The Bone Triangle (17 page)

I put my lips to Jacqueline’s ear again, but she shook her head and took a half step forward. She’d heard the passage. She knew whom we’d found.

Somehow, knowing the man who was probably on the dinner menu changed everything for both of us. Perhaps we were mad, but we had to give it a try. We couldn’t leave without attempting a rescue. But I’ll admit, we wouldn’t have had the guts to walk into that encampment full of alien predators if we hadn’t been invisible to them.

I felt Jacqueline’s palm, straining and sweating against mine. She was frightened, and I didn’t blame her. I had my gun and could probably take down a few of them, but there were too many. Even if we ran off into the desert again, I was certain they would find us easy to follow. We left big, splashing footprints in their odd sands with every step, and I’m sure our alien scent laced the air as well. I had only ten bullets in my gun, and that certainly wasn’t enough. But we crept into the camp anyway. We found Gilling staked to the ground inside one of the tents in the center of the camp.

My plan to rescue him was simple and extreme. I aimed my gun carefully toward a distant member of the tribe, who stood as if on lookout at the edge of the camp. It was hard to aim precisely. I couldn’t see the sights on the gun, but I’d put in a lot of practice at the range before I’d run out of money. I knew my weapon well.

I popped off two shots. The gun was extremely loud in the relative peace and quiet of the village. The lookout shook, then toppled onto his face. I’d shot him in the leg. He rolled and howled. Furious with pain, he thrashed about, snarling and flinging crystals everywhere.

The village exploded into action. At first they looked in our direction, but soon every eye flew to the lookout. After all, he was still making noise. They trotted to him, sniffing and calling to one another suspiciously. Fortunately, their cries were loud and made excellent cover. I leaned down, slashed Gilling’s bonds with my pocketknife, and hauled him to his feet.

I hadn’t been sure if Jacqueline’s power would extend to Gilling, but it did. He dimmed and then vanished.

“On your feet,” I whispered to him.

“Quentin? What a delightful madman you are!”

“Shut up if you want to live.”

He fell silent then, and I lifted half his weight. It wasn’t easy, even though he was a lighter man than I. He wasn’t in good shape. I threw his arm over my shoulder and was forced to put my gun in my pocket so I could get him moving.

As an awkward trio, we turned and tried to make good our escape. But there, in our path, stood a familiar figure. It was the cat lady who’d tried to kill me a few nights before. She was testing the air—tasting it, in fact. Her long, curled tongue lapped at nothing in front of her.

I thought of pulling my gun and blasting her away, but I didn’t think I’d get away with the same trick twice. She’d already figured out what was going on, and it wouldn’t be long until they all stopped fussing over the injured lookout and began wondering what had happened to their captive.

I turned right, half dragging both my companions. We moved a few steps forward, trying not to kick up too many glittering crystals. I felt like a man doing some kind of perverse, blindfolded, three-legged race. Gilling stumbled, and the three of us almost went down.

Someone gasped, and the witch flicked her attention in our direction. She took three steps toward us, growling like a stalking beast.

“Keep going,” I whispered, moving my team out of the camp and toward the tall dune.

Apparently, these people had never dealt with invisibility before. I was very glad it wasn’t high noon. Not just because we’d be blinded and fried, but also because our shadows would have given us away. The shrouded light of the night on this planet was brighter than Earthly starlight, but it didn’t cast distinct shadows.

Still, the witch knew something was desperately wrong. She followed our trail, tracking us. She called her brethren,
and they came out of the camp. They huddled for a moment while we hobbled uphill as fast as we dared.

They’d figured out by now that Gilling had vanished, of course. A score of them gathered around the witch, and they discussed what they should do. At last, they spread out and formed a crescent of hunters. They advanced uphill, following our tracks. They seemed determined. We had perhaps a hundred-yard head start, if that.

“Quentin, this isn’t going to work,” Jacqueline whispered.

I’d been thinking the same thing, but I hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. The hunters were moving slowly, but they would grow braver over time when no more of them were shot. They’d speed up and catch us eventually.

“Gilling,” I said, “you are going to have to perform a little magic.”

“Ah, now I understand the rescue!” he said, laughing. The laugh turned into a wet cough. “Sorry to disappoint, but I couldn’t manage a card trick right now. I’m exhausted and more than half-blind.”

I thought about it for a second and figured out a way to goad him. “Fine. Give me your ring, then. I’ll open a path.”

“What’s this?” he asked, scandalized despite his poor state of health. “You would try to so basely trick me out of my prized possession?”

“It’s no good to any of us if we’re dead. Give it to me.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll try. But I need a fuel to work with. You know what works best for a fast, hot rip, don’t you?”

I did indeed. Gilling believed the rips were similar in nature to fire. They required fuel to burn, and as soon as they ran out of it, the portals collapsed. For his powers to work, he needed some kind of organic base. He’d tried many things: meats, grains, and vegetables. What seemed
to work best was blood. Some people thought of his cult of followers as ghoulish or vampiric for this very reason.

“Keep going,” I said, pulling them with me, my arms circling both their waists. I felt Gilling must be getting tired. I was forced to lift part of his weight to keep moving quickly uphill.

I steered toward an outcropping of rock. The dune we climbed was steeper than most, and for good reason. It wasn’t just a hill of loose crystalline flakes. It had a core of black stone. I headed for the nearest region of stone, and when I reached it, I led them to a sheltered spot between two fallen boulders and crouched there, waiting. The villagers weren’t far behind.

They were rapidly losing their fear of us now. I’d shot one, and we were invisible phantoms, but as we were no longer hurting them, they were growing braver by the minute.

My plan was simple enough. Upon reaching the rock, I hoped they wouldn’t be able to track us any longer. After all, they would no longer have a clear set of three trails of splashing sands to follow. With any luck, they would break up to search the area. We would wait quietly until they dispersed, and then Gilling could perform his miracle and get us out of here.

I already knew what I would have to do then. I would have to bleed myself. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I couldn’t think of another way. Gilling was too exhausted and hurt to offer up his blood. Jacqueline was tired, too, and much smaller. I thought I might have to ask her for a pint or so in the end, however. To make a stable rip, it took a fair amount of blood.

I pulled out my pocketknife, planning to cut myself and dribble out blood on the black rocks. The plan was simple,
but it failed utterly. The witch found us before we could get started.

I could tell as she crept up toward us that she knew what she was facing. She’d been to our world and she knew better than the others the scent of humans. She probably understood artifacts like ours as well.

She stalked closer up, her claws clicking on stone as she crept up toward us, sniffing. The rest of them wandered the trackless mounds of crystals. They seemed to be growing frustrated and moved more slowly with each passing minute. They were still trying to find us visually, to spot us and shout for their brothers and sisters to join the hunt. In time, they would probably give up and go back to their huts. Certainly by the time the sun rose, they would abandon the hunt. I felt sure of that.

But the witch was made of wiser, sterner stuff. She approached toward us, sniffing carefully. She didn’t seem to have the nose of a bloodhound, but she definitely had our scent.

“You’re going to have to shoot her,” Jacqueline whispered.

“Not very sporting,” Gilling offered.

I didn’t look at either of them. Instead, I eyed the witch, who was now down on all fours, creeping over the crumbling rocks toward us.

“Keep contact with me, Jacqueline,” I whispered.

She ran her small hand up my arm and touched my neck firmly. With my hand free, I reached into my pockets and fished out my .32. I checked the safety by feel, and tried to make sure a round was chambered.

A tiny, audible click sounded. I froze, as did everyone else. A bullet had slid out of the breech and fell onto the rocks. It rolled downhill, rattling and clattering with a long series of small sounds.

The bullet came to rest under the witch’s paws. She gave a screeching cry and rose up onto her haunches. The three of us winced in unison. We were keyed up and the shocking noise caused everyone to recoil.

Somehow, Jacqueline’s hand slipped from my neck. She’d never had a good grip to begin with—nothing as firm as holding hands. In a moment, Gilling and I were visible.

The witch didn’t charge us, however. She raised her forepaws in a gesture I recognized, summoning her powers. I raised my weapon as well, chambered another round and fired.

She lurched, hissed, and as I went to squeeze off another precious round, I felt the gun fly from my grasp. It clattered on the rocks at the cat-lady’s feet.

Then she charged us. For a moment, I was stunned by her vitality. I’d shot her at close range, but she didn’t seem to be slowed at all. A single moment was all I had. She was on me then, tearing at my skin. I had my pocketknife out, and was trying to stab her with it, but her fangs sank into my wrist.

“Do it, Gilling! Do it now!”

There was blood everywhere, and all I could hear was snarling. I got my left hand free and stabbed several times. Jacqueline was nearby, screaming. I wasn’t sure if she was injured or terrified or both.

Gilling, for his part, began to chant. He spoke strange rhyming words in French. He sounded oddly at peace with the world, despite the fact I was being killed by a half-mad cat-witch. I understood, with a small part of my brain, that when he worked his power, he was happy inside, no matter what the circumstances. Our artifacts all had properties beyond the raw power they wielded. They affected our minds as well as the reality around us.

A shimmering rip loomed directly on top of me. It was night there, on the other side. The skies were a true dark, not like the half-light that was eternal here.

Claws. I felt them digging. This was an odd sensation, as anyone who’s been mauled can tell you. Painful, yes, but when your flesh is opened and hanging loose on your bones, shredded and bloody—it feels different somehow. It is
cold
, and the pain loses much of its initial sting. Nerves, overloaded by one agony after another, eventually refuse to transmit any more of it. I was reaching that state now. Shock, numbness, and flashes of searing pain.

My shirt was gone, a bloody rag. My torso was slashed open, almost to the ribs. My flesh hung in places from my arms. Still, the fight went on, and still I stabbed at her—but I was losing, I knew it.

Then something horrible happened. A bright light grew with shocking speed, and the light roared at me, a thundering roar.

I heard words but didn’t truly understand them.

“Get out of the way, Quentin! Get up!”

It was Jacqueline’s voice, I understood that. But she was distant, a thousand miles away. Most of my existence was filled with the foul, green-eyed monster that crouched over me, doing her worst. I knew she was overjoyed she’d found me, and that we were dying together. I knew she must be feeling ecstasy as she killed me, and I struggled ever more weakly. Meng had put this compulsion in her, and now, she was finally being allowed to indulge herself fully.

The lights grew intense over the last few seconds, then for a moment we were bathed in a shocking brilliance. There was a roaring, screeching sound—I knew that sound, vaguely. It was the squeal of locked brakes on a deserted highway.

Then a two-trailer semitruck rolled over me. The bumper struck my killer and tossed her crushed body fifty yards down the highway. I was lying flat on my back, and it seemed that the truck screeched and roared inches above my face. Then at last, it came to a halt. Under the last trailer, my bloody body was illuminated by the red glow of brake lights.

Overhead, I saw the twinkling glimmer of a thousand stars. Earthly stars are very bright at night in the desert, but not as bright as they had been on the beach world.

I smiled and passed out, secure in the knowledge that I’d made it home at last.

I awakened in a quiet hospital room. At first, I was groggy. As I grew more aware of my surroundings, fear gripped me. Could I be in the cruel hands of Dr. Meng again? I’d awakened with serious injuries before and found myself at her mercy.