Why can’t I just kill him myself?” Hendricks asked. He tried not to get too snotty about it, but he’d killed more than a few demons in his time, hadn’t he? He knew how this shit worked. Plus, he’d just taken on one partner; two more was a level of ballooning that he hadn’t ever figured on.

  “You’ve been living next door to this guy for a week without even knowing it,” Lerner said. One of his eyebrows popped up. “You’re a hell of a demon hunter, you know that?”

  “Also,” Duncan added, quiet and droll as always, “this Sygraath is a greater and would likely put a fine sheen on your bones by dragging you all over the parking lot at this point. You’re injured and weak and thus easy prey for even a non-fighter like him.”

  ‘Greater’ was a term that Hendricks knew all too well. He exchanged a look with Arch, whose mouth was a tight line. “What do you think, Arch?”

  Arch was damned quiet, and Hendricks thought that told him a lot about the cop’s thought process. “You gonna throw in with demons?” He was still watching Duncan and Lerner both.

  “They put up a fair argument,” Hendricks said. It was true; they did have a point. He was not in mint condition for a fight with a greater, that much he was sure of.

  “I don’t truck with no demons,” Arch said, and he was back to bristling again.

  “Arch,” Hendricks said, trying to figure out how to get the man to see reason, “Hollywood was a greater and he damned near rolled us even with the help of our mysterious sniper friend. Ygrusibas would’ve shredded us if we hadn’t had Starling’s help—”

  “Did you say Ygrusibas?” Lerner asked. For the first time since Hendricks had met him, he looked dead serious.

  ***

  Erin sat quietly in her cruiser. Funny how she’d already started to think of it as hers after only a day. The heat was still blowing, she pushed her hair back and rubbed at the tiredness in the corners of her eyes.

  Arch was a good man; she had never really doubted it. Whatever he was in or up to with Hendricks, though … it couldn’t be good. Not only was Hendricks a lying, cheating sack of shit, but he might be crazy to boot.

  Not only that, but he hung around the weirdest people. Who the fuck was this Starling? And could she get any more bizarre? Talking in a dead, emotionless voice about futures and shit, like one of those astrology-loving nutbags. Erin remembered some of the girls talking about that shit in school. Actually, she could have sworn Alison Stan was one of them. She always did hide some weird tendencies under that pretty, cheerleader facade.

  What the fuck had Starling been talking about? Just crazy talk, surely.

  Erin shook her head. “If I see that redhead again …”

  ***

  “You know what?” Arch said, and waved a hand at the three men—one man and two demons—sitting in the hotel room. “Talk it over however long you want. I got other stuff to do.”

  “Arch—” Hendricks said, and the cowboy started to get up off the bed. Tried, anyway. It didn’t go so well and he cringed at the pain.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me, cowboy,” Arch said with a mirthless laugh. “Demons are real. Straight out of the bowels of Hades—” He saw that one demon—Lerner—roll eyes at that, “—and now you want to conspire with two of them to take down another. I might have thrown away my job today—”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Hendricks said, and this time he made it to his feet, though he was hunched a little, like an old man.

  “Yes, I did.” Arch didn’t quite yell it, but he put force behind it. “Because I believe that demons—with the slaughters, and the accidents and whatnot—are a grave threat to the people of this town.”

  “They are,” Hendricks said and took a shuffling step toward him. Arch backed toward the door, keeping an eye on Duncan, the one next to the door. He wasn’t moving, though, just standing there.

  “But now you’re working with them,” Arch said. He could feel the bile, the fury, rising inside him.

  “Come on, Arch,” Hendricks said, taking a limping step closer. “Surely even you can see that … maybe they’re not all bad?”

  “Are they demons?” Arch asked and turned his head to look at the one called Lerner. He looked right back, smug. “Are they from hell?”

  “That’s the word,” Lerner said. Still smug. Arch wanted to wipe that right off his face with a fist.

  “Arch—” Hendricks said.

  “Call me if you find this guy,” Arch said, and fumbled for the door handle, “you know, if you and your demon buddies can’t handle it.”

  He slammed the door as he left, indifferent to the noise it made in the night.

  ***


  Lerner watched the cop go with little interest. He was a big fellow. Had kind of a scary look to him when he was mad. If you were human. Lerner didn’t fear humans. Why would he? Most of them didn’t know how to release an essence.

  Lerner honed back in on the cowboy, who was standing just a few feet from the bed in his room. Which was a shithole exactly on par with the one that the unnamed Sygraath had been holed up in. At least the motel was consistent. “You mentioned Ygrusibas.” He caught Hendricks’s attention with that one. “How do you even know that name?”

  Hendricks looked like he was just coming back to himself, and Lerner felt a little bad for having hit him earlier. Man looked like an empty shell of flesh sagging in on itself. “Because we killed—” Hendricks paused. “Because we sent him back to hell over a week ago. Whatever you call it.”

  “No, you couldn’t have,” Lerner said with a quick exhale. He meant it to sound amused, but he was in control of his facade enough to know it wasn’t amusement but fear. The name of Ygrusibas had not been spoken aloud by a human in thousands of years.

  Or at least it shouldn’t have been.

  “Yet we did,” Hendricks said, shuffling back to the bed. He sat down slowly, and it made Lerner wonder if his ass was hurting for some reason, too. “Guy named Hollywood summons him up—”

  “Not a real name, I presume,” Duncan said. Lerner shot him a look which he thought was pretty clear. It said, You don’t actually believe this shit, do you?

  “Probably not,” Hendricks said. “He comes to town with a book, kills some people on a farm on the outskirts with the intention of summoning Ygrusibas. Wreaks havoc.” Hendricks adjusted his cowboy hat down, annoying the fuck outta Lerner. Why was the guy wearing a cowboy hat? He didn’t even have a car, let alone a horse. Lerner looked around the room again real quick. Or a pot to piss in. “Releases Ygrusibas into a cow—”

  “Whoa,” Duncan said.

  “Bull. Shit.” That was Lerner’s reaction. No fucking way was the other part of it, but he kept that to himself.

  “More like cow shit,” Hendricks said, bumping his hat back. What was up with the coat, too, Lerner wondered? “Anyway, the cow-demon starts going crazy, eats Hollywood, goes on a rampage, and Arch and I stop it before it gets out of the pasture.”

  Lerner didn’t keep from rolling his eyes, not at this. “One of the ancients gets summoned up and two humans kill it in a cow pasture?” He faux-yawned, just to be an ass. “Yeah. Sure. You guys must be the Big Swinging Dicks of the demon-slaying scene in this fucking backwoods hell.” He cast a sidelong look at Duncan and stopped. “You’re not fucking serious.”

  Duncan was looking ahead, wide-eyed, watching Hendricks. “He believes it. And it could be. There were signs that something was seriously amiss, and it’s not like we get a lot of communication about these sort of things from—”

  Lerner made a low, rattling noise in his throat. “You think an ancient—” He cut himself off, because it sounded so fucking ridiculous. He stopped himself from repeating the ‘You can’t be fucking serious’ thing again.

  “It’s … possible,” Duncan said with another light nod. “Things are moving fast up here. Faster than anyone back at home office could have predicted.”

  “Yeah,” Lerner said. “Okay.” He knew he wore a sour expression now, like he’d taken a sip of lemonade. And he hated that shit. No way would he believe it, though. The ancients didn’t get out; not from where they were held.

  No chance.

  ***

  Arch pulled into the sheriff’s station parking lot and killed the engine. He had that pit of dread in his belly, and it only seemed to grow as he opened the door and started toward the entrance. The night was heading toward dawn pretty quick, and he wondered—just a little—about what the morning would bring.

  He grasped the cold, fixed steel handle of the door and pulled. The metal frame surrounded a Plexiglass window; there was condensation forming on the inside of it. Even though it was cooler outside now, it was still humid.

  The interior of the sheriff’s station was quiet, not a soul in the area behind the desk. Arch didn’t quite make it to the counter before he saw movement in the sheriff’s office and Reeve himself appeared at the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” Reeve said, and his face was blooming with thunderclouds. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “I couldn’t handle it,” Arch said, listening to the prepared words spilling out of his mouth. He’d gone over his options, and knew exactly where the truth would land him—up to his neck in quicksand. “I saw those bodies, that mess this morning and …” He shook his head, keeping it low, bowed. “… I just couldn’t handle it.” He chanced a look up at Reeve.

  Reeve was staring at him, mouth hanging slightly open. “You couldn’t handle it.” He repeated it back, and Arch wondered if he’d actually stopped the sheriff’s tirade before it could begin.

  “Yeah,” he said. “There was so much … blood. The bodies were just …”

  Reeve ran a hand over his lip, stroking it. “Uh huh.” There wasn’t enough tone for Arch to tell what he was thinking. “So … you, uh …”

  “Cut out on my patrol,” Arch said. “Shut off my phone. Shut off my radio. Just went quiet for a while, went up in the woods and … sat there.”

  Reeve stood at the entrance to his office and leaned a hand on the frame. When he stood like this, his protruding gut was obvious, hanging over the belt of his pants. He took a long, loud breath and sighed, then puffed his lower lip like he was thinking over something awfully hard. “We needed you today out there, Arch.” His words were laced with quiet disappointment.

  “I know,” Arch said and gave as contrite a nod as he could. However upset he was with Hendricks—and he was powerfully upset—and the demons, he tried not to let any of this show in the moment. “I hate that I let the team down.” It always came back to football for him, and he’d learned long ago that a coach more readily accepted an apology. They’d still chew you out, but it usually cut it down a little. Only a truly vindictive person would continue to harp on someone after they’d accepted an apology. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, shit,” Reeve said, nodding. “I can’t say that … sight this morning … didn’t send my stomach in a few different directions. Still, we had a hell of a lot go wrong today, Arch. And yeah, you did let down the team.” Reeve straightened in his doorway. “But hell, you’ll be paying for it later today with the rest of us.” He waved at Arch, and Arch headed toward him tentatively. “Come on in. We got things to talk about.”

  “Oh?” Arch asked, taking slow steps toward the sheriff.

  “Yeah,” Reeve said, and then turned back into his office. “Just when you think the shit can’t hit the fan any harder, another fucking turd splatters every-goddamn-where.”

  ***

  Gideon awoke just before dawn. He could see the first hints of it peeking out from behind the red curtains. He sniffed as he came to consciousness, and the smell was all burn, flesh roasted and flambéed. It wasn’t a bad smell; it, reminded him just a little of cooked meat. He rolled slightly to look at the hooker. She was still there, facedown on the bed. Other than being pallid as all hell, she looked like she was sleeping in a doggy-style position, face down in the pillow. He rolled her over just to see what kind of damage his jizz could do to the human body, and holy shit, motherfucker—

  Gideon rolled off the bed. He’d seen some foul deaths in his time. It was part of who he was, after all. Car accidents that rendered people wide fucking open or decapitated them. Homicides by serial killers who knew how to make the agony last. This, though—this might be one of the more grotesque things he had seen.

  The hooker was burned clean through from her pelvis all the way up to her gullet. A three-inch wide trench stretched from just below her mid-throat down, down to where her vagina had been. It was seared inside, crispy and bloodless, cauterized through and through.

  He’d left her hollowed out and he could see it. Her l
ifeless eyes were as empty as her insides now.

  Gideon hurriedly dressed, peeking at the spot on the bed where his emission had burned through her. The sheets were seared and blackened, and he leaned over to look down. There was hole straight through the mattress, the box springs. He got down on all fours to look, and saw a black scar under the bed, barely visible as the sun’s rays were starting to shed light through the curtains.

  Gideon ran a hand into the scarred floor and felt concrete an inch or two down. A subfloor. In a bedroom? He wondered if it was meant to be soundproofing or just the lucky results of a renovation. Whatever the case, it had stopped his spooge from burning its way through into the first floor below. He didn’t know where that might have ended, but it probably wouldn’t have gotten him any more sleep.

  When he was finished pulling on his socks and shoes, he looked around the room quickly. He hadn’t brought anything with him except the rune and his cash, and those were both safely in his pockets. He opened the door to the hallway and looked out. There was no one visible, so he crept out and closed the door behind him.

  He walked toward the stairs, his feet making little noise as he took care to mind his steps. He went down the carpeted stairwell and reached the bottom, about to grab the gilded handle to the front door when a voice stopped him.

  “Did you have a relaxing night, Mr. Gideon?” Melina Cherry called out to him from behind and Gideon turned to see her standing in the frame of a door under the stairs, still wearing that same silky robe that was split open.

  “Oh, yeah, great—uh—night of sleep,” Gideon said. He had the handle in his hand. The door was right there.

  “Was Colleen to your satisfaction?” Melina asked and arched her arms out, one hand on each side of the door frame. The gesture split her robe open wider, and Gideon stared at her breasts for just a moment. He really didn’t see any appeal in them. They were just round lumps of skin with a discoloration in the middle.