by Cherry Adair
Soon animals would come to drink, predators would be out in search of their prey. And the ever-present Hureni would go stalking as well, though their prey was the food and medicine in the aid camps set up by President Bongani.
When Simon moved, she moved. A dozen scenarios flashed through Kess’s mind as she stealthily followed in his footsteps, clutching the heavy gun in both hands, her arms outstretched.
She calmed herself by imagining less dangerous options. Like the possibility that the nomadic Fulani had come to trade goods, and the entire camp had gone off to see…Oh hell, Kess thought, fear making her mouth dry and her heart pump way too fast. The entire camp was never gone. Not everyone at the same time. And then there were the vultures to consider.
The weight of the gun in her outstretched arms made her muscles ache. She adjusted it slightly, her arms trembling, both from the physical weight and the ethical weight of responsibility. She hoped to hell she didn’t have to shoot anyone, but if push came to shove, she thought she could do it.
Simon kept moving, his passage between the trees almost ghostlike. Kess stayed about twenty feet behind him. There was a small clearing up ahead, and while she couldn’t yet see it, base camp was straight through the trees. The coarse cry of the birds swooping and dive-bombing overhead made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and a series of chills race down her spine.
Her heartbeat was thundering in her ears. She wrinkled her nose at the sickly-sweet smell thickening the hot air. God. What the hell was that gross smell? She tried to separate it from the pungency of the eucalyptus trees, and the green, scummy smell of the nearby river, but couldn’t quite identify what it was.
A lion roared, sounding terrifyingly close to a woman who happened to be walking through the carnivore’s backyard. There were many things Kess was willing to do for her job, but being torn limb from limb by a hungry lion wasn’t one of them. She was equidistant from the car and the camp, but she knew, despite the overwhelming urge to do so, that running would not be a good thing. The air was still, no breeze moved the hot air between the trees. The lion could be twenty feet away, or two miles. She didn’t want to be fast food should one of them decide to run her down.
Two miles would be good. Two miles would be most excellent. Stay right where you are, kitty.
Simon glanced over his shoulder and shook his head, pointed at the ground, and made a stay motion with his free hand. She stopped dead in her tracks. It made sense for her to stay put. But he’d be really sorry if he came back to find she’d been partially consumed by a pride of ravenous lions. She’d be pretty freaking sorry too, she thought wryly as she scanned the area around her for any movement.
He motioned that he’d be going ahead, and Kess took a few steps to her right. Doing a quick scan to be sure there wasn’t any animal life on the bark, she leaned back against a giant tree. Using it to help support her aching muscles, she lifted the muzzle of the gun. For several long, agonizing minutes she stood there, barely breathing as Simon disappeared between the trees. In his absence and despite the gun in her hands, Kess was keenly aware of her vulnerability. Lions and Hureni weren’t the only dangers. Not by a long shot. Sweat trickled down her neck.
The locals had warned her never to wander far from camp. Not all threats stood on four legs. Cobras, puff adders, and bush vipers were all common in this area as were the venomous funnel-web tarantula spider, which had venom three times stronger than a black widow. And its fangs could pierce through clothing and sometimes even shoes.
Or she’d just give herself a terror-induced coronary on the spot as she listed everything that could kill her while she waited.
A hundred years, and a thousand rapid heartbeats later, Simon reappeared in the clearing. “Go back to the car, Kess. Now.” His grim voice carried easily. He wasn’t whispering. He still had his gun in his hand, but she could tell by the line of his shoulders that he wasn’t as tense as he’d been a few seconds ago. Having cleared the trees, he was highlighted by the sun as he stood just out of the tree line, and in the camp itself. The vultures were swooping through the clearing up ahead, not in the least bit deterred by his presence.
She heard him, but she was so freaked out by the rank smell, and the roar of the nearby lion, his words didn’t compute.
Putting her tired arms down, but keeping the safety off the gun now at her side, Kess walked up beside him. “Where is everyo—” She took a reactive step backward as bile rose in the back of her throat.
There’d been a bloodbath. A massacre.
Bloodied bodies were strewn from one side of camp to the other. Not all the bodies were intact. Limbs and entrails littered the ground. Blood had seeped into the ground, turning it an unnatural shade of brownish red, or pooled in the dried, wrinkled foliage blanketing the grassy ground.
The vultures barely looked up from ripping the carcasses with their sharp beaks. Half a dozen hyenas gorged on the remains, shifting aside only when a vulture laid claim to the body.
Kess’s eyes saw the wholesale murder of her friends like a Technicolor nightmare spread out in front of her, but her brain could hardly comprehend what she was seeing. “What—How—God, oh, God…” Automatically, she lifted the camera and clicked off a fast series of graphic pictures.
Even through the viewfinder, none of the dead were remotely recognizable.
Gagging, she grabbed onto Simon’s strong forearm as her knees threatened to buckle.
“Don’t. The vermin will be over here quicker than you can spell puke.” He spoke so quietly she wasn’t sure if she was actually hearing him or reading his lips.
Swallowing convulsively, Kess buried her face against his arm. The sight, coupled with what she now realized was the stench of blood and sun-roasted flesh, made her stomach writhe and her legs weak.
“Breathe through your mouth. Slowly.”
Nose or mouth, Kess didn’t want to breathe in death. She shook her head, eyes squeezed shut, lips pressed hard against the tensile strength of Simon’s biceps. She thought she felt his hand on her hair, but if that were the case it was cold comfort.
He was moving, and Kess went with him, still numbly glued to his side.
She heard the creak of the car door, and realized they were back at the car. “Get in,” he said, gently extricating her clenched fingers from his arm. “Lock the doors, and stay put. I’m going to look around.”
“Don’t—” Leave me. “—do anything stupid,” she said instead.
His lips twitched. “Ditto.”
“Simon—”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“Will you—will you check to see if anyone m-made it?”
“Sorry, honey. No one made it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The scavengers got there second. The machetes came first.”
Bile rose in her throat once again at the vivid mental image of the medical team being hacked to death by dull, rusty blades. She could almost hear their screams, feel the stinging pain of slow but deadly slices ripping through skin to bone. She’d seen television footage of the massacre in Rwanda, and the thought of people she’d been with just hours earlier being murdered so methodically squeezed her chest tight.
“Keep that gun handy.”
“What if the—”
“Lock the doors.” And he was gone.
The protection spell, coupled with a few tons of metal, would protect her. Against human and/or wizard foes. It would keep Kess safe, but Simon knew it wouldn’t keep the unpredictable woman where he’d told her to stay. He considered putting a binding spell on her, but resisted. His powers were iffy at best, and God only knew, he might need all the juice he could muster.
Loping through the striations of dusty sunlight shafting between the trees, he sent out a mental probe. The danger was still present. Not wizard. Didn’t mean that a wizard couldn’t slip through his probe, especially given the recent unpredictability of his powers. The massacre in the camp didn’t have any of the hallmarks of
the work of a wizard.
Simon shimmered, invisible, into camp. The birds and hyenas startled, sensing his presence, shifted uneasily for a few moments, then went back to work. A quick recon showed no one had been spared. The slayings had all the signs of overkill. Unnecessarily brutal, most likely Hureni.
Suddenly the hyenas lifted their heads, ears alert, and the vultures took wing in a loud flurry of squawks and flapping wings.
Simon heard stealthy footsteps behind him seconds before the animals scattered. Five or six pairs of bare feet rustling the dry leaves. He couldn’t use his three-sixty vision because it wasn’t damn well working.
He glanced down. Ah, crap! They could see him clear as day. He’d materialized without being aware of it.
Hell, he really needed to get ahold of Knight and get some fine-tuning on his powers. Pivoting, he blocked the knife a warrior aimed at his ribs. Missed his ribs, but took a slice out of his arm. Stung like fire. Simon’s fist connected with the guy’s jaw. The blow landed on its target, then his fist slid off the tribal paint on the warrior’s face, and connected with his ear. Bringing up his knee, Simon hit the guy with a debilitating blow to the groin.
The warrior doubled over, falling to the ground with a high-pitched shriek of agony. Two more came up behind him, assegais raised. Working in Simon’s favor, the assegai, a long wooden spear with a metal point bound to the end, was too unwieldy for close combat. But these guys knew what they were doing, and they let fly from ten feet away. The sharp blades bit into the dry dirt at Simon’s feet. Close, but no cigar.
He shimmered, teleporting behind them. It worked, scaring the bejesus out of his opponents. Spinning in bare feet, they raised their stabbing spears and started babbling, looking around for the Ghost-man, holding up their ishlangu, hunting shields, to protect themselves.
Two Hureni warriors, braver than the others, circled him, their frightened eyes white-rimmed in their brightly painted faces. Their dark skin gleamed with sweat and animal fat. They might be confused and afraid about what he was, but these two, protected by their animal skin–covered shields, weren’t backing off.
It would be good magic for them to capture and kill him, Simon knew. Wasn’t gonna happen. His punch to the rock-hard shield caught the guy on the left flat-footed and stunned him. He bowled over, his shield flying. The one on the right came at him fast and furious. Seeing that the shield his friend had held protectively against him hadn’t worked worth shit, he tossed his aside and came at Simon with blood in his eye and a short-bladed hunting knife in his hand.
Simon smiled. The guy faltered.
“Come on, asshole,” Simon taunted, beckoning him in with a hand gesture. “Just you and me.” They circled, their feet sending up small clouds of smoky red dust. Simon kicked the knife out of the man’s hand in about two seconds. “Tsk. Tsk.” He had the Taurus, but it wasn’t going to do him much good against five men. More important, he didn’t want to draw more attention to the current problem if he didn’t have to. Hand-to-hand was fine and dandy with him. Fact was, he enjoyed a good workout, and right now he had adrenaline to burn.
The guy, war paint, loincloth, and primitive weapons aside, was professionally trained. South African trained if Simon knew his moves. And he did. Interesting. Why were these local Hurenis South African military trained? To what purpose out here in the middle of nowhere?
A warrior did a spinning heel kick with a gnarled and filthy foot, aiming for Simon’s jaw. What Simon knew, and his opponent didn’t, was that one never kicked the other guy above the waist if one could help it. It was the best way to get your nuts ripped off and stuffed into your mouth. Clearly, the warrior didn’t know this rule.
Simon did a front snap kick at the same time, lifting the guy, his balls on the toe of Simon’s boot, five inches off the ground. Having made the same incorrect tactical fighting move once himself, Simon knew the level of pain he’d just inflicted. The warrior screamed bloody murder and dropped, coiling into the fetal position on the ground six feet away, his chances of fathering little warriors now severely limited.
“Telling you just wouldn’t have had the same effect,” Simon said, spinning to intercept another guy. “You’ll know better next time, lamebrain.” He spoke in English since there were over four hundred different dialects spoken in the country, and while French was the official language of Mallaruza, Simon figured them for the dialect types and kept his fluency in French to himself.
The next warrior wasn’t making the same kicking mistake as his pal. He crouched low, jabbing a short iklwa at the air between them. In his other hand he twirled an iwisa, a knobby war club, with commendable dexterity. The guy knew what he was doing.
He and Simon did the combat dance, while Simon kept a weather eye on the other three men rapidly closing in.
Fuck this slow dance. Pulling the Taurus from the small of his back, he shot the closest guy before he could put up his shield. Which wouldn’t have mattered anyway since it was unlikely the skin-covered wood was Kevlar.
If more warriors came because of the sound of a weapon firing, he’d deal with them, too.
The guy circling him tripped over the remains of one of the slaughtered medical team and with a too little, too late war cry fell on his ass, legs straddling the corpse. His eyes went wild as he struggled to right himself and get away from the gore posthaste. He definitely wasn’t happy. Simon aimed the Taurus and took him out, dropping him right there in a pool of dried blood and glistening entrails.
He spun on his heel. “Next?”
All he saw was a bare ass in retreat.
His adrenaline was still pumping, crystallizing his vision and making his hearing almost preternaturally sharp. “Hell.” The problem, he thought, as he checked the dead guys, was that he wasn’t done fighting. He still had bucket-loads of testosterone coursing through his body. He needed to expend that energy. On something.
He could give chase to the warrior. See where he was headed. Interrogate him. Get some answers. But that would leave Kess alone and vulnerable. Until he could stash her somewhere safe, he was stuck playing babysitter.
And thinking about Kess…The rush of sexual heat crashed with the force of a tidal wave into his already overheated blood. If a guy couldn’t fight he could always fu—
“No,” Simon said out loud. His voice sounded thick and alien to his own ears as he picked his way through the bodies and headed back to the vehicle and the woman in it. “Not just no. But hell no.”
No magic this time. He’d run, and get rid of some useless, unexpended energy. His legs and arms pumped as he darted between the trees, the weeds and shrubs slashing at his legs as he hauled ass.
It was stifling in the car. Kess had decided not to waste gas by keeping the car and AC running, nor did she want the sound of the engine heard by anyone. Who knew who else was out there? Fishing another ice cube out of the cooler, she ran it over her cheeks and throat. She was so hot she was fantasizing about a deep, ice-cold swimming pool. She made do with a rapidly melting ice cube.
“Where are you, Simon?” God only knew what was going on. He’d been gone for the better part of thirty-seven minutes. Only something bad could keep him this long in a camp filled with dead bodies. “Did something happen to you?”
Holding the frigid cube to the jumping pulse at the base of her throat, she fixed her gaze on the trees ahead. Was he dead too? Had the murderers come back?
She shuddered despite the enervating heat.
Maybe he needed help. Kess’s heart lodged in her throat and she had to wipe the nervous perspiration off her palms onto her pant legs. The longer she sat there waiting, the more vivid the possibilities played in her brain.
She had to get out of the car to go and check. As far as rescue went, she was the only game in town. However, the image of the animal-gored human remains, and that never-to-be-forgotten smell, kept her in the hot car.
“Get out and go and help him.” Her voice sounded as terrified as she felt. “If I go to the c
amp and he’s there and needs me, that’ll be a good thing, right?” And what if he’s dead? What if the bad guys finished him off like the others? “Then good will go to bad, very, very bad in a heartbeat.”
She’d either die sitting here in the car or die out there. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. She fumbled one-handed for her bag in back, grabbed it, and took out a new SIM card for her camera. Popping out the full card, she stuck it in the front pocket of her jeans and replaced it.
As much as she hated to do it, someone had to document what had happened here. She was the woman with a camera. “Let it be noted,” she said out loud, “that I am totally, and without an ounce of shame, scared out of my freaking mind.”
Opening the door to let in marginally cooler air, Kess put her booted feet outside and slid off the seat, the heavy gun in her hand.
The trees seemed a long, long way away. She’d never again be able to smell eucalyptus without an instant snapshot of the massacre in the camp flashing in her head. She pressed a hand to her roiling stomach and swallowed the fear-induced saliva with an audible gulp.
It was dusk now. She had been staring so hard at the spot where Simon had disappeared, she’d barely noticed. The watering hole was about a quarter of a mile downstream from the camp. To the denizens of the plains, a quarter of a mile was a short trek for a human snack. Pretty much like leaving the family room to dash into the kitchen for that yummy last slice of chocolate cake.
“I taste like shit,” she told anything with an empty belly, raising her voice barely above a whisper. Her stomach jolted with every step she took.
Talk about walking that green mile or whatever it was death row inmates walked. She put a bit of energy into her step, even though she imagined glowing, hungry, yellow eyes fixed on a bull’s-eye on the back of her shirt.
“I told you to stay the hell in the car,” Simon said from behind her.
Kess let out a very startled, very girly shriek and slapped a hand over her heart as she spun around to face him.