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

  He waited and wondered what he was waiting for. Approval? Hah. Not from these hicks. Never. They were so far beneath him as to not even register. He gave a sort of shrug, entirely to himself and which only he understood, dismissing them all, and turned to the book which one of the fleas he had hired was holding out for him.

  The words that came out next were probably entirely perplexing to the farmer and his wife and not understood even by any of his four employees, but again, who cared? Not him. He understood every word of the language, because it was his first. Besides, it hadn’t been spoken on earth in millennia. And certainly not conversationally, even then.

  “Vecede en shi, vecede en barten, urgan ves pui, urgan ves porsace.” He let his mind do the translating, “I beckon you forward from the nether realms, O Mighty, and seek to join my form to yours. I call you forth from the darker regions, to the rock of Earth, call you up from the depths to become one with me, to join your dark purpose to mine, and sacrifice this mortal in your name.”

  With that, he covered the distance between himself and the farmer in an eyeblink, as fast as his feet could carry him, and he took the farmer’s throat in his hands. He squeezed, just a gentle little bit for him but strong enough that it broke the farmer’s skin, the veins just below the surface. The rush of blood sprayed forth, right in his face. It should have been a relief from the smell of cow shit, but it wasn’t, sadly. It was as though everything in this forsaken place was tainted by it. He said the name Ygrusibas as he tore into the farmer’s throat then waited, waited with the blood on his hands and face and suit as the farmer gurgled his last and was dropped to the muddy, grassy ground next to the boys. Hollywood’s boys. He liked that name they’d come up with for him; it fit everything he’d come to align himself with over the last fifty or so years. It was a good image. He took a breath, and he waited.

  He waited, and waited, and the earth did not shake, the mountains around him did not burst forth with torrents of fire. The ground did not erupt with all the flames and cold of hell. The smell of cow shit pervaded the air and things remained just about like they’d always been. He didn’t really expect any of those things to happen, but it damned sure would have been nice. Any sign would have been nice. Instead, cold, stark silence. And the smell of cow shit.

  “Fuck,” Hollywood said.

  “Did you … read it wrong?” Sleeveless asked. Hollywood shot Sleeveless a look that told him he was going to be changing his name to Ball-less soon enough, and that was the last that was said for a piece. Hollywood walked back to him, read the ritual again—AGAIN—out loud, said the words, same tone, same cadence—same fucking words he’d spoken for thousands of years, he knew how to fucking read them, stupid fucking hillbilly trash questioning him like that. Then he crushed the farmer’s wife’s throat and made sure she bled on him, because the blood of the sacrifice was key to bringing forth Ygrusibas and always had been. He waited again, this time for a minute, then two.

  “Fuck,” he cursed again quietly. “Fuck, shit, fuck.” This time, none of his boys said anything. They damned well learned quick, for stupid hillbillies. “Get out your cell phone,” he told Sleeveless and had him hold it over the book. He read the words again, this time not trusting his memory and the dim light. The words were the same, the exact same as they had been. Exactly what he’d read. He cursed again. Still, his boys said nothing. At least there was that. He flipped to the page before, the page after. Nothing new, nothing unexpected. The words were terse, some obscure, some annoyingly so, since Hollywood had been on earth a damned long time. Too damned long, actually. “Am I losing it in my old age?” he whispered out loud.

  “Naw,” Sleeveless said.

  “Wasn’t looking for audience participation, dumbass,” Hollywood snapped at him, and Sleeveless took the hint. Good dog. He let his fingers rest on his mouth, his chin, and he tried to contemplate, but nothing was coming to him. He was a problem solver, a fixer, a producer, for fuck’s sake! “All right, okay. The timing was off, maybe? The day, maybe? Whatever. This isn’t that time sensitive. We’ll try again tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, and however many days it takes to get it right. This was just a rehearsal.”

  He looked over the boys, still standing over the fallen bodies of the farmer and his wife. “You got people in this town, right? In this county?” He looked off at the horizon, which was dominated by hills. The locals called them mountains, but Hollywood had been in the High Sierras once, on location. These were hills. Not even a lick of snow. “We’ll need a couple more tomorrow night. Maybe three, just to be safe. And we’ll keep going, keep going until I crack it. Shouldn’t take long, I probably mispronounced something. I’ll study it up, make sure I do it right next time.” He looked at the corpses in the mud and gestured to them. “I know you’d probably prefer fresh, but … y’know, take what you can get and all that …”

  The four of them, his boys, his employees, fell on the bodies, ripping and tearing the flesh. They may have looked human, those boys, but he had known they weren’t when he came into town. He could smell them, could smell them a mile off. There was a sort of connection between their kind, the ability to see beyond, to see the signs of each other’s passage. He’d sniffed them out, followed their signs back to their trailer, caught them all doing meth. It passed the time, he supposed. Hollywood preferred pot, to stimulate the creative juices, but hey, he didn’t begrudge his fellows their vices. He watched the boys rip into the farmer and his wife and frowned. Even if it was flesh that probably tasted of cowshit.

  ***

  Creampuff watched the demons devour the farmer and his wife, dimly aware that they had been the ones that had fed her before, kept her, had cleaned out her pen. It was a messy business, what they were doing to Creampuff’s former master, but something else told her it was wholly natural, demons feeding on the flesh of humans. The voice that was speaking to her was unusual, as Creampuff was just a Jersey cow, though she didn’t know it. She’d heard the farmer say it, but it didn’t matter enough to her to be worth remembering. It mattered now just a little, though, because the new voice was talking, wanting to know what she was, what she was doing, why she had called him forth. The voice had the run of her brain, though, and figured things out pretty quickly. Certainly more quickly than the simple Jersey cow who had been named Creampuff by a man who was presently having his flesh stripped off him by four men who were not men at all. But that was all right, too, Creampuff was told by the voice. The voice that was in her ear, in her body, in her heart and even her very soul, to the extent she had such a thing. It told her all these things, all these things and more, before it realized that it was talking to a cow and decided to just start trying to steer for itself. But for a while, it was a very civil conversation. She was told many, many things, including a name, the name of the voice in her head.

  Ygrusibas.

  2.

  Arch parked his police cruiser, a big Ford Explorer with sheriff’s office markings, in the lot behind the station, a big old brick building that had been built in 1942. It was flat and square, with that age-stained brick that was so common on local government buildings in this part of Tennessee. It had air conditioning which had been put in in the eighties and probably hadn’t ever worked right. The walk through the rain-dampened lot was short. Arch pulled open the big Plexiglass door to the station without giving it much thought. It was armored, a concession to the fact that modern law enforcement dealt with risks that hadn’t been much of a worry back when the building had been built. The times were changing, even in rural Calhoun County, Tennessee, and in ways that the first occupants of the building would probably not have wanted to have to deal with.

  Arch saw his way through the second door and felt the stale air of the station coursing around him as he walked in. The air was just as humid inside but maybe a degree or two cooler. Arch suspected that was due more to it being under the shadow of the roof all day than to with the ineffectual air conditioner.

  “Hey, Arch,�
� Erin said from behind the desk as he navigated his way around the waist-high wooden gate that separated the waiting area from the official space behind the counter. “You made it with a minute to spare.”

  “Yep.” Arch slid back around a desk to where the time clock sat, an old, ugly thing that might have been installed at the same time as the building was built, and slid his card out before punching it into the designated slot. “And here I was hoping for a bounteous harvest of overtime with which to support my not-yet burgeoning family.”

  “More like support your wife in the manner in which she was raised.” The voice was warm but carried the faint prickle of familiarity and truth that Arch had come to expect from the sheriff. He turned and caught the wry smile of the balding man standing at the entrance to his office, arms folded as he watched his employees banter back and forth. “I trust your patrol was in line with what we’ve come to expect of our glorious careers in Calhoun County law enforcement?”

  “Pretty boring, yeah,” Arch said, putting his time card back where it belonged. “If I’d wanted to liven things up, though, I would have tried for a job in Chattanooga or Knoxville.”

  “Out there in the big, bad world?” Erin said with a laugh. She was cute, all the guys said so—blond, barely out of high school, spent as much time in the gym as she did in the bar. Which was considerable. She mostly worked dispatch, though Arch had heard her say she wanted to be on patrol. That was harder to come by now, though, with the budget cuts.

  “I’ve never even heard of those places,” Sheriff Reeve said, scratching his chin.

  “You wouldn’t have,” Arch said, dutifully playing the straight man and foil to set up the sheriff’s wry delivery. “They are outside of Calhoun County, after all.”

  “There’s no such thing,” Reeve said with a straight face. “Didn’t you hear? The world ends outside the county line. Just drops straight off and down into infinite nothingness.”

  “You know, boss,” Erin said, “you take flat-earthing to a new level.”

  “I’ll assume that’s a compliment,” Reeve said with a sort of satisfaction. “There’s something to be said for being a little mule-headed, after all.”

  “You mean a stubborn-ass?” Erin said with a muffled laugh.

  “I call it uncompromising,” Reeve said. “Sounds better to my ears.”

  “Yeah, well, I call it a long day.” Arch rubbed at his eyes.

  “I thought you said it was boring?” Reeve let off a hint of interest at this.

  “It was,” Arch said with a grin. “That’s the hardest day of all. I wouldn’t mind a little action.”

  “Not gonna find that in Midian,” Erin said, “and probably not much of it in Calhoun, period. What are you gonna run up against? Some old moonshiner making a break from his still? Some idiot blowing up his meth lab? Or some addict strolling naked down Main Street?”

  “All I ask is a little excitement,” Arch said with a weary smile. “Something to liven up the dull days.”

  “You best be careful what you wish for,” Reeve said with a smile of his own. The man was a thirty-year veteran of law enforcement and knew what he was talking about, Arch knew. “You might find yourself wishing differently shortly thereafter.”

  “If you want some excitement,” Erin said, opening her drawer and grabbing her purse, “I’m meeting Wade and Harlan down at Fast Freddie’s for a few beers. That’d liven up your night.”

  “I wished for more exciting days,” Arch said with a smile directed at Erin. “The missus keeps my nights about as lively as I can presently manage.”

  “Listen to that college-educated gentleman and his fancy understatement,” Reeve said with a chuckle. “That’s about the most candy-assed way I ever heard a newlywed talk about how much he’s getting laid.”

  Arch let his smile tighten. He wouldn’t have said it like that, not ever, but he was getting used to Reeve doing it. The man didn’t mean anything by it; it was just the way he talked. Time was, Sheriff Nicholas Reeve could just about blow the smile off Arch’s face with minimal effort. The job interview had consisted of a steady stream of profanities, something Arch hadn’t much dealt with until he had started playing football. Now he was used to it, but he’d still been a little surprised when he encountered it in a job interview. He shouldn’t have been, though; Reeve operated the Sheriff’s Department pretty close to how a football coach ran a locker room. There wasn’t much room for squeamishness. He glanced toward Erin, who was too busy locking up her drawer to even look up. What might have been called a hostile working environment in a big-city department was just the norm in Calhoun County. Arch expected Reeve had probably screened someone like Erin before hiring her to make sure she wasn’t the sort to find offense in much of anything. Which was fortunate.

  “Don’t even have nothing to say to that?” Reeve asked with a smile of his own. “You just gonna sit there with that shit-eating grin, aren’t you? I don’t blame you. I was newly married once myself, though I barely remember it. You could at least make a show of trying to give an old man a thrill by letting him live vicariously, though.” Reeve wasn’t exactly old, only in his mid-fifties, but the time sitting in the car and behind a desk had caught up with him. He wasn’t enormous like some of the older lawmen Arch had met, but he was a little soggier around the waist than Arch would have been comfortable being. He still managed to look like a starched lawman in his khaki uniform, though, with his big old revolver on his belt.

  “Maybe talk to Harris about that,” Arch said finally, nodding at Erin. “She’s a barfly, probably has more exciting stories to tell than I do.”

  “Who, me?” Erin said, looking up in surprise. “Nah, I ain’t got nothing interesting going on, not for a while. If I did, I wouldn’t be hanging out in Fast Freddie’s every night.” She gave off a smile that showed her perfectly even teeth. “Besides, you know there ain’t nothing worth having in this town ain’t already been gotten. Bought and paid for,” she pointed to the ring on Arch’s finger. “Speaking of which, you best run along; you know if you’re even five minutes late, your missus starts calling the station wondering where you’re at.”

  “Sure enough,” Reeve said, but the way he said it came out “sho ’nuff.” He drawled with the best of them. “Y’all have a good night.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” Erin said as Arch rounded the counter on the way back out to his cruiser. The department had gotten the new Explorer before the budget cutbacks. It was the only new vehicle they’d purchased in the last five years, and Arch suspected it had pained Reeve more than a little to pass it off to the most junior patrolman. He’d done it, though, for reasons that Arch didn’t want to delve too deeply into.

  “You sure you don’t want to come with me to Fast Freddie’s?” Harris asked again as they split, Arch heading to his Explorer and she to her little subcompact. Being on dispatch and not patrol, Erin drove her own car. “Maybe give Alison a call and take her out for a night on the town?”

  “We’re not much for drinking, you know,” Arch said, rubbing his hand over his stubbled head. He kept it pretty close to buzzed, as much for the convenience as for the regulation way it looked. Most people could tell he was a lawman just by looking at him, even when he was off duty—and that was even if the entire county hadn’t already known him. He worked hard to cultivate that image, though, to try to take away that familiarity that everyone presumed because he had been a local legend on the football field. “I doubt the missus is going to be much in the mood to go out after a long day on her feet at Rogerson’s.” Rogerson’s was the grocery store where she worked as an assistant manager. And hated it. And complained about it, every day, at length, to Arch. It was, however, a family business, and certain things were simply expected.

  “All right, then,” Erin said, slipping into her car seat and giving him a last wave. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”

  “I won’t,” Arch said tightly, “but thanks.” He got in and shut his door, turned
the key and listened to the rumble of the engine. The Explorer was a damned sight better than anything he would have been able to afford on his own, that was certain. He shifted it into reverse and slid out of the spot before Erin had a chance to even start her car. It was better this way; as wild as the girl surely was at the bar—and he had heard the tales from his co-workers—she was grandma-slow as a driver.

  Arch guided the car out of the parking lot, keeping to the lot limit even though almost no one else did, and turned right on the Old Jackson Highway, County Road 57. It was the main street that ran right through the middle of Midian, and it wasn’t but five or so minutes’ drive to his apartment. He took a deep breath as he waited for a semi to pass. He rubbed his eyes, let his fingers massage down his face as the big tractor trailer blew past on the rain-slicked street, the new-car smell thick in his nose as he thought for just a second about cutting his lights on and going after it. It was at least seven mph over, and he wrote tickets for less. But he was clocked out, Alison was expecting him, and he’d written tickets all day. It was all he did, write tickets and cite for broken taillights.

  “Is that all there is?” he asked the empty car, the turn signal clicking over and over again, tapping gently into his skull. The same boring day, over and over again, every day from now to retirement in some thirty or forty years.