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

by Robert J. Crane

  She blew the hostility out again as she drove. It was a process, a slow one, dealing with her mother’s little sand spurs that she tossed with unerring accuracy. She could land ’em in the gap between the mental sock and shoe, and for the rest of the day they stung, no matter how much you dug at ’em. Lauren took another breath out, trying to steer back to something more productive. Back to the yin and yang of karma. Back to Molly …

  … and Arch Stan …

  … who was driving past her on the road up the mountain, still in his fucked-up, dented police Explorer, signaling to turn onto that abandoned road that the old mining company had left gated off.

  She frowned. Reeve was gonna arrest the man, based on what she knew. It sounded inevitable. The only thing they were waiting on was lab results from that IV bag he’d apparently hung.

  But he was driving his police cruiser up here on Mount Horeb?

  She half expected him to hang a U-turn and come back down after her, like he could read what she’d been conspiring to do to him. She watched in the rearview, though, and his car disappeared down the road. She watched—and watched another few seconds, and then she hit the brakes. There was not another car in sight, and Arch Stan was still up there, still down that road somewhere.

  She went through about three phases of thought in quick succession. The first was the extremely natural Ah, well, fuck him, too that she sensed came almost as much from her feelings about him as from the man himself—that bastard. The second was the deeper thought—the suspicion, the wondering What the hell is he doing up here?

  The third came with a fresh breath of annoyance, and ended as she spun the car in a U of her own, heading back up the slope with full intention of following the bastard to see what exactly he was doing trespassing on the mining company’s land. Maybe it’d give the sheriff even more reason to stick the karma Taser up his deputy’s self-righteous ass.

  ***

  Arch was in the dark. It had felt like the right thing to do. He’d plunged into that mine entrance at a run, slowing only as the darkness fell and he’d had to flick on his light and draw the switchblade. He wasn’t counting on conventional threats, so the knife made sense. It wasn’t like there was a high likelihood of a bear hiding up in here, after all.

  He’d found the gate to the mine ajar. Well, a little more than ajar, actually; it’d been hanging off the hinges, open wide. Tracks for more bikes than he could rightly count were all over the ground in front of the entrance. It looked like the tunnel stretched down a ways, maybe to an elevator or something else. The gate at the front of the cave was a half-butted effort to keep teenagers out, Arch figured, the product of a company that had hit the bankruptcy skids and lost everything, even the consideration for others that might have caused them to spend their last dollars on a more substantial method of keeping out trespassers. But bankruptcy was bankruptcy, and you couldn’t get blood out of a turnip. He eased down the tunnel, done with the running.

  His light fell over dark rock, stone bereft of value. Supports lined the walls, designed to keep the world from falling in around him. There wasn’t much to see—yet—but his eyes kept track of it all. The smell of cave air would have been a little dank, he figured, but for the opening behind him. He very carefully did not look back, knowing that the sight of sunlight would blind him for seconds, and Arch was now fully aware that even a second’s blindness was far too long when one was dealing with demons.

  He came to a carved split in the rocky tunnel about a hundred yards in and found himself faced with a choice of which way to go. The cool air crawled up his arms, causing his skin to tingle in a way he surely wouldn’t have felt were he still standing out in the hot sun. Which way to go, that was the question. It didn’t take him long to decide, because lingering about was surely a fast way to get himself made into a ripe target for ambush. He headed right, flashlight beam bouncing its way in front of him, revealing nothing but rock walls and the detritus left behind by a mining company on its way out.

  The tunnels were wide; he couldn’t reach from wall to wall if he’d tried. They were open channels bored into the earth, and the cut tracks on the ground indicated where the mining company had transported the minerals out of the earth with steam locomotive hauling cars. Arch minded his steps as he walked into the silence.

  His footsteps echoed, but at such a low resonance that he wondered if they could be heard down the shaft. He slowed his pace, listening, but the sound of a faint dripping in the distance overcame the soft steps. He became aware of his own breathing, even though it was quiet.

  His flashlight beam caught the first hint of something foreign in the rocky tunnel, and Arch stopped short. He stood there, the pale light stretching across the dusty tunnel floor until it found a lump, something cloth-like that reminded him of a cocoon. He stood there, hesitant to even move, waiting for something else to stir, as though the mere light could awaken something in the darkness.

  He heard something and froze, that crash of fear like a cymbal in his head. He straightened, a pang of awareness running down to his stomach. He was vaguely aware that he’d frozen at the thought of some trouble and told himself that it was natural, that he needed to listen. He needed to know where it was coming from before he could deal with it.

  Arch listened, listened hard, waiting for some subtle clue about its location. Was it a demon? A drip of water? The hand on the flashlight shook, and even the knowledge he’d fought a demon that breathed fire at him—on him—did nothing to bring him warmth as he stood there in the dark. It had been a bad idea to come here, he knew that now, not just in his mind, but his gut, which had told him just moments ago to charge into this. The beam shook on the cloth object in front of him, fooling him for just a second into thinking it was moving.

  There was a quiet scrape of something and this, he knew for sure, came from behind him. His head snapped around, and he could see no hint of the entrance and the bright sky somewhere above. He could see nothing, not really, like he’d turned off the lights around him and stood in the dark. His hand sweated on the flashlight, felt it slickly in his palm, the ridges feeling almost ineffectual against the tangible proof of his nervousness—his fear.

  He almost shouted “Hello!” but remembered himself. There was reassurance in that word, in hearing it echo, in hearing someone else repeat it back. But he kept it in, knowing that here in a mine that had so recently harbored demons, reassurance was not what he was likely to find.

  Arch’s eyes adjusted, and now he could see the faint light somewhere down the corridor. Outlines were visible, the dark of the mine broken just slightly by his flashlight’s beam and the far-off promise of daylight somewhere around a curve in the distance.

  His breath came slow, controlled as he drew it while measuring his fear with each exhalation. Nerves were a killer in a place like this. It was a mine, after all; demons weren’t the only things in a place like this that made noise. Natural things could do it as well, like water seepage and bats.

  Arch brought the flashlight around slowly, casting light over craggy walls and dark stone clefts, until it was shining back up the tunnel from whence he’d come. Coming here still seemed like a bad idea, he reflected as he turned the beam around, and as it fell on a face in the darkness he was struck from behind, a scream filling his ears as he hit the ground and the flashlight rolled out of his grasp, casting his whole world in flashes of light for a moment before it stopped.

  ***

  “Mandy?” Hendricks asked, repeating it like he hadn’t heard it. He stared at the girl, bald as Lex Luthor, her skin wrinkled like she’d been a sun worshipper her whole life, that leather handbag look to it. He was still leaning heavily on Alison and she on him, and it surprised him that they weren’t both flat out on the ground because she sure as shit didn’t look strong enough to bear his weight.

  Duncan hummed a few bars of something, and Hendricks cocked his head over to the demon. “Mandy,” Duncan said. “The Manilow song?”

  Hendricks gl
anced at Alison, who shrugged. “Who the fuck is Manilow?”

  “Kids these days,” Duncan said. “Mandy … what are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” came the ragged response from the fire lady.

  Hendricks raised an eyebrow and surveyed the square again. He’d seen shittier shitholes but not too many. He’d broken down doors in Ramadi that looked more livable than this place—and that was after he and his boys had plowed through. “I’m a little surprised anyone lives here,” Hendricks said, holding back the honesty—because it felt like it might firehose out, irritating that girl and her flaming devil dogs. And he didn’t feel like fighting quite yet.

  “Lots of people used to,” Mandy said. She sounded a little hollow, a little high-noted mixed with some scratch, like she hadn’t used her voice in a while.

  “What happened to them?” Alison asked, and Hendricks gave her a frown. Didn’t she already know?

  “You were here before,” Mandy said, staring at Alison with hollow eyes. They were taking it all in, those eyes, but Hendricks had a doubt that it was all making sense to the brain behind them. Mandy looked about eighty percent checked out, by his reckoning. The lights were on, maybe, and that was about it. “You came last time.”

  “I came last time,” Alison agreed. “I saw you, from a distance, before we ran. But I didn’t talk to you.”

  “No one talks to me,” Mandy said.

  “Better than hearing voices, I guess,” Hendricks said. He regretted it as those empty eyes took him in for a minute.

  “You look a little like him,” Mandy said, and her bald head went to a forty-five degree angle as she surveyed him. “I think.” She paused and put a burned finger up to her cracked lips; Hendricks could see the dried skin flaking off in a way that suggested to him that a whole fucking tube of Chap-Stick could not fix the dryness problems this lady had. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”

  Hendricks wondered how long they should indulge the crazy cat-lady—minus the cats. He landed on, “At least a little longer,” when his eyes fell across the flaming dogs again. They were just waiting, like a command barked would send them leaping forward. Hendricks’s eyes darted to his sword, then back to the dogs. Nope, not great odds. He did not favor them. Walking out would be a lot better. “Who is he?” he asked, trying to sound interested while he worked on a backup plan. None was forthcoming.

  “He—” she snarled, “he’s the one who—” She made a guttural noise in her throat that reminded Hendricks of a dog growling. He eyed the flame dogs and decided that nope, it was coming from her. He shot a sidelong glance at Duncan and noticed the demon was still taking it all in, not making a hostile move. The baton was still in his hand, though, which was either a good sign or a damned bad one.

  Mandy made a new sound, now, a high, whining one, and it took Hendricks a second to realize what it was.

  “She’s crying,” Alison said a second after he got it.

  “You’d be crying, too, if you had what I had,” Mandy said, turning those blank eyes on Alison again. “Did you ever have a man … who took everything from you?” Her eyes fell to Hendricks. “Well? Did you?”

  “I’ve never had a man, no,” Hendricks replied, regretting his glibness as soon as he’d said it.

  It seemed to fall right off Mandy, who focused back on Alison. “Have you?” Mandy asked.

  “I have a man, yes,” Alison replied, a little carefully to Hendricks’s ears. He didn’t have to try hard to wonder why; Mandy sounded a little on edge. Well, actually, she sounded like she was on the edge of the cliff standing on her tippy-toes and leaning over, trying to give the abyss a big damned smooch.

  “Is this him?” Mandy nodded at Hendricks.

  “No,” Alison said.

  “What about him?” Now Mandy sounded tired, as she laconically gestured at Duncan.

  “Definitely not,” Alison said, and Hendricks cracked a smile at that one. “My man’s not here.”

  “I had a man once,” Mandy said, and she’d settled back into a trance-like state where her eyes were fixed on the red-black sky. “He’s gone now.”

  Hendricks’s mouth spoke again before his brain could get a grip on that slippery weasel. “Can’t imagine why; it’s such a lovely town you have here.”

  She looked at him, but there was no flare of anger. Hendricks felt a jolt in his ribs from Alison, caught the look from Duncan that chided him for being a moron. “It wasn’t always like this,” Mandy said.

  “I’d imagine with a name like Hobbs Green it might have been a little … greener, at some point?” Hendricks asked. He got the elbow from Alison again, but this time he fired back a look of his own. He’d kept it diplomatic, dammit.

  “It was green once,” Mandy said. “Blue skies, too, I think?” She gazed at Alison with that broken look. “The skies were blue, weren’t they?”

  “Still are, elsewhere,” Alison said cautiously. That was probably the safe way to say it, Hendricks figured. “Little different here, though.”

  “Yes,” Mandy said, agreeing with a sorrowful aura. “Things are different here.”

  “What happened?” Duncan asked, and waited for her eyes to fall on him. “What happened to turn the skies dark and the ground black and …” The demon just let his voice drift off.

  “Why, the most joyous thing in the world, of course,” Mandy said, again delivering this like it was self-evident. If nothing else, she was doing a marvelous job of convincing Hendricks that her motor would never again fire on all cylinders. And he had doubts she was ever a V8 to begin with. “I had a baby.” Her hands fell to her stomach, and Hendricks noticed for the first time that what he had thought was black clothing was soot as the covering on her belly smeared and revealed more wrinkled flesh below.

  “Holy shit, she’s naked as the day she was born,” Hendricks muttered under his breath. For whatever reason, Alison spared the elbow this time.

  “Have you seen my baby?” Mandy asked, her voice off-note this time, some perverse mixture of joy and sorrow.

  “Can’t say I have,” Hendricks replied, beating out the other two. “Where is … they?” He switched gears mid-sentence and felt like a moron for the two seconds it took for him to remember he was in the ruins of a demon-burned Alabama town and not a grammar rodeo.

  “Why, right here, of course,” Mandy said and knelt. One of the fire dogs padded over to her, leaving scorched earth with every step. Hendricks saw similar paw prints of glass all over the square and realized that everywhere it tread, it left a mark. It made a gawdawful sound that was somewhere between a scream and a mewl, then it brought out a flaming tongue and ran it quickly over Mandy’s cheek before settling lower, anchoring on her small breast. She fell backward as it did, falling on her ass with apparent glee as it suckled from her. The next closest dog came over to them then, not leaving a single glassy paw print as it did so but latching to the other side, rubbing against her with its flaming body and leaving a smear of black soot across her shoulder as it did so. The answer for how she got that fancy suit of ash clothing popped into Hendricks’s head. The other dogs maintained their guard formation as the two front runners nursed, the flames of their bodies burning brighter as they did so.

  “These are my babies,” Mandy said, and Hendricks found the time to look over at Alison, her face two inches from his. The discomfort was unmistakeable, but she kept it shy of horror by a long margin. Mandy’s hand ran over the fiery back of the one on her left breast. “But this one is the one I birthed myself.”

  Duncan beat Hendricks to the punch. “Who birthed the rest of them?”

  “The other women of the town,” Mandy said, smiling at her suckling pups. Hendricks found the way she was looking at them really fucking disturbing, and he thought he’d just about hit the peak when the acid-cum-spurting demon had burned his way through a hooker last week.

  “Okay, Khaleesi,” Hendricks said, and caught a funny look from Duncan. “Sometimes I stay in hotels that have HBO,” he
explained. Turning his attention back to Mandy, he tried to keep himself level. “What happened to the other women? The other … mothers?”

  “They weren’t the mothers,” Mandy said with a shake of her head as she scratched behind the ear of her favorite. “They were surrogates, wombs of convenience to hold my other babies, the ones my own womb couldn’t hold.” Now her crackling voice just sounded like some fucked up mix of innocent and sinister. Hendricks was not taking bets on which of those descriptions was leading in that race, either.

  “Where did the babies come from?” Duncan asked. “Who was the father?”

  Mandy’s dead eyes flared. “He was a demon from hell.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s pretty obvious to all of us at this point,” Hendricks said. No elbow this time, either. “But … uh … did this demon from hell have a name?”

  “His name was Mick.” Her hand slid along the neck of her dog.

  “I see,” Duncan said, taking it all in. “Was he Irish?”

  “Jesus,” Hendricks said, “you really were around in the eighteen hundreds, weren’t you, you racist.”

  “All you skin puppets look the same to me,” Duncan replied. “Where did this … Mick … come from?”

  “He came to town with the carnival,” Mandy said, her voice taking on a dreamlike quality. “He showed me things …”

  “Like his cock,” Hendricks muttered under his breath.

  “… things I’d never seen before …” Mandy went on. “Made me feel things … I couldn’t have imagined …”

  “Like her hymen bursting, I’d guess,” Alison added. Hendricks approved.