Deep River Reckoning_The Reckoners Read online

  "Don't try to psychoanalyze me!" Katherine snapped. "Just do something for them."

  "Psycho," Garrie muttered. "Psychic. There's gotta be a pun there somewhere. Psychicoanalyze. Something."

  "If not sentient beings," Trevarr said, undistracted by Katherine, "then you cannot reason with them."

  "That's the problem." Garrie returned her attention to the beings. "I could contain them, but I can't release them again, so there's not much point. I mean, sure, it would clean things up around here, but it..." She trailed off, took a breath, and said the truth of it. "It's not merciful. We only use containment when we need to relocate, sometimes to calm." And every now and then, to get something particularly ferocious out to open ground so she could deal with it. "Dissolution is kinder." And then she came out of her thinking squint and said, "What?"

  Because there he was again. Not just a powerful man with extraordinary presence and killer boots. But the hunter.

  He simply nodded toward the asphalt works well on the other side of the bridge, the other side of the bike path. Which looked to her just as it had ever looked.

  But she didn't doubt him.

  "It's public turf," she said, but trepidation found a foothold nonetheless. The asphalt people wouldn't want anyone poking around here. And if they were willing to dump poison, they sure wouldn't be above a little bullying.

  He glanced at her. "They will be no problem."

  Right. One on one? Or two or three on one? No problem. But— "They could have guns."

  ::Guns misfire,:: Sklayne pointed out.

  "Only if you work the timing right."

  ::Picky.::

  When the alternative was a bullet in flesh that healed astonishingly fast but still bled? Still hurt? Still could die?

  "Totally picky," Garrie said firmly.

  Katherine appeared abruptly before her, pushing up against the shield. "Are you paying any attention? Do something here!"

  "Former woman-in-charge," Garrie said, pushing back with a surge of the shield that staggered Katherine, ultra-red haze smearing the air, "killed by chance and frantically trying to regain control by bossing the hell out of the one person who can see her."

  Blood, blood, and anger—singed etherea tinting the air, a hint of the evisceration that had helped to kill her, her voice taking on a certain righteous reverb. "What does it matter if I'm right?"

  —ight—ight—ight—!

  "Damn." Because it's not that simple, that's why. But still. She was right. And she was right about being right. "Damn."

  "I will not let them touch you," Trevarr warned her, all his attention still on the asphalt works. The approaching bullies. Great. That meant what it always meant—idiots with who didn't have the faintest idea what they were in for if they tried to get past him. Domestic dogs meeting the wildest wolf.

  Only more so.

  And it was his way of saying he'd do his best not to kill anyone, but maybe she wanted to hurry at that.

  "Farking damn," she muttered. Can't contain them, can't reason with them...not willing to push the dissolution button.

  Think, Garrie.

  They were the result of a mass death, here at the site of their graves. Okay then—probably fish, insects, small creatures, all quickly killed by the sudden glut of poison in their water. The corrupted ethereal consequences, bound together by circumstance.

  By the poison.

  Get rid of the poison.

  It wasn't corporeal poison anymore than they were corporeal beings...it was manifestation. Ethereal.

  And manipulating the ethereal was what she did, wasn't it? Since childhood, playing games with a world no one else could even see?

  Surely she could filter out a little poison.

  Problem was, the only filter she had was...

  Me.

  6.

  "Well?" Katherine demanded.

  "Can you not think of another way to feel in charge?" Garrie asked her crossly. "Because really, bossing me around this must feel like one great big fail."

  ::No guns,:: Sklayne said, even as Katherine narrowed her eyes and started gathering her own energies. Losing perspective, thinking of nothing but the need to control. Sklayne added, ::Blades. Club. Funny hair.::

  "They're coming," Trevarr added, standing solidly between the access bridge and Garrie, if still within the bubble. Still tense with the pain she'd caused him, but not at all with what lay before him. "Tell me when it's safe."

  It's never safe.

  But she understood. Safe to move outside the shields. "All right," she said, and managed to make it matter-of-fact at that. "I think I should probably say, this isn't a good idea. But—"

  Put this off, and men might die. Trevarr might be hurt. She'd lose the entities and more cyclists could fall ill.

  Could die.

  "All right," she said again, and knelt in the damp, heavy clay-filled sand—only to come face to face with Katherine, her distorted features telling the tale of perspective lost, ethereal explosion on the rise.

  Garrie narrowed her eyes and gave a good hard shove—one that sent Katherine flying back into the water, splashless, her energies thinned, her entire being an expression of astonishment. Garrie pointed a finger at her—a warning. Pull yourself together.

  It would buy her a few moments, anyway. She swiftly reinforced layers of protection—around her heart, her soul. Filter. Maybe not all that different from conduit. She'd done that before. Surely she could do it again.

  Of course, it hadn't been pretty, then. Not pretty at all.

  A man's voice called out in challenge. Not quite upon them. Carefully, so carefully, Garrie thinned a spot in the shield.

  Rapacious in their deep-seated fury, the entities instantly sensed the weakness, fighting each other to reach it—a roiling swarm of nastiness, blocking her view.

  "Fark!" Garrie frantically threw her hands up—palms together, then spreading wide—letting the breezes surge up between them. Another shield—this time, permeable, to allow ethereal energies and none of the gunk. Lisa McGarrity, living filter.

  If she'd done it right.

  Please work. Please work. Puh-LEEZE—

  For extra points, she had to nab them before they reached her—or worse, before they reached Trevarr.

  "Oh, my," Katherine said, reappearing nearby and significantly subdued—and looking not at Garrie's efforts, but beyond her to those who approached. "Those men look like bullies."

  "Yeah," Garrie muttered, not daring to turn away from the thinned shielding. "And he responds so well to that, too."

  Their harsh words, full of expletives, scraped against her attention—but she didn't listen, nor to Trevarr's deep-throated response. Not with the first little entity glob squeezing itself through the thinned shield to strafe her at manic hummingbird speed. "Incoming!"

  "Safe?" Trevarr asked, breaking his exchange with the men, his back against hers as she snared the entity. Safe to leave the shield?

  "Busy!" she gasped back. Her voice vibrated with the incompatible forces between her hands, the entity closed in and fighting mindlessly for freedom. Maybe a fish, maybe an insect...maybe pond scum. It struggled to reach her, responding to initial insult, pushing itself through the veil of energies—

  And emerging a pale, clear and quiescent mass.

  "Yess!" She would have done a fist pump, had her hands not been full; she jumped up and down a few times instead.

  "Safe?" Trevarr's voice came insistent, the strain of the shield telling.

  "Yes!" she said, thinking of the clean entity, free and calm. And— "No!" she cried, thinking then of the remaining entities snapping and snarling around the shield—leaping slightly to snag the next one as it broke through, and then the next, and then three at a time, buzzing inside her little trap just like the killer bees they'd resembled in their swarm.

  "Atreya—"

  But it was her the beings wanted, and her thinned shield point around which they clustered. And he wouldn't be asking unless—
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br />   Even now, snarling male voices—a threatening demand for instant departure, coupled with a rude remark about the spastic girlfriend.

  "Yes! Yes! Go! But if I say so, get right damned back in here." Another entity popped free, cleansed and drifting; the trapped energies had developed their own buzz, and it traveled along Garrie's bones. It took her an afterthought to add, "And don't kill them."

  "I have to say," Katherine observed, quite under control now—as clear and defined as Garrie had seen her, her red hair diminished to a neutral copper, "it took you long enough to get off your absurdly petite little ass, but this is all quite exciting!"

  "Not," Garrie said, absorbing another entity into her filter and allowing herself a little snarl, "for your benefit."

  Behind her, a grunt; the thump of a body hitting the ground.

  ::One,:: said Sklayne. ::Stupid humans.::

  "But it was myidea," Katherine said, making an imperative gesture Garrie couldn't quite catch, her vision blurred by the vibrations of the cleansing.

  It didn't stop her from grunting, "My idea," even as she snagged the next entity through, and then another, and as she settled into a balanced stance again, "You aren't going to resolve your issues by pretending to control me, either. Nice try, though."

  A cry of outrage, the clang of metal on metal...the crack of bone.

  ::Two,:: said Sklayne. ::Yawn.::

  "It's just not right that I know what that sound was," Garrie said. But she couldn't pretend she hadn't gotten caught up in it—the energies, the excitement, the doing it. The results, floating around her—cleansed entities, cool soothing washes of pale crystalline green bobbing gently on the ethereal breeze.

  Katherine didn't share her mood. "I'm not pretending—"

  "No," Garrie said. "I'm busy. I'm having a moment. You can have a moment later."

  "But—"

  ::Gun!:: Sklayne cried. ::Gun, gun, ugly gun!::

  Garrie's filtering breezes faltered; she snatched them back into place. "You missed it?"

  "Atreya—"

  "Do what you have to," she said grimly, as Trevarr edged to the side—shielding her, his way. So much for the moment. She nabbed a small cluster of entities, staggering slightly under the force of the vibrations they set up. Up her arms, through her sinuses...putting fur on her teeth.

  ::Trevarr, no—there!:: Sklayne's energy, sparkling and bright, slapped the air from afar. Garrie didn't dare turn from the entities—they could still escape, still be distracted...still kill. But from the corner of her eye, she saw it—the smooth shift that meant knife drawn, the flick of motion that came with the throw.

  The gunman jerked—and then cried out in wounded outrage, the gun falling, one hand cradling the other. Trevarr took one long stride to close the distance between them and yank the knife out of impaled flesh. "Not," he threw over his shoulder at her in short, hard words, "killed."

  "G-good-d," Garrie managed though the vibrations. "Maybe we can gget ssssome ansswers."

  Which was when guy number one lurched off the ground and clapped his big beefy arms around Garrie from behind, jerking a startled cry from her as he lifted her right off the ground.

  The filtering breezes vanished.

  The shielding vanished.

  In desperate, wild effort, Garrie threw a stark gust of energy at the collected poison between her hands, dispersing it. The remaining entities buzzed wildly around those assembled by the river, the killer bees on the lose—and then plunged at them.

  Plunged into them.

  Only Garrie saw it coming, and she still cried out—ripped through by darkness and stench, the prickly edges of corruption taking hold and digging in. She dropped to the ground, barely aware that the tough guy himself fell to the ground right beside her, screaming in a faint, hoarse voice; the gunman thrashed noisily nearby. Trevarr went to his knees, a snarl taking his words.

  Garrie scrabbled inside herself, hunting control—hunting a sweep of breezes to cleanse away the invasion within them all. She found only a grasping self-retribution. And she found her breezes slipping out of a numbed grasp—not enough left to save the others. To save Trevarr.

  A voice found her in the darkness. "If I can't control others," it said, "I can at least control myself. I can do something."

  Katherine?

  A cold, damp breeze passed over Garrie's skin—a mist of unpleasant, coppery blood, turning her thoughts as red as Katherine's unnatural hair. Terror flashed through the heart of her; a sharp, eviscerating pain came and went so quickly she didn't even have time to gasp.

  And the darkness retreated.

  "You—" she said out loud, trying to focus through watering eyes. "You... Right through me!"

  "That's right," Katherine said, no sympathy at all. "Don't waste it!"

  Garrie scrubbed at her eyes, rolled up to her knees—and found she was the only one so cleansed. The man beside her lay rigor stiff; the man who'd had the gun still thrashed. And Trevarr, though he managed to open his eyes and meet her gaze, could do nothing more than that—swaying on his knees, jaw clenched, unnaturally dark blood trickling down his cheek from the skirmish.

  Katherine snatched a burr-entity from mid-air, the motion faster than Garrie could follow. "You see?" she said—and she no longer looked quite right, her blazing colors dimmed, her form gone lumpy and in places indistinct. "I'm busy. Now you do something!"

  ::Fix Trevarr!:: Sklayne, closer now—gone commanding.

  "You think?" She didn't quite have the breath to snap those words, already crawling to Trevarr and unwittingly gathering up the prickly bits this land had to offer—spines and thorns and seeds from the plants spread thinly over the ground. There, on her knees before him, she could see too much—that he trembled with the battle he fought, that his breath came in harsh, short jerks.

  She gathered breezes between her hands—a complicated swirl, felting down to recreate her filter—not a ball this time, but a net, rippling satin energy. She looked him in the eye—his sunglasses gone in the fight, their pewter nature shining hard in this shadowed light—and said, "This is gonna hurt."

  Because this world's breezes—her breezes, at working strength—raked through him, much as his energies had once raked through and changed her. It stirred things within him that he otherwise spent every waking moment fighting to leash.

  But he only nodded.

  She took a deep breath, staggering up to her feet—drawing her hands wide, thinning the net—dropping it behind him, a billowing ethereal filter.

  And then she watched his eyes. Pulling the breezes in, seeing the exact moment the breezes made contact. Those eyes widened ever so slightly, the pupils growing wider. A shiver of energy and the subtle energies that hid their vertical nature dropped away; another and he hissed in a breath, the pewter brightening to silver. His jaw clenched; his teeth chattered anyway.

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—

  Hurting him, again. She didn't know if sorry would be enough.

  ::Beware,:: Sklayne said, a distant voice in her head—a warning to both of them. ::Be most ware.::

  "Hold on," Garrie whispered to Trevarr—pulling the net right on through him, so close she could feel the rising heat of him—see the patterns darkening at his neck, the scent of wood ash sharp in the air.

  His hand shot out, clamping down on her shoulder—the strength of it startling. And still she pulled the net in, bringing her hands around...never looking away from the brightening shine of his eye. Not until he snarled, and stiffened, and the net jerked free.

  She whirled away as best she could, that hand still on her shoulder, and threw the net and its contents to the ethereal wind, sending a turbulent gust to dissipate it all. Just that fast she whirled back to him, taking his face between her hands—such brazen familiarity—and finding his eyes again. "You're here," she told him. "You. Are. Here."

  He snarled again, ever so slightly—and, still hauling breath like a sprinter, suddenly blinked. Looked at her, his hand tightening
on her shoulder...and relaxing.

  "Uh-huh," Garrie said. "You'll do."

  I hope.

  What he said, she wouldn't have wanted to repeat even if it had been in her own language. She didn't have to understand it to know that much. But she gave him a grin—something of apology, something of nice to have you back, and climbed to her feet.

  ::Number two now,::" Sklayne said. ::Almost gone.::

  No, no no. That wouldn't do—not a human ghost, raging with this intense poison. Garrie formed the net again, and when she turned to the tough guy, she found him barely breathing—a crowbar by his outstretched hand, a horrifyingly split wound over his cheek, and tats inking his bared shoulders and neck.

  She took a second look at the crowbar and told him, "Even if you were awake, I'd do it this way," just before she went for the ripped-off Band-Aid technique—jerking the net through him as quickly as she could, flicking the contents away, and dispersing them. "Get your own stitches," she said, and gave him a little kick with the toe of her sneaker.

  The others were more difficult—still conscious, still writhing around—and fighting her, whether they understood what she was doing or not. She finished hot, dirty, and sweating in no uncertain terms.

  And totally unprepared for the tough guy who had once grabbed her to make another try at it.

  Trevarr's sudden knife at the throat of the gunless gunman—gleaming in its unearthly way, sharp enough shave through flesh as air—made the grabby guy think twice.

  So THERE.

  Garrie stepped back a safe distance, slinging the man quick annoyance as she shook her hands out, ridding herself of residual energy—bouncing on her toes a couple of times to boot.

  Oh, she was going to pay for this. A long swim in her building's little pool; a long midnight session on the treadmill. Energies so stirred would take much in the way of grounding...and time to settle.

  Katherine sent a bump of a breeze her way, an ethereal throat-clearing. "I hate to interrupt..."