Night-Blooded Boys, page 15
part #3 of Pitchfork County Series
After a few minutes, during which Joe’d decided to just floor the accelerator and run the rifleman down if he looked like he was going to take a shot, the first guard reappeared. He stood on the stairs next to his buddy and waved Joe forward.
Joe eased up to the shack, and the guard came down to meet him. “Follow the road up to the first trailer. Wait outside until someone comes to get you.”
The guard didn’t wait for Joe’s response, turning on his heel and heading back up the stairs to the guard shack as soon as the last word was over his lips. Joe did as he was told, driving the hundred yards up to the first trailer. He killed the truck and sat in the cab, rubbing his cold hands as the winter’s chill settled into his bones. He was just about to start the truck to get the heat going again when the trailer’s door banged open.
A slight young woman appeared in the doorway, waving him in. Joe slid out of the pickup and slammed the door. He glanced back at the shotgun in its rack and sighed. Going around unarmed was starting to get on his nerves.
“Glad your boss could see me on such short notice,” he started, but the young woman’s hard smile killed his words. “Unless you are the boss.”
Her smile didn’t waver, but Joe could see a glint of anger in the woman’s dark eyes and knew he’d already kicked himself in the ass. “Follow me.”
She turned her back on Joe and headed deeper into the trailer, her boots coming down with hollow thumps on the plywood floor. He followed her down a narrow hall to the last door on the left. She skirted around the edge of a desk piled high with paperwork and core samples, throwing herself down into a rickety office chair that squeaked under even her light weight. “Please to have a seat,” she gestured to a small folding chair overflowing with manila folders. “The papers can go on the floor.”
Joe scooped up the stack of paperwork, careful not to spill any loose sheets. He stacked the folders on the floor next to her desk, hoping the extra support would keep them from slopping out everywhere. “Looks like you’re outgrowing this place,” he said.
“Growth is good,” she shrugged and continued with an accent that Joe couldn’t place. Outsiders reminded him that the world was much, much bigger than Pitchfork and made him wonder just what he’d missed while he’d been trapped here for most of his life. “You’re having water problems, is it?”
Joe leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his thighs. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re a troublemaker, the sheriff tells me.” Her smile was gone. “You’ve been where you shouldn’t, Mr. Hark.”
He shrugged. “And you are?”
“Pari Chatterjee, operations manager for Amogen Energy.” She leaned forward and rested her clasped hands on the desk between them. “I am very busy, so this should hurry. What is your complaint, please?”
“Pitchfork isn’t like other places.” Joe could see her face hardening further. “This isn’t about quality of life or any of that happy horseshit, Chatterjee. You go poking holes in the ground around here, there’s no telling what’s going to come crawling out of them.”
“You’re talking nonsense. Your water has what problems?”
“Whatever Amogen’s doing has contaminated the water in Pitchfork. My well water, but others, too. It’s making people sick.”
“Our office can take your complaints.” Pari brushed her black hair out of her eyes. “But you mentioned TV?”
“You have to stop drilling. Now.” Joe needed to make this woman understand the harm she was doing. “People are going to get killed.”
“You are threatening me?” The idea didn’t seem to bother Pari as near as Joe could tell. His words had stiffened her spine, but she looked ready to fight, not flee.
“You’re the one threatening me,” Joe replied. “What you’re doing has hurt my family. If you don’t stop, you’re going to hurt a lot of people.”
“We do tests.” Pari waved her hand dismissively. “Our operation hurts no one. The water toxicity levels are well within your government’s parameters.”
Joe had the hardest time with people like Pari and Laralaine. They saw the world as a logical, orderly place. They had explanations and scientific theories for everything. Making them understand the world of spooks and monsters was difficult, sometimes impossible. Show them a goddamned zombie, and they’d start going on about post-mortem reflexes. “You’re testing for the wrong things. You have to understand—”
“I understand. Your understanding is bad. We have all the permits. The rules we follow. Our office will take your complaints.” Pari stood and offered a hand to Joe. “Thank you for coming, but my work waits. I have to prepare for meetings with investors.”
Joe stood up and took her dark hand. Her grip was strong, unyielding. “Thank you for meeting with me, but I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to tell you.”
“My English is fine,” she said, defensively. “I will get you forms for your complaint.”
Joe didn’t let go of her hand. “I can’t let you keep making a mess in my county.”
She twisted her hand out of his grasp and glared at Joe. “You cannot stop what we do here. We have all the papers. We follow the rules.”
“I’m not going to stand by while you get people killed.” Joe felt like a bully talking to Pari. She was at least a foot shorter than him, and he had a solid hundred pounds on her. Despite that, she stood her ground.
“We are bigger than you, my company.” She stepped in until she was only an inch from Joe. “If you try to stop us, we will do everything to stop you.”
“I guess the sheriff didn’t tell you I don’t scare easy.”
“Stay out of our way.”
“Or what? You’re going to send some more assholes over to my house to hassle me? I won’t be so nice to the next set.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying. I have sent no one to your house.”
Joe saw the cracks in her armor. She thought she was in charge, but someone else was jerking the leashes around here. “A welcoming committee came by to warn me off. If you didn’t send them, who did?”
Pari frowned. “Someone pushes your leg. No one from Amogen has been to your house.”
Joe shrugged. “They were driving one of your trucks. They said they were from your company. You sure you really know what’s going on here?”
“I manage this operation. I know what all of my people are doing here.” But her eyes said she was unsure, and Joe decided to step on that insecurity.
“I know how big companies work. Maybe your boss just forgot to tell you he was handling some things, calling some shots without clearing them through you. It happens.” He shrugged.
“The shots are mine.” She motioned to the door. “Let me show you to your truck.”
Joe let Pari lead him out of the office. He was sure she didn’t know what the hell her company was really up to. She was a no-nonsense engineering type. Her world was all numbers and data crunched down by complex algorithms to their most profitable outcome.
But she was also not the only one moving pieces around Pitchfork’s board. There was someone else out there in the shadows, someone who knew what the hell they were doing. Joe reckoned that person was going to be very different from Pari and much, much more dangerous. He just had to find that person.
At the trailer’s door, Joe stopped. “Look, I don’t doubt that you’ve got a handle on your people here. But someone else is pushing buttons, and I don’t think you’d like what they’re doing in your company’s name. You figure out who sent people out to shake me down, why don’t you give me a call?”
“My business is mine.”
“Even so.” Joe told Pari his phone number, then repeated it. “You can get hold of me there. Leave a message if I don’t answer.”
“I don’t need your number.”
But as Joe pulled away, he could see Pari in his rearview, scribbling something in a little notebook.
“Don’t wait too long to call, boss woman.” Joe whispered. “I got a feeling we’re real short on time.”
28
Mildred’s eyes brimmed with tears as the parasite’s tentacle probed the inside edges of her nostril, fluttering, tasting, like the forked tongue of a serpent. She tried to wrench her head to the side, but Stevie’s sorcery held her fast.
“This is what the people of Pitchfork feel like when the dark comes for them.” Stevie gave the parasite a little more slack in the leash of power she’d wrapped around it, and it slid farther into Mildred’s nostrils. “Helpless. Terrified.”
The gathered witches gasped as Stevie tore their power from them, siphoning their strength through the ages-old bond between the Bog Witch and the coven that served her. For one endless moment, she held them powerless and afraid. “This monstrosity will destroy you, just as it’s destroyed countless others before you. It will consume your strength and turn you against one another. You’re just as powerless as anyone else in Pitchfork where this is concerned.”
Stevie felt their terror as the truth of her words sank in. She made them understand the reality of their deaths, and they quaked with fear before her.
Then she showed them the way to live.
The threads of their witchcraft were Stevie’s to command. She wrapped them together, forming a thrumming cord of enchantment that bound them to one another, and to Stevie.
Their combined power was more than a match for the parasite. As one, they pulled it away from Mildred and wrapped it in chains forged from their will. Stevie guided them without words, using their magic to compress the creature, forcing it into a smaller and smaller ball, until it was nothing more than a black pearl floating above the table.
“Together, we can cleanse this monstrosity from Pitchfork. We can purge its taint from the water and heal our people.” Stevie drew a deep breath. She knew she was asking a lot from these women who barely knew her and had no reason to trust what she was telling them. She could demand they do this, but that was the way of her mother. Stevie wanted them on her side, but she wanted them to want it as well. “Will you do this with me?”
The youngest witch nodded, her eyes filled with amazement at what Stevie had shown her. “I am Rae, and my power is yours to command.”
The other witches mumbled and glanced at one another. Stevie could feel her influence slipping off their shoulders. She was losing them.
“If ya ever try and cram somethin’ in my nose again, I’ll gut ya like a fish.” Mildred’s voice was harsh and bitter, the cawing of an angry crow. “But my name is Mildred, and my power is yours to command.”
A middle-aged witch with an oversized stocking cap pulled down tight over a mass of unruly red hair slapped her hand on the table. “I am Cass, and my power is yours to command.”
Stevie felt her heart leap in her chest. One after another, the witches slapped their hands upon the table and swore their fealty. When the last name had sworn, Stevie let the darkness fall from the air, and back into the pitcher of water.
“We are joined against our common enemy.” Stevie slammed her fist onto the table so hard the pitcher jumped a full inch. “Let’s break some shit.”
29
Joe drove until the Amogen headquarters was out of sight, then hooked a right onto an old mining road. He backed the truck up until it was mostly hidden by scrubby pines, and waited. He’d shaken the tree, now it was time to see what fell out.
Twenty minutes later, he saw Pari Chatterjee fly past his hiding spot. She was hunched over the wheel of a gray Prius, hanging on for dear life as the little car bounced and skidded along the rutted, gravel road.
Joe waited for a few minutes, then pulled out. He wasn’t worried about losing her; if Pari tried to take her little toy car onto one of the mining roads, she’d end up swallowed by a pothole or hung up in a washout. She had to be heading for the highway, and it didn’t look like she was worried about attracting attention the way she was driving. Joe reckoned she was heading to wherever her bosses were hanging out to pitch a fit about having her authority usurped.
He caught up with her a few miles later on 185. Pari was blasting along as fast as her little hybrid would take her, passing semis and SUVs like they were standing still. Joe didn’t have to stick close to her, he could see the disturbance she was causing from a a quarter mile back. She kept up the breakneck pace until she hit Sullivan, then slowed to the legal limit. Joe followed her to a truck stop and watched her pump gas while yelling into her cell phone. She didn’t even notice when he pulled up a few pumps down and filled the truck’s tank. He wasn’t sure where Pari was going, but he had a feeling it would be enlightening.
Pari led Joe from Sullivan up 185 to New Haven, then hooked northwest onto 100. They crossed the Missouri River, passing through one little town after another before hitting I-70 and taking that west. It was early afternoon when Joe realized he was following the operations manager to a riverboat casino. The stationary boats dotted Missouri’s waterfront real estate, giving down-on-their-luck residents places to blow their Social Security and unemployment checks in hopes of hitting it big and escaping the shit their lives had become. Joe hated the places and the false hope they sold.
The Prius screeched into an empty parking spot. Pari threw herself out of the car while it still rocked from the sudden stop and slammed the car’s door. Joe eased into a spot between a pair of SUVs. He watched as Pari stormed across the parking lot and marched up the gangplank to the casino. He gave her a few minutes’ head start, then followed.
The riverboat wasn’t huge, but it was packed with gamblers of all stripes. Joe rubbed shoulders with Harley riders still coated in road dust only to find himself in the midst of a cluster of bored high-dollar escorts a moment later. He slipped past suited executives hollering at their dice as well as hungry twentysomethings looking for a score. He found Pari the same way he’d followed her on the highway - by following the trail of angry people left in her wake.
The trail led him to the boat’s upper deck, where high-stakes gamblers threw away more money on one throw of the dice than all the people in Pitchfork earned in a year. She was across the deck, standing at a table surrounded by older men, all looking bored or irritated at her intrusion. Her temper hadn’t let up in the three hours it had taken to reach the casino, and Joe could hear her raised voice competing with the casino’s background music and the hollering excitement and frustration of other gamblers.
Joe took a seat at a bar where he could watch the scene without drawing attention to himself. He ordered a Jack and Coke, hold the whiskey, and drank the carbonated sugar water while Pari had it out with her bosses. Joe felt bad for setting the operations manager off, but he didn’t have time to fuck around. Every hour that passed with the drills running was another hour that shit was being pumped into Pitchfork County. He didn’t know how long it would be before that crap infected another batch of little boys or turned someone else into a mindless killer.
One of the men bore the brunt of Pari’s abuse. Seated, he was about the same height as she was standing, and looked a little younger than the rest of his cronies. He endured her shouting with stoic calm until, a few minutes into the tirade, he turned his head a hair toward Pari and flicked his fingers in her direction.
Joe saw a flash of deep-blue light, and Pari’s mouth snapped shut. “Well, then,” he muttered. His badge felt hot where it was pinned between the heavy leather of his duster and his flannel shirt. Any doubts he’d had about someone with dark knowledge being behind this evaporated.
To get a sense of what he was really facing, Joe shifted his perception to the supernatural. His stomach lurched as his vision shifted between worlds and he saw the ugly truth behind the facade around him.
The whole casino grew darker, the light became murky and stark. Black hole shadows, penetrated only by gleaming white eyes and flashing silver teeth, lurked in the corners. Demonic forms drifted into view, hunkered down at the elbows of gamblers, whispering dark encouragement as men and women fed themselves to the casino, a dollar at a time. It was easy to see which creatures were the most powerful, as their dark auras stung Joe’s eyes with their intensity.
He focused on Pari’s bosses and felt his stomach sink. The auras around the men merged into a blazing umbrella of arcane power. Their strength was greater than anything else in the casino; the sight of it made Joe’s brain cramp. “Great,” he muttered, “just fucking great.”
The bartender mistook Joe’s grumbling for a complaint about his service and immediately got in Joe’s way to freshen up his Coke. Joe growled at the young man, who gave him a mournful puppy dog expression. “You asked for Coke, I got you Coke. Is there something else I can do for you?”
Joe tried to look around the kid, but the bartender was so focused on making sure he got his tip he didn’t get the hint. Finally, Joe looked up at the kid and growled, “Get the fuck out of my way.”
The bartender jerked back as if Joe had punched him in the dick. He huffed away, throwing a parting “God, fine,” over his shoulder.
In that moment of distraction, Pari and her bosses vanished.
Joe dug a pair of crumpled fives from his pocket and threw them down on the bar. He scanned the crowded deck, looking for the execs, but there was no sign of any of them. He shifted his eyes back to the mundane world, and moved into the crowd.
The floors weren’t large, but stairwells seemed to plunge between floors in random spots, creating a confusing maze of passages and steps. Joe knew, too, that the boats had many private rooms for meetings and parties. For all he knew, Pari was as likely being held in a boiler room as she was being hustled off the boat. He wasn’t concerned for her; she’d gotten into bed with the big dogs, so it was a little late to be worried about her fleas, but he was concerned for Pitchfork. If he lost these guys, he might not get a chance to stop their bullshit before it was far too late for the County. Even mundane fracking left behind poisoned wastelands; Joe didn’t want to think about Pitchfork after these assholes finished with it. Adding crazed killers and mutant little boys to a toxic wilderness didn’t seem like a winning combination for the rest of the county’s inhabitants.
