Spears were raining in on the Illimani. They started to go down. It seemed impossible that any of them could survive. Yet, with a burst of speed, one, who had lost his weapon in the fighting, somehow broke free.
He was young, slim and fast. Unusually, his hair was dark but he had the same staring blue eyes as every other Illimani and, like the others, his body was criss-crossed with scars.
He dodged a few half-hearted attempts to catch him and fled into the trees.
‘Let him go!’ commanded Brindle’s thought-voice. ‘Enough killing today!’
But Ria wasn’t about to let anyone go, and it wasn’t just a matter of revenge. If there was a larger force nearby she couldn’t risk the possibility that even a single survivor might escape to alert them.
She ran alone into the forest in hot pursuit.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Three different things were happening at once.
First, the transfiguration of Sulpa. While his human form slumbered in a pool of blood, his aerial form issued forth from his open mouth as a writhing worm of smoke, shot through with glints of fire. The worm thickened into a helix, turbulent and flowing like a river in flood, the helix transformed itself into a man with the head of an alligator, and the man grew in an instant to giant size, twenty feet tall, towering above the place of sacrifice. Since neither the three remaining guards on the hilltop nor the army down below reacted to any of this, Leoni reasoned the monster must be invisible in the physical realm, just as she was. She had started to take her own invisibility for granted, confident of remaining undetected, safe from physical attack. But hideous new possibilities now loomed with Sulpa out of body too.
Could he see her?
Of course he could. The same way she could see him. He’d not noticed her yet only because she was out of his line of sight, hovering like a bird above and behind him in the sky.
Could he harm her?
Leoni felt equally sure of the answer to this. In all worlds, at all times, and in all forms, Sulpa could – and certainly would – harm her. She should fly away, high and far and fast, and not delay a single second.
But she was aware of another much more complex instinct. This was a strange feeling of compassion … and of responsibility. A feeling that she was somehow required to assist the spirits of the murdered children to pass on to the next phase of their existence. That this was her duty. She hesitated. The monster’s attention was focused on the kids as they explored the out-of-body state with innocent self-absorption. They were so into this new thing, so energised by the sudden sense of freedom, that they didn’t know he had followed them beyond death or in what awful form he now reared over them. Obviously sacrificing their bodies wasn’t enough for him. Obviously he was here to demand more. For some bizarre, inexplicable reason the greedy fuck wanted to kill them again, this time in the aerial realm.
Simultaneous with all this, a shimmering circle of brilliant white light unfurled in the sky. Leoni recognised it as the mouth of the same sort of revolving tunnel she had entered during her near-death experience, and saw the children’s transparent aerial forms were already being drawn up towards it. Sulpa saw the tunnel too and threw himself between it and his victims, blocking their escape.
The third thing that was happening concerned Leoni’s grip on this strange, fast-moving reality she found herself in. Everything was beginning to fade and dim and she sensed herself being tugged back into her body. The scene before her – the tunnel, Sulpa, the spirits of the children – went completely blank, as though someone had switched off a TV set.
For a moment she was marooned in absolute darkness with no reference points, until – CLICK! – the horror was back, advanced a few frames, and Sulpa was stuffing one of the kids into his alligator face, eating him up, swallowing him whole. The spirits of the other five cowered before him, waiting their turn.
Leoni got mad and dropped from the sky like a stone.
She didn’t give herself time to think and barrelled into Sulpa at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. This was nothing like her earlier fruitless attempts to intervene in the physical world. Instead of passing through him, and perhaps distracting him for a moment – the most she’d hoped for – she was surprised by the hard jolt of a collision with his aerial body followed by a massive shock that dazed her and sent her spinning and somersaulting through the air. The monster, too, was caught off balance. He was dragging a second wraith into his gaping maw when the shock seemed to hit him and he stumbled. His spell over the four remaining children was broken and they scattered, flying towards the tunnel of light like moths towards a flame.
Sulpa was after them in a flash and again Leoni diverted him, streaking across his path, getting in the way. He caught another child and held on to her by the throat, but the last three had now reached the tunnel and passed inside. For a moment they remained visible, looking back with unreadable expressions, but soon they were drawn deeper into the light and disappeared.
That left Leoni alone, out of her body, with a twenty-foot-tall alligator-headed man. He kept one sly appraising eye turned towards her as he crammed the soul of the girl he held feet first into his mouth and gulped her down. Then the whole scene transformed itself into a gigantic firework display, the sky was filled by walls and nets and waterfalls of glowing colour, and Leoni knew with absolute certainty that the DMT that had brought her here was wearing off.
‘You’re Jack,’ she said to Sulpa through the fireworks. She didn’t speak the words out loud but framed them as a thought.
‘What if I am?’ The thought came back like an ice pick piercing her brain.
‘YOU’RE JACK, YOU SON OF A BITCH,’ yelled Leoni as she soared up into the sky. For a moment she could imagine she had become a master of out-of-body flight, capable of outstripping any pursuer. But when she looked back over her shoulder she saw Sulpa right behind her.
For a second time everything went blank and Leoni found herself hurtling through absolute darkness. Then powerful hands closed around her throat, plucking her out of full flight, threatening to tear her head from her shoulders. There was the sense of a screen flicking on again. As light flooded back she discovered she had been carried to some realm between worlds – no earth below, no sky above – and that Sulpa was holding her up towards his gaping jaws which were filled with rows of jagged teeth like steel saw-blades.
Of his beautiful earthly features only the tawny feral eyes were recognisable in his new reptilian head, and these gazed at her with hunger.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The forest was flooded with mellow afternoon light filtered by the green canopy as Ria forced her way through the thick undergrowth of ferns and thorns in pursuit of the fleeing Illimani brave. He was never more than thirty paces ahead of her, leaping over obstacles, ducking under branches, tearing through clinging briars that snatched and bloodied his pale skin. Twice she drew back her arm to throw but each time he dodged into cover and she couldn’t take the shot.
Then he was just gone.
No longer crashing through the trees, but … disappeared.
Ria’s momentum carried her into a small glade, twenty paces across, where she slowed to a halt. She moved to the middle of the little clearing and spun on her heels as the unarmed brave burst out of the undergrowth, charging towards her, his arms and legs pumping, murder in his eyes. Ria released her last quartz hunting stone with a sideways backhanded throw. It seemed to shimmer as it flew through the air. Then – CLUNK! – it struck the Illimani square on the brow. For a moment he tottered, glaring at her, unwilling to accept the inevitable, before he crashed face down.
Ria was on him at once. She straddled his lean naked body, planted her left hand firmly in his thick black hair, and lifted up his head from the ground. In her right hand she held the flint knife, long as her forearm, glinting dully in the sun. She stooped, placed the edge of the blade against the brave’s exposed throat and drew a line of blood. She could feel the coarse texture of his hair between
her fingers, hear his hoarse, ragged breathing, smell his rank body odour, see the quiver of returning consciousness around his eyelids.
‘DON’T DO IT!’ Brindle’s thought-voice filled her head. ‘RIA, DON’T DO IT! No more killing please. I begging you.’ She looked around and saw her friend running towards her out of the trees. Right beside him was Oplimar, the little fat Ugly with the bushy red beard. Behind them came Grondin and, last of all, Hond.
Ria stayed her hand but felt a wave of fury welling up inside her. When her own beloved Rill was dead and cold why was Brindle still being so fucking merciful? Why should even a single Illimani be allowed to live and breathe?
‘Because he human like you, like me,’ Brindle answered. ‘Battle over now. All his war band dead. Don’t have to kill him.’
Still keeping a strong grip on her stunned captive’s hair, Ria wrestled him over onto his back and knelt by his shoulder, her blade raised high. His blue eyes fluttered open and he gazed up at her, for a moment obviously not remembering where he was. But, when he saw the knife, blank unafraid acceptance crossed his face.
‘For Rill,’ yelled Ria and stabbed down at his heart.
The blow didn’t reach its target. Brindle’s hands – strong and hard – gripped her wrist and prised the dagger from her fingers. Grondin and Oplimar pinned down the Illimani youth and bound his arms behind his back.
Now the fighting was over, and the explanations had to begin, Ria found she couldn’t face Hond. She jumped to her feet and bolted out of the little glade, back in the direction of the battlefield.
There were corpses everywhere, scattered across the wide clearing. Blood painted the grass in great stripes and swathes in the late-afternoon sunlight and an Illimani head, with wide-open eyes, lay in her path. She directed a kick at it as she rushed past, sending it rolling and tumbling away. To her right a little huddle of Uglies gathered arm in arm, offering up their strange healing chant. She slowed and peered through the scrum to see Trenko on the ground. Another brave supported Trenko’s shoulders, laying his big hands across the deep hatchet wound in his chest, pouring blue light into the torn mass of flesh, fat and muscle. But Ria had already passed by, her attention focused on her dead brother Rill, slumping forward against the ropes that bound him to the thick stake in the midst of the clearing, his abdomen split open and his entrails coiled around his feet.
She ran towards him and embraced his limp and lifeless body, all the while calling his name. Half out of her senses, she scooped up his guts and pushed them back into his stomach cavity, smearing herself from head to foot in his blood. She cut him free of his bonds, lowered him to the ground, and sat weeping at his side.
When she looked up she found Hond standing over her, his green eyes also brimming with tears. This was shocking as she’d never seen him cry before, even after the death of their parents. She got to her feet, her muscles turning to water, and fell into his arms. ‘It’s my fault they murdered Rill,’ she whispered. ‘All my fault. If I’d come home yesterday you wouldn’t have had to search for me and he’d still be alive.’
‘Don’t punish yourself with such thoughts,’ Hond replied. He coughed – it was a wet sound, and for the first time Ria saw he had been wounded. A blade had passed through his side in the heat of the battle and now, when he breathed – and he did so with difficulty – flecks of blood appeared around his mouth. His voice was shaking with pain and exhaustion: ‘We’ve lost our brother – no power can bring him back – but you mustn’t blame yourself. If we hadn’t fought these wolves today’ – he gestured with disgust at the slain Illimani who lay all around – ‘we would have had to fight them tomorrow and good men would still have died.’ He slumped in her arms and almost fell but struggled to speak: ‘The Uglies. How do you know them? Are we safe with them?’
‘We’re safe, Hond. They’re my friends. You saw that in the battle …’
‘They saved our lives.’ He was racked by a fit of bloody coughing. ‘Some died for us. Why?’
‘I’ll tell you everything. But not now.’ Her fear and desperation mounting, Ria looked around for Brindle, couldn’t see him and sent out her thought-voice: ‘Hond’s dying, Brindle. I need your help. I need the magic the Uglies can do. I need you to sing him better.’
‘What’s that?’ Hond asked, almost as though he’d heard her.
‘Nothing. It’s – I can’t explain right now – it’s the way I speak to the Uglies.’
‘Speak to the Uglies? How can you speak to the Uglies? They can’t even make words. I don’t know why they fought for us in the battle but I don’t trust them. I’ve never trusted them. Let’s make a run for it now, while none of them are looking.’
‘We can’t make a run for it, Hond! You need healing for your wound or you’re going to die.’
He disagreed: ‘It’s not that bad. I’m not going to die! I can make it back to camp, see the medicine man, get fixed up.’ He staggered again. This time Ria wasn’t able to support his weight and they sank together to the ground only a few paces away from Rill. ‘Who are those bastards we fought?’ Hond rasped. ‘Are they demons or men?’
‘They are called the Illimani. They bleed like men, they smell like men and I think they are men. But their leader is truly a demon and he commands thousands of them. They’re here to wipe us out.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘The Uglies told me.’
As she answered, Brindle’s thought-voice was back inside her head: ‘Please tell brother don’t be afraid. Don’t be angry. We ready to try healing now.’ Looking up, Ria saw that a ring of Uglies had gathered round. One of them was Trenko! She felt a surge of hope.
Hond was at once belligerent. ‘What’s happening?’ he muttered. Ignoring Ria’s protests, coughing more blood, he struggled to his feet.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Leoni had grown used to the idea that her transparent, diaphanous aerial body was not subject to physical laws and could not be seen, harmed or detained by physical beings. But now she knew she was not invulnerable in this form and could be seen, harmed and detained by other non-physical entities. This was why Sulpa had been able to follow her on her flight to the sky, had succeeded in fastening his hands like a vice around her throat, and was now transporting her towards his chainsaw teeth while maintaining a repulsive, appraising, leeringly sexual eye contact with her.
Despite the alligator face, the look in the monster’s eyes was familiar. Leoni’s father had given her just such a knowing look each time he had forced himself into her bed.
(‘It’s what Jack wanted.’)
A howl of fury burst out of her and she fought Sulpa’s grip, twisting and turning. Then something else new and utterly unexpected happened. Her transparent aerial body began to change. She felt hair sprouting, teeth and claws growing, the rumble of a roar rising in her chest, and in a rapid blur of motion, spitting and hissing, she underwent a spectacular metamorphosis into the savage form of a mountain lion. Unimaginable strength flooded through her, taking Sulpa by surprise. She lashed out at him with a paw, clawing his left eye out of its socket, and broke free of his stranglehold.
No tunnel of light had brought them here between worlds where they floated twenty feet apart like two astronauts in a vacuum – nothing above them, nothing below them, nothing beside them, absolutely nothing at all in this realm of air except Leoni the lioness and Sulpa the alligator-man.
He put his human hand to his dangling eye and reinserted it into the gaping socket. ‘You have injured me,’ he said. The words, which were not spoken out loud, took shape inside her head like shards of ice.
‘I haven’t even started!’ she spat. ‘You’re Jack and you ruined my life.’
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed with mock dismay. ‘A hero seeking revenge!’ His good eye glared at her – the other had turned opaque, like the white of a poached egg. ‘But you have me at a disadvantage … I have ruined so many lives. Please do refresh my memory.’
Before Leoni could unload a
lifetime of hatred the scene before her shivered, returned with full force, and blinked off again into complete darkness. She felt a vast force at work, pulling her away. Far away. The next thing she knew – WHOOSH! WHAM! – she exploded back through a torrent of colours and dropped down into her body in the treatment room at UC Irvine.
Gasping for breath, she opened her eyes, sat up and looked around, half expecting that Sulpa had followed her even here. Instead she found Doctors Monbiot and Shapira standing on either side of her, staring at her as though they had seen a ghost.
Which, in a sense, they had.
Leoni couldn’t bear looking at the three wiry black hairs growing out of Dr Shapira’s chin. They were hideous. But when she focused on Monbiot his lipless face and small circular spectacles proved to be equally disconcerting.
Fixing her gaze somewhere between the two of them she asked: ‘How long was I out?’
Monbiot checked his digital stopwatch: ‘Almost exactly fourteen minutes.’
‘Fourteen minutes?’ Leoni couldn’t believe it: ‘I feel like I’ve been away for fourteen hours.’
‘With DMT it’s not unusual to experience expansion of time,’ Shapira cut in. ‘Sometimes you might believe yourself to be trapped in those realms for months or even years before you return. But in reality it’s rare for more than twenty minutes to pass from the beginning to the end of the trip.’ She loomed over Leoni and, in quick succession, put a stethoscope to her chest, took her blood pressure, examined her tongue and shone a bright little light into her eyes. Finally she announced: ‘You’re OK.’
‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be OK?’
‘We were a little concerned,’ the older woman explained. It was obvious she was making an effort to sound more friendly. ‘Your heart rate went way up. At one point you appeared to be choking …’
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