“As long as there isn’t another slide blocking my way,” he muttered. Then he smiled. “Or unfriendly mountain spirits who don’t appreciate my passing through.”
He considered throwing the finger bones again, but it didn’t seem necessary at this point. What he was looking for was somewhere on the other side of the Rockies, so he might as well wait until he had crossed to reevaluate which way he needed to go. Unless something drastic changed, he was headed into the northwest part of the country or maybe even into Canada. There was nothing to say that the gypsy morph hadn’t chosen to hide outside the United States.
Boundaries didn’t mean much at this point. Less still, if you were a creature of magic.
Or a wielder of magic, like himself. That was what the Spider had called him. But he knew what he was. He was a hollowed-out shell that had been infused with fresh purpose and a cause. He was a dead man brought back to life by an encounter with the Word. He was an orphan lost in a world of orphans, but unlike so many, he had been found. He was not a wielder of magic; he was its servant.
He ate a little and drank from a water bottle as he drove, keeping his eyes on the road and his attention on the task at hand. The road twisted and turned through the rocks, and now and again he encountered massive boulders hunkered down like predators to block his path. The air turned sharp and cold as he ascended, and breathing became more difficult. He was up about a mile by now, and light-headedness brought on by the thinning air forced him to concentrate harder. He was deep in the mountains, no longer climbing but simply navigating through narrow defiles and towering peaks, a solitary sojourner in an empty land.
Then fog began to gather and settle in about him, a thin blanket at first that quickly thickened to something much more unsettling. There was no reason for fog to appear this high up on a night that had been clear and in weather that had been untroubled. He watched it tighten like a shroud, shortening his vision to less than fifty feet, then thirty, and finally to ten.
He slowed the AV to a crawl, switched on the fog lights, and waited patiently for the heavy mist to break. It did not; if anything, it got worse. Time passed, a steady unraveling of minutes that left him numbed and weary. He blinked against his sleepiness, sipping at the water bottle, humming tunelessly. His thoughts drifted and scattered like dried leaves blown in the wind.
You should have listened to them, a voice said suddenly.
He glanced over and found Michael sitting in the passenger’s seat, rigid and unmoving, eyes directed straight ahead. He stared for a minute, and then looked back to the road.
“You aren’t here. I’m imagining you,” he replied.
There was no response. He glanced over, and Michael was gone. He felt a chill run down his back as he realized what had just happened. The change in altitude coupled with exhaustion was causing his mind to play tricks on him. He took a deep, steadying breath and let it out, nosing the car ahead.
The fog couldn’t go on for much longer; it had to break soon.
I wouldn’t be too sure of that, boy, Michael said.
He was back in the passenger’s seat, his craggy profile expressionless as he sat staring out at the night, hands resting comfortably in his lap atop his Ronin. Logan risked a quick glance over, unable to help himself, feeling the cold seep back into his bones. There was a pale light all around Michael, a hint of something otherworldly, of an ethereal quality that living things did not possess.
Mountain spirits, he thought in disbelief, then cast the thought away.
“You’re dead, Michael,” he said. “Have the decency to stay that way.”
Beside him, Michael shimmered and vanished. Maybe that was all it took, he thought. Just tell them to go away and they would. He smiled despite the shiver that swept through him. Very accommodating, these mountain spirits.
He glanced back at the empty seat several times after that, trying to prevent any reappearance by telling himself that if he kept watch, it wouldn’t happen. He was anxious to get clear of this fog and these mountains now, to get far away from them. Then he could get some sleep and stop hallucinating. He hadn’t realized how tired he was, and when he coupled that with the traveling conditions and his mental state, he could understand why he was seeing dead people.
I don’t think you should keep going this way, a new voice said. I think you should turn back. This road doesn’t belong to the living, Logan.