Free Depths: Southern Watch #2 by Robert J. Crane

build, long hair around the sides but way bald on top. The guy was wearing—no shit—a t-shirt that said nothing but Nike, and a pair of khaki cargo pants. He had on a pair of white tennis shoes, and his legs were pale enough that Hendricks knew he was a northerner in a heartbeat. The legs looked just like Hendricks’s when he didn’t have his jeans on.
    “Morning,” Hendricks said, tipping his hat to the guy as he passed. He’d learned that this was the way things were done in the South, greeting everybody you passed. That shit didn’t fly in the North.
    The guy said nothing, just sort of nodded as he went by.
    Hendricks didn’t think much of it. Lots of people were unfriendly like that, and he ached too much to dwell on it or give a shit. He pulled his key and opened his door, disappearing inside to where slightly cooler air waited. And possibly a shower.
     
    * * *
     
    Gideon just nodded at the cowboy as he passed him. He looked back when he was sure the guy wasn’t watching him, and saw him go into the room next door. Shit.
    He knew the cowboy, had felt it when the cowboy had cut loose a couple of demons in a bar last night. That black hat and black coat. There was a sword in there somewhere; he remembered the vision of those Y’freiti demons getting stabbed right through. He’d filed it away at the time, indifferent, because demon deaths didn’t do anything for him. He stared at the cowboy’s back as the man retreated into his room and closed the door.
    Still, a demon hunter in the next room? That was some nerve-racking shit for him to deal with. Gideon had no plans to do anything that would cross the cowboy, but it was still unnerving. Demon hunters and demons weren’t exactly good neighbors, though apparently the cowboy hadn’t seen his real face. Which was fortunate, because Gideon wasn’t much of a killer. He was more of a voyeur.
    Still, if the cowboy figured things out …
    Nah. Gideon turned and kept on walking. He needed something to eat, needed to get out for a while and stretch his legs. Besides, if his nose didn’t deceive him, he smelled death coming nearby. Really close, in fact. It was too tantalizing to pass up. And why not be deathly close when it came? He’d never really tried that before.
    Gideon put thoughts of the cowboy out of his mind for now and turned to walk over to his rental car. He’d just head toward the death he felt coming for now and leave everything else to be dealt with later.

 
     
Chapter 5
     
    Lerner stared out the window of the hotel and watched rain start. Again. Last night had been a downpour, the little Holiday Inn-style thirty-unit building buffeted by high winds and a hard rain all night long. He’d gone to sleep listening to it tap on the roof, the sound of Duncan’s slow breathing in the bed next to his as familiar as eating. Not as enjoyable, though.
    He put his hand on the glass and felt the slight chill from it across the tips of his fingers. He’d often given a lot of thought to the fact that the shell over his essence breathed the way a human did, could feel sensation and even had a sense of smell the way a human’s did, but contained none of the organs of a human. No liver, kidneys, heart or lungs. On the occasions where they stumbled across dead humans and he had a few minutes, he liked poke around inside, see what was going on in there. Lerner thought being a doctor would have been a magnificent career, if only for the opportunity to poke around inside real, living human beings.
    Of course, he didn’t really care whether they lived or died, so that probably disqualified him.
    Still, the knowledge was interesting. He remembered the smell of the kitchen in the house they’d raided last night. The corpse was so different from a living person. It wasn’t better or worse, just different. The sight of a gutted human didn’t offend him, really, it just bothered him from a job perspective. It meant paperwork. It meant headaches. When there were