Siege Perilous

by Nigel Bennett

  For a bad moment it occurred to Sharon he might be after her, but she dismissed it. Until a few hours ago she'd no idea herself that she would stop for a visit. He'd already been here, so he couldn't have followed her. No, this was one of those mad coincidences that sometimes just happen.

  Richard Dun did not believe in coincidences, though. In the short space she'd been with him she'd learned he took such things very seriously, indeed. They were not always portents of grim events, but they were something requiring a certain amount of consideration depending on their level of intrusion and probability. The more improbable, the more important they must be, and how much more improbable could this one get?

  I make a casual stopover and run square into a man that several dozen police forces would love to have chained and gagged in a dungeon, which they would gladly build especially for him. What are the odds?

  Richard would know the reply to that one. Too bad he wasn't here. He'd said he had certain unfinished and no doubt fatal business to conclude with Rivers.

  Perhaps he would have his chance, if Sharon could find out Rivers' business without getting killed. She wished she had her Glock with her. The local law was indecently paranoid about allowing honest people to protect themselves . . .

  She froze in midstep, then sank low with only her head above the level of the ditch.

  Rivers emerged from his hiding place. He'd been hanging near the stones in the middle of the circle and appeared now as a shadow moving among them. He swaggered about as though he'd just bought the place, apparently unconcerned over discovery and eviction.

  Then he climbed atop the Altar Stone in the center. Good God, even the most radical of the "Free Stonehenge" New Agers discouraged that sort of behavior. Not only did it add to the weathering and wear, but it was bloody disrespectful.

  Neal Rivers stood tall on the great block and raised his arms to the night sky. Outlined against its leaden press she could clearly see the crooked twist of the right one.

  But what was he doing?

  Belatedly, she turned to her inner sight for an answer. She'd shut it down completely on the off chance he might be sensitive to it and notice her.

  When she opened up, it was almost too much.

  Instead of the occasional rush of cars passing on the nearby road she was all but flattened by a terrific Otherside howling that hit her ears like a basso supremo air-raid siren. It boomed and roared over and around the whole area of the monument, yet she could see no source. The stones shook from it, and smoke seemed to rise from them, though they couldn't possibly be on fire. Streamers thick as storm clouds flowed from their surfaces to rush in a clockwise current around her.

  And there were things in that river of darkness.

  What she glimpsed she had no description for: swirling shadows and sparks of light and half-perceived shapes flowing swiftly around and—alarmingly—through her. Some seemed to be human in form, others were like animals, but they shifted too fast to be identified. She felt that many were harmless while others were beyond dangerous, both caught up by this strange squall. It was like a rout from a forest fire, where rabbits and deer fled next to wolves and mountain lions.

  A few of the more nightmarish monstrosities, for they did not resemble anything familiar to her, slowed enough for her Sight to focus on. They seemed to see her in turn. They reminded her of the big predators in a zoo held safe behind their bars, and all is well until one of them picks you from out of the crowd. Those all-knowing and hungry golden eyes carry you back to the dangers of the ancient plains, and you know that your once important strivings in life are about to end, you've just been turned into food.

  So it was here. Whatever those things might be, they were not only caught in the maelstrom, but held back by some barrier yet invisible.

  It took an enormous amount of willpower to wrest her awareness from the Otherside gale to look at Rivers. Only then did she perceive that he was at its center.

  He was laughing. She couldn't hear him for the row, but little else could account for his head being thrown back and his arms spread high and wide as though to receive . . . what?

  The chaos menagerie, apparently.

  Sharon gaped as the overwhelming and gigantic flow of raw power whirled around and around to finally sweep right into his chest.

  It did not pass through; it went in and stayed.

  He was . . . was feeding on it.

  Oh, now that just wasn't right.

  She thought she should do something, but didn't know what that could possibly be. Jump up and yell at him to stop defacing a national monument on the metaphysical level?

  And get flattened into jelly. If he could cause this sort of disruption with the enormous primal forces of this place he could do just exactly that to her. Much as she wanted to stop him, this would have to be a strictly intel-gathering operation. Watch everything, then get out and decide what to do about it later. When he was locked up in a cell.

  Make that "dungeon." Yes. For people like him a dungeon was just the thing. The only safe place to contain his threat was yards-thick impersonal stone with bars made from cold iron.

  Of course, this assumed Rivers was up to no good, but she knew in her soul that evil was afoot—real evil—the kind that couldn't be spin-doctored away with lawyer-speak excuses about an abusive childhood or disadvantaged environment or temporary insanity. This evil was the sickening, deliberately cruel, self-absorbed, old-fashioned kind that made dedicated atheists cross themselves.

  So Sharon kept her head down, waiting out the storm, until the terrific howling diminished and finally died.

  She wasn't used to absolute silence, in either world she walked in. The ordinary Sussex countryside was mute, with not even the swish of a passing motor to break the hush. She tapped one ear to make sure she'd not gone deaf and heard the light thump, but nothing else.

  The same went for her Otherside hearing. She knew that wasn't right, but just how wrong was it?

  Then Rivers crowed, letting rip a shout of triumph and joy mixed with laughter. It was like a drunk cursing in a church, so loud as to make her wince. She lifted just enough to see.

  Sweet heavens, but he was glowing. It was an unhealthy light, though, like something from a fifties scare-cinema to show radioactivity. He was happy enough about it, positively gloating before he hopped down from the Altar Stone and went striding off toward the car park. Good. Her cell phone was in her own vehicle. Once he was gone, she'd start the police to tracing his plate numbers. With any luck they could nab him before—

  She ceased planning as the surrounding devastation gradually impressed itself on her inner eye.

  Of course the Henge on this Side was intact. There was damned little that could influence those monuments into moving.

  But the Otherside . . . She blinked, disbelieving.

  It was utterly gone. The great stones were crumbled to rubble and dust no more than ankle high, as though they'd been struck square on with a bomb, lots of bombs—or one really big one. The destruction was so thorough that she couldn't tell where anything had stood before; she had to superimpose the view of one world atop the other, and they still didn't match. Everything was gone.

  And dead. Whatever life, good, bad, or neutral, had been in the circle was missing. The lights, the shadows, the movement of existence itself—had been sucked into that . . . thing. Rivers. The disguised thing in a suit of flesh.

  No number of police would be able to stop him. Rivers wouldn't even be slowed, not with that kind of power to command. She could make a call, but it would only get people needlessly killed. Her intuition told her that if he could drain life from a place he could just as easily take it from living beings.

  Richard Dun might know how to deal with him on such a level, but for that to happen she'd need Rivers's location.

  As soon as it was safe—a relative term, now—she dashed shakily to her car and followed his rental as it ran toward London. She kept her distance, but never quite lost sight of his tailligh
ts, not that she needed them. All she had to do was lean into her Sight and there he was blazing away like a Guy Fawkes effigy.

  Rivers went straight to Heathrow, which did not bode well. He was apparently booked and all the arrangements made. He turned in his car, collected a bag from a storage locker, and headed for an overnight flight with the final destination being Cancún in the Yucatán.

  * * *

  Seventy-two steps, seventy-thr—oh, hell . . . relax a moment. Her heart was making a good run of it, but another break wouldn't hurt. If only the air wasn't so souplike in her straining lungs. Good grief, she'd seen flabby old ladies weighed down by suitcase-sized purses and shopping bags going up this thing at a faster pace. All she had was a single canteen, a machete strapped to one leg, and the Glock.

  What's your problem, girl?

  Jet lag, perhaps. After the chaos at Stonehenge she'd hardly paused, booking on the next flight out. There'd been barely enough time for a hasty stop at an airport shop to snag some necessaries, then pelt away again. Tight timing and a lot of speeding, but she'd done it, making her plane and arriving in Cancún only hours behind him.

  There'd been no spare moment to phone Richard then. She'd eventually managed that from the plane, but he'd not been home. This was not the sort of news one could easily leave on an answering machine. Hallo, love, I've found Charon. He's off to a tropic vacation in Cancún after metaphysically destroying Stonehenge. Would you mind dropping everything and come lend a hand down here? His aura looks like a black hole on steroids, so I wouldn't mind the help. You can reach me at this number . . .

  What a look she'd gotten from her seatmate. Who had asked to be moved to another part of the plane. Stuffy cow. No matter, Sharon made herself at home on both seats and tried to sleep.

  It hadn't worked. She kept seeing the Henge turned into moonscape. The things that had lived there, that had given the place its—well—magic, were gone. Were they dead? Could they die? She was very vague about Otherside life, if that's what it was. Energy, perhaps?

  She could use some for herself. The summit of El Castillo seemed miles above her.

  But she was used to swift air travel; her body had to be reacting to something other than a different time zone and latitude. She clung tight to a step, drew a deeper breath than normal, and went still, her eyes half shut.

  It only took a moment to see, then several more to even begin to take in the magnitude of it.

  Though the heavy air pressing close upon her was statue-still, on another plane, in that place where she could see auras, high winds were ripping about the pyramid in a hurricane turmoil the same as before but on a vastly larger scale. Enormous shapes rode the currents, spinning so quickly she could only see their trailing shadows. Her imagination supplied images to fill in the blanks, an inhuman eye here, a gaping mouth there, like a moving Rorschach test constantly turning itself inside out.

  Dear God, what was going on here?

  It was growing in power, too. Energies from the other monuments in the area were being drawn in, stripped violently away from their accustomed place in the universe.

  If there was a source for the disturbance it was at the top of El Castillo. She thought she saw a more stable, slower patch of shadow there, but when she blinked it went away. Rivers? Had to be. He would have climbed the pyramid from the northeastern side, the only one with the twin serpent heads flanking the stairs. After all, hadn't he been talking to one of them earlier?

  Right. So . . . what were her options?

  Ordinary world: Take herself down from here as quickly as possible, get hold of someone in authority and see about pulling Rivers into custody for trespassing after hours, then fix him in place with the international warrants for his arrest. She liked the option of putting some distance between them. It made the bit about possibly being arrested herself seem rather attractive.

  Otherside world: She could complete her trip to the top and see what the devil he was up to and this time stop him. Oh, yes, bags of fun trying that, but after the devastation at Stonehenge she couldn't let him get away with it again. She had no doubts he intended to commit the same ravaging here. Her instincts told her he was only just getting warmed up for . . . whatever it was he did, and that would be something very bad indeed. What next? The Vatican? The Wailing Wall? Ayers Rock? No, that couldn't be allowed.

  One thing in her favor—she hoped—was that flesh-suit he wore. Obviously he needed it to function on this plane, and a body was a body was a body. Vulnerable to damage . . . and death.

  Of course the locals here were almost as paranoid about firearms as the place she'd come from. She never transported a gun on flights anymore, too much trouble and forms and delays and notice. When needed, it was better to buy one upon arrival, whatever the legality or lack thereof, which she promptly did. Sharon had a wide experience dealing with all sorts of people on both sides of the law and in between, and she knew how to ask the right questions in four different languages. Within hours of reaching Cancún she had a Glock comfortably weighing down the cargo pocket on her right hip, along with spare magazines of ammunition. For good measure she also purchased a third- or fourth-hand machete and scabbard, well used, but with a sharp edge and decent weight. It even fit into her backpack without showing. The shady gentleman she'd bought it from had overcharged her outrageously, but he'd not asked questions, so she chalked it up to being part of the service. God, but it was good to deal with professionals on her own level. Almost homey.

  Rivers, she had to be honest about it, was very much beyond her in a number of areas, though she still had surprise on her side.

  Maybe.

  When he was busy . . . feeding . . . she'd have her opportunity.

  First-degree murder the Yanks called it, though she didn't see it that way. The chance had fallen to her to deal with this threat, and she wasn't the sort to flinch. It was like those times when Gram went into a "what if" mood. What if you had the chance to shoot Hitler or Stalin before they really hit their stride. Would you do it?

  Not of that generation, Sharon was unsure about either of them because of historical impact factors, but she had no hesitation over this particular target.

  It was that important.

  Enough rest, get going.

  Seventy-three, seventy four . . .

  And on and on. Passage was marginally easier now, as though opening her other senses allowed in a fresh breeze. Maybe in a very small way she was also feeding on the power here. The way it's supposed to be done, in small polite sips, not a gluttonous frenzy.

  Eighty . . .

  Near-invisible things screamed around her. Whatever was out there was in a panic. She couldn't blame it. Them.

  God, I'm really not prepared for this kind of emergency; just thought you should know in case this doesn't turn out well.

  Then pace it, one step at a time. Literally. Don't look down.

  Eighty-four, eighty-five . . . take it slow. He could have armed himself, too.

  She moved quietly. Just because the row had deafened her, didn't mean Rivers was similarly restricted. She lowered the volume on her perceptions. The noise was really quite over the top. Distracting.

  Speaking of the top . . . ninety, ninety-one. Wonderful. She'd made it. Give the girl a coconut. She eased onto the flat walkway, adjusting to the change and watching her feet, for the ledge was too narrow for her own comfort. The nine large inwardly diminishing steps that made up the general shape of the pyramid had to do with the regions of death in the Mayan universe. Sharon worked very hard at not wondering what the topmost one symbolized, suspecting it was nothing she needed to dwell upon just now. Instead, she wiped sweat from her brow with her boonie hat, then stuffed it out of the way in a pocket. She drained off the water bottle and wished for another from her backpack, but that was where she'd left it in the trees. At the time it seemed best not to carry its extra weight for the climb.

  Creeping over, she put her back against the huge structure that rested on top. She couldn
't remember what the guidebooks called it, and you got no sense of the size from mere pictures. The walls rose up perhaps another three stories. On this side a single wide door in the center yawned, and at night the effect was a little too ominous. It would be the worst rotten luck if Rivers was inside and saw her silhouetted against the sky. Since he was more likely to be lurking on the north-northeast face to her left, she edged to the right, intending to take the scenic way.

  Sharon pulled the Glock out, tucked the spare magazines under her belt so they'd be handy, and quietly made sure a round was ready in the chamber.

  She put the first corner behind her, standing where the south-southwest face of the pyramid overlooked forest. The tallest trees remained respectfully dwarfed in its presence. The steps leading down to them were in a shocking state, not repaired like the other three sides. One whole section had no steps at all, but a smoothed-over surface like a great slide. Dangerous. It reminded her of a stage set for a play. So long as the bits facing the audience—or in this case tourists—looked good that's what mattered.

  Another centrally placed door to the inner mysteries was on this side. She slipped past it, her heart in her mouth for a bare second. Damn, the weight and solidity of the Glock in her hand should have been more reassuring.

  She paused before taking the next corner in her circuit, listening. Nothing on this side. No birds called from the trees below. They must have known something was up and sensibly bolted. Good for them.

  Could use with a set of wings myself. Preferably the rotating kind. Attached to a fully armed Blackhawk helicopter with night-vision goggles and a load of those other lovely, expensive-but-totally-worth-it tech toys and an experienced flight crew to aid and abet her quest. She'd stand for all the beers afterward.