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

by Robert J. Crane

  “It seem like it’s getting … darker to you?” Alison’s voice came out in a low wheeze, like air coming out of a balloon. It was a sneaky, squeaky noise, almost irritating.

  Still … Hendricks looked into the sky and saw a dull grey cloud hanging overhead, wisps of its structure dark with only the vague sense that the sun might lurk somewhere beyond. “It’s just that cloud.”

  “I remember it getting dark early last time I was here,” Alison said, leaning against a tree with her shoulder. It didn’t look like a strong one, and Hendricks surely wouldn’t have trusted his weight to it. “Like midafternoon was black as night.”

  “Gets like that up north in the winter,” Hendricks said mildly. “Back in Wisconsin it gets dark at four in the afternoon in December sometimes.”

  “It’s not winter here,” Alison replied, slumped slightly forward, hands resting on her—dammit, Hendricks noticed, though—shapely thighs. “It’s still summer.”

  “Barely,” Hendricks said.

  “Sounds like an unnatural phenomenon anyway,” Duncan said.

  Hendricks frowned. “A cloud’s an unnatural phenomenon? You’ve been living in the underworld for a little too long.”

  “This cloud is an unnatural phenomenon,” Duncan said. “What she’s describing … midday darkness? That’s not normal. When you couple it with the idea that this town is a hotbed of some sort of demonic activity …” He just shook his head. “I’d say they’re related.”

  “How do you not know about this place?” Hendricks asked. “If this town got wiped out, shouldn’t that have registered on your OOC radar? Or does that not matter to your office?”

  “Not my case, not my department,” Duncan said with a lack of concern that Hendricks found to be the latest un-damned-settling thing in a whole line of them. “Like I told you; the Office of Occultic Concordance is not big on the info-sharing. I know what I see, and I’m told what I need to know.”

  “Any chance you boys gossip around the water cooler like normal working stiffs?” Alison asked, and Hendricks damned near applauded for her asking such a useful question. And for getting his mind off her thighs.

  “We don’t work with others very often, but yes,” Duncan said. “That does seem like a constant. Still, never heard of this place nor anything about it.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much fucking useless,” Hendricks said, just shaking his head and turning back to Alison, who met his eyes without any reluctance. He didn’t know whether to find that to be a problem yet or not, but she was still cool. “You want a few more minutes?”

  “No,” she said and shook her head just once before starting off into the woods. Her t-shirt was drenched with sweat down the back, the cloth almost blackened from wetness. It clung, and so did her jeans. Hendricks tried to put that thought out of his mind and focused instead on the branches of the trees around them. The light that once flooded in from a hot, shining sun grew dimmer and dimmer with each step they took until finally, Hendricks had to admit that there was something mighty damned unnatural going on around him.

  ***

  Arch wasn’t the type who was predisposed to sit around while there were things to be done. Another body somewhere out in the town was a stark reminder that there was work to be done and he pored over his map trying to puzzle it out. He thought it unlikely—but not impossible—that the bicyclists were still hiding out in the same place. He had that circled on the map, the mine where he figured they’d been up on Mount Horeb. Charging in there seemed like a darned, foolish course of action, so he was resolved not to undertake it unless he had to. He did have a different idea of how he might approach it if another day was to turn to dusk without the rest of his crew—that was the oddest way to think of them, as some sort of crew, like they were all in the mafia together—returning from Alabama.

  Arch took to his feet again. He’d paced around the table in the kitchen, staring at the map over and over. Not even knowing where the latest crime had been committed was a liability to his investigation. But then, he couldn’t exactly call and ask Ed Fries. That might look suspicious, and he needed more suspicion on him like Job had needed more torment.

  Arch gave up the pacing and hit the couch. The soft material, like felt, hit his neck with a loving touch of comfort. It drew his mind to Alison, to that particular brand of relief she’d brought him just the other day. It was the strangest thing, being drawn into thoughts of that after seeing death up close and personal. It was as though a bony hand had reached out and tried to pluck one of their number, had clenched ivory fingers around Erin and ripped her out of their midst. Something about the whole thing had set his mental teakettle to boiling, bringing an unease he was finding it real hard to shake.

  He ran rough fingers over beard stubble, letting out a hot breath that stank of coffee even to his own nose. That velvety sensation of the couch on the back of his neck rubbed at him like he wished Alison was. His eyes wandered to the kitchen counter; he’d started with a full pot of coffee just an hour ago—

  Now it was empty, just the smell remaining. He’d downed the last cup and not even noticed how much he’d shotgunned into his system. He pulled his hand away from his face, waiting to see if it shook. It didn’t, not a whit. A whole pot of coffee, a complete lack of sleep, some crazed events cracking their way through his life like a lobster getting broken out of its shell, and he was thinking about—

  Arch wiped his mouth again, feeling a thin line of perspiration on the stubble of his upper lip. Maybe that was the caffeine. Or maybe that was the oddly placed, strangely rampant desire for Alison that he couldn’t explain as anything other than grossly inappropriate. For a long time he’d felt out of sorts in his life, bizarrely longing for something else. It was a call he’d heard and ignored in favor of just doing his job, and now that he was in the middle of a mess outside his control …

  His hand didn’t shake. Not at all.

  For a man whose boss had turned on him, he felt strangely calm. Even stranger considering that whole pot of coffee he’d downed.

  He stared at the wall for about another minute before he found himself standing again, stalking back to the map in the kitchen as he paced once more around the table, seeking perspective on a problem he knew he needed to solve. And the one he was considering didn’t even involve Nicholas Reeve, not even tangentially. It was the beasts on the bikes that were all he could think of, them and them alone. He would find them, he would crush them, break them, send them back to Satan with relish and gusto—

  Then he’d see his wife again, and maybe that inappropriate thirst he wanted to sate wouldn’t feel quite so inappropriate with this problem out of the way.

  ***

  Hendricks had to concede that things were becoming more and more … unnatural as they progressed further. Once-fresh shoots of trees gave way to gnarled and ragged trunks that twisted unpredictably in ways that nature never intended. The skies darkened, the wispy grey clouds turning darker, until finally he could ignore it no more. “What the hell are we walking into?” he asked Duncan and Alison. “Mordor?”

  Alison stared at him blankly, her breath ragged and heavy. “What? Where?” She sounded about ready to keel over, which did not bode well for any running they might have to do.

  “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” Duncan said, eliciting a grin from Hendricks and a shake of the head from Alison. “I love catching those movies whenever they’re on cable.”

  “I have no idea what you people are talking about,” Alison said.

  “Come on.” Hendricks waved his arm, beckoning them onward. Any sign of a road had long since disappeared, and Hendricks wondered who might be responsible for that particular bit of ominous work. Could some agency have come in here and plowed it up to discourage visitors? If so, what did they do to keep the supposed demons that were lurking at bay while they did it?

  “Not far, now,” Alison said, and Hendricks saw her bearing change. Her breathing went much shallower, like she had overcome her
difficulty with it. He watched for a second then caught Duncan doing the same. The demon didn’t betray much with his look, but it was enough to make Hendricks think he was on the same track. Alison’s gait straightened, losing the lopsided limp she’d been harboring a minute earlier as though she had a stitch in her side.

  Hendricks eased toward Duncan and whispered, “What the hell was that?” She had changed in seconds, no longer the weak, winded little princess.

  Duncan just shrugged, not taking his eyes off of her. “Seems like we’re being played with.”

  “But for a good reason,” Alison said, and Hendricks stopped just in time to avoid plowing into her. She was right there, halted in the middle of their forward path. She was stiff, slightly hunched, her hand hovering at her side. She was tense, that much was obvious just from looking at the back of her jeans.

  Hendricks dropped his hand to his side as well, opening the drover coat. He waited, hand near his belt, trying to decide which weapon to pull. The air was hot and humid, and he felt drenched and sticky, everything clinging to his skin.

  “Son of a bitch,” Duncan said, and the night started to close in around them—even though it was midday.

  Hendricks listened. The chirp of crickets was strangely absent. So too was any other ambient noise. Gone was the familiar hum of the woods—the rustle of the leaves, the sound of silence or of distant cars. All that was missing, vanquished by the falling dark. He could no longer even hear Alison’s breathing, save for the occasional low breath. Duncan made no sound at all.

  There was almost a sound of buzzing in the distance, and Hendricks’s first thought ran to the bicyclists. He drew his sword, a sound of metal on leather as it cleared the scabbard. The noise passed, though, and left him clenching his blade. Duncan had his hand filled with the baton, and now Alison had a subcompact pistol in hers—a Glock, he thought.

  They stood arranged in a rough triangle, facing the perimeter of the woods. The clouds had become complete, and the sun’s last rays had disappeared. There was only a hint of illumination—like red moonlight—shining down from above. It cast Alison’s face in a strange pallor, her blond hair turned strawberry like someone had hit their brake lights right in front of her. It gave Duncan’s suit an even more exotic look. Hendricks was left to wonder what he looked like by the fading, demonic light.

  “My kingdom for a flashlight,” Hendricks muttered, and he heard a click as one turned on.

  Alison held one in her left hand, crossed under and supporting the pistol in her right. “Guess you Marines don’t prepare for everything, huh?”

  “That’s the Boy Scouts,” Hendricks said a little bitterly. “And I have a flashlight, but no one told me I’d need it.”

  There was another click, and suddenly a white beam streamed from where Duncan had stood moments earlier. “A gun and a sword on your belt, but you don’t have room to carry a micro flashlight? They weigh ounces.”

  “I didn’t know I’d need it.” Hendricks repeated, more irritable the second time through.

  “You’re a demon hunter,” Duncan said, and the beam started to move ahead, with a rustle in the leaves that echoed through the air around them. “Don’t you have to go into dark places sometimes?”

  “I try to travel light.” Hendricks could feel the aggravation, like a heavy stone being dragged through his chest. It was painful, this galling little lesson. He followed behind the two of them, watched their silhouettes in the light of the beams as they danced along; Alison’s swayed considerably as she walked, while Duncan’s was as steady as though it were mounted on some moving frame. “But thanks for the reminder,” Hendricks muttered under his breath.

  The lack of noise was disquieting, and with every step forward, Hendricks became more aware of even the red light through the clouds fading away. He could hear his companions, could smell Alison’s sweat, that scent of outdoor briskness and activity when he got close to her. He followed just behind her, wary of bumping her but even warier of getting too far away from the only people that kept him out of total darkness.

  “Do you hear them?” Duncan asked. Hendricks stopped to listen closer, breath stuck in his throat. Give him a thousand demons head-on rather than one lurking in the darkness, that was his take. The overwhelming evil he could see versus the tiny little one he couldn’t. It resonated in his head, in his heart, that feeling, and he chafed under it, wanting to throw caution aside and charge into the underbrush blindly to stab whatever was out there. Foolish but cathartic, he thought, with an emphasis on the foolish part. His superiors from his Marine Corps days would not have approved. Understood, but not approved.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Alison said. “But I can feel them.”

  “They’re watching,” Duncan said. “Growing in numbers. Feels like they’re working in a pack. Surrounding us, maybe, before they come in.” He sniffed, and Hendricks wondered if he was actually breathing. “Or leading us.”

  “Where are we going?” Hendricks asked, absolutely rhetorical.

  “Deeper,” Alison said. Better than any answer he could conjure. Because really, no matter how you sliced it, that was true.

  ***

  The day dragged like a dog wiping its butt on the carpet, and Arch gave up on the pacing after three hours. Looking at the map was a steady descent into madness, staring at gridpoints and coordinates until he went blind in both eyes. He felt the itch get progressively worse as time passed and his phone stayed silent. He wanted to call Alison, check in, but even if she’d been in a place to answer a phone, he knew what that could prompt. They were heading into the heart of trouble, into a place where a sudden noise could be a real detriment to your continued well-being. So he kept his hands off his phone, kept his eyes on the maps, and kept his feet moving until he could bear the weight of his uselessness no longer.

  It was a simple craziness that came on, that cabin fever feeling. He’d ignored it for an hour, then another. By now, the utterly insane was sounding more and more intelligent. There was a cave on Mount Horeb. This much he knew. An old mine. Probably had contained the bicycling demons only a day earlier. Were they there now? Unlikely.

  But his brain buzzed in circles around the hope that there was some sign of their flight still hidden in that darkness.

  Of course all the reasonable reasons to not undertake this path were perfectly present and cogent in his mind. They could actually still be there. He could be walking into a trap laid by demons. He could be outnumbered and devoured, drawn and quartered or worse by soulless beasts from the very depths of the biblical hell that he had feared since childhood.

  But every hour he stared at the four walls of his apartment was another hour where taking the initiative to go deep into the mine seemed like a better and better idea, even without a whit of backup.

  His rational, logical mind argued again, then again, that was dumb beyond dumb. That this was the height of arrogance, it was Samson not listening to the warnings and seeing his strength ripped away with his hair. The forces of the Morning Star—and he fully believed with every bit of his heart that was who was at work here—would exult in every champion’s fall, and his would surely be no exception.

  But that part of his mind became quieter as the hours passed, and as he grabbed his keys and walked out the door, it lost to the part that suggested that even one more night going by without a read on where these things were hiding would result in yet more death. More chaos in the name of the one who reveled in these things. The thoughts were still there as he revved the engine and took the damaged Explorer onto the road, heading toward Mount Horeb once again, but he let himself think that self-sacrifice for the greater good was the one that was driving the car, and ignored that little part of him that said he was just losing his good sense and giving in to wrath.

  ***

  Hendricks was way too close to Alison for his own good. He was practically up on her back now, in boner-stabbing distance, he might have called it in the Corps, nuts to butts, but he was a little
too aware of the worsening situation to feel much like bonering right now. He was young, though, and sex was always—ALWAYS—in the back of his mind if it wasn’t in the front, and even in a forest that was dark as hell’s pits during midday, standing close enough to poke the wife of his friend, with his own recent lover lying in the hospital, yep, it was still there, even with a demon watching on, and it would have been to Hendricks’s shame if he hadn’t had those other worries to keep him from exploring it much. There’d be time for guilt later, he figured, maybe after the running and screaming and all hell had broken loose. He figured that was moments away based on the way his internal tension was ratcheting up, the heat just building under his coat like a furnace inside him had gotten stoked with fresh wood.

  Wood. Heh. He wasn’t too wary to appreciate that one, either. Wood.

  “Gettin’ hot,” Duncan said, a clear statement that made Hendricks come out of his own head for a minute. He was sure that the feeling of warmth was from the coat, from the fact it was Alabama in summertime and the fact there was a pretty girl just in front of him. Sweaty, but pretty.

  “Thought it was just me,” Hendricks said.

  “You ain’t that good lookin’, sweetheart,” Alison said flatly, like she could read his mind and wanted to pour some cold water on him. Southern drawl, too.

  “I meant—” He felt the frown rise. He kept the sword in one hand and grabbed the lapel of his coat with the other, flapping it like it was a valve he could turn to let some steam off. Jesus, it was getting hotter. “Never mind.” There was no way to say it without coming off like a sour sonofabitch, anyway. “How’s it getting hotter if the sun’s behind the clouds?”

  “Good question,” Duncan replied, his gait completely unchanged from when they’d first started. For Hendricks, the chafing had started. He’d heard it called being galded, where the thighs start to stick together as you walk. It made him want to sashay sideways for a bit, but he knew he’d look ridiculous and have a bitch of a time keeping up, so he didn’t. “I don’t know,” the demon conceded after a brief intermission, maybe to think it over. Hendricks didn’t think that boded too well. It was like having the native guide on an expedition telling you that you were off the fucking map, in hostile territory. Like you wandered into North Korea or something. Oops. Bad luck. Sayonara—or however you said it in Korean.