Downpour g-6

by Kat Richardson

  Coming out of the deep Grey, I shivered and staggered a few steps. I’d lost track of time in the Grey and been standing still for so long, my limbs had stiffened in the cold. I needed to get the rest of the way down to the road before it got dark, or I’d never get back to my truck.

  Ridenour and Strother were probably put out with me for taking so long to get down the mountain. I wondered if they’d found any trace of Willow at their end. I hadn’t found much and now the trail was literally too cold and faint to follow. I was still certain she’d headed for Costigan’s place—it seemed too big a coincidence otherwise—but they might have some other ideas, since they knew the area and residents better than I did; you don’t have to know anything about magic to know what people may do. I got moving again and found myself on a comparatively wide, groomed trail following the curve of the shoreline. I headed north because, although it led away from Fairholm and the most likely direction to find Ridenour and Strother, it was a shorter distance to the road, and I’d driven that stretch of East Beach enough to feel confident I could find my way to someplace with a phone—possibly Costigan’s house....

  The trail finally died out at a tiny parking lot a few yards from the river that was the lake’s only outlet. A sign told me my wide trail had once been the right of way for the Spruce Railroad and now connected the head of the Lyre River with Camp David Jr. I wondered for an irreverent second if people sent aspiring presidents there to summer camp. I turned toward the Devil’s Punch Bowl and Costigan’s house and began trudging.

  Along the short bit of road was a line of small lakefront houses. Most boasted short docks for tying up sporty little boats, just like the houses on Lake Sutherland did. No boats currently swung from any of them nor did any of the houses pour light out onto the road. This was strictly seasonal housing. I was almost to the end of the road that could actually be called one when I saw a cluster of people huddling at the edge of the pavement, nearly hidden under the long shadow of Pyramid Mountain and the boughs of alder trees near the water. The smears and strands of colored energy that lay across the ground and plants seemed to crawl toward them.

  “You should go,” the group whispered. “Get out of here. You’ll end up like us, like him. . . .”

  I frowned and walked closer to them. One of them strained to pull away from the others, walking a few steps toward the nearest house and then falling back, flickering and jerking like a film running backward.

  They weren’t people; at least not live people. But they weren’t thin and fading like most of the ghosts I’d seen recently around the lakes. These were almost present, almost . . . alive, and they seemed to become more solid as the sun dropped. I stopped close to them, but not close enough for them to reach me—I hoped. They were far more disturbing than most ghosts I’d seen. They were . . . wrong. And they had a smell like something that had lain bloating in water for a long time. One of them swayed and turned eyes like rough, unpolished marble in my direction. I recoiled. This one looked like the white thing I’d seen come up from the lake a week ago. It was not a ghost but a sort of walking corpse, half-eaten away by whatever lived in the lake, the remaining flesh and bone dull white and rot gray. It made a low noise but didn’t move any closer.

  “What—” I started, but had to stop and swallow hard before I could go on. “What are you . . . doing here?” I asked. Were they zombies, ghosts, ghouls? I didn’t know, but they sent some part of my brain screaming in horror and I had to work hard to keep from letting that part run the show.

  They knotted themselves closer together and seemed to speak from a single breath that rattled through all of their decaying throats. “Drawn, tied. Run away.”

  “Who’s keeping you here? How long have you been here?”

  “Him . . . Days on end. Run. . . .”

  They were dead. The dead don’t know everything, but sometimes they know something. Much as the conversation sickened me, I asked them, anyhow, “Do you know what happened to Steven Leung?”

  “In the lake . . .”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “Do you know how he got there, who put him there?”

  They were silent, staring at me for a few moments. I hesitated to call what they did thinking, but it seemed to be something of that nature. “Because . . . the anchor.”

  “Is that a person?”

  “No. . . . Cause. The anchor . . .”

  “An anchor was the cause of his death?”

  They let out a collective sigh and one slumped to the ground in a wet heap, a noxious odor bursting up as it hit. I jumped back, closing my mouth and holding my breath. “Run,” the rest reiterated as dusk deepened under the ridge in the shadow of the setting sun.

  Then they lurched toward me and I could hear something like a snake moving swiftly through dry grass. I backpedaled as fast as I could, gaining ground without taking my eyes off them. The slithering noise stopped with an abrupt whipcracking sound, and the standing dead were suddenly free of whatever had restrained them. They staggered and began shambling toward me, gaining speed the longer they stayed upright.

  I swore and whirled, breaking into a full run toward the narrow bridge that crossed the Lyre River. I was a few feet ahead and I thought my living legs were probably more powerful than their dead ones, but I didn’t want to turn my head to find out. I’d know I was wrong when I felt their rotting hands on me. And that thought goaded me to run faster.

  I pelted down the road in the lowering darkness, the lake a momentary red flash as the clouded sun tipped beyond the edge of the mountains on my left. I didn’t pause to admire the effect. I just bolted in the direction of East Beach Road. Whatever Costigan might have been able to tell me, I could try for it another time.

  I ran like hell. I could hear them—or I thought I could—gasping and thrashing across the ground after me. I aimed for the bridge. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet away. . . . I thought maybe, if I crossed it, I’d be safe. I hoped so, at least.

  As I ran, I saw something moving in the trees on my left where another small road came down toward the bridge from the mountain. Friend or foe? I couldn’t slow down to find out. I’d have to deal with it when it hit me. I didn’t hear an engine, so it wasn’t a truck, though right that second I’d have been thrilled to see Ridenour or Strother, no matter how freaked they might be by the zombies in my wake. I dodged a little to the right, to make room for whatever was coming.

  A flash of black and white and then a confusion of shapes and colors burst from the intersecting road. For a moment I thought I saw a swirl of black hair, but I didn’t look too hard. Something barreled into me, almost shoving me into the lake, and then snatching me back at the last moment and pushing me toward the bridge again. The thing closest to me howled and I knew that sound.

  I turned my head a fraction, glancing at the big white monster next to me.

  Jin, a double exposure of white demon and black-suited man, grinned back. “Hello!”

  “Hi,” I panted, feeling a stitch knitting tight in my side.

  “Cross the river. They’ll stay back after that.”

  “Goody,” I gasped, stretching for the last few yards to the bridge.

  I almost lost it and fell down when my feet touched the wood and steel of the short span across the Lyre. Jin grabbed me under the arms and flung me the last ten feet, jumping to join me on the far side.

  Then he turned back and looked across the bridge. I picked myself up from my undignified sprawl and rushed to my feet, ready to keep running, but seeing Jin standing still and grinning back at the other shore of the river, I turned back, too.

  With gruesome black liquid oozing from them here and there, the undead things on the other side milled back and forth in their lurching, teetering manner. They shambled forward one by one and fell back, turning their dead eyes on us to stare for a moment. They twitched and re-formed their strange, pressing cluster as if they were too weak separately to speak until they had compiled themselves into one mass. “Not safe.�
� Their common voice sighed. “Don’t return for us.”

  Then they separated, turning individually and shambling back the way they’d come.

  I shuddered. They knew I’d try to come back and let them go and they didn’t want me to. Being told not to release them from whatever dread enchantment held them in their rotting flesh was worse than making the decision myself. I wanted to throw up at the feeling of helplessness and the pain in my side.

  Jin laughed at them as they left. “Senseless, useless things.”

  “They’re pretty good guard dogs,” I panted. “That’s hardly useless around here.”

  “Hah! That depends on what one wants.” He glanced around; then he turned and faced me, composing his human features into a pleasant expression while his white demon face leered in hunger. “Now you owe me two stories,” he whispered.

  NINETEEN

  I was pretty sure I could have fought out if the zombies—or whatever the appropriate word was—had caught me, but I was just as glad not to have had to. On the other hand, now I was in debt to a demon; not the brightest or pickiest demon, but still . . .

  I watched Jin while I caught my breath, thinking about how I was going to slip out of this problem. Jin had helped me out twice, but it wasn’t from altruism. He would always want a quid pro quo; that seemed to be how he worked, though I wasn’t completely sure. He could think for himself, so it was possible he might play a longer game if he had a reason to. There was no doubt in my mind that he was working with or for Willow Leung—I’d seen them together on the highway and he definitely took orders from her—but the purpose was what made no sense to me yet. How could I get him on my side?

  First I needed to know why he’d come along just now, though I thought I knew. “Thanks,” I said, turning and starting up the narrow road in the general direction of East Beach.

  Jin caught up to me in a single easy bound that almost looked like teleportation. He waved a clawed hand in front of my face and spoke in an urgent, low voice. “No, no. You owe me some information and I shan’t let you walk off without giving it this time.”

  My feet felt unusually heavy as he said it and I glanced down, seeing green tendrils of magic wiggling out of the earth to hold me in place. I glared back at Jin. “Do you really think this is the best location for an exchange?”

  He shushed me and scowled, making a gesture like a conductor cutting off the end of a song. All noise seemed to drop away.

  “What are you doing?” I snapped. “We’re apparently only a quarter mile or so from the zombie keeper,” I said. Pointing upward, I added, “And it’s probably going to start raining again as soon as the sun’s all the way down. I’d like to be inside and dry before that happens.”

  “He won’t come for us. And rain doesn’t bother me, but we need some quiet or others may overhear. I’ve just made it much harder.”

  “Harder? Marvelous. Then we can stand out here and chat in the storm, since you no longer care how pretty you look in that nice silk suit.”

  He frowned. One gambit shot down, he tried another. “You have a truck.”

  “Not right here and it’s a long walk to get back to it, so unless you want to turn yourself into a unicorn and let me ride you all the way to Sol Duc—”

  Jin looked startled. “Sol Duc? What were you doing down there?”

  “Looking for Ridenour and that’s where I found him.”

  Jin looked thoughtful. “Interesting . . . I didn’t know he had business—down there.”

  I wondered what he’d meant to say, but I was pretty sure I’d get it out of him later. For now, I wanted to get moving before the clouds opened up and poured water on us. I tried moving my feet, but they seemed to be well-stuck to the ground.

  “Why did you leave your truck there?” he asked.

  “Because it was easier to take one truck than two, though right now I wish I’d stuck with my own ride.”

  “This is inconvenient.”

  “Damned right it is. Next time Willow wants to do me a favor, tell her to send a cab.”

  Jin started to object, but I waved him down and bent over to snap off the viney tendrils that held me in place. They stung a bit, but they were not as painful as holding on to Willow’s energy globe had been, and I figured it was about time these two got the idea I wasn’t just a flunky trotting at Jewel’s heel. “Let’s not play this game, Jin. I know you work for Willow—I saw you with her. Not saying you couldn’t work for yourself as well, since you don’t seem to want her to hear this conversation, but it seems an unlikely coincidence that she’s around this area and so are you, just when I need some help. So you’re in a bit of a tight spot here if you want to negotiate.”

  Jin sniffed to hide his surprise at what I was doing. “You think too much of yourself.”

  I laughed at the irony of such a claim coming out of Jin’s mouth. “I think that your . . . friend is a more honorable woman than the local authorities have given her credit for. She probably is a thief, a trespasser, and a troublemaker. She might even be a murderer, but like you, she knows about paying debts. Ridenour and Strother would have trapped her in that greenhouse if I hadn’t said anything, and at least one of them wants her dead, even if they say they don’t. Because they weren’t shooting at me.”

  Jin looked annoyed, pursing his human lips and furrowing both brows. “They might have been.”

  “Why? What sort of threat do I hold for them? Neither one’s a mage of any kind, so they don’t have any interest in the energetic properties of Lake Crescent, unless you think one of them killed Steven Leung. . . .”

  “Ridiculous. Neither of them could have moved the car.”

  “So . . . whoever killed Leung is the same person who moved the car.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’re sure of this . . . how?”

  Jin looked smug. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  I nodded and started walking again. Jin strolled along beside me. “Yes, I’d like to know, and it would be easier if you told me, but I can find out on my own.”

  He stopped and narrowed his eyes at me. They gleamed amber like hot coals. “It won’t be as easy as you think, Harper Blaine. These aren’t the soft, power-dead humans you chase down in Seattle. You could do it without my help, but you’ll never do it if you make me your enemy. You owe me information. I do not like to be robbed. . . .”

  I turned on my heel, letting down my guard against the Grey and allowing it to flow around me, free and raging with ghosts. I felt fury spark and set fire to the nearest seeping threads and pools of energy as I reached for him, a sudden blaze of incorporeal strength flowing through me. I closed my hands on his white demon form, pushing my fingertips into him, past the shell of seeming flesh. I knew I couldn’t hold on to him for long or push much deeper, but I shook him and held tight for the moment. “Listen to me, yaoguai,” I roared, spitting the word out. “I will keep my bargain, but never, never threaten me. Do you understand?”

  I let go and shoved him backward. He slipped on a patch of ice and fell, just as the clouds chose to open up and let loose the rain.

  Lightning burned the sky and thunder cracked over our heads. I could hear a sound like a rush of wings, and the ghosts along the shore screamed in unison. In the Grey, the fallen night was lit with flashes of color that leapt from the ground and the water of the lake, then subsided back into the ground and the mist. The ghosts fell back to whispering and muttering. Jin landed hard on his ass and stared at me as I stepped back.

  I felt burned out and soaked through, but I refused to sag or stagger with the sudden draining of whatever power I’d momentarily held. Jin might want to consume me for whatever powerful creature he now thought I was, but he wasn’t going to do it just yet. I wanted to huddle into a tired little ball and go to sleep, but I wasn’t going to let him know that.

  “Now,” I said, “enough of this. Let’s get the hell out of the rain. Then I’ll tell you about the asetem. And you will tell me about the hot spr
ings.”

  Jin picked himself up, brushing mournfully at his ruined suit. “I saved you from the shambling dead. You owe me more.”

  “You did what you were instructed to do. Don’t pretend you did it for me. But, I can be gracious: I’ll tell you more once we’re someplace dry. With a functioning phone.”

  TWENTY

  If I’d thought Jin would magically transport us someplace warm and dry, I was destined to be disappointed. Apparently he wasn’t that sort of demon. But he did know where the nearest dry place with a working phone was. About a half-mile walk along the shore, through clouds of ghosts and pouring rain, we stepped up onto the porch of the Log Cabin Resort’s main lodge.

  Under the overhanging roof, it wasn’t warm, but it was dry, and an old pay phone nestled in an aluminum hood on the wall near the front door. It wasn’t working when we arrived, but Jin assured me he could make it work as soon as I told him what he wanted to know. He also knew where Darin Shea had stashed the spare key to the lodge. I think he would have tried to dicker over that information, too, but he still seemed a bit in awe, which suited me fine.

  Frankly, I was a bit impressed myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I’d done—I’d pulled on the strands of the Grey for a moment, letting the already-loose power of the local grid flash up like a grease fire—but I hadn’t thought I still had any call on the grid itself. I certainly didn’t seem to have it in Seattle, so it must have just been here, where magic oozed up from the ground like springwater. It hadn’t felt the same as the seductive, leaching pull of the grid and its singing, near-sentient voices; it was just energy, not power, not knowledge. Knowing I wouldn’t be pulled back down into the infinite everythingand-nothing of the grid relieved me, even if it meant I’d have to bluff and work all the harder to get what I needed.

  So now we sat on the floor of the lodge, dripping, in front of an unlit fireplace. My coat was fairly soaked, but I was mostly dry under it, so I’d hung it up on a hook beside the door with my wet red scarf. I kept my boots on, just in case. Jin looked miserable and indecisive. His expensive suit and shoes were obviously ruined, but he didn’t want to take them off, no matter how wet they were. We didn’t want to start a fire, since we shouldn’t have been in the building to begin with, but it wasn’t a lot warmer inside than out, just drier.