by Leah Cutter
Tainted Waters
Leah Cutter
Copyright © 2015 Leah Cutter
All rights reserved
Published 2015 by Knotted Road Press
by arrangement with Book View Café
www.KnottedRoadPress.com
www.BookViewCafe.com
ISBN: 978–1–61138–511–3
Cover Art:
© Kounas | Dreamstime.com – Blue Tentacles Photo
© Aliaksandr Nikitsin | Dreamstime.com – Minneapolis skyline
Cover and interior design copyright © 2015 Knotted Road Press
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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Prologue
“Everyone needs to roll one–dee–four,” Gary, the game master, suddenly announced.
Shit. Steve looked up from the laptop displaying his character sheet. “Why?” he asked.
“Roll against insanity,” Gary said with a maniacal grin. “Mwah–ha–ha–ha.”
Steve couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
“What about—” Mary, the group’s rules lawyer, started to ask.
“No mods, no saves,” Gary insisted. “Roll.”
Steve shook his head. He knew coming to this island had been a bad idea. It had screamed insane asylum from the first description Gary had given. All that mud and ooze along the coastline, the buildings set at odd angles, and nothing growing? They should have steered clear, no matter what treasure they’d been told about.
“High or low?” Steve asked as he plucked the clear, triangular, four–sided die from his pile of dice. He liked to imagine his dice as a hoard of jewels sometimes. It was why he always got the translucent dice, in bright colors, and kept them scattered across the top of his purple–suede dice bag next to his laptop.
“Low. Very low,” Gary assured him, obviously lying.
Steve rolled a four.
“Safe,” Gary growled.
Steve nodded as relief spread across his shoulders. As the party leader, it would have been a real pain if he’d suddenly gone crazy.
All the other players around the gaming table—there were seven of them that night—reached around their laptops and rolled their dice, trying to make their save.
A tall lamp that Gary had found at an estate sale stood in the center of the round table, casting just enough light for everyone to see, so that only the golden wood of the table was lit. Beyond the table, the rest of the basement room was in shadows.
Even Steve had to admit it was a nice effect, isolating the six of them while they played, cutting off the real world, making them live more in the world of the game.
The lamp itself was old and brass. Clawed feet dug into the wooden table, then flowed up to a fluted column. Three bulbs spun out from the top, covered by a swirling yellowed–glass shade.
Steve had laughed at Gary when he’d claimed the lamp threw strange shadows—told him that he needed to get out of his mother’s basement more. The shadows came from the unevenness of the swirling shade. The southern corner did not hold more darkness than the rest of the room. It just wasn’t as well lit.
Even when they’d started playing this crazy campaign of Gary’s, Steve refused to acknowledge Gary’s claims. The game was creepy enough without real–world weirdness.
Only Pat, the cleric, blew his roll. Of course, he was the only one who could heal the rest of the party of explorers.c
Steve told himself that it was just the luck of the dice roll, really, that Pat blew his save, not the fact that he sat the closest to the southern, darkest corner of the basement.
“So just how insane am I?” Pat asked, leaning back. He was the newest addition to their regular group of gamers. Mary had brought him in—probably thinking they could start dating.
Steve wasn’t going to be the one to point out to Mary that Pat seemed to be much more interested in Gary than in her.
“This is a quiet, disturbing insanity,” Gary told him. “Open up a private chat window on your computer with me. You’re going to start seeing things the others don’t.”
Great. More eerie weirdness. Just what they needed.
The game went downhill from there surprisingly fast. Mary, their thief, botched springing a trap and nearly got decapitated. The others also blew saves and attacks.
All the while, Pat continued to say more and more disturbing things about the Great Old Ones, describing the creatures he was seeing, like the elephant–like man with fangs at the end of his trunk, or the slithering green–jelly mass with thousands of eyes all seeking out those who lied, or even a slimy, pale worm the size of a city, blindly eating every soul it could find.
When everyone in the party of explorers was either dead or near death, they decided to call it a night, regroup, and figure out how to get off the damned island so they could heal their wounds and raise their friends.
After making plans for meeting the following week, the others traipsed off, leaving only Gary, Steve, and Pat.
“The Great Old Ones will return soon,” Pat told them darkly. “Resume their horrifying and terrible rule.”
“Dude, give it a rest,” Steve said, though he knew this was the kind of shit that Gary would eat up with a spoon.
Pat spouted a line of harsh gibberish. It seemed to be mostly constants. Grated like hell on Steve’s ear.
“Huh?” Steve asked, looking from Pat to Gary to Pat again. What the fuck was he saying?
Gary grinned at him. “It’s what Cthulhu’s followers chant. About his place—in R’lyeh—and how he waits, dreaming.”
“Crap,” Steve said. “I know you said you were going old school with this campaign, but I didn’t think you were going that old.”
“Our dread lord Cthulhu is timeless,” Pat said solemnly. “Eternal and evermore.”
Gary just grinned. “We will need the blood of fifty virgins to complete our despicable ritual.”
“Good luck with that,” Steve told him. “Or are you just going to use your own fifty times?”
Gary punched Steve in the shoulder. “Could just use yours.”
Instead of joining in, Pat proclaimed, “The darkness shall not hide you. Yigoph will find you and shred your souls. Not even Poseidon will save you.”
Steve just looked at Gary, who gave a minute shrug. Evidentially he hadn’t told Pat to continue on after the game.
“Whatever you say, buddy,” Steve told Pat.
“You have been warned,” Pat said before he turned and left.
“That was weird,” Steve said, turning to Gary.
Gary gave a more expressive shrug. “Kinda. But it was kind of cool, too. Don’t you think it would be cool?”
“What, some kind of hell on earth? The Great Old Ones coming to their terrible rule? Why would that be cool?” Steve asked. It sounded stupid to him. He had a good enough life—worked at a phone store, lived on his own (okay, so he had a roommate), even had a car and an X–box. Life was good.
“Naw, not that,” Gary said. He shivered. “But what if they really did exist? Like, the Old Ones or maybe a Sigil of the Elders?”
“A what?” Steve asked. God, Gary needed to get a life sometimes.
“It’s this gray–green stone. Supposed to
give you one hundred percent protection against psionic attacks.”
“That could be cool,” Steve said. Keep all the creepy blessed away, the people with paranormal abilities, the ones who could read your mind, or even your future or your past.
“Did you see that?” Gary asked suddenly.
“See what?” Steve asked, though he’d seen it.
One of the shadows thrown by the light standing in the center of the table had seemed to move. In his mind’s eye, Steve saw it grow. Become something gelatinous and huge.
Something other.
“We should go,” Gary said, heading for the stairs.
“Yeah, my alarm is going to go off way too early tomorrow morning,” Steve agreed, hurrying right behind Gary.
There wasn’t anything in the basement. They’d just been talking too long about creepy things. Gamed too late into the night. Nothing dark breathed down there. No amorphous being slobbered in the corner.
“Exactly,” Gary said as he rushed up the stairs.
Steve was glad that Gary actually did have a room upstairs and that he didn’t have to sleep in his mom’s basement, despite how Steve teased him about it. Dude was in his mid–twenties, though. Steve was going to have to find him a place, a roommate, a girlfriend, something. Get him out of there.
“See you on Friday?” Gary asked as he walked Steve to the door.
Steve paused for a moment. Gary had used a very odd tone asking his question. Steve turned to look at his friend.
There was something dark in Gary’s eyes, something that Steve had never seen before, that disappeared so fast after Steve noticed it that he wondered if he’d been mistaken.
“You bet,” Steve said, though he might actually tell the gaming group he was sick when Friday rolled around.
He didn’t want to go back into Gary’s basement. Not anytime soon.
He’d never admit that something down there had spooked him, but it had.
Ξ
Hunter snapped his right foot out and back.
Pow. That would dislocate the opponent on his right’s kneecap.
Hunter spun, letting the momentum add power to his arm as he clotheslined the opponent who would be standing on his right.
That opponent was down now.
Jab. Jab. Jab. That took out the one on his left, three quick strikes, neck, gut, balls.
A final kick with his left foot toppled that opponent.
On to the next.
Jab. Punch. Strike. Kick.
Hunter increased his circle of decimation. Took out all the ghosts and opponents and everyone, everything he could see.
Finally, when Hunter reached door of the VA yoga room that he’d taken over as a private gym, he realized someone was standing there.
Someone real.
Hunter pulled himself up abruptly. Otherwise he would have struck out at the stranger.
Maybe. Hunter generally had better control than that.
But there was something off about this guy.
Hunter stayed where he was, exactly one arm’s length from the door, examining the stranger.
The guy looked ordinary enough. He was dressed like an orderly, wearing blue scrubs. Smelled like disinfectant. Jar–head haircut, no beard or mustache, but with huge reddish sideburns, like from those bad porn movies in the ’70s. Weasel–like face, with a small, sharp nose, thin lips, and beady eyes.
There was something about the guy’s shadow, though, as if it was denser or thicker than it should have been. Like it trailed too far behind him, dragging itself through more than one world.
Then the guy seemed to snap back into place. There was nothing wrong about him. Nothing disturbing at all.
Had Hunter imagined it? Was his own gift playing tricks on him again?
Or was there something more to this guy?
“That was amazing,” the guy said. “How’d you learn to move so fast?”
Hunter shrugged. He’d been learning not to tell people the truth, that the ghosts had taught him, the beings from so far in the future that they could cross the timelines, the world lines, and interact with him.
“Practice,” Hunter finally said.
Because that was also the truth. Hunter practiced. A lot. Every move. Every gesture. Until nothing was wasted, everything was automatic. Smooth. Nothing mistranslated in either this world or any other.
“Could you teach me?” the guy asked. “I’m Erik, by the way.”
“Hunter,” he replied, merely nodding at the outstretched hand and not taking it.
He still didn’t like to touch people. Didn’t have any problems hitting them. But touching? No.
Not because there were likely to have a super–powerful secret government drug on their hands that they wanted to infect Hunter with, but because Hunter was afraid he might see something accidentally.
That they might trip a pre–cog vision when Hunter wasn’t prepared for it.
Hunter cocked his head to the side as he pondered Erik’s question, looking for a trace of that misshapen shadow he’d seen before.
He’d tried to teach Cassie—his one, true, blood brother—how to fight. When she let him see her. When she wasn’t too angry at him about, well, everything.
However, she wasn’t any good at it.
She could fight—mean, dirty—and win. Not against Hunter, of course, but she could certainly hold her own against an untrained assailant.
However, she didn’t have the discipline, or patience, or whatever it took to drill. To practice one move at a time. Hell, she couldn’t even break a move down into pieces. With her, it was all or nothing.
Was her failure because Hunter couldn’t teach her? Like he hadn’t been able to teach her how to use her own post–cognitive abilities? Or was it because Hunter couldn’t teach anyone anything? Were his abilities too different? Or was he too different?
“I can try,” Hunter announced. He realized he’d been quiet for a while, staring off into space, weighing options, pushing at his own inadequacies like a sore tooth, unable to just let it be.
He was okay with that. At least he hadn’t been arguing with ghosts the entire time.
“Great!” Erik said with a big grin. At least his expression looked honest.
Maybe Erik wasn’t a secret agent. Maybe he was fully of this world. Maybe Hunter’s gift was to blame. There had been a time, before Loki had kidnapped him and forced him to view all possible futures, when Hunter’s gift had been more reliable.
Well. Sort of.
But Hunter was still cautious. Josh had fooled him for a long while, claiming to be a friend before Hunter had figured out that Josh was a corporate spy for the Jacobson Consortium.
“Meet me here on Friday,” Hunter announced. “3 p.m.” And maybe he should go and pay Josh another visit. Hunter wouldn’t break the restraining order, of course, wouldn’t come within one hundred yards of Josh.
However, Josh would still know Hunter was there. Staring. And laughing.
Freaked Josh out every time.
“You got it,” Erik said with a grin.
Hunter picked up the towel and water bottle sitting next to the door.
“You finished?” Erik asked, gesturing toward the now empty room.
Hunter looked back. With his regular vision, he could see the empty wooden floor, the mats piled up along the walls, the blocks and straps in baskets.
With the tiniest shift, he could also see the pile of bodies he’d left behind, ghosts and former companions, all lying motionless.
“I am,” Hunter said. He could come back and banish the bodies at some other point.
Or maybe they’d all rise up and he’d have to fight them again.
Either was acceptable to him.
Chapter One
The bomb blew up. Again.
Damn it. What was I missing? I pulled back along the time thread, still following the brightest of the blue lines that represented the timelines surrounding the event.
There had to be something I
was missing. Something we’d all missed. There had to be a way to see the guy planting the bomb, not just watch it go off again and again.
The strongest blue line in that great fanning wave of lines spread through my area of knowing represented the present. This world. My modern–day self.
The lines that traveled along either side of that bright blue one were all weaker.
Alternate timelines. Alternate pasts.
Different me’s. Usually still bleached blonde, tall, zaftig, with great boobs.
On the one hand, I had to be able to swear under oath that I’d found the guy in my timeline. Lawyers were freaky clever like that, once they’d learned that some of us could see more than one past or future.
Most of the blessed hadn’t come to grips with that as fast as defense attorneys.
Not that I blamed them. Much. It meant that a bunch of us, the ones who had been labeled crazy, were now part of their club.
They weren’t always chummy about it.
Maybe there was a clue in one of the other timelines about who’d set the bomb. So far, I’d stuck with just the primary past, despite how tempting the other lines were. I didn’t want to look at those alternates until I was forced to.
Not that I’d ever admit how tempting they were to my girlfriend Sam, but traveling alternate pasts was slightly addictive.
Whoever had planted the bomb on the sidewalk in the middle of University Avenue on a slow Sunday morning had done a fucking good job of hiding his footsteps.
The guy had assembled the bomb in an abandoned warehouse building in northern Minneapolis, close to the Mississippi, where the gentrification hadn’t taken hold.
Then the asshole had hired someone to torture and murder people on the site. The creep had created three “masterpieces” before the cops had caught him.
That much emotion messed up any kind of reading. No one had been able to get through the pain of the other events. They’d just been too big. The lines were too blurry.
The police might have some physical evidence that a bomb had been created on that location. But they didn’t have anything else.
So now it was up to the PAs, those with paranormal ability, to figure out who this fucker was.