The Remnant (29 page)

Stan’s face hardened. "After you get me out
of here."

"I can’t reach you."

"Use something else you idiot! Do you have a
rifle?"

That might work, but did he really want to
save this guy? Rendt and the Angels all deserved to die for their
crimes, but Stan was even worse in his own way, a Judas who had
lived right in the midst of the Brethren. On the other hand, what
choice did he have? If Stan really knew how to cut off Rendt it
might be Ashley’s only chance. But when Trace started to pass the
stock down he realized his mistake and turned the gun so that the
barrel extended toward Stan.

Stan locked a muscular mitt around the gun
and jerked himself upward with a powerful heave. But Trace hadn’t
been prepared, and the carbine slipped from his fingers. He watched
as Stan flung it behind him, the gun whirling downward into
darkness. Stan threw himself against the cliff face again, gasping
and locking his fingers into a notch in the stone.

"You bastard!" he gasped.

"Sorry," said Trace, half meaning it. "It was
an accident."

Stan was almost within reach, but Trace still
wasn’t sure that saving the fucker was a good idea. His rifle was
on the valley floor now. The shotgun was a quarter-mile back down
the trail, and Stan, although he appeared unarmed, was a trained
killer.

"Can’t you make it up the rest of the way?"
asked Trace.

The three foot wide defile was steep but
lined with meandering cracks large enough for finger holds. Stan
glared at him.

"You shot me in the fucking leg!"

Trace nodded, suppressing a smile. So he had
hit the sonofabitch, and a wounded Stan might be a little easier to
deal with. Still, not dealing with him would be better.

"Which way did they go?"

Stan shook his head. "You’d just leave me
here."

"And if I do pull you up? What guarantee do I
have you’ll tell me how to find them?"

"I can’t
crawl
off this fucking
mountain, and I can’t trust Rendt or his fucking Angels. I’m going
to need help."

That made a limited amount of sense. Perhaps
he could trust the man at least that far. He knelt on the rocky
ground, digging his knees in, hating the dizzy feel of the earth
falling away so close in front of him. He reached over into the
cut, and Stan grasped upward, but they were still a foot or more
apart.

"You’re gonna have to reach farther!" shouted
Stan.

Trace shook his head. "I can’t do it."

"Sure you can. Spread your legs behind you
for balance. Lean down here and give me a fucking hand!"

Trace stared into the man’s eyes, then looked
past him at the two-hundred foot fall to the trees below. He flexed
the muscles in his arms and slid forward a little, catching himself
on his palms against the rough stone of the notch. When their
fingertips were almost touching Trace searched Stan’s face for
anything he could trust. He didn’t find it, but it was too late.
Stan jerked forward and locked a powerful fist around Trace’s
wrist.

Trace spread his legs wider, locking them
across the top of the cut like a stick suspended over a bottle
neck. The strain burned his thighs and groin and back, and when
Stan grasped his other wrist and jerked himself upward another foot
the man’s fingertips cut painfully into Trace’s skin.

"You’re gonna pull me down!" Trace
grunted.

Stan snatched a handful of Trace’s hair,
slamming his face into the cliff, bloodying Trace’s nose and lips.
Trace could feel his leg-hold slipping, his palm scraping painfully
down the gap even as Stan clambered over his back. He slapped out
at the sides of the cut, but in his blindness he could find no
handholds, and he felt himself slipping inexorably downward. He
pictured both of them flying past the cliff face, crashing to their
deaths below, but even as one hand shot out into emptiness he felt
Stan’s foot on his butt, kicking him away.

In that instant Trace’s other hand lost its
contact with the precipice, and he was flung outward and downward
into the night.

Cloaked within the eerie light and warmth of
her vision Marie rode Sparkie up a meandering path through gaunt
trees with spectral branches, the forest seeming less an inanimate
wood and more a worshipful throng. Rather than following a direct
line of approach to Raven’s Head the horse had climbed the back of
the mountain, along a deer trail that paralleled the ridgeline and
the security system there. Marie had allowed the animal its head
because this, too, was part of her vision. With her eyes open or
closed she could still see the fires in the valley below as she
rode the razor thin border between her past and her future, knowing
there was immeasurable pain waiting on either side.

But one last glance at the flames marking her
home caused her to gasp, fighting back a sob. Even had she not seen
the flames she would have known for certain that everyone in the
valley below was now dead. She had seen each of the killings as
though she had stood beside the killers in person. She had seen
Trace battling to save Stan on Raven’s head, and she had realized
that they needed her help. She had seen other things as well.
People and places she didn’t recognize. More Angels with guns, and
weeping women and children. That was all part of her vision. That
and a deep darkness filled with evil red eyes.

When Maxie appeared out of the brush with
bowed head and one torn ear Sparkie started, and she reined him
in.

"Where did you come from Maxie?" she
whispered.

In answer the dog blinked at her and woofed
again, and she nodded.

She didn’t know whether either of the animals
was privy to her vision, or to ones of their own, but Sparkie
needed no spurring to urge him to clop quickly on up the trail.
When they broke through the trees and out into the clearing at the
top of Raven’s Head, Marie jerked the reins in tight. There,
drawing himself up onto his feet was Stan. She climbed down from
Sparkie’s back and ran to him.

Dark blood soaked through his right pant leg,
and he limped back a step and grimaced as he pulled her into his
embrace.

"They’re all dead, Stan," she said, waving
toward the flames dotting the valley.

Stan nodded. "It’s over now, Marie. We have
to get out of the valley."

He released her to rest one arm over her
shoulder and nodded toward the trees across from Sparkie. "Will he
carry both of us?"

"I suppose..." she said, glancing around for
Trace.

This wasn’t the way the vision was supposed
to go. She seemed to be watching herself in a gloomy mirror, but
not all of her reflection’s moves matched her own. Sparkie shied
back toward the woods, and she noticed for the first time that
Maxie-standing beside the horse-had his hackles raised and teeth
bared. She glanced around for Angels, anyone lurking, but there was
no one here but her and Stan. Suddenly his grip on her shoulder
tightened painfully.

"We need to get going."

"I’m supposed to stay here," she argued,
still half caught in her vision.

"For what? It’s over, Marie. I’m sorry about
the others, but they’re all dead."

Smoke continued to flume from a dozen
homesites down below, swirling and blending into a noxious, gray
blanket, and she knew that there was much more than wood and tin
and glass afire down there. The Brethren were all going to meet
their fates in a cloud of ash-laden fumes.

She managed to shake off Stan’s hand.

"I’m supposed to be here."

"You are here. Now we’re going."

She shook her head, backing away. He grimaced
as he took a limping step toward her.

"No. I have something to do here, and I
haven’t done it."

He shook his head. "Like what?"

"I’m supposed to save Trace Wentworth."

Stan’s laughter careened around the clearing
like a witch on a runaway broom. There was a sharpness to it she
had never heard before, something depraved and hard, and she
realized in that instant that Stan was not her friend, that she
could not trust him, that she could not fully trust her vision,
either. If Stan was evil then why had she not been warned? She
backed away another step toward Sparkie.

"Where is Trace?" she asked, accusingly.

Another laugh, and another step in her
direction. This time Maxie growled ominously, and Stan glared at
the dog. Suddenly there was a long, gleaming blade in his hand, and
Marie gasped.

"You’re coming with me," said Stan. "You’re
my ticket to the paycheck I was promised by that lying bastard,
Rendt. He’ll cough up the money for a sweet little thing like
you."

So it was Stan who had unleashed the Angels
into the valley. He was the man responsible for all the deaths
below, and just maybe he had murdered Trace Wentworth as well.
Still, she couldn’t stay here. If she did Stan was going to drag
her off to who-knew-where. She turned to run to Sparkie.

But even wounded, Stan was faster. Her hair
was jerked so hard she thought her neck had broken. She fell
backward hard onto her butt, staring up at the glistening blade of
the Bowie knife just as a roaring mass of black and white fur leapt
over her with teeth flashing.

The hand that grasped her hair was shaken
viciously, finally releasing. She heard a pain-filled grunt from
Stan, then another gasping, whimpering cry from Maxie. She was
splashed with blood, and she knew instantly it was the dog’s. She
clambered to her feet, her heart pounding, her vision swimming.
Even wounded again Maxie locked onto Stan’s arm, burying his teeth.
Stan cried out, jerking back the knife to slash it down across
Maxie’s side.

Without thinking she surged into the fight,
grasping for the knife. She felt a burning sensation in her hand
and jerked back, realizing she’d been gashed herself. But she
ignored the blood, leaping at Stan as he stabbed at Maxie
again. He backhanded her so hard sparks flew. The last thing she
saw was Stan, lifting Maxie high overhead. Then there was a heavy
rumble like thunder through the ground, the sky went dark, and she
had the strangest picture of Sparkie, rearing above her...

The scream shocked Trace into
semi-consciousness, but within that dim daze for a moment he was
half certain it was his own long-ago cry in the bowels of the
stairwell. He struggled to drag himself from the dream of the rats,
the shots... He had to focus. This wasn’t a long ago nightmare. It
was here and now. The pain in his arm and gut wasn’t bites or serum
being delivered by a giant needle. The darkness all around wasn’t
the sterile sheet the nurses had pulled over his face. It was the
darkness of night, of blood in his eyes, of a jagged cliff pressed
so hard against his face he thought his cheekbone might be
broken.

His left arm was caught in something
cord-like, and he dangled from it like a worm on a hook. Swinging
gently he felt his toes bounce against the granite on either side,
and he knew that he hung within a deep cut in the precipice walls.
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and stared at the twin lines in
which he was tangled. He’d seen similar multi-colored and braided
climber’s line before. As he tumbled down the cliff his arm must
have become snagged, and the rope had brought him up short-thus
explaining the burning pain in his shoulder-and slammed him into
oblivion against the rocks.

He finally blinked himself to full
wakefulness and glanced down in horror and disbelief.

The rope ended a few yards below his boots,
but he dangled less than one third of the way down the cliff. The
trees looked bigger from here. Just big enough to kill him after he
fell a hundred-fifty feet or more.

"Is this some kind of test?" he asked the
cliff.

In answer a lone owl hooted from the valley
below.

It seemed as though there were more fires
burning down there now like candles on a hellish cake, and he
suspected this
war
was really over.

He bit back a scream as he pictured Ashley
and probably Marie in Rendt’s hands. During their time in Mexachuli
he had wormed a lot of the story of Ashley’s childhood from her,
and it wasn’t pretty. If the tale she’d told about Ruth was more
than just a terrible stretch of memory-and he knew all about the
reality 
of some childhood terrors-then she was in
deadly danger now. She would be used and abused, but never allowed
to escape alive again.

"You aren’t keeping her," he promised.

The vow stiffened his resolve, but did
nothing to get him out of his predicament, and he was well
cognizant of how hollow it sounded with him swaying in the breeze
twenty yards below the cusp of the precipice.

He hadn’t seen any sign of the rope at the
cliff’s face, so it was altogether possible that it ended at a
piton somewhere well below the top. More than likely this was some
climber’s failed route up, and the line had simply been abandoned.
If a practiced mountaineer hadn’t made the top this way, there was
no way he was going to. Still, hanging there waiting to die served
no purpose.

He kicked around experimentally until he
discovered a toehold for one foot. At least he was able to take
some of the strain off his damaged shoulder. He swayed there for a
moment, trying to make out the route above. The rope seemed caught
in the crook of a natural fissure just wide enough for a man’s body
so that it was just possible he might be able to wedge himself in
and chimney climb his way to the top. He reached up with his good
hand and locked it into the rope. Kicking his free leg upward he
searched for another toehold. Finding one, he lifted himself a foot
higher into the notch.

Of course Stan might well be waiting for him
above. Or more likely-if he wasn’t certain that Trace had fallen to
his death-he would have left one of the Angels to guard the crest,
but Trace couldn’t waste time or energy worrying about that now.
Just reaching the top was going to be problem enough, especially
since his strained arm and shoulder stabbed him with fiery daggers
of pain whenever he tried to lower that hand. Finally he slid it
gingerly back up the rope and twined it there again. As long as it
was stretched high overhead the pain seemed manageable, but he
wasn’t going to be able to count on that side to climb.