Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted by Robert J. Crane

just looked disgusted, like he’d heard it all before and was tired of it. Deputy Stan still had that look of quiet fury in his eyes, and his wife was still just staring straight ahead, listening politely like she was at the fucking country club and someone had told her what was on the dinner menu. No big.
    “We got another one,” Deputy Stan said, breaking his silence. The big man looked more than a little irritable, and Lerner wondered if he’d had a bad morning already. Probably, the way this town was going.
    Lerner was still keeping an eye on the wife, though. Mrs. Stan was an interesting character, and showing zero reaction to the news that humans were a food source to demons? Lerner had his ideas of how a Southern belle should act, and they weren’t all based on cable TV viewings of Gone With the Wind , either. This chick was different, though. Real different. And not just because she carried a rifle that would make most real men shit their pants and run.
    He watched her, and she just listened to her husband. That same polite look, like she was taking it all in, with no reaction on the surface. What Lerner wondered, though, was what was going on beneath the facade?
    ***
    Erin was ready to chuck. She had that sick feeling in her gut like she was gonna, and she kinda just wanted to get it over with, just stick a finger down her throat and start the engine so she could finish and be on with life. The problem was, even if she emptied her stomach, the thing causing her to feel nauseated was still gonna hang around. It was like having your eyes opened so you could watch a snuff film. Not a great thing to wake up to.
    “Another what?” Hendricks asked. She was standing inches from him, could tell that he wasn’t too happy about the current topic of conversation, either. He didn’t look sick, just annoyed.
    “Another body,” she answered before Arch could. “Another murder.” She looked to Lerner and Duncan, those two weird-ass guys. “Another demon.”
    “Oh, yeah, look at us, like we dragged them to town,” Lerner said, eyebrows raised. She didn’t have too much sense of the man yet—though she supposed he wasn’t a man at all, was he? She had, however, decided that man or not, he was a dick.
    “Did I say that?” She was able to keep her tone calmer than she would have thought given how annoyed she was at him. “Or did I just look to you as our resident experts on demonology?” She paused and felt that slight satisfaction dissolve as she thought about what she’d just said. “If that’s a thing.”
    “Heh,” Lerner said and glanced at Duncan like he’d heard something hilarious. “Demonology.”
    “We got a body,” Arch said stiffly. More stiffly than usual. He looked a little pissed himself.
    “Just one?” Lerner asked, and some of the dickishness dissolved. At this point, Duncan reached up and tugged on Lerner’s arm. Erin didn’t get even close to the same vibe from him as she did from Lerner. Duncan seemed softer somehow, maybe because his face wasn’t quite as lean. Lerner kind of paused as he noticed what Duncan was doing, like he was actively reassessing what an ass he was being. “What is it this time?”
    “Looked like a real nasty hit and run,” Arch said. “Like someone was going a hundred miles an hour down a residential street, but no one heard an engine rev like that.”
    Lerner shrugged. “That’s not a lot to go on. Could be anything. Could be a car instead of a demon.” Duncan tugged his sleeve again and Lerner wavered for a second. “But assuming it was a demon, it could be almost any kind. Strength like the Hulk is not out of line for any number of types of our kind.”
    “How many types?” Erin asked. “Like, a dozen types? Or—”
    “A hundred,” Duncan answered, again almost apologetic. “Or at least somewhere between there and a thousand. A lot.”
    “Well, that don’t make it too easy to narrow down,” Arch said.
    “The worst part is that they’re