Glancing up at his hand, he felt his blood freeze in his veins. ‘What on ––?’
Ants.
Thousands of them.
Swarming through his fingers and tumbling in a treacly waterfall over his wrist. Whippy-legged as spiders, squirming from a ghastly brown mass that now seethed around Estella’s hand, enveloping it like a living glove before storming up his bare arm towards his shoulder.
‘Estella!’ he shrieked, turning back to face her.
Except it wasn’t her any more.
A human-shaped column of ants stood in her place. They scrambled in a mask over her forehead, tearing the red flower in her hair to shreds. They dripped from the tip of what had been her nose. Streaming over her neck and shoulders, they dribbled into thick swinging pendants of scuttling bodies that crumbled and dropped in clumps to explode and scatter around the heels of her shoes.
Jason felt a scream die in his throat as the phantom of roiling brown and black now gracefully lifted its other writhing arm and clamped it firmly on to his opposite shoulder. Immediately the ants moved as one, their wriggly platoons skittering up the twin bridges of her arms to pour over his body. Snapping and biting, they cascaded down his chest, his back and legs, enfolding him like a living mummy case, one lined with tiny fangs that sent bolts of pain searing across his skin.
Behind him, he was dimly aware of the band screeching to a stop as people fled past him, screaming and shouting, scattering tables and chairs in their wake as they swerved away from his flailing arms and the ants that rained down in a glistening shower on to the floor. Desperately scooping handfuls of insects from his face, Jason saw the swarm abruptly turn towards the door and charge towards it. A single glint flashed from the legion of their scrabbling bodies, the glimmer of the Underworld key as it was jostled along on their backs, the little parrot bouncing merrily, as they carried it like a trophy, out into the street.
‘No!’
Roaring, he leaped blindly after them. But the ants were faster. Surging like a black tide, they turned sharply and poured down a storm drain. Taking the key with them.
For a split second Jason blinked after them, his body throbbing with bites, unable to believe what had happened. In agony, he lumbered towards the fountain and, heaving himself in, sank gratefully into its cool water. A few blissful moments later, he stood up again, dazed and dripping. Even in the moonlight the swellings were red and furious and, gingerly touching his face, he squealed, feeling his handsome features as crumpled as a fallen peach.
Dizzy with shock, he clambered out and stumbled away, swatting and scratching, still feeling as if a million tiny legs were scurrying over his skin. In fact, he was so distracted by the terrible sensation that he didn’t even notice the red fire truck parked in front of Estella’s apartment. Nor the clapping as the real Estella, the one who’d been trapped in the building’s lift for the past three hours, stepped out of the doorway, flanked by a couple of firemen.
But he did hear a woman’s eerily familiar laugh. High and chiming, it tinkled in amusement along the street behind him, echoing off the buildings as he limped away into the shadows.
25 Or mandibles, being the fancy name ant-scientists use when studying them. You can easily spot ant-scientists – they’re the ones in white coats and Wellington boots up to their armpits.
THE LONE STAR26 LONE STAR
Well, I don’t know about you, but all those ghastly ants have made me want to throw myself into the nearest fountain too. Do you know, I’ve gone itchy all over? Prickly and tingly, the way you do when you watch one of those Sunday night documentaries about creepy-crawlies, only to find that you can’t enjoy your cup of tea any more because of the sensation of something scooching up your leg.
Ugh!
Let me think of something nicer.
I know!
A kitten!
Not a real cuddly-wuddly one that meows and flops over so you can tickle its tummy – but one made from platinum, a pendant shaped like a kitten and the one that Hazel was admiring at that very moment, dangling in the window of the jewellery shop tucked inside Manaus’s glamorous Hotel Esplendido. Curled into a ball, its nose and collar were set with pink diamonds, and now, lifting up her sunglasses for a better look, Hazel just knew that it would go fabulously with her strawberry-coloured suede jacket. And, what a snip at $5,000! Then her eyes slid sideways to the platinum poodle displayed on the necklace beside it, with a pink-diamond bow on one ear, and frowned because that was rather gorgeous too.
Kitten?
Poodle?
She frowned, strangely unable to make up her mind this morning. Heaven only knew she deserved a treat after that terrible ordeal on the boat and expensive, glittery things usually cheered her up. But not today. Frustrated, she turned away and walked across the marble-floored foyer to sink down into a green velvet sofa. Stretching back, she felt relieved that the shop didn’t open for another twenty minutes, giving her plenty of time to think about it properly.
Above her, ceiling fans whirred and, listening to the tinkling piano being played in the lobby behind her, she glanced round at the women chatting over low tables set with silver tea pots and blue china; the old gentleman briskly turning the page of his ironed newspaper; businessmen in linen suits barking down mobile phones; and her own bodyguards, flown in last night, who stood blearily drinking coffee at the palm-fronded espresso bar.
She loved being here at the hotel. The way its floors didn’t rock beneath her feet. The way she couldn’t hear the endless slip-slap of water. The way the air smelled grubbily full of city and cars and not jungle. And most importantly, the way it wasn’t squirm-full of hulking great spiders slinking up the duvet towards you. Of this she was absolutely certain, having insisted the bellboy27 check her suite, demanding he look underneath all five beds, seven tables, thirty-three chairs, inside ten wardrobes, beneath the pool table and under the seats of all twelve toilets (twice). Now, leaning back against the marsh-mallow-soft velvet, this was, she decided, the only way to see the Amazon, although technically, of course, she couldn’t actually see it at all from here. Only pictures of it, like the one of a golden jaguar stalking through the treetops on the wall beside her, which suited her fine.
So why then did she feel so twitchy?
She swallowed, uncomfortably thinking back to Rose’s face the day before as the helicopter Hazel had chartered from Manaus slapped down its floats on the Rio Negro. Feeling a sharp jab of guilt, she remembered the disappointment etched into Rose’s sunburned brow, her tight mouth, the sparkle gone from her eyes and felt her own heart tighten. But, she consoled herself, that ghastly spider on the boat really had been the absolute last straw. Her second near-death experience in as many months, it had been the giddy limit, the tin lid on the cattle shed and the sugar frosting on her Dallas doughnut – and much as she wanted to help Rose, she knew she had to leave the jungle. Recalling how Eduardo had told her that it was the most venomous spider on Earth, she shuddered. A deadly critter like that, ugly as a mud fence, climbing up her bed? The captain had been bewildered by how the, the thing, had managed to crawl on to the boat in the first place and, wringing his hands, he’d explained how his staff were always so careful, shaking out the bananas and coffee sacks and boxes of supplies they brought on board. Yet nothing he or Rose could say had made the slightest difference to her decision to leave, and so, utterly unravelled, Hazel had quite literally abandoned ship.
Glancing at her watch, she felt her heart thump. Rose and Eduardo would have left the Tucano by now, to canoe – canoe! – into the jungle. She imagined them paddling up some dark stretch of water, soupy with swimming snakes and tangled with vines. Just how could Rose entrust her safety to something so flimsy, so small, so sinkable, over that endless murky green water?
‘You’ll miss the anaconda nests lining the river,’ Eduardo teased as he’d loaded Hazel’s cases on to the helicopter.
She rolled her eyes and quickly shook the thought from her head. Nests, where she came from, were fo
r little biddy chicks, not enormous great snakes that flung themselves round you, squeezing you tighter and tighter until they stopped your very lungs before unhinging their jaws, and … and …
Well, that was quite enough of thinking about that.
She twisted forwards on the sofa and tried to force her mind back on to the jewellery glittering behind glass a little distance away.
Except that her heart was no longer in it.
If only she’d been able to persuade Rose to let her hire some professional to track down Professor Pottersby-Weir, some capable sort with scorpion-proof shorts and a big grin, who’d machete his way through the greenery and come back, fly-bitten but triumphant. It wouldn’t have mattered how much it cost, or what supplies or help he’d have needed. She was willing to pay for it all.
But Rose wouldn’t hear of it. She was so impatient, so determined to do it for herself.
Now, sliding lower down the sofa, Hazel pulled her phone from the pocket of her pink jeans and flicked through her photos: her and Rose trying on matching sunglasses in London; her and Rose drinking lime coolers on the plane; her and Rose trying on huge floppy hats at Barcelos Airport. Flicking to the last picture, she felt a lump rise in her throat. In it, Rose stood alone on the deck of the Tucano waving as the helicopter turned away towards the city. Hazel tucked the phone away and glanced dismally at the jeweller’s window, knowing that no diamond-studded cat or dog was going to change the way that that made her feel. Whichever way she looked at it, and however good her reasons were, she’d let her friend down. Even the GPS, the emergency flares and the army phone she’d had flown out to the boat as soon as she arrived in Manaus hardly soothed her conscience. Not when she could imagine Rose simply tucking them into her rucksack with a sad little shrug, puzzling at what half of them were for, and wishing that she had her friend beside her instead.
A sudden scrape of high heels over the floor startled her and she looked up to see a tall thin woman in a grey suit clattering over to the reception desk where a hotel employee was primping pots of thunder-orchids and ferns.
‘It’s completely unacceptable!’ exclaimed the woman in grey, slamming down a crumpled poster of a Japanese lady and making the receptionist jump. ‘My husband and I flew halfway round the world to see Rosita de Bonita perform!’
‘Madam,’ soothed the hotel receptionist. She raised her palms in the air apologetically. ‘I am sorry for your dreadful disappointment. Obviously the opera house regrets —’
‘Reee-grets?’ shrilled the woman, stamping her foot on the marble floor.
Wincing, Hazel shrank down into the sofa and returned to her gloomy thoughts, consoling herself that at least Rose would be safe with Eduardo. Reliable as an old teddy bear, he knew how to survive the jungle. Heav’n only knew he’d told them often enough about taking his granddaughters trekking through the rainforest to watch baby monkeys swing through the branches or spot owlets bustled like blobs of cotton wool in rotted tree trunks.
Meanwhile, over by the desk, the irate woman’s voice was growing more furious and, glancing over, Hazel saw the receptionist take a big step backwards, nodding madly.
‘Yes, madam. I agree,’ she spluttered. ‘It is appalling that they’ve had to cancel Madama Butterfly and close the opera house. But the management is offering full ticket refunds.’
‘Reee-funds?’ squealed the woman, her voice now wild as a toucan with its tail covered in termites. ‘How can anyone possibly reee-fund the experience of hearing Rosita de Bonita as Butterfly on opening night?’
The tinkling piano stopped tinkling. The chatterers stopped chatting, the newspaper readers stopped reading, the sippers stopped sipping as everyone now turned to watch the woman’s face grow as purple as the orchids topping the desk.
‘But then,’ the woman fumed, ‘how can anyone be so careless as to allow a boy and a gigantic bald ram to ruin her performance in the first place?’
Hazel snapped off her sunglasses and threw them onto the sofa.
A boy and a gigantic bald ram? Goosebumps swept over her skin as though someone had thrown a bucket of iced water over her.
Alex and Aries?
Here?
In Manaus?
Was the heat frying her brain? How could it possibly be them? And yet, even though she knew she must be going wholly la-la, she found herself sprinting across the lobby – sending the jeweller, now busily unlocking his shop, careening headfirst into a large prickly palm – to skid to a stop in front of the desk. Because if it really were them, she reasoned breathlessly, there was only one reason that would bring them back: Medea.
Shunting the furious woman out of her way, she leaned over the counter until she was nose-to-nose with the bewildered receptionist.
‘Tell me!’ she demanded, as a pot of orchids smashed on to the floor. ‘What happened to them?’
26 No, you’re not seeing double. ‘The Lone Star State’ is the nickname for Texas. Every American state has its own moniker. Florida’s called The Sunshine State; Georgia, The Peach State; and Kansas, The Sunflower State. However, since none is known as The Custard Cream State I shan’t be emigrating any time soon.
27 A bellboy is a hotel porter employed to carry guests’ luggage and attend to room service. It is not, as the name suggests, someone made of metal that ding-dongs each time they walk by. Such a person would cause havoc in a hotel by luring towel-draped guests from the shower into the corridor seeking imaginary ice-cream vans and play havoc with the manager’s exotic fish, who’d doubtless suffer fin-flump from all the ting-a-linging vibrations in their water.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE!
Miles to the west, not to mention miles hotter, grubbier and wearier too, Rose stood waist-high in ferns, blinking the sweat out of her eyes, as Eduardo chopped through yet another thicket of bamboo.
For the past two days they’d been trekking through the jungle proper, hacking their way through the rainforest understory, the tangled cage of tree trunks, ferns and palms, of prickly plants and pathless green that lay far below the canopy of leaves and criss-crossing lianas,28 shut off from the sunshine above. Hot, thick and clammy, the air down here was murky, tinged with a mossy light, so soupy and green that it reminded Rose of the water in a forgotten fish tank. Worse, it stank of rotting leaves and fungus.
Snatching her breath in small gasps, she quickly checked the bark of the closest tree before leaning her aching back against it, exhausted. She tilted her face up and watched two tiger-striped Heliconia butterflies flutter past the tip of her nose and spiral away like sparks, vanishing into the shadows between the trees. She felt swimmy-headed, dizzy from the sticky heat and the strain of hour upon hour spent picking their way over roots and toppled trees, of listening for falling fruit, of shrinking away from scorpions sunbathing on palm leaves, of splashing through small creeks and trudging through mud that sucked your feet down into it after the daily downpours. Then, wriggling her damp toes in her boots, raw and uncomfortable in their thick, bristly socks, she smiled so hard it made her cheeks hurt.
Because every aching, grubby, scary, exhilarating second of it had been worth it because they were almost there.
Tatu Village.
The thought sent a sudden swell of excitement surging through her body like an electric current jittering every exhausted cell, every nerve, every muscle back into life. Now, stretching up on to her tiptoes, she craned to see past Eduardo’s bulky frame and caught her breath, snatching a glimpse of scrubby land beyond the broken fence of bamboo.
This was it!
Finally, the moment she’d been dreaming of, the moment that made lying to her mother all right, the moment that made the heat and the grittiness and the slamming rain and the discomfort and the fear bearable. Trembling with impatience, she felt a sudden stab of longing for Hazel because even though her head totally understood why Hazel had had to leave, her heart missed her horribly now. She bit her lip, tasting the tang of salt and wishing Hazel were beside her again – moaning, smeary-face
and fizzing with bad-temper, of course – but actually with her now that she had finally, finally arrived at the outskirts of the village. Of course, Eduardo was kind and protective and strong and told her lots funny stories to keep her spirits up. But it just wasn’t the same as having a friend by her side.
Her head was throbbing now, thumping with the crunch and splinter of bamboos beneath Eduardo’s machete. Her heart thumped, pounding in time with the ceaseless trilling, screeching, shrieking, hoppity-clicking bang and rasp of the jungle around her. Of course, if she hadn’t been quite so elated or quite so woozy with weariness, she might have noticed that the howler monkeys had abruptly stopped adding to the din about twenty minutes ago.
And it might have worried her.
But she didn’t.
Because all she could think of was her father – only minutes away – running towards her – only minutes away – arms outstretched to scoop her up into a bear hug – only minutes away – speechless with astonishment to see his own daughter racing out of the trees to greet him.
‘Rose!’ Eduardo’s voice rang back through the trees in triumph, sending unseen parrots squealing into the air high above the roof of leaves. Pulling off his cap, he wiped his brow and stepped through the gap in the bamboo. He turned and looked back at her. ‘Come and see!’
Euphoria exploded inside Rose like fireworks dazzling the night sky. Stumbling away from the tree, she forced her legs to run, even though they felt as though they’d turned to rubber, and stamped through the clumps of ferns to plunge through the bamboo after him, careless of the scratches on her face and arms.
In the distance, beyond the patch of cleared jungle, stood a wide circle of wooden huts. Rose swallowed hard, stifling the mad giggle that threatened to bubble up in her throat, and blinked. Thatched with palm leaves bleached by the sun, the huts stood like sentries around an enormous molucca,29 the longhouse, outside which a family of armadillos were hoovering through the dirt like leathery vacuum cleaners. Suddenly, desperate to run the rest of the way, to search every centimetre of the place, she took a step forward and felt Eduardo’s hand on her arm.
Rampage! Page 10