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“How much farther?” Wiley panted as he came up behind Harrison. The young man dropped to his knees, looking as if he would be happy to just curl up in the dirt right there and take a nap.
“Maybe a mile. I think.” He’d lost track of how far they’d come already. They’d been forced off the trail numerous times, had to backtrack and find alternate routes to the natural red rock arc. Every once in a while, Baer would shift into a large bird and scout ahead. When he returned, he’d get everyone moving in the right direction once again.
They’d set out shortly after sunrise. There was no reason to wait for the cover of darkness. John and all the pestilents knew they were coming. Might as well benefit from the sunlight so they could see what the hell they were doing.
The trip itself should have taken less than ninety minutes, but they were now on hour three of this death hike and still had at least a mile to go.
“We’ve got this.” Hale’s confidence was carried on the wind, sliding into Harrison’s ear just a second before arms wrapped around his shoulders. Harrison looked to find Hale’s sweaty, blood-splattered face smiling at him. That wonderful smile didn’t quite reach his blue eyes. They appeared dull with fatigue and possible pain.
Harrison forced his own smile, not wanting Hale to worry about him. But then, a new vision flashed across his brain. He could clearly see himself and Hale, his new soul mate draped across his back behind the scrawny, leafless tree. A pair of pestilents were crawling up the side of the trail to his left. They launched themselves at them, knocking them down. Silver blades flashed in the brilliant late-morning sun just as they plunged.
A hard gasp pulled Harrison out of the vision. He blinked a couple of times, his gaze finally focusing on Wiley’s confused expression. Hale’s warm arms were still wrapped around him.
Reaching across, he grabbed the gun Wiley had set between them with his left hand. He tightened the fingers of his right hand around Hale’s forearm and rolled, putting his body between Hale and the trail. As he moved, the two pestilents he’d seen in his vision were just poking their heads above the slope on the left side of the trail.
Lifting the gun, Harrison squeezed off two rounds, burying bullets in the forehead of each pestilent. They collapsed dead on the side of the trail, their black blood oozing out. There had been no smell to alert the Weavers to their presence this time.
“Holy shit!” Wiley gasped.
“Nice shootin’, Tex,” Hale teased.
A couple of seconds later, a large ram scrambled across the sliding rocks and dirt, shifting back into Baer as soon as he was within a few feet of his mate. “Are you all right?” Baer demanded.
“Yeah, Harrison…Harrison got them,” Wiley said. He patted Baer’s arm where it was wrapped around the smaller man like Baer meant to pull him into his larger frame.
“A vision?” Hale inquired.
Harrison nodded. “A quick one.” He lowered the gun he was still holding pointed toward the dead pestilents and pushed upward so that he wasn’t lying on his mate.
“And good reflexes.” Hale rose as well, a hand lingering on Harrison’s shoulder as if he were still worried about his mate. Or maybe he simply wasn’t ready to let him go yet.
“Anything about the final spell or what’s up ahead?” Wiley asked.
The hope in that question was a knife slice through his heart. He couldn’t blame Wiley for his wishful thinking, but it killed him to keep telling the man no. He didn’t want to lose Hale any more than Wiley wanted to lose Baer. But so far, there had only been the final vision where the six men died after completing the spell and closing the rift.
“Nothing. They just happen in flashes and seem to be just a few minutes or even seconds into the future. I can’t…I can’t control it or guide it.” Harrison could hear the frustration thickening his voice, but he couldn’t clear it away. There was no wrapping his emotions up and packing them away in the face of duty and the greater good. Hale was going to die if he didn’t come up with a solution to this impossible problem.
Hale’s warm lips brushed against the shell of his ear. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
“It’s not!”
“It is. I know it will be okay.”
Harrison didn’t have Hale’s confidence or blind belief that they’d find a way out of this. He didn’t want to let Hale go and just believe they’d find each other again in another lifetime. He wanted this lifetime with this man.
He wanted that for all the Weavers, as well as all the Keepers who lived and died fighting the pestilents. So much death and destruction had stretched over endless centuries. Couldn’t they truly win for once?
