“Was I asleep when you got here? How long has it been?”
“I don’t know.” He took a deep breath and exhaled, and I watched the wind hold it in front of his face like a caul before snatching it away. “You were talking to yourself.”
Maybe it was Virgil’s reappearance, maybe it was the rest I’d had, but I was feeling better. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” It was almost as if I was feeling too well and suddenly felt like I was on fire. I dropped the collar down to my chin. “Is it getting warmer?”
Virgil reared back, and again it was as if the two heads were doing the work of one. “I don’t think so, colder maybe.” He looked past, his eyes returning to the sullen darkness of the mountain, the broken terrain of the summit, ghostly and vague in the fast-traveling fog. “Very cold at the top.”
I rolled over and looked up at the boulder-covered hillside. “I guess I’m getting my second wind.”
“Maybe so.” Abruptly, with the help of the war lance that stamped the snow like a horse’s hoof, he stood. “We should get moving.”
I half expected to hear the. 223 again, but there was no sound except the returning wind. When I stood, something heavy slid from my chest and hit the rocks. I thought there would be more resistance, but my legs pushed out and steadied me as I rose.
“Perhaps you are the dead one.”
I glanced up at him. “What?”
He studied the face leading to the summit. “Maybe you’re the one who was killed.”
I started off past him. “I’m not the one that got shot, Virgil.”
He fell in behind me, unperturbed. “How do you know? You said I got shot, but I feel fine.”
“How do you explain the fact that half your face is laid open?”
I felt the hand on my shoulder, stopped, and turned to look at him as he crouched down to place his features close to mine. “I have always had this scar.”
I didn’t move at first but then dropped the goggles so that I could see better.
There was no fresh scar there; only the original one.
I reached up and touched the unmarred side of his face with my glove. “Virgil, I remember that you had two wounds, a center shot and a tumbling round that hit the paperback and climbed up your face-I had to patch it myself while you held it.”
He looked at me strangely and sniffed a laugh. “I don’t remember any of that, Lawman. Are you sure you didn’t dream it or make it up in your head?”
“It was no more than a couple of hours ago.” I pulled his cloak apart so that I could see the blood-soaked mooseskin shirt, but when I did, it was whole and unstained. I stood there staring at him. But then I remembered the paperback in my coat and drove a hand in to pull it out. “Wait a minute, there was this book; the one you were reading when you got shot.” I yanked the Inferno from my coat and held it out to him. “There.”
He took it and examined it before handing it back, turning and sheltering us from the wind. “Is there supposed to be something special about this book?”
In exasperation, I took it and flipped through the pages to show him the damage it had sustained-but there was nothing there. The pages were swollen and sullied from the dunking I’d taken in the nameless pond, but there was no bullet hole stopping at page 305. I looked up, my mouth and eyes wide.
He sighed a deep yet uncomplicated sigh. “You know what I think?”
“No.” I looked around, trying to get my bearings; I felt more and more lost and not just in a geographic sense. “And I’m not sure I want to.”
“I think that one of us was sent to guide the other one to the Beyond-Country.”
His words had a ring of truth that stung like hopeful loneliness verging on desperation. “Well… that would mean that one of us is dead.”
“Yes.”
The words hung in my throat, thick and lugubrious. “And that the other one is soon to be dead.”
“Possibly.”
I reached up and placed the goggles back over my eyes, chortling a sad laugh at the ludicrousness of the conversation we were having and where it was taking place. “Well, I remember you dying, so I think you’re the dead one.”
The grizzly reared a little in indignation, and Virgil’s words were gruff and clipped. “I remember you dying, more than once. You died under the four-wheeler, in the fire, when you walked off the cliff, and when you lay down a while ago.”
I stuffed Inferno back into my inside and damnable pocket; one more layer of insulation. “That doesn’t make any sense, Virgil. You pulled the four-wheeler off me.”
“Yes, and you were dead.”
“At the fire?”
“I found your body.” He dropped his shaggy head to look at me again. “You keep dying, but you keep coming back. It is all very strange, but I think the Old Ones have sent you back all these times to guide me.”
“No, I had a conversation with the agent, Pfaff.”
“I had a conversation with her as well, down in the overhang; I told her how you had died and that I was going after the man with the bag because it was what you would’ve wished.”
I brought my hand up and felt my forehead for a temperature as my headache attempted to come back.
“I told her how you had burned up in the fire.” His posture softened a little. “I’m sorry, it’s disrespectful to talk of these things, but I thought it was something you should know.”
“That I’m dead?”
He nodded and then was still, like a lizard on a rock; he didn’t even blink, but I swear the bear did. “Yes.”
“Thanks for enlightening me.”
He didn’t catch the sarcasm in my voice or chose not to acknowledge it. “You’re welcome.”
I guessed it wasn’t that outrageous; I was sure that Virgil had been killed, but it seemed as if he was just as certain that I had died, and numerous times. He had me, four deaths to one. “Well, whichever one of us is dead, we’d better get going. I’d hate to think that the Old Ones went to all the trouble of bringing us back and that we couldn’t get the job done.” Turning, I tacked against the wind that struck the ridge with six-pound sledgehammer blows.
“With the four-wheeler, the handlebars had driven into your chest, and your eyes were bugged out; you had frozen to death.” Over the wind, I could hear his trudging footsteps behind me along with the rattling of the teeth and hooves, striking in rhythm with the words. “I didn’t see you when you fell off the cliff and into the pass, but I heard the yelling-not very dignified.”
We were on the steep incline, following the path that Raynaud Shade had left behind, even stopping at the collection of boulders where he’d thrown the few shots to slow me down. “Uh huh.”
“When I found you on the Knife’s Edge back there you were frozen the second time, but you looked more comfortable. You know, like you had died in your sleep?”
I stopped and rested an arm on the boulder. I was feeling pretty strong, but my breath continued to remain short.
“The fire was the worst one; you were floating in the pond like barbecued chicken, only with really white teeth.”
It was silent, except for the noise of the wind and the accoutrement of Virgil’s lance. It was another couple of hundred yards to the top, but then what? What was Shade doing up there? How many people had he killed to get here and why?
My mind, with the appearance of Virgil and his chatter, had become clear-but my body was another matter. The last reserves of energy were petering from my tank, and I didn’t know how useful I was going to be once we got to the top. Virgil, aside from the fact that he’d had bullets pass through his body and appeared to have a living lance and cloak, seemed to be in fine fettle. If it came down to a fight, which I was sure it would, Virgil might have to be our man. “Virgil?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got to tell you.” I took a few breaths just to steady my voice. “I’m not so sure how much help I’m going to be topside.”
“You will be fine.”
I leaned my head against the rock to try to steady myself in the endless, vertically sloped world. As I leaned there, I could feel my legs giving out beneath me.