"I'll keep it in mind for the next time." I don't reach for the door handle.
"This is your last chance to start walking," he warns as he slides the gear shifter into first.
"Let's take a drive," I suggest, keeping my voice neutral.
He drops his gaze, eyes shifting below lowered lids. His eyes meet mine and I see the quick flash of his resolve, a decision made, and something unreadable and distrustful in our momentary connection. He pulls the car onto the road.
Steven Kroller is, I'm guessing, a twenty-year-old maniac. Definitely young and out of control. Driving ninety miles an hour down the wrong side of the highway is apparently fun and games to this kid. When an oncoming car approaches, he plays chicken, and only swerves to get out of the way after the other car pulled onto the berm.
"What would you have done if they crashed?" I ask.
"They're fine," he says, glancing in the rearview mirror.
"Would you have gone back?"
"I don't know. I think I would crash my own car to see what it feels like."
"What's the death wish about?"
"Why? Are you ready to get out now?"
"No."
"So, you're screwed up, too."
"Probably in a different way than you are," I say.
He chews on my answer while watching the road, then asks, "Want to go pick up some beers?"
Before I answer, his cell phone rings.
He adjusts the volume of the music before answering. "Hello.” There’s a short pause. "Yeah, I can fill in," Steven says. "Thanks, Yvette. Tell Lance his timing couldn't have been better."
Steven grabs a pen and an envelope out of the glove box and scribbles an address while driving. "Got it," he says. "I'll come in tonight."
He returns the phone to the cubby hole built into the dash. "Where do you want let out? I have to go to work."
"For Lance De'Lao?" I ask, remembering the record producer and his assistant, Yvette. My curiosity is piqued. When the world throws a coincidence this big in your face, it's best to pay extra attention.
"Yeah. You know him?"
"He's producing a friend of mine’s first album."
"Mostly Mayhem?"
"That’s right. Do you know Jared and the band?" I ask.
"I've seen them play a few times, but never talked to them. Lance needs me to help on a tour. I'll be contracted to The Shy Lights, but I heard Mostly Mayhem is their opener."
"What do you do?" I ask.
"Stage hand. I’ll take any gig that gets me out of the house and away from the step-monster."
"If you've got a job to go to, does that mean you'll stop trying to kill people, including yourself?"
My question warrants one of his detached looks, but no answer.
The city lights of Durango lie ahead of us. Over the past few days, Jared and his band have been recording in Lance's new studio. After all the problems with ghosts and a girl dying at Lance's main residence, Castle Hill, the studio and the equipment had been moved to the new city location.
"I know where the studio is if you don’t. I can direct you there and then I'll take off for a friend’s house."
I knew about the new recording studio because Juliana and I had stopped by the night before to watch Jared and the band work on their album. It was great to be with Juliana, but stressful with Marcus nearby. I ended up leaving early so Juliana could hang out with her brother — without my ex-mentor and Angel of Death, Marcus, threatening to banish me or cause some other ridiculous and unwanted scene. I wonder how Marcus is going to handle the fact that my new client is going to be on tour with the bands. He can't stop me now and he's going to be chafed about it, I'm sure.
"I guess that’ll be all right." Steven reaches for the volume knob as he drives into the city.
The way he reacts to me makes my extra sensory nerves prickle. There's something different about him, and unlike the other suicidal cases I've dealt with. It's as if he doesn't give two cents about his life. Living or dying seems to make no difference either way. Once again, his actions confirm my theories as we round the last stretch of highway before entering the main part of town.
"Is your belt on?" he asks.
I glance over at this non-descript twenty-ish male in time to see him yank the wheel and suddenly cut across the highway for the drainage ditch on the other side. He doesn't look at me or say anything else as he veers the car onto a concrete drainage shoot leading down a steep bank to the water below. His car doesn't fit and he has two wheels on the grass and two in the ditch. The bumpy ride is enough to rattle the teeth out of his head as we head down the slope at breakneck speed. When we reach the bottom, the front spoiler of the car scrapes the concrete with a sickening grind of plastic and metal against the ground. The city’s runoff water is shallow, but I still don't think he should be driving a car through it. Steven kills the headlights, and rips the wheel to the right, sending the back end of the car whipping out and careening across the slick algae covered concrete. Using quick hands on the spinning steering wheel, he recovers, straightens out, and nails the gas pedal. The tires screech as they regain their grip and peel out. The streetlights give us just enough light to see the barrier of the right and left walls of the drainage ditch. Ahead, I notice a black void of a shadowed overpass. The culverts running under the road can't be large enough for the car and I brace myself for whatever is coming next.
He guns the engine through the runoff and to the left side of the ditch. He hits a similar shoot like the one we came down, going even faster uphill. For me, there are no consequences if he crashes the car. I'm already dead. I won't feel pain or loss, but that doesn't mean I want to be part of this mania, either. Besides, mangled bodies are never pleasant for me or the soul who has just left their corporeal body behind.
The headlights remain off and there are no convenient streetlamps guiding the way. It's as dark as any moonless night can be, and I don't understand how he’s able to keep the car moving in the right direction. The driver’s side is on the concrete and I’m on the rough side. I can’t help but imagine the car’s suspension being battered and abused to the breaking point. I suspect the top of the ditch is near and the car levels out a few yards later. Steven flips the lights on and we see a deer standing in the weeds, eyes glowing unnaturally iridescent in the halogen beams. He swerves to miss the deer, but the car is moving too fast and lifts onto the two left wheels.
So this is it, I think. He's going to roll the car and kill himself. I was able to ride along and even talk with him before he died. Escorting him to the afterlife will be the easy part. I've done it hundreds of times, but I was getting used to the idea of my client living and finding a better life. Steven reacts, and I'm unsure if he does it on purpose or by sheer coincidence and luck. He works the brake and gas pedal in a combination that places the car back on all four tires.
We careen over a sidewalk and onto the street. Fortunately, there are no cars or people around. The car skids to a halt and he climbs out, leaving the door open. I follow my client to make sure he isn't doing something else I wouldn't want to miss.
He runs away from the vehicle and then stops just as suddenly.
"Shit. I almost hit a deer," he says, panting.
The flash of white tails bounce away through the weeds — apparently, there was more than one deer — and they bound off toward the cover of some nearby trees.
"You care about the deer, but not yourself," I say.
"They're innocent. I'm not."
"What are you guilty of?" I’m trying to find out why this seemingly healthy guy wants to throw his life away.
"I was born," he says bitterly. "Born a sinner. That's what I've been told since the day I came into this world."
His anger rises and I'm glad to see it. I want to know what makes him tick. Anger, irritation, resentment, frustration. Anything is better than the dull emptiness he expresses with such effortlessness.
"Whoever told you that was an ignorant git," I say.
> "My stepmother’s family has been threatening me with hellfire and damnation since I could walk."
"You know it's not true, right?"
His contempt and lifetime of being misunderstood are clear to me in his stiff shoulders and clenched fists even though he shows no emotion on his face. He walks to the lip of the drainage shed, keeping his back to me. "I don't know shit. I don't feel anything and I don't care about anything."
"That's why you’re doing this, isn't it?" I say softly, unsure if he can hear me. "Why you risk your life for a thrill. To feel something."
"You don't know shit, either." With head lowered, Steven returns to the car.
He drives away and I don't follow.
Chapter Two: Empathy
Juliana
"If you've come to daydream and piddle away the day, we'll do this another time," he says plainly.
"I'm trying. I really am. There's so much going on right now with my family. It's hard not to get distracted."
"Then this is the perfect time to train your focus. When you are inattentive, it is easy for menacing spirits to harass you."
"That explains a lot," I say, thinking how preoccupied I've been this entire summer, which ultimately led to being haunted by ghosts, followed by demons, and possessed by a succubus. Those are only the highlights. Now, visions are plaguing me.
“It happened again this morning,” I say.
“Tell me what you saw,” Chris says.
“I was eating a bowl of cereal and just like that, I was completely gone. Like my mind was being controlled by aliens or something. Why is this happening now? I don’t like being out of control in that way. The visions come to me and I have no power to stop them. What if I had been cooking? I could have burnt my house down.”
“I do not believe you will set fire to your kitchen,” he says flatly. “Tell me everything you remember.”
Chris Abeyta, my shaman friend, and lately, my personal healer and otherworldly adviser, has been sitting at his workbench stringing beads on sinew since I walked into the sunroom at the back of his cabin. I'm here for our second official training session. He convinced me how important it is that I learn how to control and use my paranormal abilities. After I psychically took my brother's deadly virus from him into my own body and nearly died from that little stunt, the importance became even more evident. I didn't know it was possible to take sickness from someone, and yet I still accomplished the unimaginable feat. I also had my neck sliced open by my brother's girlfriend, Star. Although it was mostly an accident by a girl who suffered from mental health issues, Chris believes if I had used my ability to read people’s auras and energies, I would have known how unstable she was. Since I'm now trying to take better care of myself, I'm taking Chris up on his offer to teach me how to wield the "gifts" I've been given by “Creator” — what he calls the great and vast universe. My attempts to ignore and pretend I can't see and hear the dead, or all the other weirdo stuff I can do, is working out about as well as ignoring an atom bomb.
“In the vision, there was a lot of darkness. And it’s hard to breathe,” I say. “I think it’s nighttime and there were other people with me.”
“Male or female?” Chris interrupts as I concentrate on remembering what I saw mid-cornflakes.
I attempt to look deeper into my brain. “Male. Definitely all guys. I’m the only girl.”
“You are in the vision?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Does it matter?”
His face reveals little change of expression as he half-heartedly shrugs and returns his attention to the necklace of beads he’s assembling.
“Go on,” he says.
Swallowing the lump of trepidation in the back of my throat, I close my eyes and try to recall the images. “Heavy and hot breath in the dark. Not from humans, but from animals, I think. There’s sounds I can’t explain. A lot of movement and fear. It’s so dark that I’m mostly feeling things and not seeing them. I’m afraid I’m going to fall. My throat is burning.” Replaying the vision refreshes the unease and a shudder passes through my body.
“Tell me the rest,” Chris says.
“Easy for you to say,” I mutter, but continue.
“There’s fire. Flames in the sky. The fear almost overwhelms me. Ghosts circle us. There’s chaos hitting me from all directions. Inside me and outside of me — if that makes any sense. Which it probably doesn’t. Unrecognizable movements and sounds. The pounding sounds are like a heartbeat, or a dozen heartbeats, and then more black. I remember coughing and being surrounded by the dark for a long time before my bowl of cereal was staring back at me again.”
"Okay. This is for you." He hands me the string of beads.
They're little more than what I made for my mom in preschool. But the beads are warm and smooth in my hand and I lower them to my side, not sure what to do with them. “Thanks?” I say with a doubtful look. “That’s all you’ve got for me?”
Chris's eyelids flicker in his perpetual state of being perturbed with me. His down-turned mouth deepens in disapproval at my choice of words. "The necklace will protect you against the newly dead. And the answer is yes. That is all I have to say about your latest vision, Ant."
His given nickname for me isn't my favorite. I'd much rather be called vixen and love — Nathaniel's choices. I sigh contentedly, thinking about the sound of Nathaniel's voice.
"Juliana, if you are coming with me today, you need to train your teenaged brain to remain alert."
"I thought we were staying at your house today," I say quickly, snapping out of my dreamy memory of Nathaniel and his silky voice and muscular body. Thinking about my boyfriend is so much easier than dealing with the rest of my life and the ghosts and spirits who show up unannounced and uninvited.
"Come or do not. I must see my father. I will think on your vision while we drive."
"To the reservation?" I ask.
"That's where he lives."
I swallow to moisten my suddenly dry mouth. No definitive answer comes to mind. I've only been on the reservation outside of town for open-to-the-public festivals and gatherings. My grandfather had relations there once, but he said our relatives moved away or joined the spirit world a long time ago. My grandmother's people are from the northeast. Even though I'm half Native American, I've never felt any connection to the local tribes in my area of the Southwest.
"Are we still working on protection and communicating with the spirits today?"
"Yes, Ant." Chris tucks another string of beads into the breast pocket of his army green canvas vest. "My father would like to meet you," he adds.
"Why's that?" I ask.
"A shaman’s motives are his own. You should ask him if you want to know."
"Should I be worried?" I ask.
Chris gives me one of his characteristically unreadable flat stares before walking out the back door.
∞
A bay colored horse rears and bucks inside the paddock as we roll down the dusty driveway. The horse nearly collides with the fence before switching directions on a dime and barreling toward the opposite corner of the corralled yard. I crane my neck, looking for a problem or whatever has the horse worked up, but a sun-faded wooden barn blocks my view as we continue toward an adobe house.
I turn back around in the truck seat. "Your dad owns horses?" I ask Chris.
"And cats, chickens, and probably some sheep. And—" He doesn't finish. The pickup truck stops in front of an animal sprawled across the road. The dog is nearly identical in color to the sandy dirt. I know the dog’s alive because he lifts his nose, nostrils twitching as he processes our scent. The dog relaxes once more to laze in the sun and ignore the arrival of visitors.
"And dogs," Chris finishes. "That's Bird." Chris stares at the napping indeterminable breed of dog. "Lula will be the one who looks like she's starving. She's not and don't let her fool you. And Fetch is the creature who never leaves my father's side except to chase a stick, should someone have pity on him and throw it."
Chris shifts into park and shuts off the truck. After a formal introduction to Bird, who barely lifts his head to sniff my hand, we walk toward the house. Pinion trees, sagebrush, and chamisa line the drive. Rocky bluffs rise above the Piedra River, running wide and lazy behind the house.
"Did you grow up here?"
"Sometimes," Chris says cryptically.
"What does that mean?" I ask.
He doesn't answer because we hear the horse from the paddock whinny followed by a loud crack of wood. Chris opens the screen door of the house and two dogs nearly run me over in their haste to get outside.
“White Wolf, you in there?”
“You call your father White Wolf?” I ask.
“Sometimes,” he says again. “He’s not here,” Chris adds and turns on his booted heel.
The screen door clicks shut behind us as we start walking toward the barn. Near the paddock area, I see the horse prancing wild-eyed in the far corner of its fenced yard. I notice a couple of broken fence rails, but otherwise the area looks secure.
"What's the matter?" I ask as we near the barn door.
"Hush," Chris says with an abrupt wave of his hand.
I slow my approach, suddenly feeling queasy and unsure if I want to enter the barn. One more step forward and I know I don't. Reaching out, I place my hand on Chris's arm. The sudden clenching in my gut almost has me doubled over.
Chris stills and turns a penetrating gaze on me. "Jules, what is wrong?"
"I'm sick," I manage to say. "There's something really wrong."
"Stay here. I need to check on the other horse and find my father."
A quick nod and I back away from the barn. I hear an animal snorting, blowing, and stamping the ground inside. A loud whinny echoes out of the open door. The bay horse in the paddock answers in return. Out of curiosity, I hurry down the length of the barn to check on the reddish-brown horse in the paddock. It's galloping straight in my direction. The massive animal rears at the last second before crashing into the fence. She still looks crazy-eyed and her skin shivers over the withers as she sees me. Instead of jumping out of the way, I cower, but the horse manages to twist away. Her front forelock buckles and she falls to her knee. I gasp in empathy and reach a hand out as if I can help steady her. She recovers and bolts for the other side of the yard.
Destined to Fall (An Angel Falls Book 5) Page 2
