Mountain Echoes (The Walker Papers)

by C. E. Murphy

  At the rate I was going, that would happen when I was about eighty. “I’ll be fine, anyway,” I amended. “Don’t worry about it right now. We have other problems. Aidan apparently knows these hills like the back of his hand, and he really wanted to go with me yesterday when it looked like I was going monster-hunting. If he’s gone hunting by himself....”

  “He’ll be fine,” Morrison promised, and since, like George Washington, Morrison never told a lie, I accepted the reassurance gratefully. He edged me aside to pick up where I’d left off: packing the shotgun and other bits of the arsenal I’d put in Petite’s trunk over the past several months. “I’m glad no one stopped me for speeding. I had no idea what you had in the trunk. Is anything in here illegal?”

  “I have permits for all of it. Were you really speeding? Of course you were.” I took a back holster for the sawed-off shotgun out of the trunk and slung it on, but I was trying to stare at Morrison over my shoulder while he slid the shotgun home. It had a comfortable weight to it, though I bet after a day’s hike it wouldn’t be so comfy. “You really just drove across the country in two days, Morrison? Did you sleep?”

  “Not much. I made good time through the Midwest and stopped at a motel for about six hours.”

  I turned around to stare at him with my heart and my libido both speeding up. I’d driven that route when I was seventeen, all the way through South Dakota and into the speed-limit-free zone of Montana. I had a fair sense of what good time meant, in those regards, and I knew for damned sure what Petite’s upper speed range was. I had made it across the country, North Carolina to Seattle, and avoiding Ohio, which was lousy with cops, in about forty hours, including sleep, stopping for food, and climbing a mountain to look at the wild horse monument built there. My average speed had been around 75 miles an hour, and that took traffic jams into account. My top speed had been close to Petite’s nominal upper limit of 130, but I’d never quite pegged it. One of my goals in life was to bring her to Utah and let her rip on the salt flats.

  The idea of Morrison tearing across the country at an average speed in excess of sixty miles an hour was one of the sexier images I’d been presented with lately. My cheeks flushed. Morrison looked amused. “You all right, Walker?”

  I’d said it before, but it was worth repeating, except this time I said it in a lower, more throaty voice. “I didn’t know you drove that well.”

  “Driving fast isn’t the same as driving well.” He gave Petite a sideways glance, then admitted, “She can move.”

  My grin was big enough to split my head. I patted Petite proprietorially and beamed some more as Morrison put on his best official-cop face and went back to ransacking Petite’s trunk. He didn’t ask about the flask of holy water or the wooden stakes. Then he went around to the driver’s side, flipped the seat forward, and took out two more completely unexpected items from behind the seat.

  The first was a black leather coat, which he shrugged on and magically transformed from Michael Morrison, Seattle police captain, to Mike Morrison, In Need of a Motorcycle and Possibly Not The Boy You Bring Home To Mother, After All. There was suddenly not enough air in the whole world. I got dizzy. Morrison glanced at me and smirked. I blushed. He laughed, and I said, “Well!”

  “Glad you approve.” Then he took the other item out and offered it to me.

  My blush turned into something much more profound. The heat rising in me made my heart ache with surprise and joy, and I took what he offered carefully.

  My drum. The skin drum given to me by the elders, Carrie Little Turtle included, when I turned fifteen. Aside from Petite, it was easily my most prized possession. Almost two feet across, its thin leather was stretched across a wooden frame. Crossbars were set into the frame’s insides, providing a handhold. Feathers and beads trailed from leather strings around the frame’s edge, and the images painted onto the drum skin were as bright and vibrant as they’d been nearly thirteen years ago when it had been given to me.

  But the peculiar thing was, they had changed. Or one of them had, at least. A raven still arched over two other animals, their orientation giving the drum’s circle a top and bottom. On the left was a rattlesnake, poised to strike. But on the right, for more than a decade, a wolf or a coyote—I’d never been sure which—had faced the rattlesnake. Six months ago the painting had begun to fade and warp like it had been soaked, but the drum itself never lost any of its tension. I hadn’t been able to tell what was coming up in the coyote’s place, though even I had understood the change indicated a waning of my mentor’s influence on me.

  Now, though, the image was there, fresh and clear as if it had always been the one painted onto the drum. A praying mantis, long legs folded and heart-shaped face examining the rattlesnake across from it. I touched it cautiously, a little afraid it would smear, though I knew perfectly well it was magic, not paint, staining the leather. I said Subtle, inside the confines of my head, and all three of my spirit animals radiated amusement. Most people didn’t go around announcing to the world what form their spirit guides took. I guessed I couldn’t do anything like most people did, and lifted my smile to Morrison. “Thank you.”

  He looked incredibly pleased with himself. “I thought you might want it.”

  “You...” I shook my head, still smiling. I was alternating between having the best and worst moments of my life the past couple weeks, crashing from one to the other with no real warning. Despite the low moments, Morrison’s presence and thoughtfulness were pulling everything heavily toward it being the best of times. “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting this. Thank you. You’re going to roast in that coat, up in the mountains.”

  “I’d rather have it in case we’re out there all night. Unless you can keep us warm.”

  My eyebrows did a lascivious waggle, all of their own accord. Morrison laughed, but he had a good point. I went to get my own coat and a backpack while he tucked his gun—Les had left it on Petite’s roof—back into its holster.

  Ankle-length white leather was even less practical for mountain climbing than Morrison’s black bomber jacket. I stared at my new coat, still in love with it but having a moment of vicious practicality regarding the upcoming cost of maintenance on the thing. On the other hand, the only other coat I had with me was the winter-weight parka I’d been wearing when I went to SeaTac two weeks ago, and there was no way I was wearing that hiking. Feeling a little silly, I pulled the shotgun holster off and the coat on, wondering if the former would fit over the latter.

  To my surprise, it did. I belted the holster and turned around to find Morrison looking at me with much the same stunned gaze I’d delivered unto him a few minutes ago. I ducked my head, self-conscious as he had not been, and studied the toes of my stompy boots as I listened to him cross toward me. He tipped my chin up until I met his eyes, and then with great solemnity, said, “Nice coat.”

  My discomfort vanished and I laughed aloud. “Did Gary put you up to that?”

  “No, why?”

  “That’s what he said, too, that’s all. Thanks. I kind of liked it.”

  “You look like one of the good guys.” Morrison kissed me and went back to Petite, leaving me all but dancing in his wake. The whole point of the coat was to look like a good guy. I felt like I could take on anything if I was projecting the right image.

  We were packed up in less than five minutes. My backpack didn’t fit all that comfortably over the coat and shotgun holster, but it was better than stuffing my pockets with ammo. I locked Petite, informed the gods that if anything happened to her they would have me to reckon with, and Morrison and I walked into the Appalachian Mountains like a modern-day Lewis and Clark.

  We were barely forty feet in before Morrison made a sound of satisfaction and called me over with a crooked finger. Bent grass, broken branches and hints of heel prints were visible, the wights’ high-speed escape left its mark. Either that or th
is was the path most people had been taking up to the Nothing Holler, which I suggested to Morrison in apologetic tones. He said, “I think you’d better fill me in,” and I did as we hiked up the mountainside.

  He didn’t interrupt often, once with a “They’d really make it that difficult for Sara because she’s a Fed?” that wasn’t so much disbelieving as a sigh at the human condition, and later with a quiet “It wasn’t your fault, Walker.”

  “People keep saying that. Doesn’t make it any easier to believe.” We crested the mountain as I finished catching Morrison up, and there we paused, taking in the view. I loved Seattle and the sharp, ragged Rockies in its distance, but North Carolina’s soft old mountains and hazy landscape were welcoming in a way the Pacific Northwest would never seem, to me. I inhaled deeply, and Morrison cast me a cautious look.

  “Miss it?”

  “More than I realized.” After a beat, I recognized the real intent behind the question, and shook my head. “Not enough to come back, except maybe to visit. Too much water under this bridge. I’m pretty dedicated to Seattle at this point.”

  A flash of regret sang through me as I remembered the expression on my friend and mentor Coyote’s face when he’d realized that I really wasn’t ever going to give up my cool Seattle street stomping grounds for the heat and wilderness of Arizona. It wasn’t a lot of regret, especially with the reasons for my decision standing right here beside me on a low-rolling mountaintop, but the echo of Coyote’s fear in Morrison’s question brought it to mind. His eyebrows quirked, suggesting he was reading something of my emotions in my face, but I didn’t think this was a great time to explain I was thinking about another man. “Trust me, Morrison. I’m coming home with you when this is over.”

  “Good. The trail goes two directions here. Which one do we take?”

  Even I could see there was a reasonably well-beaten path heading off to the east, in which direction lay the Nothing Holler. Sara had not, I thought, tried very hard to find the easier path into the holler.

  The other trail was considerably less obvious, only visible if I crouched and squinted at things. “This way. The path less traveled by.”

  “No one can accuse you of taking anything else.” Morrison forged ahead until I caught up, said, “Snakes,” and lifted my booted foot in comparison to his shod one. It wasn’t so much that I’d come prepared for tromping through viper-infested forests as I’d been wearing my favorite stompy boots when I’d left Seattle. They just happened to go up to the bulge of my calf muscle, which was high enough that most startled snakes would get a fang full of leather instead of flesh.

  Morrison blanched and fell behind me. For a while we worked our way up, down, through, around, over, under, and occasionally between valleys, hollers, trees, dells, streams and shrubberies. The wights’ path was mostly clear enough to follow, though I called Morrison forward a few times when I wasn’t certain. The second or third time I breathed, “What, Boy Scouts?” and he said, “Eagle Scout,” without missing a beat.

  I laughed. “Of course you were. I’m surprised you’re not a troop leader now.”

  He said, “No kids,” in a tone light enough that it was weighty. I narrowly avoided tripping over my own feet as we got started again. It wasn’t so much that somebody had to have children themselves to lead Scout troops as clearly that was how Morrison envisioned himself doing it, and that was a thought I hadn’t gone anywhere near. And I wasn’t going to go any closer to it, either, not now and not for any time in the immediate future.

  The sun was overhead before we broke over another crest that lay a whole rich valley out beneath us. A creek not quite big enough to be a river dribbled down the center, visible here and there between breaks in a full-on old-growth forest. The water’s song bounced around the valley just enough to be heard when the wind caught it, and the scent of early wildflowers rose up with the buzz of captivated insects. It was as idyllic a setting as I’d ever seen.

  Morrison, softly, said, “But if you insist on moving back South...” which reminded me of the glimpses I’d had of his inner garden: wilderness, as lush and varied as this place, though much more informed by the Pacific Northwest’s landscape. I had miles to go before I caught up with his spiritual development, and I doubted it was something Morrison spent much, if any, conscious time on.

  “We’d need a helicopter to get in and out. I don’t think I’m man enough to hike three hours each way every time I wanted to go see a movie. Seriously, though, yeah. I can’t believe it’s not settled. The water must be coming in and out of a cave system, or somebody would have followed it upstream and built a homestead here.” I slid the Sight on, wondering if I could get a glimpse of the water system.

  Instead a roar of pain and anger rose from the earth, black wiping out the color and life I saw with normal vision. I fell back a step, shocked, and felt Morrison’s hand at the small of my back again. Not really supporting me so much as letting me know he was there. I could get used to that.

  It took a minute or two for the roar to die down, and even then it didn’t disappear, just faded out. I could nearly See that a settlement had been made in this valley, once upon a time. Small buildings, cleared spaces, campfires, and children’s laughter filled my mind, though I knew they were imaginary. I didn’t see ghosts, not the way some people did. But I could See the centuries-buried fire circles, the fallen structures of homes and meeting places. The Cherokee had built wattle and daub homes with thatched roofs, previous to Western encroachment. This valley had been home to buildings like those, and to dozens, maybe hundreds, of people. Their bones faded into view the same way the buildings had, buried deep and forgotten by time. Bit by bit I realized the trees weren’t actually old-growth, not the way I was thinking. Their roots ran deep, blue strength making concentric rings in the trunks, but they were a couple hundred years old, not centuries on end. One of the fires had burned through the valley, left untended by the dying. Nothing deliberate had happened here, no massacre, no driving the natives out. It had been destroyed through illness, smallpox and influenza carried on blankets and racing ahead of the conquering people.

  “No,” I said very quietly, “we wouldn’t want to live here after all.” I shut the Sight down. As I did, something flared at the corner of my vision. I steeled my stomach for a second hit from the death valley and triggered the Sight again, turning north toward the brightness.

  Aidan’s aura, unmistakable with its broad tangle of colors, and from the frantic pulse to his magic, he was fighting for his life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three things hit me at once: I could not get there fast enough. No matter what was happening, I simply could not get there fast enough.

  I could not throw magic that far, not without at least being able to see my target.

  I could not do less than try.

  I whispered, “Renee,” aloud, and for the first time tried to trigger time-shift magic on purpose.

  I had done it before, inadvertently. Done it at Morrison’s home, in fact, and therefore his presence at my side boosted my confidence. I had thrown my spirit forward, gone out of body to see what was happening in a room I couldn’t get into. I still had no recollection of how my body had caught up to that passage of distance. It had just snapped into focus, catching up somehow, and in retrospect I thought I’d done something a little like folding a square of time. A tesseract.

  If Mrs Who could do it, so could I.

  I cut free from my body. Distance was irrelevant in the spirit world. It was all about expectations, there. One moment I was beside Morrison and the next I was beside Aidan, whose body language was pure last stand: they were going down, or he was.

  They were the wights. All five of the remaining ones, whose presence made a sick lurch in the space that was nominally my stomach. There were seven more people back in town who had died in more or less the same way the wights had,
by having their lives sucked away through black magic. I should have told Sara to burn those bodies, because I couldn’t think of anything else that would guarantee they wouldn’t rise like these ones had. I guessed they’d be buried by sundown, but I wasn’t at all sure that would be enough. I hoped like hell that once this was over, I would remember to call and tell her that. And that there would be cell phone reception that would let me. And that was the last time I worried about anything but me, Aidan and survival for a little while.

  Renee was a firebrand inside my skull, stitching things together with her long sticklike legs. I reached for my sword and remembered two things at once: first, it hadn’t been a good weapon against the wights, and second, I was immaterial. I had nothing to hold a sword with.

  The attempt to draw magic, though, got the wights’ attention. Two, then three of them, moved away from Aidan, drawn by the source of raw energy that was me. My shields were in place, rock-solid, but without a body to house my power in, I blazed all over the landscape, a delicious temptation. I still didn’t know how to fight them, and had probably made it worse by de-bodying, but if it was me or Aidan, I much preferred them siphoning off me. Not so much because I was confident of my survival, but because if somebody was going to die here it was not, by God, going to be the twelve-year-old. As the wights closed in on me, I forced myself to think. They were undead. Monsters created by sucking the life force out of others, as they had none left of their own.

  The question, then, was what happened if I sucked the power out of them.