The Whittier Trilogy

by Michael W. Layne

  For a moment there was only the sound of the bear breathing.

  Suddenly, the bear opened its gigantic mouth that was capable of crushing Trent’s head in one bite, and it moaned, almost as if it were trying to communicate with him.

  The bear’s mournful sound triggered something inside Trent that felt familiar. Trent gradually turned his head and lifted his gaze until he was staring at the bear directly in its eyes. He knew that he was never supposed to do such a thing, but his instincts told him to do so.

  Trent and the bear locked eyes, their faces only inches apart. Trent looked closely at the bear and thought that he saw his own eyes reflected back at him, just like he had seen with the bear at the campground in Canada.

  This time, however, Trent understood what that meant, and he grinned as he realized that Ka’a’s spirit was inside the giant creature in front of him.

  Looking upon a physical manifestation of Ka’a’ for the first time, Trent got a true sense of how the mighty bear must have appeared when he had been alive.

  Yes, the animal was fearsome, but it was also magnificent. Viewing Ka’a in front of him like this altered the way he viewed the vengeful spirit forever.

  He now respected the power and the beauty of this creature as well as the tragedy of its senseless slaughter.

  Just as Trent’s shoulders began to relax, the light from the playing card faded, and he was engulfed by darkness again.

  When he lit another card, the grizzly was gone.

  Trent started coughing uncontrollably and he knew that he had to do something to save himself before it was too late. He didn’t know where the bear had gone, but he knew that he had to get to fresh air, even if the Hunter was waiting outside to kill him.

  He picked up a softball-sized rock with a pointed end from the cave floor, grabbed his walking stick, and started stumbling toward the entrance.

  If this was going to be his day to die, he would at least go down fighting.

  As he neared the front of the cave, he heard a growl from the grizzly and a crack from a rifle followed quickly by another.

  Then silence.

  There was no more gunfire, but he didn’t hear the bear anymore either.

  Some internal instinct told him to run as fast as he could to the cave’s entrance and to surprise the Hunter, if he had lived through the bear’s attack.

  In a few seconds, Trent reached the entrance. He knew he would be an exposed and easy target once outside the cave, but he had no other option. He put his sleeve over his mouth and did his best to step over the remains of the fire that still poured smoke into the cave.

  Trent moved to the right as soon as he was outside, and he raised the rock he had been carrying, ready to hit the Hunter with all his might. But all he saw was the massive bear sprawled face down on the ground, unmoving.

  The Hunter was gone.

  Trent looked around, trying to use his inferior human senses to check for any signs of the Hunter. He lit another card, but saw no signs of the Hunter.

  Then he looked closer at the bear’s dark brown body and saw the tip of a rifle barrel jutting out from under its carcass.

  Trent hefted the sharp rock in his hand again as he walked over to the opposite side of the bear. When he got there, he saw a human arm and a foot visible from under the giant animal’s body.

  The Hunter killed the mighty bear, but not before the grizzly had pounced on him and crushed him to death.

  Trent dropped the rock he had been clutching, and he coughed again.

  He reached out and placed his hand on the massive bear’s back, feeling the solid muscular hump beneath its thick, rough fur. He silently thanked Ka’a and the bear that had given its life so that he could live.

  With the Hunter gone, Trent readied himself to find his way back into the shrouded forest and then back to the Shaman’s camp. After making sure that the Shaman was okay, Trent would finally be free to leave Whittier the same way in which he had first entered it.

  He knew he would never be the same after his experiences here and in Vegas, but he and Zana would at least be able to try being in a real relationship with each other. It would sadden him to leave Christina again, but he knew that his future, at least in the near-term, lay with Zana.

  Even if Zana wasn’t in the picture, Trent couldn’t stay here with Christina, and he knew it. Alaska was beautiful country, but Trent’s life wasn’t here. He was more of a city person, and if his agent was still talking to him when all of this was over, he had a career to get back to and a lot of practicing to catch up on.

  Trent dropped the card that had burned down to a stub. Then he turned and started to make his way up the boulder wall so that he could get back to the forest once again.

  He made it only three steps before he heard a scuffing sound.

  When he turned around, from the light of the half-moon, he could see the bear’s body was moving…but not on its own. It was being rolled aside by the man underneath it.

  The Hunter was still alive.

  Chapter 44

  TRENT’S ADRENALINE surged back into his body all at once.

  He allowed himself less than a second to process the fact that the Hunter had somehow survived the attack of the grizzly, even though the animal’s weight alone should have crushed him to death.

  Despite what should have been, Trent watched as the Hunter began to roll out from underneath the huge bear carcass.

  Trent’s mind raced with his options. If he could climb up the boulder quickly enough, he could try hiding in the Shaman’s forest or even heading farther down the mountain, but he didn’t have much chase left in him, even with the extra adrenaline that he knew would be short-lived.

  His instincts told him to run, but he realized that he might not get a better chance in the future to attack the Hunter, than while the man was still struggling with the weight of the dead bear.

  Even with the light from the moon, it was still dark. Despite that, he looked around the clearing for the Hunter’s own rifle or his crossbow, but he didn’t see them anywhere and assumed they were still pinned beneath the bear.

  Trent picked up the largest rock he could heft with his one good hand, lifted it as high as he could, and brought it down hard on the Hunter’s already swollen head.

  The rock hit the side of the Hunter’s cranium and bounced off, as the man let out a loud yelp of pain. Trent had hurt him, but the Hunter shrugged off the stream of blood leaking from his head and kept working himself out from underneath the bear.

  Trent cursed. The Hunter was tough, but there was no way the man could have lived through what he was seeing without some supernatural help. The Elder’s spirit was back, endowing his son with the strength of the dead, and helping him heal from the bear’s wounds.

  Without another thought, Trent threw his walking stick up to the top of the boulder and then clumsily climbed up after it. With help from the last of his adrenaline, Trent made it to the top of the boulder just as the Hunter was almost completely free of the bear.

  Trent grabbed his walking stick, slid down the front of the boulder formation, and took off down the mountain as fast as he could hop and hobble. He was out of plans, and all he could think to do was to flee and take the Hunter as far away from Christina, Zana, and the Shaman as possible.

  As he sped down the mountain, he memorized the trees as best as he could in the dark, with the hope that he could find his way back to the Shaman’s forest if he ever had the chance to.

  Just as he was trying to figure out his next move, he felt a push on his shoulder, right where the arrow had come out. His mind exploded in searing pain as he lost his footing and stumbled down the forested side of the mountain.

  As he continued, out of control, he thought to himself that at least his fall put some distance between him and the Hunter.

  Trent came to a stop when his back ran into the wide trunk of an ancient spruce tree.

  He performed what amounted to a one-legged standing squat with his good leg wh
ile holding onto the tree. He looked up and saw the Hunter, illuminated by a few shafts of moonlight, striding briskly toward him, not more than forty feet away.

  The Hunter moved as if he hadn’t been injured at all, while Trent felt as if there were hardly a place left on his own body that wasn’t bruised or nearly broken.

  Trent cursed again and started back down the mountain.

  Even though rolling down the mountain had hurt like Hades, the Hunter had shown him at least one method to move faster.

  Trent held his breath and jumped forward, aiming downhill and letting gravity do as much of its painful work as possible. As he fell, he tried his hardest to avoid slamming his head into any of the passing trees. But when he caught a glimpse behind him, he saw the Hunter still coming for him.

  While he was focused on the Hunter, his body crashed into the trunk of a large tree. He scanned the area around him for anything he could use as a weapon but saw nothing.

  Then he remembered the bear claw that was still in his pocket. If the Hunter got close enough, he could shove it right into the Hunter’s esophagus.

  Trent sat still, gripping the claw—waiting. The Hunter passed behind a cluster of trees and vanished out of site for a few seconds. Before Trent knew what he was doing, he was limping downhill again, still trying to stave off his seemingly inevitable death at the Hunter’s hands.

  This time, he only made it another twenty feet before coming to the edge of a flowing stream. He knew the water would be mind numbingly cold. He also knew that, depending on how deep the water was in the middle of the stream, he might be able to float or let the current take him away and even farther away from Zana and the others.

  As Trent stumbled into the water, he repeated the mantra, never give up. When the cold of the water hit him, he struggled to take a full breath while his body tried to deal with the shock of the sudden change in temperature. The only good part about standing in the water was that the frigid stream took away much of the pain in his right leg as it started to go numb.

  He waded out until he was waist-deep in the water, then lowered himself deeper into the water, making him buoyant enough to more easily turn around and search the shoreline for the Hunter.

  When he did so, Trent saw the moon reflected on the surface of the stream and the Hunter in mid-run through the water, charging directly at him.

  Chapter 45

  BEFORE TRENT COULD move out of the way, the Hunter was on him, sending him into the full depths of the swiftly moving current. The pull of the water was so strong that Trent was barely able to grab a quick breath of air before the Hunter was on top of him again, pounding him with his fists.

  “You should feel special, Walker. I don’t usually finish off my prey with my own hands. But I want to feel the life go out of you.”

  Trent coughed and tried to get his legs under him to stand up while fending off the Hunter’s attacks. At first, he tried to match the man’s strength, but the Hunter was too strong and forced Trent under the water again.

  Trent suppressed his panic and let his logical mind take over. His opponent may have spent his entire life training to be a killer, but Trent had studied mentalism for just as long, and one of his most admired heroes was Harry Houdini.

  And Mr. Houdini specialized in escapes.

  While still under water, Trent reached up and grabbed the Hunter’s shirt with his good hand. He used his hold on the Hunter to pull himself out of the water just enough to fill his lungs fully with air.

  Then he let himself fall back into the freezing water and pulled the Hunter in with him.

  Together, they rolled beneath the fast moving stream like two alligators trying to kill each other. While the Hunter was busy hitting Trent, Trent wrapped his arms and his legs around the Hunter and held on as tightly as possible. Once his grip on the Hunter was secure, he made himself as much like dead weight as possible.

  The rolling stopped.

  Trent put himself into a meditative state while keeping his body taut. He felt the Hunter struggling, and after another thirty seconds under water, the Hunter began to panic.

  Along with various other self-control techniques, Trent had practiced holding his breath since he was a boy. Even considering the frigid temperatures of the water, he could hold his breath for much longer than the forty-five seconds they’d already been submerged. Given the circumstance, he wouldn’t last his usual six minutes, and he wouldn’t even come close to the world record of over eleven minutes.

  But given the way the Hunter was panicking, Trent knew he could last a lot longer than him—and that was all that was important.

  As Trent felt the Hunter’s struggles diminish in strength, he felt a sense of serenity wash over him. His battle with the Hunter would soon be over.

  The Hunter went still, and Trent thought he could feel the man’s spirit leaving his body.

  But it was not the Hunter’s spirit that Trent was sensing.

  Suddenly, Trent felt the horrible presence of something evil entering his mind. It was a dark spirit, but it was as different from Ka’a as black was from white. Trent resisted its attempts to take over his mind and to control his body, but its proximity alone repulsed Trent and made him want to vomit—to spew the black tar of the spirit out of his system however he could.

  With his focus broken, his grip on the Hunter faltered, and he heard the voice of the Elder inside his head.

  Let go of my boy now, or I’ll make sure you die with him. Then I’ll find your girlfriends and do things to them that you can’t even imagine.

  Trent didn’t care if he lived or died, but he wasn’t about to let the Elder hurt Zana or Christina.

  He let go and pushed the Hunter away from him, downstream. As soon as he did, he felt the Elder’s spirit leave him. He was under no illusion that the old man’s spirit was honoring its promise. The only reason the spirit abandoned Trent so quickly was so that it could save the Hunter.

  Trent broke through the surface of the water, and took in a full breath. He got to one knee, and pulled himself over to the riverbank where he had entered the water. Trent couldn’t feel either of his legs and was having a difficult time trying to stand.

  Even though steam poured off his body as it hit the cold air around him, his soaking wet clothes made him dangerously cold. He knew that he had to get into something dry or he would die of hypothermia, but walking around naked in the cold wasn’t an option either.

  Trent fell to his knees. He vomited and dry heaved, like he was trying to purge himself of the residue left over from the Elder’s spirit. Then he curled up into a ball in the snow-covered grass and used his right hand to rub his legs and his left arm as best he could, in a useless attempt to restore sensation to them.

  As he tried to save his own life, his mind was also trying to figure out how to deal with what was sure to come next. With the Elder’s spirit back inside the Hunter, Trent didn’t have long before he would be attacked again, and he didn’t have the strength to withstand another assault.

  He tried one more time to stand up and found that he was still unable to do so. He let his head fall back into the snow and closed his eyes.

  No brilliant plans came to mind.

  No logic arose to save the day.

  He tried to calculate the odds of the Hunter versus the cold getting to him first, but he knew that death was coming for him in one form or another.

  As he lay in the snow, his mind registered that he had stopped shivering—a sign that hypothermia was settling in.

  He slowly moved his right hand to his pocket and felt the bear claw that was still there. If luck was with him, he would get a chance to impale the Hunter in his softest of parts before the Hunter killed him.

  Trent’s mind continued to spiral down into darkness as he struggled to hold on to consciousness.

  He felt his thoughts being squeezed into a tight tunnel of blackness. His entire life—his entire being—was reduced to a single notion—the desire for the Hunter and his father, th
e Elder, to suffer.

  “Somehow, please let that happen, even if it’s after I’m gone,” he said in a voice so weak, he barely recognized it as his own.

  As the last bit of his life started to fizzle, he realized that he was not alone anymore. He opened one eye, expecting to see the Hunter’s form hovering above him. Instead, he realized that the presence he was feeling was inside him.

  A darkness filled his mind and then his body, and Trent surrendered happily to its demands.

  If it was the spirit of the Elder, Trent was ready to die—ready to move on. Maybe once he was in the spirit world, he could do something from there to help protect Zana and Christina.

  As the darkness continued to spread through him, he realized that instead of moving closer to death, he was feeling stronger, like a spark of his life was being fanned.

  Trent still couldn’t move, but he felt warm blood rushing through him, and his cloudy thinking started to clear.

  What he was feeling was not the putrid evil of the Elder.

  As his eyes remained close, he grinned.

  He was instead being filled with the familiar darkness of Ka’a.

  Even though he had no control over himself, Trent could sense that he and the spirit of Ka’a were of singular mind and purpose. All either of them wanted was to kill the Hunter and destroy the spirit of the Elder.

  Chapter 46

  SLOWLY, BUT WITH increasing strength, Trent stood. His wounds and bruises were healing faster than ever before, and his extremities were responding again, despite his wet clothes and the thin sheet of ice that had formed on their exterior.

  He wobbled for a few seconds, then stabilized himself and looked toward the stream.

  The Hunter was standing there, glaring right back at him.

  Behind the Hunter’s still-swollen face, Trent could still see the palpable hatred the man held for him. But, for the first time, he also saw something in the Hunter’s eyes that convinced him they shared at least one thing in common.