“Okay, I concede. I am a city girl,” said Marley, taking his hand once again to scramble up a boulder. “My pride insists we rectify that when this is over. You know, after that white sandy beach vacation where we sleep for two weeks.”
“Your pride should be somewhat mollified by the fact that we’re at a higher elevation than you’re used to. Less oxygen.”
So that’s why it was harder to breathe. “I still feel like a wuss.”
“You’ve been going for days on very little sleep.”
“So have you.”
“Yeah, but I’m trained for it.” He’d also had something of an Energizer Bunny spring to his step since she’d fed him in Tennessee.
Marley tried to imagine him as just an ordinary guy, as if their lives weren’t on the line and the two of them were taking some lunatic vacation to go hiking in the middle of freaking nowhere. She couldn’t do it. He was too far from ordinary, so beyond her experience of other men that she couldn’t put him in the same category. And thank God for it.
As they broke free of a stand of trees on to the top of a long ridge, she lost her breath for a whole other reason. The valley spread out below them, a forest of rock and trees as far as she could see. In the distance, the green and brown and gray gave way to the blue gray ridges of the next mountain chains. Objectively, it should have been desolate. She found it awe inspiring.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Ian. “It’s the kind of thing that makes you believe in God.”
Marley nodded. “Do you believe in God? Do other Mirus?”
“We’re not exactly on speaking terms, but aye, I believe. There’s as much variety in religious beliefs in the rest of the Mirus world as there is in the human population.”
“Hard to not believe in something greater when you’re out here looking at a view like this.” Marley paused, soaking it in. “I think I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“Why people do this for fun. I don’t think I’ve ever been this alone before. Not really. In the city, even when you’re alone in a room or your apartment, there are still people through the next wall. But this…We’re so far from civilization I feel like we’re the only two people on earth. On top of the world.”
Ian’s fingers tangled with hers. “I should consider myself incredibly lucky to be the only man on earth with you.”
Marley smiled and tipped her head against his shoulder, still taking in the view. “That’d be good. No Dream Walkers, no assassins, no highly-trained team of supernatural military special-ops soldiers, who regularly defy the laws of physics. Just…us.”
That wasn’t the world they lived in, but neither said so, taking a few more minutes to gaze out over the landscape, imagining.
As the incoming storm began to grumble, Marley straightened reluctantly. “How much farther?”
Ian checked their heading. “Another mile or two, depending on the terrain.”
“Let’s get to it. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can see about that vacation.”
The trees grew thicker, the terrain steeper. Focused on the strain of muscle and the beginnings of a blister on her heels in the new hiking boots, at first Marley thought the prickle was from the sweat tracing a line down her spine. When she caught the tawny flash beneath the trees, she stumbled to a halt. By the time she focused on the spot, there was nothing there except trees and rock, but her arms pebbled with gooseflesh.
“What’s wrong?” Ian’s low voice came from behind. He’d circled back to her.
“Someone’s watching,” she murmured. It was the same tingling awareness she’d felt the night Matthias followed her home from work.
“Or some thing,” he said.
Marley looked at him, startled to see his eyes gone silver.
“There’s no emotional grid out here but ours,” he said. “Might be an animal.”
“Animal?” she said faintly. It hadn’t occurred to her that they were sharing this mountain with more than birds and small fuzzy things on par with squirrels and rabbits. She didn’t want to think about what bigger, more carnivorous creatures might roam the slopes.
Pebbles slid down the rock face behind them. Marley whirled, a scream lodged in her throat. A mountain lion crouched not twenty feet above them, staring down with great, gray green eyes. It—he—somehow Marley knew the cat was male—watched her, tail twitching like a mesmerized cobra. Ian reached for his sidearm, but Marley shot out a hand, “Don’t.”
He was magnificent, all bunched muscle and claw. So much bigger than the cat she’d once seen in a zoo. A distant part of her brain kept waiting for the fear to kick in, for her survival instinct to demand she run. Her fingers itched to stroke along the silky hide, scratch behind those ears as if he were a giant house cat.
“Marley!” Ian hissed, jerking her back.