The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7)

by Michael Richan

  “He and I do have a long history,” Vohuman said. “But I think you can put that history to an end, if you choose to.”

  “So I kill him,” Steven said, rolling things around in his mind, once again looking at the floor, “and you get what you want. What about what I want?”

  “You get vengeance!” Vohuman said. “That’s what every wronged human wants. Imagine seeing him die, knowing it was you that did him in! Hard to resist! It’s so rare to get that kind of satisfaction. Most people never do.”

  “The other thing that I’ve heard over and over,” Steven said, “is that demons lie. You are probably lying to me right now. There’s some trick, something you get out of it that I don’t know about.”

  “I freely admit that I want Aka Manah dead,” Vohuman said. “You’ve known that for a while now.”

  “Only because Evie told us that,” Roy said. “She was lying for you, so that might not be true, either.”

  “The only way I’d consider it,” Steven said, “is if there’s some iron-clad protection for me and my family and friends. It’s a one-time act and we’re forever protected, in this life and the next.”

  “Son,” Roy said, “you’re not seriously considering this, are you? He’s a fucking demon for Christ’s sake!”

  “And I’d have to have it in writing,” Steven continued. “This was a big risk and reward for you, as you said, so I expect a good payback. All my guarantees engage whether or not I can kill him. If I fail, or even if I walk away, I get everything we agreed to.”

  “That doesn’t seem very equitable,” Vohuman said. “But I think you’ll kill him. I think you want to see him die, for the death of your son. So it’s a good bet from my perspective.”

  “In writing,” Steven said, “and I want time to review the deal with an expert, and to propose changes before we seal the deal.”

  “Alright,” Vohuman said. “On the condition that we come to an agreement within the next twenty-four hours. Aka Manah certainly knows the Agimat is gone by now. He’ll lay low, not wanting to stir the pot, hoping you’ll be satisfied with his absence. But if he learns that I’m involved, he’ll go back underground again and I might lose him. So this needs to be soon. I have plans in place that I’m waiting to finish. Twenty-four hours to complete the deal, and you act immediately after the deal is made.”

  “Write it up,” Steven said. “The clock will start once I get a document back from you. And I can decline anytime within the twenty-four hours, and you agree to walk away.”

  Steven knew this was a lot to ask. Since Vohuman was a demon, he could play a card from Aka Manah’s deck and threaten him simply by hurting Roy or Eliza, and he’d be forced to act. Maybe it was part of Vohuman’s strategy to come off as the opposite of Aka Manah, to gain his trust. Maybe Vohuman knew that he really wanted to kill Aka Manah, deep down inside, and he didn’t need to threaten or anger him to make it happen.

  “Agreed,” Vohuman said. “You’ll have it within the hour.”

  The dark fog surrounding Vohuman intensified, and then quickly dissipated. He was gone.

  “What are you thinking?” Roy said to Steven. “Another deal? Didn’t you learn your lesson?”

  “There’s something inside me that killed Jason,” Steven said. “This seems as good of a way as any to figure out what it is.”

  “You’re just a pawn in their little chess match,” Roy said, becoming angry. “You’ve not understood their intentions from the start, and neither have I. Why go along with it? We’re being used, just like Evie.”

  “People the world over are pawns for more powerful interests,” Steven said. “Happens all the time. We’re just on a different playing field.”

  “You don’t have any idea what he’s really up to. You might find yourself selling your soul and not even realize it,” Roy said, thinking back to when he’d put his own soul on the line in a deal with a time demon. One false move under that deal and he would have been lost.

  “No,” Steven replied, “I have every intention of making sure the agreement is to my advantage. If this is such a big deal to Vohuman, I should be able to get something substantial for it.”

  “What could be that substantial?” Roy asked.

  “Look!” Eliza said, staring at the couch where Vohuman had been sitting. There was a rolled piece of paper.

  Steven walked to the couch and picked up the paper. It had a red wax seal, which he broke. Then he opened the paper and began to read.

  “It’s the terms,” Steven said. “It’s his offer.”

  “Fuck it all,” Roy said, exasperated.

  Eliza walked behind Steven and read over his shoulder. “It’s dense,” she said. “Lots of tiny writing. Makes you wish you had a demon lawyer to look it over.”

  “Oh, we have someone better than a lawyer,” Steven said. “Come on. We’re going back to Port Townsend.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The smell of the ocean was strong, and they could hear the Coupeville ferry sounding its horn in the distance. It was sunny, but clouds on the horizon told them it wouldn’t be for long. The wind was increasing, doing strange things to Eliza’s chaotic hair as they walked along Water Street, ducking to avoid the water dripping from freshly watered flower baskets that hung over the sidewalk every few feet.

  Roy had been quiet for most of the trip, angry that Steven seemed intent on pursuing the deal. Now that they were just minutes from Victor’s house, he realized he was running out of time to convince Steven not to go through with it.

  “I admit that I have no experience with demons, like Victor does,” Roy said as they dodged tourists. “But I am your father, and you should listen to me. This is a bad idea in my opinion.”

  “Two hours driving and a ferry ride,” Steven said, turning to Eliza, “and now he speaks. What do you think, Eliza?”

  “I’m not getting in the middle of a disagreement between you two,” she said.

  “She’s all bedazzled by Vohuman,” Roy said. “You can’t take her opinion seriously.”

  Eliza stopped walking and looked at Roy. “I am not bedazzled!” she said.

  “He had your number the moment you walked in,” Roy said. “You ran to his side like a teenager in love.”

  “I did not!” Eliza protested, then turned to Steven. “Did I?”

  “Kinda,” Steven said. “He seemed to have some influence over you.”

  “Really?” she asked. “It didn’t seem that way to me.”

  “Do you think I should go through with it?” Steven asked, resuming walking.

  “My experience with them is limited to my situation in California,” she said, trying to be vague since they were in public. “So I’m no expert, either.”

  “That’s a nice way of avoiding answering,” Steven said.

  “Son,” Roy said, “I hate to see you fall for what he’s pitching, because I think it’s a pack of lies. I wish you’d listen to me.”

  “Like I listened about Jurgen?” Steven said, stopping in the street. “‘Oh, he’s as good as dead,’ you said. You were wrong. And about Michael? ‘Better to let sleeping dogs lie,’ remember? Well he wasn’t a sleeping dog, was he? If we’d put him down like the sick dog I thought he was, Jason wouldn’t have been hauled off to Nevada and he wouldn’t have had something placed in him at St. Thomas. He’d be alive now.”

  “Oh, so you’re blaming me now?” Roy said, raising his voice.

  “Stop it you two,” Eliza said. “We’re on a public street.”

  Steven resumed his walking toward Victor’s.

  “So that’s how it is?” Roy asked Steven, running to catch up with him.

  “I guess it is,” Steven replied, stopping at the doorway to Victor’s apartment, and pressing the buzzer. Victor let them up, and soon they were back in his library, looking out over the sound.

  “What an interesting wrinkle,” Victor said once Steven had explained the reason for their visit. “Vohuman seems to be playing a longer game than Aka Manah, but
you can never be sure. It might be – and probably is – bigger than the part of it he lets you see.”

  “That’s why I think we should drop this,” Roy said. “We might be making things worse, digging ourselves in deeper.”

  “Your son wants to understand his power,” Victor said. “You’d want to, too, if you had it.”

  “Hummpf!” Roy said, folding his arms and turning away to look out the windows.

  “The question is,” Victor said, opening the paper Steven had given to him, “is this deal the best way to go about it? Let me read for a moment.” Victor studied the paper, scanning through it rapidly. They waited patiently until he’d read through all of it.

  “Almost every deal with a demon is dangerous,” Victor said, “but he’s not asking for your soul or anything like that. What you’re risking is failure with Aka Manah, in which case you’d be at his mercy.”

  “And so would we,” Roy said.

  “True,” Victor said. “Aka Manah has demonstrated his willingness to hurt your friends, Steven. So you have to factor that in.”

  “Can a deal be made with Vohuman that protects them from Aka Manah?” Steven asked.

  “Of course,” Victor said. “You can construct a deal any way you want, as long as both parties agree to the details.”

  “Then I want them protected,” Steven said, “regardless of the outcome.”

  “And what if I don’t want protection from a demon?” Roy said.

  “Having a demon watch over you isn’t a bad thing,” Victor said. “So long as the price for it has been paid. It’s owing the demon that is usually the problem.”

  “In this case the price is my son’s life,” Roy said. “No thank you.”

  “How do we make a counteroffer?” Steven said. “He’s written his terms, how do we write ours back? I only have today to finalize this.”

  “We’ll make our own offer, in a form that’s beneficial for you, but that he’s unlikely to want to change once you make it,” Victor said, rummaging through a desk drawer. He removed a leather pouch that contained a syringe.

  “What’s that for?” Eliza asked.

  “We’re going to amend his offer letter to reference a chain,” Victor said, sterilizing the syringe. “We’ll need your blood, Steven.”

  Steven didn’t hesitate. He rolled up his shirt sleeve and extended his arm to Victor, who wrapped a rubber tube around his bicep and looked for a vein.

  Roy groaned. “There’s no way I can talk you out of this?” he asked Steven as Victor stabbed at Steven’s arm and pulled back the plunger on the syringe.

  “I suppose there are ways,” Steven said. “I just haven’t heard a good enough one yet.”

  “How about the fact that it’s a dishonest, lying fucking demon!” Roy exclaimed.

  “Demons always honor the deal,” Victor said. “They will lie in the construction of the deal, which is why we must be careful. But they will honor the deal, to the letter. Things go wrong when you make assumptions.” He slipped the needle from Steven’s arm and reversed the plunger, ejecting its contents into a small dish on his writing desk. Then he rolled open the offer letter from Vohuman and pinned the corners down with books. He took a fountain pen, dipped it into Steven’s blood, and began to write on the bottom of the document.

  Steven and Eliza stood over his shoulders, watching as he wrote. Roy was looking out the windows at the sound, watching a ferry departing the dock.

  “There,” Victor said, blowing on the paper to get the blood to dry. “The fact that we wrote it in blood will impress Vohuman, and he won’t want to alter it.”

  “What did you write, exactly?” Eliza asked.

  “I merely added a bit that said the entire agreement was subject to the terms in the Steven Hall chain, and that the chain’s terms superseded anything in the written document. So, now all we need to do is construct a proper chain.”

  Victor rose from his writing desk and walked to a filing cabinet. He pulled out a small chest and placed it on a coffee table in the middle of the room between the sofa and chairs. He opened the chest, and began removing items; a small black cloth, which he opened and spread out on the coffee table, a set of pliers and snips, and several small tins with contents that rattled.

  “Right,” he said, pulling the coffee table a little closer to the chair where he was sitting. He opened one of the tins and removed a small circular link and placed it on the cloth. “I’m assuming the first requirement will be the protection clause you wanted for your family and friends.”

  “Yes,” Steven said. “That’s first.”

  “Alright,” Victor said. “Now, where’s the…” He began searching through the chest, unable to find what he was looking for. “Oh – that’s right, hold on…”

  He left the coffee table and walked out of the room. When he returned a moment later, he had a small teacup. “I washed it the other day, and I realized it looked so nice, I decided to leave it out.” He smiled, and showed them the object. It was unremarkable in every way.

  Steven jumped into the River as Victor held it out to show him. The teacup was gone, and in its place was an object so dark and black that the light around it was being drawn into it, like a black hole.

  Steven left the flow. “That thing is sucking in light,” he said to Victor. “Looks dangerous.”

  “Oh, it is,” Victor said. “If I were to use it wrong, it could suck the entire room into itself. Who knows where we’d wind up.”

  “I’m telling you,” Roy said from the other end of the room, “this is a bad idea.”

  “Never mind him,” Steven said. “Proceed.”

  Victor placed the teacup over the link and dropped into the River. Both Eliza and Steven joined him, and watched as he formed a type of trance between himself and the black form that was obscuring the link on the cloth.

  After a moment Victor dropped out, and Eliza and Steven followed.

  “This link,” Victor said, removing the teacup and picking up the round ring of metal, “is good to go.” He picked up the snips and cut the link, then used the pliers to open the ends slightly. When he was finished, he placed the link to the side.

  “What else?” Victor asked. “What else do you want in the deal?”

  “I want Jason back,” Steven said.

  Eliza raised her hand to her mouth, stopping herself from saying anything. Victor set down the snips. “My boy,” he said, “that’s not a good idea.”

  “That’s why you’re giving this demon the time of day, isn’t it?” Roy said, walking over from the windows. “That’s the real reason why you dragged us back up here. I should have guessed.”

  “I want Jason back,” Steven said, emotion rising in his voice, feeling the need to defend himself. “Vohuman can do that, right?” he asked Victor.

  “He can,” Victor said, “but I’d advise against it.”

  “Steven,” Eliza said, reaching out to place a hand on his knee. “No.”

  Steven stood up. “Why not? If he can bring him back, then do it. Make a link for that.”

  “I don’t think you realize what you’re asking,” Victor said. “Your son died how many days ago?”

  Steven didn’t answer.

  “Several,” Roy said. “He’s been buried in the ground for several days. No embalming.”

  “Then putrefaction is underway,” Victor said. “You won’t like what you get, if he comes back. And your son will not like it, either.”

  Steven turned from the others and walked to the windows. Eliza followed him. She placed her hand on his back and spoke softly.

  “He can’t come back,” Eliza said. “He’s gone.”

  “I thought there might be a way,” Steven said. “Up until now I was hoping there might still be a way that I could use this deal to get him back.”

  “The deal is only revenge,” she said. “Roy may be right.”

  Steven tried not to cry, but it felt like his last inner hope that Jason might still be able to survive had just b
een ripped from him, and it re-opened the wound in his heart that formed when he rose from the floor of the house in Diablo and saw his son lying still on the bed.

  “How about something else?” Victor asked. “Demons have a lot of resources. Some object you’d like, maybe money or power?”

  “I don’t want any of those things,” Steven said, still facing the windows. “I want my son back.”

  “I’m not sure you’re all thinking straight at the moment,” Victor said. “I’m just going to put together a few links that I think you should have, to protect your side of the deal. Give me a couple of minutes.”

  “Don’t you make a link to bring Jason back,” Roy said to Victor.

  “You can be sure I won’t,” Victor said, looking up at Roy. “I know what that would do.”

  Roy watched while Victor continued to make links, dropping into the River and out again, snipping some links and attaching them to others. Eliza stayed with Steven at the windows, rubbing the small of his back and assuring him that things would be alright.

  Steven didn’t know how long he’d been standing at the windows, trying to control his emotions. He watched the water as the storm came in, whitecaps forming, not able to resist the wind. The finality of Jason’s death was weighing fully on him now, and he felt like sleeping, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he finished Aka Manah. He intended to go through with the deal, regardless of what Roy said.

  “Finished,” Victor said. “Now to seal the chain.” He placed the entire chain, about twenty links, under the teacup and entered the River again. When the chain emerged, the snips had all been healed and it looked like any piece of jewelry.

  Steven turned back to Victor. “Do I wear it?” he asked.

  “No,” Victor said. “Vohuman is to wear it, as a binding. I guarantee you he has hundreds of them already, previous deals he’s made, just under his skin. A chain is one of the strongest deals you can make with a demon, because it lives on them, binding them to the terms for as long as it lives.”

  Victor walked to his writing desk and picked up the paper, the blood ink having dried. “The chain is referenced in this agreement,” he said, “handing it to Steven. “Make sure both of you sign the paper, and make sure you see him put the chain on his wrist. One of the links requires that it always remain on him, so once he puts it on and the paper is signed, you’re golden.”