Bitter Waters (36 page)

“Are you sure?” Ukiah lowered Max to the bench.

“Yes! We've got to get Kittanning back, or they'll just do this again, someplace else with the other Ae.”

Assuming Du-ae was damaged beyond human repair, yes, there was Loo-ae yet. The air death. The most dangerous of the Ae.

Ukiah reached out for Kittanning and felt him speeding away, still on the bow of Socket's speedboat. “Sam, they're heading upriver fast.”

“Okay.” Sam wheeled the big boat in a tight circle. “How clear is the run? Is there anything I should know about?”

“The Oakmont Highway Bridge, Twelvemile Island, Fourteenmile, and another dam just after Fourteenmile!”

“Another dam? Where's the fucking first one?” Sam slammed the throttle to full open and the boat leapt up, throwing curtains of water out on either side that glittered in the firelight.

“Downriver, just above Sixmile.”

He ducked into the cabin, leaving her to curse about high-speed powerboats in very small swimming pools.

Behind them, Sycamore Island burned, reflected in the black waters of the Allegheny River.

Ukiah found the first-aid kit and hurried back to Max. The rifle bullet had punched a neat hole through Max's thigh. The sight of it set him growling again.

“It's okay. It's okay,” Max murmured, eyes closed, slumped in the chair.

“I should have killed him,” Ukiah snapped, bandaging the wound.

“No. You shouldn't have.” Max gripped his shoulder, gave it a weak shake. “You're better than him.”

“He hit you twice.”

Max nodded weakly, and gingerly touched a hole in his windbreaker. “Hit my vest.”

Over their headsets, Sam said, “Ukiah, I can see them!”

“Go on. Kick butt.” Max pushed him toward the ladder.

They were rounding the bend at Oakmont. Ahead, the Oakmont Highway Bridge spanned the river in an intricate weave of steel supported by five massive columns of stone, creating four water channels underneath. Warning lights blinked under the bridge decking, pinpointing the supports
and marking the second channel from the right to be the sailing line.

Socket and Core were in high-performance speedboats, sleek and fast as bullets, visible as the shore lights turned their spray into waves of glittering pearls, their waves a slowly vanishing gleam. Socket, with Kittanning's presence in her boat, led. From Core's boat, flashes of muzzle flare spat out from the prow. Core had a gunman with him, by the size of the man's dark shape, Hash. The
Endeavor
was still several hundred feet behind the others.

“Can you catch them?”

Sam laughed. “There's a reason they call those speedboats and this a cruiser. The only way we'll catch them is by them running out of gas or river.”

“There is the dam in less than three miles.”

“There is that. How is Max, really?”

“He should be in a hospital,” he told her truthfully as he reloaded his pistol. “But he's right. Kittanning is the key. We have to get him back.”

“At this speed, we're going to be out of river fast.” Sam nodded toward the weaving speedboats. “Socket is a much better pilot than Core. He probably doesn't have her experience in boats.”

“So she can outrun him?”

“There's only so much outrunning you can do in a seven-mile stretch.”

Socket suddenly veered hard to the left, and kept turning, aimed at the black stone column of the Oakmont Bridge.

“Shit, I think he hit her!” Sam cried.

“Come on! Pull out of it!” Ukiah shouted helplessly to Socket.

At the last minute, she did, flicking to the right to narrowly miss the column, and then cranked hard to the left again. Kittanning's dog crate fit snugly into the bow's wedge-shaped seating area of Socket's boat; the two babies, only resting in their infant carriers, went sliding across the wide stern of the speedboat and nearly upset.

Core started to follow in a wide arch, and suddenly he too veered hard to the left.

“Watch, watch, watch,” Ukiah cried. “Twelvemile is right on the other side of the bridge! They're both coming back downriver!”

Sam swore and wretched at her wheel hard to the left, and dropped one of her motors to neutral, and a moment later into reverse. The
Endeavor
spun tight until they were pointing downriver.

Socket threaded through the bridge supports again, heading toward them. Core came flashing out from under the bridge moments later, Hash braced in his bow seating area.

“Hold on!” Sam slammed the throttle to full and leaned on the horn. Blaring out a warning, the
Endeavor
leapt in front of Core's oncoming speedboat.

Core frantically worked the steering wheel of the smaller boat, aiming for the
Endeavor
's stern. Ukiah leaned over the side of
Endeavor
's tall bridge and fired down at the bottom of the speedboat as it flashed by.

Sam heeled the
Endeavor
hard to the left. “Come on, baby, come on. I know that you're not built for this, but work with me.”

Core floundered through the deep trough of chaotic water left by the big boat as Sam continued to turn, trying to bring around the
Endeavor
's bow to ram the speedboat. She wasn't going to make it, the cruiser was moving too slowly to catch the more agile boat, and Core would quickly overtake the wounded Socket. Ukiah darted out of the
Endeavor
's bridge, ran the length of the bow, and leapt to Core's boat just as it cleared their wake.

“Ukiah!” Sam shouted after him, but to her credit, kept the big boat locked on to the speedboat's midcenter.

Out of the turbulent water, the speedboat roared forward, surging out of the
Endeavor
's path.

Hash emptied his gun at Ukiah as he leapt between the boats, the bullets cutting through the air around him, all missing. Ukiah stumbled as he landed, the speedboat rocking out from under him, and before he could recover, Hash was on him. The big man bowled the off-balanced Ukiah over, slamming him to the floor of the speedboat, and struck Ukiah in the temple with the butt of his empty pistol in an explosion of
pain and momentary darkness. Ukiah caught Hash's arm before the cultist could hit him again, and they grappled for control of the pistol. They tumbled through the narrow cut in the instrument panel into the bow before Ukiah got the leverage he needed to suddenly heave the unsuspecting Hash over the side.

Ukiah rolled to his feet and turned to Core, who had a gun leveled at him while trying to keep the boat steady. They had traveled back down the dark river to the bend at Blawnox.

“Now, you disgusting sack of shit,” Ukiah snarled, “where are Ice and the other two founts?”

“Don't move or I'll shoot!”

Ukiah checked for a moment and then realized there was no reason to play the meek boy anymore. He'd cleared the playing field of all innocents: Kittanning and the babies were safe with Socket, wounded Max was with Sam, and soon the river would be flooded with police.

Now, though, there was only him and Core—and Ukiah was nearly indestructible.

“You can barely see me,” Ukiah growled, crouching in the darkness. “But I can see you clearly. You're an arrogant, power-hungry, lying perverted hypocrite. And you're going to tell me where the fuck the rendezvous is even if I have to beat the information out of you—and frankly I'm hoping that I have to.”

“I can see you!” Core cried, but the gun wavered.

Ukiah laughed. “Can you? Do you have any clue what I am? Here's a hint—you bastard—I'm not human.”

“You're not a demon.” Core steered between the two islands; Sycamore still burned brightly. There were police cars on the cove's shore. “The Blissfire wouldn't have worked on you if you were a demon.”

Ukiah decided it was useless to insist on the truth; aliens or demons, what was the real difference to an insane man? He'd face Core in his reality. “How do you get a nephilim without an angel, you stupid idiot? Have you so little faith that you can't believe Good walks the world as well as Evil? You've got it all screwed up. The founts don't kill demons; they only kill humans. You know that—you said it yourself!”

“What do you mean?”

“Blissfire doesn't affect demons. None of the founts affect demons.”

“But Blissfire is a gift from God.”

“It wasn't a gift—you stole it, and got what you deserved. Death. You've signed your own death warrant, and all those you've used Blissfire on, except me; that's one little trick of its that I'm immune to. Now, where is Ice with the other two founts?”

“You're lying!” Core started the boat into the nearly straight run to Highland Park Bridge. Ukiah could sense Kittanning ahead of them as Socket continued fleeing Core's speedboat, apparently unaware that Ukiah had intervened. “You're a demon! You're trying to stop me from doing God's holy work!”

“God's work?” Ukiah leapt, snarling at him. Core fired once, the bullet creasing Ukiah's side, before Ukiah batted the gun out over the river and caught hold of Core. A quick hard twist, and he had Core trapped, head craned back to lay bare Core's neck, and teeth inches from the flesh. Ukiah caught himself then, growling low. “God's work! Killing babies?”

“It was an accident! We didn't know that the Persuader was so deadly.”

“Like hell!” Ukiah tightened his hold, feeling satisfaction from the whimper of pain from Core. “The machine was only to inflict pain, not kill! It would have been useless to Hex if it killed! You'd have to torture the babies for hours until the very stress killed them, not the machine. That's what you did, wasn't it? You had to have known that they couldn't have survived that much pain! You're a fucking EMT. Why did you do it when you had to have known it would kill—?” The truth hit Ukiah and he barely controlled the impulse to bite down hard and tear out Core's throat. He growled in anger, until he finally managed to force the words through clenched teeth. “You wanted them to die so you could look into their eyes and see God.”

“I baptized them first,” Core protested, as if this made things right.

“How much death do you need? Are not all the deaths of the demons enough for you?”

“I'm beginning to think that demons are all part of one great Evil, all its darkness spread out over many bodies. We cut them up, and they only get smaller and smaller. We'll never utterly kill Evil, so we'll never see God.”

Was that the whole reason behind Core's war with the Ontongard, that the Gets were guiltless subjects to kill in his quest to see the face of God?

“You're wrong,” Ukiah growled. “You're wrong like you're wrong about everything else.”

“No I am not. You have to hold the baby's eyes open and look carefully as they breathe out that last sweet breath, but both times I saw Him—God's face—as He welcomed them to heaven.”

Ukiah flung Core away with revulsion; Core had killed the second baby after “succeeding” with the first. He backed away from the monster in human form, growling.

From Kittanning came a sudden flare of panic. Later they would tell Ukiah that the tugboat was pushing four barges up the night river, two barges abreast and two deep, loaded deep with coal. Now it was just black, upon black, upon black. Socket's speedboat was a crazed blur of running lights as it tumbled away from the tugboat, spilling out Socket, dog crate, and babies. Sam's horn blared. The tugboat's deep voice joined, and under the chorus, Ukiah heard the deep powerful throbbing of a tugboat engine and the shushing of massive amounts of water being shoved aside.

And then Core's speedboat hit the front barge.

For a moment Ukiah was airborne, and then he hit cold wet darkness. Instantly, he was yanked under the tugboat's powerful undertow. He sensed something thrashing in the water near him. Instinctively, he reached out and caught one of the babies, and together they were tumbled head over heels in the tugboat's massive wake. Moments later he fought his way to the surface, baby held tight against him.

“Sam!” he shouted, treading water as the current carried him downriver. “Sam!”

The
Endeavor
surged out of the darkness and came up
beside him. He caught hold of the swimmer's platform and scrambled up far enough into the boat to shove the baby toward Max. “Here! Take him! Sam, do you see anyone else?”

“There's Kittanning!” She pointed out the dog crate quickly sinking. “Hold on, I'll get you there quick.”

Ukiah tucked his feet onto the swimmer's platform and Sam whipped the boat over to the cage as it vanished. Ukiah dove after it, following Kittanning's scent through the cold water until his fingers laced through the wire gate. It was like hauling a rock to the surface. When he reached the surface, he hefted the crate over his head, letting the water drain out. Kittanning licked at his fingers, whimpering. The puppy, though, growled at Max when Ukiah handed it up to his partner.

“Hey, big boy, it's Max! Don't you remember me?” Max crooned and risked his fingers through the wire.