Ancient Echoes (26 page)

“Where did you get that firearm?” Rempart demanded.

“What were you shooting at?” Devlin asked, seeing the ashen
pallor of her face.

“It was a…a mountain lion,” she whispered, placing the gun
in the holster at her back. She couldn’t possibly have seen what she thought,
and Brandi was too hysterical to contradict her. “It came at us.”

Rempart’s mind spun back to tales he’d heard as he had
researched coming to this area. He didn’t want to think about them. “Why didn't
you tell me you had a gun?”

Melisse glared furiously at him. “What difference would my
gun have made to you? At least I had one, or Brandi and I would be dead!”

“Perhaps I should be the one to hold it,” Rempart suggested,
thinking about the mountain lion and Melisse’s reaction. She wasn’t a woman to
scare easily.

Her voice turned deadly.
“Only if you can
take it away from me.”

Rempart backed away. “Let’s get away from here.”

“Yes,” Melisse murmured. “It isn’t dead. It might return.”

Brandi’s world spun, but she couldn’t take her mind off the
creature. It was no mountain lion. It was the most frightening thing she had
ever seen. She moved forward, shock and terror blocking out everything beyond
the need to get away. But then she saw that everyone had stopped.
Run,
her
mind cried.
Why didn’t they keep going? Why were they waiting?

Melisse, too, stopped suddenly. It took another moment for
Brandi to fully process what had happened. They stood at the edge of a cliff,
the descent too sheer and steep to climb down. There was nowhere to go but
back, where monsters waited.

New York City

JENNIFER VANDENBURG QUIETLY walked
out of her daughter’s bedroom, leaving the door open so she could hear if
Felicity called her. The girl slept.
Finally.

In a comfortable seating nook in her master bedroom,
Vandenburg drew in several deep breaths,
then
settled
back in a pale green wingback chair, a lamp table at her side. She was running
out of time. Rempart still hadn’t been found. She had arranged everything so
carefully: Rempart, the sabbatical in Idaho, the field trip, even the maps. She
had thought of everything, yet, she had nothing to show for it.

Her thoughts turned to the paramilitary group Phaylor had
used years earlier. Was this strange disappearance the same as happened to them
out there?

If trained military men couldn’t survive, how could a
professor and some students?

No!
She refused to think that way. Her plans would
work.

Some might have thought her crazy, but she had proof that
she was right.

Years earlier, Calvin Phaylor had tracked down a bizarre set
of bones found in Central Idaho. No one could identify exactly what sort of
animal they came from—some unclassified creature which made it easy to denounce
the find as a clever hoax. But one thing no one could denounce was the
scientific evidence that the bones had no normal age degeneration. The cellular
degradation seemed to have slowed down so substantially, as if the creature had
barely aged, as if it could live almost forever.

As if it could be immortal...

Thus began Phaylor’s obsessive interest in the area, an
interest that led to his downfall and her rise.

Even now, after all she had learned, the rational part of
her mind shouted that alchemy was bunk and a sham. But at a much deeper level,
the idea that since everything in the physical world changed and developed,
such change could be controlled, felt right. Since change could be sped up or
slowed down, if slowed, life would naturally be extended, perhaps forever.

She lacked only the process to create a philosopher’s stone,
the key to all alchemical change. The book in Idaho explained how to do it.
Once she had that book, no one could stop her.

She would get the book.
For Felicity’s
sake.

And, as the full ramifications of immortality struck her,
she smiled.
For Felicity’s sake…and for her own.

RACHEL NOTICED A CLEFT in the cliff
face. It sloped in a way that, being careful and using muscles they didn’t know
they had, the university group managed to descend and not need to backtrack to
the area with the frightening beasts.

They reached a flat clearing and were congratulating
themselves when Rempart decided to make camp. As the oldest and least fit of
the group, he felt ready to drop. He didn’t even help gather firewood, but lay
down and soon snored almost as loud as the beastly howls from the forest.

The others built a fire as Devlin and Melisse began to carve
wood into sharp fishhooks. The others joined them, and soon began braiding
grass to form fishing lines and weaving thicker grass strands into nets. Their
empty stomachs and the chill in the air focused them on their predicament. Once
the snows came, how long could they last?

Constantly sorrow over Brian, a nagging fear for Ted, and
worry over the strange creatures and dangerous landscape they would encounter
plagued them.

“I think it's time for a new plan,” Vince said, pushing up
his glasses. “We’ve got a long way to go. The weather is turning cold. I say we
stay put and build ourselves shelter, find food, and store it to get us through
the winter. It could snow any day. We've already woken up to frost. If it
snows, and we aren't prepared, we'll die.”

“Don't say that!” Brandi pressed clenched hands to her
temples, memories of the creature that attacked her far too fresh. She began to
cry.

The students turned quiet, fighting their own tears.

“We don’t have time,” Devlin said, “to find or prepare
enough food to make it through the long winter. Once heavy snows hit, the
mountain passes won't open until late March or April. That means we’ll be
struck here five or six months. I’m not ready for that. We need to keep moving,
to hurry.”

“No way!”
Vince clenched his fists.
“Don’t you know the dangers out there? Am I the only one who's ever heard
stories of this area? About ghosts and old Indian tales of bad things and of
people simply disappearing? That’s what happened to
us.
It’s time you
faced it.”

Rempart, awakened by the bickering, turned to Vince. “You've
heard that?”

“It's a
wilderness,
” Devlin ranted, exasperated. “People
get lost in the wilderness. What else is new?”

“There's something seriously wrong, and we need to stay put
until we figure out just what's going on,” Vince countered. “We can make it
safe to stay here. We'll survive this if we all work together.”

“I'm not staying, Vince,” Devlin announced. “Who wants to
travel with me?” He glanced at Rachel and she nodded.

“That's crazy!” Vince shouted. “You'll get yourselves
killed!”

“Stop it!” Rempart ordered as he rubbed his eyes. “I've
listened to both arguments. It's not likely we'll be rescued if we remain in
this god-forsaken nothingness. The only prudent thing to do is to head south
right now. Surely, we'll find a major roadway before long. There, we'll find
help.”

“What if you don’t?” Vince cried. “What if there’s nothing
out there?”

“You’re being silly. We must all concentrate on making this
work. Be positive, and get a good sleep,” Rempart stated, lying back down and
turning his back on them. “We'll start out fresh tomorrow morning.”

“Who made you king?” Vince shouted. He stood, hands on hips,
and faced the others. “What's wrong with you people?”

“Don’t be so stubborn,” Melisse snapped. “Trying to save
ourselves is well worth any potential risk.”

The others agreed with her.

Vince's face flamed at his idol's rebuke. “Like hell! You'll
see.” He stomped away from the camp, angry and embarrassed.

“I guess I should go get him,” Devlin offered.

“Leave him alone,” Melisse said. “He can't rush off simply
because he doesn't get his way. I suspect he'll realize it soon enough.”

o0o

Vince was furious that the others didn't know better than to
take chances with winter weather. He'd once been stranded in it as a child. His
uncle thought it would be fun to drive out to Silver City, an old mining town
south of Boise deep in the Owyhee Mountains. People were warned not to try to
reach it in winter, but the interesting and colorful town was worth the trip.

The sun shone that day, the snow bright, white, and
beautiful. They were high in the mountains, the frost-covered dirt road a
narrow ribbon whose flatness and width were the only things that distinguished
it from the rest of the sparkling white landscape. About five miles from their
destination, the weather changed. Out of nowhere, ominous dark clouds gathered
and the wind kicked up, harsh and loud. They hadn't thought it would snow that
day, but they were wrong. Thick, wet globules of snow and hail pelted the car
and made it impossible to tell what was road, and what was not.

The car went into a slide. Fortunately, it slid toward the
hillside and not the drop-off since guardrails were unknown in most of rural
Idaho. The car hit a snow bank. Every attempt to get it out caused the wheels
to spin, wedging the car even deeper.

Vince, his uncle, and two cousins walked back toward the
paved road some fifteen miles away. Since no one inhabited Silver City in
winter, no help would be found there.

They were pretty sure they would see a car coming their way
before long. But they didn't. No other fools were on that road.

Even as a child Vince was small and somewhat weak, and soon
he was exhausted. His mom had dressed him warmly, but he'd forgotten to take
the mittens she'd put out for him, and even keeping his hands in his pockets,
his fingers were soon numb.

One of his cousins wore light sneakers, and his toes became
frostbitten.

By nightfall, Vince's mother had grown worried and called
the sheriff's office. A deputy found the nearly frozen foursome about seven
miles from the paved road.

Vince never forgot how cold and scared he'd been as the sun
had sunk lower on the horizon, and he knew that night would be colder and
lonelier than anything he'd ever experienced. He'd had nightmares for weeks
thereafter.

He didn't know what was...

A sound, something indefinable, all but beyond hearing...

He jumped to his feet and turned in a complete circle.

Nothing was there. At least, nothing he could see in the
darkness.

Vince was no fool. He hadn't wandered so far away he
couldn't see the glow of the campfire through the firs. Mrs. Norton hadn't
raised her son to be an idiot, even though she had raised him alone when his
father took off with another woman when Vince was only six years old.

He thought of a wolf, a bear, or mountain lion, or whatever had
carried off Brian, or the monster Brandi swore attacked her and Melisse.

Vince assured himself he was simply nervous. Perhaps a tiny
night creature made the sound.
A jackrabbit.
Maybe a badger or a beaver.
Nothing dangerous would venture
close to a campfire.

In fact, maybe he should return to camp.

But once there, how could he convince the others not to try
to walk back to civilization? If they got caught in a blizzard, it would all be
over.

Silence settled around him. Maybe he should simply tell them
about his Silver City experience and remind them how quickly weather in the
mountains could change. They all knew it. Well, maybe not Rempart who didn't
seem to know anything except what he read in books. But perhaps none had
actually experienced it.

Melisse was the smartest, the most experienced of the lot.
She would listen to him. She had to.

Just then, two shapes moved toward him in the darkness of
the pines. The moonlight behind them gave him an idea of their outlines,
upright, like great hulking gorillas, or Sasquatch, or men.

They stopped, held perfectly still, and stared at him.

MICHAEL, JAKE, CHARLOTTE, and Quade
made camp. After the shock and horror of what had happened to Ted Bellows, they
searched for footprints and found several that probably belonged to the
university group. The footprints headed east. With renewed hope they followed
them until it grew too dark to see. Eventually, they fell into a restless,
troubled sleep.

It seemed he had scarcely shut his eyes when Michael awoke
to the lute-like sound of a
sanxian.
The melody sounded beautiful,
intriguing. He had to see…

Quietly, he left his small tent and sleeping bag and walked
toward the gentle music. Moon and starlight in a cloudless sky lit the way.
Instead of dry, brittle ground, a lush green garden of low grasses, moss, red
peonies, and a mulberry tree spread before him.

With wonder, he continued on. Mist swirled around a pond
filled with lotus pods, and by the bank, her back to him, a woman sat on a low
bench and lightly strummed a
sanxian
. She was slender, and wore an
emerald green Chinese robe. Gold ribbons and mother of pearl combs held her
long, heavy hair in elaborate coils.

He approached, but the setting made no sense. No placid
waters or thick foliage existed in this high, arid land. And it had been night,
but now sunshine warmed the day.

Was this heaven? If so, he was sorry he'd stopped believing
in it.

The woman turned his way. He knew her at once.

“Come sit by me.” She gave a small bow of the head as she
gestured toward a small, second bench nearby.

He didn't recognize the words she spoke, yet by the time
they reached his ears, as if the mists themselves possessed the power to
translate, he understood. When he answered in English, the same translation
seemed to occur. He sat at her feet. They were tiny, but had not been bound.
That practice came many centuries after the Han dynasty. He was thankful she
had not been made to suffer. He felt big and clumsy beside her, but her warm
smile eased his awkwardness.