Deep River Reckoning_The Reckoners

by Doranna Durgin

"I doubt it." But then Garrie turned, and saw her.

  No longer vibrant; no longer brimming with purposeful bossiness. No longer exuding confidence. Her coiffed hair hung a lank, dull auburn; her gruesomely realistic wounds left her torso gaping. Her skin no longer emulated a healthy fair tone, but bubbled and swirled in yellow-grey patterns.

  "Fark!" Garrie said, taking in involuntary step back. "Get rid of it all! Filter it!"

  "I'm not you," Katherine said, some of her perspicacious tone making a comeback. "I'm a spirit. A somewhat inexperienced one at that."

  "But—"

  "Have I earned the right," Katherine said, "perhaps just a little? To ask you to quit being stubborn and, once again, to do something?"

  "I was always doing something," Garrie said, her temper returning. "It just wasn't what you wanted!"

  "Shit, man," the grabby guy said, blind to Katherine's side of the exchange, "She's crazy. The old man don't got anything to worry about."

  Not so crazy—or distracted—that she couldn't follow the significance of his comment. She gave him a quick, narrow-eye look. A thoughtful look. Enough of a look so he took a step back, and then froze when his buddy squeaked meaningfully in Trevarr's grip.

  "Katherine," Garrie said, still eyeing the beefy grabby guy, "What can you do? What feels right to you?"

  "Consequences," Katherine said promptly. "The idiot who killed me should have had consequences. The idiot who tried to kill the river should have consequences, too. This should be his burden to bear...if only for a little while..."

  "Time to find out a little more about that idiot," Garrie murmured. She stepped up to grabby guy, head tilted...walking around him to take in the view from all sides. Stubby features, not much of a neck, distinctly pointy head shaved. The earring and the amateurish tattoo smeared on one side of his neck didn't help.

  The guy stayed frozen—carefully so. But he still said, "What the hell are you? Some kind of demented pixie?"

  She considered that only a moment. "Yes."

  "What did you do to us, puta?"

  "Tsk. Language. Or did you want your friend to bleed?" Garrie glanced at former gun guy and his frantic gulp of fearful breath—already bleeding plenty from his hand and now with a trickle running along his throat. "I didn't do anything to you. I did a whole farking lot for you."

  Katherine's voice came garbled. "I helped!"

  Garrie gestured at her. "Katherine would like you to know that she helped."

  ::I helped!:: Sklayne added. But after a pause in which Garrie looked in the direction of his mind-voice, brow raised, he added, ::Maybe next time.::

  Grabby guy did the predictable thing at the entire exchange, kicking off a solid round of uninventive cursing. "So who the hell are you and who the hell is Katherine?"

  "Geeze," Garrie said. "Try for some variation." She took a step closer, stared up—distinctly up—at him, and let her voice go harder. "Katherine is the hell a ghost. She's currently hosting the things that were attacking you. Me? I'm the hell a reckoner. That means when people screw up and it messes with the ethereal, I fix it. You remember screaming like a little girl? I made that stop." She smiled her meanest smile. "I can also make it happen again. Trevarr might have your friend, but I have you."

  He sneered. "You're full of shit."

  Garrie pretended to assess herself, shook her head. "Nope," she said. "Really not. You want me to prove it, or can we go on to the productive part of this conversation?"

  "Jorge, for God's said," said the guy with the knife to his throat and his hand dripping blood. "Talk nice to her!"

  But Katherine interrupted, even more garbled, "Hurry...I don't think I can...they're trying to make themselves part of me—"

  And if that happened, instead of a swarm, they'd have one powerful, sentient, giant-sized ghost of badness. And then Garrie would have no choice. Dissolution.

  For Katherine was far too ethereally complex to withstand a filter.

  But she had also already been killed once because of someone else's bad choices. She didn't deserve to be killed twice that way...

  "What Garrie wants," Trevarr told the men, a voice as cold as Garrie had ever heard it, "is to know who did this thing." He nodded at the river, and then turned his gaze back on Jorge—direct and piercing and hardly human.

  Garrie was only a foot away. She didn't miss the slight bob of Jorge's throat, or the tension in his jaw. Or his continued hesitation.

  "Look," said the guy under the knife, running his words together, "it wasn't supposed to be a big deal. That's what he said. Dump the stuff and run, it was too old to use and it would evaporate so fast no one would know the difference."

  "Shut up, chilito," Jorge said—under his breath and fast, as if neither Garrie or Trevarr would notice. "No one did know the difference."

  "I'm right here," she told him, narrow-eyed. "I can hear your asshattery very clearly."

  The other man sneered at his erstwhile pal. "Chinga tu madre," he spat. "You got a knife to your throat? I don't think so."

  "He laid hands on her," Trevarr said, voice full of meaning. "It could still happen."

  Gun guy glared at Trevarr, and at his buddy, snarling acquiescence. "William George—the old man who owns this place, right? Told us to dump the stuff, told us to chase off anyone who came hanging around until we got a good rain."

  "He's been planning this," Garrie said. "He waited until the monsoon season."

  "You think we know? We do what we're told, little puto. It stunk like everything in that place stinks, and then it didn't. No big deal."

  Katherine made a strangled noise. "I believe this one should have to bear these poor dead, poisoned creatures after all."

  In way, it was too bad they couldn't hear her.

  "You want to know more?" Jorge said, sullen but defeated. "You go ask him. I want to take my friend to the hospital, huh?"

  Right. The one who hadn't gotten up.

  "Works for me." Garrie dug into her shorts cargo pocket, pulled out the sturdy little minimalistic cell phone—the only thing that could survive the constant flux of energies.

  Sometimes.

  Today, she was in luck. She held the phone out. "Gentlemen?"

  They gave her the number.

  They told her he was, in fact, in the very building behind them. And then, released, they scooped up their buddy and ran for it.

  Garrie watched them go, pensive. "I'm not sure we should have let them go."

  "Your work is not with them," Trevarr said, sheathing his Sklayne-cleaned knife.

  "I know," she told him, poking at the phone and hitting send. "And I doubt they really knew what they were doing. Tools. Oh, hi—Mr. George? Can I have a moment of your time?"

  He blustered a response; she tipped the phone away from her mouth to look at Katherine. "There's the one who deserves what you're carrying. Can you follow this connection? It's not far."

  Katherine looked at the building, even less distinct than she'd been. "There's just too much—" she said, and didn't finish.

  She's losing it. Dammit!

  ::Helping now,:: Sklayne announced, all the world his stage. A pulse of bright ethereal energy speared from one of the building's rare windows.

  Garrie stabbed a finger at the window until Katherine found it, even as she said to Dick George, "I got your private number from Jorge and friends. You know—tattoos, crowbars, and attitude?" She headed for the asphalt company as she spoke; Trevarr moved at her side—silent, purposeful...alert. "Unfortunately for them—and you—it turns out we have more attitude. Fewer tattoos, though."

  More bluster from his end of the phone...a hint of a threat. Blah, blah, blah. "It's not about what I want from you," she replied. "Well, okay, it is, but first things first. First, it'll be about what you want from me."

  Invective poured back out at her; she held the phone away from her ear, sparing herself the loud disconnect. "It's okay," she said, dry humor in response to Trevarr's silent inquiry—the equally silent suggestio
n that he take things in hand at this point. "He'll call back."

  And that's all this had been about. Putting her number into his caller ID; putting it into his head that she was involved with what would happen next.

  ::Here!:: Sklayne said, flashing insistent bright energy. ::Me!::

  Katherine hesitated, wavering in form and intent. "But..." she said, her mouth now more than a moving blur, "if I do this...is it worse, then, than what that young woman did to me? Because she didn't mean for it to happen. This...I do on purpose."

  Garrie shook her head. "You'll be cleansed—and safe. The river will be safe. And then he's going to call me back, and I'll go cleanse him. If it leaves any mark on him...well, maybe he needs to remember what he did here."

  "Is it that easy?" Katherine asked, a whisper.

  Garrie looked at Trevarr...thought of what he'd lost to be here, because of doing what mattered. Thought of what she'd been through, in the pursuit of doing what was right. Thought about those whom she'd seen dead and dissipated and forever changed. He met her gaze, the irony sharp in still silvered eyes; she felt that same shiver of trepidation, that same repeating fear. What if it had all been too much to ask? From him, from anyone?

  "No," she said, holding his gaze. "It's not the least bit easy. But taking action isn't. Because there's always this part where you have to take responsibility for what you've done. And things don't always turn out exactly as planned."

  "As opposed to standing on the bank of a river bullying others just to gain a sense of control," Katherine said—there, for that moment, firming up in her details, her hair flaring its confident red.

  "Wasn't gonna say it," Garrie told her.

  "And still...there is a satisfaction...a freedom..." Her voice faded, and Garrie couldn't tell if it was because she'd gone thoughtful, or because she was simply going.

  But then her visage sharpened up. She said clearly, "If I change this man's life, I will hope, in the end, it's for the better." And then she disappeared.

  For a moment, Garrie stopped walking. She closed her eyes, and she thought the words she so often thought. I hope I'm doing the right thing. I hope, I hope... Heavy words, borne on wiry shoulders that carried a weight no one else even knew existed. Carrying Katherine's fate...carrying Trevarr's pain. Wondering again if he could allow it of her.

  When she took a deep and resolute breath and opened her eyes again, she found Trevarr watching her—waiting, and understanding. All of it.

  He held out his hand, and they walked on together.

  ~~~~

  Other Works by Doranna Durgin

  FANTASY

  Changespell Saga:

  Dun Lady's Jess (Winner, Compton Crook Award)

  Changespell

  Changespell Legacy

  Barrenlands (prequel)

  King's Wolf Saga

  Touched by Magic

  Wolf Justice

  Stand-Alone Fantasies

  Wolverine's Daughter

  Seer's Blood

  A Feral Darkness

  ROMANCE

  Action Romance

  Shaken and Stirred (Femme Fatale Novella)

  Chameleon (Smokescreen Novella)

  Exception to the Rules

  Beyond the Rules

  Heavy Metal Honey

  Survival Instinct

  Hidden Steel

  Checkmate: Athena Force

  Comeback: Athena Force 2

  Paranormal

  Sentinels: Jaguar Night

  Sentinels: Lion Heart

  Sentinels: Wolf Hunt

  Demon Blade

  The Reckoners Series:

  The Reckoners

  Storm of Reckoning

  MYSTERY

  Nose for Trouble

  Scent of Danger

  FRANCHISE BOOKS

  Star Trek: Next Generation

  Tooth and Claw, #60

  Earth: Final Conflict

  Heritage

  Angel

  Impressions

  Fearless

  Mage Knight

  Dark Debts

  Ghost Whisperer

  Revenge

  Ghost Trap

  SHORT STORIES

  Harvest of Souls

  Fool's Gold

  A Bitch in Time

  The Right Bitch

  Bitch Bewitched

  Mornglom Dreaming

  Bummed out

  The Yoke of the Soul

  Feef's House

  Hair of the Dog

  Call from the Wild

  Just Hanah

  Emerging Legacy

  The Scoria

  Bitch Bewitched

  Forward