Blood River (The Ruby Callaway Trilogy Book 3)

by D. N. Erikson

  He glanced over, breathing heavily. “You look deep in thought.”

  “Not really.” He shrugged and gave me one of those looks like he didn’t believe me. “You told me once that I could be anything I wanted.”

  “Doesn’t sound like me,” Kalos said with a wry grin. “But at least you chose something you’re good at.”

  “A killer.”

  “Could be worse.” His legs churned in the desert dust. Argos sped ahead, outpacing us both. The entrance to the Fae Plains was about a mile to the north. Roark didn’t look like he had that type of time.

  “How so?”

  “You could be unemployed.”

  There was a fierce howl in the distance that was most definitely not coyotes. More like…

  “Vanished,” Kalos said, no fear in his voice.

  “Which means there’s a demon somewhere.”

  “Hopefully not nearby.”

  I took the shotgun off my back and racked it, the sharp noise slicing over the rainy desert. We ran in somber silence over the cracked earth. The desert had an infinite nature, like a Mobius Strip. Each step brought us closer to our destination, but the endless horizon never moved. It made it feel like we were running in place.

  “You told me you were sorry,” I said, peering into the rain for movement. Still no sign of Roark.

  “I really think you have the wrong man, Ruby,” Kalos said, pretending to drawdown with the .45 as he ran. “You’ll ruin my reputation, you keep up with these falsehoods.”

  “Right before I was about to die on those butcher shop stairs,” I said. “You did. For bringing me into your world.”

  “I was sorry. If I hadn’t come into the print shop, then you wouldn’t have been down in that cellar.” Kalos shrugged, his t-shirt clinging to his skin. “But I guess things worked out in the end. Because the world wouldn’t be here without you.”

  The Vanished howled on the horizon, reminding me of Roark’s fate. I redoubled my pace, trying to urge my legs to go faster. We’d be too late to save him. No way he had held off the horde alone, with only his pistol.

  I said, “What does your code say to do when someone’s inflicted with demon bloodlust?” Such was your fate if you were bitten by the Vanished. An unpleasant descent into madness, if there ever was one.

  “I haven’t lived by the code in a long time, Ruby.” Kalos shot me a glance. “Because I’m no longer half-demon.”

  “Fair enough.”

  A gun barked on the horizon. I finally saw a thick ring of bodies in the gray afternoon light. Something was holding them back, keeping them from launching an all-out attack. Their master lay in wait somewhere nearby.

  I racked the shotgun and aimed, shredding three of the Vanished with MagiTekk’s lethal ammo. A few turned and snarled, noticing our presence. Kalos’s .45 barked.

  The wisps carved a path through the rain. I cleared out some bodies, sprinting through the gap in their tight racks. I ducked beneath an outstretched arm, firing at a woman brandishing an umbrella.

  Safely on the inside of the circle, I gasped, recognizing the short sleeved polo shirt in the mud. Roark was slumped against a rotten wooden support beam that was jutting out of the desert. The recent rain had revealed the buried entrance.

  “No.” I broke into a dead run, howls pounding at my ears. “No, no, no, no.”

  Throat dry, I slid to a halt next to his body and touched his face. The sad blue eyes were closed forever, the brown hair matted by dust and tumbleweeds. His arm bled—a gash from a knife or a switchblade. A few other minor wounds were visible through his torn clothing.

  The pistol laid silently by his side.

  “You can’t die, you son of a bitch.” Bringing my lips to his ear, I said, “Goddamnit, Colton Roark, you can’t do this.”

  Cold fingers touched my arm, and I recoiled with a surprised scream. I heard a soft chuckle that sounded like a rusty piece of machinery due to his parched throat.

  “I thought you only liked me for my looks, Ruby.” Roark’s head turned slightly, the slivers of his blue eyes visible. “But now I know for sure.”

  Kalos stomped through the mud, looking no worse for wear. He said, “We need to get him up.”

  “Can you stand?”

  Roark grimaced and said, “I’ve been out here since yesterday.”

  Roark’s eyes flickered shut before I could respond.

  “The dog is drunk and Mom doesn’t care,” I said with a small smile, shaking him.

  “You remembered that. Wow.” His eyes didn’t open.

  “You remember telling me?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Time loop?”

  I patted his hand. He winced and said, “Come on, that hurts.”

  Well, that wouldn’t do in a fight—so I did the only thing I could think of.

  I took the second-to-last booster shot out of my pocket and jammed it right in his neck—straight to the source.

  14

  The booster shot may have worked, but it didn’t fix a far bigger problem: the mob of soulless acolytes who wanted to tear us limb from limb. Staring out at the army, I wondered how Kalos and I had even managed to cut through. Because my intuition sure as hell wasn’t charting a course back out of this mess.

  The Vanished snarled around us in the downpour, forming a jagged circle. I backed up, bumping into Roark and Kalos. Together, we formed a little triangular island in the middle of some very precarious seas.

  Soccer moms, constructions workers—normal people turned into soulless husks. Harvested to sate a demon’s bloodlust, only continuing to faithfully serve their master.

  An ear-piercing shriek from the unseen master caused the minions to answer with an equally horrible caterwaul. Wincing like I’d just bit a lemon, I considered firing the shotgun next to my ear to deafen myself.

  “Odessa,” Kalos said, the remnants of a demonic growl tinging his voice. “She wants the map.”

  “You know her?” I asked. “Could’ve told us.”

  “She’s been following us. Harcourt’s blasting the Tributary details to every media outlet finally let her zero in.”

  “But she can’t know I have the actual map.”

  “She’ll find out,” Kalos said as the ring of soulless bodies tightened around us. They were close enough now to see their empty eyes. Totally subservient to their demoness master. “Must be her lucky day.”

  “At least someone’s getting lucky.” I racked and raised the shotgun. For Vanished, these specimens were surprisingly tame. The wisps trickled through the thin gaps in their ranks, flowing across the wet, sunburnt plains. Their blood red hue told me that Odessa was nearby, pulling her minions’ strings.

  “They aren’t moving,” Roark said. “Why aren’t they moving?”

  “Why didn’t they kill you?”

  An answer came, traveling on the stormy winds. The sound didn’t so much rush through the air as become part of its very fabric.

  “Bait,” Odessa’s imperial voice announced. “The attractive one was bait.”

  “Bait for what?” I called back.

  “One of you will explain how to reach the Tributary.” Odessa’s voice swirled around us from every angle. “And the rest will be spared.”

  “Likely story,” I shouted back.

  “Not your lives,” Odessa replied, disdain dripping like rainwater from her tone. “Spared the indignity of being torn limb from limb.”

  “Pass,” I said, aiming down the sights. “But thanks for the offer.”

  “Very well, fools.”

  Suddenly, the Vanished surged forward like enraged animals, their mistress’s restraints finally coming loose. Kalos and I gave each other a knowing nod.

  A bolt of blue lightning erupted from the shotgun’s barrel, turning a vacant-eyed car salesman into ashen dust. Kalos, for his part, got off two headshots with the .45, but the ranks quickly closed, the sea of Vanished rumbling toward us with bats, knives and whatever sundry rocks were available.

 
Roark’s pistol fired like a metronome behind me. We dropped the first wave before they’d even closed half the gap. But ammo wasn’t unlimited, and the Vanished had strength in numbers.

  They also had a pocket ace up their sleeve: if they bit us, we’d be consumed by demon bloodlust. A slow-moving affliction that robbed you of your sanity—and eventually turned you into little more than another soulless acolyte. Not before you had a psychotic episode that made the worst meth binge look like rational discourse, though.

  “Faster you worthless creatures!” Above the pounding rain, the demoness squealed, desperately trying to galvanize her army. I had Harcourt to thank for this attack. His public release of the details had every crazy who believed in the Tributary licking their chops. Even from beyond the grave, that damn Fae was causing me no shortage of trouble.

  Hopefully, other would-be treasure seekers and power grabbers would ignore him. Odessa and MagiTekk were more than enough chaos to deal with.

  I racked the shotgun and fired, the chamber going empty.

  “I gotta reload!” I jammed a mixture of MagiTekk and supernatural rounds into the chamber, working as fast as my rain-click fingers allowed.

  Kalos grunted a response, but I knew that a .45’s magazine didn’t hold an infinite number of bullets. Behind us, the pistol stopped ringing, and ice sluiced through my veins as I heard Roark say, “I’m down to my last rounds.”

  He’d been out here fighting the Vanished long before us. Figured he would run out of bullets first.

  Scanning the approaching barbarian horde, I estimated that there was a minimum of thirty demon associates still standing. Once human, now nothing but meat puppets, they stalked forward, ready to execute their Odessa’s wishes.

  “I’m running low, too,” Kalos said. Another thunderous shot exploded from his .45, catching a former waitress in the head. But still the Vanished came forward, feeling no fear or pity for their fallen comrades.

  I finished loading the shotgun and squeezed off another shell, cutting off a burly fellow at the knees. He still crawled forward through the bloody, rain-spattered dust, dedicated to his mission even in the throes of death. The obsession would’ve been impressive had he not been crawling toward me.

  “Here,” I said, shoving the shotgun at Kalos. “Cover me.”

  “You can’t go out there—”

  But I was already racing toward the army, taking the lightning blade from its sheath. Its electric glow cast a glistening blue sheen over the soaking landscape.

  Reaching the first row of bodies, I spun to avoid a golf club, slicing through a neck as I ducked beneath the clawing arm of another would-be attacker. Pirouetting around a gray-haired man with a cane, I sprinted through a gap in their ranks, my focus centered on one goal.

  The horizon.

  If I could draw the Vanished away, then Roark and Kalos could pick them off. Maybe thin out their ranks enough to have a chance.

  But that was Plan B—a worst case scenario.

  Because, really what I was doing, was following the trail of red wisps. Right back to the source.

  Cut off the head off the snake, and the body dies.

  I jammed the knife into an office worker’s skull, feeling the bone crack from the force. As I tried to wrench the weapon free, two Vanished closed in and grabbed my arms. I unleashed a bloodthirsty cry, temporarily giving up my pursuit of the blade to trip one.

  His partner had a copper pipe, and the woman brought that down on my knee with a howl. Angry, I wrestled the pipe from her hands. She tried to bite me, but a sharp elbow to the stomach nipped that in the bud.

  Clutching the slippery metal tight in my hands, I flipped over, just in time to see a rock plummeting toward my face. She’d grabbed a new toy. I swung the pipe, connecting with the woman’s attack. Her neck snapped back like an impact dummy’s as she flew back into the gooey dirt.

  Not wasting time, I quickly swung the pipe at her partner, caving in his head. Pulse pounding, I returned to my original task, placing my boot against the fallen office worker’s chest and tugging on the blade. It slid out with a gruesome noise that made even me wince.

  Shots from Roark’s pistol and the shotgun peppered the landscape behind me. The Vanished seemed torn between attacking me and going after my allies. Not the intended effect, but their ill-fated divide and conquer approach was making survival easer.

  But I had a demoness to kill.

  I dropped into a dead run, sprinting in pursuit of the wisps. The fringes of the group were ragged and unkempt, comprised of the stragglers. I weaved through the ultra-wide openings, rather than picking unnecessary fights, my focus always on the horizon.

  The desert can be deceiving—what looks empty for miles can suddenly be filled with fauna or mountains. The opposite too—one can imagine an oasis that, upon reaching a distant vista, was nothing but sand.

  In this case, however, it was no desert illusion keeping Odessa hidden. It was a garden variety cloaking spell, which I sensed as I tore ass away from the Vanished horde. I sensed the aura of the crude spell from many yards away.

  The wisps turned a shade of deep crimson that I hadn’t seen in years. Perhaps ever.

  This demoness needed to die. It was her blood, or ours.

  But I wouldn’t get the chance. The illusion shattered with the rumbling start of a loud truck engine, the gray horizon disappearing in a cloud of thick black diesel smoke. The pickup truck’s high beams flashed. I stopped, shielding my eyes.

  Its engine revved, and I heard Odessa call, “I will find a way into that Tributary.”

  “Not on my watch, you won’t.” I regretted handing the shotgun off to Kalos. In the distance, I could hear the fragments of the battle still raging. I needed to dispatch her before the remaining forces devoured him and Roark.

  “We are alike, you and I.” Odessa leaned out the window and waved. I don’t know what I was expecting—maybe a hideous, Medusa-esque monster with tentacles flowing from her wrinkled face. But what I saw was a pretty brunette wearing a cowboy hat.

  “I’ve been hearing that too much, lately.” I gripped the knife, wondering if I could hurl it through the windshield. “And it’s pissing me off.”

  “That’s what allows us to survive. Rage.” The engine exploded, all that Detroit steel humming at once as the tires screamed forward in the muddy desert. I stood my ground as the truck bore down, gauging my chances of killing her.

  None.

  But anger and defiance kept me standing there until the wisps screamed I was going to die. I dove out of the truck’s path as it tore ass away from the melee. Coughing from the exhaust, I scrambled to my feet.

  In the distance, I saw a field of bodies, a few lost stragglers wandering about without their mistress. And, in the middle, two men.

  One standing.

  The other on his knee.

  Lungs burning, I raced across the rainy expanse, worst case scenarios playing in my mind.

  When I was within earshot, I yelled, “What happened?”

  The man on the ground looked up. I could see Kalos’s salt-and-pepper flecked beard. I almost breathed a sigh of relief, until he said, “One of them got me.”

  And then he craned his neck to display a fresh red bite.

  15

  Breathing heavily, Roark and I helped Kalos back to his desert cabin. Argos greeted us at the door, his plumy tail wagging like a metronome until he sniffed the air.

  His ears immediately went down and he said, “Someone’s been corrupted by demon bloodlust.”

  “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before, buddy,” Kalos said, offering a weak laugh. He shook off our arms and walked to the table under his own volition. I watched him take a long drink directly from the bottle of bourbon. Then he limped into the kitchen-bedroom-living room and slumped onto the cot.

  Argos nodded me into the adjacent room, where all the workstations and tech beeped. It was amusing to me that Kalos—he of the shitty apartment and mattress on the floor—would reinvent h
imself as some sort of technical wizard. I guess the job market forced everyone to learn new skills.

  I leaned against the crumbling wall, Roark taking the other side of the small room. He’d made a remarkable recovery after the booster shot. Guess they worked better when you weren’t completely exhausted.

  I could already feel the weariness begin to set within my bones.

  “Do you have something that can help?”

  “I can’t heal him here,” Argos said. For a moment, he looked every bit of 3,000 years old. Worry for his aging and hurt friend, who had long ago saved him from the Underworld.

  “We can’t bring him along,” I said, glancing at Roark. “He’ll just slow us down.”

  “He’ll die.”

  “What about Nadia or Gunnar?” Kalos’s other associates might be able to help.

  “Gunnar doesn’t live close by. And Nadia…” Argos’s voice trailed off. “She left.”

  “Is he trying to win her back?” I nodded to the open doorway.

  Argos said in a growly voice, “It’s complicated.”

  I glanced at Roark, sharing an unspoken understanding.

  “We need to get him to a doctor.” Argos’s ears flicked back. My eyes narrowed, sensing a problem. “There something I should know?”

  Kalos appeared in the low doorway. His salt-and-pepper hair brushed against the top as he ducked beneath. “We’re going with you to the Tributary, Ruby.”

  “Like hell you are.” I glanced at everyone in the room. Suddenly, I was the center of the attention. How that had transpired was a goddamn magician’s act bordering on Houdini. First we were discussing Kalos’s bloodlust, and now everyone was looking at me like I’d peed in their cereal.

  Sorry if I thought it unreasonable to include a bitten man with goals counter to my own in my party. Silly me.

  I stomped my boot against the ground, the shotgun banging against the wooden slats nearby. “Y’all going to stare at me, or give me a damn answer?”

  “We’re trying to fulfill Kalos’s destiny.” Argos’s looked to Kalos for guidance. The former half-demon gave his loyal dog the nod. With an aristocratic throat clear and a puffed out chest, the border collie added, “And we’re willing to die for that.”