Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance by Mark Frost

second—and I know how much you hate to do that and how annoying all these questions are to you, but I’m asking as a favor, this one time—how would you describe what happened to him?”
    Jericho turned to look at Will with unsettling steadiness. “I would say that … the We-in-di-ko took Lyle’s soul from him … and left something foul and dark in its place.”
    Will felt a shiver run from his knees to his chest.
    “Hey, you asked,” said Jericho.
    “What did it leave in its place?”
    “For all I know it left a Hello Kitty lunchbox. Was he injured in the fall?”
    “You’d have to think so, right? Jumping through plate glass, dropping four stories?”
    “So you were there,” said Jericho.
    Will nodded. “I felt him more than saw anything. By the time I looked around the corner, he was gone. He was wearing a doctor’s coat. All I caught was a flash of white.”
    “Which way did he go?” asked Jericho.
    Will pointed toward the woods. Jericho started walking in that direction, waving for Will to follow him.
    “Are you going to track him?” asked Will.
    “Track him?” said Jericho.
    “I mean, you can do that, right?”
    “No, but you can,” said Jericho. “And you need to find him before he finds you.”
    They followed a narrow path into the forest.
    “Did you bring any weapons?” asked Jericho.
    Will rummaged around and showed Jericho his Swiss Army knife. “I left the RPG launcher in my other pants.”
    Jericho almost smiled.
    “What did you bring?” asked Will.
    Jericho held up a small stitched leather pouch.
    “Great,” muttered Will. “Pixie dust.”
    “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” said Jericho, putting it back in his pocket. “Pixie dust strong medicine.”
    The air felt saturated with heat and humidity the deeper they ventured into the woods. A heavy blanket of decayed leaves underfoot muted their footsteps and muffled the air. After traveling less than a hundred yards, they’d lost all sight or sound of the campus.
    “So how do we do this?” asked Will, scanning the ground as they trudged along. “Search for footprints, broken branches?”
    “Do I look like I was born in a tepee?”
    “I didn’t mean it that way—”
    “Footprints aren’t where the action is. We’re after a hairy, ugly-ass freak in a white doctor’s coat who’s six foot nine. How hard could he be to find?”
    As they walked past a tall silver birch, Jericho stopped and pointed to a smeared crimson stain on its bark at about shoulder level.
    “Okay,” said Will. “As long as you’ve got a method.”
    Jericho looked out and scanned the tree line. The forest grew steadily denser ahead of them, the ground rising and falling in small hillocks, in many directions leaving little space to move between the trees. Will waited for Jericho to tell him which way to go next.
    “He went this way but you’re the only one who knows how to find him, Will,” said Jericho. “That is, if you want to.”
    Will burned inside at the provocation in Coach’s voice, indignation turning to resolve.
    “As a matter of fact, I do,” said Will.
    He closed his eyes and called up his interior sensory Grid. That extra vision booted up in his mind’s eye and as he gazed out ahead of them the woods came alive with patterns and swirls of energy. The world around them went as quiet as a snow globe. He became aware of small animals scurrying and skittering around, emanating flares of nervous system heat. He heard every birdsong, pinging their locations on a three-dimensional, wraparound screen.
    A disturbance in the Grid slowly revealed itself, a slightly glowing pathway took shape in the leaves on the ground, leading away from the birch. Will felt some quality or feeling lift off the path, and he realized it was as if Lyle had left some energetic trace of himself behind as he passed through—
    Ravenous.
    The word came into Will’s mind. He felt a cold chill.
    “This way,” he said.
    They continued on. Over the