“Do you feel it? My God! I’m sure that someone’s watching us!” Holmes repeated the refrain in a shaky voice; his eyes were gleaming orbs in the yellow lamplight. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait for her inside?”
“The Quarries are there if she returns,” Virginia snapped. “Now cease your babbling. She may call out.”
The governess hurried ahead of him in the dark, painfully aware that she was wearing her nightdress and little else. The dew on the long grass had soaked the garment from her bare feet to above the knee where the wet material clung to her thighs.
With his lamp behind her, Holmes would have full view.
“Lilly!” she cried again, to push the thought from her mind. Now that Captain Seward had returned Phillip Holmes would pay for any indiscretion later.
An odor overpowered her senses then, and she halted where Van Resen’s mysterious moringa grove loomed before her.
“Maybe she’s in there!” Holmes gasped, panting to catch his breath. “If she is hiding.”
“It reeks!” Virginia scoffed. “She wouldn’t.”
“That smell’s not so bad at second pass—musty like an old scotch,” Holmes said pondering the hanging boughs.
“Don’t be foolish,” Virginia said, glancing back to catch the young man’s expression. His eyes had shifted from the trees to where the lamplight warmed her legs.
“The trees fill me with dread,” she said, certain that dim light glowed among their branches.
“Someone could hide in there—or if one required privacy...” Holmes offered, moving close behind her and setting a hand on her shoulder. “What do you think? We would be alone—and I’m here for you.”
“That’s a poor invitation and of precious little comfort,” Virginia answered, shaking the man’s hand off, and she hissed when his fingers clasped her elbow from behind. There was a flash of electric blue behind the bloated tree trunks, and she squinted—thinking it was Holmes’ unsteady lamp.
“Comfort I can give you, and—I know you’ve been watching me,” Holmes said, a deep timbre now echoing from his chest. “While the others work. A woman your age, unmarried, you must long for much more.”
“Leave me!” Virginia said, trying to draw away, but his hand tightened around her arm. Again she saw a flicker of light within the grove.
“I know you feel it too!” Holmes rasped huskily, his eyes crimson crescents in the lamplight. “We’ll be safe.”
Voices echoed distantly as Van Resen and the others called out for Lilly far to the other side of the yurt.
“Release me now! We mustn’t linger here. It’s dangerous—wait...” Virginia scowled into the murk by the moringa trees. “Is that mist moving toward us?”
Holmes came close to her again, and his hand slid up to her shoulder turning her toward him. The light splashed across her breasts as the lamp shook in his unsteady hand.
“It’s only fog. Please, let me...” he said, a quaver in his voice as his arm slipped around Virginia’s waist. “...I’ll give you what you want—what I need!”
“Stop!” she cried, pushing on his arm as his hand slid up to her breast. She pulled away, silenced by outrage, her mind struggling to grasp the fool’s audacity.
And could he not see that the fog had crept even closer?
“We do as we must, Miss James. Please, I’ll be quick!” Holmes grated, the hand holding the lamp pressed against her shoulder as he groped her chest. His mouth brushed her throat. “I can taste you already!”
“Stop—help!” Virginia shouted, twisting in his embrace as the hot lamp singed her back. Holmes pulled her hips against his own, but lost his balance as she struggled.
Turning in place as the governess pulled away, his legs became entangled in the long grass; he lurched to catch his balance, dropped the lamp and fell.
Holmes staggered to his knees, crying out as he stooped to retrieve the lamp for in its guttering flame he saw that the black fog had drifted out and clung to the glass.
“Miss James!” he called, looking around. She would never have entered the moringa grove alone, and he would never have considered it himself...before...but the smell had come, and his thoughts had been drowned by the throb of his heart.
There to his left other more wholesome trees grew down to the clearing.
“Virginia. Please, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” Holmes cried out, hurrying in the only direction she could have run. “I was afraid. You mustn’t tell!”
The young man moved briskly past the black trees and climbed the gentle slope before hesitating at the jungle edge where he peered into the darkness, using his pale white hand to direct the lamp’s glare into the wooded gloom.
Had he lost her? Impossible! He imagined the ranger, newly returned, and how the big man would take such news...
This was no time for cowardice!
“You come from a long line of brave Englishmen!” he said to steady his nerve, though his thoughts returned to the governess’ smooth throat. I must have her!
With a final gasp, Holmes stepped between the first small trees, and was soon weaving through the thick undergrowth and tangling creepers that infested the spaces between the many stout trunks.
The looming intensity of the jungle crushed the lamplight to a flickering spark beneath an avalanche of shadow—but he kept on. Starting, stopping and struggling through the brush as the land rose underfoot.
Holmes knew he should call out to Virginia—Miss James—but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t! She wouldn’t believe his intention to help—or his excuses for acting so barbarically.
And he could not drown out the distant voices as the others cried for Lilly.
Captain Seward had never liked Holmes, none of the castaways did...other than Lilly, but she had been such an immature thing—no more than a silly, spoiled little girl.
No wonder he had lost control of himself, and behaved so abominably with her governess. The woman was still fetching despite her maturity, and dressed in the wet cotton nightdress had proved irresistible.
Holmes imagined her body then, the rounded thighs pressing against damp cloth.
“She had no right to refuse me after such an offer!” he hissed, as shadowy images formed in his mind of the woman lying exposed upon the grass, her clothing torn, and defiance dead. He would have her. He had to have her!
“And who is this old maid to turn down Phillip Holmes?” he growled, glancing down, wondering at the chill that had suddenly clasped his ankles.
The black fog had drifted with him into the jungle and was now slithering and sliding against his boots.
“Oh Miss James!” he blurted, terrified, rushing forward, hoping to shake the fog that seemed to dog him yet.
He had to apologize, and he would be wise to do it first, to beg for her forgiveness long before she talked to the others.
...so beautiful and tempting. What man could resist with the wild night all around him.
...and what were her intentions? To be barefoot and showing naked ankle and calf while a young man was near...and the wet clothing? It was like putting an advertisement in a newspaper.
Surely, even the Texan would understand.
Holmes kept on until the dim grew more terrifying than what Captain Seward might do to him for losing Miss James.
So Holmes turned upon his heel to head back to the clearing, but as his lamp swung, its light fell upon something pale.
“Oh my God, Lilly!”
The girl lay in a tangle of dark green ferns and ivy. He had almost trod over her soft feet. She was naked to the waist and her wet night dress was hiked up to reveal her white thighs.
“Oh my...” Holmes breathed huskily, kneeling by the girl. To his left, he saw some remnant of black fog lingering in the lamplight. Among the leaves it curled, and in gentle waves the haze clung to her hips and caressed her bare shoulders.
“God help me,” he said, reaching out to brush the unwholesome stuff aside, and as he did the mist enveloped his w
rist, and the action drew his palm and eye toward Lilly’s breasts.
“I’ll reckon you’re feeling her heartbeat,” Captain Seward’s voice snarled from the darkness before he stepped out of the gloom with his gun pointed at Holmes’ sternum. “And save me a bullet.”
“Lilly’s fainted—she’s barely breathing!” Holmes snatched his hand away from the girl and rose to step back. “The fog...something’s wrong with the fog.”
“Wrong’s the right way of putting what I saw, Mr. Holmes. Now, you take another step north and hold your lamp up so I can look...” The big Texan holstered his gun and knelt by the girl.
He frowned up at the Englishman before quickly pulling Lilly’s nightdress down over her legs and closing it at her throat, though he paused before buttoning the collar to touch her neck. He shifted his fingertips to his mouth and licked them. “Blood... Something’s bit her—there’s tooth marks.”
He scowled at Holmes. “Now, I give you permission to lay hands upon her one more time.” He squatted by her shoulders. “Grab her feet. The doctor’s got to have a look.”
But before Holmes could move, the ranger stiffened.
“Wait. Ain’t Miss James with you?” he asked, glaring at the younger man.
“Virginia saw something,” Holmes said with shaking voice. “And ran to look but we got split up—then I found Lilly.”
Another lamp appeared in the trees and cast a pool of light on the ferns that Van Resen and Jacob followed through the tangle toward them.
“Miss James is missing now, Doc,” Seward growled, as Jacob took Lilly from him; the black man cooing, “Poor little girl!”
But the ranger continued, “And it looks like something bit her.”
“Again?” Van Resen leaned over the girl and groaned before looking up. “Where is Miss James?”
A bloodcurdling scream shattered the jungle quiet; somewhere in the night, in the distance, a woman was in peril.
“Miss James?” The old ranger stared in the direction from which the sound had come. Before he could move the scream came again to fill the dark with menace.
CHAPTER 16 – Action at Sunrise
Gazda glared in the direction of the screams, and knew from the echo that the brown-haired female was moving east through the treetops at a rapid pace. And she was not alone.
Some other creature carried her.
The night ape looked down from his perch in a young oak, and struggled with the conflict that raged inside him. The males of Lilly’s tribe had reacted to the distant cries where they stood over her body. From their postures and manner he knew they shared his frustration and wanted to retrieve the second female, but they also had the injured Lilly to think of first.
Lilly!
The night ape came close to despair as he thought back to the moment Lilly left the cabin to go with him through the black fog.
She came to him with a smile on her pink lips and desire gleaming in her blue eyes. Smitten, Gazda crouched before her, and patted the earth with open hands while swaying left and right, apologizing in the way of apes: barking, and grunting out his great remorse—explaining his behavior of the night before.
But Lilly paid no mind, accepting instead his presence with a soft downward stroke of her fingers over his neck, chest and abdomen. Then walking with him into the jungle, she watched his movements, eyes hungry as she opened her long garment and pulled it down to hang at her waist.
Gazda leapt and charged excitedly around her as she turned and turned to follow him with her eyes—until her breath caught suddenly, and she fell unconscious in his arms.
Sitting cross-legged in the ferns with her draped across his lap, he inhaled the scent of her sweet yellow hair, and licked at her lips, jaw and breasts, drawn quickly to an excited pitch by the taste of her skin, and by the blood that surged beneath it.
When Lilly’s eyes half-opened Gazda pressed their lips again and a scarlet flame welled up in him that filled his body with a passion he could not contain, and so he coupled with the drowsy female. The heat from his burning loins rushed over her skin like flames, caused her heart to throb and blood to rush.
Gazda had been alone so long, lost without his friends, without king, family and tribe, and there the beautiful Lilly had trusted him to walk among the trees, to move at his side with the cold black fog caressing her heels. And then to trust him in the vaulted forest, to mate while the dark mist drifted round.
There in the tree above the unconscious Lilly and the males of her tribe, fury shook Gazda’s powerful frame and caused the scar on his brow to blaze and his eyes to flash with fire.
Had he not come to Lilly concerned that she had suffered his mother’s fate?
He remembered how his passion rose to match a thirst that grew within, and how he used his fangs again to open the wounds upon her throat, and how he had with pointed tongue lapped the sweet blood that trickled out, and then...
He remembered pulling his mouth away to see her bright eyes upon him. To this he shook his head and drooped with shame; but, Lilly cooing drew his brow against her breast where the roar of her heart called out to him.
He pressed his mouth to hers to kiss and kiss more deeply, and soon he laid her out upon the ground, and pushed aside her coverings to mate again.
Blind with her perfume, urged on by her flesh, Gazda pressed his suit as heat poured from the girl and her thoughts were overborne.
High in the branches, Gazda gripped his skull as if he yearned to crush it, for memories came of his fear as he leapt from Lilly’s white form to whimper her name with foaming lips dripping...
Blood. He’d taken her blood again.
She was white upon the jungle floor, and in a panic he had kissed her face to draw her back from death, and as she slept he took his knife and slit the flesh of his wrist to press the flowing wound against her mouth. And Lilly drank what he returned to her before she could wake.
Then cries had come through the woods as others came in search. In the clearing they circled and called, so Gazda kissed poor Lilly and caressed her naked limbs until a young male carrying flame approached. Then the night ape left the girl where she’d be found...
...to climb into the trees to watch the orange flame flicker and dance upon the young male’s palm, and Gazda had wondered if this was the thunder-hand at work again—like the smoking fingers he had seen before.
But his thoughts were drawn from the mystery to the scent of the male who carried it; for it was plain he hoped to mate with Lilly.
He leaned over the barely conscious girl in a way that had Gazda bristling defensively, when a strange male charged from the dark.
This one was big and moved with the strength and poise of a silverback. He wore a great cloth covering on his head, and a sweeping tuft of hair beneath his nose.
Gazda had wondered briefly if this one would challenge him for Lilly, but there was no time to worry for another flame came flickering through the trees.
This light had been brighter, and caused a flash to dazzle Gazda’s eyes as it approached the other, so he turned from the flare and saw how brightly his limbs shone in the jungle night. With no mud-skin and only his loincloth for covering—his flesh shimmered like the moon.
The night ape males were looming over Lilly when the terrible scream had turned their faces south and east, and then another cry, farther on—deeper in the forest.
Gazda’s hunting instincts had flared to life, and the desire to pursue swelled within him, but he could not leave Lilly until the other males had carried her to safety in the tree-nest, and even then for some time he delayed, brooding in the trees that bordered the clearing where he watched the lighted window.
A short time later the new big male and the black-skinned one climbed out and ran through the grass with a flaming stone before them. Their fretful charge took them southeast across the clearing in pursuit of the brown-haired female. The night was limping toward dawn, and its many dangers would die with the rising sun.
When Li
lly’s sleeping breath reached the night ape’s sensitive ears, he tore after the other males to overtake and pass them like a wind in the high branches.
Gazda hoped to rescue the other female before the sun came up, or to slay the beast that had carried off and killed her. Only when he knew what had happened to Lilly’s friend would he dare return to his mate.
Lilly had been returned to the cabin, and as Van Resen worked on the girl, the other castaways had welcomed Captain Seward back as he wolfed down tinned meat, biscuits and a large quantity of water while telling Jacob to wrap a hunk of cheese, jar of preserves and biscuits in a pillowcase that they could carry like a bag.
Then with little more explanation, the old ranger had taken up some matches and their sturdiest lamp, and dashed out into the night with Jacob Raines behind.
The scientist would have gone with them to search for Miss James if he hadn’t young Lilly’s health to worry about.
He had volunteered Phillip Holmes to go in his stead, but the captain negated that suggestion with a look that encouraged the scientist to later question the young man’s sequence of events that led up to his losing Virginia and finding Lilly.
Holmes’ description of discovering the unconscious girl while searching for the panicking governess did not match the behavior of the level-minded Miss James in Van Resen’s memory, anymore than the Englishman’s tone suited the harrowing tale he told.
“You say one thing, Mr. Holmes,” the scientist remarked while cleaning Lilly’s wound and face. He and Mr. Quarrie had laid her out on her grandmother’s bed. “But your expression says something else.”
Mrs. Quarrie joined her husband to watch over Van Resen’s shoulder as he gauged their granddaughter’s health.
“Anemic” was an insufficient term for her condition. Judging from the pale complexion and skin turgor, she had lost a dangerous amount of blood.
“Such small wounds and no blood on her clothing,” he muttered, more to himself than to his companions.
“What could have happened?” Mr. Quarrie asked, holding their remaining lamp near.
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