Eximere (The River Book 4)

by Michael Richan

  They walked out of the library and through the house to the staircase leading upstairs, then over to James’ bedroom. They looked down at him, but no one moved to take the silver fork in his hand. Finally Eliza reached out and slipped it out of the bony fingers. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll carry the funnel.”

  Steven wasn’t sure if this meant she intended to use it on Jonathan if the time came, or if she was just transporting it upstairs for them.

  “You ever wish you didn’t have these abilities?” Eliza asked as they turned to leave Eximere and walk back to the stairwell leading up to the main house.

  “Never,” Steven said. “My only regret is leaving people like Jurgen and Michael alive. You, Dad?”

  “Once,” Roy said. “But it’s a long story I’ll have to tell you another time. What about you, Eliza?”

  “Only when I was younger,” she said, “when I didn’t know what I was doing and made a lot of mistakes. It wasn’t until I matured that I figured out I needed to do something worthwhile with what I’ve got.”

  “What you’re doing in California is worthwhile,” Roy said, “and important. A damn sight more important than anything I’ve ever done with my ability.”

  “You’ve mostly helped friends in need?” Eliza asked. “I think that’s important.”

  “Yes,” Roy said, “that’s been most of it. I didn’t do much while I was married. The gift wasn’t anything my wife would tolerate. It scared her, turned her into a religion nut.”

  “I’ve never heard you phrase it that way,” Steven said. “I mean, I know you didn’t go to church with us and Mom, but I didn’t know you thought she was crazy.”

  “I loved your mother,” Roy said, “right up until the end, when things got nasty just before she died. Even then I still loved her, I suppose, but it was harder. As far as all the churching goes, yeah, I thought it was all bullshit. All just a way to protect you boys from me. And it worked, up until recently.”

  Steven smiled. “I’m glad it stopped working,” he said to Roy. “Without your help, I don’t think I would have survived what was happening in my house last year. The ghosts, the knockings, and all that. I thought I was going crazy.”

  “You know,” Roy said, “the people who should have received the books stored away in James’ library could probably use our help. I’d like to find a way to do that.”

  “We’ll never be able to help them,” Steven said, “if we don’t eliminate Anita first.” Although Steven had turned the subject back to the task at hand, he could tell that wheels were turning in Roy’s mind.

  They maneuvered through the passageways at the top of the stairs, coming to the ladder that ascended up to the cleaning closet in the pantry. Roy went first, then Eliza, then Steven. After they passed through the opening and into the closet, Roy rearranged the wainscoting to hide the entrance as best he could. Then the three of them looked at each other.

  “Ready?” Roy asked.

  “I guess so,” Eliza said.

  “Just remember,” Roy said, “he has to believe I’ll go through with it. I might say some things you don’t like. Don’t give me up.”

  “That’s why I’ve got the funnel,” she said. “If he sees that I’m on your side, I think he’ll acquiesce. I don’t want him to take advantage of my reservations.”

  “And if it comes to using it on him?” Steven asked.

  She looked him in the eyes. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said.

  “All right,” Roy said. “Let’s go back up to your room, Steven. We’ll contact the person in charge of the boundaries, then we’ll go talk to Jonathan.”

  ◊

  They knocked on the door to Jonathan’s room. “Yes?” they heard from inside.

  “Jonathan, it’s us,” Eliza said. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  Jonathan opened the door. A cell phone was at his ear. He held up a finger to them, signaling them to wait until he finished his call.

  “Yes…yes,” he was saying into the phone. “It won’t be long now…no, they’re resigned…no, they’re not doing anything, just waiting…I’ll call you when it’s over.” He flipped the phone closed.

  “Percival?” Roy asked, walking into the room.

  “If you must know, yes,” Jonathan replied.

  “Keeping him informed on the state of our deterioration?” Roy asked snidely.

  “Yes,” Jonathan said.

  Steven and Eliza walked into the room. Steven shut the door behind them.

  “What’s this about?” Jonathan said, looking from person to person. He was becoming concerned.

  “We’re here to talk to you,” Eliza said. Steven could see she held the silver fork in her right hand, gripping it tightly.

  “About?” Jonathan asked.

  “About what you’re going to do to make this right,” Roy said.

  “Make it right?” Jonathan said. “I’m not going to do anything. In a couple of hours, everything will be right, all on its own.”

  “No, you’re going to make it right,” Roy said. “You’ve got two options. I’m going to leave it up to you which one you want to take.” Roy was channeling something between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Steven felt himself starting to smile, so he dug his teeth into his lower lip to stop himself.

  Jonathan looked at Eliza. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “Hear him out,” Eliza said. “He’s serious.”

  Jonathan rolled his eyes and looked back at Roy. “Well?”

  “While you’ve been sitting on your ass, we found a way to solve this,” Roy said. “But it’s going to take a sacrifice to pull it off. That’s where you come in.”

  Jonathan stared back at Roy, baffled.

  “We know what the device is, and how to stop it,” Roy said. “But in order to do that, we’re going to have to shut down Anita first. And to do that, we’re going to use the marchers.”

  “The marchers?” Jonathan said sarcastically.

  “Yes,” Roy said. “We’ve already altered the boundaries of where they’re allowed to go, and once the cost of that change is paid for, the marchers are going to take care of Anita.”

  “What a load of horseshit,” Jonathan said, but Steven could see a look of worry pass over his face. He hoped Roy could see it, too.

  “No, I assure you,” Roy said, “it’s true.”

  “You’re desperate,” Jonathan said, “and you’ve concocted this story to try and get something out of me. It won’t work. You’re all doomed. So get out of here and fuck off.” Jonathan was raising his voice, but it wasn’t convincing. Roy’s performance was better.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Roy said. “Not until we’re done.”

  Jonathan began slowly walking backwards towards the nightstand next to the bed. Steven noticed and left his spot next to Eliza, moving between Jonathan and the nightstand.

  “You’re going to pay for the change to the marcher’s boundaries,” Roy said. “And there’s two ways you can do it.”

  Jonathan gave Roy his best patronizing look. “Fuck off, old man. I’m not going to do anything.”

  “There’s two ways to pay,” Roy reiterated. “We talked to the man who maintains the boundaries. His price is two hundred thousand dollars. I have his bank account information, so you can get on the phone and wire the money.”

  Jonathan smiled back at Roy. “You’re dreaming,” he scoffed.

  “Or, the boundary change can be paid for the same way it was established in the first place, with this,” he said, turning to Eliza.

  Eliza held out the fork. Jonathan looked at it and smiled. “A fork? What are you going to do, stab me to death?”

  “I can see why you’re so jealous of others with the gift,” Roy said. “You don’t even have the brains to use it when you should.”

  Roy, Eliza, and Steven watched as Jonathan slipped into the flow and then back out. “So it’s a cone. So what?”

  “Not very educated, either,”
Roy said. “It’s a soul funnel.”

  Roy thought he saw Jonathan’s face twitch slightly as he finally understood the options. “Steven?” Roy said.

  Steven walked up to Jonathan from behind and grabbed one of his arms. Surprised, Jonathan turned to look at Steven, and while turned, Roy rushed forward and grabbed the other arm. Then the two wrestled Jonathan down onto the bed, pinning him down.

  “You’ll get one chance to take the money option,” Roy said, “before we use the funnel on you.”

  “Fuck you both,” Jonathan said, twisting under them. “I don’t have that kind of money, and even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you pricks.”

  “Please, Jonathan,” Eliza said. “What they’re telling you is true, and they mean it!”

  “Fuck off, you stupid bitch,” Jonathan said. Out of nowhere, Steven punched Jonathan in the face. Roy, shocked at the move, pulled back a little as Jonathan’s head lolled to one side.

  “You knocked him out,” Roy said, looking up at Steven, surprised.

  “I’m tired of his insults,” Steven said, getting up off Jonathan. “He shouldn’t have said that.”

  “What do we do?” Eliza asked. “Revive him? He needs to understand this is serious. Right now he thinks we’re trying to swindle him.”

  “Give me the funnel,” Steven said, “and I’ll use it right now. He doesn’t have the money, you heard him.”

  Eliza pulled the funnel back, hiding it behind her back. “No!” she said. “He deserves the chance to pay. He doesn’t understand.”

  “You heard what he just called you,” Steven said. “Why are you standing up for the guy?”

  “Because what we’re about to do is permanent,” Eliza said. “And I believe in karma, and this will come back to haunt us.”

  “Karma is him getting the funnel,” Steven said. “He’s the one with the debt!”

  Eliza looked conflicted. Steven could see she was swinging back and forth in her mind.

  “We should tie him up or something,” Roy said, “while he’s out. Otherwise we’ll have to sit on him the whole time he’s making the call to transfer the money.”

  “There was wire in the janitor’s closet,” Eliza said. “On one of the shelves we moved.”

  “Will you go get it?” Roy asked, “And quickly? Steven and I will need to stay here in case he comes around.”

  “All right,” she said, and left the room.

  “I noticed she took the funnel with her,” Steven said.

  “She’s just ensuring the guy is given a fair chance,” Roy said.

  “Have you thought about what happens if he pays?” Steven said. “We’ll just have another asshole out there with a grudge against us. Add him to the list.”

  Normally, Roy would have argued with Steven about this, but his experience with Frank changed his feelings on the subject. Now he didn’t have the heart to even play devil’s advocate about it. Steven was right; if Jonathan paid the money, there would be another problem out there that might resurface in the future. He wasn’t sure if this made him prefer the funnel option to the payment option, since Eliza was clearly hoping for the latter. But he was now open to either, where in the past he would have preferred leaving Jonathan alive. This doesn’t kill him, anyway, Roy thought. He just becomes a vegetable. Roy knew he’d rather be dead than living as a vegetable, so he wasn’t doing a good job of convincing himself.

  Eliza returned with the wire, and Steven and Roy moved Jonathan over to a chair. Roy began using the wire to bind Jonathan’s hands and feet to it. “Steven,” he said, “go into the bathroom and bring in some water. We’ll use it to revive him.”

  Splashing water on Jonathan’s face brought him around, and when he saw that he was tied to a chair, he began to fume.

  “What’s it going to be?” Roy said to him. “The money, or your soul?”

  Jonathan looked as angry as a man could be. “The money,” he spat at them.

  “Do you know the phone number to your bank?” Steven said, opening Jonathan’s phone.

  “I do,” Jonathan said.

  “What is it?” Steven asked. Jonathan told him the number, and Steven dialed it, then held the phone at Jonathan’s ear. After a moment, Steven changed his mind and decided to listen to the call himself. He pulled the phone away and held it to his own ear.

  “Hello?” said a voice at the other end. Definitely not a bank, Steven thought. I’ve heard that voice before.

  “Jonathan?” the voice said. “Anything going on there?”

  “No, everything’s fine, dialed by accident sorry,” Steven said, flipping the phone closed. “He was calling Percival.”

  “So the funnel, then,” Roy said.

  “Jonathan,” Eliza said, “this isn’t a shakedown. I’ve seen James Unser’s body. I reconfigured the boundaries for the marchers myself. It’s all true. They mean to take your soul. Please just pay the money. You owe us all that.”

  “I’ve put up with your whining for so long,” Jonathan said. “You have no idea how sick I am of it.”

  “Jonathan,” Eliza said, “I thought we knew each other. I thought we were friends!”

  “We were never friends,” Jonathan said. “You always thought you were better than me. Well, by tomorrow that’ll change.”

  “You don’t understand,” Eliza said, “if they use the funnel on you, tomorrow won’t matter!”

  “Yes, it will,” Jonathan said. “Your plan isn’t going to work. Even if you use it on me, you’re all too goddamn stupid to make anything work. I’ve always been smarter than all of you, even if I couldn’t do as much as you. I don’t believe for a minute you’ve located the device or know how to stop it. Or Anita for that matter. I think you’re going to stick that fork in me, and nothing is going to happen. I think this is a last, desperate attempt of two pricks and a cunt who ran out of time.”

  Steven grabbed the fork from Eliza’s hand as she turned away from Jonathan. He walked over to Jonathan and placed the tines of the fork against his chest, and pressed. Then he watched as Jonathan’s smirk slowly sagged and his eyes shifted to the right, staring into space at something past Steven’s head. He could hear Eliza crying behind him, and he knew Roy was standing to his left, probably disapproving of the action he just took. I’m not going to create another monster, he thought.

  Steven stared at Jonathan’s face for a long time. When he was sure the process was complete, he withdrew the fork from his chest, and looked at it. The fork didn’t look any different than before.

  “I think we can untie him,” Roy said. “I suggest we get him on the bed.”

  Steven placed the fork in his pants pocket and assisted Roy in untying and moving Jonathan. Once he was laid out, Eliza turned and looked at him. She walked up to the side of the bed, examining Jonathan’s face.

  “You know, he helped me with one of my earliest endeavors,” she said, “when I was young and confused. He always seemed to be a constant, stable person I could rely on. What happened?”

  “Maybe he got into debt,” Roy said. “Or maybe, as he got older, he cared less about other people’s opinions, and he decided to do what he thought would satisfy him the most. I can assure you, that idea occurs frequently as you get older.”

  “Did it work?” Steven asked. “How do we know if the boundaries have been changed?”

  “The guy I talked to,” Roy said, “told me that the change would happen the moment he received the money or the soul.”

  “How do we know if he received it?” Steven asked. “Can we call him back to make sure?”

  “Sure,” Roy said. “If you’ll dial that same number we got from Dixon, I’ll ask him.” Steven pulled his cell phone from his pocket and used the recently called list to redial the number Dixon had given to them. He handed the phone to Roy, who turned and began speaking to someone named Malachi.

  Steven walked up to Eliza while Roy spoke on the phone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry it came to that.”

  She tu
rned to face him. “You did what you had to,” she said. “And the rest of us will have you to thank, if this all works out. I know that must have been hard.”

  It wasn’t hard, Steven thought. It was much easier than she thinks.

  Eliza’s face changed a little, and she looked down as she spoke. “Or maybe it wasn’t.”

  “If he’d paid,” Steven said, “which he wasn’t going to do, but if he had, we’d just have another enemy out there, waiting to take revenge on us. I can’t keep doing that.”

  “You know,” Eliza said, “you and Roy are interesting. He’s the one who comes off as John Wayne, all bluster and bravado. He sounds intimidating to most anyone he talks to. You don’t. You come off as passive and open, calm and intellectual. But when it comes down to it, you’re the one who pulls the trigger, aren’t you?”

  Steven hadn’t thought of this before, but he supposed she was right. He wasn’t going to acknowledge it, though. He just looked back at her.

  She leaned a little closer to him. “You found it easy because he made you angry,” she said, her voice lowered. “Not because you didn’t want another enemy. You were reacting to your anger.”

  Steven didn’t know if this was true, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge it either. He kept his face still, and made sure he didn’t think anything in response that she might pick up on.

  “It’ll be your downfall, someday,” Eliza said. “If you don’t get a handle on it.”

  “Maybe,” Steven said. “Roy has said the same thing in the past.”

  Roy handed the phone back to Steven. “He says payment received in full, and he’s made the changes.”

  “So the new boundaries for the marchers are in effect now?” Steven asked.

  “Supposedly,” Roy said.

  “They’re dormant now,” Eliza said. “When they wake up, they’ll all migrate downstairs. Do you want to go down and watch it happen? We could stay in the safe area I arranged behind the tree.”

  “Or we could stay up here,” Roy said, “and assume it happened. Maybe watch to see if Anita comes back up at dawn, or not?”

  “No,” Steven said, turning away from both of them. “I want to go down. I want to see it happen.”