River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Having made the Earth and watched the population grow, however, the seven Kethili disagreed on what they should do next. They went to war with one another, fighting over the course of eons until only two were left: Kethili-anh, who wanted to let the world continue on the course that was begun, and Kethili-cha, who wanted to wipe it clean and start over.”

  Truly didn’t know what to make of her fantastical story. “We going into the rocks?” he asked, nodding his head toward the pale, rain-soaked stones ahead. Brewer must have gone that way, he figured.

  “Looks like we should.”

  “It’s going to be wet.”

  “Is there any place that isn’t?” She checked the strings on her hood, and he wished he had one, too. Even a hat would help. Or a force field. He reached into his zippered bag again, removed two spare magazines for his weapon, then zipped it shut. He dropped the magazines into the side pockets of his raincoat and opened his door. “I don’t remember reading about all that in the Bible,” he said as they sloshed through standing water toward the first of the huge rocks.

  “There are far older writings than those contained in the Christian Bible, Mr. Truly,” she replied. “And older stories still, written on stone, which no one has ever dared to put down on paper.”

  “So you believe this tale?” He slipped on wet stone, and she caught his arm, held him until he regained his balance. Forty days and forty nights of rain had been in the Bible, and he hoped that wasn’t about to be repeated.

  “I don’t know what to believe. But I refuse not to believe in it. And if you have any special relationship with God, I expect that praying would be a good idea right now.”

  Truly ignored the suggestion. “And your friend? What’s he doing here?”

  “That’s hard to say. I need to look for him, and maybe we’ll both find out.”

  Ginny Tupper had calmed considerably since he had pointed his weapon at her, but she was still anxious for her friend. Truly thought he sensed an undercurrent of excitement, too, as if she believed herself on the verge of a major discovery. Perhaps they both were.

  She was smart and she had a fierce wit even under pressure. Unlike most of the women he dated, she wasn’t too young for him—or too married, judging from the lack of a ring.

  He wanted to kick himself. In the midst of the worst storm in history, heading into a rock formation he had never heard of, chasing a murderer who was traveling with an old blind man, listening to tales of homicidal gods, he couldn’t help thinking that the woman beside him—whom he had met all of ten minutes before—was strangely attractive.

  Keep your mind on business, he told himself. Try not to be a dope for once.

  But people couldn’t change their true natures, and he doubted he’d be able to take his own best advice.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “It’s not a great night for rock climbing,” Truly pointed out.

  “It’s not a great night for anything,” Ginny said. “Except maybe a stiff drink and a movie on TV. I’m not even sure where we should go. Besides up, there are also caves in there, whole networks of them tunneling under the rocks. But given the river’s height, I’d rather go up than underground.”

  “Works for me.” She obviously knew the place better than he did, so he let her lead. He tried to emulate where she put her hands and feet, knowing the rocks could be treacherous in this heavy rain. His leather street shoes weren’t meant for serious hiking or climbing.

  Amid the rocks, the lightning and thunder seemed louder, closer, more violent than they had en route from the city. It didn’t make sense—not that “sense” meant what it once had—but it almost seemed that the blinding flashes and crashing thunder was originating within the tumble of rock instead of outside it.

  Ginny led him up a trail of sorts, winding up a series of ever-higher outcroppings. Along the way they passed images painted directly on the rock: a sunburst, some parallel wavy lines, creatures that might have been deer, and a shield, all of them glowing as if white-hot. “What the hell? That’s definitely not normal,” Ginny said. It seemed like a vast understatement, but Truly didn’t offer any comment.

  Strange as the glowing images were, his attention was fixed on something else. The storm made its own crashing, banging racket, its particular light show in the sky, but there was definitely something going on within the rock formations as well. Cracks of thunder echoed off the stone surfaces, drowning out that coming from the clouds. Other sounds were interspersed with that thunder, rattling booms like an army of convicts breaking rocks with sledgehammers. Occasional whining sounds sliced through the rest of it like devilish buzz saws.

  “What do you think that is?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “We’ll find out soon, I expect,” Ginny offered. They had almost reached a pinnacle from which they would be able to look down onto whatever transpired below. The rocks were steeper here—the fall, should they lose their footing, potentially lethal. Wind and weather had smoothed the stone, leaving handholds that were little more than bumps on its surface. Realizing he could see better the higher he climbed, Truly determined that what he had first thought were thunder and lightning glowed bright enough to cast its illumination all the way up here.

  When she reached the top and stared down the other side, Ginny let out a gasp. Her body went stiff. Truly hurried the last few feet, joining her at a jagged edge from which he could see all the way to the river more than a hundred feet below. Blinking rain from his eyes, he gazed at a scene he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe.

  Two—creatures—was the best word he could summon, not human, although they had human attributes—faced each other in some sort of mystical battle. Both were naked and their genders were clear—one, with longer dark hair, had visible breasts and a slightly softer, rounder form, while the other had shorter blond hair and beard, and external genitalia swaying between freakish, spidery legs. They stood across from each other on a wide rock shelf that had stone spurs shooting up all the way around it, forming a natural amphitheater, the walls of which were covered in glowing pictographs. They conversed, Truly guessed, as they circled each other, making a series of squeaking hisses interspersed with whoops and barked comments, in a language that didn’t sound like anything he had ever heard, or heard of.

  The male’s oddly jointed arms worked together in a motion that looked like he was scooping up empty air—except that the air bent and wrinkled where he held it, as if he’d formed a huge soap bubble—and then he hurled his ball of seeming nothingness at the female.

  She bobbed on legs that made Truly’s teeth hurt to look at, ducking under the male’s attack. While Truly couldn’t see the projectile in flight, except for a vague wrinkling of the air where it flew, it hit the wall behind her and exploded, sending shards of stone flying everywhere. The blast unleashed a stink like burning rubber, but with an unexpectedly sweet undercurrent that reminded Truly of fennel.

  The female hissed something unintelligible at the male and blasted him with her own unseen missile. It glanced off his left shoulder, spinning him around, then crashed into the wall and sprayed him with bits of stone. He dropped to one knee—or whatever those inverted joints were called—and clapped a hand over that shoulder. Purplish blood seeped between fingers as long as Truly’s forearm—seven of them on each hand, he noted, ending in inches-long claws.

  Ginny’s expression was rapt, awestruck. She stared in wonder at a scene that no anthropologist—no human being—had witnessed since before the dawn of recorded history.

  Truly’s belief system had undergone serious changes since he had taken the job running Moon Flash. But it hadn’t altered enough to accommodate whatever he was seeing. Looking at them made his stomach churn and he had to swallow back bile. He wished it were a nightmare so he could wake up, or that in the brief time Ginny had been in his car, crossing the flooded bridges, she had dosed him with LSD. “What are those things?” he demanded.

  “I can only guess,” Ginny said, h
er voice now much calmer than his. “The guy used to be my friend Wade. I’m thinking the other one looks like—and I use that phrase loosely—his friend Molly. But now? Now I’d have to say they’re Kethili.”

  Truly didn’t bother arguing. No other explanation was any more plausible than hers, and at least she ventured one. “So one of them wants to—how did you put it?—wipe the world clean and start over? Which one?”

  “From what Wade told me, that’s Molly. Kethili-cha.”

  “Then we’d better damn well hope she loses.”

  He tore his gaze away from the struggling creatures—or gods—and looked toward the river. Lightning and the illumination from the explosion of their mystical weapons lit up the flowing water momentarily, like a camera’s strobe, and he saw figures floating in it, whisked downstream by its ferocious current. A cow, he thought, and maybe some deer. Smaller shapes that might have been human beings.

  Movement across the way caught his attention, and he tried to focus through the rain. On the far side of the rock amphitheater, mostly tucked away behind some large boulders, Vance Brewer watched the battle. The blind man, standing slightly behind him, appeared oblivious to the scene in front of him. The rain had pasted the old man’s few tendrils of hair to his scalp, giving him a cadaverous appearance.

  Truly still owed Brewer for killing Millicent, and he wanted answers about his involvement in this whole mess. “Wait here,” he told Ginny, fully aware that he held no authority over her whatsoever. “There’s something I have to do.”

  She touched his shoulder as he started away. “Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m good at that.”

  More confident than when he had first climbed up, Truly descended and worked his way around the natural clearing where the two Kethili fought. The flares and flashes of their conflict lit his way, lightning providing secondary illumination. Every now and then the clouds parted enough to reveal the moon—a flat, pale pewter disk that offered no light. When he threatened to lose his balance, he grabbed at the yucca or mesquite breaking the stony surface here and there—all of it sharp, slicing his bare hands, but better than a fifty- or sixty-foot drop.

  Fifteen minutes later, he had circled all the way around, coming up behind and slightly above Brewer and the old man. Brewer still watched from hiding, but the old man had sat down in a puddle behind him and inscribed shapes on the rocks with his fingertips. His mouth moved, but no sound came from it.

  Truly could shoot Brewer from here. One in the back of the head should do it. That might avenge Millicent, but it wouldn’t help him achieve his other goals. Anyway, the man was a captain in the United States Army. Although it hadn’t seemed like it, they were ostensibly on the same side. Better to give Brewer a chance to explain himself.

  He maneuvered toward a narrow bench from which he could drop down behind Brewer, taking him by surprise. Dodging the old man would be the only hard part, since he had moved to the center of the small hidey-hole Brewer had found.

  As he slid around, trying to position himself for the drop, though, Truly slipped, his hands gliding out from under him on the rain-slick stone. Instead of a dramatic landing, he plopped six feet to the ground, splashing into the puddle, one outflung arm smacking against the old man’s leg. The old man didn’t react, but Brewer did.

  He spun around and aimed a sudden kick at Truly’s head. Truly saw it coming but since he was off-balance with his hands and feet in the puddle, he could only jerk his head to the side. The kick glanced off his shoulder instead, knocking him sprawling.

  “I should have taken you out of this a long time ago,” Brewer said, his voice a menacing growl. He started toward Truly, who was still shaking off the effects of the fall and the kick. Truly scrabbled to regain his feet before Brewer reached him, and almost made it. At the last second, still trying to rise, he scooped up a fist-sized rock from the ground, and just before Brewer slammed into him, he hurled it at the captain’s head. The rock caught the side of Brewer’s temple, staggering him for a moment.

  “I thought attacking women was your thing,” Truly said. Taking advantage of Brewer’s temporary instability, Truly charged through the puddle and drove the officer back against the boulder behind him. They landed with a bone-breaking crunch. Brewer groaned.

  He was at least twenty years older than Truly. Maybe thirty. But he outweighed and out-muscled Truly, and he was probably a more skillful hand-to-hand fighter. Even smashed up against a rock, he managed to bring a knee up into Truly’s thigh and a fist down against Truly’s ear. Truly’s hold relaxed. He fell away, and Brewer followed up with two more quick jabs, a left and a right, blinding Truly with flashing lights and driving him back through the puddle. There the old man’s outstretched legs tangled with his and he went down again.

  Brewer came at him once more. A kick to the jaw snapped Truly’s head around. A second landed short, catching Truly’s leg with a glancing blow. On the third, Truly caught Brewer’s foot in both hands. He yanked, twisted, and Brewer fell hard. Truly scrambled over him, pummeling with both fists as he did. Brewer, on his back, rained blows up at Truly. His right fist caught Brewer’s cheekbone, tearing the flesh. Truly tasted blood. He jabbed a thumb toward Brewer’s eye but Brewer whipped his head to the side. Truly’s thumb mashed against the side of his face, then Brewer turned his head again, snapping at the thumb. He nipped it before Truly could yank it away.

  Favoring his damaged thumb allowed Brewer another moment, and he used it. He bucked Truly off him, got to his knees, and lunged into Truly, shoving him down in the puddle once again. Truly landed on his back with Brewer swarming over him, punching and kneeing his ribs and chest. Truly was weakening, barely able to take the punishment and still give anything back. Brewer was a killer, and he didn’t show any sign that he would stop until Truly had joined his list of victims.

  Truly got the break he needed when the old man suddenly lurched to his feet, tried to take a step, and tripped, coming down across Brewer’s back. Brewer half turned to shove him off. Truly shot out his left fist, catching Brewer squarely in the throat. Gagging, Brewer reared back and Truly squeezed out from beneath him. He gained his feet and shoved a hand in his coat pocket, drawing out the Colt.

  “I don’t want to do it this way, Brewer,” he said. “But if you make a move toward me, I will.”

  Brewer held out his hands in a show of truce. “Don’t worry. One thing I’m not is suicidal.”

  The old man had fallen back into the puddle, and drew himself to a sitting position, as if forgetting he had ever tried to stand. “All right, then.” Truly relaxed a little, but kept the gun pointed at Brewer’s midsection. If the officer charged, he couldn’t kill him outright but he’d put a hurting on him, granting himself time for a second, more fatal shot. “Why did you kill Millicent Wong?”

  Brewer’s mouth opened in surprise. “That’s what you care about? You didn’t notice that we have some far more urgent concerns right now?” He ticked his head toward the battle that, from the evidence of noise and light, continued below.

  Truly shrugged. “Okay, point taken. You obviously know something about what’s going on here.”

  “About the Kethili? Yeah, something.”

  “Tell me,” Truly said. “Why are they here? Why have they come back from wherever they’ve been? Where do you fit in? And what’s the army’s interest?”

  “Hold up,” Brewer said, raising his hands again. “That’s a lot of questions.”

  “Then you better talk fast because I still have the gun.”

  Brewer clenched his right fist, then loosened it again. “We brought them back,” he said. “You’re CIA, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ve got your occult research section. Army intelligence has ours, too. And we’re way out ahead of you on that. Maybe we’re a little less hidebound, less bureaucratic, I don’t know, but we were willing to make some intuitive leaps, consult some sources you guys didn’t seem interested in
. You know how intelligence sharing is—not really a priority for either of us.

  “Anyhow, way back, I don’t know, thirty years ago or so, we turned up information on the Kethili. Someone in our group thought if they could be restored, controlled, they might be useful weapons. That was toward the tail end of the Cold War, remember, and we needed any edge we could find, in case the Commies decided to launch nukes at us.”

  Truly had a hard time accepting what Brewer said. He spat blood. His tongue probed a spot where a tooth he had probably swallowed had been. He was sure the gash over his cheekbone still bled, but the cold, stinging rain had numbed it and washed away any blood as soon as it surfaced. “Let me get this straight. You thought you could bring gods back to life and control them?”

  “Someone did. I’m not naming names. I was a junior member of the team back then. An errand boy. Somebody told me who to hit or where to go, and I followed orders.”

  “Where have I heard that excuse?”

  Brewer ignored him. “Eventually they determined who knew the most about the Kethili—at least, in the world of English-speaking white men—and they pointed me in his direction. I went and found him, snatched him up, and…let’s say, persuaded him to perform a ritual that would restore their physical bodies. This is still ages ago, twenty, twenty-one years, something like that.”

  “Sounds like it wasn’t the most successful ritual ever.”

  “Not at first. We thought it was a total flop. The old guy swore it would work, but it might take time. Twenty years, fifty, a hundred, five hundred…he didn’t know. Naturally, that pissed me off royally—flying missiles could be here in a matter of hours, not years. I bitched, but he said there was nothing to be done about it.”

  “Where did all this happen? Victorio Peak?”

  “Yeah, back inside the mountain,” Brewer said. He dabbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “The old guy said the correct vessels—that’s the word he used, vessels—had to be in the right place at the right time. He said his spell sank down into the water table, where it would join the rest of the Earth’s waters, flowing through rivers and streams and across oceans, until it found the vessels it needed.”