Depths: Southern Watch #2 (26 page)

“You didn’t have to do that,” Hendricks said, and this time he made it to his feet, though he was hunched a little, like an old man.

“Yes, I did.” Arch didn’t quite yell it, but he put force behind it. “Because I believe that demons—with the slaughters, and the accidents and whatnot—are a grave threat to the people of this town.”

“They are,” Hendricks said and took a shuffling step toward him. Arch backed toward the door, keeping an eye on Duncan, the one next to the door. He wasn’t moving, though, just standing there.

“But now you’re working with them,” Arch said. He could feel the bile, the fury, rising inside him.

“Come on, Arch,” Hendricks said, taking a limping step closer. “Surely even you can see that … maybe they’re not all bad?”

“Are they demons?” Arch asked and turned his head to look at the one called Lerner. He looked right back, smug. “Are they from hell?”

“That’s the word,” Lerner said. Still smug. Arch wanted to wipe that right off his face with a fist.

“Arch—” Hendricks said.

“Call me if you find this guy,” Arch said, and fumbled for the door handle, “you know, if you and your demon buddies can’t handle it.”

He slammed the door as he left, indifferent to the noise it made in the night.

* * *

Lerner watched the cop go with little interest. He was a big fellow. Had kind of a scary look to him when he was mad. If you were human. Lerner didn’t fear humans. Why would he? Most of them didn’t know how to release an essence.

Lerner honed back in on the cowboy, who was standing just a few feet from the bed in his room. Which was a shithole exactly on par with the one that the unnamed Sygraath had been holed up in. At least the motel was consistent. “You mentioned Ygrusibas.” He caught Hendricks’s attention with that one. “How do you even know that name?”

Hendricks looked like he was just coming back to himself, and Lerner felt a little bad for having hit him earlier. Man looked like an empty shell of flesh sagging in on itself. “Because we killed—” Hendricks paused. “Because we sent him back to hell over a week ago. Whatever you call it.”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Lerner said with a quick exhale. He meant it to sound amused, but he was in control of his facade enough to know it wasn’t amusement but fear. The name of Ygrusibas had not been spoken aloud by a human in thousands of years.

Or at least it shouldn’t have been.

“Yet we did,” Hendricks said, shuffling back to the bed. He sat down slowly, and it made Lerner wonder if his ass was hurting for some reason, too. “Guy named Hollywood summons him up—”

“Not a real name, I presume,” Duncan said. Lerner shot him a look which he thought was pretty clear. It said,
You don’t actually believe this shit, do you?

“Probably not,” Hendricks said. “He comes to town with a book, kills some people on a farm on the outskirts with the intention of summoning Ygrusibas. Wreaks havoc.” Hendricks adjusted his cowboy hat down, annoying the fuck outta Lerner. Why was the guy wearing a cowboy hat? He didn’t even have a car, let alone a horse. Lerner looked around the room again real quick. Or a pot to piss in. “Releases Ygrusibas into a cow—”

“Whoa,” Duncan said.

“Bull. Shit.” That was Lerner’s reaction.
No fucking way
was the other part of it, but he kept that to himself.

“More like cow shit,” Hendricks said, bumping his hat back. What was up with the coat, too, Lerner wondered? “Anyway, the cow-demon starts going crazy, eats Hollywood, goes on a rampage, and Arch and I stop it before it gets out of the pasture.”

Lerner didn’t keep from rolling his eyes, not at this. “One of the ancients gets summoned up and two humans kill it in a cow pasture?” He faux-yawned, just to be an ass. “Yeah. Sure. You guys must be the Big Swinging Dicks of the demon-slaying scene in this fucking backwoods hell.” He cast a sidelong look at Duncan and stopped. “You’re not fucking serious.”

Duncan was looking ahead, wide-eyed, watching Hendricks. “He believes it. And it could be. There were signs that something was seriously amiss, and it’s not like we get a lot of communication about these sort of things from—”

Lerner made a low, rattling noise in his throat. “You think an ancient—” He cut himself off, because it sounded so fucking ridiculous. He stopped himself from repeating the ‘You can’t be fucking serious’ thing again.

“It’s … possible,” Duncan said with another light nod. “Things are moving fast up here. Faster than anyone back at home office could have predicted.”

“Yeah,” Lerner said. “Okay.” He knew he wore a sour expression now, like he’d taken a sip of lemonade. And he hated that shit. No way would he believe it, though. The ancients didn’t get out; not from where they were held.

No chance.

* * *

Arch pulled into the sheriff’s station parking lot and killed the engine. He had that pit of dread in his belly, and it only seemed to grow as he opened the door and started toward the entrance. The night was heading toward dawn pretty quick, and he wondered—just a little—about what the morning would bring.

He grasped the cold, fixed steel handle of the door and pulled. The metal frame surrounded a Plexiglass window; there was condensation forming on the inside of it. Even though it was cooler outside now, it was still humid.

The interior of the sheriff’s station was quiet, not a soul in the area behind the desk. Arch didn’t quite make it to the counter before he saw movement in the sheriff’s office and Reeve himself appeared at the door.

“Jesus Christ,” Reeve said, and his face was blooming with thunderclouds. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“I couldn’t handle it,” Arch said, listening to the prepared words spilling out of his mouth. He’d gone over his options, and knew exactly where the truth would land him—up to his neck in quicksand. “I saw those bodies, that mess this morning and …” He shook his head, keeping it low, bowed. “… I just couldn’t handle it.” He chanced a look up at Reeve.

Reeve was staring at him, mouth hanging slightly open. “You couldn’t handle it.” He repeated it back, and Arch wondered if he’d actually stopped the sheriff’s tirade before it could begin.

“Yeah,” he said. “There was so much … blood. The bodies were just …”

Reeve ran a hand over his lip, stroking it. “Uh huh.” There wasn’t enough tone for Arch to tell what he was thinking. “So … you, uh …”

“Cut out on my patrol,” Arch said. “Shut off my phone. Shut off my radio. Just went quiet for a while, went up in the woods and … sat there.”

Reeve stood at the entrance to his office and leaned a hand on the frame. When he stood like this, his protruding gut was obvious, hanging over the belt of his pants. He took a long, loud breath and sighed, then puffed his lower lip like he was thinking over something awfully hard. “We needed you today out there, Arch.” His words were laced with quiet disappointment.

“I know,” Arch said and gave as contrite a nod as he could. However upset he was with Hendricks—and he was powerfully upset—and the demons, he tried not to let any of this show in the moment. “I hate that I let the team down.” It always came back to football for him, and he’d learned long ago that a coach more readily accepted an apology. They’d still chew you out, but it usually cut it down a little. Only a truly vindictive person would continue to harp on someone after they’d accepted an apology. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, shit,” Reeve said, nodding. “I can’t say that … sight this morning … didn’t send my stomach in a few different directions. Still, we had a hell of a lot go wrong today, Arch. And yeah, you did let down the team.” Reeve straightened in his doorway. “But hell, you’ll be paying for it later today with the rest of us.” He waved at Arch, and Arch headed toward him tentatively. “Come on in. We got things to talk about.”

“Oh?” Arch asked, taking slow steps toward the sheriff.

“Yeah,” Reeve said, and then turned back into his office. “Just when you think the shit can’t hit the fan any harder, another fucking turd splatters every-goddamn-where.”

* * *

Gideon awoke just before dawn. He could see the first hints of it peeking out from behind the red curtains. He sniffed as he came to consciousness, and the smell was all burn, flesh roasted and flambéed. It wasn’t a bad smell; it, reminded him just a little of cooked meat. He rolled slightly to look at the hooker. She was still there, facedown on the bed. Other than being pallid as all hell, she looked like she was sleeping in a doggy-style position, face down in the pillow. He rolled her over just to see what kind of damage his jizz could do to the human body, and holy shit, motherfucker—

Gideon rolled off the bed. He’d seen some foul deaths in his time. It was part of who he was, after all. Car accidents that rendered people wide fucking open or decapitated them. Homicides by serial killers who knew how to make the agony last. This, though—this might be one of the more grotesque things he had seen.

The hooker was burned clean through from her pelvis all the way up to her gullet. A three-inch wide trench stretched from just below her mid-throat down, down to where her vagina had been. It was seared inside, crispy and bloodless, cauterized through and through.

He’d left her hollowed out and he could see it. Her lifeless eyes were as empty as her insides now.

Gideon hurriedly dressed, peeking at the spot on the bed where his emission had burned through her. The sheets were seared and blackened, and he leaned over to look down. There was hole straight through the mattress, the box springs. He got down on all fours to look, and saw a black scar under the bed, barely visible as the sun’s rays were starting to shed light through the curtains.

Gideon ran a hand into the scarred floor and felt concrete an inch or two down. A subfloor. In a bedroom? He wondered if it was meant to be soundproofing or just the lucky results of a renovation. Whatever the case, it had stopped his spooge from burning its way through into the first floor below. He didn’t know where that might have ended, but it probably wouldn’t have gotten him any more sleep.

When he was finished pulling on his socks and shoes, he looked around the room quickly. He hadn’t brought anything with him except the rune and his cash, and those were both safely in his pockets. He opened the door to the hallway and looked out. There was no one visible, so he crept out and closed the door behind him.

He walked toward the stairs, his feet making little noise as he took care to mind his steps. He went down the carpeted stairwell and reached the bottom, about to grab the gilded handle to the front door when a voice stopped him.

“Did you have a relaxing night, Mr. Gideon?” Melina Cherry called out to him from behind and Gideon turned to see her standing in the frame of a door under the stairs, still wearing that same silky robe that was split open.

“Oh, yeah, great—uh—night of sleep,” Gideon said. He had the handle in his hand. The door was right there.

“Was Colleen to your satisfaction?” Melina asked and arched her arms out, one hand on each side of the door frame. The gesture split her robe open wider, and Gideon stared at her breasts for just a moment. He really didn’t see any appeal in them. They were just round lumps of skin with a discoloration in the middle.

“Oh, she certainly satisfied me,” Gideon said with a nod. His hand clutched tighter on the handle. “I think I might have worn her out, though.” He tilted his head toward the stairs. “She was still sleeping when I left.”

“Of course,” Ms. Cherry gave him a smile that was all politeness. “I hope you’ll grace us with your presence again, Mr. Gideon. Colleen would certainly enjoy spending time with you in the future.”

“Sure she would,” Gideon said without any inflection.

“And if your tastes were to change, I or my other girl would love to help you fulfill all your fantasies,” Ms. Cherry said with that same smile. “Good day to you, Mr. Gideon.”

“Good day,” Gideon replied stiffly. He opened the door and walked out. The air was heating up already, felt humid. He looked up and saw a sky half-filled with clouds. By the time he’d reached the bottom step of the porch he thought for sure he’d be sweating any moment now. Had to be.

He got to the car and started it up in a hurry. He looked up at the whorehouse, the faded panels and worn siding. He hit the accelerator and knew he’d have to get a new car. Soon. Real soon. He rolled the window down and stared up at the second floor window where he had spent last night. Where he’d done something he’d never done before.

Taken a human life when he was RIGHT THERE. It was a new kind of high. He was discovering lots of those lately. It was an awakening for him.

As he was pulling away, he heard the screaming start. He steered a left at the end of the street, headed out toward the edge of town. It wouldn’t do for him to get caught now. Not yet. He had one last thing to do before he left this town for good.

And it was gonna be the biggest high yet.

He was sure of it.

Erin killed the lights and sirens on the patrol car as she pulled onto Water Street. She could see Arch’s Explorer, the doors just opening. She’d gotten the call when she was a good ways out of town but hauled ass to get there. She’d heard of the whorehouse here, but knew that Reeve hadn’t ever gone after them because they’d kept their noses clean of complaints.

As she let the car drift to a stop, she suspected his days of letting it slide were pretty well over.

Reeve and Arch were getting out of the Explorer, which was an interesting pairing. She wondered how far up the sheriff’s shit list Arch was sitting at this point.

She opened the door and felt the warmth of the semi-cloudy day shine down on her. The air reeked of weed. She looked down the street and saw a guy standing out on his porch with a joint in his hand. She gave him a hard stare and he put the joint behind him. Dumbass.

“I’m gonna go talk that possession charge waiting to be booked,” Reeve said as he stepped up to the curb. “See if he saw anything.”

“Be gentle,” Erin said, “he looks dumb.”