The Ascent(83)

“They each had their reason,” Andrew said. He had to shout now above the sleet. Lightning lit the horizon, and I could see the countless purple peaks at his back. “Hell, I flat-out told you about Shotsky!” This time he did laugh—a stuttering, mechanical sound. “Everyone’s committed an injustice, and everyone must pay for their mistakes.” He held his arms out above his head. “Christ, look around! Look where we are! You think a place like this—a sacred, spiritual land as this—exists without divinity? There’s divinity all around us. It courses through me, it courses through you, and it pumps life into every living, breathing thing on this miraculous planet.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“I’m the corrector of things,” he practically hissed. “I’m the man who fixes your mistakes. Goddamn it, you should be grateful! Because out of everyone on this trip, your mistake was the biggest.“

My grip tightened on the handle of the pickax. I rose off my knee, wiping the icy water from my eyes. A second flash of lightning illuminated the sky, this one closer than the first.

“I f*cking loved her, you son of a bitch. But she didn’t love me.

And that was okay. It was okay because she loved you, and you made her happy. Well, for a little while at least …”

“Shut your goddamn mouth,” I growled, spewing water from my lips. My hands were numb, my heart strumming furiously in my chest. I could taste acidic bile at the back of my throat.

“You weren’t man enough for her. You weren’t the man she needed you to be. So she left. And because she left, she died. And that’s your fault. I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone and she’s dead and you killed her.”

The head of the pickax, suddenly too heavy for me to hold, swung like a pendulum down into the snow.

“Thing is,” Andrew said, “you almost did the honorable thing. Couple years ago, back in that cave, you went there with the intention of never coming out, didn’t you? Would have been a noble way to go. But in typical Timothy Overleigh fashion, you chickened out, lost your nerve, and climbed out—the first in a series of events that delivered you from the clutches of death and back to the land of the living.”

I tried to lift the pickax but couldn’t. I watched Andrew take a step toward me, then another, but I was only partially seeing him; I was seeing the motorcar drift off the road and launch over the cliff. I saw it explode at the bottom of a stone quarry. I saw Hannah’s palms slamming against the window while the smoke suffocated her and the flames blackened her skin and peeled it from her body …

“A beautiful woman,” Andrew said, his voice distant like a dream, “who deserved better than you. And now look what happened to her.” Startling me, he screamed, “Now look!”

He charged me. I went to pull the pickax from the snow, but the sleet had frozen it to the ground; my hands pulled free of the handle, sending me flailing backward, and I fell on my ass. A third charge of lightning lit the sky as Andrew Trumbauer lunged through the air and dropped on me—

4



LIKE A TON OF BRICKS. HANNAH’S BROTHER ON THE

other end of the telephone saying, seemingly over and over again, “Tim, there’s been an accident …”

5



A CLAWED HAND PRESSED ONTO ONTO MY FACE.

a massive weight from above knocking the wind from my lungs, and a second hand struggled to gain access to my neck.

I bucked my hips, but Andrew had firmly planted his long legs on either side of me, pinning me down. His fingers pressed down on my eyelids, and he pushed my head up and back, grinding it into the ice, while his other hand worked around my neck.

Futilely I continued struggling, banging my hips up and down, up and down, up and down, up—

6



—AND DOWN THE STAIRS. DRUNK OUT OF MY MIND.

the phone broken in two pieces at the bottom of the stairs. Briefly, I felt myself lift up and out of my body until I was able to watch myself from above—the broken, quivering husk I was …

7



“YOU … DIE” ANDREW SHRIEKED THROUGH

clenched teeth, his face only inches from mine. “You die now!”

The hand squeezed around my throat. I shook my head from side to side, but his hold was strong.

Blind, I brought my fists up on either side of Andrew’s face andbegan pummeling him. His grip on my neck relinquished just long enough for him to swat one of my arms away, driving it into the snow. Then he dived back in for my neck, but I brought my chin down on his fingers.

My fingers thumped against something hard in the snow. I grabbed it, made a fist around it, and swung it in an arc toward Andrew’s head. It struck with enough force to knock him off me, his entire body going momentarily limp.

I shuffled backward, gasping for air and choking on falling sleet. The object still clenched in my hand, I glanced down to see it was the can of mushrooms.

“Overleigh!” he yelled, scrambling to his feet with one hand to his temple. Black fingers of blood trickled down the side of his head. Dazed, he staggered while trying to charge me.

I threw the can of mushrooms at his head—but missed. Quickly I dropped to the ground and crawled toward the pickax. Just as my hand closed around the handle, one of Andrew’s boots stomped on it, impaling the back of my hand with the climbing spikes in the sole of his boot.