The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) Read Free

figure this out. You need me to do
anything, you let me know. And don’t worry about Eliza. She’s tougher than a
two dollar steak.”

Chapter Two
     
     
     
    Carrying the empty boxes down the many stairs to reach
Eximere, Steven imagined what it was going to feel like hauling full boxes on
the way back up. They’d rarely taken things out; they usually brought things
down, like food and conveniences, like a coffee maker. Most of Eximere felt
like a fully furnished rental house where the owners were perpetually away and
housekeeping services happened magically when your back was turned. After they
explored the house briefly to make sure everything was as they left it, Steven
left Roy to the breezy comfort of Eximere’s back porch and walked to the object
room, removing Aka Manah’s list from his back pocket. He scanned it – there
must have been at least three dozen items on it, each with a name and a
physical description. The names were useless since they were arcane.  
    How am I going to do this? he wondered, looking around the object room. There
must be three or four hundred items in here!
    He re-read the list, trying to commit the descriptions to
memory. He decided he’d start with an object, and scan down the list to see if
it matched. If it did, he’d put it in a box. If it didn’t, he’d move on. He
mapped out a route he’d follow in the room so he didn’t duplicate his efforts.
    It was tedious and slow. At least I’ll have seen them all
when this is finished, he thought as he moved to the next object. I
should be cataloging them as I go, but I don’t have time. After a dozen
tries, he found an object he felt matched an item on the list. It had the shape
of a pine cone, and when he dropped into the River it changed to look like a
flat, ovular piece of black marble. He could see tiny specks moving in the
darkness of it, looking like miniature stars.
    Damn, he thought. Is that a universe in there?
    He dropped out of the River and gently picked up the pine
cone, gingerly placing it into the box. It rolled a little to one side, and he
imagined a billion catastrophes occurring for trillions of unknown people and
planets.
    It unnerved him.
    He knelt next to the box and took a picture of the tilting
pine cone. At least I can document the ones I give to him, he thought.
    Since they’d liberated Eximere from Anita and discovered all
of its treasures, Steven and Roy were able to return several books from the
library to their rightful owners. The objects in this room were much harder to
figure out than the books. They were all stolen by James Unser, the architect
of Eximere and son of Anita, a self-loathing gifted who sought to destroy the
gift in others. He was successful to a disarming degree, and he kept the books
and objects of the people he ruined, locking them away in here so that their
heirs couldn’t find them and use them.
    Steven and Roy considered the book their ancestors had left
to them to be invaluable. It bothered both of them that others had such a
valuable resource stolen from them, and they felt compelled to reunite the
books in Eximere with their rightful owners.
    But the objects were a different story. They had no idea what
most of the objects were, how they worked, or what they did. There were no instruction
manuals and nothing to read that might give a clue as to whom they originally
belonged to. Aka Manah might have once owned these things, Steven
thought as he observed the next object, but he might have just known about
them, and put them on this list as a way to get them. There’s no trail of
ownership that can be checked. I’m just going to have to hand over the ones
he’s identified, whether they’re his or not. I don’t have a way to prove otherwise,
and Eliza’s life is at risk.
    He found three more objects that matched the list by the time
he reached what he figured was the halfway point. He turned when he heard Roy
come into the room.
    “Just checking that you’re OK,” Roy