The Remnant (13 page)

He was over the hill and almost off the road
before he realized that the orb was his headlights glow against the
inky backdrop of sky and that there was a car stopped in his lane
directly ahead. More adrenalin surged through his exhausted body
and mind. He was going to have to pass on by and hope that with the
unusual darkness of the night, and driving fast enough, they
wouldn’t recognize him. They were certain to be suspicious, though.
There had been almost no one else on the road for the past forty
miles.

But as he whipped into the opposite lane the
driver’s side door of the sedan swung open, and a large man in a
dark business suit leapt out. As Trace veered further toward the
far shoulder, the guy reached inside his jacket and jerked out a
pistol.

"This is getting old," gasped Trace, ducking
as his windshield splattered, raining shards of safety glass.

A second and then a third shot rang out. The
car slipped in the gravel and went into a skid. Trace found himself
staring up a dark side road. With more shots echoing, he floored
the accelerator. His head felt as though it were shoved down inside
a pocket in his shoulders as he peeked back over the seat. But when
he turned to watch the road there was another gunman ahead, holding
his hand up for Trace to stop.

Not gonna happen.

The man leapt aside but fired a burst of
automatic weapons fire. Trace felt the car jolt, then the passenger
side dropped into a ditch, and the car began a slow motion rise
into the air as the sedan cartwheeled. As the ground rushed to meet
him Trace wondered how the gunmen could possibly have known to set
up the ambush here. How did they know for certain he’d take the
turn, and why wait so far back down the road for him? He also had
the oddest impression in that frozen moment that the
man
might have been a woman.

But as the roof of the car smashed into the
ground the impression whirled away in a flash of light and the
cacophonous roar of rending metal, rubber, and glass.

"What the hell was that?" Stan shouted into
the radio.

There was a pause, then Ashley’s shaky voice
echoed around the clearing. "You got me. Two cars came along. One
guy got out and took some shots at the second car. When that car
pulled into the valley it wouldn’t stop, and I had to blow out the
guy’s tires. The car rolled."

"Was it Angels shooting at the guy’s car?
Over."

"Looked like it. I don’t know if they hit him
or not. They didn’t kill him because he was under control when he
turned into the valley. Over."

The violence of the crash didn’t give Ashley
much confidence that the guy was unhurt. But what the heck was he
doing here, and why had the Angels been shooting at him? There was
an old saying,
the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
But did
that apply here? Trust of outsiders was an almost unknown commodity
in the valley.

"What are the Angels doing now? Over."

Ashley chuckled dryly. "The driver hopped
back in the car and started to pull into the valley. He’s gonna
need a new windshield. They’re gone now. Over."

"You didn’t hit them? Over."

"Nope. Over."

"All right," called Stan. "We’re coming down.
Let’s see who our visitor is and if he’s alive."

An oddly twisted snake that appeared to be
eating its own tail would have writhed away out the empty opening
where the windshield had been if not for Trace’s death grip upon
it. But as his eyes fought for focus he decided it was not a
serpent at all, but the steering wheel-bent and warped in the
wreck—and he wondered if he’d been hit by gunfire or brain damaged
by the crash. Wounds didn’t always hurt when they were first
inflicted, and for all he knew his grogginess might be the result
of blood loss or head trauma, but for the life of him he couldn’t
think how he should go about checking.

When he released the wheel his hands fell
upward
, and he realized that he was hanging upside down from
his shoulder and lap belts. He fumbled for the release, but when it
clicked open he ended up scrunched painfully against the roof. His
head began to ache, and when he wiped his forehead he felt warm
blood and a gash on his cheek that then began to trickle into his
eyes.

The door was jerked open, and he found
himself staring into the barrel of what looked like a very deadly
black carbine. Imagining bullets buzzing around like angry bees he
just lay there, shaking, trying to drag his eyes from the gloating
empty barrel up to the face silhouetted by a flashlight’s glow.
Finally the gun lowered to the gunman’s belly and strong hands
lifted Trace gently to his feet.

The light was flashed full in his eyes again,
and he heard the gunman gasp. Did he look that bad?

"Anything broken?" croaked the gunman who did
turn out to be a woman.

Trace still couldn’t see her face for the
light and the blood in his eyes. He took a quick inventory of his
limbs. Everything seemed to move, and although there was pain
everywhere it felt more like bruising and sprains than breaks.

"I don’t think so," he rasped.

"What are you doing here?" asked the woman,
as Trace heard the sound of shoe soles on asphalt.

Several more silhouetted figures stopped
around him as Trace leaned back against the corpse of his
rent-a-car. Men with more guns.

His eyes finally began to adjust, and he
squinted at the woman who had dragged him from the car. The face he
saw there-outlined by moonlight and starshadow-was an
impossibility, the countenance of a corpse with the form of an
angel. His jaw dropped, and his heart felt as though it were
burning its way through his chest and into his belly.

"Ash?" he gasped.

Disbelief warred with a desperate yearning
for this miracle to be true.

"Yes," she said, sighing.

"All these years," he muttered. "All this
time. I thought you were dead. I was there. I helped bury some of
the bodies."

"Shit," said a man behind her. "You
again?"

Trace felt as though all the blood had
drained from his head to his heart. Or maybe he was dead after all,
and there was no mystery to Ashley being here. Perhaps one of the
Angels had killed him or he had died in the crash. But as he tried
to decide if Ashley’s presence meant this was heaven, or the
suddenly increasing pain meant it was hell, the figures around him
grew dim. Then they were gone altogether, and the world went black
again.

Ashley watched Trace starting to come around
on her couch. He had a large lump on his forehead and a butterfly
bandage she’d placed on the gash on his cheek, and he was sure to
have sprains, but neither she nor Paulie had been able to find any
broken bones. When his eyes widened and he jolted forward she
pushed him back into a reclining position on the pillow. Stan and
Paulie sat in chairs facing him, glaring as though Trace were
either about to make some world shattering announcement or
physically attack them. Marie stood in the doorway staring at Trace
as though he might be Satan himself. For all Ashley knew he
might.

She hadn’t seen or heard from him since the
night they separated five years before. She’d offered an ultimatum,
and he’d stormed out of her life, she thought forever. Their
parting had been heartrending, worsened by the fact that it was
only a few days later that the Angel attack struck Mexachuli, and
the Brethren for all intents and purposes disappeared from the face
of the Earth. She had had to write off Trace and pray that he had
been able to write her off.

She stared into his clear blue eyes trying to
read them the way she had once been able to. There was confusion,
anger... and something else she couldn’t quite get. Fear perhaps?
But fear of what? Why had the Angels been shooting at him?

"I remember you," Trace told Stan. Then he
turned to Paulie. "You, too."

Paulie sighed. Ashley noticed how tired the
old man looked. He had been growing more haggard for months, losing
weight, his muscular frame becoming more boney and birdlike, but
tonight he seemed utterly exhausted.

"In Mexico," continued Trace. "Before the
murders."

"Why did you follow us here?" asked Stan.

"I didn’t follow you," said Trace. "I thought
you were all dead. I was tracking those Angels because the two of
them tried to kill me in New York."

"Why did they do that?"

"Because of a book I’ve been working on about
the murders."

"He’s stirred them up," said Stan, shaking
his head.

"
I’ve
stirred them up?" said Trace,
glancing from face to face. "What the hell are they doing here? I
thought they’d wiped all of you off the face of the earth." He
turned to Ashley again. "Thanks for calling to let me know you were
all right, by the way. I’ve been fine, myself."

Her face fell. "There was nothing I could do,
Trace. I’m so sorry. Honestly."

He nodded, perfunctorily.

"They tried to follow him into the valley,"
said Stan.

Paulie nodded, and Ashley felt a sinking in
her stomach.

"So?" said Trace.

"If they want him that badly," said Paulie,
letting the thought hang for a moment, "it’s worrisome to say the
least."

"Maybe if we just send him on his way they’ll
know we’re no part of it," said Stan.

"Whoa," said Trace, raising onto his elbows.
"It may have escaped your notice, but those guys were shooting at
me. Then one of
your
people tried to kill me. And now I’m
without a car. The rental company is going to be pissed, in case
you don’t know about such things."

Stan shook his head. "Ashley wasn’t trying to
kill you, or you’d be dead. If you hadn’t been going so fast you’d
just have rolled to a stop."

"
You
shot at me?" said Trace, staring
at Ashley.

She looked only somewhat apologetic. "I blew
out your tires."

Trace’s eyebrows rose. "If the Angels know
you’re here, if they’re holding you all hostage, why not call the
law?"

Ashley shook her head. "We can’t call the
law, Trace. That’s part of the deal."

Trace frowned. "What deal?

"The Angels don’t molest us anymore, and we
don’t molest them, go to the law, whatever," said Stan.

"That sounds like a pretty lousy deal," said
Trace, rising to a sitting position and lowering his feet to the
floor. "I can’t believe you trust them to hold up their end of
it."

Stan glared at Ashley, and Paulie
shrugged.

Ashley leaned closer to Trace, close enough
to smell his aftershave. She longed to touch him again, to hold
him, but there was a world and an eon between who they’d been and
who they were.

"Trace," she said, quietly. "We survived this
long by coming to terms with the Angels... If you-or anyone
else-were to call the police now, an entire way of life in this
valley would be shattered in a heartbeat. More lives would be lost.
You need to take a little time to understand what it is you’re
threatening."

Trace stared at her for a long moment, and
she felt the heat of his eyes upon her and knew that he was
thinking the same things she was, feeling the same things.

"It sounded to me a couple of minutes ago
like they-" and he pointed at Paulie and Stan, "were making a snap
decision about me."

She looked at the pair. "We all need to sleep
on this."

"That’s all well and good," said Paulie, "but
the Angels know where he is, now, and Stan’s right. It seems like
they want him bad. We’re gonna have to consider what to do about
that."

Ashley shrugged. "Send them a message."

They all stared at her as though she had two
heads.

"We know they’re out there tonight," she
continued. "Walk out in the road with a flag of truce."

They all looked as though they’d just
realized the bright ball in the sky was the sun. Only maybe looking
directly at it wasn’t a good idea.

"Stipulating we don’t get our asses shot off,
what do you suggest we tell ‘em?" asked Stan.

She stared at Trace again. "Tell them the
deal still holds. If they back off for now, we leave them alone. We
need time to think. They haven’t attacked anyone other
than Trace, right?"

Stan shook his head.

"Then ask them why they broke the truce and
give them a final warning."

"Meaning he’s here, and he stays here," said
Stan.

She shrugged. "For now."

"For
now
," mused Paulie. "We’re spread
pretty thin, Ashley, and your friend here is an added problem at a
very bad time. We don’t know for certain it was only him that
stirred up the Angels, but I’m worried."

"We’re all worried, Paulie," said Ashley,
"but what would you have us do? Send Trace out to face those
killers alone?"

"He’s certainly caused more trouble for them
than we have," said Stan. "Maybe they think he’s here on account of
us."

"Me cause trouble for them?" said Trace,
irritably. "They hunted me through the sewers of New York, got my
manuscript killed, and maybe my career ended. They hunted you guys
almost to extinction and tried to kill me again tonight, and you’re
worried about what these guys think?"

Trace and the two men stared at each other a
moment before coming to their own silent truce.

"You can sleep on the couch," said Ashley,
ignoring the surprised looks on the other two faces. "I’ll get some
blankets."

"Cole’s not gonna care for that," muttered
Stan.

When Ashley stopped in the doorway and
turned, Stan’s face was already bright red. There were words on her
lips, but she bit them off. She looked into Marie’s eyes and hated
what she saw there. The girl had had a crush on Cole for months,
and Ashley hadn’t figured out yet how to deal with it or how to
convince her that
she
was not a rival. Shaking her head she
hurried to the hall closet for bedding. When she returned Stan and
Paulie were already preparing to leave.