The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) (14 page)

“That doesn’t seem very equitable,” Vohuman said. “But I
think you’ll kill him. I think you want to see him die, for the death of your
son. So it’s a good bet from my perspective.”

“In writing,” Steven said, “and I want time to review the
deal with an expert, and to propose changes before we seal the deal.”

“Alright,” Vohuman said. “On the condition that we come to an
agreement within the next twenty-four hours. Aka Manah certainly knows the Agimat
is gone by now. He’ll lay low, not wanting to stir the pot, hoping you’ll be
satisfied with his absence. But if he learns that I’m involved, he’ll go back
underground again and I might lose him. So this needs to be soon. I have plans
in place that I’m waiting to finish. Twenty-four hours to complete the deal,
and you act immediately after the deal is made.”

“Write it up,” Steven said. “The clock will start once I get
a document back from you. And I can decline anytime within the twenty-four
hours, and you agree to walk away.”

Steven knew this was a lot to ask. Since Vohuman was a demon,
he could play a card from Aka Manah’s deck and threaten him simply by hurting
Roy or Eliza, and he’d be forced to act. Maybe it was part of Vohuman’s
strategy to come off as the opposite of Aka Manah, to gain his trust. Maybe
Vohuman knew that he really wanted to kill Aka Manah, deep down inside, and he
didn’t need to threaten or anger him to make it happen.

“Agreed,” Vohuman said. “You’ll have it within the hour.”

The dark fog surrounding Vohuman intensified, and then
quickly dissipated. He was gone.

“What are you thinking?” Roy said to Steven. “Another deal?
Didn’t you learn your lesson?”

“There’s something inside me that killed Jason,” Steven said.
“This seems as good of a way as any to figure out what it is.”

“You’re just a pawn in their little chess match,” Roy said,
becoming angry. “You’ve not understood their intentions from the start, and
neither have I. Why go along with it? We’re being used, just like Evie.”

“People the world over are pawns for more powerful
interests,” Steven said. “Happens all the time. We’re just on a different
playing field.”

“You don’t have any idea what he’s really up to. You might
find yourself selling your soul and not even realize it,” Roy said, thinking
back to when he’d put his own soul on the line in a deal with a time demon. One
false move under that deal and he would have been lost.

“No,” Steven replied, “I have every intention of making sure
the agreement is to my advantage. If this is such a big deal to Vohuman, I
should be able to get something substantial for it.”

“What could be that substantial?” Roy asked.

“Look!” Eliza said, staring at the couch where Vohuman had
been sitting. There was a rolled piece of paper.

Steven walked to the couch and picked up the paper. It had a
red wax seal, which he broke. Then he opened the paper and began to read.

“It’s the terms,” Steven said. “It’s his offer.”

“Fuck it all,” Roy said, exasperated.

Eliza walked behind Steven and read over his shoulder. “It’s
dense,” she said. “Lots of tiny writing. Makes you wish you had a demon lawyer
to look it over.”

“Oh, we have someone better than a lawyer,” Steven said.
“Come on. We’re going back to Port Townsend.”

The smell of the ocean was strong, and they could hear the
Coupeville ferry sounding its horn in the distance. It was sunny, but clouds on
the horizon told them it wouldn’t be for long. The wind was increasing, doing
strange things to Eliza’s chaotic hair as they walked along Water Street,
ducking to avoid the water dripping from freshly watered flower baskets that hung
over the sidewalk every few feet.

Roy had been quiet for most of the trip, angry that Steven
seemed intent on pursuing the deal. Now that they were just minutes from
Victor’s house, he realized he was running out of time to convince Steven not
to go through with it.

“I admit that I have no experience with demons, like Victor
does,” Roy said as they dodged tourists. “But I am your father, and you should
listen to me. This is a bad idea in my opinion.”

“Two hours driving and a ferry ride,” Steven said, turning to
Eliza, “and now he speaks. What do you think, Eliza?”

“I’m not getting in the middle of a disagreement between you
two,” she said.

“She’s all bedazzled by Vohuman,” Roy said. “You can’t take
her opinion seriously.”

Eliza stopped walking and looked at Roy. “I am not bedazzled!”
she said.

“He had your number the moment you walked in,” Roy said. “You
ran to his side like a teenager in love.”

“I did not!” Eliza protested, then turned to Steven. “Did I?”

“Kinda,” Steven said. “He seemed to have some influence over
you.”

“Really?” she asked. “It didn’t seem that way to me.”

“Do you think I should go through with it?” Steven asked,
resuming walking.

“My experience with them is limited to my situation in
California,” she said, trying to be vague since they were in public. “So I’m no
expert, either.”

“That’s a nice way of avoiding answering,” Steven said.

“Son,” Roy said, “I hate to see you fall for what he’s
pitching, because I think it’s a pack of lies. I wish you’d listen to me.”

“Like I listened about Jurgen?” Steven said, stopping in the
street. “‘Oh, he’s as good as dead,’ you said. You were wrong. And about
Michael? ‘Better to let sleeping dogs lie,’ remember? Well he wasn’t a sleeping
dog, was he? If we’d put him down like the sick dog I thought he was, Jason
wouldn’t have been hauled off to Nevada and he wouldn’t have had something
placed in him at St. Thomas. He’d be alive now.”

“Oh, so you’re blaming me now?” Roy said, raising his voice.

“Stop it you two,” Eliza said. “We’re on a public street.”

Steven resumed his walking toward Victor’s.

“So that’s how it is?” Roy asked Steven, running to catch up
with him.

“I guess it is,” Steven replied, stopping at the doorway to
Victor’s apartment, and pressing the buzzer. Victor let them up, and soon they
were back in his library, looking out over the sound.

“What an interesting wrinkle,” Victor said once Steven had
explained the reason for their visit. “Vohuman seems to be playing a longer
game than Aka Manah, but you can never be sure. It might be – and probably is –
bigger than the part of it he lets you see.”

“That’s why I think we should drop this,” Roy said. “We might
be making things worse, digging ourselves in deeper.”

“Your son wants to understand his power,” Victor said. “You’d
want to, too, if you had it.”

“Hummpf!” Roy said, folding his arms and turning away to look
out the windows.

“The question is,” Victor said, opening the paper Steven had
given to him, “is this deal the best way to go about it? Let me read for a
moment.” Victor studied the paper, scanning through it rapidly. They waited
patiently until he’d read through all of it.

“Almost every deal with a demon is dangerous,” Victor said, “but
he’s not asking for your soul or anything like that. What you’re risking is
failure with Aka Manah, in which case you’d be at his mercy.”

“And so would we,” Roy said.

“True,” Victor said. “Aka Manah has demonstrated his
willingness to hurt your friends, Steven. So you have to factor that in.”

“Can a deal be made with Vohuman that protects them from Aka
Manah?” Steven asked.

“Of course,” Victor said. “You can construct a deal any way
you want, as long as both parties agree to the details.”

“Then I want them protected,” Steven said, “regardless of the
outcome.”

“And what if I don’t want protection from a demon?” Roy said.

“Having a demon watch over you isn’t a bad thing,” Victor
said. “So long as the price for it has been paid. It’s owing the demon that is usually
the problem.”

“In this case the price is my son’s life,” Roy said. “No
thank you.”

“How do we make a counteroffer?” Steven said. “He’s written
his terms, how do we write ours back? I only have today to finalize this.”

“We’ll make our own offer, in a form that’s beneficial for
you, but that he’s unlikely to want to change once you make it,” Victor said,
rummaging through a desk drawer. He removed a leather pouch that contained a
syringe.

“What’s that for?” Eliza asked.

“We’re going to amend his offer letter to reference a chain,”
Victor said, sterilizing the syringe. “We’ll need your blood, Steven.”

Steven didn’t hesitate. He rolled up his shirt sleeve and
extended his arm to Victor, who wrapped a rubber tube around his bicep and
looked for a vein.

Roy groaned. “There’s no way I can talk you out of this?” he
asked Steven as Victor stabbed at Steven’s arm and pulled back the plunger on
the syringe.

“I suppose there are ways,” Steven said. “I just haven’t
heard a good enough one yet.”

“How about the fact that it’s a dishonest, lying fucking
demon!” Roy exclaimed.

“Demons always honor the deal,” Victor said. “They will lie
in the construction of the deal, which is why we must be careful. But they will
honor the deal, to the letter. Things go wrong when you make assumptions.” He
slipped the needle from Steven’s arm and reversed the plunger, ejecting its
contents into a small dish on his writing desk. Then he rolled open the offer
letter from Vohuman and pinned the corners down with books. He took a fountain
pen, dipped it into Steven’s blood, and began to write on the bottom of the
document.

Steven and Eliza stood over his shoulders, watching as he
wrote. Roy was looking out the windows at the sound, watching a ferry departing
the dock.

“There,” Victor said, blowing on the paper to get the blood
to dry. “The fact that we wrote it in blood will impress Vohuman, and he won’t
want to alter it.”

“What did you write, exactly?” Eliza asked.

“I merely added a bit that said the entire agreement was
subject to the terms in the Steven Hall chain, and that the chain’s terms
superseded anything in the written document. So, now all we need to do is
construct a proper chain.”

Victor rose from his writing desk and walked to a filing
cabinet. He pulled out a small chest and placed it on a coffee table in the
middle of the room between the sofa and chairs. He opened the chest, and began
removing items; a small black cloth, which he opened and spread out on the
coffee table, a set of pliers and snips, and several small tins with contents
that rattled.

“Right,” he said, pulling the coffee table a little closer to
the chair where he was sitting. He opened one of the tins and removed a small
circular link and placed it on the cloth. “I’m assuming the first requirement
will be the protection clause you wanted for your family and friends.”

“Yes,” Steven said. “That’s first.”

“Alright,” Victor said. “Now, where’s the…” He began
searching through the chest, unable to find what he was looking for. “Oh –
that’s right, hold on…”

He left the coffee table and walked out of the room. When he
returned a moment later, he had a small teacup. “I washed it the other day, and
I realized it looked so nice, I decided to leave it out.” He smiled, and showed
them the object. It was unremarkable in every way.

Steven jumped into the River as Victor held it out to show
him. The teacup was gone, and in its place was an object so dark and black that
the light around it was being drawn into it, like a black hole.

Steven left the flow. “That thing is sucking in light,” he
said to Victor. “Looks dangerous.”

“Oh, it is,” Victor said. “If I were to use it wrong, it
could suck the entire room into itself. Who knows where we’d wind up.”

“I’m telling you,” Roy said from the other end of the room,
“this is a bad idea.”

“Never mind him,” Steven said. “Proceed.”

Victor placed the teacup over the link and dropped into the
River. Both Eliza and Steven joined him, and watched as he formed a type of
trance between himself and the black form that was obscuring the link on the
cloth.

After a moment Victor dropped out, and Eliza and Steven
followed.

“This link,” Victor said, removing the teacup and picking up
the round ring of metal, “is good to go.” He picked up the snips and cut the
link, then used the pliers to open the ends slightly. When he was finished, he
placed the link to the side.

“What else?” Victor asked. “What else do you want in the
deal?”

“I want Jason back,” Steven said.

Eliza raised her hand to her mouth, stopping herself from
saying anything. Victor set down the snips. “My boy,” he said, “that’s not a
good idea.”

“That’s why you’re giving this demon the time of day, isn’t
it?” Roy said, walking over from the windows. “That’s the real reason why you
dragged us back up here. I should have guessed.”

“I want Jason back,” Steven said, emotion rising in his
voice, feeling the need to defend himself. “Vohuman can do that, right?” he
asked Victor.

“He can,” Victor said, “but I’d advise against it.”

“Steven,” Eliza said, reaching out to place a hand on his
knee. “No.”

Steven stood up. “Why not? If he can bring him back, then do
it. Make a link for that.”

“I don’t think you realize what you’re asking,” Victor said.
“Your son died how many days ago?”

Steven didn’t answer.

“Several,” Roy said. “He’s been buried in the ground for
several days. No embalming.”

“Then putrefaction is underway,” Victor said. “You won’t like
what you get, if he comes back. And your son will not like it, either.”

Steven turned from the others and walked to the windows.
Eliza followed him. She placed her hand on his back and spoke softly.

“He can’t come back,” Eliza said. “He’s gone.”

“I thought there might be a way,” Steven said. “Up until now
I was hoping there might still be a way that I could use this deal to get him
back.”

“The deal is only revenge,” she said. “Roy may be right.”

Steven tried not to cry, but it felt like his last inner hope
that Jason might still be able to survive had just been ripped from him, and it
re-opened the wound in his heart that formed when he rose from the floor of the
house in Diablo and saw his son lying still on the bed.

“How about something else?” Victor asked. “Demons have a lot
of resources. Some object you’d like, maybe money or power?”

“I don’t want any of those things,” Steven said, still facing
the windows. “I want my son back.”

“I’m not sure you’re all thinking straight at the moment,”
Victor said. “I’m just going to put together a few links that I think you
should have, to protect your side of the deal. Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Don’t you make a link to bring Jason back,” Roy said to
Victor.

“You can be sure I won’t,” Victor said, looking up at Roy. “I
know what that would do.”

Roy watched while Victor continued to make links, dropping
into the River and out again, snipping some links and attaching them to others.
Eliza stayed with Steven at the windows, rubbing the small of his back and
assuring him that things would be alright.

Steven didn’t know how long he’d been standing at the
windows, trying to control his emotions. He watched the water as the storm came
in, whitecaps forming, not able to resist the wind. The finality of Jason’s
death was weighing fully on him now, and he felt like sleeping, but he knew he
wouldn’t be able to sleep until he finished Aka Manah. He intended to go
through with the deal, regardless of what Roy said.

“Finished,” Victor said. “Now to seal the chain.” He placed
the entire chain, about twenty links, under the teacup and entered the River
again. When the chain emerged, the snips had all been healed and it looked like
any piece of jewelry.

Steven turned back to Victor. “Do I wear it?” he asked.

“No,” Victor said. “Vohuman is to wear it, as a binding. I
guarantee you he has hundreds of them already, previous deals he’s made, just
under his skin. A chain is one of the strongest deals you can make with a
demon, because it lives on them, binding them to the terms for as long as it
lives.”