by Derry Sandy
Kariega’s face held a small smile. “I dreamt of you.”
“Well you are lucky to have had such a striking beauty grace your dreams.” Katharine laughed.
Kariega replied, “You skinny mulatto women have little effect on Kariega Le Clerc, I miss the heavy backsides and bosoms and the dark skin of my tribeswomen. Now that is what a woman should look like. Where did you learn to laugh like that?”
“My laughter is a trick my mother taught me, I can make you into one of us and then you can learn it,” she said sweetly. “And as for the heavy backsides of your tribeswomen. Imagine one of them trying to help you hunt down some underworld creature, her damned bosoms knocking things over, creating an unholy raucous. You'd never sneak up on anyone."
“You might have a point.” Kariega conceded. “Do we have a pact?” Kariega said as he rose and held out a hand to the woman.
“Make me breakfast, Kariega and I will think on it. The quality of your food shall be the deciding factor.”
This was the beginning of a strange friendship that Kariega dreamed would save the Absolute.
Chapter 2
(Present Day)
The sun was shining, the northeast trade winds were blowing and somewhere in the distance a radio bleated out a reggae tune. The song urged Kingston’s ghetto youth to rise against the class oppression of urban Jamaica.
By all appearances it was a generic Trinidadian Sunday afternoon just like so many other Sunday afternoons that had passed since the beginning of time.
Rohan Le Clerc lifted his head and peered through his mirrored sunglasses at the coffins containing the bodies of his grandfather Isa and his cousin Dorian. A warm breeze ruffled his dreadlocks. His girlfriend Kamara’s hand tightened on his arm in a reassuring squeeze. His grandfather had liked Kamara. He had said she had the makings of a seer, but at twenty-three she was too old to be tested.
Rohan fought to swallow the bolus of emotions that threatened either to choke him or to escape his lips in the form of a plaintive wail. The presence of the two coffins was difficult enough to handle, but even worse was the knowledge that the body of a third Orderman, Kimani, was lost altogether. That body lay where it had fallen in the Paria forest and would lie there until it turned to dust because as much as he loved his brother-in-arms, Rohan, certainly wasn’t going back to retrieve the corpse. Not after he himself had only narrowly escaped death.
Everything had gone wrong on their last hunt. What had begun as a mission to eliminate a single lagahoo in the Paria forest, had become a prolonged midnight battle against a pack numbering in the dozens. Dozens! It had been years since anyone had seen a pack of the werewolf-like creatures that large. Before that night, the Order had come to accept as fact, that the taint of the original greyborn was diminishing. Every year fewer people were infected by lycanthropy or vampirism. Of late The Order had had precious little to do. The events of that night were cause for belief that the relative peace of the last few decades was at an end.
***
Rohan Le Clerc and his kin were not ordinary men. They had superior senses, speed, strength and stamina. While in the womb Rohan had been blessed by four mayalmen, knowledgeable herbalists, healers, and practitioners of limited sorcery and necromancy. Shortly after he was born he was marked with a lion’s head on the flesh above his heart; eagle’s wings around his feet, and down his back along his spine, vertebrae bones with a sheen like metal. The ink of the tattoos was a mixture of shapeshifter blood and the ash from the funeral pyre of a mayalman. Each tattoo was a small gateway to the Grey, channeling that realm’s mystical power and bestowing on the wearer attributes represented by the tattoos. In Rohan’s case he had gained courage, speed, and durability.
His gifts were considerable, but he had been badly wounded in the initial round of the fight, as badly as he could remember ever having been wounded. His arm was partially torn out of the shoulder joint and there was a deep bite in his thigh. These were the most serious injuries among a thousand other claw marks and scratches. That he could still run, although not very fast and certainly not indefinitely, was testament to his gifts. His grandfather and his cousins had all been hobbled by similar wounds.
The monsters pursuing them had been immensely powerful. They looked like massive Irish Wolfhounds that ran upright. They had huge shaggy dog’s heads with long jaws that opened to more than ninety degrees and bit down with the force of a sprung tiger trap. Their arms of dense muscle covered in thick hides and coarse hair could uproot saplings. But what Rohan hated most about them was their speed. They ran about six times faster than the fastest man and thus about two or three times faster than Rohan could manage on his best day, and today was not his best day.
Rohan and his kin had fled through the forest as dappled moonlight and dark shadows took turns revealing then obscuring the horrors around them. Though he knew that their pursuers had once been human, Rohan would do anything for more silver shot. The pack could have and should have overtaken them, but for some reason the beasts had seemed happy to simply chase them, like overzealous dogs pursuing a car with shiny hubcaps.
The pack’s goal was revealed when the forest ended abruptly in a clearing. The clearing, even more abruptly, ended in a two-hundred-foot drop to a rocky, rough sea. Standing on the edge, Rohan felt the sea mist every time the angry waves assaulted the cliff face. The four men had been corralled, brought to bay like deer before hounds. They turned to meet the blazing eyes of the dog-men all around them and found in their gaze no humanity. They were hemmed in with the cliff behind them and the pack closing in on all other sides.
There was a brief pause, a moment of utter stillness and then the night exploded in violence. Three lagahoo launched themselves at Rohan. Their movement was almost faster than his brain could process. Their snapping fangs and wicked claws were everywhere. Rohan had no time to think, only to react. He dodged to one side. The most zealous of the three flew past him and sailed in a neat arc over the edge of the cliff.
One appeared to his right. He didn’t consciously go for the knife at the small of his back, in the heat of battle he operated on sheer muscle memory. His knife materialized in his hand. He flicked his wrist and the knife buried itself, blade-first, into the forehead of the dog faced beast. The entire sequence was over in the span of half a wink. To varying degrees, greyborn were allergic to silver, and lagahoo were particularly vulnerable. Silver caused painful flesh wounds and death if a vital organ was struck. This one was dead before it hit the ground. Rohan glimpsed his grandfather out of the corner of his eye. With his ancient short sword, Gladius, in hand, Isa Le Clerc danced among the dog men. Limbs and heads flew about as if expelled from a fountain. The razor-sharp silver blade cauterized where it cut, and the air was filled with the smell of burnt blood and fur and the howls of the maimed and dying.
Kimani and Dorian were also engaged in pitched battles for their lives. Dorian held a hatchet in each of his fists. Where he lacked Isa’s grace and finesse he compensated for with massive power, splitting the lagahoo with powerful blows that dismembered most assailants.
Kimani moved with fluid and animalistic grace, a true student of his grandfather’s methods, but his skill would count for nothing. They were outnumbered and outflanked. Rohan had no more knives. He punched the closest lagahoo in the chest and heard its sternum crack, but he broke two fingers in the effort. The creature’s legs crumpled. As Rohan turned to face another foe, a lagahoo came up behind him, clamped its toothy maw over his shoulder, and bore down. Searing pain ripped through his entire upper body. The creature kept a crushing grip on Rohan’s shoulder while shaking him like a terrier would shake a rabbit.
Through a thick haze of pain, he had heard himself call out for help. Another lagahoo, seeing that Rohan was immobilized, rushed in to finish him. Rohan kicked out as hard as he could, catching the onrushing beast square in the throat. With a gurgled mouthful of blood, the lagahoo went down, but the blow was not fatal and Rohan could see the crushed throat reconst
ruct itself under the fallen creature’s skin. Without silver, the dog-men were simply too difficult to kill.
Suddenly the fight halted. The lagahoo stopped attacking at the precise moment that they could have pressed their advantage and killed the four cornered men. The creatures stood still as if in a trance. Dorian took this opportunity to hack down two of the closest creatures. They made no attempt to defend themselves and Isa signaled for Rohan and his cousins to start moving away.
Before the Ordermen could retreat, the beasts let out a chilling howl. Into the clearing strode a creature of legend. Rohan recognized it immediately. He had heard many stories told by the elders of the Order about master lagahoo, pureborn of the Grey, allowed into the world of men by the events of the Recompense. The master lagahoo was nine-feet tall and massively muscled, half again as tall and twice the mass of its once-human ancestors. Its long arms, which ended well below the knees, were tipped with razor-sharp black claws. Its eyes burned with a mixture of rabid ferocity and intelligence and it appeared to have psychic control over the pack. Rohan was deeply disturbed by its appearance. Not a single pureborn had been seen in the Absolute in centuries. Its presence meant one of two things, either someone had opened a new gateway, or this guy had been sharpening his horticultural skills in the Paria forest for two hundred years.
The beast stood for a beat as if evaluating the four men. Then it moved. One instant it was at the edge of the clearing, the next its mouth was clamped over Kimani’s head, manifesting in their midst as if it had teleported. The other lagahoo looked on, making a bloodcurdling noise like hyenas at a kill.
The bite killed Kimani instantly and Rohan felt a deep, stabbing loss. Isa made a sound that was part sob, part shout. The master released the dead Orderman’s lifeless corpse and the body fell to the earth. All three of the remaining warriors rushed the master as one.
The massive lagahoo moved. It back fisted Dorian in the face providing no opportunity for the stocky man to react. The power of the blow snapped Dorian’s head all the way around so that his fading eyes met Rohan’s who was standing behind him. The master moved again with baffling speed. It grabbed Rohan around the throat and before he could raise an offensive response, cut off his air supply with a crushing grip.
Rohan heard the telltale whistle of a blade and a wet sound as a weapon bit through flesh. The creature roared, dropped Rohan and turned toward Isa who was in the act of lifting his sword for a second strike. Rohan rolled to the side and wrenched a hatchet out of Dorian’s death grip. He rushed back into the fray. The huge creature turned to face the attacking Isa, apparently considering Rohan as the lesser threat. It slashed at Isa who dodged just outside the reach of the telescopic arm and wicked claws. Rohan hurled the axe at the beast with all the force he could muster.
His throw was on target but the master’s head swiveled at the last instant as if it heard the missile’s approach. It caught the axe by the handle inches from its face. Isa used the momentary distraction to attack again slashing upward. The short-sword grated against bone as it entered the creature’s gut and exited at the shoulder in a spray of blood, the cut however was not deep enough to be effective. With a roar the master whipped out an arm and caught Isa. Its claws and fingers pierced deeply into the lower part of the elder’s neck. Rohan made two running steps forward and launched himself into the air intending to kick in the creature’s throat or at least get it to drop his grandfather. In response the beast hurled the limp elder at the airborne Rohan as if the man weighed no more than a pebble.
Rohan could do nothing to brace for the blow. Isa and Rohan slammed together in midair with the force of a car collision. Rohan expected pain, but he felt nothing. He and Isa fell to the ground in a tangled heap, ten feet from where the lagahoo stood. Rohan could do nothing but lay where he fell. There was an odd sensation in his back. When Rohan attempted to rise his legs refused to comply. He was now at the mercy of the creature. The master slowly approached the fallen pair, wearing a grim parody of what Rohan thought could be a smile.
The lesser lagahoo howled a blood chilling cacophony announcing their master’s triumph to the night. The master still held the axe Rohan had thrown. It reached Isa first, and grabbing a handful of the elder’s locks, lifted him off the forest floor, sliced the elder’s throat with Dorian’s axe, then discarded the body over the cliff edge. The creature’s smile seemed to widen as it continued its approach to where Rohan lay. Rohan tried to retreat, to stand, to move. Not a single body part complied with the frantic messages supplied by his brain. Even in that moment he did not panic. Every Orderman knew that his life would probably end violently. He closed his eyes and, in his mind, he traveled to a dark place, almost completely black except from a billion pinpoints of starlight far above. He still could not move, but in the darkness, he sensed someone was with him. He could not see her face, or even a silhouette but he knew it was a woman.
“I’ve got something here for you,” she said, and a thick rope of blindingly white light sprang from her chest and snaked towards him. Even with this new illumination Rohan still could not see her face. When the snake of light touched him, it felt as if he was hit by lightning.
His eyes opened and he was back on the forest floor. His body began to repair itself. He felt a snap in his back as the bones righted themselves. He rolled over and onto his knees as the heat and the pain of healing took over. The flesh on his shoulder crawled as it re-knitted without leaving a scar. The wound on his leg closed as if it had never been inflicted. His body was whole in a matter of seconds, and there was still strength left over for fighting.
Rohan could not suppress the onrush of new power, and there was no doubt what he would use it for. He rose from his knees and on to his feet in one smooth motion. His body felt supple and his senses were even more powerful than before. He could see the individual hairs on the body of the master lagahoo even in the dark. He could hear its heartbeat and he could smell the blood on its claws and on its breath. The blood was Isa’s, Dorian’s, and Kimani’s. He rushed the beast where it stood, seemingly perplexed by his prey’s sudden convalescence.
The master hurled Dorian’s axe at Rohan’s head but to Rohan the flying axe appeared to move in slow motion as if the air was cold honey. In fact, everything around him moved more slowly than he did. He tapped the axe aside just before it struck him, diverting it into the bush towards one of the lesser lagahoo.
The master came at him in a rush of violent intent but he might as well have been strolling. The beast swung a talented fist and Rohan moved just out of its reach then flowed back to land a crushing fist to the creature’s mid-section, a chop to the throat, and a round house kick to the head all in the space of half a second. The master tried to fend off the flood of bone breaking blows, but its efforts were futile. Rohan's fists and feet found every opening in the master’s guard.
That night he had beaten the master back towards the cliff edge. And just before he drove it off the precipice, Rohan seized it by the throat and drew its face downward so he could meet its eyes. It tried to pry Rohan’s hands from its neck but could not make them budge. Pure hatred blazed in the greyborn’s eyes. Rohan knew his own eyes burned with a similar loathing. He discerned an odor under the lagahoo’s stink, an acrid scent which by some dark instinct he knew was the smell of fear. He tore its throat out and was bathed in a spray of hot blood. The dead master fell backward over the edge of the cliff and down to the black sea and its impaling rocks.
With the object of his immediate interest gone, Rohan felt as if he was going insane. His newly acquired force threatened to draw him to a place from which he did not think he could return unless he could find a way to unleash it. He turned to the other lagahoo and pounced on the closest one. The creature made a futile attempt to escape and Rohan punched the back of its head so hard that his fist went right through its skull, through the warm brain, and out the front of its face. He was swept up on a tide of a gleeful rage, determined to slay them all. They scattered, f
leeing in all directions, and he cackled hysterically as he pursued them.
He glided through the forest as easily as if the thick branches and undergrowth made room for his passage. The lagahoo were no match for his speed and strength. He was crazed, he only wanted to kill.
The morning sun climbed over the mountain tops as Rohan sprang into a clearing pursuing a fleeing lagahoo, savoring the smell of its terror. The white sunlight seared Rohan’s eyes and he fell to his knees in pain. The wound in his shoulder re-opened. His tongue felt swollen and parched as if he had swallowed mouthfuls of hot sand. Sweat poured from his body in rivulets and the new strength flooded out of him leaving behind agony and, as he succumbed to unconsciousness, an intense disappointment that he had not been able to kill all the fleeing, monsters.
***
As Rohan stood at the graveside of his fallen grandfather and cousin, he puzzled over how the Order had rescued him and recovered the bodies that lay in the coffins. He also wondered about the mysterious woman who had given him the power to heal, survive, and to kill so many lagahoo by himself. He promised himself to meet with the Watchers’ Council as soon as possible where he hoped that the circumstances surrounding these occurrences would be illuminated.
He held Kamara’s hand as they walked along the gravel track that led out of the Arima Public Cemetery. Another breeze ruffled Kamara’s curly hair and wafted the smell of her shampoo towards him. Her reassuring grasp tightened around his upper arm and he shifted her hand higher on his sleeve. He was wearing a shoulder holster under his jacket, and if he needed to go for the gun he didn’t want Kamara’s hand in the way. For the time being Rohan Le Clerc was the last living member of the Stone Chapter, and he intended to survive to see Stone’s ranks replenished.
Chapter 3
Jean and Dinah, Rosita and Clementina
