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

by Robert J. Crane

  ***

  “I assume you weren’t down that mining tunnel by pure coincidence,” Arch said as they broke out into the daylight. The afternoon sun was hanging high overhead, taking its slow arc around the sky. Wafting white clouds rolled along, and the wind came rolling too, but off the top of the mountain.

  “Yeah, I’m not doing a rotation in the local abandoned mine,” Dr. Darlington quipped. The woman had a sour face, like she had just swallowed a dill pickle and maybe took a chaser of the brine as well. He’d seen her around town, and she didn’t always look like that. Just when she was pointed at him.

  “Why were you following me?” Arch asked, leaning warily against his vehicle. His khaki uniform bore dark stains down both legs and all across the chest; he looked like he’d been wrangling pigs or at least playing an afternoon football game, minus the grass stains.

  “Why are you changing IV bags at a hospital?” She spat it back at him with a hostility that wouldn’t have been out of place in a line of scrimmage with the bitterest rival team across from him.

  “I … don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with so little conviction that it didn’t sound like he was within even a hundred miles of honest.

  She gave a little smug smile in response. “I’m gonna enjoy watching you twist for this. And if not for this, it sounds like your sheriff has enough other stuff to bury you forever.”

  Arch straightened, felt his back tense all the way down. “What are you talking about?” Reeve had said he was going to come after Arch if Erin hit the skids. “Did something happen to Erin—Deputy Harris?”

  “What did you put in that IV bag?” Lauren asked.

  “I didn’t put anything in an IV bag,” Arch said, and this he delivered truthfully. “Is she all right?”

  Darlington stared back at him, her hands clenched. She wore scrubs, he realized a little belatedly, and her car was parked just behind his cruiser. She had a cell phone in one of her pockets, and she pulled it up to look at the screen. “No news yet, which is probably good for you, since they would have called me if she died.”

  Arch took a breath of relief, letting his back muscles relax as he slumped back to the car. He closed his eyes. “Thank the Lord.”

  “No thanks to you, I think you mean.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Erin,” Arch said, cracking an eye open. That woman still looked fiercely sour.

  “We sent the bag for analysis,” she said, staring flatly at him, more than a little malice in her gaze. “We’re gonna find whatever you put in there.”

  “You’re not gonna find much of anything, then,” Arch said, rolling himself a little along the side of the Explorer toward the door. Normally he wouldn’t have been that cavalier with his duty uniform, getting it dirty on the side of his car, but it was already well and truly wrecked anyhow. The car and the uniform.

  “Then why’d you change the IV bag?” Dr. Darlington asked.

  “How do you know I did?” Arch said, pulling himself off the side and taking a breath of the fresh mountain air. It was a fair sight better than what he’d been breathing in the mine. “Is there some reason you always assume the worst of me, Doctor?”

  That got a rise out of her. Those snakelike eyes went so narrow she couldn’t have squeezed a fat tear out of either of them. “I know who you are, Archibald Stan, and I’ve known all along, even if nobody else wanted to believe the truth of you. You were a sorry, belittling, pious, hateful little shit when you were a child, and now you’re a corrupt, bullying, power-mad murderer in a town going straight to hell.” She had that low, loathing drag to her voice like every word of her soliloquy was sweet pain to spill out.

  He just blinked at her. It wasn’t exactly the first time someone had said something unkind about him, but it might have been the worst thing he’d heard that didn’t have a racial epithet thrown in. “Well, answer me this, then, Dr. Darlington,” he applied the full sarcasm to her title, something he did not normally do, “if I’m a ‘power-mad murderer,’ and we’re up here in a deserted location all alone together …” He opened his car door, boosting himself up to get in but still throwing a venomous glare right back at her, “why haven’t I just shot you dead and called it a happy day?”

  He watched her face contort in reaction, that furious uncertainty dissolving as she realized either she’d put herself at stupid risk or that he might have been lying. He found that he did not care either way and tossed her an uncharacteristic salute as he started his car. His wheels tossed gravel as he floored it in reverse, narrowly missing her car with the Explorer as he wheeled around in the old, weed-filled parking lot of the mine. He left her in the dust, but the stings she left him with vexed him all the way back to town and beyond.

  ***

  “On your left!” Duncan called just before he overtook Hendricks. Hendricks had been expecting this for a while, since he’d heard Duncan’s footsteps coming from behind. He didn’t glance back, but he knew Starling had to be close at hand as well.

  She came alongside a moment later as Duncan passed him to match pace with Alison. The red-clouded sky burned overhead, casting a glare down on them like they were under a crimson light. “You are well?” the redhead asked, causing Alison’s head to jerk around. Hendricks could read the expression on her face, but when she spoke in response he didn’t quite expect what she said.

  “What kind of rough, no-lube butt-fuckery is this?” Alison stopped hard and turned on Starling. “You sent us here—”

  “She seems angered,” Starling said, like it was a matter of no consequence. Oh, the grass is green.

  “Can’t imagine why,” Hendricks said, coming to a stop himself. He put his palms on his knees this time and gave Alison a sour look for not doing the same. She looked completely unbothered by the run. Neither were Duncan or Starling, but that was different.

  Hendricks heard the crashing of brush and turned his head in time to see the man he’d met earlier that morning—lo, those many hours ago when the sun was still well below the horizon—coming at them in the darkness. Hendricks could tell it was him by the bevy of flashlights that suddenly got pointed his way. That same slightly overweight, large-framed fellow—except now he had a hunting rifle snugged across his shoulder by strap and a pistol on his belt that looked like a real, old-fashioned wheelgun.

  “Daddy!” Alison said with obvious relief and took off for him, feet crushing leaves with each step. She threw herself into his arms and sank into his chest.

  “Baby girl.” Mister—what was it he’d introduced himself as? Longcolt? Longholt, that was it. Mr. Longholt hugged his daughter tight, his greyish brown head of thinning hair bowing down to Alison’s shoulder. Hendricks couldn’t see his face, but that didn’t stop him from looking.

  “And now she is no longer angry,” Starling observed. The sky is red.

  “Even you mystical beings can’t figure women out,” Hendricks said.

  “Don’t be a pig,” Duncan said.

  “Oink oink,” Hendricks said with an unintended snort at the end. He snapped his gaze to Mr. Longholt. “I take it we don’t have to spend time doing the long explanation about what just happened back there?”

  “Demons from hell,” Mr. Longholt said, pulling his head off his daughter’s shoulder. He didn’t look old or frail, not one bit. He looked strong, maybe a little wary, like many a soldier in a war zone Hendricks had known. “That’s what’s going on in Midian right now?”

  “In a nutshell,” Hendricks said. He hadn’t been able to formulate much of an opinion about the man when they’d met the night before, being in something approaching screaming pain, but this was more than a bit impressive. “If you don’t want your town to turn out like this, we need to get back immediate-damn-ly.”

  “We need to keep moving,” Starling said.

  Hendricks turned his eyes to Duncan. “They following us?”

  “Doubtful,” Duncan said, shaking his head quickly. “But I still can’t see in there. Someone mucked
this place up, bad.”

  Hendricks blinked at the OOC. “Are you talking about the fact that this place is burned to the fucking ground?”

  Duncan didn’t even show a hint of emotion. “That too. But it’s clouded over. Some kind of work like Spellman does, but maybe on a bigger scale. I thought it was cloudy before we went in, but it’s kinda like fog; you can’t see in front of you so it’s hard to tell if there’s anything going on inside.” He glanced at Starling, and a hint of distaste appeared. “Red here doesn’t seem to share my limitations, though, so if she says we should keep moving, we should keep moving.”

  “Roger that,” Hendricks said, breaking into a jog again long after Mr. Longholt had started moving his daughter forward. Just another reason for the Army man to rise in his estimation. Between that and the impressive daughter he’d raised, Hendricks was beginning to think he’d been making a mistake running solo all these years.

  ***

  Mick had some time off, so he went into town. The sun was starting to arc lower in the sky, heading toward its terminus on the western horizon. He was excited about the night’s activities, about what the evening with Molly would entail. He had trouble with her name, because some time in the itty-bitty hours of the morning he’d remembered that the last girl he’d been with, in that Alabama slice of shit town, had been Mandy. It had popped right into his mind like only something long forgotten could, ringing triumph of random memory in his ears. She’d been a sweet little piece, hadn’t she? Nice knees and everything. He wasn’t all that curious about how she was doing, but if things fell into the usual pattern, she was probably still alive—if one could call what she was doing living.

  As he looked around the town square, he felt nothing. Less than nothing, really. The urge was too strong, it was burning him up inside. Left unsated, in about another year he’d be a walking erection, a disaster area of demonic proportions. He wouldn’t be able to be near anybody, his essence would be bleeding out in flaming bursts of uncontrolled emotion. He’d tried holding it back once, when he was young and denying what he was. That had been Italy, he thought, and a few hundred years back. It had sure as shit cost him, too, made him flee the country in a hell of a hurry. Bonfire of the vanities looked quaint by comparison.

  No, this was the time, this was the place. Just another stop for the carnival, just another town. Except this one was already heading to hell anyway, so why not speed up the process a bit?

  He could smell the scent of coffee coming out of the Surrey Diner and thought about stopping in for a bit. He had that plan with Molly, knew where to meet her and when, was ready to follow through with it. He looked at his watch, the face scratched with a half a hundred nicks in the glass, and bemoaned—not for the first time—the slow passage of the hours.

  What the hell was there to do in this town?

  He came with a half an inch of voicing that thought, and then the faint crowd around the square gave him an answer.

  “Flame inside,” came a dreamy voice, far off, from behind him. “Fire burns, runs through the trees.” He turned to see a man standing there in clothes a hell of lot worse than his own, and his were not exactly new and fancy. The guy looked to be in his fifties, old navy shirt that was threadbare and worn, long-sleeved even in the heat. He wore long, stained trousers, too, some sort of heavy canvas-looking material. He was sweating, a stocking cap pulled down around his ears.

  Homeless, Mick thought. Bum. Not the sort of thing you saw a lot of in a town like this, but here one was.

  “I can see it burning like a lit match inside,” the bum said, staring at Mick. The man’s eyes were looking straight through him, and Mick felt just a little swell of panic inside as his essence rippled. “Oooh,” the man said. “Pretty, it crackles like flame.”

  “Don’t mind Jarrett,” came a rough voice from behind him, causing Mick to pinwheel around. There was a guy in the alley next to him, wearing a white apron as he came out the side door of the diner, full trash bag in his hand. Looked older than the bum, and Mick realized he’d seen him before. Pat, wasn’t it? He squinted and caught the nametag. His hair was grey brown, and he looked like he scowled more than he smiled. “Came home from Vietnam a little off, but he’s harmless.”

  Mick tore his glance from Jarrett, the bum, to Pat. He hadn’t met Pat before, but he knew who he was. He was the guy giving Mick the stinkeye from behind the counter of the diner when he’d been sitting there with Molly last night.

  “The flames are rising,” Jarrett said, like he was in some kind of fucking trance. Mick could still feel the nervousness, but at least now he had a plan. He eased away from Jarrett and toward Pat, taking odd note of the stains and marks down the apron on the old proprietor.

  “I know you,” Mick said, putting on a fake smile.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Pat replied, pausing after heaving the garbage bag into the open dumpster. He wasn’t looking at Mick with suspicion, exactly, but it wasn’t friendliness, either.

  “You were the one giving me dirty looks when I was with Molly last night,” Mick said, throwing some affable in there. It was all pretend, of course, but he kept his pace steady, trying to stage-manage the show and hoping that the bum stayed right where he was. A glance back showed that he was doing exactly that, though he’d taken to mumbling under his breath.

  The alley was in shade with the side of the diner keeping the sun off of Mick’s head. For this he was slightly grateful. He offered a hand to Pat. “I’m Mick. Nice to meetcha.”

  Pat glanced down at it like it was a foreign object, and Mick could see him weighing the options. Out of politeness he finally out thrust his own and took it, but Mick didn’t miss that it was the hand that had been holding the garbage bag seconds earlier. Fucker. Mick didn’t even feel remorse for what he was about to do after that. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Pat said, putting the squeeze on Mick’s hand, though by his tone he clearly wasn’t.

  Mick met his eyes, shook his hand once firmly, then glanced again back at the bum. He was at a good twenty paces away, and that was good enough for Mick.

  “The fire,” Jarrett whispered.

  “What’s he talking about?” Mick asked, nonchalant. He reached inside and started to play with something he’d only used once before, squinting at Jarrett like he held the secret of life.

  “Like I told you, he ain’t right,” Pat said from Mick’s peripheral vision. Mick knew he was far enough away to make this plausible. It was just a matter of effort, really. He pictured the bum in his head, pictured him in flames, rising—

  “So hot,” Jarrett said quietly. “Sooooo hot.” The voice rose.

  “It’s a hot day all right,” Pat said toward the bum.

  Mick reached deeper, looked deeper, saw the middle of the bum. He didn’t think of him as a person anymore, not that he cared all that much. There was a switch in there, a fiery middle, and all he had to do was—

  “AIEEEEEEEEEE!” The shriek was instantaneous, and Mick found himself jumping back involuntarily just from the noise.

  “Jesus!” Pat said from next to him, startled. “Simmer down, Jarrett!”

  “Is this normal?” Mick asked, taking note of the first strains of smoke wafting from under the bum’s dark shirt.

  “He’s usually fairly docile,” Pat said. “But I have seen him get irate once or twice.” The man said ‘twice’ like ‘twiced,’ like it had a d to end it. Southerners. It was barely audible over the bum’s shrieks by this point.

  The fire burst out of the belly of the bum’s shirt like a door coming off a stove, and the next scream he let out was consumed by a belch of flame that rolled out of his mouth.

  “Holy shit!” Pat said. He did not move to help and neither did Mick; the diner owner just stood there, stunned, and Mick stood right with him, though only feigning surprise. Inside, he was a big, bubbling pot of indifference.

  The bum’s screams died with the gout of fire that came out of his mouth and his skin was replaced with flame withi
n a second, a blackened skull appearing within them like some object partially unearthed. The fire crackled as the bum fell to his knees, arms spread wide like he was ready for a hug or salvation or something. He was completely consumed by now, and Mick wondered just how alive he was under the orange blaze. His clothes, the threadbare, shitty things, had already blackened and peeled back. Bones were appearing now, obvious, as the body—what was left of it—toppled to the ground in the mouth of the alley and stopped moving.

  Mick watched with detached interest, trying to plot his response for maximum effect. “Jesus,” he said, putting a little acting into it, like when he had to fake excitement for someone who had won a prize at a booth, “did he just spontaneously combust?”

  “I ain’t never seen nothing like that,” Pat said from beside him. “Jesus. I think he did.”

  “I know I wasn’t anywhere near him,” Mick said, trying to sound awestruck, “and neither were you.” He cemented his alibi with this little lie. “He was just standing there and—I mean, holy, it was like the flames came out of him, it wasn’t even like he was on fire on the skin or clothes or anything …”

  “Yeah,” Pat said, nodding. The proprietor had not yet moved his gaze off the charred remains, the flames finally dying down. The whole alley smelled of them, smelled of burnt meat, and Mick covered his nose involuntarily. “There wasn’t anybody anywhere near him, he just lit off like a firecracker.” His nods came one after another, and Mick wondered for a moment if the diner owner’s head wasn’t going to bob right off his shoulders.

  “We should call 911,” Mick said, finally dropping that suggestion. Now that the damage was irreversibly done and his alibi was secure.

  “Yeah,” Pat said, but it came out with the air of a man who had heard and nodded but would not move without some external prodding.