Read Online The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) by Michael Richan - Free Book Online Page B

the two of you
wait for me? Wait there at Eximere, until I can get there?”
    “Sure,” Steven said. “We’ll wait for you.” The idea of Eliza
joining them during their time of grief seemed comforting to him. He was glad
she was so willing to drop everything and come up.
    “I’ll rent a car at the airport,” she said, “and be out to
Eximere as soon as I can get there.”
    “Alright,” Steven said. “Thank you.” He hung up.
    “I’m glad she’s coming,” Roy said.
    “Me too,” Steven replied.
    Neither of them had touched their coffee. They settled back
into the wordless silence that had preceded Eliza’s call, the sound of the road
a numbing soundtrack to their thoughts.
     
    ◊
     
    “How horrible,” Eliza said, as Steven finished recounting the
tale. He was on his fourth drink and was beginning to slur his words. Roy was
right behind him.
    In the distance, under the banyan tree in the back yard at
Eximere, a fresh mound of dirt covered Jason’s body, now resting silently near
the other gifteds, the only one with a normal grave. Steven and Roy had spent
hours sitting next to it after they finished with the sad task of interring the
body. Now they were on the back porch with Eliza, filling her in on what had
happened.
    “So my illness was brought on by Aka Manah,” Eliza said.
“That explains why the doctors were so baffled. And the quick recovery.”
    “The deal is over now, so fuck it,” Steven said. “I’m going
to tell you what the agreement was. Between me and him.”
    “Are you sure you want to do that?” Eliza asked. “Weren’t the
terms of the deal that you’d keep it secret?”
    “Fuck it,” Steven said, swinging his glass a little and
spilling some of his drink. “He changed the terms on me. Plus he wasn’t even
after the Agimat anyway. And the deal is done now. So I consider myself
released from the agreement.”
    “What do you mean he wasn’t after the Agimat?” Roy asked.
    “OK,” Steven said. “So, the deal all started because of the
planchette. You remember, the one we found in the object room?”
    “Yes,” Roy said. “The one that exposed the marks on your
hands.”
    “Yes,” Steven said. “He claimed it was his, and he wanted it
back. He wanted to know where I got it from, but I wouldn’t tell him.
Apparently, he can’t detect things down here. So he had a bunch of other things
he wanted back, things he claimed were stolen from him over the years. He
threatened both of you, hanging your bodies in the suicide forest. I don’t suppose
you remember that?”
    “Hanging?” Eliza asked. “Literally?”
    “Yes,” Steven continued, “he had your bodies hanging in the
trees as a way to scare me into agreeing to his terms. He gave me a list of
items. I told him I’d look for them, and if I found them, I’d return them to
him. He showed up in California, along the freeway, when we were driving back
from Nevada. Do you remember that?”
    “No, I don’t,” Roy said.
    “He made you both pass out while he talked to me,” Steven said.
“Threatened you again, made you gasp for air. He wanted me to speed up the
search. Then we got home, and apparently I still wasn’t moving fast enough for
him, because he showed up here on Friday, threatening you, Eliza. Telling me
you’d be ill until I got the job done. So Roy and I went out to Eximere, and I
went through all of the objects, comparing them to his list. It took all night.
There were maybe a dozen or so I brought back that night, to give to him the
next morning. The Agimat was one of them, but it disappeared sometime between
my leaving Eximere with it, and the demon inspecting the boxes of objects at my
house the next morning. He said the Agimat had reverted to its previous owner.
Apparently this happened because it was removed from the protection of
Eximere.”
    “It was recharging during this period,” Roy said. “Between
Good Friday and Easter. So it was powerful. Perhaps that’s why the demon