Devil's Throat (The River Book 6) Read online

  Steven could hear the snarling behind him, just feet away. That was just one quick swipe, he thought. I’d hate to see how much damage it could do to my back if it catches up! He glanced to his right, looking for Roy. Roy was running right alongside him, moving quickly.

  The snarling started to fade. After they’d run about a block, Winn stopped and turned. The ghost was well behind them, and it had become translucent again. “Watch!” Winn said, as they all turned to look at it, dropping into the River. It seemed to sputter and shake, then it faded quickly and was gone.

  “Fucking hell,” Steven said, exiting the flow.

  “What’s the damage?” Roy asked, and Steven held his arm up to Roy’s flashlight. An inch-wide gash ran down the middle of it.

  “That’s going to need stitches,” Winn said.

  “I’ve been attacked by things in the River before,” Steven said. “It hurt, but there wasn’t a physical mark when I came out of the flow. Not like this.”

  “That’s because these things aren’t normal,” Deem said.

  Winn opened his backpack and removed a roll of gauze. “Here, wrap it with this,” he said. “It’s not the first time I’ve been attacked by them. I learned to bring supplies.”

  That’s how he got the scars, Steven thought. He held his arm out while Roy wrapped the gauze around it and tied it off.

  “That’ll hold you until you can get to Mesquite,” Winn said. “There’s a hospital there.”

  “You can see why we couldn’t just storm the place,” Deem said. “It’s not like shooting targets. The gun takes a few moments to work.”

  “Too damn long,” Steven said, holding his arm. Now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off, his arm began to throb. “I’m not going to turn into one of those things, am I?”

  “What, like in a zombie movie?” Winn said. “No, they’re ghosts. I’ve never seen their attack turn anyone into anything. I’ve seen it kill and maim a few people, but not turn them.”

  “Is there more you want to show us?” Steven asked. “If not, I’m ready to go. I’ve seen enough.”

  “Let’s leave then,” Winn said. “Follow me back to the trail.”

  Chapter Six

  It was after midnight when Steven emerged from the ER in Mesquite. Roy, Deem, and Winn were waiting for him.

  “I’m beat,” Steven said. “It’s been a long day. I have a million questions for you, but they pumped a painkiller into me and I really need to sleep.”

  “Let’s get you back to the motel,” Roy said. “Can you two meet tomorrow morning? Maybe over breakfast?”

  “Sure,” Winn said. “Deem?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just say when and where.”

  “Any place in Overton?” Roy asked.

  “Pete’s is about it,” Winn said. “9 a.m. work?”

  “Works for me,” Deem said.

  “We’ll be there,” Roy said, walking with Steven out of the hospital and into the parking lot.

  “Here, take this,” Winn said, pulling a jar out of his backpack and handing it to Steven. “If it starts to tingle, put some of this on it.”

  “I thought you said it couldn’t infect me?” Steven said.

  “I said it couldn’t turn you into one of them,” Winn said. “I never said it couldn’t infect you. If it starts to tingle, rub a liberal amount of this on it. Don’t be stingy, I’ve got a lot more. It’ll take away the sting and keep it from rotting.”

  “Rotting?” Steven said. “It’s going to rot?”

  “Well, it’ll smell like it,” Winn said. “So just use it, OK?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Steven said. “I guess it was stupid of me to get so close to that window.”

  “At least you saw your son,” Deem said. “It confirms what Winn thought.”

  “He seemed fine with being there,” Steven said. “He didn’t look trapped at all. He’s there willingly, isn’t he?”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Winn said. “You two get some sleep, and we’ll see you both tomorrow.” Winn left them and walked towards his Jeep. Steven looked at Deem; he noticed she was watching Winn’s backside as he left.

  “He’s good looking,” Steven said to her, wondering if she and Winn were a thing.

  “Oh yeah,” Deem said, “he is. You interested in him?”

  “Oh, no,” Steven said, a little embarrassed. “I’m divorced.”

  “Doesn’t mean you’re not interested in him,” Deem said. “Half the town is.”

  “You two ever…?” Steven asked.

  “Hell no!” Deem said. “He’s brilliant, but I can’t stand his ego when it comes to sex. He thinks he’s god’s gift.”

  “Ah,” Steven said, wondering if he’d asked for too much information. He was still a little surprised she might have thought he was interested in Winn. He’d never been mistaken for gay in his life, and he wondered if Deem’s comment was based on anything more than what he’d said about Winn being handsome. He IS handsome, Steven thought. I’m secure in my sexuality because I can admit that. Doesn’t mean I’m interested in him. Kids these days…they’re so much more open about things than we were years ago.

  “You a lesbian?” Steven asked, feeling he had a right to.

  “Hell no,” Deem said. “I just know better.”

  ◊

  They met at Pete’s on the main drag in Overton the next morning. When Steven and Roy arrived, Deem already had a table for them. They were waiting on Winn.

  “How’s Jason?” Deem asked.

  “The same,” Steven said.

  “Coffee?” the waitress asked Roy and Steven as they sat.

  “Please!” Roy said, turning over his mug and allowing the waitress to fill it with her pot. “I like this place already,” he said, sipping the mug. “Shouldn’t have to feel it’s something special to have coffee. Coffee is the norm.”

  “What worries me,” Steven said, ignoring Roy, “is that Jason’s been comatose for over a day now. Maybe longer. What about eating? Bodily functions?”

  “Winn might correct me,” Deem said, “but when people come here and go to St. Thomas like that, they’re usually here for about a week before they leave. So he’s just getting started.”

  “You mean he’ll be comatose in my room for a while?” Steven asked. “Won’t his body have a problem with that?”

  “I think he’s suspended in a way that shuts all that down,” Deem said. “He’ll come out of it after several days, starving.”

  “We could at least get an IV in him,” Steven said. “Keep him hydrated.”

  “I wonder what the motel thinks,” Roy said. “Him in bed all day long, them not changing the sheets.”

  “I think they’re used to it,” Deem said, sipping what appeared to be a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. “It’s not the first time. I think that motel is the location of choice when people come here to train.”

  “Train?” Steven asked. “Is that what’s going on?”

  Winn walked into the diner. Several heads turned as he walked to their table and sat. Steven could see smiles of recognition on several of them.

  “Been waiting long?” he said, smiling and opening a menu. Steven looked at his face – he had the exact amount of stubble that he’d had the day before. He must shave it that way, Steven thought. Maybe I should try that.

  “No, just got here,” Roy answered. “And I’m glad they’ve got the coffee on. I think I went all day yesterday without any. At least I feel back in sorts today.”

  “We were just talking about Jason’s body,” Deem said. “Steven was worried about how long he’d be in that state.”

  “About a week,” Winn said. The waitress appeared and he smiled at her. She began to blush. Deem rolled her eyes.

  They all ordered, and Steven asked again about Jason’s state.

  “Should I get an IV in him?” Steven asked. “I don’t want him to dehydrate or anything.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that,” Win
n said, “but I don’t think it would hurt. It’s going to be a couple of days before we can extract him. That is, provided he’ll come.”

  “Deem says he’s in training?” Steven asked. “Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Winn said. “One of the things the Callers do is run a training outfit for gifteds that want to go into service roles.”

  “Services roles for what?” Steven asked.

  “Usually to creatures that have a fat wallet,” Winn said, “who need an assistant that has some abilities. A normal human won’t do. They need gifteds. Most of us won’t have anything to do with it, but there are some who are duped into it or actually want to work with the evils. They train them here, then sell them off.”

  “That explains Michael,” Roy said. “He was trained here, and sold off to Lukas.”

  “And now he’s wrapped Jason up in it,” Steven said.

  “It’s almost like a cult,” Winn said. “The things they tell them, the way they control their thinking while they’re here.”

  “And he probably doesn’t have a clue that there’s other ways to use his gift other than what they’re training him for,” Steven said. “It’s like he’s being brainwashed.”

  “He was primed for it,” Roy said. “He wanted it, remember? I imagine it wasn’t a hard sell for Michael.”

  “That’s my fault,” Steven said, shaking his head. “I waited too long. And I just assumed Michael had kidnapped him, that once Jason realized we were here to rescue him, he’d come back with us. But what if he wants to stay? Damn, I fucked up big time.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Winn said, flashing him a smile. “We can still find out if he wants to leave or not. Maybe, after you talk to him, he’ll want to go. You’ll have to convince him though. He’ll be all jazzed by the little tricks they’re teaching him. It’s exciting to him, and he won’t want to leave it. They’ll have taught him that anything outsiders say about the training is a lie. So he won’t believe you at first; you’ll have to convince him. But I’ve seen people pull it off.”

  “How do we do that?” Roy asked. “Talk to him?”

  “We need him to break the trance for a while,” Winn said, “so he can return to his body. The only problem with that is they’ll know he’s gone.”

  “They?” Roy asked.

  “The Callers,” Winn said, sipping coffee.

  “What are these Callers?” Steven asked. “You mentioned them last night.”

  “They’re a kind of ghost,” Deem said, “that has evolved into something more functional.”

  “They’re more self-aware, more ambitious,” Winn interjected.

  “They know they’re ghosts,” Deem continued, “and they take advantage of it, behaving a lot more like living humans. They run operations like what you saw in The Gentry. We named them ‘Callers’ because they seem to call the shots in St. Thomas. Didn’t really know what else to call them.”

  “These are ghosts who are running a business,” Winn said. “They work together with a common cause, conducting the training and selling the graduates. They keep other ghosts as slaves. That one that came at you last night,” he said, looking at Steven, “that was a worker, a ghost they’ve trapped there. It had no idea it was a ghost, it thought it was a normal person, doing a job like you or I going to work. The Callers run the whole operation.”

  “Did we see any Callers last night?” Steven asked.

  “No,” Winn said. “They don’t do the work. They’re on the top floor of the hotel, running things. All the ghosts they’ve enslaved think of them as the town elders, like the mayor and council. In a way, they are. They’re in charge, they’re calling the shots. Everything in St. Thomas is happening because of them.”

  “So if they’ll know Jason is gone,” Roy said, “what do we do?”

  “We’ll need a doppelganger,” Winn said. “One of us will replace Jason in the trance. Probably me, since I’ve done it before. They do the trainings during the day and early evening, and they all sleep from around midnight to sunrise in the hotel. The trainees all sleep on cots in the basement. I’ll go in, wake Jason, and tell him you want to talk to him for a few minutes. Provided he’s willing to go back, I’ll take his place in the hotel until he returns. You’ll be able to talk to him at the motel when he comes to in his body. If you can convince him to leave, he’ll still have to return and play along with the training until we can do the extraction.”

  “How does the extraction work?” Steven asked.

  “Same approach as the doppelganger,” Winn said. “We go in and he leaves. Then the doppelganger leaves, and covers his tracks so he can’t be found. You son will go into hiding until they lose interest. They don’t have much power outside of this region, the downwind area.”

  “But Michael knows about him,” Roy said. “He knows where he lives.”

  “Then we’ll have to take him out at the same time,” Winn said. “That’s going to complicate things. This is going to take a bit of planning.” Winn smiled, leaning back in his chair as he thought. The complexity of the situation seemed to appeal to him, to make it more interesting.

  “Do you know how to handle it?” Steven asked.

  “No,” Winn said, smiling, “not yet. But I love a challenge.”

  Steven was crestfallen. Deem reached out and grabbed his hand.

  “He’ll figure something out,” she said. “He always does.”

  “Thank you,” Steven said. “I just feel so helpless, and responsible.”

  “It’s not entirely on you,” Roy said. “It’s my fault we didn’t take out Michael back when we dealt with Lukas. You wanted to, but I discouraged it. I was wrong.”

  “We might have to track them separately,” Winn said. “Two of us handle your son, and the other two handle Michael. Something like that.”

  Steven looked at Winn. He could see the wheels were turning rapidly. He felt better about relying on him.

  “I’ll handle Michael,” Roy said, “if it comes to it. Steven should stay with Jason.”

  “They’ll need you for the switch,” Deem said to Winn, “so I’ll work with Roy on Michael. You can work with Steven on Jason.”

  “Hold your horses,” Winn said. “I’m not sayin’ this is the plan just yet. I want it all thought through before we start divvying up sides.”

  “How long before the plan is solid?” Steven asked.

  “We can try the first part tonight,” Winn said. “Get him out, let you talk to him. If we decide to do the extraction, it’ll be the next night at the earliest. So I’ve got some time to make sure our approach will work. I’m gonna need a lot more of that purple stuff, Deem.”

  “Shit!” Deem said emphatically. “Fuck!”

  For a twenty year old girl, she sure has a mouth on her, Steven thought. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

  Winn smiled. “She doesn’t want to go back in there!” he said, chuckling.

  “Fuck!” Deem said again. “No, I don’t. What did you do with it all?”

  “Used up,” Winn said, smiling at her. “You didn’t get me that much last time.”

  “What are you talking about?” Steven interjected.

  “It’s this purple shit that Deem digs out of a mine somewhere,” Winn said.

  “Topaz,” Deem said. “I pulverize it into powder.”

  “It’s what I use to cover the tracks,” Winn said, “when I do an extraction.”

  “It’s not normal topaz,” Deem said. “It’s been fucked with by the radiation, like everything else.”

  “When you’re in the River,” Winn said, “it’ll cover up anything. It’s amazing shit.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Roy asked.

  “The mine that it’s in,” Deem said, shaking her head.

  Winn laughed. “It’s haunted as hell! She hates going in it!”

  “Haunted how?” Steven asked.

  “The ghost of every critter for fifty miles seems to have gone there,” Deem said. “Every snake,
every scorpion. All unbound by gravity.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Steven asked. “They’re ghosts, do they leave you alone?”

  “Not these,” Deem said, shuddering. “They’ve mutated. You feel the bites and the stings. If you’re in the River you can see them, but if not you just feel them. No one goes near the place.”

  “How do you get the topaz then?” Roy asked.

  “It’s a production,” she said. “The snakes hate a certain frequency of light, so I go in with that. And Winn came up with a protection I drink that’s tuned to the weirdness here. Between the two, it keeps the snakes about a foot away. The scorpions get closer, but the protection stops them from stinging. God help you if the light goes out, though, or you get lost in there and your protection wears off.”

  “How much topaz do we need?” Steven asked.

  “It’ll take me fifteen minutes to chip off enough for one extraction,” Deem said. “I’ll stay thirty minutes, get enough for two. But that’s as long as I can stand in there.”

  Winn held his hand across the table and close to Deem’s face, then he pinched his thumb and fingers together, imitating a scorpion’s claws. “Deem doesn’t like the bugs,” he said, teasing her.

  “Who would?” Steven said, defending her.

  “It’s not the bugs,” Deem said, “it’s Tonnaquin Smith. He’s the real problem.”

  “Who’s that?” Roy asked.

  “He roams the mine,” Deem said. “Even the snakes and scorpions avoid him. If he shows up while I’m chipping at the topaz, I’ll have to leave, regardless of how much I’ve got.”

  “A ghost?” Roy asked. “I might be able to help.”

  “Roy is pretty good at handling ghosts,” Steven said.

  “What’s his story?” Roy asked Deem.

  “The legend is that he was part of a wagon train heading west,” Deem said, “when one of the women in the party accused him of Satan worship or something like that. Apparently he would rant and rave – probably just a schizophrenic by today’s standards. But they decided to expel him from the group, so they bound him up and abandoned him in the mine so no one could claim they killed him. The story has it he died there, ripped apart by coyotes. Now he drifts through the shafts and adits. If he finds you, he won’t leave you alone until you leave the mine. He considers the place his. He swings a pickaxe against the walls of the mine as he goes, you can hear him coming in the distance. If you don’t leave when he finds you, he’ll take the pickaxe to you. I ran into him once and he chased me all the way to the entrance.”