My throat closed up. My arms wouldn’t work. Spiders crawled out of the torn collar of his shirt and covered him in a boil of shiny black bodies.
Not real. Not real. Not real. My heart pumped at a dangerous velocity. Still, I couldn’t pull myself away.
“Aaron, we’ve seen enough.” Jesse was closer, his voice stern.
Aaron’s remaining eye snapped open. A dark bead welled in the corner and painted a crimson stripe down his cheek. The yellow-green iris darted between us and the orb-bodied spider on his shoulder.
The spider teetered, legs twitching. Then it popped in a hiss of smoke. A succession of smaller pops followed as the remaining spiders exploded with tiny sparks.
My pulse beat a wild tattoo through my veins. “Oh Jesus, how do I not look with my eyes?”
A firm hand clasped mine. “Look with your heart.” Another hand gripped my jaw, turned my head. Copper eyes imprisoned mine. “It’s time to leave this world. We’ll go together.” His voice was authoritative, echoed with power. My knees buckled.
He caught me around the waist and sat me in his lap on the ground. His fingers curled around the pistol and yanked it from my fist. The tug at my thigh told me he holstered it. I laid my head against the muffled thump of his heart and lifted my eyes.
The weathered corpse of a nymph sagged in the bindings where Aaron had hung.
“I’m fucking losing it,” I whispered. “You must be too, since you saw…”
“Aaron’s spirit.”
“How—” I shook my head. “It wasn’t real.”
He shifted, settled me deeper into his lap. “I’m a spirit walker. Just like you.”
“You sound like Akicita. I don’t believe in that shit.” A lump filled my throat. “No offense.”
He cupped my head against him. “Your othersense, what you see in the spirit world, is a gift, the consciousness of the Great Mystery. It’s up to you to discover the meaning.”
I pushed his chest. His iron grip tightened.
“They’re hallucinations.” I rubbed my temple. “There’s something wrong with me.”
“The spirits show me things, too.” He sighed. “They brought us together in West Virginia. I followed them to you.”
My body stiffened. “You followed who, Jesse?”
“The energy from memories of those who have passed can give spirits a tangible form in the spirit world. Annie and Aaron’s memories are potent. Their spirits are strong.”
I jerked, and his thighs and arms formed a cage around me. The way he looked at me made me want to break eye contact. I didn’t. “How do you know their names?”
“I’ll tell you, but don’t pull away.”
I nodded.
“Annie’s ghost visited me the day after the outbreak. That was the first time. When did she die?”
Blood roared in my ears. I lowered my eyes, just an inch, to the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“She persuaded me to leave Europe,” he said, “to reunite with my people in North Dakota. From there, I followed Aaron to the Allegheny Mountains.” The corner of his mouth crooked up. “He’d leave that bear in the damndest places for me to find.”
A burn shot from my chest and spread behind my nose.
He stroked my hair. “The night you chased Annie into our camp, I was there. I was chasing her too.” He stared at our laps. “I’ve grown attached to them over the past two years. Their lives were short, but very full. They’ve given me a reawakening. And more importantly…” He lifted his head, eyes raw. “They led me to you.”
A kind of isolation I didn’t realize I carried lifted away. I padded a fingertip over the blade-sharp angle of his jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me? All this time?”
His hand shackled my wrist, pulled it from his face. But he didn’t let go. “The veil between our realm and theirs shows me other things, darker things. Things I must keep from you.”
I laughed, and it rang of hysterics. “Darker than this?” I tilted my head toward the nymph’s decayed body.
“Yes.”
“Remember the nightmares I had in the mountains? They featured the Drone. This was before I’d met the bastard. Imagine my surprise when he showed up at River Tweed. How do you explain that?”
“If he’s amidst transformation between human and other, maybe his spirit is caught between realms and your consciousness sensed him.”
“There is nothing scientific about that answer. In fact, it reeks of bullshit.”
“Spiritualism explains what science cannot.”
He looked away from my glare and laid a hand over my stomach. “Maybe he was closer than you thought and was able to project through your shared communication.”
“Maybe.” A stiff breeze stirred up the nymph’s decay. “Why would Aaron show himself in such a horrific way?”
“Sometimes it takes an extreme action to spur reaction. You’ll get better at interpreting the visions.” He studied me for a moment. “When you see them, can you leave them at will?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t want to.”