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

by Robert J. Crane

She shrugged it off and started back up, and watched the shoulder narrow to her right, then fall off into a sheer cliff face. Something about that unnerved her, too, but she didn’t pay it much heed because it was the mountain, and she still had a few feet of shoulder to dive to if someone hugged the lane a little too hard.

  The noise grew louder. More persistent. Now it was hissing, descending from above, the mountain road’s S-curve wending up to her left to ride a sheer cliff face a hundred feet high. She could hear it up there, that awful sound, that unearthly buzzing, with just a little screech mixed in. She thought she heard something else, too, like tires squealing on pavement.

  What the hell made that kind of noise?

  She scuffed her shoe a little and mentally kicked herself. Paying attention to the road was important, lest she stumble and find herself with a bloodied knee. Or worse.

  The noise was louder now, starting to drown out the sound of the birds on the mountain, the crickets in the grass. She realized a little late that she hadn’t actually heard any birds or crickets in quite some time and tried to remember if she’d heard them at all on her run.

  It had been quiet the whole time, eerily so, save for a couple cars that passed her by.

  What the hell was going on here? What was that sound?

  The buzzing grew to a crescendo, and she knew whatever it was, it was just around the next bend in the road. Her pace slowed automatically, as though her head was telling her to back off, to keep away from the corner.

  Then she saw it. And only one thing came to mind.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  7.

  They moved down the mountain like shadows at high speed, catching Hendricks’s eye through the windshield. He was peering through the trees at the end of the driveway, standing like upright posts on a football field, like he was staring through about to kick a field goal.

  This wasn’t a goddamned field goal, though. This wasn’t a football game. This was—

  It was—

  “What the fuck?” he whispered under his breath.

  They moved through that gap between the trees like dark clouds rolling past on the road. They were fast, damned fast, but the wheels were visible, just barely, in the dusky twilight.

  “Is that …?” Arch just let his voice trail off.

  “You have got to be fucking shitting me,” Hendricks said, just staring at the things swirling across. The buzzing was hell on his ears. “It really is, isn’t it?”

  Arch didn’t sound surprised when he finally spoke up. “I always hated those sons of guns, but I never thought of them as real demons.”

  Hendricks just stared straight ahead as the last of them passed the driveway and rolled down the hill. When he spoke it was in complete and utter disgust. “Bicyclists.

  “Demon fucking bicyclists.”

  ***

  Alison had half considered hanging out the window as Duncan steered the car down the mountain behind the demons. On bikes. Demons on bikes. She thought about it, and dismissed the idea as stupid, because trying to fire a .50 out a window while the vehicle was in motion sounded like a recipe for 1) deafness as the crack of the rifle echoed in the town car like God’s own thunder sent down from heaven and 2) a really sore shoulder coupled with some poor shooting. For all those reasons and more, she was just watching instead, watching the swarm of bicyclists move down the mountain at a speed that wasn’t possible for human beings.

  She turned her head as tires squealed behind her and saw Arch’s Explorer burst out onto the road. The sirens weren’t wailing, but he had his lights on. Duncan took barely any note of it; he just kept his cool and took the town car into a sharp curve at over sixty miles per hour. Alison just held on and mentally added on another reason why she didn’t want to chance shooting out the window. “What now?” she asked and waited for the expert’s answer.

  ***

  “What the hell are we gonna do now?” Hendricks asked.

  Arch ignored him for a minute because he had no idea at all other than chasing the demons down. “I thought you were the expert demon hunter.”

  Hendricks just sat there for a second. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but I can promise you I’ve never dealt with a pack of demon bicyclists before. I’m still just trying to get a handle on this situation. I mean, they killed two people just by hitting them with a bike?”

  Arch had to concede it sounded funny, but those demons were moving awfully fast down the mountain. “They’re stronger and faster, makes sense they could pedal a bike faster. Look at ’em get on down the road.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get hit by them, I guess,” Hendricks conceded. “But … there’s gotta be like fifty of them, how are we supposed to—” The sound of a ringing phone filled the air.

  “Hello?” Arch said, terse, holding the phone with one hand to his ear while he followed Duncan’s town car into a tight turn with the other.

  “It’s demons on bicycles!” Erin shouted at him from the other end of the line.

  “Figured that out for ourselves,” Arch said, and he heard the tires squeal underneath him.

  “How?” Erin asked.

  “Cuz I’m looking at them right now, like a big ol’ swarm of people who are serious about their physical fitness and enjoying nature. We’re not far below the overlook—get down here. We’re in pursuit.” He hung up without waiting for an answer. “So … how do you kill a swarm of bothersome flies?” He glanced over at Hendricks, waiting to see if the cowboy knew the answer.

  Hendricks just smiled. “One at a time.”

  ***

  Arch’s Explorer gunned past the town car on Alison’s side. Arch glanced over at her only briefly as he shot past on a short straightaway. She could see Hendricks already out of his seat, sword out of its scabbard. He was leaning out the window.

  “Shit,” she whispered, and unfastened her seatbelt so she could get to the rifle in the backseat. “Looks like we’re really gonna do this.”

  Arch tried to keep the car somewhat steady as they came up on the pack. There could be fifty, a hundred of them in there; it was hard to tell. It wasn’t that they weren’t wearing helmets and bicycle shirts and pants, because they were. It was just that every single one of them was black as the night itself. The bikes were all painted black too, save for a couple. Arch caught a glimpse of a couple reflectors still wired to the spokes of one bike, spinning a circle as the light caught it; pretty much all the rest lacked them.

  “Well, this looks like a safety hazard,” Hendricks said, mirroring Arch’s own thoughts. “Don’t they know you’re supposed to wear bright clothing when you’re cycling at night?”

  “Apparently not,” Arch said as he slowed to cope with a steep, hard right S-curve. “Which is too bad, because if you do that, it’s nobody’s fault but yours when you get hit by a car.”

  He gunned the engine and closed the last ten feet between him and the back of pack. He edged up enough to let Hendricks hang out the window, and watched as the cowboy extended his sword to poke—just poke—the last guy in line. With a blast of black flames that consumed the demon’s dark clothing, the bike fell to the ground and filled the air with the sound of screeching metal.

  ***

  “I think they’ve noticed us now,” Duncan said as he swerved to avoid the bicycle clattering on the road. Alison braced herself as the car shook, veering right as Hendricks killed another demon ahead. The others were looking back, and the buzzing was somehow louder now.

  “What is that?” Alison asked.

  “Looks like a bunch of vembra’nonn on bicycles,” Duncan said. “Light-shelled demons, like speed. Usually they’re drawn to doing stuff like hanging on the bottom of airplanes or riding in the back of pickup trucks going at high velocity. I did catch a rumor about a group into extreme sports a couple years back; hang-gliding, base-jumping, skydiving, that sort of thing. Can’t say I’ve heard of bicycling ones before, but …” He shrugged as Alison flipped the latches to the gun case.

  “Can
you keep us steady?” she asked as she pulled the ear protection out of the case first and draped the muffs over the sides of her neck. She grabbed the glasses, too. Safety first, especially when it came to dodging a .50 cal shell hitting you in the eye. That would probably cause blindness.

  “I can try,” Duncan said, and she could hear the strain in the demon’s voice.

  Alison stuck the magazine in the Barrett rifle, then turned awkwardly, trying to bring the oversized thing around without smacking the barrel into the windshield. It wasn’t easy; the rifle was awfully big.

  “That thing is like a cannon,” Duncan said matter-of-factly. “You might be able to kill a vembra’nonn with one of those.”

  “I thought guns didn’t kill demons?” Alison asked. She was distracted for only a second then chambered a round. Focus.

  “Not most of them, no,” Duncan said. “But these are light shells. Most demons have hard shells. Kinda like bone density in people, I guess. It’s rare, but sometimes you get these guys with a big essence and in order to fit it all in, they have to shrink the amount of shell—”

  “Huh,” Alison said, and hit the automatic window. She swung the rifle barrel out as the wind whipped her in the face. She draped the heavy shoulder pad against her and stuck the butt of the gun hard against it. “Let’s see what we can do, then.”

  “You might want to—” Duncan started to say something, but Alison slipped the ear protection on and focused on her target. There was a demon at the far back right that fell into her sights. She led him a little bit and fired.

  “There’s your wife!” Hendricks called as a deafening rifle blast echoed down the mountain. He was hanging out the window, probably in one of the less safe moments of his life, even compared to Iraq—this one was going to stick out in his memory—and the wind was blowing at him. He took off the cowboy hat and tossed it back through the window into the floorboard. No point losing it, after all. It had sentimental value.

  “I believe she just killed one of them!” Arch shouted back at him. Hendricks could barely hear him over the rush of the wind blowing his hair. Hendricks looked over and saw a bike rattling and skating down the road, no sign of a demon on or near it.

  “What the fuck?” Hendricks muttered. “With a gun?” Arch had steered him closer to the peloton of these bicycling demons, and they were all looking back at him now. They had the whole inhuman eyes thing going too, their demon faces out on display. It was not pretty, either. They were a wave of black, a nasty little pack of demons rolling on along. “Hey there, hell on wheels!” He jabbed his sword into another one that tried to swerve to avoid him.

  “Get in here for a second!” Arch called at him. Hendricks slipped back inside as Arch eased off the speed and they drifted back as the road turned right in a lazy curve.

  Hendricks sat there, waiting expectantly, watching the peloton ahead, the bicyclists’ black helms bobbing up and down as they sped up their pedaling. A few of them were still looking back, hissing at the Explorer. “What now?” he asked finally.

  “This.” Arch gunned the engine as the road straightened. Hendricks could hear the whine as he accelerated down the slope. The speedometer rushed from fifty to eighty in about two seconds, and Hendricks felt a compelling need to reach for the oh-shit bar as the Explorer shot down the hill.

  Arch steered them straight as Hendricks fumbled for his seat belt. He clicked it in place just as Arch ran them into the rear wheels of six bikes at the back of the group. The impact was immediate, black suited freaks falling sideways, flying over handlebars. He watched black flames crawl over the skin of at least two of them from their impact against the hard asphalt. One of them in the center was launched up and onto the hood of the Explorer.

  Hendricks reacted before he even realized what he was doing, leaning hard against his seatbelt to snake out the window with his sword. He saw the tip pierce the cheek of the demon and appear within the gaping mouth. A black flame welled up inside and swallowed the thing whole in a matter of seconds. “Fucking A!” Hendricks said, grinning at Arch. “That’s how we do this shit.”

  ***

  “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” Duncan was shouting over the muffles on her ears, “and demons without hard shells shouldn’t be riding bicycles at high speed!”

  Alison just ignored him and led another demon. The crack of the rifle was followed by the sight of her target dissolving into black flames straight from the bowels of hell. She drew a bead on another.

  ***

  “What the fuck is this?” Lerner asked from the passenger seat. Erin felt she agreed with his sentiment, bicycles and a few bicyclists littering the road in front of them. “Seriously? Demons on bikes? Have they no brains?” He paused. “No, scratch that, they definitely don’t have brains. Have they no sense?”

  “Of style, you mean?” Erin asked, steering around a black-clad bicyclist who was recovering from a wreck in the middle of the road. She wanted to put a dent in the fender of the sheriff’s cruiser like she wanted a firm kick to the square center of her ass. She caught Lerner looking at her out of the corner of her eye. “Bicycle pants look dumb.”

  “Bet they’re comfortable, though,” Lerner muttered. She ignored him and swerved around a demon, who shook his fist angrily at them.

  “Should we stop and deal with these?” Erin asked.

  “Better keep on,” Lerner said. “I’m guessing there’s a whole lot more ahead. Probably better to focus on the core rather than the dregs.”

  ***

  Hendricks unfastened his seat belt again. Arch had played bold at first, but after that last bicyclist he’d run over had left the handlebars scraping under the car with a gawdawful clunk, he’d gotten a little less bold. Hendricks couldn’t blame him; it wasn’t like it was even his car. He’d have to explain the damage to the sheriff. Hendricks got the feeling he was kind of a ball buster.

  “We’re steamrolling them,” Arch said.

  “More like Cleveland Steamer-ing them,” Hendricks said as he started to lean out the window again.

  “What’s—?” Arch asked, but Hendricks lost it in the roar of the wind as he stuck his upper body out.

  There had to be at least thirty more of them, and they were starting to scatter again. Their first response to the shit rolling down the mountain with them had been to pedal faster, but they were more prepared for a city where they could outrun foot pursuit rather than being stuck on a mountain road with cars bearing down on them.

  That cannon blast fired again, Alison Stan lighting up another rider. Hendricks watched a bicycle drop to the road on the far side of the peloton, the rider already evaporated like water on a hot day. They may have done some damage, but there were still a shitload of bicyclists.

  He leaned a little further out the window, ready to deliver a love tap to the nearest. He did it, the bike dropped, the rider fell, already covered over in the flames of hell, but he only saw the motion in his peripheral vision at the last second.

  The demon slammed into him from his right. He realized too late that the bastard must have been hiding in the shadow of the car’s bumper, just waiting for a chance to do something.

  And he’d done something all right. Judging by the fire in Hendricks’s side, he’d broken at least one rib. Maybe more.

  Worse than that, he still had a grip on Hendricks, and Hendricks could see the dark malice in the bastard’s eyes as he prepared to hit him again.

  ***

  “Uh oh!” Duncan yelled, but it sounded like a whisper to Alison under the muffs. She hadn’t been paying attention to Arch’s side of the peloton, instead trying to deal with thinning the herd on the other side. She saw the demon riding in the wake of the police cruiser just before he made his move. Black spandex thundered up the side as Arch put the brakes on for a turn. Hendricks was hanging out the window and the demon hit him hard. Duncan blanched in the driver’s seat from the impact.

  It didn’t look pretty, that was for sure. Worse than
that, the demon had positioned himself perfectly—lined up just between her and Hendricks. She didn’t even bother to try; even if she could have shot him, she’d at least clip Hendricks in the process.

  ***

  “Well, well, look at this here clusterfuck,” Lerner drawled as Erin got them on a straightaway and hit the accelerator. She could see the next turn ahead, but for now she had the Crown Vic up above one hundred miles per hour, and she was screaming down the mountain. She figured she had about another ten seconds tops before she’d have to apply the brakes with everything she had, but that would buy a little time for them to catch up to the battle unfolding down the mountain.

  “There sure are a lot of them,” Erin said as she started to hit the brakes. “How the hell are we supposed to kill them all?”

  “I’m surprised you’re worried about that right now,” Lerner said coolly. “I figured you’d be concerned about your boyfriend.”

  Erin glanced at him, then looked ahead. Sure enough, Arch’s car had a black-coated figure hanging out the window, and one of the bicycling demons was—

  —was—

  —was on him.

  Hanging on to him. Dragging him out of the car? Eating him right there? Erin couldn’t see.

  She stomped the accelerator into the turn and took it fast. When the tires started to skid, she saw Lerner clutch his oh-shit bar, which concerned her. But not enough to hit the brakes.

  ***

  Arch saw the thing hit Hendricks just a little too late. He hadn’t been watching his rearview, which hadn’t seemed like a mistake until that demon came out of nowhere behind him and showed him how wrong he was. Now the cowboy was out there at its mercy, feet still hanging in, sword pointing the wrong way, and getting manhandled in a close encounter by something that was a lot stronger than him.

  Arch had a sense of where Hendricks’s balance was, and it was failing fast. He did have his legs locked in good, could probably hang them up under the dash if need be—