Eximere (The River Book 4)

by Michael Richan

  “He went in here,” Roy said.

  “Through the bookcase?” Steven said.

  “What’s on the other side of this wall?” Roy said.

  “There’s a large sitting room,” Eliza said.

  “There’s got to be a passageway then,” Roy said. “Help me find it!”

  Steven and Eliza began inspecting the bookcase, looking for anything unusual.

  “Do you think you have to be in the River to open it?” Steven asked.

  “Probably not,” Roy said. “Look for a lever or something. He hated his gift, he liked to make mechanical things that didn’t require its use.”

  “Didn’t stop him from making this house, in this cave – or whatever it is,” Steven said.

  “Good point,” Roy said. “Maybe I’m wrong. Eliza?”

  Eliza slipped into the River and continued her inspection. After a few moments, the bookcase in front of her slid back, and then to the left.

  “A lever on the top,” Eliza said. “Steven was right, it was concealed in the flow.”

  “I stand corrected,” said Roy.

  They looked into the space the bookcase had revealed.

  “Of course,” Steven said. “Another stairwell, leading down. The device is under this house.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Amusing!” Kent Percival said, kicking back in his chair and placing his feet on the table.

  Steven, Roy, and Eliza had returned to the surface after ensuring everything was in its place. They decided to not go down the staircase they found in the library of Eximere until they had a plan for dealing with Anita, agreeing that getting closer to the device without a plan meant they’d lose their gifts even faster. Thomas warned them Anita would know if they touched the device, so she had to be neutralized first, somehow. When they arrived upstairs, they found Percival talking with the others in the dining room.

  “There’s only so much you can get in this town,” Russell said. “We’ve been using the only pair of wire cutters we could find, but they’re barely making a dent.”

  “Don’t bother talking to him,” Myrna said. “He doesn’t need to know what we’ve tried.”

  “What does it matter?” Russell said. “He put the mesh over the door, he knows what’s going on. We all know what’s going on here.”

  “Amusing!” Percival said, smiling and laughing. “Yes, that was a bit of a rush job, thanks to Jonathan.”

  The group turned to look at Jonathan.

  “So it was you,” Eliza said.

  “I…I…,” Jonathan stuttered, looking down.

  “Out with it, Jonathan,” Percival said. “Tell them how you brought them all to their dooms!”

  Jonathan stood silent, the toothpick in his mouth bobbing up and down.

  “Come on,” Percival said, “out with it.”

  “He’s just saying that,” Jonathan said, “to turn us against each other.”

  “I figure you’ve all got one more day,” Percival said, “then your gooses will be cooked. No reason not to be honest with them now, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan stared back at Percival, anger boiling behind his eyes, shredding the toothpick between his teeth.

  “You said they wouldn’t be harmed,” Jonathan said.

  “And they won’t,” Percival said.

  “You said I wouldn’t be harmed,” Jonathan said.

  “You didn’t have much gift to lose, though, did you?” Percival said. “And you still have yours. Surely the risk was worth what you earned.”

  It took a moment for Percival’s statement to sink in, but when it did, Roy came unglued. He ran at Jonathan, grabbing him by his collar, and pushing him back into the wall. The toothpick in Jonathan’s mouth fell to the floor.

  “How much?” Roy yelled at him. “How much to sell us all down the river?”

  Jonathan remained silent. Roy could see the fear on his face.

  “Ten thousand,” Percival said. “Plus the promise that he wouldn’t be affected.”

  “So you weren’t tagged?” Myrna said.

  “No,” Percival said. “He drank something before your focus – one of your evil concoctions.”

  “So you faked being sick back in town?” Eliza asked.

  Jonathan glanced up at Eliza, but quickly dropped his eyes back to the ground, not saying anything.

  “He doesn’t have to answer,” Roy said. “It’s written all over him.”

  “Go to hell!” Jonathan said, and spat in Roy’s face.

  Roy shoved him further up the wall, but Steven grabbed Roy’s shoulder to stop him.

  “You’re always talking about loose ends,” Roy said to Steven, “how about we end this one right now?” He shoved Jonathan even further up the wall. Jonathan grabbed Roy’s hands to try and loosen his grip, but Roy held firm.

  “You betrayed us all,” Myrna said. “You’re a traitor to your own kind.”

  “The main thing is that we continue the work,” Percival said. “After you’re all processed, Jonathan here will help me round up some more.”

  “We will talk,” Myrna said. “Others will know what you’re doing!”

  “No, you won’t,” Percival said. “You won’t care.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Roy said, lowering Jonathan from the wall.

  “No, I’m not, not according to the writings of James,” Percival said. “The final step of the process – the last thing the device does as it pulls the final bits of your abilities away – is to make you forget. You’ll leave here wondering why you came. Beautiful, really. Merciful.”

  “Abhorrent,” Russell said.

  “What if we just kill you both, right now?” Steven asked. “It’s five versus two, I think we can take you.”

  “You won’t, I know your creed,” Percival said. “James wrote about it extensively. You don’t kill unless you have to. Killing to save your ability would be the ultimate hypocrisy.”

  Creed? Steven thought. I’ll have to ask Roy about that later.

  “Well, I have to be going,” Percival said. “I refreshed a few of the items in the fridge, but you won’t be needing much more. I’m guessing by the day after tomorrow, you’ll all be in the mood to leave.” He smiled broadly, took his feet off the table, and stood up. “You keep trying with those wire cutters,” he said to Russell, laughing. “Maybe you’ll get through by next week!” He walked into the kitchen, and was gone.

  Eliza turned to Jonathan. “I can’t believe you lied to me. Why? Money?”

  Jonathan wrinkled his nose at her. “You’re all so self-righteous about everything,” he said, almost spitting as he talked.

  “So you admit it?” Myrna said. “What Percival said was true.”

  “Yes, sure, I admit it,” Jonathan said. “If he’s right, you won’t remember anything anyway.”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Eliza said, turning away from him.

  “You don’t have much in the way of ability, do you?” Roy asked Jonathan, studying his face. Under the anger and bluster, he could see embarrassment. “That’s what I thought. You’re jealous.”

  “And you’re just a sanctimonious prick who thinks he’s special,” Jonathan said. “All my life I’ve put up with your types. I’m sick of you all.”

  “Your types?” Myrna said. “You mean our types, don’t you? You’re one of us.”

  “No,” Jonathan said. “Roy is right. I’m not as powerful as any of you. Not by a long shot. Never have been. Listening to you talk and go on about this ability or that, I’m fucking sick of it. It wasn’t the money. It was the chance to bring you all back down to size. Regardless of how much power I have, when this is over, it’ll be more than any of you.”

  “You’re a horrible person,” Myrna said. “I can’t believe I trusted you! I regret having ever met you.”

  “So do I,” Eliza said, her back still turned to him. “And I can’t believe I involved my friends for you. I feel ashamed.”

  “Fuck you,” Jonathan said, “and fuck your
friends, too. You’ll all be living normal lives soon, so get used to it.” He turned and left the room, going down the velvet paper hallway.

  “Well, fuck you!” Roy yelled after him. “You son of a bitch!”

  “What an asshole!” Russell said.

  “Judas,” Eliza said, her head bowed. Steven thought she might be crying.

  “We were all tricked into this,” Steven said to her. “It’s not your fault, Eliza.”

  “You both had concerns,” she said, “and I brushed them off. I trusted him over you. Never again.”

  “Russell, you said you were using wire cutters?” Roy asked.

  Russell raised his right hand, showing Roy a pair of wire cutters that were about six inches long. “Got them in town,” he said. “The best I could find.”

  “How do they work on the door covering?” Roy asked.

  “I’ve spent hours on it,” Russell said. “I’ve snipped through three wires, and bent the cutters in the process.”

  “It’ll never do it,” Roy said. “They’re not big enough.”

  “We seem to have run out of options,” Myrna said, exasperated. “What else can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Roy said, still unwilling to share their discoveries with the group. “I guess we wait.”

  “I intend to spend my last few hours with the gift my own way,” Russell said. “I’ve got a few trances I’ve always wanted to try, and I’m going to give them a shot, provided I’ve got enough juice to pull them off.”

  “Same for me,” Myrna said. “I’d like to be alone during whatever hours are left.”

  “All right,” Roy said. “We’ll interrupt you only if we have news.”

  Russell and Myrna left and walked down the hallway, returning to their rooms. Eliza, Roy, and Steven were left in the dining room.

  “I’m so sorry,” Eliza said, turning to look at Roy and Steven. “I…”

  Steven walked to her and hugged her. She hugged him back, a sob or two leaving her body.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Roy said. “We haven’t given up like Russell and Myrna. We have options. There’s things we need to do.”

  “Should we tell them?” Eliza said. “Russell and Myrna?”

  “No,” Roy said. “It’s worked for us so far to keep this between the three of us. Let’s not change that. If we’re successful, they’ll both be OK – then we can tell them.”

  “What about Jonathan?” Steven asked.

  “I don’t think we want Jonathan or Percival to know how far we’ve gone,” Roy said. “So we need to be careful. But I don’t think either of them has any clue what’s really under this house.”

  “I can’t believe he lied to me like that,” Eliza said. “And that he’d participate in this horrible thing.”

  “Not just participate,” Steven said. “He’s getting paid, and he intends to keep doing it to others.”

  “I really misjudged him,” Eliza said. “I feel so foolish.”

  “If we can find a way to destroy the device,” Roy said, “we can stop both him and Percival.”

  “What do we do next?” Steven asked. “We can’t go back down there, it’s nearly dusk. We’re running out of time.”

  “I could use some food,” Roy said. “I’m starving.”

  “Really?” Steven asked. “Food? Now?”

  Eliza seemed to snap out of her funk. She took a deep breath, and shook her head, as though she was shaking off the guilt that bothered her about Jonathan. She turned to Roy. “Roy, you go get your book from upstairs. I think we should go through it again, now that we know about the missing section from Thomas senior. I’ll go rustle up some food in the kitchen. Let’s meet back here in ten minutes and get to work.”

  They all looked at each other, and smiled. Eliza took it as forgiveness from Roy and Steven, and Steven was glad the old Eliza was back. Then they all went their separate directions.

  ◊

  Roy reached for another piece of cheese. Steven had cut several smaller pieces off a large chunk of cheddar to make it easier for Roy to grab and eat while scanning the book.

  Like cutting up food for a baby, Steven thought. As they get older, they revert.

  “Now, now,” Eliza said, staring into the book next to Roy. Steven wasn’t sure if she was referring to his thought about Roy or to something she was reading. Or something Roy might have thought, he wondered. He decided he was going to find out if Eliza really could read minds or if it was a coincidence.

  If you can tell what I’m thinking, he thought, look up and smile at me.

  He saw her smile, but she did not look up. Just like her, he thought, to leave me wondering.

  “Isn’t it intriguing how mysterious it is?” Eliza said.

  “I know what you mean,” Roy said. “I wish we had Thomas senior’s book to check on a few of the things junior is writing about here. It does seem mysterious. He just assumes you’ll know what he’s referring to.”

  “Junior must have had his father’s book at the time he wrote this,” Steven said. “That means junior was into his own by the time his father was killed by James.”

  “I wonder if he knew what happened to his father,” Roy said. “I’ve never encountered anything in junior’s writing that would indicate his father went missing.”

  Roy returned to studying the book, scanning carefully.

  “Do you see that?” Roy said, pointing to a drawing.

  “It looks like a cone,” Eliza said, moving her face a little closer to the book to examine the drawing.

  “Technically it’s a funnel,” Roy said. “It’s a soul funnel. I’ve seen it before, somewhere recently.”

  “A soul funnel?” Steven asked.

  Eliza scanned the book. “Looks like it’s used to conduct a transaction.”

  “Conduct a transaction?” Steven said. “Involving souls?”

  “Eliza, you’re familiar with managing perimeters,” Roy said, ignoring Steven’s question. “You use them to manage the area you’ve protected in California, right? How do you do it?”

  “The same way everyone does,” Eliza said, “on a legend shelf.”

  “What’s a legend shelf?” Steven asked with a little irritation in his voice, “and what does it have to do with a soul funnel?” He hated being left in the dark.

  “A legend shelf,” Eliza said, turning from the book to look at Steven, “is a little different for each person who uses one. In my case, I use it to set the physical boundaries of the protected area of artifacts. It’s almost like a map. It lets me monitor the lines where the protection starts and stops.”

  “So you’re able to change the boundaries,” Roy asked, “if you want.”

  “Yes,” Eliza said, “but I don’t. It takes a lot to get them set up in the first place, and a lot to change them. So you make sure you get them right once, and leave them.”

  “What does ‘a lot’ mean?” Roy asked.

  Eliza stared at him, seemingly unwilling to answer.

  “Come on,” Roy said, “I’ve never worked with them. We need to know. I think the marchers are controlled by the same method, something James set up.”

  “There are two ways I know of,” Eliza said. “The first is to pay a lot of money to someone who will start it up for you. We used my legend shelf to set the boundaries we wanted, but we saved for almost five years before we had enough money to pay someone to start it, to like, ‘turn it on.’ It takes a huge amount of power to do that, especially for as large an area as we were intending to protect. We had endless fund raisers, bake sales, you name it. Several of us took mortgages out on our homes. It wasn’t easy, but it was important to all of us, so we made the sacrifices we needed to. We made sure we had the boundaries we wanted, then we engaged someone to start it for us.”

  Steven thought of Albert in New Mexico, and the portal he’d maintained for Robert Maysill before they shut it down.

  “Exactly like your friend Albert and the portal at Mason Manor,” Eliza said, smiling at Ste
ven.

  “What’s the other way?” Roy asked.

  “I hesitate to say it,” Eliza said, “because I find it so abhorrent.”

  “Just tell us,” Roy said.

  “Well,” she said, “as you know, Albert is above board. If you don’t have the money to set up something like this with someone scrupulous like him, then you have to set it up with…”

  “Yes?” Roy asked.

  “…someone less scrupulous,” she said.

  “Someone who’ll take something other than money, you mean,” Roy said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And if not money,” Roy said, “it must be pretty substantial.”

  “That’s what I understand,” Eliza said.

  “Wait, let me guess,” Steven said. “A soul.”

  Eliza nodded, a look of disgust on her face.

  “It’s always souls with these people,” Steven said under his breath.

  “So James set up the parameters or boundaries for where the marchers would be,” Roy said, “using a legend shelf somewhere. Then he used the soul funnel to pay for it to engage.”

  “And presumably,” Eliza said, “for it to keep running for a long time.”

  “How does it work?” Steven asked. “The soul funnel?”

  “According to this,” Roy said, looking at his book, “once the arrangements are made, you press the open part of the cone against the chest of the person whose soul you’re taking. So I guess James must have used it on himself, which would explain why it’s still in his hand.”

  “Why were we able to communicate with James,” Steven asked, “if his soul had been taken?”

  “James’ body would have gone comatose once he used the funnel,” Roy said. “It’s likely his body was kept alive for a while, before it died in that bedroom. Perhaps Anita kept him going; we’ll never know. Being able to communicate depends on the deal he struck. He must have had enough freedom to at least return to that room.”

  “Probably to keep an eye on things, make sure things were still running,” Eliza said. “I know monitoring my shelf is important to me.”