Shadowmark (The Shadowmark Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

“Ha, ha. I’m not looking for a knight in shining armor. But if I were, he wouldn't look like you. No offense."

"And here I stole this suit of armor so you would think better of me," he said dryly. "Turns out you just think I'm just an average guy."

"Joke all you want. There aren’t many men who would help someone else without expecting to gain something for themselves.”

“I’m flattered."

“I wasn’t talking about you!” Mina blurted it out before she could stop herself, then quickly tried to backtrack. “I mean, I guess you fit that description. I’m grateful, but I was thinking about another person.” A figure in white, surrounded by smoke and ash.

Doyle looked amused rather than offended. “Who were you talking about?”

Mina hesitated. He would scoff, but wasn’t this what she wanted? Conversation?
 

They sat in silence a while, listening to the birds singing in the trees. Mina finished her meal and leaned against a fallen log. They had camped partway up the mountain slope near a gap in the trees and enjoyed a spectacular view of the green mountains. The air smelled of wildflowers and golden sunshine. Mina unclipped her gun from her waistband and laid it on the ground to lean back more comfortably, looking up through the trees to the hazy mountains rising up around them. She felt safe here, but maybe it was her full stomach talking.

“Your brother?” guessed Doyle.

“He wasn’t who I was referring to.”
 

Doyle shrugged, but her watched her, waiting for an answer.
 

She sighed. Of all the things to talk about with Doyle, she wouldn’t have chosen her family. She hadn’t yet worked through the guilt of postponing her search for Lincoln. “My brother is a computer engineer. He started a company, Interface Labs. You know it?”
 

Doyle shook his head.

“He got me back to the States during first contact. I still don’t know how he managed to get me on that flight, but I was on one of the last planes out of London, as far as I can tell.”

“You were in London? Why?”

“Oxford, actually, for a semester. Doing research.”

“What kind of research?”

Mina hesitated again. Doyle would laugh at her. He was so practical about everything.

“Literature. Romantic period.” She smiled.

Doyle did laugh. Long and hard. She waited it out. Her choice of career seemed ironic now even to her. How many times lately had she wished she had chosen a more practical field of study? Doyle looked at the frown on her face and stopped laughing, but he wasn’t about to drop the subject.

“And all this time I thought you didn’t think much, that you were just floating around in a sea of ignorance and despair, but you are an academic! All you
do
is think!” He snorted as another thought occurred to him. “You really were looking for a knight in shining armor. Tell me, did you think it would be romantic to die by drowning yourself in a creek?” Mina winced but stayed quiet. Doyle nodded at the mountains. “It’s different to read about something in a book than to experience it firsthand, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is. You’re wrong about me, though. My life was small and insignificant at best, with my research and papers, but I was happy. And because I was happy, I’m all too aware of what we’ve lost. The entire fabric of our society has unraveled. Not just literature, but everything.” These thoughts had been with her for some time, and they spilled out of her mouth like a spring bubbling out of the mountainside.
 

“I know I should just concentrate on surviving,” Mina continued. “but what are we surviving for? To run another day? I know what we’re running from, but what are we running to? That’s what bothers me most. I’m not looking for romance, because there is nothing romantic about this.” She looked out at the break in the trees. A raven soared over the valley, searching for prey.
 

She sighed. “Lincoln was supposed to meet me in Atlanta, but my flight was diverted to Charlotte. People were panicking. There was no way to contact him after the Glyphs attacked. I had no choice but to just . . . run.”

“And now you’ve found someone to keep you safe and feed you,” Doyle said pointedly. “So you’re resigned to the fact that you will never know your brother’s fate.”

That stung. “Of course not!” She stood up to face him. “I knew where I wanted to go. Getting there was the problem. I didn’t even know how to find food!”

“It sounds like an excuse to me.” Doyle stood, too, but his tone remained even. “It sounds like you were afraid of going all that way by yourself. Afraid of not finding him.”
 

“Don’t pretend to know me! What are the chances of finding him, anyway? Because he isn’t the type of man to sit and wait for me to find him. More than likely . . .” But that sentence refused to be finished.
 

Doyle continued, “I don’t have to know you. You are easy enough to figure out. You’ve spent your life consumed by other people’s ideas, without experiencing anything for yourself. No one could blame you for not looking for someone who is probably dead anyway, but don’t try to justify it. And stop blaming me for your cowardice. We all do what we want to do, even now. No one is stopping you but yourself.”

Mina reached up and slapped him across the face as hard as she could, her hand stinging from the blow. When Doyle didn’t react, she turned and grabbed her water bottle before sliding down the slope, heading for the stream at the foot of the mountain.
 

Angry with herself as much as Doyle, Mina slid through the trees as quickly as she dared. Why had he said that? Why now, after weeks of almost complete silence, was he arguing with her about her life choices? She reached the bottom before she’d had time to cool off, kneeling down to splash the cold water on her hot face. Now what? Was this the end? Should she leave? She sat down by the stream.
 

The day grew warmer and then cooled as the light faded. She had no desire to climb back up the mountain and find Doyle, but she had little choice. Even if she went off on her own, she needed her gear.
 

A twig snapped behind Mina. She turned, opening her mouth to tell Doyle to get lost. But the person standing in the shadow of the trees didn’t look like him. This man was short and stooped.

Panicking, Mina took two steps back and stumbled into the shallow stream. The cold mountain water soaked her shoes and stung her ankles. She halted, facing the man staggering toward her.
 

His clothes were torn and burnt, the skin underneath red and raw. Mina thought he looked middle-aged or older, but as he stepped out of the shadow, she gasped. The right side of his face was charred and blackened from fire. Where his right eye should have been, yellow pus oozed from an empty socket.
 

“Help me,” he said, wheezing. Mina was frozen in shock. She didn’t see Doyle approach until he was directly behind the stranger.

Doyle pointed his pistol at the man’s head. He had attached a silencer.
Why does he have a silencer?
 

“Don’t move. Hands on your head,” Doyle said calmly.

Mina scrambled to Doyle’s side. “Doyle! Look at him!”

“What of it?”

“
Look
at him!”

Doyle moved around to look at the man’s face and his eyes widened.

“Please,” said the man, who struggled to keep his hands up as Doyle had demanded. His good eye screwed up in pain as he sank to his knees. “Please help me.”

“What happened to you?” asked Doyle.

“Glyphs?” asked Mina.

The man’s lungs rattled with every breath. “They attacked . . . our camp.”

“Which camp?” asked Doyle.

“Over the ridge . . . a day ago . . . two days . . . I don’t know.” The man looked at Doyle now. “Help me.”

Doyle nodded and pulled the trigger. Mina jumped at the mechanical click of the firing pin, the vibration of the muffled shot thumping in her chest. The stranger collapsed beside the stream and his blood mixed with the cold current.

“What did you do?” Mina whispered, her eyes fixed on the stranger’s body.

Doyle turned to her, frowning. “He didn’t have a chance. Death was a kindness.”

“But you didn’t have to . . . we didn’t . . .” She couldn’t utter the words.
Doyle just shot a man. Just like that.

“Would you rather have left him here to die alone, or taken him back to camp and watched him die there?”

“But he needed help!”

Doyle glared at her.
 

“It’s not right,” Mina said.

“No.”
 

“You helped me. What’s the difference?”
 

“You will die if you can’t learn to make hard choices.” And with that he walked away up the mountain. Mina wanted to run in the opposite direction, but again remembered her gear. So she followed him, picking her way carefully in the dusky light. When they reached the camp, Doyle grabbed his backpack and walked away from the fire. For one wild second Mina’s heart leapt into her throat, but he settled himself back down by a tree apart from her, keeping his eyes on the fire.
 

Mina resisted the urge to kick something, to kick at him. Why should she stay with this man? What kind of person was so complacent, so calm about killing another? She found a place not too far from the fire and sat down against a tree, facing away from Doyle, who was brooding at the corner of her vision.
 

Evening settled in, and the fire warmed her, but the the image of the man down by the stream burned hot in her thoughts. Mina stood again and tossed another large log onto the fire, but the act did not satisfy her. She felt foolish. Foolish for believing life had improved, that she could forget the outside world.

She lay with her back to the fire and her blanket wrapped around her shoulders, hoping to find solace in sleep. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Doyle’s stern, unwavering face, and the gun as he raised it to the stranger’s head. She turned over and glimpsed Doyle on the other side of the campfire. He stared at the fire too, and reached under his jacket to rub his chest as if his t-shirt were irritating him. She caught his eye, and he returned her look for a brief moment. Mina looked back at the fire. She would have to make a decision in the morning.

Doyle woke Mina at first light. She peered groggily up at him, feeling as if she had just gone to sleep. The fire had died.

“Are you coming with me?”
 

Mina sat up and rubbed her eyes to stall for time. She was more confident in her own ability to fend for herself now, and last night had shaken her confidence in Doyle and shattered the illusion of security she’d been harboring. But in the fresh light of morning, Doyle seemed less menacing. He had kept her alive these last few weeks, after all. She would be an idiot to let him leave without her now. She also wanted to believe Doyle’s actions last night were more courageous than malicious.
 

“We need to bury the body,” she said.

“We didn’t even know him.”

“I don’t know you!”

“I’m not going to waste time convincing you now. Either you travel with me or you don’t. You shouldn’t—”
 

“Skip the lecture,” she interrupted. “I’m going with you. It just doesn’t seem right to leave him there.”

Doyle paused for a moment. “Okay. You have the morning. I’m going hunting.” He put her gun in her hand. “Wear it. Keep it with you at all times.” He stood and began hiking away up the mountain, leaving Mina to her unpleasant task.

Mina stared at the gun, still amazed that something so small could weigh so heavy in her hands. She had forgotten about it yesterday afternoon when she stormed down to the creek. Had left it lying on the ground. And when the stranger appeared out of the woods, she hadn’t even thought of drawing a weapon. Maybe she had passed a test of some sort. Obviously possessing a gun didn’t make her any more willing to use one.
 

Doyle, on the other hand, had no problem with using a weapon. He handled his gun like he was born with it attached to his arm. And what about that silencer? She sighed and clipped her own gun to her waist. Better to not think too much about it if she was going to stay with him.

Down at the stream, buzzards wheeled above the treetops and flies buzzed above the body. Mina stared at the stranger, struggling not to puke. They hadn’t even asked his name. But did she even want to know it?
 

Mina grabbed the frail body by the ankles and tried to pull it away from the stream. It wouldn’t budge. She leaned back, putting all her weight into the task. Her feet slipped in the soft earth, and she almost fell back. Recovering, she dug in her heels and pulled again. The body moved slowly. She mentally kicked herself. She had never even considered the work it would take to bury the body. When she reached the tree line, she looked around. Without a shovel, she could only hunt for stones and rocks to build a mound.
 

Finding stones she could actually use proved difficult. Mina walked back and forth along the stream all morning, muscling rocks out of the water to place over the body. Before long, a buzzard tried to claim it, and Mina had to shoo the thing away with a large tree branch, wielding it like a baseball bat. The buzzard came back every time Mina left. Every time she returned, she dropped the rock she was carrying to pick up the stick and swing at the scavenger. The bird only gave up when she had the body completely covered. By then, the sun was directly overhead and sweat was running down Mina’s back, soaking her shirt.
 

As she finished placing the last stone, a man cleared his throat behind her. Mina jumped and turned.
 

“How long were you standing there?” she asked Doyle.

“Good thing it was me. You weren’t paying attention,” he said as he walked over to the grave, carrying her bag as well as his own.

“You’re so quiet.”

“Are you ready?”

“Shouldn’t we say something?” She nodded toward the mound of rocks.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“No, I guess not.”