The Brotherhood of the Wheel (41 page)

“Viamancy?” Heck asked crumpling his empty chip bag.

“Viamancy involves the bending of space and the altering of perception,” Max said. “In relation to the Road.”

“You probably heard it called ‘road magic,' Heck,” Jimmie said. “Folks who got the knack for it are usually called road witches.”

“Oh yeah, shit, I heard of that,” Heck said. “Witches supposed to be able to make a short ride go on forever, or you blink and you're there. Stretch a gallon of gas to cross a desert, or make a full tank go empty in the middle of nowhere. Hell, I heard a witch can make you fall asleep driving or keep you going longer than a bottle of yellow jackets.”

Jimmie nodded, looking out into the sunset, the sky smeared with ocher, crimson, and saffron. “Some folks got the gift,” he said. “They can listen to the Road and whisper back to it. I think Karen Collie had a touch of it. Apparently, Lovina does, too. But viamancy takes a toll on most who practice it. They go kind of crazy.”

“Crazy?” Heck said.

“Most of them end up disappearing,” Jimmie said. “One day they just … aren't there anymore.”

“They end up in the city, the city of the viamancers,” Max said. “The city that is everywhere and nowhere. According to the myths, it's the city you see whenever you're bending space—working road magic, if you will.”

“The city of the mad,” Jimmie said. “The city at the center of everything. Metropolis-Utopia.”

“And you think this Four Houses is like this city of whack jobs,” Heck said. “Not really there.”

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “Unfortunately.”

The road slid under them, and they glided through the early-evening traffic. They were all silent for a long time. They were nearing Nashville. Max was napping, and when Jimmie looked back Heck looked as if he'd conked out as well. Jimmie heard the opening to the Clapton song playing on his cell and tapped the answer button. It was Layla.

“Hi, baby,” he said softly. “How is everybody?”

“We're okay,” Layla said. “You sound worn out, baby. You headed to the job?”

“No, baby,” Jimmie said with a sigh. “I'm still on that other thing.”

“Oh,” she said.

“What,” Jimmie said. “What's going on, baby?”

“It's nothing, honey,” Layla said. “How are you and Heck—”

“Layla, tell me,” Jimmie said. There was a long pause on the line. The highway filled the emptiness with the noises of motion and velocity.

“We got a call from the mortgage folks,” she said. “It's no big deal, baby. They do it all the time when we're a little late.”

“Shit!” Jimmie said. “Shit, shit, shit! I forgot, baby—”

“It's okay, honey,” Layla said. “It's not like you ain't got other things on your mind. I talked to them, and it's okay. We'll make do, baby. We always do, don't we?” He could hear her smile in her voice, but he could hear the thin quaver of stress there as well.

“I'm sorry, baby. I'll take care of it, I'll get it paid. I promise.” In his mind, he was doing the math—he was already late to pick up the load, make the run, pay the mortgage. He also figured those college kids had maybe a day left to live, if they weren't already dead. Whatever this Pagan guy was up to had something to do with screwing up the universe—the whole damned universe. That all seemed abstract, vague, and pale compared with the mundane clarity of a collection call or a pink envelope in the mailbox labeled “URGENT NOTICE.”

“The baby's squirming,” she said. “He hears his daddy.”

“Tell him I'm on my way and that I'm making sure he's got a house to come home to.”

“He knows, baby,” Layla said. “Please stay focused and stay alive, Jimmie. We can get through anything, as long as we're together, honey. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said. “I'm damned lucky to have a woman like you.”

“Yes,” she said, laughing, “you are. I'm proud of you, baby. Be careful. Bye.”

“Bye, baby.” Jimmie hung up the phone.

“Power bill or rent?” It was Heck's voice quiet behind him.

“Mortgage,” Jimmie said.

“That sucks,” he said. “You got a run to pay for it?”

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “But I'm about to fuck that up, running around chasing damned teleporting serial killers and Black-Eyed Kids.”

“You could just say, ‘Hell with it,'” Heck said. “Not your problem, man.”

Jimmie glanced over his shoulder for a second. “It is my problem. I caught this, and it's mine to see through. And if you don't understand that, slick, then I'm going to tell you right now, you won't hack it with the Brethren.”

“It more important than your kids, than your old lady?” Heck asked.

“No,” Jimmie said. “Not exactly. Look, you were in the Corps, right?”

“Yeah,” Heck said. For a horrible eternity of a second, the laughing fire was in Heck's mind, burning his screaming friends. It was what he always remembered first whenever he thought about being over there.

“We had a job to do,” Jimmie said. “It was to protect our own, our families. We did it for them. This is like that, but even more so. How many lives has the Pagan ruined, ended? How many families has he destroyed? There are two kids out there right now, scared and wondering if they're ever going to see home again. What if it was my little girl? My son? I'm supposed to go home, plop my fat ass down on the couch? Drink a few beers, watch TV? Pagan's my responsibility now. I have to see this through.”

“I was so focused on doing the job, getting it done, I missed Ale dying,” Heck said. “I regret that. I fucking regret it a lot. He was the closest thing I ever got to a dad, and he's gone. There were things I wish I had said, had the chance to say, even if I punked out and didn't. Family's important, all I'm saying. It's the first duty.”

Jimmie didn't say anything for a few miles. He seemed distracted, maybe even a little shaken. “The last time I talked to Ale he was damned proud of you,” he finally said. “He understood. He may not have been your flesh-and-blood dad, but he damned well thought he was, Hector.”

“Thanks,” Heck said. He cleared his throat. “Okay, man. Well, I'm with you, come what may. You guys can crash at my house … well, my mom's house. But she won't mind, she digs on babies—unless, of course, they're me.”

Jimmie laughed. “You might regret that invite.”

Heck looked over at Max, curled up with her arms wrapped about her legs, her eyes closed. “She's turned out to be a damned sight tougher than she looks, hasn't she?”

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “Tough enough. Saved our asses back at that hotel.”

“So where we headed, chief?” Heck asked. “Four Houses? The town that isn't a town?”

“Yep,” Jimmie said. “If our professor's theory she keeps jawing about has any traction.”

“It does,” Max said, her eyes still closed. A grin slowly spread across her face, and she yawned. “I'm going to prove it, too. And you're welcome. I've never saved anyone's … um, ass, before. This has been a day of firsts.”

“Playing possum? Jimmie asked.

Max smiled, rubbing her eyes. “Only for a little while,” she said. “Didn't want to interfere with your male-bonding moment.”

“Fess up?” Jimmie said. “What, exactly, have you been working on, Doc?”

Max sat up, crossed her legs, and hugged her knees. “We're going to get to Four Houses the same way Lovina and the Master of the Hunt did—by viamancy, by bending space.”

“You're suddenly a road witch?” Jimmie said.

“No,” Max said. “Viamancers tap into a system of power, and I think I've decoded that system—hacked it, if you will.”

“The only people I've ever heard of doing road magic were road witches,” Jimmie said.

“Well, have you ever wondered how they do what they do?” Max asked, as she slid her tablet out of her satchel. “I'm going to try to explain it,” she said. “Please try to keep an open mind. My colleagues in the order have been less than unbiased about my research and my hypothesis. It's very disheartening to see scholars with such narrow minds.”

“After the last few days, my mind is as open as a drunk's fly,” Heck said, smiling. “Lay it on me, Doc.”

“Go on, Max,” Jimmie said. “How do the road witches do what they do?”

“Magic,” Max began. “Real magic—not Penn and Teller stuff—”

“Actually,” Jimmie said, interrupting, “I hear tell those fellas are the real deal. There was this deck of cards that stole souls over in Reno and—”

“Okay, okay,” Max said. “How about the Chris Angel stuff, then?

Jimmie nodded, “Sounds about right—damned mind freak…”

“Anyway,” Max continued, “real magic requires enormous amounts of energy, power. To bend space, in physics, requires the harnessing of suns—what they call total conversion power. In magic, it would require a harnessing of a significant amount of the earth's manasphere. Back in the hotel, Mark Stolar mentioned that his friend Dewey Rears had been looking into a connection between the U.S. highway system and
long xian—
”

“Max,” Heck said, jamming a thumb toward his chest, “caveman, remember? Grunt.”

“Right, right,” Max said, nodding and waving her hand in front of her face, as if batting invisible cobwebs. “Grunt, of course.
Long xian
is Chinese for ‘dragon lines,' or, as they're called in the West, ‘ley lines'—powerful lines of magical energy that run through the earth—the lifeblood of the planet. The fact that Rears had connected ley-line energy to the highway system and to the Pagan's murders made a great deal of my theory fit, made it all click into place. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was the genesis of the modern interstate-highway system. It spawned over forty-two thousand miles of highways and routes that completely cover America today.

“What I've been studying for several years now, and what the data Lovina gave me from Mr. Rears's computer seems to confirm,” she said, holding up a small USB drive, “is that America's highways were planned and built to tap the energy of the earth's ley lines—its magical power—and redirect that almost limitless power the way dams control the flow of water.”

“So the highways are magical rivers,” Heck said, an evil light twinkling in his eyes. “Has anyone told the folks in Jersey yet, because I'm pretty sure they got screwed in this deal.”

Max narrowed her eyes behind her glasses, “Open mind, caveman. You promised.”

“Max,” Jimmie said, rubbing his chin. “You have to admit that seems a little far-fetched. Don't you think someone would have made this connection before now? You Builders research everything, after all, and us Brethren are out here on the Road constantly.” He downshifted the semi, gliding between traffic. “It just seems someone would have noticed.”

“You actually just made part of my point for me, Jimmie,” Max said. “I think everyone has noticed, but they just didn't see. You and the other Brethren are out here all the time—on the Road. You've all wondered, like everyone who has to deal with entities like the Master of the Hunt, for example, why—why does the highway attract these supernatural forces, these unstable and dangerous personalities? Why? The energies that the Road is conducting are the answer. They're drawn to it, like a light in the darkness, and the amount of the energies, the confluence of them, allows them to slip over into our world, close to the source, close to the Road.”

“Son of a bitch,” Heck said, looking to Jimmie. “That makes pretty good sense, Jimmie.”

Jimmie nodded, “Yeah, it does—better than any of the other theories I've heard over the years, but forgive me if I withhold judgment, Doc.”

“I've looked into the other theories that have popped up over the decades,” Max added. She slid the USB drive stick into a port on her tablet. Her fingers were moving quickly over the screen. “Unlike my colleagues, I don't just dismiss a theory out of hand because I don't care for it.”

“So your buddies got no love for this idea of yours?” Heck said.

Max nodded. “I researched the Builder archives and everything I could access from the other orders, and there's nothing. Not even a mention in passing. The Benefactors have the resources for a project like that but not the required occult architectural and geomancy know-how. The Builders have the knowledge but not the resources or the political pull. And, like I said, there is no mention of even a hint of any of this anywhere.”

“I noticed you just skipped right on over the Brethren,” Jimmie said. “Nobody knows the Road better than us.”

Max looked up from her tablet. She had a distinct “deer in the headlights” look on her face. “Oh, oh, Jimmie—oh, no … I … didn't mean to offend the order. It's just that the Brethren … they just don't have that kind of, well, power.”

“It's cool,” Jimmie said with a thin smile. “We get that all the time. First to bleed, last to brief.” Max looked back to her tablet sheepishly.

“Shit, it is like the military, isn't it?” Heck said

“Like I told you when we first met,” she said, “I was very excited by the prospect of riding along with Brethren, because it gave me a chance to do more work on my research. Your order keeps so many secrets, Jimmie, from everyone.”

“Gee, I wonder why?” Heck said. “Sounds like these other guys treat the Brotherhood like a bunch of garbagemen.”

Max remained busily working on her tablet, her eyes down.

Jimmie laughed. “It's okay, squire,” he said. “Let it go. Got to know your limitations. Well, for the record, I've never heard of any of this even as a wild truck-stop story. I don't think the Brethren are in on this conspiracy of yours, either, Max. You say Rears's research backs this up?”