“I know what Radell Cain has planned next. I’ve seen him do things like this before. He’s going to make you responsible for the deaths of innocent people if you refuse to help him. He’s going to force you to choose.”
Alex stared ahead as he inched along the rocky ruts. He had considered such questions in the back of his mind. He hated to bring them to the front, to dwell on them, to contemplate having to make such a choice.
As they drove on deeper into the woods, they eventually passed two side roads that were on the map that Hal Halverson had drawn for him. Those roads essentially circled the entire property. The road he was on was the only one that went deeper in toward what the people of the Daggett Society called the crown jewel of the property: Castle Mountain.
They had long since left the buffer property that he controlled through the Daggett Trust, and were now on the land that he had inherited. It seemed surreal to think that he actually owned everything he could see.
Another hour and a half of tough going finally brought them to a circular spot that had been cleared so that vehicles could turn around. Off to the left side was a brook that came from farther into the property. Beside the brook Alex saw a trailhead. He circled the Jeep around and parked.
As he got out and shut the door, Alex noted that the brook rushing over rocks created a lot of noise that would mask the sound of anyone who might be sneaking up. He scanned the woods before he lifted the tailgate so they could get their gear out. The dark wooden box with the knife was sitting in the back, seeming to wait for him.
Underneath the velvet he found a black leather sheath trimmed in silver that looked just like the one Jax had. He threaded the sheath onto his belt, placing it on the left side behind the pouch holding two spare magazines. He had the other four spare magazines in an easily accessible pocket on the side of the backpack. He had also packed a number of boxes of ammunition in the backpack. Ammo was heavy, but he wasn’t about to leave it behind.
Ben always told him that you could never have enough guns or ammo. He wished now that he had taken the time to get another gun. He was thankful to at least have one and to know that it was as dependable as a rock.
Jax lifted the silver-handled knife out of the box. She pulled hers out to look at them together. The one from the box still had her blood on it.
Alex gestured at the weapons lying in her hands. “It’s mind-boggling to think that those two knives haven’t been together for probably a thousand years or more.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.
When she handed him the knife, he started to wipe the blood off. Jax stopped him. “No, leave it.”
Alex frowned at her. “Why?”
“These blades were made to draw blood. It should have a taste to wake it from its long sleep to its purpose.”
Alex gazed into her resolute eyes for a moment, then slid the knife, still stained with blood, into its sheath on his belt.
He and Jax silently went about the task of getting their gear together. It was already early afternoon. Fixing the truck and the drive up had taken most of the morning. He knew that there was no way they would make it all the way in to Castle Mountain that day. They would have to set up a camp and make it the rest of the way to their destination the next day.
He supposed that Radell Cain, Sedrick Vendis, and Yuri the pirate could simply pop in at Alex’s destination without having to go through the effort of a long hike. He certainly had no doubt that they would show up.
Alex was looking forward to finally meeting the visionary artist who was creating a new reality. His blood boiled with rage in anticipation of meeting him.
Jax looked like she knew what she was doing with the camping gear. She got her pack together quickly and efficiently, then hoisted it up onto her back and buckled the waist strap. Alex did the same. Their packs had collapsible water containers and they also had water bottles hooked on utility belts.
As they left the Jeep and started into the woods the calls of birds echoed through the trees. Walking along side by side in the more open areas, they shared a couple of packages of rolled-up meat and cheese. They had preserved food, but the meat wouldn’t keep, so they ate it all as they made their way deeper into the gloom.
Farther in, the trail became less defined, but it wasn’t difficult to follow. The security people probably used the trail into the interior of the property, and over the time that the Daggett Trust had protected the land the trail had become a reasonably well-defined route. Besides the roads, Hal had also marked such trails on the property. There weren’t a lot of them, but they provided access to just about any corner of the land. As he walked along, Alex could see that there were deer trails that could probably be followed if need be.
As the afternoon wore on, the land began rising. At first it was gentle slopes, but it soon began to get rocky and more difficult to climb. They were both breathing hard as they ascended a series of ridges, having to go down the back side of each one before going up again to get over the next.
After the ridges, the trail took switchbacks up a steep area with a series of cliffs. Each of the rock faces wasn’t all that high, but negotiating them was difficult, especially carrying all the gear they had. In some of the places Jax’s legs weren’t long enough and Alex had to lie on the upper trail and reach down to help pull her up so that she wouldn’t have to take time to climb around. Other than that, he was having a hard time keeping up with her.
As they went higher, the mist thickened. It felt cool on Alex’s sweaty face. The land finally leveled a little. The trail wound its way up through trees with gnarled roots clinging to seams in areas of exposed granite ledge. Leaving the ledges behind, they plunged back into thicker woods. Moss underfoot made it a quiet walk.
“It won’t be long until dark,” Jax said back over her shoulder. “With the cloud cover there won’t be any moon or stars. It’s going to be a pitch-black night. Hiking in this kind of terrain after it gets dark is dangerous. You could walk off a rock face, or break a leg in a hole. We’re going to have to think about setting up camp pretty soon.”
Alex sighed. He was weary from their pace, but he hated to have to stop. He had wanted to get closer to their destination, but he knew that she had a lot more experience at this kind of thing and so he took her advice seriously.
“How about if we keep pushing for just a little longer. We can always use flashlights to help us set up camp.”
She agreed, but told him that it wouldn’t be long until it would be too dark to push on. Everything soon began losing its color, making the trees look gray. Darkness was falling quicker than he would have thought.
And then they came out of the closed trail to a small opening in the woods that for the first time gave them a view into the distance. They halted together, surprised by the unexpected sight.
Silhouetted against the fading gray sky while at the same time lit a little from the obscured sun setting to the left stood Castle Mountain, rising up before them from the undulating, rolling landscape.
It didn’t really look at all like a castle to Alex. It looked more like a plateau rising up out of the surrounding forests. Its top wasn’t flat, though, instead looking somewhat crenellated with irregular rock outcroppings rising and falling across the surface of the top.
“Dear spirits,” Jax whispered.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“I don’t believe it.”
“What don’t you believe?”
“It looks very much like a place in my world called the People’s Palace.” She shook her head. “I can hardly believe what I’m seeing, but I guess, when I think about it, I’ve somehow expected all along to see it.”
“Sure doesn’t look much like a castle to me. What’s so special about the People’s Palace?”
“It’s the place where our worlds were split apart. Up there, at least up there in my world, is a place called the Garden of Life. From there, at the end of a long struggle, people were banished to this worl
d. It only makes sense for that to be the place of connection, the place where the gateway would be.”
The enormity of such a concept gave Alex pause.
She pointed. “Can you see that line rising up diagonally from the bottom left toward the top right?”
Alex squinted into the gathering darkness. “Okay, I see it now.”
“It looks like a narrow, angled ridge. In my world that’s a road up the plateau to the palace at the top.” She let out a sigh. “From here it’s probably a hike of four hours to get there. We’d better look for a place to camp and get some sleep.”
56.
THE TRAIL SOON TOOK THEM BACK into the shelter of the woods. They found a place that Jax liked for a camp because there was a rock overhang to protect them in case it started to rain. In the gloom they quickly set up their tent and unrolled the sleeping bags.
“Tonight we should stand watches,” she told him as she used rocks to make a fire ring around an area she had quickly scraped clear of forest litter. “A fire could possibly be seen, but it’s more important that we can see them—and not die of exposure.”
Gathering wood nearby, he looked back over his shoulder. “You think that watches are necessary?”
“I hope not,” she said. “But being this close I wouldn’t want both of us to be asleep and have Yuri and his friends show up in the dark.”
Alex built kindling up in the center of the fire ring and lit it with a match. He had been about to argue the point of a watch, but her words gave him pause. “All right. But only if you will take the gun on your watch.”
She said she would. He handed her a foil pouch and a plastic spoon. In the dark he wasn’t sure if he had pulled out meatloaf or roast pork. His was meatloaf. They ate in silence, listening to the coyotes in the distant mountains. It was a spooky sound to hear all alone so far out in the woods.
When they were finished Jax said that if it was all right with him she was really tired and would rather sleep first and take her watch the second half of the night. Alex agreed. She found a comfortable place on a flat rock just out of the ring of light from the fire and told him that it was a good place to keep his eye on things without being blinded by the fire. She told him to make sure to keep wood on the fire.
She rested her arms on his shoulders and clasped her fingers together behind his head. “Come wake me when it’s my turn.”
Before he knew it, she was kissing him. It was a lonely, desperate kind of kiss. It was wonderful only in the sense that they at least had each other. He understood her emotion, and how it came out in the embrace. They were both dispirited by the killing of innocent people earlier that day. The kiss wasn’t passion so much as it was meant to be comfort.
Alex helped her get into her sleeping bag, since she’d never seen one before. When she was settled in, he went to the rock and sat, resting his gun in his lap.
The mist came and went, but at least it didn’t rain. He checked his watch every once in a while and waited longer than half the night to let her have a little extra sleep.
When he woke her, she put her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. It felt like a fearful, lonely hug.
He put more wood on the fire for her; then, when she sat on the rock, he put the gun in her lap. On the long drive from Nebraska to Maine he had explained how it worked in case she ever needed to use it. At night he had taught her to switch magazines and clear a jam. She was familiar enough that he didn’t feel he needed to give her another lesson.
Jax put her arms around his neck again and pulled him close. “Alex, you do know how much you mean to me, don’t you?”
Alex smiled in the darkness. He pulled back to gaze at her face. Firelight sparkled in her beautiful brown eyes.
He thought about that morning back at the motel in Westfield. He smiled to reassure her. “You made it quite clear.”
“I would do anything for you. I hope you know that. You won’t ever doubt me, will you?”
He smiled. “Never.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. She put her hands to each side of his face as she gazed into his eyes. “Alex . . . would you do anything for me?”
He frowned a little. “What is it you want me to do?”
“To say you love me.”
Alex had wanted to say it a thousand times. He guessed he had always been waiting for the right time. That morning had been the right time. In his whole life, nothing had made him happier than when he’d heard those same words from her lips.
“I love you, Jax Amnell.”
“I love you, Alexander Rahl, defender of man.”
She kissed him softly, then pulled back just a little.
“Promise me,” she said as she looked at him from inches away, “promise me that you will never doubt that I love you, that you will never doubt that I will always love you as long as I draw breath.”
“Jax, are you all right?”
“I will be if you promise me.”
Alex ran a hand tenderly down her hair. “I promise—as long as you promise the same.”
“I do,” she whispered before kissing him again.
She let out a reluctant sigh. “You had better get some sleep. It will be light sooner than you think.”
Alex lifted an eyebrow. “Now you want me to try to sleep? After that, you think I will be able to sleep?”
She smiled a strangely sad smile and gave him a quick kiss. “Yes. You need to sleep. I want you to be strong tomorrow.”
“For you, anything.”
Alex crawled into his sleeping bag and tried to go to sleep. His heart seemed to be beating too fast for him to ever be able to sleep. He could think of little other than those precious words from her.
Yet his mind started drifting to the dangers she faced. What with alternating between fear and rage at those dangers, it was difficult to try to sleep, but somewhere in that wild swing of emotions, as thoughts of her filled every part of him, he was so overcome with exhaustion that it carried him into a sound sleep.
When he woke up, it was just getting light. He yawned, wondering why Jax hadn’t woken him up sooner.
As he turned, he saw the gun lying not far from his head.
Alex sat up in a rush, staring at the gun, trying to make sense of it.
“Jax?” he called out from the tent as he picked up the gun.
She didn’t answer. She should have been close enough to hear him.
He untangled himself from the sleeping bag and raced out of the small tent.
The fire was dead.
Jax was gone.
57.
ALEX FRANTICALLY SEARCHED AROUND THE CAMPSITE, hoping against hope that he was wrong and that Jax was actually close at hand. He screamed her name as he looked. Panting in panic, he realized that he wasn’t mistaken. She was gone.
He searched the site, looking for the footprints of intruders. He didn’t see any. At the trail, he found a partial print left by her boot. It was headed in the direction of the mountain.
With a sinking feeling of icy dread, Alex knew what she had done, and why.
He snatched up his pack and threw it on. He left the tent and the gear they had gotten out. He took time only to grab the water bottles. Her pack was leaned up against the rock where she had been sitting. He left it and took off up the trail.
Before he had gone far, a man suddenly appeared directly in front of him in the trail. He was big, perhaps in his early twenties. He looked like he belonged in a biker gang. His matted brown hair didn’t appear to have ever seen a brush. Alex froze. The man grinned wickedly.
“Radell Cain has a message for you,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice.
“I have a message for him,” Alex said as he drew his gun.
He put a bullet in the center of the man’s chest.
Birds took to wing at the resounding bang.
With a look of stunned shock on his face, the man crumpled to the ground, groaning. The sound of the single gunshot echoed through the woods to reflect back from t
he mountain up ahead.
Ben had taught him to quickly fire two or three rounds into the center mass of a threat, and if warranted, more. The man was seriously wounded. There would be no help for him out in the middle of such remote woods. The only thing that would find him would be the coyotes. Alex had a limited supply of ammunition; he wasn’t going to waste any on a man who clearly wasn’t going to present further threat or last long.
He stepped over the gasping, dying man and hurried up the trail.
As the morning wore on, Alex only pressed on harder. Instead of climbing down and then up to cross small gullies, he bounded across. Instead of climbing down short drops, he jumped down. He knew that he had to be careful or he could break an ankle and then he would be helpless, but he couldn’t make himself slow down. He knew that he was in a race to stop Jax before it was too late.
He kept thinking of her asking him to promise that he would never doubt that as long as she drew breath she would always love him. He felt a lump rising in his throat as he ran. The limbs and brush he flew past turned to a watery blur.
He was furious at himself for not catching on to the things she’d said. He’d thought that it was because she was upset at hearing about all the deaths that morning. He should have known it was more. Having been sleepy was no excuse. Excuses couldn’t undo it if he lost her.
A few hours of grueling effort brought him to the base of the plateau that rose up out of the forest. Catching his breath, he looked up the rugged series of cliffs toward the top. Squinting into the iron gray light, he couldn’t see anything beyond the edge other than the wispy limbs of trees.
Jax had said that the ascending rift in the rock was in her world a road up the side of the cliff to the top. While not a road, the trail led to the craggy edge of rock that looked like a natural formation, yet went up along the face of the cliff at a steep angle. It looked like it might go all the way to the top. If it didn’t, if the lip of rock ended, he was going to find himself awfully high up with nowhere to go.
Alex couldn’t see that he had a choice and so he didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. He simply started climbing.