He moved so fast that Thomas hardly had time to call out. A roundhouse kick knocked the pistol flying from Catherine’s hand and he whirled past her, spinning on his heels to come at her from behind and slipping one arm underneath her chin, tucking the other behind her head in a choke hold. He grinned at Thomas again, but it was short lived. Catherine reacted instinctively. She arched her back and pulled downwards, dragging Kanu forwards with her. As he tried to move backwards, she placed her clenched left fist into her open right hand and then powered her elbow straight into his groin. As Kanu doubled over, she pivoted on her hips and stabbed at his eye sockets with two rigid fingers. They found their mark and Kanu released her, stumbling backwards. But Catherine wasn’t finished. Her left hand dropped to the ground, acting as a pendulum to the right leg that delivered a smashing kick that landed just below Kanu’s left ear. It was his turn to be sent tumbling through the dirt.
“I love you,” Thomas exclaimed, smiling.
“Who wouldn’t?” Catherine shrugged.
She crouched and offered Thomas a hand. She needed both in the end to haul him up. She turned back. The gun had been flung several yards behind her, well out of Kanu’s reach. He was still groaning and writhing on the ground. Catherine kept her arm around Thomas’s side as they walked over towards the gun. She left him for a moment to pick it up, then came back to him. As she glanced back towards Kanu she dropped to her knees and let off a shot, as he disappeared through the archway that led to the marshes.
“Quick little bugger, isn’t he?” Jericho exclaimed, joining them. He threw the shotgun to Thomas, who caught it by the strap. “Let’s end this, that bastard can’t get away. I’m sure it would be bad for all our health.”
“What about Kanu’s men?” Thomas asked. “Surely there must be more of them?”
“You mean those guys?” Jericho replied, nodding behind.
Thomas glanced, noting about a dozen men on their knees.
“There’s a new bokor in town, didn’t you see the elephants obeying my commands?” Jericho said with a wink.
“How did you get them to charge the lions?” Thomas asked.
“What lions?”
As if to answer, a blood curdling roar pierced the night. It brought the chaos and noise of the compound to standstill and silence.
“Jericho...Rhodes, I think he took a hit. He’s...”
“I saw him,” Jericho nodded sombrely, “He’s breathing. Take more than a bullet to knock the life out of that one I tell you. Be on your way now,” he nodded.
“I’m coming with you,” Catherine stated, checking her pistol.
They both headed towards the archway and slipped through it. The lights from the camp faded quickly, leaving them in inky blackness. But the moon was full and lit their way a little. Thomas was able to follow Kanu’s muddy footprints from the compound. As he’d feared and suspected, they were headed for the jetty. But then he saw something that made him stop. Something that had made Kanu stop and change direction too. The huge round pugmark was unmistakable. The queen was here. It had been her roar that had floated up from the marsh.
~
Just as she had tensed for the charge into the open, she had registered the rumbles of the elephants and the vibrations of the metallic beast following in their wake. She had slunk back into the marsh, unable to call back the others who had already slipped between the stone pillars. As she lay in the underbrush listening to the shouts, gunshots and screams of the elephants, she vented her frustration, as a ripple of energy swept along her spine from the tail and burst forth in a roar. A continuous growl emanated from her throat as her tail thrashed from side to side. Then she saw him. The man passed through the crumbling opening in the stone and was headed for the river. The warm night air brought his scent to her and she sat up, recognising it instantly. She had detected it many times before, often when hunting. Many times, his taint had been on the other men she had killed and eaten not far from here. It had laced the pungent territory markings that she often travelled miles to investigate too. This man had encroached on both her food sources and home. She slipped into the water and surged towards the jetty, snarling her intentions.
~
Kanu Sultan stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard the snarl. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt fear. He peered out across the water, towards the lagoon and the river beyond that offered escape. He saw the bow wave as something large moved out of the reeds and headed for him. As they reflected in the moonlight, he watched two blue glowing orbs snake their way closer. Instinct told him to run, but the unfamiliar terror he felt rooted him to the spot. At a distance of about ten feet, he began to see the whitish head that belonged to the eyes fixed on him, the body already rising from the water. Suddenly released from his fright, he turned to run as the river exploded in a tidal wave of water, fangs and fury.
~
Thomas lowered into a crouch, bringing the shotgun up. Jericho had fired two shots into the air. Thomas remembered to pump the gun, loading the next two rounds into the DP-12’s twin barrels. If Jericho had loaded the gun fully, that meant he had fourteen left. Catherine stayed behind him, her pistol raised too. They dropped down the bank and into the marsh grass and reeds. The trail of both Kanu and the cat were obvious, a flattened path that led east. They had barely gotten ten yards when a scream lifted up from ahead of them. It was a chilling sound, a cry of pure terror. They began to edge forward again.
“I don’t like this,” Thomas whispered.
“What’s to like?” Catherine shrugged.
Thomas turned to look at her. His face was full of warmth and affection.
“Don’t get soppy,” she nudged him. “We have a job to do.”
~
Kanu sprinted through the reeds, his eyes wide and his lungs on the verge of bursting. He felt the presence of the cat, its thunderous paw strikes sounding out closer and louder with each step. He stumbled, but his momentum kept him going for a few seconds more, before all breath was purged from his body with a tremendous blow from behind. He smashed hard into the mud and the few inches of water at the base of the reeds, dazed by the strike. Clarity painfully burst back into his consciousness as what felt like molten iron pins ripped into his leg. His body was lifted into the air and thrown several feet as the queen whirled around, an angry roar escaping as she released the clamp of her jaws. Kanu crumpled to the ground, but he struggled to his feet. His damaged leg gave out instantly, just as the blow came from the side. He wailed in agony as the queen buried her teeth into his chest, lifting him from the ground, and tearing her way deeper into the reeds. Her blue eyes locked on his, emblazoned with tenacious rage.
She dropped the man as soon as she reached solid ground. She brushed past him, a casual flick of her tail opening his forehead, as its barbed tip lashed him. She stood before her prey, which whimpered and cowered on the ground. The stench of the coppery, salty blood filled her nostrils and a sound that was half purr and half growl signalled her delight at this. She stepped forward, taking one of the man’s feet in her mouth. She bit down, enjoying the sensation of the crunch of the bone and ooze of blood it released. The man’s screams became a catalyst to her probing claws and stabbing teeth. She licked the blood from the mangled feet, removing what was left of the skin. She sucked on the exposed flesh then ripped away the fat muscles from the calves.
Kanu took short gasping breaths as he went into shock. His eyes bulged and glazed as they looked up into the night sky. His brain still distantly registered the jolts and tugs that rippled along his nervous system as strips of flesh were ripped from him by teeth and claws. He heard the popping sound as his lungs collapsed, followed by something not unlike the noise made by a deflating balloon. Vomit filled his throat as his sternum cracked and his stomach emptied, simultaneously venting his bowels as his body shut down. No screams were left now, only pain as more cracks signalled the splintering of his ribs. The last tremors he felt were of her muzzle pushing its way throug
h the opening in his abdomen, instinctively nosing up into his disintegrated chest. Her tongue lapped at the blood drenched innards before she sucked the fleshy, beating mass into her mouth. She ripped his heart from its mooring veins, arteries and tendons as if they were string. Life left Kanu’s eyes just as he registered the great white head above him, its chin and jaws stained with the dark residue of his own blood. She swallowed her prize as new sounds came to her from across the marsh. Her ears pricked and she let loose a low rumbling growl as she melted back into the cover of the reeds.
~
Thomas and Catherine followed the bloody trail another forty yards further before they found Kanu’s body. It looked like his chest had exploded. His left side had been eviscerated and his clothing shredded into blood drenched clumps. The tattered remains of his legs ended in the blunt pulp of what was left of his feet. The right one had been removed and lay in the grass half-consumed. It was like a hole had opened in the grassland, the walls of which were soaked with blood. The small indent in the greenery was a crucible of slaughter. Globules of matted tissue and fat dripped down from the swaying blades and bent over reeds. This had been an act of savagery, something beyond feeding or hunting.
“So much for the wild cat king,” Catherine stuttered with horror.
“She’s out for revenge,” Thomas whispered in shock.
“I hate it when you talk like that,” Catherine said, reeling back and shaking her head. “You know animals don’t operate on those kinds of levels...”
Thomas grabbed her by the hand and led her away from the scene, unable to stomach the visual and olfactory assault on his senses any longer.
“Seriously, now is when you want to have a conversation on the semantics of emotional intelligence in higher mammals?” he said with disbelief, as he turned them back towards the compound.
“Well yeah. Going on today’s events so far, we might be dead later.”
Thomas turned his head in her direction with a look of surprise and a hint of prideful fondness.
“You’re very cool under pressure,” he said. “Looks like those Muay Thai lessons have more than paid off.”
“Let’s just say that a question I’ve been asking myself for some time has been answered,” she replied, returning his gaze with equal warmth. There was no hint of the coldness and holding back he’d sensed before.
Thomas kept moving. With Kanu dead, he could afford to deal with the queen later. Then he heard it, a low, gruff, rasping growl. It built in volume and intensity. It filled his ears and set him on edge. She was out there, somewhere close by and watching them. She hadn’t finished yet. Thomas and Catherine instinctively went back to back. The growl ceased instantly, replaced by silence. They began to scan the surrounding reeds and buffelgrass.
“Keep moving back towards the camp,” Thomas whispered. “We’re where she wants us at the moment, let’s change that around.”
Catherine nodded and began to edge forwards only to come to an abrupt halt.
“What’s the matter?” Thomas asked.
“Something just passed through the grass ahead of me,” she stammered. “It was pretty damn big, and it looked greyish. Whatever it was, it was moving fast.”
“Sounds like our girl,” Thomas rasped.
He caught the sound of the grass rustling before he saw the shimmer of movement to his left. She had skirted past them, slipping through a maze of corridors only she knew. She could approach virtually unseen, but it was clear she wanted to be behind them.
Catherine continued forward, more urgently now. They both froze as the sound of a gunshot echoed from within the compound.
“Fuck’n lions,” yelled Jericho’s angry Irish voice, full of rage. The marsh went quiet again.
As Catherine went to move off, Thomas touched her elbow with a gentleness that told her to stay put. She slowly turned her head.
Thomas was breathing rapidly, his mind racing as he studied the form that had just stepped out onto the path. In the pale glow of the moon, the wide and brilliant eyes seemed to shine blue. There was something other worldly, almost ethereal about the stare that met his. The face was feline, but not lion shaped. It had the blunt, taught features of a leopard, but on a much more massive scale. It was also the wrong colour. As Catherine had said, it did indeed appear to be grey. Revealed by the moonlight, it looked almost white. But the strangeness didn’t end there. It had a bear like hump that marked its massive and powerful shoulders, covered in a dark coloured ruff of bristled fur. Thomas thought it could easily be mistaken for a mane at a distance. From there, the coat became brindled along its back, contrasting with the faint spotted markings that lined its belly and flanks.
It was as if the animal had called them out. She was tired of lurking in the shadows. She stood as still as a statue, only emitting a purr like growl. She would occasionally tense, or drop her head cautiously, as she regarded him with a stare that belied a cold and calculating intelligence. And that’s when Thomas realised what was happening. They were being ambushed. It was just like Musa had told them when Amanda had run into the long grass. This queen wasn’t challenging them. Nor was this some noble acceptance of fate. It was simple distraction.
Thomas swivelled the shotgun on his hip and squeezed the trigger, blasting an area to his left. He heard a yowl of pain as the unseen lioness hidden there died where she laid in wait. He swung back, ready to pull the trigger again, but she had already vanished back into the maze. As he stepped backwards, he nearly tripped over Catherine who had become rooted to the spot. A lioness was barrelling towards her, teeth bared, and the white of her chin shining like a beacon as it streaked through the long grass towards her. A second shot echoed into the night from the direction of the compound, this time slightly closer. The lioness tripped and somersaulted off the path into the grass. There was a soft splash as the body crashed into a hidden pool of standing water.
“I got one up here too,” came Jericho’s distant voice over the reeds. “Was there more than three?”
“The queen’s out here too,” Thomas yelled back. “Only, I don’t think she’s a lion at all.”
“Good to know, I’ll just shoot the next thing that comes out of there that isn’t you.”
“Or me,” Catherine shouted back.
Jericho muttered something that neither of them heard.
The ear-splitting roar was terrible and thunderous. It was the most horrible thing Catherine had ever heard. She winced and trembled at its sound. Thomas tensed his grip on the shotgun and pumped it to reload. Catherine screamed as something exploded at them from the reeds, a hurricane of teeth and fury. Thomas’s finger snapped at the trigger twice in quick succession before it hit him.
The world went black and silent for a moment, but he was still conscious. It was the roar that had deafened him and he realised with horror that it was the animal itself that cut off his vision. He gasped for breath as it suddenly vanished and he found himself looking up at stars. With his ears still ringing he tried to sit up. He still had the gun in his hands, but when he tried to move, he yelled out involuntarily with pain. He guessed that the thumb and index finger on his right hand were broken, as was his ring, middle and little finger of his left. He could feel the breeze cooling his forehead, which was slick and wet with blood. His shoulder too felt wrong. He looked down. It was torn open, perhaps grazed by the queen’s teeth.
“Catherine?” He called out shakily.
“I’m here, coming right for you.”
“Don’t, I don’t know where she is.”
Thomas looked around. The pain, and a blow to the head in the tumble he was only just registering, were taking their toll. He was close to drifting into unconsciousness. Something stirred in the darkness low down in the reeds. It crawled and clawed its way towards him. Blue glazed eye shine appeared out of the black, as the silhouette of her grey head loomed closer. He’d hit her with both blasts from the shotgun in the chest, but her heart was still pumping. She had one last kill still to
make. Thomas shuddered with a shockwave of pain as he flipped the shotgun up awkwardly onto its stock. He used his elbow to slam down on the pump handle as hard as he could. He let out a gasp as he heard it load and lock in place. He looked back up and recoiled in horror as he found she had inched her way to within a foot from his outstretched boot, jaws open and eyes set in unblinking determination. He let the shotgun fall onto its back and shoved the ring finger of his right hand into the upturned trigger slot. He pulled backwards. The world went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When Thomas awoke again, he found himself lying prostrate in a hospital bed. He was dressed in a simple undershirt and was in a private cubicle. His vision was slightly blurred, but as he came to, he found his surroundings strangely familiar. He strained to see further. Sheet plastic curtains were pulled around his white metal bed. He relaxed a little when he saw Catherine, curled up asleep in a chair a few feet away. He saw a label on a pill pot next to his bed. He was in the Nairobi hospital; the same place he had found himself after Amanda had died. It was possibly even the same ward.
When he looked back at Catherine, she was awake, grinning at him with glinting eyes of relief and mischief.
“It’s nice to have you back sleepy head,” she cooed, leaning in close.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he replied.
He felt very stiff and sore, and decided not to move too much. Catherine lifted his eyelids and moved his head from side to side as she examined him.
“Ow,” he protested.
“Is that our brave Bwana I hear,” came an Irish accent from behind the curtain.
“What’s left of him,” Catherine replied.
The curtains parted and Jericho stepped in.
“You had us worried there for a little while,” Jericho laughed.
Thomas reached up with his hand to stroke his chin. It was covered in a few days’ growth of stubble.
The Daughters of the Darkness Page 35