Eximere (The River Book 4)

by Michael Richan

  “He must have hated her a great deal,” Steven said, “to be willing to sacrifice himself just to torment her.”

  “Love and hate within familiar relationships,” Roy said, looking up at Steven, “are often deep waters that outsiders never understand.”

  Steven didn’t know if he was talking about James and Anita, or himself.

  “It’s well known that some children hate their parents,” Roy added, returning his gaze to the book.

  “And it’s well known,” Steven said, taking the bait, “that some parents deserve to be hated.”

  Roy looked up at Steven, a mischievous grin on his face. “It’s OK,” he said. “I hated my father sometimes.”

  “I didn’t say I hate you,” Steven said. “I said that some parents deserve the derision they get from their children, that’s all.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Roy said.

  “No, you don’t,” Steven said. “I’m referring to James and Anita. I can understand why James hated her. She’s capable of awful things. God knows what she did to James over the years. If he hated her, there’s a reason.”

  “That’s probably true,” Eliza said, “and I can’t see what any of that has to do with you two.”

  Roy returned to the book, and Steven felt a potential fight was averted. Thank you, Eliza.

  “You’re welcome,” she said to both of them.

  “If we were to locate James’ legend shelf,” Roy said to Eliza, “would you be able to reconfigure it? Redraw the boundaries that define where the marchers go?”

  “There’s a chance,” Eliza said. “I’d have to see it to be sure.”

  “Then,” said Roy, standing and closing his book, “I think we have a way to take Anita out.”

  “How?” Eliza asked.

  “We let the marchers do the work,” Roy said. “We just need to redefine their boundaries to include down here. She’s so mired in her routine, they’ll surprise the hell out of her when they appear. She’ll be trapped; she’ll have nowhere to go. They’ll finish her off.”

  “So I’m guessing,” Steven said, “that you’d have Eliza redefine the boundaries, provided we find James’ legend shelf.”

  “Yes,” said Roy.

  “Then use the soul funnel to pay for the changes,” Steven said, “since none of us have the funds.”

  “We’ll give Jonathan the option,” Roy said.

  Eliza sat stunned. “You can’t be serious,” she said.

  “He got us into this,” Roy said. “He can get us out.”

  “Does he have that kind of money?” Steven asked Eliza.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s always seemed well off, but what’s the alternative? Take his life?”

  “Well,” Roy said, “his soul.”

  “I can’t believe you’d even suggest that,” Eliza said.

  “That’ll be the motivation for him to come up with the funds,” Roy said. “And he’ll need to believe I’m crazy enough to do it, or it won’t be much motivation.”

  Eliza looked back at Roy as through he was a man from outer space. “That’s a truly twisted idea,” Eliza said.

  “He lied to us,” Roy said. “He put our abilities at risk. And I believe his final words to you were ‘fuck you’.”

  “Percival is more to blame,” Eliza said. “Why not him?”

  “OK,” Roy said, “he’ll do. Either one. Though I don’t think Percival will have the funds. But I could be wrong.”

  “He had ten thousand to pay Jonathan,” Eliza said, turning and walking away from the table. She seemed to be mulling it over. “We’d have to contact the person James made the deal with, and find out if they’re even willing to make the change. And how much it would cost.”

  “OK,” Roy said.

  “And then we’d need to confront Percival and see if we can force him into it,” she said.

  “Sorry, Roy’s right,” Steven said. “It has to be Jonathan. Even if Percival has the money, he won’t do it. He’s a zealot. Jonathan doesn’t care about James and the legacy of it all – he’s gifted, so he understands what we’re talking about. He is more likely to take the threat seriously. If Roy threatens Percival first, and Percival refuses, but Roy doesn’t follow through and take his soul when he refuses to pay, Jonathan won’t believe he’d do the same to him. We get one shot at this, and it needs to be Jonathan.”

  Eliza looked at both of them, worried. She clearly felt troubled about the plan.

  “I won’t have anything to do with this,” she said, “unless you both promise me that even if he doesn’t pay, you will not use the funnel on him.”

  “And wind up drained?” Roy asked. “Are you willing to let that happen to all of us, and let Jonathan continue on?”

  “I’m not willing to kill anyone,” she said.

  “He won’t be dead,” Steven said. “He’ll just be a shell, a body without a soul. Fair play for what he’s done to us, I think.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Eliza said. “I think it’s horrible, the idea of him a vegetable, a body waiting to die.”

  “It is,” Roy said, “but the alternative is worse.”

  “I can’t believe there’s not a better option,” Eliza said.

  “I’m open to whatever you can come up with,” Roy said.

  “It’s left to me?” Eliza said. “You two are settled on this approach? You won’t even help me find some other way?”

  “We’ve run out of time,” Steven said. “I’m fine with Jonathan paying for what he’s done. Let’s just hope he takes Roy seriously, and pays up.”

  “First step,” Roy said, “is to find the legend shelf and get a quote on what it’ll cost to make a change.”

  “First thing in the morning,” Steven said, “as soon as Anita comes back upstairs. We can’t wait any longer.” He looked at Eliza. She looked as though she wanted to throw up. He felt sorry for her, and he understood where she was coming from. But as far as Steven was concerned, Jonathan was fair game. He threatened them, and now they were going to threaten him.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning, Steven, Roy, and Eliza met at dawn and traversed the path back down to the house. The light was bright downstairs, just as it had been in the past. Walking into the front yard from the door with the oval symbol, the openness and lightness of the air around him made Steven take a deep breath and sigh. This place is addictive, he thought. And Anita must not have noticed anything, since she didn’t attack.

  They didn’t talk about the previous night’s discussion. Eliza was uncharacteristically quiet while they walked, and Steven worried that she might not be able to go through with their plan. It won’t come to sacrificing him, Steven thought. He’ll pay up. Roy will put on a convincing show. If not, I hope we can find some alternative that she’s comfortable with. He saw her look up and smile at him, then return her gaze to the ground, watching her step. She seemed to appreciate his thoughts, but she seemed miles in agreement from them.

  They walked through the house to the library, Eliza triggering the lever she’d found earlier that opened the book shelf to reveal the stairwell leading down.

  “I’m assuming the device is down there somewhere,” Roy said. “So we need to find the legend shelf as quickly as possible and get back out.”

  “Agreed,” Steven said, and Eliza nodded. They walked down the steps, making a turn at the bottom down a short hallway. At the end was a door, which was locked. Unusual, Steven thought, given how every other door and window here is wide open.

  Eliza stepped up and had the lock picked in a minute, then all three went through the door and into a large room that was half the size of the house. There were large pillars spaced at odd intervals and work tables set up over most of the space. On top of every table there were objects – some just sitting, other disassembled.

  “Jesus Christ,” Roy said. “This is the biggest shop I’ve ever seen. How are we ever going to find anything?”

  “The legend shelf is ab
out three feet wide, and flat,” Eliza said. “Mine glows green, and has little lines on it. Look for something like that.”

  “Let’s each take a section and spread out,” Roy said, “Cover as much ground as you can. We’re looking for both the shelf and the device, so holler if you see either.”

  They split up and began scanning tables in separate parts of the room. Steven was amazed by the items he saw – some were strange, almost as though they came from another planet, and others were ordinary and mundane. Sometimes he encountered something that was moving; there was something that looked like a large erector set, except the pieces were made of ceramic, and it had an arm that was continually swinging. Perpetual motion? he wondered, completely taken by it. He found it hard to pull away and continue looking around. Every piece he saw was fascinating and drew his attention.

  He was disturbed when he entered the River and a large jar of metal hinges sitting on the bench in front of him transformed into a jar of insects. Each one had a tiny human-like face, and they all turned to look at him, as through his entry into the River caught their attention. Their tiny mouths opened and closed, like fish, but he could see, when their mouths were open, rows of small sharp teeth. They forced themselves to the top of the jar, trying to push the lid open. The lid appeared to be screwed on tight, and he was glad, as he didn’t want to deal with the creatures inside – although they clearly wanted to deal with him. What the fuck would you use those for? he wondered.

  “Torture,” Eliza said from a nearby table. “I’ve seen them before. They have no legitimate use. Many of the things here are contraband, or worse.”

  So James was a lot like Jurgen, then? Steven thought, referring to an evil adversary Roy and Steven had encountered in Seattle while trying to help Roy’s friends at Mason Manor.

  “Never met him,” Eliza said, “but from what you’ve told me about him, Jurgen sounded exclusively ‘dark side’. There’s a mixture of good and bad here. But some of the bad is rather extreme.”

  He exited the River, finding its perspective more of a distraction than a help. Eliza hollered for the other two to come see what she had found, and Steven and Roy hurried over to her. In front of Eliza was a three foot section of black slate. In the slate there were faint blue lines, some of them pulsing.

  “Is that it?” Steven asked.

  “I believe so,” Eliza said. “It’s not exactly the same as mine, but the pulsing lines remind me of the one I have. So it’s probably it.” She bent over it, examining the lines for a minute. “This outline looks to me like the house upstairs. Yes, I think this is it.”

  Roy removed a small mirror from his back pocket and held it at an angle next to the slate. “I’m going to go into a trance, to see if I can pick up a signature,” Roy said. Then he closed his eyes and stood frozen, the mirror cocked at an angle and shaking slightly.

  Steven knew what Roy was trying to do. They looked for signatures when they worked at Mason Manor in Oregon. Using a mirror, Roy had been able to see a signature of a mysterious portal that appeared there, and with the help of his friend Dixon, an expert in signatures, Roy was able to figure out who was behind it. He was hoping he could use the same method to figure out who was maintaining the shelf.

  Steven looked at Eliza. She was staring down at the shelf, trying to make sense of it. I hope she knows what she’s doing, he thought.

  “If I spend a few minutes with it, I think I can figure it out,” she said.

  Roy opened his eyes and lowered the mirror. “I’ll have to call Dixon to find out the owner,” he said, placing the mirror back in his pocket and removing a piece of paper and a pen. He began sketching.

  “What about the shelf itself, Eliza?” Steven asked.

  She moved her hand over the area on the shelf and other images formed above them. “Seems to work the same,” she said. “The colors are different, but it’s responding the same as mine. The map is of the landscape upstairs, the yard, the house.” She moved her hand again, and an image of Russell in his bedroom appeared. He looked deep in a trance, or still asleep from the night before. “There’s Russell,” she said. “I doubt he’ll know we just looked in on him.” She moved her hands again, and other areas of the house appeared. Then she pointed to the blue lines that had the brightest glow. “These are the boundaries,” she said. “He’s got the marchers penned into the entire estate on the surface, excluding the house itself, which has a twenty foot buffer. Except for right here,” she said, pointing to an area of the house, “he has the boundary go through her bedroom window and a couple of feet inside her room. That’s to keep her scared, I expect.”

  “Can you change the boundaries?” Roy asked.

  “I should be able to,” she said. “Just need to find the Z axis toggle.” She moved her hands around the edges of the slate, and suddenly a three dimensional image of the house and yard rose from the shelf. She kept moving her hands along the edge until Eximere appeared as well, with the various stairwells that led to it. Eventually she had the whole area displayed in three dimensions, including the main road and the tunnel. As she moved her hands, the image rotated, offering each of them a change of view.

  “I rarely turn mine on three dimensions like this,” she said, “since we’ve set ours to go fifty feet underground no matter where we place the boundary.” She pointed to an area of the upstairs house near the foundation that looked like a blurry red smudge. “See this here?” she said. “This is the protection that was placed on the foundation. That’s why we could never see under the house when we tranced.”

  “So you know how to change these boundaries?” Roy asked. “Can you do it?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she said, reaching into the three dimensional display and letting her finger linger on one of the blue lines. It pulsed and turned green, and she slid it to the right. She paused her finger, and the line turned blue once again. Then she removed her finger from the display. “There,” she said, “I just moved the boundary out past the main road, which obviously we don’t want to leave in place,” she said, reaching in and reversing the steps. “I can make these moves easily enough. The problem will be getting the changes to engage. That’ll take the power of whoever is keeping this running.”

  “Which will require Jonathan’s cash,” Steven said. “We’ll find out just how much it’s going to cost when we get back upstairs.”

  “I think we should go now,” Roy said. “We know what we’ll need to do, and how to get back to this shelf when we’re ready.”

  “But we don’t know where the device is yet,” Steven said, turning around and surveying the room.

  “We can figure that out once we’ve eliminated Anita,” Roy said, “and we need to make sure that happens tonight. We can’t afford another day. I don’t know about you, Eliza, but entering the River has become much more difficult for me.”

  “It’s much harder,” Eliza said. “I should make the changes to the boundaries now, before we go back up.”

  “And we should leave with the soul funnel,” Roy added. “We’ve got to have these changes in effect before the marchers wake up at dusk. We’ll just have to trust that the timing will work out, and that Anita won’t find the missing funnel before the marchers find her.”

  “Agreed,” Steven said. “How long to make the changes, Eliza?”

  “Let me start now,” she said. “Gotta do this right. We’ll want the marchers to be able to go into all the underground areas, including the stairwells, so she doesn’t try to escape back upstairs. And if that’s the case, there’s no reason for them to be upstairs anymore at all. What about this room? Should I exclude it?”

  “No,” Steven said, “let them come down here too. She might know about this place and try to escape down here.”

  “We need a safety area somewhere, in case we’re trapped down here,” Eliza said. “I’ll keep a small area behind the banyan tree off limits. She won’t know it’s there to escape to, but it’ll come in handy if we need it.” She reached into the
model, moving and repositioning lines. When she was done, she stepped back. “There,” she said. “That should do it.”

  “So after this takes effect,” Steven said, “we’ll still only be able to come down here during the day, because the marchers will be out at night. Down here. And upstairs will be safe all the time.”

  “Correct,” Eliza said. “But none of this will matter unless you get someone to enforce the changes. The old pattern was what James paid for, and that’ll stay in effect until this new pattern is paid for.”

  “All right,” Roy said. “Let’s head back up and deal with Jonathan.”

  They started their walk back to the stairwell that led to the library. Steven turned to Eliza, wanting to resolve the situation between them.

  “I know this isn’t comfortable for you,” he said to her, hoping she’d come around.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “Yet, the more I thought about it last night, the more I felt you two are right. I just don’t see any good option. I agree Jonathan has to own up for this. This kind of betrayal in our world just isn’t taken very well. I know some people who would have killed him already. But I’ve known him for many years. It’s taken a while just for me to believe he’s done it.”

  “I wonder what happens,” Steven said, “after we’ve forced him to pay up. Another person out there with a vendetta against us, Roy?”

  Roy’s initial reaction was somewhere between he can get in line and I don’t give a shit, but he stifled himself and didn’t say either. He remembered dealing with Frank Wilmon, a memory Steven and Eliza didn’t share. That softened him to Steven’s thinking that leaving people out there instead of finishing them off might be a big mistake. I’m not a killer, Roy thought. I don’t murder people. But if it’s between all these people and Jonathan, Jonathan loses.

  “How much of our ability is worth a person’s life?” Eliza said.

  “You won’t be able to continue your work in California, protecting artifacts,” Steven said. “You’ll get home and not know what most of the stuff in your house does.”