Ghostwalker - Erik Scott De Bie [70]
"No," he said. "I apologize if I seem… distant."
"No," said Arya. "No need." She put out her hand to take his again, but he pulled it out of reach. At first she felt hurt, but then she saw the pain in his eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"Until I met you," whispered Walker. "No one had ever touched me without violence."
A wave of sadness washed over her. "No one?" she asked. "Not even your mother?"
Walker's face became stony. "I have no mother," he said. "No father." His eyes closed. "My life began fifteen years ago. The day I was murdered by Dharan Greyt." His face twisted in awful hatred for a breath, then smoothed again.
Arya sat in stunned silence.
"I wield powers beyond your world. You cannot understand." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Having never died, that is."
"How do you know a priest has never raised me from the grave?" asked Arya with a raised eyebrow and a tiny smile.
"The same way you know I have not known many women," said Walker. "I can tell by looking at you."
Arya conceded the point. "If not parents, then who taught you these powers?"
"My teacher is not as important as her teachings. I feel the pulse of the earth, the power in every leaf, rock, and tree. It is not the vibrant life, but the opposite, the spiritual energy of the dead. You cannot see the spirits around you, but they are there. I see them at all times-even now, in this very grove, all around us. Dozens."
"The souls of the dead? Ghosts?" Arya's face went pale as she looked around the grove in vain. She could see nothing but the forest-even the doe and her fawns had bounded away.
"Not ghosts," explained Walker. His voice sounded almost clear. "The departed are not fully departed. They wait for something to be resolved-unfinished business. Just as I have unfinished business with Dharan Greyt."
The comparison sent a chill through Arya.
The noon sky darkened as the clouds that had merely been lurking before asserted their presence over the sun.
"Rarely, I find wraiths, specters, haunts-all things men call the undead," Walker continued. "These are not the same spirits that surround us, but dead people, fully formed in spirit. They grow jealous of the living and malevolent. These spirits avoid such as I, for they have no new secrets to tell, no new horrors to show us that we do not know. But the other spirits-they are always there."
Arya shivered. "And these monsters… surround us all the time?"
Walker's eyes flicked back to her and he shook his head. "They are not monsters. The spirits that surround us-spirits most cannot see, even with magic-are mere figments of departed souls. They are tiny echoes of those who have lived, loved, hated, and died. They exist so long as someone lives to remember them, so long as someone listens to their whispers, and so long as someone looks for them." He smiled wistfully. "As I do."
Arya's heart fluttered at that smile. Describing the mysterious spirits as though they were his children, Walker seemed almost happy. She felt her body grow warm all over.
Hardly aware that she was doing it until she had done it, she reached out and placed her hands over Walker's ears, pulled his face to hers, and pressed their lips together.
At first, Walker sat in stunned shock, then the kiss took on a mind of its own.
Then he seemed to remember himself and pushed her away. Arya fell back onto the ground and gasped, finally aware of what she had done. Her cheeks flooding with heat, she grinned sheepishly and stammered an apology.
"I'm-I'm sorry, I didn't-"
He wrapped strong arms around her and pressed his lips against hers, and she lost herself in that embrace. For a sweet moment, as he held her, she felt safe and secure for possibly the first time in her life.
And for just one thrilling moment, she felt exactly where she was meant to be.
As though realizing what he was doing, he broke the kiss and scrambled away. She sat there for a breath, held in the lingering sensation of his lips, before her senses returned.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"No," said Walker. "I cannot."