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

by Robert J. Crane

  Lerner and Duncan came up seconds later, and Hendricks just stared at them as Lerner paused on the threshold, a rough look on his face, peeking his head inside like he was afraid he’d get whacked in the head or something. He had something clutched in his hand and Hendricks stared at it. It was a little cylinder that was an inch longer than his hand on the top and bottom, and he kept it by his side.

  “What the hell is that?” Hendricks asked as Lerner scanned the room and stopped on Spellman, who was now standing by the table in the corner.

  “Baton,” Lerner said and stepped inside. “Used for breaking shells. Who is this?” He pointed the baton at Spellman.

  “My name is Wren Spellman.” The mystery man bowed to Lerner. “I’m here with some interesting information, as evidenced by my rather obvious attempt to get your attention.”

  Duncan followed Lerner into the room a moment later, and Hendricks watched him. He wondered if Duncan’s suit had always been so purple. He couldn’t remember. “He’s clean,” Duncan said. “It’s just a screen.”

  Hendricks waited to see if anyone would explain what that meant. They didn’t, so he asked. “Screen?”

  “Empty vessel,” Lerner said. “Someone’s communicating through ‘him’ from somewhere else.” He waved at Hendricks. “Now take a seat, kid, and let the big boys talk, huh?”

  Hendricks stifled the urge to pull his sword and show Lerner how the big boys reacted to consecrated metal, but Duncan gave him a sympathetic smile so he didn’t.

  “You seek a Sygraath named Gideon,” Spellman said, hands neatly folded in front of him, same pleasant smile perched on his lips. “I am here to tell you where he’s going, what he’s going to do, and when he’s going to do it.”

  “Why?” Lerner shot out immediately. Hendricks was wondering the same—once his brain translated it through the fog he was in. He figured he was on about a five second delay, but his head was so fuzzy it wasn’t really possible to be sure.

  “Because,” Spellman said, “his plan is no good for my business interests in this area.”

  Lerner seemed a little suspicious at that. “How is it bad for business?”

  “Because,” Spellman said with little emotion, “he’s going to blow up the dam that holds back the Caledonia River.” Spellman made a helpful hand gesture to illustrate. “And when that dam breaks, everyone in this valley—including my potential customers—will all be washed away.”

  ***

  Gideon pulled up outside the gate at the end of the dirty road. His car was really struggling at the end, and by the time he reached the guardhouse with the gate, he was worried it wasn’t going to carry him much further.

  That was all right, though. One of the security guards probably had a pickup truck he could use. He ran a hand over his smooth cheek, scratching his flesh. He’d just need to ask nicely.

  There was a yellow and black striped gate barring his passage. He suspected it was metal, but it really didn’t matter in any case. It was starting to rain, so he stepped out of the car just as the security guard was stepping out of the guardhouse. It wasn’t really a house so much as a six-by-ten-foot booth, roughly. Looked a little like a tollbooth to Gideon, like one of the ones that dotted every off-ramp around Chicago.

  Gideon felt his shoes splash in the first puddle he came to. It drenched his sock. He felt the cool water wash down into his shoe, soaking him all the way to the toes. It was a sensory discomfort for him, but little else.

  The booth had an overhanging awning that stretched a couple feet out from the roof, and Gideon felt the volume of rain soaking his t-shirt lessen as he stepped under it. “Ugly day out,” he said to the man who was coming out of the booth to greet him. The guy had on a khaki uniform and a polite smile, but Gideon had a feeling it wouldn’t last long.

  “You look lost,” the security guard said. Like he’d had this happen before.

  “I could use some directions,” Gideon said, stepping closer to the guard. The guard didn’t flinch away. Probably figured he’d have time to go for the gun on his belt if Gideon tried anything.

  “Where you heading?” the security guard asked.

  “Not far,” Gideon said and reached for the man. He had him gripped by the time the guy’s hand got anywhere near his holster. He broke the security guard’s arm, snapped it and jammed it hard so that the bone tore through the skin. The guard let out a scream, and it was sweet. He pushed the man down and looked in his eyes. He could feel the fear coming off him as he held him down with one hand. “I think I’ll go straight for your heart. Have you heard what the quickest way to it is?”

  Gideon found out. Turned out, it wasn’t through the stomach. It was through the ribcage.

  ***

  Erin sat in awkward silence with Starling—Lucia, she was constantly correcting herself—in the passenger seat. The redhead wasn’t saying a word, and she was tempted to let that rest. Tempted. “So,” she said, breaking the silence, “you want to talk about the future again?”

  There was a pause, and it was almost painful. When Lucia answered, it was with a quiet confusion. “Excuse me?” She talked in a deep Southern accent that sounded nothing like Starling’s blank, unaccented speech had.

  Erin wondered if she was being punked, or if this girl had some sort of multiple personality disorder raging inside her. She’d seen that shit on a movie before, and it was just about as crazy as what was happening around her lately. “Oh, you’re gonna play like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Starling?”

  Erin watched Lucia go paler than her usual self. “Who’s Starling?”

  And Erin got the feeling she meant it.

  ***

  “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, fuck, damn,” Lerner said. Spellman had spilled it, really, answered the follow-up questions, and it smelled real enough to him. Based on Duncan’s expression, he felt the same. “A whole fucking town gone under. How’s he gonna do it?”

  Spellman gave a sympathetic nod. “He has a conjuring that will damage the structure enough to break the dam open, I think, with the increased pressure from all the rain that’s been falling.”

  “Well, goddamn,” Hendricks said in a little whisper.

  “I’m afraid this one’s all on Gideon, actually,” Spellman said to Hendricks.

  “And the guy who gave him the fucking conjuring,” Lerner said, hot enough that he would have let the air out of Spellman right here, if he hadn’t been a fucking screen. “Why didn’t you give him a fake if you’re so concerned about saving your damned business?”

  Spellman shrugged lightly. “I have a guarantee. He ordered a product, I delivered it. Whatever happens to him after that is entirely out of my hands. I just wanted to make sure he didn’t leave a bad review on Yelp.” Spellman looked almost apologetic. “Those things will hurt sales faster than—”

  “Oh, fuck off,” Lerner said, and he started to pace. “You put a bomb in the hands of a psychotic Sygraath, and now he’s—” He shot a look at Duncan. “Come on, let’s get to the dam.”

  “I can’t see him,” Duncan said in a soft tone.

  “I fucking know that!” Lerner said. “I need you to read the map and tell me where to go.” He snapped his fingers and made for the door. He caught sight of Hendricks heading toward him and held out a hand. “Not this time, junior. Sygraath’s a greater; he’ll pop your head off and drink your blood out like you’re a growler of ale. Sounds like he’s getting a taste for it, too.”

  “You need all the help you can get,” Hendricks said, and he staggered and swayed as he took a couple steps.

  “I need help from someone who can fucking stand up straight,” Lerner said, and he knew he’d snapped at the cowboy. He didn’t care. He had shit to do, humans to save, status quo to maintain, and some wobbly demon hunter wasn’t getting in his way. “Stay here and sleep it off.” He shot out the door and headed for the car.

  He could hear Duncan pause in the threshold behind him. “Drink it,” he said, and Lerner wondered what he was ta
lking about. But he didn’t wonder long because Duncan was out behind him a hot second later, and Lerner already had the car going. They peeled out of the parking lot as fast as the wet tires on the watery road would allow.

  ***

  Arch heard the phone ring as he sat silently on the couch next to Alison. It was his personal cell phone, he could tell by the plain tone. Not that he had a different or fancy tone for his personal one, it was just a different default ringer. He looked at Alison apologetically, but she still wasn’t looking at him. She was just staring off into space, had been for the last fifteen or twenty minutes.

  “Hello?” he asked. He hadn’t checked the number first.

  “Arch,” Hendricks’s voice came over the line. He sounded frantic but slurred. “We figured out what the Sygraath is up to.”

  “Great,” he said, giving his wife an apologetic look that she didn’t even notice and getting up to walk toward the bedroom. “What now?”

  “He’s gonna blow up that dam you showed me the other night,” Hendricks’s reply came. “Flood the whole town, feast on all the souls passing into the … I don’t know, afterlife or void or whatever.”

  Arch felt his eyes slide back and forth, real slow. “When?”

  “Well, he’s already up there, I think, so—”

  “On my way,” Arch said. He didn’t even have to think, it was just instinct. “I’ll pick you up on the way, so you better be ready.” He hit the end button and ran for the door. “Gotta go!” he called to his wife as he passed. He had no idea if she even noticed he was leaving.

  ***

  Erin took the long way back to the station. She’d wanted to avoid some of the roads that were starting to flood over, figuring that with the rain coming down they’d be bad again, so she’d gone up and caught the interstate on the far edge of town and was following it back to the Old Jackson Highway exit. The rain was constant, pelting the windshield as her wipers squealed in a steady rhythm to keep it clear enough for her to see.

  She’d settled into an easy silence with Lucia, and was still trying to work out in her head if the girl was lying, nuts or actually telling the truth. The latter seemed crazy, but she was a dead ringer for Starling, and—

  Erin stopped at the light at the top of the exit ramp as she heard tires squealing to her right over a crack of thunder overhead. Pulling out of the Sinbad’s parking lot was the sedan that those two peckerwoods who had been parked outside the murder scene were driving. They blew down the Old Jackson Highway in one hell of a hurry, violating the speed limit as they headed toward the hills—the opposite direction from where she was supposed to be going.

  She took a long breath, trying to decide what to do. Unconsciously, her hand reached down to the switch for the siren and lights and she flipped them. “Hold on,” she said to Lucia, whose face was a mask of uncertainty as Erin jerked the wheel to the right and headed after the sedan.

  ***

  Hendricks stared at the thing in his hand. He had some doubts about drinking out of a cow’s bladder.

  “It’s been boiled,” Spellman said, watching him. “You needn’t worry about cow urine. Not that it would harm you in any way if you did drink some.”

  The dude had seemed to go blank for a few minutes after Lerner and Duncan had left, with Duncan exhorting him to drink it. He wasn’t sure why, but he trusted Duncan. Sort of. “How did you know I was thinking that?” he asked Spellman.

  “It was written all over your face,” Spellman said mildly. “Or somewhere.” He went blank again, like someone had cut the power to him.

  Hendricks started to move toward the door. Arch would be here in minutes, and he needed to be outside. If Lerner and Duncan could handle this, fine, and all the better, but … if they couldn’t …

  He grunted in pain as his ribs screamed at him. “Fuck it,” he said. There was no way he’d be ready for a fight, not in his present condition. He’d limp into a greater and get his head popped off like a cork, just the way Lerner had said.

  Hendricks pulled the stopper out of the bladder and upended it, chugging it down. He caught movement from Spellman out of the corner of his eye, like someone turned the power on to him again. He looked pleased. Unsettlingly so.

  ***

  Lerner had shot off on a back road at a ninety-degree angle, tires skidding across gravel. He could hear the heavy thunks and tiny plinks of rock hitting the car, and wondered how much it would cost to fix it at the body shop. The accountants would have his ass in a sling for that. Maybe literally.

  Duncan was reading the map next to him, and his usual calm was gone out the fucking window. “Uhhhhmmm … it looks like there’s a turnoff up ahead …”

  “Left or right, numbnuts?” Lerner asked, gritting his teeth as he felt the traction slip on a curve.

  “Right, I think,” Duncan said.

  “You think?” The rain was pounding the windshield, trees were zipping by outside. They were blurred by the lines of water falling down the windows.

  “Yeah,” Duncan said. “This map … I’m not sure how accurate it is.”

  Lerner felt the car slalom around a lazy S-curve and tried to keep from jerking the wheel too hard to compensate. “Lovely.”

  “It might be easier to read it if the car wasn’t bumping all over the place.”

  “You’re just eighteen different kinds of fucking helpful, aren’t you?” Lerner asked. He kept going, though.

  ***

  Erin saw the sedan make the turnoff toward the lower dam and followed. Lucia was still sitting pale next to her, and she tried to give her a reassuring smile. They were ahead far enough that they might reasonably be able to claim they didn’t see her coming up on them with sirens wailing and lights flashing. She needed to get closer.

  The brothel thing could wait. Right now she had her teeth into something else, and oddly enough—and she did kick herself when she thought of it this way—it felt like her future depended on catching them.

  ***

  “Get in the car!” Arch called out the window as he slowed down. Hendricks was already in the parking lot, running through the wash. Arch was pretty sure the parking lot had dried out yesterday after the rain quit, but it was already back to flooding. Bad sign for the town. Maybe an omen of things to come.

  Arch watched out the open window as Hendricks hustled toward the Explorer, splashing all the way and holding on to his hat. His black drover coat seemed to be keeping the rain off him, but his black cowboy hat looked like it was soaked and drooping just a little after being out for only a few seconds. It was a gully-washer, no doubt, and he hit the switch to roll the window up as Hendricks opened the door, jumped in and slammed it shut in seconds. The cowboy took his hat off and shook it toward the floorboard. “Let’s go,” he said, and Arch obliged, gunning it.

  ***

  Gideon had gotten the guy’s heart, but he was so caught up in the moment that he hadn’t bothered with a scream. By the time he remembered he needed it, the security guard was already dead. Double damn.

  He threw the body into the woods with ease, like he was Cubs fan tossing a baseball. It landed about ten feet from him, in some underbrush, with a cracking noise. Not like it mattered. The guy wasn’t going to feel it anymore anyway. Gideon hadn’t even caught his name as he passed through.

  He’d saved him for later. Stored away that pain, that screaming agony in his essence. He’d never done that before, preferring to pleasure himself right when he got them. It was a curious feeling, a churning, constant arousal inside.

  He flipped the gate switch in the guardhouse, got back in the car and started up the road again. He could feel the pleasure from this kill welling up inside him, stirring. He was already rock-hard, but he didn’t have time to satiate himself, not now. His erection caused his cargo pants to tent, just a little, as he sat in the rental car and pushed his foot to the pedal. The engine in the sedan whined as he started up the hill’s incline. He could see the dam out his window.

  There were mor
e souls coming, and soon. He could almost taste the anticipation of having so many of them to chew on, to savor. He’d have a feast of them to satiate himself with, and he could jerk off for weeks on what he’d get once the dam went down.

  ***

  Lerner hit the brakes when they got to a guardhouse. There was a fence blocking them from going any further, and the gate looked strong enough to at least fuck up the front of the car, if not stop them. Lerner wasn’t all that sanguine about trying to bust through. When he saw the security guard come walking out, he suspected he might not need to.

  Lerner slowed the car and crept it up to the gate. Stared down the slate grey hood as the rain washed over it, and rolled his window down halfway. Big, heavy drops of water drenched his left arm and started to soak the pleather interior of the door panel.

  “How y’all doing?” the guard asked by way of greeting. An awning above the guardhouse was shielding him but not by much. His security uniform was already showing signs of dampness.

  “Anyone come through here lately?” Lerner asked. “Anyone who didn’t have permission?”

  The guard just sort of frowned at him, like he didn’t get asked penetrating questions by total strangers every day. “No. You’re the only ones to come through here in hours. All the employees go up to the top of the dam; we just block the bottom because the Department of Homeland Security says we gotta.” He shrugged. “Terrorists, y’know.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Lerner said. He could see the dam up ahead, barely, in the distance, through the rain, over the trees. He put the car in reverse without even bothering to roll the window up or say so much as Thank you to the guard, who was looking pretty damned confused at this point.

  “He wasn’t lying,” Duncan said, “and he didn’t have any kind of gap to indicate he was being fiddled with.”

  “I figured that out on my own, genius,” Lerner snapped. “Clearly this Gideon bastard is going to the top of the dam.” He smacked the wheel lightly, careful not to do it any harm. Which he could, easily. “Why didn’t you steer us to the top?”