Page 144 of Into the Mist

His brow furrowed. Al sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his blood-stained hand. “What are you talking about?”

Stella smiled. “Exactly what I said. The green fog has changed some of us. For example, I know things I didn’t before—things that are going to happen—things that always come true. And I know something about you, Alvin Rutland.”

When Stella didn’t continue, his lips twisted in irritation. “What do you think you know about me?”

“That you’re a dead man walking. That bloody nose of yours is going to kill you if nothing else ends your life before it. I know that for sure. So, do you really want to meet your god, or whatever you believe in, with their deaths on your conscience?”

Al’s face flushed red again, and then he threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, girly, that’s a good one!” Then his laughter slid away, and his expression went flat. “But you’ve saved me another burr. Might as well go first, and your friends will join you.” Rutland turned the rifle on Stella. “Say bye-bye.”

Ford exploded forward as he shouted, “Mercury, get the gun!”

Rutland squeezed the trigger of the automatic rifle just before Ford reached him. The machinegun blast tore through Ford’s chest, but his momentum carried him into Rutland. Ford hit him low, like a professional linebacker. Legs pumping, Oxford Xavier Diaz lifted Rutland, and the two of them flew backward together into the wave of green fog.

“No!” Mercury screamed as she wrenched open the passenger door, popped the glove box and pulled out the .38. She flipped off the safety and raced into the green fog just as Al was pushing Ford off of him and raising the assault rifle again. Mercury fired the pistol, and kept firing it as she strode forward. Later, she remembered that she’d been screaming the entire time. Then, during that moment, she heard nothing except the thunder of her own heartbeat as Rutland’s body convulsed and fell backward.

Mercury shoved the pistol into her jacket pocket and reached down into the fog, grabbed Ford under his arms, and pulled him up and out of the lapping green. She carried him as she sprinted back to the truck. Stella was already behind the wheel. Mercury jumped into the cab, pulling Ford with her. “Get us out of here!” She yelled as Khaleesi whimpered and pressed against Mercury’s side.

Stella floored the truck and they raced from Mitchell up 26 and into the mountains above the fog.

“Ford! Ford! Can you hear me? Wake up, Ford! Wake up!” He lay across Mercury’s lap. Blood poured from holes punched through Ford’s chest, front and back. If felt to Mercury as if she would drown in his blood—that it would fill the cab and turn her entire world red. “Hurry, Stella! We have to get him to Gemma! Hurry!”

“I am! I am!” Stella sobbed as the truck sped along the highway, tires screaming while she dodged sinkholes and stalled vehicles. Stella shrugged out of her sweater and tossed it to Mercury. “Use this to try to stop the bleeding.”

Mercury pressed the sweater to Ford’s chest. He drew in a shallow breath and his eyes opened.

“Ford! It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay! Stella will get us to Gemma. She’ll fix you, just like she did me!” Mercury hugged him to her, cradling him in her arms like he was a child. “So you have to hold on. Please hold on!”

“Gemma cannot save a dead man.” He rasped the words as blood bubbled between his lips, from his nose and ears and dribbled onto his beard.

“No! Don’t you dare give up!”

“I breathed in the fog. It—it broke me. I can feel it… worse than the bullets.”

“No!” Mercury sobbed.

Ford lifted his hand and touched her cheek. “Bellota, I would have liked to have made a new world with you.”

He breathed in a rattling breath, let it out slowly, and then Oxford Xavier Diaz breathed no more.

CHAPTER

42

LED BYMERCURY,the women bathed and prepared Ford’s body for burial in silence. Their sadness was reflected in the tears that washed freely down their cheeks, and their affection for him was clear in every compassionate touch. After his body was clean, dressed in the new clothes he’d worn at the festival, and lovingly wrapped in a soft blanket, they buried Ford just before sunset, near the creek, in a grove of cedar trees.

While they’d been preparing Ford’s body and digging his grave, Mercury had thought about what kind of ceremony he would’ve liked. She considered and discarded rites from Pagan funerals she’d attended, finally deciding to speak from her heart.

Everyone wore what they considered their best clothes. Mercury smiled through her tears as she pulled on the beautiful dress she’d been wearing when Ford had waltzed her around the firepit. She asked their little group to circle around Ford’s newly dug—and filled—grave.

“Please face east and then turn with me as I call the elements,” Mercury said. With her friends—her family—she faced east and invoked, “Air, I call you to this Rite of Passage.” Then Mercury led the group clockwise to the south and called, “Fire, I call you to this Rite of Passage.” She continued to the west. “Water, I call you to this Rite of Passage.” And, finally, north to invoke, “Earth, I call you to this Rite of Passage.”

Then Mercury spoke the words that lifted from her heart.

“Those of us who believe in the Olde Ways know that when a person dies, it is only their shell that we lose—that the soul, the spirit, will return again in a newborn body to live another life. This is a tenet of our Pagan faith that has been taught since long before recorded words.”

Mercury walked the circle of her friends, filling the wineglass they each held, as she continued, “O gracious Lady of the Earth, She who gives our worn bodies rest—I do invoke your presence. O powerful Lord of the Forests, He who embodies all that is wild and male in this land—I do invoke your presence. We thank thee for protecting and guiding Oxford Xavier Dias to the golden portal of the Summerlands beyond our own, and we ask that Ford knows the love and well-wishes we hold for him within our hearts.”

Mercury completed the circle and moved to the center of the grave as she filled her own wineglass and then put the bottle down. She lifted her glass, and her friends lifted theirs in response. “I propose a toast—to the gracious and lovely Goddess of the Earth. Blessed be!”