The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5) (18 page)

She began to
wonder how it would play out.
Will they call them out? Have a confrontation
in the parking lot, or in the streets of Caliente?

Deem saw the
first of the party approach the parked cars, passing through them to the doors
of the motel rooms. Within moments they had passed inside.

She
shuddered to think what was happening behind the door. The movement of the
group was carrying her; they were all passing through the parked cars now,
moments from entering their own rooms.

Paul reached
the door first and disappeared through it. Deem turned to look at Marion, who
still had her dagger at bay.

You going
in there?
Deem
asked.

Just to
see,
Marion replied.
Not to participate.

More ghosts
went around them, entering the room that Paul had already entered. Deem turned
and followed them.

Inside was
grim. Paul attacked one of the sleeping men, slicing his throat and cutting
through his abdomen. The light was dim, but she could see the dark red patches
spreading on the white sheets, and jets of blood hitting the walls from the
severed arteries. Paul continued slashing mercilessly at the body in the bed,
over and over, inflicting wound after wound, enjoying every strike. Others
around her swarmed the other men in the beds, hacking at them repeatedly,
delighting in the carnage. Deem could hear muffled cries coming through the
motel’s walls, and she knew similar scenes of horror were happening all around
her. She found herself drifting back, wanting to leave the room. The sick souls
of the soul cage were clearly in charge here, subsuming any humanity that might
have been left in the ghosts of the Fancher party.

As she
passed through the door, she was taken by a sudden rush behind her, and she
turned to see a man running down the walkway in front of the rooms. He was
dressed only in his garments, his bare feet flying over the cement.

Running
for his life,
Deem
thought. He wasn’t running away from the motel, however. He was running for the
end of it, to a room at the far corner where the members of the Fancher party
had not yet descended.

Deem decided
to follow him. Part of her wanted to allow the spikes to emerge and take the
man down before he could escape, but she suppressed the idea of killing him in
the interest of seeing where he was going.

As they
passed room after room, Deem could sense the violence going on inside; members
of the wagon train, with whom she’d just walked miles, were slicing at the
bodies sleeping inside.
Were they all part of Dayton’s control structure?
she wondered as she followed the man.
Or were there more? Other Daytons from
other areas?

He stopped
at the final room of the motel and unlocked the door, going inside quickly. She
moved through the door, realizing that Marion was no longer with her; Marion
was somewhere back near the first room they’d entered.

Inside, she
was surprised to find the room was empty.

It seemed
like a normal motel room, made up and ready for an occupant…but there was
something slightly off about it. She couldn’t put her finger exactly on what
made her feel that way. Something was disjointed, not right. Deem moved around
the space, looking, searching…the man had vanished.

Deem!
she heard, the familiar voice coming
through loud and clear.
Deem! Can you hear me?

Lorenzo!
she cried.
Are you there? Yes, I
can hear you!

Look
carefully, Deem!
Lorenzo called.
Wherever you are, it’s special. It’s important.

This
room?
Deem asked.
This
room is important?

It’s very
important,
Lorenzo
answered.
It’s why I can talk to you. It’s different. Find out why it’s
different.

She studied
the room.
There’s nothing unusual here, Lorenzo. It’s just a motel room. The
man ran in here, but I can’t find him…

In the
distance she heard Marion scream, and Kate rose to take control, driving her
from the room, abandoning the search Lorenzo had suggested. She was suddenly in
the night air, returning quickly over the cement walkway to her sister who was
still inside the first room they’d entered.

Marion was
holding her arm, tears on her face.

What
happened?
Kate
asked.

They
attacked me!
Marion
replied, showing Kate her arm.

They?
Kate asked.

One of
our party!
Marion
replied.
I think it was Jonas. After they finished with the bodies, they
were in a furious rage. They turned on me!

Kate looked
up at the room. Blood was everywhere; bodies sliced and cut, pieces of them
tossed from the beds, lying on the floor. The horror of it caused Kate to recede,
and Deem took control again. She wanted to return to the room at the end of the
motel, to talk to Lorenzo again and figure out what he was trying to say, but
she found herself suddenly immobile, unable to move.

Winn?
she thought, watching as Winn and
David entered the room, walking to one of the bodies on the bed. She glanced to
the open doorway; no one else was there. The other ghosts were gone, as though
they had finished their work and were now no longer needed.

Marion!
Deem felt Kate cry, wanting a final
word. Marion was gone.

She turned
her gaze back to the bed and watched as Winn activated a small metal band near
the neck of one of the recently butchered men. A thin line shot out from it,
wrapping around the neck. It duplicated downward, forming a mesh that quickly
enveloped the body.

She felt as
though she wanted to vomit, but couldn’t. Something was down her throat,
something had violated her and was extended deep down inside. She grabbed at
her face, feeling a soft, gelatinous mass, horrified at how she couldn’t
breathe and how her face seemed to be missing, replaced by something soft and
squishy.

The blood disappeared
from the walls as she watched David helping Winn lift the encased body from the
bed, and suddenly everything dimmed. She could feel it rising out of her,
something pulling up through her mouth and nose, something foreign that had
decided to release her.

Her eyes
flew open, and in the dim light of Lyman’s underground cave, she saw three
faces looking down at her: Lyman, Carma…and Warren.

Then she
felt the slimy substance slip down the side of her face, landing on the wood of
the table next to her ear, and she worried that whatever had been down her nose
and throat might try to re-enter her ear canal. She sat up quickly, startling
the group.

“Whoa,”
Warren said. “Take it easy!”

She could
feel Carma’s hands on her back, steadying her.
My dear, you’ve been lying on
the table for months. You need to be careful. Things might not work right for a
little while.

They
butchered them all,
she weakly croaked, the words hard to speak.

You saw
it, then?
Lyman
asked
. The massacre at Caliente? The payback for Mountain Meadows?

Worse
than payback,
Deem
said.
It was a bloodbath.

Lyman
smiled.
And what happened to the Fancher party in 1857 wasn’t?

Deem
remembered the vision she’d had when first leaving the soul cage; Marion’s
throat cut, her father’s face destroyed.
Not my father,
she thought.
Kate’s
father. Was it worse than what she’d just seen?

She felt the
horror of witnessing her sister die in front of her as she relived the bullet
entering her own body.
Not worse,
she thought.
Just as bad. A
massacre is a massacre.

She tried to
stand, but her legs couldn’t support her. Before she fell, she felt Warren’s
arms catching her, lifting her up. His arms felt good, and she resisted her
natural impulse to try and fight the help, to try and stand on her own.

They were
moving through the caves, making their way back to the house. Deem saw the
overhead lights as they went, single bare bulbs hanging from the rocky surface
of the tunnel.

The
massacre of Caliente,
she thought.
Lyman did it. He killed them all. Not himself, of course. His
plan. He arranged it, he made it happen.

“Did Dayton
die?” she asked.

“What?”
Warren asked, her voice so quiet he could barely hear her.

She cleared
her throat. “Did Dayton die? Is he dead?”

“We don’t
know,” Carma replied behind her. “We’re waiting to hear from Winn. We’ll see.”

“Winn!” Deem
said. “I saw him. He was there, with David.”

“Hush now,”
Carma said. “We’re going upstairs, and we’ll get some tea down you. Then you’re
going to rest until your strength returns.”

Warren
carried her upstairs and placed her on the sofa in the sitting room. Deem felt
her head land on a pillow, and she instantly wanted to close her eyes and
sleep. Instead, Carma appeared with a mug, insisting that she drink.

The tea was
soothing. Her scratchy throat instantly relaxed and she felt energy returning
to her limbs.
More tea,
she thought, moving her lips forward toward the
mug.

“Don’t gulp
it,” Carma warned. “Just sip. It’s potent, you won’t need a lot. You just need
to be patient while it works.”

She took
another sip and let it slide down her throat, enjoying the feeling beginning to
radiate through her. Warren was at her side, holding her hand, and she could
feel the heat of his palm, warming her.

“Lyman let
you downstairs?” Deem asked him.

Warren
smiled back.

“Your
boyfriend has been helping us out ever since you were trapped,” Carma said, standing
up. “He’s been invaluable. Lyman brought him inside the circle. He’s been
routing information about Dayton to us for months, and feeding back to them
false information about us. That’s how we knew about their little conference in
Caliente tonight.”

“Really?”
Deem asked, looking at Warren. She wasn’t sure, but he seemed to blush. “How
did that happen?”

“He kept
coming around after your incident in Paragonah,” Carma continued. “We didn’t
want to tell him what happened, so the first few times he visited I made up a
story.”

“I knew she
was lying to me,” Warren said. “You’re a horrible liar, Carma.”

“So I’ve
been told,” Carma replied. “On one of Warren’s visits, Lyman became alarmed. He
detected a bug on Warren. It was an attempt to penetrate our little fort here.”

“A bug?”
Deem asked.

“Almost
invisible tracking nematodes,” Carma said. “Entirely River. We knew Warren
wasn’t aware of them, so we scraped some from him and figured out they’d been
planted on him by Dayton’s group.”

“When Dayton
learned I was visiting here,” Warren said, “he decided to track me. I had no
idea. I was pissed.”

“As we
sorted it out,” Carma continued, “we decided to approach Warren. We asked if
he’d be willing to act as a kind of double agent, working more and more with
Dayton, passing information to us. Dayton loved that Warren was someone we’d
actually allow on the property, so he thought he was using Warren to spy on
us.”

“When Carma
explained that your life was at stake,” Warren said, “I knew I had to help, any
way I could.”

“Dayton
would have killed you if he figured it out,” Deem said. “That was very risky.”

“I didn’t
care,” he said, squeezing Deem’s hand gently.

“He’s the
reason we knew about the big Caliente conference,” Carma said. “Without his
intel, Lyman wouldn’t have known when it was happening.”

“And Winn?”
Deem asked. “David?”

Carma turned
to walk back into the kitchen. “Lyman’s plan isn’t done,” she called back over
her shoulder. “They have more to do.”

Deem turned
to Warren. She could see that he was trying to assess her strength, to figure
out if she needed to rest.

“I’m fine,”
she said. “I want to stand.”

“I’m not
sure you can yet,” Warren replied. “Carma said it would take a little time for
your strength to return.”

Deem reached
out to Warren and used him to press up, trying to stand. She was wobbly, and
Warren stood to steady her.

“There’s a
place we need to go to,” she said. “In Caliente.”

“A place?”
Warren asked, just as Carma returned with a fresh mug of tea.

“What
place?” Carma asked. “You can’t go anywhere just yet!”

“A motel
room in Caliente,” Deem said. “It’s important, and I didn’t get a chance to
examine it.”