Halfway Dead (12 page)

“Is this seriously how fast you walk? Are we racing or something?” I half-yelled at Jim. We’d been on the main trail for less than ten minutes, and I found myself almost running to keep up with him, even though I was the one who knew the way. At a foot taller than me, his legs were that much longer. I was getting mighty tired of taking three steps to his one just to keep abreast so that we could talk.

He stopped abruptly, and I ran into his back with a slight grunt. After turning to me, he looked down, and I swear he was about to make another short joke until he saw thunderclouds in my expression. I was ill-tempered, short on sleep, and had managed precious little coffee before we began this jaunt into the forest.

With visible effort, he calmed himself. “Sorry, Carlie. I let my adrenaline get the best of me. I’ll slow down. And no, I’m not trying to ruin your day.” He looked around at the general majesty of nature, smiling. “It really is beautiful here.” That was dangerously close to an apology, so I straightened myself with great dignity and took a place next to him. The trail was well-worn and nearly ten-feet wide. It would continue on thusly for another three miles before things got wild, so to speak. I was following the cues from my necklace, but I had a general idea of how far into the park we would walk before branching off into more unknown territory. If anything, I expected that we might actually camp somewhere relatively close to town; we were gaining altitude faster than distance.

“The park only gets more primal from here,” I said, and meant it. We’d already seen a deer that regarded us with large, soft eyes before flashing away into the greenery. We had heard, but only glimpsed, what sounded like a runaway tractor, but turned out to be a rotund porcupine trundling along, engrossed in its own concerns. Birds called all around us, and the hum of insects was a constant companion as we bent left, then right, in an ever-ascending series of elbows. Each turn brought us inexorably toward the pass between our first two legitimate mountains, a notch in the greenery some two-thousand feet up, and three miles distant.

“Thirsty?” I asked.

Despite being in excellent condition, Dietrich was sweating, and he gratefully accepted the chance to drink. He wore sensible clothes of light duck cotton, a tan hat that covered neck and brow, and boots that were new but appropriate. His pack was an aluminum frame military grade, and a large knife hung at his belt. The bulge of a pistol was visible in his shirt, and I studiously avoided taking notice. Better to let him have is secrets; I had my own, and that was fine with me.

“Thanks.” He drank while looking around, his brown eyes narrowed at the scenery. “What’s the general frequency of moose?”

“Well, they’re big, and there aren’t millions of them running around. They sort of do their own thing.” I looked around, hoping that one of the giants would amble out for a friendly hello. “There might be . . . several hundred. Moose, I mean.”

Dietrich grinned. “I know they’re big, and now I know they’re uncommon. I find that to my liking.”

“I understand. And you’re right, they’re huge, but we ought to be a little more concerned about bears. Oh, and coyotes,” I added, cheerfully.

“You’re rather glib regarding denizens of the woods,” Dietrich said. His tone was respectful, but I sensed he was probing to see if I was being unnecessarily casual.

“Animals are naturally occurring features. I don’t fear that which is natural. It’s the unnatural things that keep me awake at night.” I put my canteen away and pointed up trail. “Shall we?”

“Indeed. And I promise to keep my pace more
reasonable
.” He smirked as I punched his arm. I don’t like short jokes, even when they’re veiled with a patina of manners.

We walked in silence for some time, letting the forest enclose us with a hypnotic, welcoming feel. At a natural break in the tree cover, we turned in unison to look back over the ascent.

“That’s my town,” I said, with more than a little pride. Halfway was fully visible from our vantage point, and bustling with a rush of tourists who moved about in their eternal quest for fun. Sunlight winked off the line of cars that edged north, but the southbound lane was already shadowed by the bulk of the mountains. I could imagine the first cool air drifting downward toward town, a kindly reminder that the night would be brisk and starry.

Dietrich nodded appreciatively, his curious eyes taking it all in. “I can see why you’re happy to stay. The winters might be a tad enthusiastic for my tastes, but as far as summer goes, this is paradise.” He pointed to the lake where small sailboats were cutting crosswind, their colorful hulls rolled upward in protest of the stiff breeze.

“I don’t want to say you get used to it.” I shouldered my pack, groaning lightly as it settled against my back. I held my walking stick outward, indicating that we should sally forth. I was determined to make it well over the mountain before sundown.

Dietrich looked confused. “Well, what would you say about winter, then?” He shrugged his own gear on, a half-grin playing at his lips. He had the expression of someone looking forward to a pithy local saying, or something folksy; I gave him neither.

“You never get used to frostbite, Jim. If you’re smart, you learn to stay indoors and drink tea.” I stepped up the trail, smiling. “At least all of the smart people do.”

“And what do the stupid people do?” he asked.

“That’s easy. They die.”

Alarm spread on his face. “Seriously?

“No, I’m kidding. They move to Florida, complain, and drive slowly with their turn signals permanently on.” And with that, we began to ascend once more as the necklace pulsed lightly, telling us that we were going toward the unknown, one rise at a time.

We made camp at a place that was both beautiful and logical. Just over the mountain, the trail veered wildly to follow a narrow stone face that was far more challenging than our original ascent. As the sun began to fade in earnest, I felt the nudge of my necklace urging us to turn sharply toward the steep declination, which was thickly forested and free of any real trail. I held up a hand to stop Dietrich, who froze instantly, every muscle in body posed as a question asking if there was danger.

“Listen. Water.” After waving him forward and watching him relax, I noted that, for a tall guy, he could get incredibly small when he decided to be stealthy.

I could hear the creek before I saw it, then the silver ribbon of water spangled through the trees as we turned and half slid down a loose bank to the running water. I nearly went boots first as gravel gave way, stopping only on a half-rotted log that was covered in a profusion of turkey tail fungi radiating out in rusty browns and reds. The humble mushrooms were going about their work with typical industry, breaking down an errant log and incidentally providing me with the perfect place to squat and dip my canteen in the water. Before me, the waterway was more than a creek, but less than a river. I searched my mind and realized I didn’t recall the stream from any map.

“I don’t know the name, but this creek is probably crawling with trout,” I told Jim, who was watching the closest pool with moderate distrust.

“I’d rather it was filled with coffee,” Jim grumped. So, he was human.

We filled our canteens and rinsed hands and faces in the bracing chill of the creek, gasping at the shock of its bitterness. Even in summer, the lingering hint of January held true in the shallow water. I felt revived, pink-faced, and stifled a laugh after the renewal of cleanliness from our impromptu bath.

We followed a game trail through the underbrush to a tabletop of stone that peeked grimly from the lush growth; it was large enough for a campsite, and had a wet weather spring dribbling down the mossy rock face. With the last light of day in full retreat, we built a small fire and got down to the business of eating.

Jim spoke around a mouthful of noodles. “Do we need to set a watch?” He eyed the darkened forest with suspicion. We’d already heard several noises that were too loud for a chipmunk, but unknown to him. To me, they sounded like ordinary animals, not magical. I found comfort in their presence; it meant the forest was conducting business as usual, despite our presence.

“No. I’ll set a wardstone. Anything larger than a mouse will wake us both, but only if it intends us harm.” I busied myself with a small, unremarkable stone that fit neatly atop my walking stick, pushing the butt end into the ground with a satisfied grunt.

“I keep forgetting that you’re a witch,” Dietrich said, letting the last word roll off his tongue with an unfamiliarity I knew too well. The magical world was, until recently for Jim,hidden. Dietrich was now aware of something beyond his own understanding of life, and he was doing his best to absorb these findings. All things considered, I thought he was handling things remarkably well, especially since I’d unloaded a spell into his body at point-blank range. Sometimes seeing—or in his case, feeling—really is believing.

He cleared his throat to speak, but I held up a hand. “You can’t learn it,” I said.

“Learn what?” he asked, features carefully blank.

“Magic. You were going to ask me if magic could be taught, and then, after a few minutes, you’d cajole me into learning some small spell; a trick, you might call it. In your mind, you would be finding the angles of how to best use magic for your career, then one day, you might have a problem outside of work, and magic would seem to be the perfect answer. Before you knew it, all of your problems turn into nails, and witchcraft becomes a hammer. Am I right, or were you going to chat about how delicious our freeze-dried noodles are when reconstituted with mossy spring water?”

He was quiet for a long time, just looking up at the spangle of stars overhead. When he looked at me, his eyes were dark and flat. “I take it this isn’t the first time someone has learned about your skill.”

I shook my head. “No, but it’s the first time someone like you has found out.”

“Like me?” he asked. There was an edge to his voice, and I realized how far we were from town. I don’t think he understood what that meant. Danger went both ways in our little camp.

“Don’t take offense, Jim. I mean someone who is under pressure to solve problems. Most of the people who seek out magic are just dilettantes, not really a threat to anyone except themselves. You can’t imagine how many newbie witches have blown off their fingers or set fire to their own hair. It’s more common than you might think.” I laughed, recalling a warlock from Connecticut who melted his hand to a pewter plate while attempting some hilarious form of alchemy. It took the efforts of three seriously talented witches to free his hand, but not before they took a picture of him pretending to be a Greek Olympian ready to hurl the discus. He’d quietly moved away and given up the art, which was an excellent decision considering the fact that he was likely to kill himself with a spell gone awry. Magic was not a part-time occupation. It was a lifetime at study, and a demanding one at that. I looked Dietrich over again, letting my senses roam a bit. “Not someone who relies on the skills of a soldier. That’s what you were, before?”

“You mean before I was an investigator? No, I was an investigator even when I was a soldier.” He smiled blandly, giving away nothing. “How did you know?”

“Call it a shared fondness for observation. Think of magic as a series of puzzles, but, in order to solve them, you have to identify, sort, and implement the pieces. What does the art of witchcraft begin with?” I asked.

He looked off into the cooling night air. “Observation.” His voice was low.

“Correct. And you, my friend, are a watcher of the first order. I don’t think you grew up in the forest, but you’re comfortable here. That tells me you can adapt on the fly, so to speak. Not many people can, and certainly not a pavement-pounding cop who never left his city. I think there’s quite a bit more to you than a simple detective.” I added two logs to the fire, then nudged one with my boot. Sparks chased merrily upward. They had places to go.

He finished his noodles in silence, then drank deeply of his canteen. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he broke the silence at last. “You’re right, but . . . let me ask you something. About what’s out there.” He pointed to the dark with his canteen, and the water sloshed with a tinny ring.

“Go ahead. I sense you don’t mean deer and coyotes?”

“Those I understand. They’re animals. Despite the occasional anomaly, animals behave in a manner I can grasp. Now, the world of magic? I don’t understand it. And I find myself wondering, do the people who work with magic follow a logical order? Can you be trusted?” He licked his lips thoughtfully, before piercing me with a stare. “What’s out there that you
haven’t
told me about?”

I drew a breath, slowly. “I don’t know.” My fingers went to the necklace of their own volition, and the contact released a sense of uncertainty that had built in my thoughts as I considered the answer. “I’m not sure I can even imagine what is waiting for us. I can tell you some of the things that I’ve seen. Personally.” I shivered with memory. “There are monsters, Jim. And of course, there are ghosts. There are always ghosts.”

“Why? And why here?” he asked.

I waved vaguely at the entirety of our scene. “Ghosts are copies made under extreme circumstances. It takes a violent, or memorable, or even poignant death to create a ghost, and they tend to stick close to home, so to speak. Humans have been here for 10,000 years, so, yeah—there are ghosts. It’s just that some of them aren’t necessarily sane, nor are they welcoming of people who look like us.”

He thought about that, letting small nods slip past his implacable exterior.

“That isn’t the worst, though, is it?” he asked. I must have given something away in my eyes, because I’d kept my face an impassive mask.

I felt myself shrug. “No, not by a long shot. There are dead things, too. Or . . . they’re partially dead. Like halfway, stuck in limbo between life and the ever after. They’re almost always tormented, and vicious. Stars and Sky, can they be cruel.” I thought of things in Gran’s grimoir, and the chill of unseen fingers touched my spine. “They exist in shadows, mostly.”

“I know about shadows.” Dietrich gave me a wintry smile. “I’m only in the woods with you because I believe in the shadows.”

I cocked my head at him, as his voice was soft and flat. “What have you seen?”

He shook his head, a tiny gesture of denial for such a tall man. “It isn’t what I’ve seen. It’s what was missing.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Afghanistan. Fourteen years ago. The villages there, they build them like terraces, do you know what I mean?” he asked.

I nodded once, letting the night settle around us again in that quiet moment.

His confessional seemed to still the air. “At the base of this one village, the stones rolled down to form these slumping piles, all cut angles and glimmering edges. We scouted an entire valley and didn’t find a single sign of life, except for some fresh bones stuck haphazardly into those rock piles. To the man we were terrified; the air itself seemed to buzz with malignant energy. I didn’t spook easily, but the quiet in that valley was unnatural. There was no smell, either. Nothing. No cooking fires, no spices, no animal dung. Just this absence, like something had scrubbed the entire place of humanity.”

“Did you find anything?” I asked. I understood what he’d felt. It was something I knew well.

“Nah. Nothing. A few spilled coins in the dirt floor of one house. They winked at me in the gloom, so I scooped them up, dropped them into my pocket, and we walked out of the valley in complete silence. I don’t think any of us uttered a sound until well after dawn. We were too afraid. There were eyes on us the entire time. I could feel it.” He pulled at his canteen again, then swished the water in his mouth before swallowing. His forehead shined with the effort of concentration, and I let him refocus without any input from me. Sometimes, a story must be allowed to form at its own speed. “I looked at the coins in the sunlight. You know who was on them? Alexander the Great. And they were flecked with blood, and something charred. I lifted a coin to my nose and it smelled—it was awful. A horror show. Like roasted pork, and blood, and dust.”

“The scent of a human being?”

“No.” He was adamant.

“Were the coins silver? Tell me about them,” I directed him, but gently.

“Gold, and they were re-struck. I know that now. Someone had remade the coins at a later date, but Alexander was still on one side,” Dietrich explained.

“What shape of cross was on the reverse?” I asked.

Deitrich’s head snapped to me as his eyes flew open.

“Was it a regular cross, Jim? Or something more primitive?”

“How did you know what was on the coin?” His astonishment was palpable, like a physical thing. He didn’t bother to cover his surprise.

“That smell? Vampire. The villagers used the coins as a sort of covenant with the monster, I bet, but something went wrong and the beast took them. All of them,” I explained, then I watched him sift the memory of that silent valley, and knew that he was doing some uncomfortable math in his head. “How many homes?”

He looked at me, lips pressed into a thin line. “Maybe sixty or more. All filled with families. They were herdsman, I think, but a few of them farmed, too.” He spat in the fire before going on. “They made a deal with the devil?”

“It’s not uncommon. Vamps will move around until they find a place of relative security. For all of their elegant aspirations, they’re really just animals. It’s one of the reasons they do so well in the wilder places of the world. Think about where all of our vampire lore originates. Transylvania? Wallachia? Romania? All beautifully rugged, and filled with shadowed places to hide.”

Jim chuckled with resignation. “I had no idea. I mean, assuming I’d ever believed in the supernatural, I couldn’t picture a vampire anywhere except the heart of a city. A werewolf, maybe—hey, are those real, too?”

“They are, and they’re incredibly unpredictable. Lycanthropes are feast or famine in terms of how they fit in,” I stated, with some authority. “Shifters are a part of every community, even if they did tend to stay hidden. The distinction between lycanthropes and vampires was largely how they played with others. As far as the undead in general, don’t get me started. I’ve even met a mummy, and he was polite, smelly, and a bit too familiar with his hands.” I winced in memory. “It turned out he’d been born in France during one of the periods of sexual freedom, and his brain had been preserved in a permanently horny state. Aside from the cloud of spices that accompanied him everywhere, if you stayed out of arm’s reach, Claude had been a pretty nice guy. At last report, he was running an export company somewhere in the Caribbean. I don’t know how well mummies hold up under intense humidity, but something told me he might be getting kind of ripe after a couple years in the tropics.”