The Blood Gardener (The Dark River Book 2) Read online

  “The policemen who were here said he used a knife, or scissors, but I didn’t see either,” she said, lightly rubbing her fingers over the bandage on her hand. “I just felt the pain when he cut into me. At that point I remember yelling, but my voice was weak and gave out. Then his face slid down and he got off me, and the pressure was gone. I got up and walked to the bathroom, and saw what he had done. Then I called 911.”

  “You said ‘he’,” Derick replied. “You had the sense it was a male?”

  “An evil male spirit,” she answered. “Perhaps the devil himself, or one of his emissaries. I can’t prove it, of course. You probably think it was a burglar or something. It wasn’t that. It was something evil, not of this world.”

  She grabbed at her ear once again, and her face contorted in pain.

  “Mrs. Kessig?” Derick asked.

  This time she didn’t stop rubbing. The pain on her face seemed to grow, and she stuck her finger into her ear, as though she was trying to remove something. She looked at him, her eyes growing large.

  Something’s inside her, he thought. She’s realizing there’s something inside her.

  She stood and began to scream, pressing at her ear, trying to dig into it with her finger.

  Derick and Franklin shot to their feet, running to her.

  “There’s something in there!” she screamed, as Derick reached out to help. She flailed her arms, and Franklin grabbed for them, pulling them away so Derick could examine her.

  He inspected her ear; it looked red and inflamed from the aggressive rubbing, but in all other respects appeared fine. Trying to look farther into her ear canal, he wondering if an insect had somehow crawled into her.

  She screamed, twisting in Franklin’s arms, making it hard for him to see. Franklin tried to console her. “Let him see what’s going on!” he told her. “He’s trying to help you.”

  Derick reached out to still the movement of the woman’s head, once again pulling back the hair that had fallen over her ear while she squirmed. Then he saw it.

  Saw them.

  Hundreds of tiny insects emerged, streaming out of her ear, covering the side of her face within seconds. He let go of her head and stepped back in shock.

  “Let her go, Franklin!” Derick said. Franklin, confused, continued to hold onto her, trying to still her, but her contortions increased and she yelled repeatedly, her voice going out and turning to air. She raised her hands to the sides of her head, shaking it back and forth. Derick saw the insects crawl over her hand. They were moving toward her face.

  “Step back, Franklin!” Derick repeated. “She’s infected with something.”

  She was twisting and shaking so frantically that it was easy for Franklin to give up. He stepped back, watching her.

  “Do you see them?” Derick asked.

  “Yes,” Franklin replied. “What do we do?”

  “Call 911,” Derick said. “Don’t get any of them on you.”

  The insects continued to emerge. They looked like spiders and were no bigger than an eraser tip. They swarmed over the flesh of her face and reached her mouth and nose, quickly entering her there, filling her nostrils. Streams of the creatures passed over her eyes, attempting to reach the other side of her face, where they could access her mouth and nose from the opposite angle. Dozens of the creatures had fallen from her body, landing on the floor. He lost sight of them in the carpeting.

  Franklin fumbled with his phone as the woman began to struggle for air. Her hands reached to her nose, trying to wipe the spiders away from her face, but there were too many. Derick reached out to help her, wiping at her skin, and the insects crawled onto his hands, swarming up over his fingers. He pulled back, swatting at them, quickly wiping them from his flesh. He grabbed a magazine from the table and used it to scrape at the spiders, but hundreds had already reached her nostrils, crawling inside and disappearing. She opened her mouth, attempting to suck in air, and more swarmed inside, coating her tongue. She expelled a breath, and dozens of the insects flew into the air in front of her, falling to the ground.

  “Jesus Christ!” Franklin exclaimed as he waited for the 911 operator to pick up. “What’s happening to her? What do I tell them?”

  She lost her balance and fell to the floor, convulsing. Derick knelt next to her, struggling for something he might do. The creatures continued to emerge from her ear, racing across the skin of her face with tiny legs, moving deliberately toward her nose and mouth, intent upon reentering her.

  Derick rose and ran to another room, returning with a towel. He used it to wipe at her face, sending hundreds of the creatures to the floor below her head, crushing and smearing some of them. He saw the ones he’d wiped off reorient themselves and move back toward her. Her skin was beginning to turn blue from lack of oxygen. His first instinct was to perform CPR, but the insects continued to flow from her ear and into her nose, filling her throat and lungs; he wasn’t sure CPR would do anything for her.

  “Send an ambulance,” Franklin said into the phone, providing an address. “We’ve got an elderly woman having some kind of respiratory problem.”

  Derick continued to wipe at her with the towel, at times succeeding in keeping the spiders from entering her, but the ones that had already passed into her nostrils and mouth were now working from inside, filling her, cutting off her breathing. She convulsed again as she struggled for air, and Derick knew they were losing the battle; she had only moments left to live.

  “Yes, yes, I’m an ex-cop, I’ll handle CPR if needed, so I’m not going to stay on the phone,” Franklin said. “Just get medical here right away.” He hung up. “They’re coming.”

  Derick continued to wipe at the woman’s face, but for every insect he could send to the floor, just as many continued to her nose and mouth.

  “They’re cutting off her air supply,” Derick said. “I don’t know how to stop them.”

  “What the fuck are they?” Franklin said, coming closer. “Spiders?”

  The woman stopped breathing, and Derick knew she’d given up. Her eyes flew open in desperation, and Derick saw the spiders immediately crawl over her eyeballs. He stood, dropping the towel. They watched as dozens and dozens of the insects continued to emerge from her ear and stream into her nostrils.

  “I’ve heard of a spider nesting in an ear,” Franklin said, “but this is insane. What can we do?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Derick said. “Her lungs are full of them.” He moved closer to her, wanting a closer look at the insects. He grabbed the magazine and ripped off the cover. He folded it in half, and used the heavy paper to scoop up some of the creatures still streaming over her face. He brought them close so he could look at them.

  “No kind of spider I’ve ever seen,” he told Franklin. “Ten legs.”

  He felt the bulge of the Haas Box in his pocket, and he handed the magazine to Franklin. “Here, take this. Don’t let them fall off.”

  Franklin took the magazine cover, tilting it at an angle he hoped would keep the spiders from crawling toward his hand. Derick removed the Haas Box from his pocket and slid one side open, which he held under the magazine. “Tap a few of them into it,” he told Franklin, and Franklin delicately knocked the edge of the paper against the side of the tin. Several fell into the opening, and Derick slid it closed, trapping the spiders inside.

  “Can I drop this?” Franklin asked anxiously.

  “Yes,” Derick replied, and watched as Franklin let the folded magazine cover fall to the ground. They could hear sirens.

  “What do we tell them?” Franklin asked.

  “We let them figure it out,” Derick said. “They’ll see the spiders.” He turned to look at the woman’s body. Her frozen death stare was aimed at the leg of the coffee table.

  The insects were gone.

  “What?” Derick asked, kneeling next to her. “They must have all crawled inside her.”

  He turned to look at the magazine cover lying on the floor. There were
a handful of spiders remaining on it, and as he watched, they slowly melted into a thin, watery brown slime, and evaporated.

  Within seconds, there was no sign of a single spider anywhere.

  “Fuck!” Franklin said. “Where’d they go?”

  “We say she clutched at her throat, unable to breathe,” Derick said. “We tried to help her, but she didn’t revive.” He pulled the Haas Box from his pocket, and slowly, carefully slid the lid open. Four spiders were still inside, attached to the sides of the tin.

  “They still in there?” Franklin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is some fucked-up shit.”

  “I need to find out where these came from,” Derick replied, sliding the lid closed. “We might go to Henderson after I find out more, but for now, no talk of spiders, alright? We keep this to ourselves.”

  “Fine by me.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Derick opened it to allow the paramedics inside.

  Chapter Four

  He glanced at his watch again. She was late.

  It had taken a little cajoling on the phone; the last time he spoke with the woman he’d met at Anna’s gravesite, he hadn’t been very forthcoming or polite. Quite the opposite: he’d been a total asshole.

  Now he felt like an even bigger asshole. He’d just used the woman’s grief over her sister to lure her into a meeting where he hoped he might manipulate her into giving him some of her sister’s DNA.

  You’re worse than an asshole, he thought.

  So much had happened since Anna’s death; it seemed like a million years ago when he’d escorted her to Valkin. Surviving the Eaters and the firestorms, changing clothes in the run-down apartment over Nick’s bar in Corbin. Holding her as she died giving birth — if you could call it that — to A. He felt a deep pang of regret at her loss, and the loss of the potential he imagined between them. It felt rare to find someone he clicked with so quickly. She was snatched away from him suddenly and violently. He glanced up, looking around the coffee shop, not so much to see if she had arrived, but to see if anyone might notice the moisture in his eyes. A public spectacle was not on the agenda — he’d have to stow his feelings. Keep that shit in check when you talk to her sister, he thought.

  At the worst moment she entered the coffee shop, glancing around for the man wearing the dark blue cap and forest green jacket. She walked up to the table he was seated at.

  “Mr. Hall?”

  He rose, hoping the tears were no longer noticeable. “That’s me,” he offered, extending his hand. “Please, call me Derick.”

  “Call me Kera,” she answered, giving his hand a quick shake and taking the seat next to him.

  “You want some coffee?” he said, motioning to the cup he’d been nursing.

  “No, thanks,” she replied, offering a weak smile. “Had enough already.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Well, you said you could give me details about Anna. That’s why I’m here.” She looked at him expectantly. No warmth, no shared pain over Anna’s loss. Purely transactional.

  “First, I want to apologize for my reaction the day of the funeral,” Derick said. “There were a lot of things going on for me right at that moment, and Anna’s loss really put me over the edge. I should have been nicer. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Apology accepted.” Still cold.

  “I also don’t know who I can fully trust, and who I can’t. I met Anna because someone hired me — under false pretenses — to bring her out. Two women, one claiming to be her mother, and the other her sister.”

  “Out of…that place?”

  He glanced around the coffee shop. Employees were busy behind the counter, and no other patrons sat nearby within hearing range. “Yes, the Dark River. I perform extractions. For money.”

  “Against the will of the person you extract?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She paused, as though it was a revelation. “I had no idea you could hire such people. If I’d known, I might have tried to hire you myself.”

  “You didn’t approve of your sister being there?”

  Kera’s face tightened a little, then a piece of the steely exterior chipped off. “No, I didn’t. None of us did. She was enamored with some guy, and he led her into it. We tried to talk sense to her, but she was always a very headstrong person, and once she set her mind to something, she didn’t stop.”

  Derick smiled in response to the description. It fit the Anna he’d known. “No one from your family went in to get her?”

  “No!” Kera responded strongly, pulling her head back a little. “Going there was never an option. We considered the place off-limits, something to be avoided at all costs. She was an adult, making her own decisions, so we couldn’t stop her, though god knows we tried. Once she met that man, she was set on it; she wouldn’t listen to us.”

  “Edward?”

  “You met him?”

  “I did. He’s gone now.”

  “He died with Anna?”

  “Not with her, not at the same time.”

  Kera looked at him, another piece of the tough exterior falling away. “What happened to her?”

  Derick looked down at the table. “Are you sure you want to know? It isn’t a nice story.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Closure is an overused word in this world, but it’s exactly what I and her brother want right now. Tell me.”

  He sighed. “Well, as I said, I was hired to find her and bring her out. The people who hired me weren’t her family, of course. Anna was carrying some kind of being, fused to her. Are you familiar with fusings?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Anna was very skilled at that.”

  “OK. Well, she planned to deliver the fused being to a group of rebels within the Dark River who were working to end the worm treatments.”

  The first signs of confusion entered Kera’s face.

  “How much do you know about the Dark River, exactly?” he asked.

  “Not much,” she replied. “Never wanted to. I know you go to that motel to get there. That’s about it.”

  “The entire place is dark,” he said. “Light has trouble penetrating. You get used to it after a while, but it’s entirely different from here. It’s filled with twisted creatures and people who’ve given up on life in the real world. There are flies there, small insects that sting you soon after you arrive, and they lay eggs in your system. If the eggs hatch, you have to start treatments to keep them at bay, or you turn.”

  He saw her gulp. He felt nervous and a little sick to his stomach, not really wanting to proceed, but knowing he needed to.

  “The rebels your sister was working with believed the treatments could be changed, so they’d act as a permanent cure rather than something you had to do every few weeks. The people who own and run the treatments are the real power brokers in the Dark River. Everyone who’s there has to use their services. Anna and Edward were trying to bring them down. They’d found someone — a spirit — who they thought could change things, and Anna brought him in fused to her. She planned on unfusing the attached spirit at an event called the Oculus Apertus, a quasi-religious thing where people…Christ, I don’t know how to explain it exactly…”

  He realized his hand was shaking slightly, and was surprised when she reached out to take it, calming him. “It’s OK,” she said. He was too embarrassed to look at her, so he kept trying to relate the story.

  “Anyway, I fucked that up. The Oculus Apertus was her plan to separate from the fused spirit, but she missed it because of me, and the spirit stayed fused to her. She needed to lay low for a couple of weeks, until the next Oculus Apertus. She insisted I take her to her friends in a town called Valkin. So I did.”

  “But you went in to extract her,” Kera said. “Something changed your mind?”

  “She did,” he said, now raising his face to look at her. “She convinced me.”

  “Go on.”

  “She wouldn’t leave the Dark River, but I had
to,” he continued. “Leaving kills the eggs, and I wasn’t going to become infected by staying too long. She had Edward and others there, so I figured she was safe.”

  “She wouldn’t go with you?”

  “The portal going in was how she fused the spirit to herself. She was afraid that if she left, it would unfuse the spirit and defeat the whole purpose. They needed it unfused at the Oculus Apertus, where it could be contained and delivered to agents within the LeFever organization.”

  “LeFever?”

  He sighed again. “It’s complex. LeFever is who controls the treatment technology. That’s who they were working against.”

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway, I came back here, killing the eggs in the process, and went back in a couple of days later. That’s when…” He stopped, looked at her. “This is the bad part.”

  She was still holding his hand. She gave it a squeeze. “Go on.”

  “They were hunting for her. That’s why they hired me in the first place, so they could stop her plan to bring in the spirit. When they learned that I’d turned on them too, they were hunting for both of us. The only thing they knew was that we were headed to Valkin. There are creatures there called Raidarchists. They had been threatening the town, demanding they give us up. While I was gone, they attacked. Most of the women were raped.”

  Kera raised a hand to her mouth, covering it.

  “It’s very difficult to kill someone in the Dark River,” he continued. “There’s no guns or things like that, and even if there were, you’re dealing with physical states that aren’t corporeal. You can’t just strangle someone or stick them with a knife. Things like that don’t work. But raping is one way to do it, since the birth of the offspring will kill the mother.”