Page 38 of Wind Called

Neither was Bellamy, it seemed, because she went out in front of him, sure-footed as a mountain goat. It was something of a marvel to watch her walk across the slender rock bridge, stray strands of hair bright as a new penny in the morning sun, her lightly tanned legs slim and yet sturdy at the same time as she took one step after another.

Clearly, she hadn’t been lying about being an experienced hiker. Not that he’d any reason to believe she hadn’t been telling him the truth when she’d said she was familiar with this trail, but he supposed he’d been wary because he’d had a couple of rough experiences in the past when a girl he’d been dating had sworn up and down that she loved to hike, only to find her practically freezing in fear the first time she had to make her way across some even slightly rocky ground.

No worries about that kind of paralysis with Bellamy, that was for sure. And she’d appeared cheerful and upbeat this morning despite the lack of sleep, which seemed to tell him that either the Sedona vortexes had taken the night off or there had been a completely different reason why the Wilcoxes and the McAllisters had agreed all those years ago not to make the red rock city their home.

Maybe there wasn’t any need to talk to the elders after all. He didn’t like the idea of canceling at the last minute, but if it turned out nothing was going on here —

Bellamy froze a few feet in front of him, body stiff, hands dangling at her sides. He hurried over to her, wondering if she’d had a sudden agoraphobic episode or something. It happened sometimes, even to experienced hikers.

But when he stopped next to her and took her hand in his, he could feel how cold and clammy her skin was, how oddly nerveless her fingers appeared to be.

“Bellamy,” he said, his tone urgent, “are you okay?”

She didn’t even look at him. Instead, her gaze was fixed on something deeper in the canyon, although he couldn’t see anything except scrub juniper and patches of cholla cactus and a few spindly cottonwood trees, their leaves fluttering languidly in the soft morning breeze.

“He’s out there,” she said, her voice oddly emotionless, like videos he’d seen of people speaking while hypnotized.

“Who’s out there?” he asked. Her blank tone and expression were jarring, considering how animated she usually was, but he did his best to sound reassuring, calm.

Behind her sunglasses, her eyes closed, then slowly opened again. “The voices are trying to tell me.”

“What voices?” he said. It occurred to him that he should have encouraged her to keep moving, that trying to hold a conversation while standing in the center of a narrow, rocky bridge wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

Unfortunately, she seemed rooted in place, and he wasn’t sure how she would react if he tried to gently urge her along.

If they lost their balance, it would be averylong drop to the ground below.

“The voices you heard at the ranch the other night?” he asked, and at least she nodded.

“Yes. The voices on the wind are trying to tell me he’s out there.”

The sun beating down on them was already hot, even though the hour had barely inched past seven-thirty, but right then, Marc thought he might as well have been dunked in a tub of ice water.

“Who’s out there?” he asked again, trying not to sound overly urgent so he wouldn’t upset her. She seemed to be in thrall to the voices she heard on the wind — well, more like a breeze, just enough to play with the ends of her hair as she stood there on the stone bridge — and he didn’t want to do anything that might make her react violently.

“The Collector,” she replied, then pulled in an odd, hitching breath, almost as if she had something caught in her throat.

The Collector? Who the hell was that?

But then she blinked, and gave him a curious glance. “Marc, what the hell are we doing standing in the middle of the Devil’s Bridge? We should keep going — this really isn’t kind of place where we want to be hanging out and having a chat.”

No kidding. “You don’t remember what just happened?”

Her russet brows drew together. “No…what are you talking about?”

“We can discuss it once we’re off this bridge.”

She seemed to realize that was the only sensible thing to do, because she nodded, even as she still looked confused.

“Okay. Let’s get going.”

Tricia McAllister sent Bellamy a worried look. “You really don’t remember anything that happened?”

They were all sitting in the living room at Tricia’s house — Levi and Allegra and Tricia, the three elders, with Marc and Bellamy close to each other on the couch as he held her hand. She was glad of the contact, glad how he felt so real, so reassuring, because that whole episode on the Devil’s Bridge had scared the living shit out of her.

Never in her life had she had anything like that happen. When she’d heard the voices the other night while standing on the patio at the ranch house, the experience had been somewhat unsettling, but she’d still remembered who she was and what she was doing.

Today, though…today it was as if the voices had put her in some kind of a goddamn trance.

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