Blood Oath, Blood River (The Downwinders Book 1) Read online

  “That IS a trip,” Winn said.

  “It’s hard to describe how it feels, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Kind of like…well, no…like…”

  “Hard to describe, I know. Did you think about anything? What were you walling off?”

  “Nothing. Didn’t think about anything.”

  “Great. Maybe it’ll wall off everything, by default.”

  “Or nothing. How would we know, unless someone who can read minds tested us.”

  “We could try it with Carma,” Deem said. “I think she can read minds. A little, at least.”

  “We could stop there on the way out to Kanab tomorrow, and see. Do you want to leave them in, until then?”

  “God no!” Deem said. She placed the emblem at the back of her head and pressed. Her head fell forward onto the table, making the dishes jump.

  “Fuck,” Winn said, sliding out of his side of the booth and back in next to Deem. He raised her head off the table and laid it on his shoulder. The waitress walked by again, and gave Winn a patronizing look that seemed to say, “I’m so sorry it happened again, but I’m glad I don’t have that fucking disease!”

  Winn smiled at the waitress as he patted Deem’s cheek, trying to revive her. After a moment she opened her eyes.

  “Please don’t do that again in public,” Winn said.

  “I passed out again?” Deem asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you came to my rescue,” she said, noticing how close he was sitting next to her. She patted his leg under the table. “I’m OK now, big boy. Thank you.”

  “Did it come out?” Winn asked.

  They both dropped briefly into the River. Deem’s emblem turned into the small snake, twisting in her palm and rising its head to slide around her little finger. Winn’s emblem remained a beaded circle.

  “Apparently so,” Deem said.

  “How’d it feel?”

  “The same. Blackout. Now I feel like I have a headache growing deep in there.”

  “I imagine pulling a wall out of your head would be a little painful. I’m leaving mine in until later tonight.” He slid out of the booth from Deem and back to his original side. “I’ve got someone coming over tonight, and I want to see what it feels like while having sex.”

  “That’s so stupid,” Deem said. “It walls off memories. It’s not extascy.”

  “How would you know about extascy?” Winn asked, smiling at her.

  “We learned about it in health class,” Deem replied. “If you think that snake in your head is going to make you have a more intense orgasm or something, you’re crazy. It just walls off memories.”

  “I was thinking more about having it wall off memories about the best sex I’ve ever had,” Winn said, poking at a couple of lingering French fries on his plate. “It would make even shitty sex seem great.”

  Deem rolled her eyes. “Let’s go,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “It’ll be after midnight before we get home. And we’ve got a big day tomorrow.” She slipped the emblem into her pants pocket and pulled out her phone.

  “Texting mommy?” Winn said as he stood up and paid the tab.

  “She worries about me,” Deem said. “And I worry about her, since Dad died. Pick me up tomorrow? For the drive to Kanab?”

  “Sure,” Winn said, pushing open the doors to the restaurant and walking outside. “Kanab will take two hours, so I’ll be to your place around nine.”

  They walked out to Winn’s Jeep, Deem texting as she walked. Winn stopped when he saw the Jeep, and Deem bumped into him.

  “What the fuck, Winn?” Deem said. She saw him standing still, staring at the Jeep. She walked around him, and saw what he was looking at.

  On top of the Jeep was a large animal with black hair. It was lying on its side, its head draped over the windshield. Its throat had been cut, and the blood had drained down the windshield and under the hood. Someone had used their finger to write two words in the blood: SUFFER. ATONE.

  “Fuuuuck!” Deem said, turning to Winn. He stared at the car, unmoving. She turned to look around the parking lot, scanning for who might have done the act. Aside from a dozen other cars spread throughout the lot, she saw nothing.

  “Who would do this?” she asked, walking up to the car. Winn slowly followed her. She could see that the animal was a large dog, a black lab.

  “Suffer?” she said, turning back to Winn. “What the fuck? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Winn said. “But I can guess.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Deem swung at the alarm clock, hitting the snooze. After removing the dog from the Jeep, they’d driven to a car wash. She’d told Winn to take an extra hour, and pick her up at ten. She wanted to sleep in.

  Now the extra hour didn’t seem enough. It was nine-thirty, and she had just enough time to get up and shower before Winn would arrive. She groggily dropped one foot out of the bed and onto the carpet in her room, then swung herself up and used the momentum of the swing to propel herself into the bathroom.

  After cleaning up and dressing she walked downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen.

  “Good morning, dear,” Margie said.

  “Aunt Virginia get off OK?” Deem asked.

  “Yes. I wish you would have gotten up and said goodbye to her.”

  “I said goodbye last night, mom. Six a.m. is way too early.” Deem removed a box of cereal from a cabinet and poured a bowl.

  “She wanted to get an early start. Oh, some mail came for you this morning.”

  “I never get mail,” Deem said, walking over to the envelope her mother had set aside for her.

  “It’s from the church,” Margie said, watching over her shoulder as she opened it. “So it must be important.”

  Deem read the letter. Before she could get past the first sentence, she heard Winn honking outside.

  “Gotta go, Mom,” Deem said, folding the letter back up.

  “What did it say?” Margie asked, following her as she walked to the front door.

  “I don’t know,” Deem said, opening the door and running out. “I’ll let you know. Bye!”

  She shut the door and ran to Winn’s Jeep. She could still see some blood caked below the windshield wipers.

  “You gotta get another car wash,” Deem said as she got in.

  “Yeah, I saw that this morning once it was light,” Winn said. “What’s that in your hand?”

  “Oh, a letter I just got,” Deem said, strapping the seat belt around her as Winn took off. “It’s from the church.”

  “The church?” Winn said.

  “Yeah,” Deem said, turning the envelope toward him. She pointed her finger at the logo in the left corner of the envelope. “Official.”

  “What’s it say?” he asked.

  “Don’t know, haven’t read it yet,” she said, opening it up once again. She unfolded the stationery. Winn could see another logo at the top of the page. He let her read silently for a minute.

  “They’re excommunicating me,” Deem said, dropping her hands to her sides. “I’m being called to a Bishop’s Court.”

  “So what?” Winn said. “You hate it anyway.”

  “This is to hurt my mother,” Deem said. “This will devastate her. To her it means I won’t be in heaven with her, in the next life. This is Dayton’s doing, to get back at me by hurting her. What an asshole.”

  “What’s a Bishop’s Court?” Winn asked.

  “They haul you in front of a group of men and grill you,” Deem said. “I heard my father talk about it, since he sat in on many of them. It’s usually reserved for criminals, adulterers, and apostates.”

  “Well, you’re certainly an apostate,” Winn said.

  “Not really,” Deem said. “I’m just a jack Mormon. I don’t go to church, I’m not active, but they don’t excommunicate inactives. Half the church is inactive, they’d be half as big if they did that. They only excommunicate when they want to make a point.”

  “Are you going to go
to the Bishop’s Court?” Winn asked.

  “Oh, hell no,” Deem said. “That’s playing by their rules. I’m not going to sit there and defend myself while the fix is in. They’ll ex me in absentia. And excommunicating the daughter of a former stake president is a big deal, this’ll be talked about. I don’t care, really. It’s my mom. She’ll bear the brunt of it. Dayton knew it would hurt her. The fucker.”

  “She’ll survive,” Winn said.

  “I don’t know,” Deem said, looking out the window. “You don’t know how hard they make it. Her whole social structure is the ladies in her ward. An excommunicated daughter means she was a bad mother. Some of them will shun her, others will treat her differently. She’s used to a certain level of respect because my father was a stake president. That’ll all be gone now. That will be hell for her.”

  “After we take care of this shaman,” Winn said, “we’ll figure out how to get back at Dayton. We’ll make him pay for hurting your mom like this.”

  “Tit for tat,” Deem said. “I wonder what the charges are.”

  “Charges?”

  “Oh, they have to accuse you of something in order to do this,” Deem said, shaking the paper between them in the car. “They’ve trumped up something. It would be interesting to hear what.”

  Winn wound his way through the gorge, slowing for trucks and watching out for cops. Deem looked up at the steep mountain faces, some natural, others carved for the freeway. Whenever she drove through the gorge, she always thought she saw small cave openings in the rocks, high up on the sides of the mountain. It looked like hundreds of places to hide. As a little girl, she’d considered hiding in those imagined caves when she contemplated running away after fighting with her parents. Now she wanted to climb up into one of them, and just leave all of the turmoil behind. The shaman, the journals, Claude, the skinrunner, the excommunication, her mother, Awan, and Winn – just hole up in one of those caves up there with a supply of food, and ride it out, wait for it all to pass. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She’d fought alongside Winn as they tackled zombighosts and other creatures over the years, but meeting Claude and learning of her father’s involvement with the secret council had caused her to grow up fast. The adults she trusted as a child were turning out to be false, untrustworthy, cruel. Can’t run away from this, she thought. Time to woman up.

  “You OK?” Winn asked.

  “I’m alright,” Deem said. “I guess having your history ripped out from under you makes more of an impact than I thought it would.”

  “That’s how they want you to feel,” Winn said. “Your history is still yours. You just have a more honest perspective on it now. That’s better. That’s healthier. Maybe they did you a favor.”

  “That’s why they call it a ‘Court of Love,’” she replied.

  “You’re shitting me,” Winn said.

  “No, really,” Deem said. “They call this excommunication court a ‘Court of Love.’”

  “Oh, that’s funny,” Winn said. “And kinda creepy at the same time!”

  “I know!” Deem said. “I always thought it was strange when I heard someone call it that.”

  “Don’t let these fuckers get you down, Deem,” Winn said. “That’s what they want.”

  “I’ll be OK,” she said. “It’s just a little jarring. I didn’t think they’d go there. But they’re really capable of anything, aren’t they?”

  “You saw what they did to Claude,” Winn said. “What makes you think they won’t do that to you?”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  They arrived at Carma’s and she welcomed them in with open arms. “Awan with you?” she asked.

  “No,” Winn said as she released him from a hug. “His mother is having surgery today.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know,” Carma said. She grabbed Winn’s upper arm right at the bicep and gave him a squeeze. “You don’t need his permission to come ’round, either of you! You can stop by anytime. I was thinking I might see you last night, Deem.” She pulled Winn by the bicep into the house.

  “I was planning to,” Deem said, “but we had something come up, and I had to meet Awan in Vegas. We’re having some trouble with a shaman that we need to do some research on later today.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the skinwalker epidemic?” Carma asked as they walked down the hallway to the sitting area with the view of the back yard. “Sit down and I’ll get you something to drink.”

  Deem fell into the soft chair she’d enjoyed at their last visit, and looked out over Carma’s backyard. I suppose it’s Lyman’s back yard, too, she thought. In the daytime she had a better view of the trees and bushes, and the beautiful lawn. The hill rising behind the yard made it all seem so private. There were occasional outcroppings of red rock on the hill, giving it an interesting range of color. Set against the deep green of the lawn and the trees, it looked beautiful.

  Carma returned with a Diet Coke for Deem and an iced tea for Winn. “Now tell me about this shaman,” she said, taking an iced tea for herself and joining them in the sitting room.

  Deem relayed the story of the skinrunner and how they’d managed to neutralize him. When she mentioned the blood river, Carma’s eyes went wide and she interrupted Deem.

  “Oh, you didn’t!” she shrieked. “Tell me you didn’t!”

  “Didn’t what?” Deem said, confused.

  “Tell me you did not walk into that awful place,” Carma said.

  “The blood river?” Deem asked.

  “Yes,” Carma said. “You didn’t go in, did you?”

  “I stuck my hand in it,” Deem said. “And my feet.”

  “Oh no,” Carma said, shooting up out of her chair. She began to wring her hands. “Well, Awan didn’t know. He thought he was helping you. He should have talked to me first.” She disappeared into another room.

  Deem looked at Winn. “What the fuck?” she mouthed to him. He shrugged and took a sip of his iced tea, looking in the direction Carma had gone. “I don’t know!” he mouthed back.

  “Here,” they heard Carma say before she entered the room. “Here!” She had a book in her hand, and she handed something to Deem in the other. Deem opened her hand and Carma dropped three small, round yellow balls in her hand. They looked like peas.

  “Eat them!” Carma said. She opened the book and began reading from it, chanting in a strange language. Deem was beginning to feel freaked out, and she turned to look at Winn. He gave her another shrug, and she turned back to look at Carma, her face in the book, struggling to pronounce the words. Carma looked up, and saw the peas still in Deem’s hand.

  “You have to eat them while I’m saying it, dear,” Carla said. “Or it won’t work.”

  “What are they?” Deem asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleansing you,” Carma said. “You may have washed the blood from your hands and feet, but you’re still tainted by it. Not all of it comes off by washing. Go on, they won’t hurt you.”

  Deem popped the peas into her mouth. They were hard and she had to bite down on them with her molars for them to pop. Once she had them chewed down small enough, she swallowed them and chased them with a gulp of Diet Coke.

  Carma continued chanting, watching as she drank. She completed the chant and closed the book, then returned to her seat next to Winn.

  “Now promise me you’ll not go near the place again,” she said, looking pleadingly at Deem.

  “We needed to,” Deem said. “It was the only way to deal with the skinrunner.”

  “There’s other ways, Awan just didn’t know,” Carma said. “The other blood rivers are fine, but that one is polluted.”

  “Its mutation is what made the ghost corporeal,” Deem said. “That’s why it worked. Because of the radiation.”

  “But what else does it do?” Carma asked. “What else is different about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Deem said. “We were just operating off what Awan said.”

 
“He didn’t know,” Carma said. “Just promise me you won’t go there, again. Will you do that?”

  “I suppose,” Deem said.

  “Sure,” Winn said. “We have no reason to go back.”

  “And I want you to keep an eye on that hand,” Carma said. “Which hand was it?”

  “My hand?” Deem asked. “You mean the one I put in the blood river?”

  “Yes,” Carma said. “Was it your left, or your right?”

  “My right,” Deem said, holding it up.

  “I want you to wrap it in a brown paper bag every night for the next week,” Carma said, looking stern. “Spray the bag with a mixture of distilled water, Epsom salts, ground thyme, and a drop of rabbit urine. Do you have a little bit of rabbit urine at home?”

  Deem saw Winn successfully control a spit-take of his tea.

  “No,” Deem said calmly, “I don’t have any rabbit urine at home.”

  “Well, I’ll give you some before you go,” Carma said, leaning back in her seat. “It won’t work at all if you don’t use the rabbit pee. Now tell me about the letter you received.”

  Deem was dumbfounded. Carma moved from one thing to the next at breakneck speed. Further, Deem hadn’t mentioned anything about the letter to her. She can read minds, Deem thought.

  “You’ve been thinking about it since you got here,” Carma said. “That and the windshield and the mindwalls. Start with the letter. What was it?”

  “Bishop’s Court,” Deem said. “Excommunication.”

  “Delicious!” Carma said. “For who?”

  “Me.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Carma said, rising from her chair and extending her arms to Deem. Deem stood up and let Carma hug her. “Congratulations, my dear.”

  “Thanks, but I’m afraid it will not be a congratulatory thing for my mother.”

  “She doesn’t know it yet,” Carma said, “because she’s brainwashed. But when she comes around, she’ll realize it was the best thing for you.”