American Quest (34 page)

Bruce was about to offer a grunt of understanding, but the effort of making a sound in his throat proved too much. Instead, he only nodded. His head went up and then it went down . . .

And Ichabod continued. “I am a small man, a humble man. Being poor I have had to do much that I did not want to do.”

. . . and Bruce’s head continued down and landed in a soft pillow of darkness. A luscious warm hedonistic darkness. A wrong darkness.

He jerked his head back up again. The van swerved into another lane. He slammed on the brakes and gasped, steering to the shoulder and coming to a complete stop. Fortunately, there had been few other cars on the road.

Ichabod watched him from beneath those brows with a crowlike stare. None of the others had stirred despite the sudden movement in the van, and the only sign of change was a few hiccups among the soft snores. Their exhaustion seemed that thorough. Bruce could sympathize.

“Perhaps it is time to stop and rest,” Ichabod said.

He was right. Bruce couldn’t keep it up.

But Bruce shook his head. “Time’s running out. We’ve got to keep going.”

He turned and regarded Ichabod, the van idling in rhythmic cycles along the side of the road. “Maybe I ought to take you up on your offer to drive after all.”

Ichabod shrugged. “I certainly don’t mind. Are you sure you feel comfortable with that?”

Bruce sighed. Ideally, he wouldn’t be taking any chances, ever. But to continue driving now was to wreck the van for sure. And to stop was to risk losing Gloria forever.

“Have at it, my friend.”

Bruce unclasped his seat belt and hopped out, as did Ichabod. Bruce settled into the decadence of the backseat, and somewhere from the sienna haze of the distant horizon, he heard an inquisitive keening. He closed his eyes.

“Hear that?” he said, because he was still reluctant to give in to sleep altogether.

It felt unfair to lay the entire burden of staying awake on Ichabod, even though he hadn’t been suffering ongoing sleep deprivation like Bruce and the rest. The guy was all right. Bruce realized he was feeling a sense of completeness in the van. Like they’d assembled a collection of personalities that comprised the corners of a complex jigsaw puzzle and now all that remained was to fill in the center. Perhaps that was where Ichabod and California figured in.

He tried to talk to him or at least to prompt Ichabod to talk.

“That sound. Some animal out there. That’s exactly the kind of sound I’d expect to hear on the Texas plains,” Bruce said.

“Yes, coyotes,” Ichabod agreed. “I’ve heard a few tales of coyotes.”

Bruce managed just enough alertness to prod Ichabod along, and the fortune-teller indulged him with a monologue about coyotes and twisting rivers. But despite his efforts to stay awake, Bruce’s mind disengaged and settled into visions of the California coastline that awaited them. The coyote cries along the plain melted to sea lions barking in the waves; waves that crashed upon the Four Pillars of Humanity.

And atop the pillars, a lone siren.

A lady in white, with amber eyes and plumage that ran the length of her torso to her tapered, crooked leg. She chanted her siren song to a distant seaworthy van, beckoning the pilot upon the rocks, a musical voice that rose barely above a whisper.

“Take them to their final end. Of metal and fire, no hope to mend.”

Then Ichabod’s voice, faraway and echoing from somewhere that seemed never actually to pass his lips: “The instructions were to keep the leader alive.”

“Your orders have changed and you shall obey. Lest you wish to befall the same fate as they.”

“There’s no need of that. I was hoping for the chance for a little sport.”

The seaworthy van accelerated in the direction of the pillars, charging with the glory of the ocean’s waves while the siren spread wide her wings to embrace the onslaught.

She’s mesmerizing. A beautiful, terrible thing, the canteshrike.

And Bruce’s mind tumbled under a hemp chain of sleep-deprived diurnal cycles. He fell hard into dreamland where a dragon loomed on the eastern horizon, waiting hungrily in case the van should change its course. And to the north, a giant cloud, a cumulonimbus of bubble bath formed along the broad stretch of sea. And in its lightning flashes, Bruce saw himself going with Gloria to a formal dinner for the President of the United States.

The siren laughed, a canteshrike’s delight. The seaworthy van bore down toward her waiting embrace, toward the pillars. Waves exploded with anticipation. The vessel tore through the ocean with such g-force speed that Bruce’s muscles tensed to a sweat.

And he sat up.

And the van was tearing down the highway at a crazy speed. An impossible speed.

Bruce gripped the seat. “Ichabod!” The nauseating velocity continued. Obviously, the van was running at its max. “Ichabod! Hey!”

Bruce unclasped his seat belt and climbed to the front of the van, nudging Shannon and Forte as he did. But they seemed completely lost in their own dreamlands. He gave Jamie a good shake at the front seat. Her eyes fluttered and then slid shut again.

They were not sleeping a natural sleep.

And insane though it was, knowing that a deadly collision was nearly certain, Bruce felt tempted to lie down on the floorboard and go to sleep himself. He wrestled toward wakefulness and shouted again at Ichabod. The look in the fortune-teller’s eyes was one of determination and bloodlust. He darted his gaze at Bruce and then back to the road, and a grin formed at the corners of his mouth. Bruce recognized that grin. He’d seen it in the clenched grimace of a truck driver who’d parked his petroleum tank on a treacherous bend of a highway off-ramp.

Ichabod’s foot pressed the gas pedal all the way down.

Bruce lunged at him. But Ichabod’s thin body seemed made of iron. Inhuman, unswayable. He backhanded Bruce with surprising strength, sending him tumbling backward. The van shifted to a slightly new angle. Bruce used Bedelia’s slack arm to climb to his feet and saw a gas station looming directly in the van’s path.

He looked around wildly. They were all going to sleep through this!

“Ichabod!” Bruce lunged at the fortune-teller again, and again Ichabod shook him off as casually as brushing a cobweb from a stair rail. The sheer steely power of him was humbling. Bruce had no prayer of fighting him off. And even if he did, he would likely crash the van in the process.

For one sick, stupid moment, he thought of tearing open the van door and throwing the others out, one by one. They’d almost certainly die in the process, but they were absolutely going to die when they crashed into those gas pumps.

The air escaped his lungs. There was no way out. They were really going to die. Perhaps that strange, peaceful slumber that overwhelmed them all was a merciful thing.

In a flash, Bruce’s mind raced through all that would be lost. Bedelia, so willing to walk away from her job to help a stranger reclaim his love. Forte’s music, so inspiring and energizing, Shannon’s humor, sharp but always human, Emily’s compassion, both blind and wise.

The van advanced toward those gas pumps at a sickening pace. He saw trotting movement in the distance, converging toward the pumps from a different direction. A pack of coyotes.

In the front seat, Jamie’s head lolled to the side, and her hand fell from the armrest. She’d devoted her life to protecting him. Ensuring
that one day he would give to the world those creations he had yet to conceive. Things he would now never conceive. But it wasn’t just him. Jamie might have cared about him more than she did anyone else, but she cared about
everyone
. Just look at the way she treated the others. How could that spirit incinerate now?

And somewhere far away, Gloria stood in the shadow of evil. She was about to disappear into that shadow. If only he could at least say good-bye. If she were here right now, he would tell her . . . if she were here right now . . . he would touch her hair and say . . .

Bullshit.

If she were here right now, he’d make damn sure some Jack Sprat fortune-teller didn’t blow everyone he loved to smithereens.

And he did love them. He loved them for their sake and he loved them for the beauties they bestowed upon the world.

Bruce seized Ichabod from behind and wrapped his arm around his neck. He clamped down thinking of Forte and Shannon, a phenomenal musician and a sprightly soul who made everyone laugh. He imagined he was forcing the beauty Forte and Shannon created straight into the fortune-teller through his Adam’s apple.

Ichabod gripped Bruce’s arm with one hand, the other still clamped on the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, Bruce could see the grimace of fury on Ichabod’s face, and beneath that, a bloom of surprise.

In that moment, Bruce knew he had him.

He doubled his concentration, calling on Emily, who despite being abandoned had found it within her heart to watch over the lost children of the park. He thought of Bedelia, and his beloved Jamie, whose heart had such capacity. Bruce gripped that Adam’s apple and let it all pour in.

Then he let Ichabod feel the electricity of his own vast love for Gloria.

He bore down on that Adam’s apple as if to fill it with love and ideals was to free Gloria.

The accelerator let up ever so slightly.

The gas station loomed closer. Bruce drew from everyone around him, leveraging this new strength that was not physical. The same strength that woke him from his dream when he should have been stuck
in dreamland under the demon drug.

Ichabod began to tremble under him. Bruce sensed that whatever he was, Ichabod could not be asphyxiated or overwhelmed physically. But somehow, Bruce was overpowering him.

Bruce threw his entire force into that sensation and Ichabod’s trembling intensified. The van slowed even more. Ichabod fought back, his foot mashing at the accelerator in lurching kicks.

The pumps now stood no more than a few hundred feet away and closing. Bruce saw the coyotes again and they darted, confused by the movement of the van, though they hovered near the station like flies over carrion.

Bruce roared, calling out all his reserves as he ratcheted his intensity one more notch. Ichabod jerked once.

And then burst into a cloud of ashes and sparks that rained through the van and out into the desert beyond.

The van decelerated.

Bruce slumped onto the back of the empty driver’s seat, feeling as though his veins were coursing with wet concrete. He cast a gasping glance at Bedelia, and saw that she now wore a fine film of ash. The others did as well.

The van continued toward the island, but the lowered speed caused the steering to become sensitive to shifts in terrain and it veered away and passed the pumps. It rolled on instead with an amble toward nothing, the gas station now falling farther behind. The van loped upon a dusty mound and finally stopped.

Bruce’s arms and legs felt as though they were made of concrete and his lungs failed to serve him. He didn’t know what part of him had battled Ichabod, but that part seemed to have sustained some kind of injury. He thought for one crazy moment that maybe he himself was going to burst into a cloud of sparks and ashes and the thought made him cough out a wheezing, hysterical chuckle.

He crawled to the side door and used his last reserves to open it. Straining for oxygen. The door opened. A wind bloomed into the van, brushing away the fine ashy residue that had settled over the occupants. They stirred.

The coyotes danced, coughing and huffing. One of them came in
closer with a warning heckle. Its face was angled into three pie wedges; two triangular ears every bit as long as the triangular snout. Its hair was the color of the dust and sunset.

Bruce tried to struggle to his feet. He pulled his body forward, reaching for the outside.

“Bruce?” Jamie’s voice seemed very distant, as though she’d spoken his name from the other side of a broad lake.

The floorboards fell away from beneath him, and he was tumbling, sliding. He tasted the chalky earth of the Texas soil, and his vision faded to complete darkness.

GLORIA WATCHED THEM as they lay in bed together.

Bruce’s eyes were closed. Jamie stroked his brow. The sight of them sent a dagger through Gloria’s heart. She couldn’t hear them at first; she could only see them. Then their voices emerged and she heard Jamie refer to herself as “your wife.”

“I’ve been connected to you since the moment I was born,” Jamie said to Bruce. “Losing you is something I just can’t handle.”

At this, Bruce reached up and smoothed the top of Jamie’s hair, similar to the way he used to smooth Gloria’s.

“Not going anywhere, Tink. Love you too much.” His voice came groggy, even blissful. Gloria had heard him speak that way so many times before. After they’d been intimate and his body was completely relaxed.

“I’ll always watch over you, Bruce,” Jamie said.

Gloria shook her head, tears welling. “Bruce?”

She sat up.

Bruce and Jamie disappeared and Gloria realized she was in the library inside Aaron’s penthouse. She’d been reading and had looked up for a moment, spotting the dagger resting inside an ornate Rococo cabinet. It was the one Sileny had brought to her several days ago.

Sileny. What had happened to her? For a time she’d made Gloria
feel less alone here. Now that she was gone, no one could do that. Except Aaron.

Gloria must have dozed off after gazing at that dagger. Its shining surface now held no hint of the vision it had conveyed to her. No evidence of the truth it cut into her.

She swallowed. She had known this already, that Bruce was lost to her. Their time together had been blissful. Singular. But it was over.

Sileny had been right to tell her to keep her eyes forward. And eyes forward meant eyes toward Aaron. Though Gloria couldn’t fully guess what Aaron’s ultimate intention was with her, she knew he wanted her. And she sensed that by winning her Aaron stood to achieve some greater gain. Beyond that, everything was a mystery. Maybe Aaron was her salvation. Maybe he was her ruination. Maybe he was both.