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

by Robert J. Crane

  “I am here to help,” Starling said. Hendricks couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the truth, though he didn’t know why. “To help you save this town from the destruction that is coming.”

  “How do you know what’s coming?” Hendricks asked, getting right back on point himself. “How do you know what’s happening here?”

  Starling did not say anything for a long moment. “Irrelevant. Do you want the help or not?”

  Hendricks kept himself from answering while he tried to consider the branching path that this conversation was taking. She had saved his life already—twice at least, by his count. “I could use some help,” he said finally. “But I could also use some answers.”

  “Here is an answer for you,” Starling said, and her voice had this echoing, otherworldly quality for a moment. “Destruction is coming to this town again—”

  “Again?” Hendricks muttered. “Is this a daily thing now?”

  “—and you will once more have to stop it.” She kept on talking like he hadn’t just smarted off.

  “That’s delightfully vague,” he said. “Got any kind of other warnings, like, ‘sometime in the future you’ll experience a headache’?”

  She cocked her head at him. “It is all the warning I have. The future is cloudy, and those aiming for the destruction of this place have taken care to cover their movements and activities.”

  “Right,” Hendricks said and looked toward Alison. “Sounds like she’s bound by the same vision problems as Duncan. Runes get in your eyes.”

  “There are other forces at work to cloud the future of this place,” she said, and again her voice turned different. “There is more going on here than you know.”

  “Which is why we were hoping you might answer some questions,” Hendricks said. “You know, in the interest of blowing away some of that fog we’re laboring under.”

  “I have no answers for you,” Starling said, voice back to nearly normal—but not quite like Lucia’s. “The path you must walk is covered in darkness because to allow you to see farther might corrupt your actions today.”

  “Corrupt them?” Hendricks dropped his head, looked at her in slight disbelief as he rolled his eyes upward to keep looking at her. “That’s a peculiar choice of words. How would my actions get corrupted?”

  “Darkness falls,” Starling said. Hendricks didn’t care for the poetic sound of it. “And blackens all that it touches. Staring into the future would allow you to see the darkness in its infinite and unfolding form. No man can look upon that and remain untouched by it.”

  Hendricks frowned. “Wait … you’re saying what’s coming is so bad that I’ll … what? Give up because I’m overwhelmed at the thought of it?”

  Starling merely stared at him. “It is not for me to say.”

  “And that’s what’s going to destroy us now?” Alison said. She still sounded like she was curiously uninvolved in anything going on around them, but Hendricks thought he caught a flicker of interest from her at this. “This unfolding darkness?”

  “What comes now is merely another harbinger—just as Ygrusibas was, just as the Sygraath was.” Her eyes flickered, as though there were light somewhere within them. “What is yet to come is that which I speak of—and that which will surely herald the end of days.”

  “Great,” Hendricks said, nodding. “So even if we beat whatever is coming at us now, the thing that’s coming somewhere down the line is so horrible I’ll take one look at it and shrug my damned shoulders to give up. Marvelous.” He shook his head in sheerest irritation. “Listen, lady, I don’t think you know me—”

  “I know you, Lafayette Hendricks,” Starling said.

  “Then you know I’m motivated,” he said, just a little hotly. “You think some demon spawn—some ultimate evil—is going get me to throw in the towel and quit? Lady, if you really believe that, I don’t think you know me. Not at all. I’ve fought a war—”

  “This will be unlike anything you have ever seen,” Starling said. “Unlike anything any living human has seen.”

  “I—” Hendricks started.

  “Go to your husband,” Starling said, shifting her attention to Alison. “Another threat looms that requires your attention.” With that, the lighting dimmed for a second and Starling was shrouded in a sudden shadow. When it passed, she shook her head.

  “What the hell was that?” Lucia asked, her voice back to normal, eyes a glimmering green. Her hand came up to her face and rubbed her forehead.

  “Grim,” Hendricks said after a moment’s thought. He looked at Alison, and she looked back at him with enough of a look that he knew she’d at least heard it all with him. “Really fucking grim.”

  ***

  Erin was just standing by the body on the path, waiting. She’d thought about going back to the car for crime scene tape, but Reeve would be here in a few minutes, so why leave the body? Not like there was a high chance of someone coming along and messing with it—

  Wait, no, scratch that. If Erin really dug deep and examined it, a week ago she would have said it would have been impossible for this body to even be here. This was Calhoun County, Tennessee, dammit, and so boring that the high school kids didn’t even bother to hang around on Saturday nights.

  No, the idea that someone would even leave a body here was unlikely. The fact that this had already happened meant anything else she thought of as inconceivable was now fair game. So she had to stay by the body, lest some corpse-eating demon come along and destroy the evidence.

  Evidence of what, she wasn’t even sure.

  “Dear Jesus,” came a voice from behind her, and she turned, hand already on her pistol. She hadn’t heard him coming up the walk, but it was Reeve, sure as shit. He’d gotten there faster than she’d thought he would, and she was suddenly thankful Lerner and Duncan had gone on down the path to try and track the—whatever the hell caused this—to where it was going. Trying to explain their presence to Reeve would have been about as easy as trying to explain the appeal of kale.

  “Looks a lot like what happened to Connor,” she said as he came out of the darkness. He wasn’t carrying a flashlight, which she thought of as odd until she realized the moon had come out from behind its cloud. The river was visible once more, and she had a pretty clear view of everything around her. She’d just been too caught up in her own thoughts to notice. An experienced woodsman like Reeve probably didn’t even think about needing a flashlight since he was following a path.

  “It’s the middle of the goddamned woods,” Reeve said, and she could tell he was in a snit. Not that she blamed him. “How the fuck—” He looked around him like something was going to come barreling out at him at any second. “Dammit, I guess it’s big enough to get a car down here.” He looked around. “Maybe a Smart Car or a golf cart or a Prius or something.”

  “I think I could fit my Honda down here,” Erin said.

  “Dammit, son of a bitch,” Reeve said, and his hand came up to his forehead so fast he knocked his hat off. “So now we’ve some fucker that seems to enjoy running people over so bad that he’s willing to go off road to do it. Son of a whore.” His face was partially shaded by the moonlight, but the flash of anger was unmistakable. “I wonder if it’s the same bastard as the one who caused that pileup? Some sick fuck with a fascination for killing with cars …” His voice drifted off.

  Erin just stared at him. It wasn’t like she could tell him that Gideon was dead, that this was something new. Presumably something new. Gideon had seemed to explode in the reservoir behind the Tallakeet Dam, after all. That had killed him.

  Hadn’t it?

  Yeah, surely. Besides, this was petty shit for Gideon. He had planned to drown the whole town after he’d gotten to the point where he was killing en masse with things like the pileup. Doing onesie twosie would have been a step back for him at this point. No, this had to be something new, she was sure of it. Not sure enough that she didn’t make a note to ask Lerner and Duncan to confirm Gideon was good and dea
d next time she spoke with them, but close.

  Reeve was just standing in silence, hand on his face, obscuring his mouth. “Uh, sir?” she asked, staring at him. “You all right?”

  Reeve didn’t take more than a second to turn on her and his look was all Are you fucking stupid? “No, I am most assuredly not all-goddamned-right. Is that a fucking joke, Erin?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured, not really sure what else to say. She just felt bad for him, felt bad that he was so in the dark. She couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking at this point. All hell breaking loose had officially kicked off here in Midian, and he was the quarterback for the opposing team. Poor bastard didn’t even know the game had begun.

  “You don’t know,” Reeve repeated, staring at her with a cold fury she knew was not born out of what she had said, not really. “Well, here’s what I know. I live in a town that is my whole world. Calhoun County is my place. I’ve lived here my whole life, I’ve worked here since I was barely a kid and could first start working, and I’m likely to die here, God willing, in another forty years when I’m old and grey—” He ran a hand over the smooth top of his head. “Well, old at least. These people—I’ve known them either my whole life or theirs. They’re my people, and when I took that oath to be sworn in as sheriff, I wasn’t just pledging to uphold the law. I was pledging to protect them, Erin.” Nicholas Reeve had a serious bent, and she saw emotions in the man right now that cut through her usual image of him. He normally had two states: joking and irritable.

  This one felt more like … helpless.

  “I’m failing,” Reeve said, and he shook his head. “I’m failing them in record numbers. Record, as in this is a fucking record to have this many people die in a year, let alone two weeks. Record as in we hadn’t had a murder here since … shit, I don’t even know when. I’m supposed to protect this town, protect these people, who I have known for so long. And I … am … failing.” He let out a long breath and turned his head to the side. “I have failed. I don’t even know what to do anymore, other than call in the state police.”

  She felt a strange quiver in her belly. It hadn’t really hit her on that level. Sure, some of the deaths had felt personal, but the horror was almost covered over immediately by all the things she had going on with Hendricks. With all the things she’d learned from Hendricks. She’d felt like she’d become a part of something in the last few days, and maybe it was cushioning the blow of all the stuff that had come down on them lately.

  After all, she’d lived here her whole life, too, and it wasn’t like she didn’t know these people who were turning up dead.

  Murdered.

  She started to say something, started to try and express how she felt about all that—a messy jumble of feelings that had been covered over by something new and exciting with Hendricks—and with the purpose—but she halted before she got a single word out. What could she even say? She didn’t know how he felt, not really. She was here, but she didn’t feel responsible. Not with demons on the loose. That was beyond man. Beyond police.

  So instead she sighed, trying to make it sound sympathetic, and stood in silence while Reeve shook his head as he stood over the corpse, and they waited that way.

  ***

  Lauren Darlington had gotten the call in the middle of the night and had considered—just for a brief, happy moment—of telling Nicholas Reeve to go fuck himself with something sharp. She’d thought about it, but the thought had passed relatively quickly. Well, the intention to do it had passed relatively quickly, anyway.

  The thought remained, along with at least some vestige of the sentiment.

  What was she going to be able to do, anyway? Forensic pathology was out; it wasn’t even close to a specialty for her. Post-mortem wasn’t something she’d be able to perform right there in Rafton Park anyway, even if she were qualified to perform an autopsy. She was a doctor, dammit, like McCoy used to say on Star Trek, but not the kind that Sheriff Reeve needed, at least not now. The best she’d be able to do was stand over the corpse, touch her fingers to the wrist and say, “He’s dead, Jim.”

  Which Reeve already damned well knew before calling her.

  “Why couldn’t he ask Doughtry or McClellan to do this?” she muttered under her breath as the wheel resisted the turn she made into Rafton Park. Two big, wooden posts held a white sign with all the pertinent info on the park, including the fact that it closed after sundown. Probably to prevent people from being—oh, say—murdered in it after dark. Mark that sign as a failure. “Oh, right, because they’re the serious, long-term country doctors that service this hell-burg. Let’s drag in the rookie who works in Chattanooga instead! She’s probably too new and weak-willed to tell us to go fuck ourselves.” She was working up to it, though, that she was pretty sure of.

  She pulled into the parking lot and killed the ignition next to a cop car that had its blue and red lights flashing. It didn’t do much to light the night, surprisingly, though she could see the path down by the river thanks to the illumination of the headlights. Lauren chewed her lip and thought about how smart it might have been to bring a flashlight as she opened up her door and stood there, listening as the river burbled in the distance. “Oh, that’s right, I’m not that smart. Which explains why I’m standing here in the middle of the fucking night.”

  She had none of that sleepy feeling that she should have had at this time of the morning. It was gone, replaced by that foreboding sense of nastiness that came from knowing she was about to inspect a corpse for signs of … well, anything that her unpracticed eye could discern.

  Lauren started down the slope toward the path, feeling her tennis shoes slip a little until she got her balance. The moon glowed overhead, and the night air carried just a little chill. It actually wasn’t a bad place for a walk, even in the darkness; but she would rather have just been able to come down here to walk or jog without having to worry about stopping to examine a bloody chunk of meat that had once breathed and walked and jogged itself.

  She followed the path to the left as it entered the trees. She’d done a fair amount of jogging here when she could get away to do it. Seemed a lot less lately than it had been before. Wasn’t becoming an attending physician supposed to be easier than her residency? Didn’t feel that way.

  She could hear voices ahead in the night, at least one of them raised. She looked and saw a flashlight moving around, figures moving in the moonlight. She hadn’t counted cop cars, but it looked like there were more than a few on scene. In Chattanooga, this kind of shit wouldn’t have gotten a doctor to come out. They brought the bodies to the hospital; they didn’t summon the doctor out to the body.

  Then again, this sort of shit—hit and runs—happened in Chattanooga a little more frequently than they did in Midian. Still, two in one day? Weird. Beyond weird, really. Or beyond coincidence, at least.

  “Hello, doctor,” Sheriff Reeve said as she approached. There was another deputy there, a blond girl who really did look like a girl. Early twenties at best, Lauren figured. Maybe younger. She had that look, too, watching everything Lauren did as she approached. Cop look. She’d seen it in the ER more than a few times.

  “Sheriff,” Lauren said, not bothering to conceal her irritation. If he noticed it, he didn’t respond. Which sort of made sense; the man looked a little out of sorts to her eyes, and she didn’t even know him all that well.

  “We’ve got another one,” he said, sparing not a moment in informing her of not only the obvious, but of something he’d already told her before.

  “So I see.” Lauren held herself to civility. She still wanted to rail at his ass for getting her out of bed to come down here like this, but she really had no one to blame but herself for agreeing to it. One good “fuck off,” and he’d never trouble her again, she suspected.

  But he wasn’t on the list. Damn him.

  The female deputy illuminated the body for her with one of those big Maglites. Lauren didn’t like ’em, thought they looked like the sort
of thing a Cro-Magnon would use to knock a woman over the skull with before dragging her back to his cave. “Over here,” the deputy said.

  The light skittered along the ground just briefly, enough to catch a couple of dark red reflections that might have been water if one didn’t look too closely. Lauren suspected they weren’t, though, and she tried to take care in stepping over to the body. “Am I destroying a crime scene or something just by trampling here?”

  The sheriff’s hesitation was damning in and of itself. “I don’t know how much of a crime scene we’ve got here,” he said. Not exactly the vote of confidence she was looking for. But then again, why would the sheriff of Calhoun County know how to set up a crime scene anyway? At least for something like this, he wouldn’t.

  The deputy brought the beam around so Lauren could see where she was stepping. A few isolated drops of blood were scattered along the path and she avoided landing her shoes in them—for more than one reason. “Thanks,” she told the short, blond lady. Did she know the deputy? Probably not; even if they had gone to the same school, they had to easily be ten years apart. She did look a little familiar, though.

  “Not a problem,” the deputy said. “You’re Lauren Darlington, aren’t you?”

  Lauren felt a brush of irritation and looked over at the face hidden behind the flashlight’s beam. The deputy lowered it so she could see a little more of the shadowed features. The deputy had soft ones, a little nose, blond hair that didn’t make it far past her neck, and she wasn’t all that tall, either. “Yeah. And you are?”

  “Erin Harris,” the deputy said.

  That triggered a little bit of a revelation for Lauren. “Rick Harris’s little sister?”

  “Yeah,” Erin said, and not much more.

  Lauren had known her brother, had gone to school with him. He was all right; he hadn’t made the list, either, him or his other two brothers that she knew of. She vaguely recalled Erin now, but only barely. When she graduated high school, this Erin must have been something like eight years old. “How is Rick?”