Kaahin was wide open. No cover for a hundred kilometers. He thought about diving for the sand when a whip crack rang out and the bullet sunk through his shoulder. It dropped him to his ass as the bitch fired again, this time going too wide overhead.
“Please,” he screamed.
The blonde’s eyes blazed with the kind of madness you couldn’t talk down.
There was one chance, and Kaahin took it. He scampered for the water on his hands and legs, leaping into the deep as two more gunshots plunked into the mud around him.
Kaahin swam inland, wondering how he could survive this.
Forty-Six
The scream from the shoreline was Guillaume’s.
Sara found his comms gear smashed and scattered across the beach, just before the trees. Blood was already hardening in the coral sand, and small dots of it formed a trail into the forest.
She called his name and nobody answered. She didn’t know how to use a submachine gun but took it anyway and just as she did, another scream tore through the distant sky, this one more familiar.
Holloway.
Sara broke into a sprint against the trees in order to shave off some distance. She was drenched in sweat by the time she reached the now vacant site of the plane crash.
Another scream. This one somewhere inside the forest. Someone had taken Holloway. Sara rushed after the noise, using trees for cover.
Jagged mountain stabs rose over the treetops. Sharpened points confined to the northern most side of the island. Looking at them was enough to make Sara tired. Her fingers brushed against the spool of dynamic nylon climbing rope hitched to her belt.
Right, she thought. You knew you were going to have to use that.
At her back, distant gunfire was a muted echo. Jean-Philippe would have to defend the Star Time.
She picked up her pace and rushed through the trees on a steady jog. Sweat soaked through the fabric beneath her neckline. The submachine gun in her hand brought minimal confidence.
Her chest tightened, wondering if she wasn’t feeling a few native gazes all of a sudden. Muscular fingers gripping bowstrings, eager arrowheads pointed at her chest. This place was obviously home to someone. Difficult to find, near impossible to land.
The more island she saw, the more she began to wonder if they were in the right place. Isabella had claimed that she and Roche lived here, in a manor that had taken years to complete. Even if that was long gone, there had to be some trace of it.
“Sara, they’re killers...” Holloway’s voice broke across the sky. The next sound out of his mouth was full-throated, guttural, and could only mean one thing...
“No.” Her voice was so soft it was nearly silent. She leaned against a tree, light-headedness taking hold. She was nearly abandoned out here and had no strength to continue. “I’m sorry, Holloway,” she said. He had been as good as dead, Guillaume was right about that, but no one deserved to go out this way.
Maybe it was best to get back to the Star Time.
She turned on her heels and a tomahawk was raised above her head. The blade was firm inside a gnarled fist of tri-pronged and misshapen fingers. Nails like train spikes. The forearm was wisps of grey, ghostly hair. Bulbous white eyes glared out from behind the anonymity of a human skull that masked this thing’s true face.
Sara stepped back and screamed at the sight.
It wore a loincloth of animal pelts. Its torso was a display of open sores and broken scabs. A banded headdress stretched in a ring around its malformed head, various bird feathers jutting out atop it like jewels on a crown.
It opened its mouth and hissed, flashing a scramble of chiseled teeth that would flay her in a single bite.
Sara squeezed the submachine gun trigger, mostly in panic, burying rounds straight through its heart and chest, halting its charge before it could begin. The thing stuttered back and collapsed, flailing through the dirt with a horrible death rattle vibrating in its throat.
Sara kept her weapon fixed until its wheezing breath wound down into silence.
Its weapon was a sharpened fish bone, fashioned to a stone hilt with leather strips. She kicked it into the brush just to be safe.
This thing was humanoid. Three toes on one foot and six on the other. The missing digits weren’t removed, the flesh was too clean and rounded where they should’ve been. Curved animal talons were in the spot where a human had toenails. The feet were callused. Were these the red feet that Roche’s clues intended her to sit among?
Eruptions of gunfire on the beach, more frequent. Sara tensed and got low as if the bullets might be coming for her.
“Sara.” Another far-flung scream, this one belonging to Guillaume. “Sara, help!”
She held her breath as if the simple act would betray her position.
Sara stepped toward the mountains with reluctance, fanning out in order to go around its base.
The jungle kept humidity the way her father’s walk-in humidor had. Her palms itched. Beads of sweat tickled her skin beneath her bangs. Her utility belt consisted of rope, a climbing axe, a holster, and a canteen, but she felt as though she were lugging bricks.
The square footage of this island atoll was somehow deceiving. The day stretched and became afternoon. Her steps turned to shuffles. She fantasized about taking another sip of water, but hadn’t she just done that? Couldn’t afford to spend another drop so soon. There was, after all, no telling how long she would be stranded here.
No telling how many of those monstrous skull things were watching.
Sara feared living out the rest of her days here—just as Isabella had. Surrounded by treasure that might as well have been rotted food for as useful as it was. The cruelest irony. One final way for Blake, her husband in sickness and in health, to hurt her.
Her boot tip dropped onto the forest floor and something snapped. Reflexively, she threw herself down, face-first and bracing for death. A dozen blades carved through her back at once, drawing thin rushes of blood. She screeched into the earth, as the blades lurched back from the other direction, slicing her again.
Sara dragged herself out from beneath the obstruction and rolled to her side, feeling the blood pour off her back. She jammed her fingers into her mouth to keep the cries from getting any louder.
To keep those awful skull faces at bay.
A log, cut to precision so it would fit between the trees that lined either side of the path, was suspended three feet from the ground, swaying in the breeze. It wore a slew of carved and fastened spikes, many of them blood-stained.
Roche’s trap? Or had the locals done this?
Close to her boots, an old bird’s nest had fallen as the trap dislodged. Two homeless birds circled it, firing off mournful squawks. One landed to survey the damage and Sara only now realized there were a few eggs spilled out around her. None had cracked and she was surprised by how much relief this brought.
In the distance, Guillaume’s voice came roaring back, begging for help. He was closer now.
Sara retrieved her weapon off the forest floor. Those things must’ve been hunting him.
A second bird landed and began chirping. Sara stepped away, ready to continue when her eyes fell upon the creature’s feet. Its talons were a dark shade of red. And it wasn’t blood.
“You clever bastard, Roche.” Sara was surprised by her willingness to smile as her hand slid down to the metal spool that housed her climbing rope.
Guillaume’s voice came back another time and she thought the best thing she could do was take to the skies, suddenly eager to sit among red feet.
***
The birds must’ve been indigenous to the island. Sara wondered at first if she had to climb the very tree that had spilled the nest, but thought better of it.
She knew where she was supposed to go. To the largest stone structure the island had.
She was climbing before she knew it. Her hands fell into the natural crevasses. Padded and half-fingered gloves protected her while granting flexibility. She stretched against the old rock
and pulled herself up. From beneath her arm she caught a whiff of her own perspiration and laughed that she could be so vain in such a desperate moment.
“Sara!” That voice again. This time, practically nipping at her heels.
She was going to signal him when his voice came calling again, stopping her cold.
“Where the fuck are you, Sara?” She wanted to know what made Guillaume so certain she was alive, but then remembered the thing she killed. He might’ve found it, or at least heard the shots.
She kept scaling. Once she was about equal with the treetops, she unspooled some of the climbing rope and hammered a stake through the rock face, never quite sure of how she knew what to do. The end of the rope hooked through the grip and at the very least she’d probably prevent herself from splattering on the forest floor. Now she’d just swing back and break her head open against the rock face.
“Sara!” Roaring gunfire somewhere below.
She climbed to escape that world, the sweeping chaos she feared would inevitably catch her. Things had happened too fast to comprehend. She wouldn’t speculate. Only climb. The gunshots beneath her turned to sporadic pops. Guillaume was probably close to dead.
Climb.
Her hand got caught deep inside a crevice, tearing the skin off her knuckles as she yanked it free. Her muscles begged for a break, but Sara refused.
Climb.
A gunshot like cannon fire roared past her head, whizzing for the sky. Her body tightened and she pushed herself forward until she was flat against the rock face.
“Guillaume, what the hell are you—”
“Need to get your attention somehow if you refuse to answer me!”
“Dammit, I—” Sara glanced down and gasped at the sight.
“You’re bleeding, Sara.” Guillaume stood at the base of the mountain. “Quite badly.” He barely looked like the man she knew. The flap of flesh hanging off his jaw was like a loose patch of chicken skin. Half his face had been peeled away, picked down to the bloody bone beneath. His eyeball was completely gone from that socket, and the ear on that side of his face had been cleaved away. Nothing but a wide dark hole where it had been.
“I’m fine,” she insisted and kept climbing.
“You are going to get yourself killed.” His speech was about as clear as oatmeal.
“Only if you keep shooting at me.”
“Thought you were another of those things,” he slurred. “Let me dress your wounds and we’ll regroup... what are you going up there for?”
Sara left the question unanswered as she continued her ascent. Next time she looked, the treetops were like broccoli heads.
“Tell me what you are doing.”
“Finding a vantage point.” Trembling hands reached for the ledge where the stone receded. Her fingers curled around the landing as another jagged blade leapt for them. Sara yanked back her hand, but was too slow. The bone blade scraped stone. Her pinky finger came away and a small stream of blood painted the rock face.
Sara pulled her hand back and felt the blood rushing. She went for the submachine gun that dangled off her belt and swung it up toward the landing just as the skull appeared over the ledge.
Its face seemed equally crazed behind the human bone façade. The eyes behind the empty skull sockets were also white. These monstrosities were without eyesight.
Its hand was a creature’s claw, slashing the gun barrel as Sara squeezed off a round that blew straight through its palm. The thing lost none of its strength. It yanked the weapon up toward it with enough force to tear the strap from her belt and send the gun sailing back to the forest floor below.
With the weapon gone, the thing closed its fingers around Sara’s wrist and yanked her up too. Her knees scraped and bled and her body seemed to sail up and over.
The thing was hunched, readying the blade for its next attack. In motion, Sara saw the creature’s curves, realized it was female. It had the same pattern of runny sores on its chest. Breasts were bare, though one appeared to have been eaten away, with only a flappy piece of ribbon flesh remaining, obvious teeth imprints.
Sara pulled her pistol free as the blade lunged. She scurried back while taking aim. It cleaved through the round of her toe just as she got her shot off. The bark was louder than an explosion and a quarter-sized hole broke through the skull mask.
The creature plopped face down. The back of its skull, a jagged exit wound.
Sara rolled onto her side, just about the only piece of her that wasn’t bleeding. She sucked air until her heart slowed, vomiting just a little.
Far below, scraping and rustling began in earnest as Guillaume started his ascent.
“No,” she said. Then, a little louder, “what are you doing?”
She peered over and caught his gaze. His body moved upward with strength he couldn’t possibly have. His one remaining eye refused to move. Locked in a permanent, wicked glare. Underneath the charade, he was determined to be the one who took the treasure out of here.
“Think,” Sara said to herself for no other reason than to refocus her thoughts.
On this ledge sat the remnants of several red-foot nests. Tiny twigs and leaves mottled together and reinforced whenever time demanded it. There were more eggs against the recessed wall space, but no sign of overprotective mothers looking to clamp down on trespassers.
An engraving was cut into the enclave stone, looking first to Sara’s eyes like caveman markings. She used the fingers on her uninjured hand to scoop away as much muck as possible, running her fingertips through the rivulets until the gunk was clear.
The image beneath was a pair of stone eyes. Almond-shaped and mostly shallow, a small nose and parted lips. There was a deeper recession on what looked to be its tongue.
The jewel. It was necessary.
“Guillaume,” Sara called. “Stop climbing. We’re going to need to get the jackhammer. Or the explosives, if they survived the trip.”
There was no response from the cliff face.
“Guillaume,” she repeated. “We need that jackhammer if we’re going to break through this.”
A dark hand curled around the cliff. A second hand appeared gripping a curved and soaking blade. Sara gasped as the head appeared next. The face of the man who’d thrown her overboard.
“Please,” he said in slow, measured English. “I do not wish any more bloodshed.” His shirt was cut into ribbons. Pieces of it torn away and wrapped around the still bleeding shoulder wound. He used part of his shirt to clean the blade and then tucked the weapon into his waistband.
“What happened to Guillaume?”
The pirate did not answer. He reached into his pocket and took hold of something. Opened his fist to show the jewel that had come a long way and passed through many fingers to be here.
“What about Guillaume?” Sara repeated.
He lifted his hands in surrender and with his foot, gestured cliff side.
Sara limped to the edge and looked down. Guillaume was swinging like a pendulum on the safety rope, halfway to the ground. His shoulders stooped and his neck was torn so wide that the dark paramilitary uniform was stained crimson.
Sara lifted the gun and knew in that moment she should’ve shot him.
Because he lunged for her, sidestepping her arm.
Sara tried to pivot, but he had lowered his shoulder and plowed her like a battering ram. She went over the edge and dropped like a sack, rushing toward the earth below.
Forty-Seven
Kaahin reached for his knife as the girl screamed below, caught by her safety rope.
As far as he could see there were two pegs. One was just a few feet beneath him. His reach extended that far and he hacked at the nylon rope there, the material fraying into thinner strands with each pass of the blade.
The western bitch screamed something desperate, but the pathetic tone of her voice only made him angrier. One final hack and the rope snapped, sending her sailing. The second peg caught her, but snapped her body and flung her around,
bashing her against the rocks and knocking her silent.
He hoped she was dead, though there was no way of telling. It would have to be enough. His eyes went naturally to the work the girl had done, clearing away animal debris to find the spot where the jewel called out.
It was all so obvious.
He pushed the stone into the engraved space that resembled a human tongue. Tremors enveloped the wall and the stone slid away with a protracted groan. The stale air that lived beyond it came rushing out, setting him coughing.
Kaahin turned away, hungry for the fresh air his seafaring lungs craved.
He had no light, and cursed his haste for failing to take one off the soldier he’d left dangling below. He was going to have to do this in the dark.
With the blade in his fist, he headed inside.
Forty-Eight
Sara’s gnarled hands gripped Guillaume’s belt strap for dear life. Overhead, the clip that kept them suspended in the air via the wall spike whined and groaned, dislodging with the addition of extra body weight.
Sara swayed back and forth atop the dangling corpse, stunned to discover just how far she’d climbed. Falling at this height meant splattering. She eased her weight and the body swung like a bell, away from the rock face while the wall spike continued to pull clear. Then she sailed back on momentum, trying to get close enough to grab.
The holding spike stuttered, dropping them a few inches as it fell free. Sara reached out, punching her fist inside the nearest crevice, burying it wrist-deep in order to anchor herself there. Her shredded knuckles were threads now, and the pain from her severed finger throbbed all the way up to her tonsils. The anchor overhead fell clear and sent Guillaume plummeting.
Sara resumed the climb. Her muscles blazed as she stretched and pulled herself up.
It took longer this time. The afternoon sun gave up beating on her back and disappeared behind a puff of clouds. The ocean breeze was cooler up here, and when she closed her eyes, she could fool herself for a second or two into thinking this really was still her vacation.
Ocean Grave Page 24
