Page 28 of Flames and Blood

They go up. Kent takes the shelf. Meyer is on the ledge on the far side before I see him move.

I take my place at the narrow part. There’s nothing left to do but wait for engines.

Waiting is the one part of this work that sixty years hasn’t made easier.

“How long have we got?” Kent asks from the shelf. Quiet. It carries anyway up here.

“Before they arrive, or before the sun does?”

“Either.”

“They’re an hour out at the pace that road allows. The sun’s about one hour behind them.”

“So we’ve got an hour after they get here.”

“You’ve got less than that. You want to be off this rock and under something before the sky changes, and so do I.”

“Everything takes an hour,” Meyer says from the far side.

“Not tonight.”

Nobody says anything after that.

Then it comes.

Her mouth at my throat. Heat. Teeth. The weight of her against me—

My hand is flat on the rock wall.

I don’t remember putting it there. I’m braced against cold granite in the dark, and there’s an ache in my throat with nothing to cause it.

Half a second. Less.

“What the fuck?” I barely realize I’ve said it out loud.

Odile’s voice echoes in my head: ‘Keep an open mind, Crowe. Do you believe in Fate?’

No. I don’t, and I’m not going to start on a mountain an hour before a fight.

I can’t shake it. My throat aches where nothing touched it.

“You say something?” Kent asks, quiet, from the shelf.

“No. All good.” I take my hand off the rock, and put my eyes back on the road.

Then engines, and there are two of them.

Two sets of gears, both working the grade below us, one behind the other.

“That’s two vehicles,” Meyer says.

“I hear it.”

“You planned for one.”

“Warned about two,” Kent reminds him.

“Nothing changes. The transport is still the transport. Wait for it to stop.”