Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground - Part two (cont)
Penelope Hill
Awareness reclaimed me with a jerk of pain. It tumbled me sideways, dislodging me from some unspecified support to plunge me into the impact of cold fire.
No, no, nooo...
I rolled over and over in total disorientation, the agony of ice stripping at my skin; my eyes wouldn't focus and I could find nothing with which to anchor myself. The beast in my soul was screaming, panicking, tearing at my heart; I was panicking, flailing out in desperation, feeling as if I were being torn apart, my skin shredding into tatters, my senses pierced by javelins of pain...
Then my hands found something solid and I was scrabbling to hold onto it, seizing that unexpected lifeline and using it to haul myself from the torment that enfolded me. I kicked and scrambled and struggled, and suddenly I was above the sucking embrace of the river, the evening air a warmth around me as I dragged my broken body out of the abyss to lie shivering on a narrow strip of shore.
Running water...
I'd crossed it with barely a thought before, dismissing its legendary menace as mere myth when it failed to affect me. But the river was dangerous; dangerous in a way I had never expected. The sweet purity of the water had scalded my undead flesh, scouring at my soul, and to remain within its embrace any longer would have been unbearable.
I was shaking, beset by echoes of pain. There was a gasping numbness in my chest, a howl of need in my soul, and I felt as if I had been flayed alive.
But I'm dead. Stone cold dead.
God, oh, god, what has become of me?
The pain faded slowly, to be replaced by hunger. Not yet the savage cramping hunger that I had fought and struggled against for so long, but a cold craving, a focused desire that stirred me from my refuge and set me moving almost without my being aware of it. My fingers dug into the rock and lifted me upward, dragging my dead self toward the lure of distant fire like an angled spider creeping up a sheer wall.
It wasn't until I reached the top that I finally managed to regain a measure of myself. Only a measure. Enough to register where I was. What I was.
An abandoned corpse, left to rot in the foam of the river. It had washed me past the village until I'd been caught and held in the scoured depths of an eddy-filled pool.
My mind replayed the sequence of events; the confusion in the square, the terror of the sunlight, the demands for me to stop, to surrender-
- and the impact of the bullet, its weight tearing me apart...
I lifted my hand to my chest, looking down to study the damage, half-expecting to see a gaping hole and the skin hanging from my fingers in tattered strips. Instead all I found was pale flesh beneath the ruins of my shirt, gleaming faintly in the evening light. I looked up. It wasn't quite dark yet, just overcast and threatening; I was staring up at a sky that matched my mood.
Black and angry.
They left me to die.
That was bad enough. The callous reaction of mercenary men who could slaughter a fellow human being and leave him to lie where he fell. But there was more to my anger than that. It wasn't revenge I desired.
It was retribution.
I was cold. Driven. Racked by need and sustained by the remnants of a fire that wasn't mine. A fire that might be all that remained of a man I had been privileged to call my friend.
The friend I had chosen to abandon.
And if he were dead, then I would never be able to forgive myself.
They'll pay, I promised myself savagely, lost in the anger, in the sense of dark despair that had swallowed me. Every damned one of them!
The skies thundered. A heavy rain began to fall. I tore away what remained of Frazel's ruined shirt and left it in the mud, heading back up the valley toward the village, stalking through the storm like a creature of ill-omen.
Like the demon I had become.
And god help anyone who gets in my way.
The village was deathly quiet, a place of huddled anxiety and undirected dismay. The narrow stepways and slopes were deserted, although I could sense a multitude of souls lurking within the shelter of the houses. There was a sense of menace in the air, the reek of oppression, the resentment of the tyrannised. Need tugged at my soul as I passed the refuges of the innocent; the demon demanding to be fed. I slapped it down, trying to ignore the whispers that fed my anger, that promised power for my revenge.
I wanted to taste blood, all right - but it was going to be the hot hearts' blood of the men whose brutal hands had earned them such a fate...
I climbed the curve of the main road and entered the deserted square; the rain was coming down in merciless sheets of water, covering everything, running down the angled roofs, slicking the ground with a shallow ocean of mud.
Ice cold...
Just enough to stir the echo of the river's pain.
I ignored it. Ignored the warning it implied, too focused on my intent, on the desire that burned inside me. The elder's hooch was only a few steps away, and within that...
I let my predator's senses reach out with expectation, allowing a cold smile to curl onto my face. They'd be alert, perhaps expecting trouble from the villagers, but they sure as hell wouldn't be expecting anything like me.
There was a sense of bitter triumph in my heart.
I am beyond the reach of death.
I am death...
I took one more step toward my destiny - and as I did so the whisper of familiar fire caught my attention, closer than my intended prey, close enough - sure enough - for me to pause and turn.
Al?
He was alive!
Comprehension of that was swiftly followed by a bleaker comprehension of what I'd been about to do.
Oh dear god...
I came to a halt with a gasp, shaking and distraught. The demon howled inside me, its intent revealed as the seduction it really was. I'd wanted retribution? Surely not that way, not by freeing the beast, by succumbing to its desires ...
I won't.
I won't!
I fell to my knees in the mud, the rain sluicing its ice onto my shoulders, and clenched my fists as the pain of the hunger slammed back into my heart. The anger had kept it away. Had kept me from seeing the true path I was about to walk.
Fight it, Sam.
He gave you the strength to fight it...
"What the hell are you still doing here, anyway?" The complaint was an irritated one, delivered to conceal the weight of despair that threatened the speaker's soul.
"Dr Beeks said I'm not to leave you alone for anything," Gushie's voice insisted in reply. "She said-"
"Screw Beeks," Al growled with feeling, then snorted. "Now there's an idea..."
"Admiral-" I had no sense of the hologram's presence, but even so I knew he was having great difficulty in coping with the situation. Not that I could blame him for that. My chief programmer was not recruited for his social skills, and this would be a harrowing experience for anyone.
"Just forget it, willya, Gushie?" Al's request held resignation. "There's nothing you can do. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero." His voice relished every word, packing patient anger into their expression.
"But there has to be something," I heard Gushie protest. "Ziggy says you're going to die."
I shivered at that fervent exclamation, stepping a little closer in the shadows to try to assess the situation as best I could. They'd secured their prisoner under the hooch, in among the stilts and the sheltering pigs. No-one seemed to be watching him, although there was one man on general watch, up on the boarded veranda overhead. He seemed oblivious to the conversation proceeding beneath his feet, probably because of the impact of the rain that drummed the roof above him. His presence was a temptation lying just above the fragile barrier. If I wanted, I could reach right up and drag him down...
I curled my trembling hands into tight fists of self-denial. The hunger hammered at me, one of the reasons I had not just walked straight to my friend's side. Fat lot of help I would be if - in seeking to free him from captivity - I simply freed him from the burden of life altogether.
"I'm not going to die, damn it." Al's denial was determined. "Sam'll think of something."
Oh, Al...
His faith was immeasurable; I wasn't sure I was deserving of it, but hearing that confidence expressed helped add further resolution to my inner conflicts.
It also elicited a very patient sigh from his intangible company. "Dr Beckett is dead, Admiral." Gushie's words held anxious sympathy. "I told you. I saw him take the bullet. He's not coming back. Not after that."
"Sam was dead when he got here," was the answering growl. "You can't kill a vampire with a bullet, you bozo. You gotta - stake his heart, or, or - cut off his head."
"Maybe you'd better do both," I suggested softly, finally plucking up the courage to close the rest of the distance. "Just to be sure."
Gushie - a ghostly figure in his lab coat - looked up in alarm, and his face went as white as the rest of him. Al, buried in the gloom, merely smiled.
"Hi, kid," he said. "What kept ya?"
His sense of relief was almost tangible; I felt the anxious tension that I knew savaged at his soul relax its clutch a little. Just a little.
"It was such a nice day," I offered deadpan, "I thought I'd sleep in."
The hologram had taken a step backward and was staring at me in total disbelief. I ignored the look he was giving me and moved to stand where he had been standing, looking down at the prisoner in the dark.
At the brilliant spirit that filled my senses, that shone with irresistible incandescence; at the fire and the glory that I needed so much...
"Jeezus, Sam," was Al's reaction on seeing my rain-soaked and half-naked form step from the depth of shadow. "Are you okay?"
"No." I was trembling, and I fought to bring myself back under control. "But don't worry about it. That's my problem, not yours. What about you? I thought they'd killed you."
"Not yet," he observed with grim humour, still watching me with concern. "Lascale wanted me to reconsider his offer. I told him he could go to hell." His smile was a tight grimace of irony. "You'd think by now I'd have learned when to keep my damn mouth shut."
I hunkered down beside him, studying the bruises that patterned his face. He was jammed up against one of the rough-cut stilts that supported the hooch, his arms dragged back around it and his wrists lashed together to keep him there. It didn't look very comfortable, and I wondered how long he'd been sitting there like that.
Helpless and vulnerable.
Temptation stirred along with the thought, and I quashed it with difficulty. "What offer?" I asked instead, steeling myself so that I could reach out and examine the knots that held him in place.
"To take the money and keep schtum," Al answered, wincing as my exploring hands woke protests in his arms and shoulders. "As if anyone could trust the bastard to keep his word ... ahh!"
"Sorry." The knots were stubborn ones; my tentative tugs at the rope were doing no good at all. But I couldn't afford to stay so close for much longer.
Frustration spurred a brief resurgence of my anger; I curled my hands around his wrists, my fingers tangling in the air-dampened hemp, and I pulled, a short savage jerk that parted the cordage like so much soft taffy.
And the scent of blood stirred in the air, where the coarse rope had cut into his skin, where he had struggled and fought to be free without success...
I stepped back and away with alacrity, suppressing the surge of the hunger as best I could. Al didn't notice my reaction; he was too busy easing his arms and shoulders back to more natural angles, grimacing as he did so. But Gushie saw it. Saw it and recognised what it meant with horrified comprehension. He'd not stopped staring since I'd arrived; now his hands clenched around the link and his eyes flicked towards my company then back to me with a look of utter dismay. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.
Now do you understand what I've become, Dr Gushman?
"We got it all wrong, you know, Sam?" Al was tugging the remnants of rope from his wrists and scowling at the damage the action revealed. "Lascale wasn't really after me - I mean Schuster - when he scuttled the plane. Just the other guys. Seems he's been running some kinda black market smuggling scam for years - and they were about to blow the whistle on him."
"So what's he doing here?" I asked in puzzlement. "Making sure it worked?"
"Nope." Al clambered to his feet and frowned at Gushie's haunted expression. "He's after the same thing we are. The secrets of that damned temple. Only he doesn't care what they are - so long as they're portable, and valuable. He's a thief, kid. Pure and simple. He and his bunch of thugs have been looting art treasures and selling them overseas for a nice tidy profit. When Schuster turned up with his careful research and his crazy tales it musta been like being handed a treasure map on a plate."
"Art treasures?" I echoed, thinking - for some strange reason - of McFarlane's hidden crypt and the wonders with which he had surrounded himself.
"Yeah. Not that he's bothered about the art. Just the money people will pay for it. Matter of fact, I get the feeling that the money is the only thing he's bothered about. That - and protecting his own interests."
"So it was greed," I registered with resignation. "I guess that's as good a motivation for murder as any."
"Try paranoia," Al suggested acerbically. "He's plain crazy, Sam. And as for his bunch of bully boys-" His hand lifted to stroke the curve of his jawline. "They could teach the VC a thing or two." He paused, and glanced across at me, an odd look in his eyes. "Maybe they did," he muttered with a hint of bitterness, half under his breath.
"Are you okay?" I asked, sensing the shiver that ran through him. Beeks said I was not to leave you alone for anything... I glanced at Gushie - who was still staring - and wondered what might have happened during those long hours in which I had played no part.
Those hours in which I had abandoned him.
Al thought about it, finally finding me a chagrined grin. "Yeah," he breathed. "I'm okay. But can we just get the hell outta here?" And he demonstrated the concept with an eloquent gesture of his hand. "Cut in the afterburners? Vamoose?"
It was a tempting thought. The night would swallow us with efficiency. But what good would it do? When Lascale discovered his prisoner had escaped he'd just order his men to track him down again.
"What does Ziggy say, Gushie?" I asked, distracted enough by my thoughts to let my fingers drift to my lips. The blood that lingered there was sweet, despite being tainted with an echo of pain. The hologram swallowed. Hard.
"Ah - uh - errm..." He sought refuge from his consternation in the handlink, which squealed with its usual sound of protest. "Well - the odds on Schuster surviving have gone up. But the village still gets burned to the ground."
It was an excuse. It was always an excuse.
"He has to cover his tracks," I realised bleakly. "Al, we have to stop this."
"Do we?" The retort was sharp. "Sam - you and I are in deep doodoo here, right? Forget the village. Forget Lascale. If he wants to slaughter a few gooks, then let him. You gotta get up to that temple and find this elixir before you lose the chance. Before you lose everything. You're skimming close to the edge here, kid. And believe me, this place ain't worth your soul."
Isn't it?
I stared at him. Determinedly. He was arguing the logic as he saw it; but innocents were going to die, and he ought to know by now that I would never choose to live with that on my conscience. After a moment or two he began to squirm a little.
"Don't look at me like that, Sam," he protested uncomfortably. "I'm just telling you like it is. Okay," he reluctantly acquiesced a second or two later. "You wanna save the village - I guess we save the village. Got any idea how?"
The sarcasm in the question did not escape me. Nor did the fact that his agreement came purely from knowing that I was stubborn enough to hold my ground when principles were at stake.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I suppose we find some way to stop Lascale. Where is he right now?"
Gushie checked. "Somewhere in the ruined temple. Yun Shi refused to take him up there, but his grandson agreed to act as his guide when he threatened to hurt the old man."
"Yun Ho?" Al and I exchanged a glance. "Al, you don't think-?"
"The path to wisdom can be treacherous," he noted, a small grin creeping onto his features. "Particularly when the rains come ... I wouldn't trust that kid further than I could throw him. He's not leading them to the Goddess, Sam. He's leading them straight into a pitfall or two."
He didn't have to look so pleased about it. Or maybe he did, come to that.
"I'm not so sure," I said worriedly. "Gushie, did they take Yun Shi with them?"
"Uh-huh," he agreed with a nod. "I don't think Lascale trusted the boy either."
Damn...
With his grandfather under threat, the youngster might well keep his word. But Lascale didn't have to - and once he discovered that neither knew the whereabouts of the temple's only remaining treasure, he was quite likely to kill the both of them.
"We need something to bargain with," I realised, pacing a little to ease the nag of the hunger. "Something Lascale will want..."
"Like what?" Al asked suspiciously, then frowned. "Now - wait a minute, Sam. If we can find that elixir stuff, then you gotta drink it. We're not gonna bargain away your only chance for the sake of - of - saving Charlie, for god's sake."
I swung back toward him, startled by the impact of angered passion, the demon in me stirred by the sudden intensity of his presence. "Al," I warned anxiously. "Don't-"
"Don't what?" he demanded, misreading my concern. "Don't look at reality here? We're in Vietnam, Sam, not - not Elk Ridge, Indiana. The kids here aren't going to grow up to be worthy citizens. They're gonna grow up and kill people."
"You don't know that," I defended, allowing my own anger to surface because doing so helped cage the raging need that threatened my self-control. "You can't judge these people by what they might do, Al."
"Can't I?" he growled, glaring at Gushie, who was watching both of us with alarm. "Damn it, Sam. If anyone around here has the right to make that judgement-"
"You don't!" I interrupted him with tight words, my hands clenching at my sides, the hunger howling in my heart. "Nobody has that right. Nobody. We are going to do whatever it takes to save this village. What ever it takes, understand?"
He glowered at me from the shadows, and I fought down the demands his presence - his vehemence - stirred in me.
Make it an order, the beast suggested, feeding on my anger, using my annoyance to tempt me. He belongs to you. Don't waste time with words and arguments.
I nearly did. I opened my mouth again, the command forming in my heart, the power there if I wished for it-
- and Al sighed, and stepped back, leaning his tired weight against the rough-cut wood and letting the anger go with resignation. "I just - don't want all this to have been for nothing, Sam," he said reluctantly. "You deserve a better deal, kid. That's all."
Ohhh, boy ...
I turned away, wrestling for equilibrium. It would have been so easy, to enforce my wishes, to dominate and control. And, by doing so, abuse the faith, the trust he had offered me. Even his anger was driven by his desire to save me.
Betrayal, Yun Shi had identified in the tumbled patterns of my future. Not - as I had thought - in the anguished choices I had made in the square, but in the subtler temptations of the darkness that held my soul.
"I know," I acknowledged softly. "But this is important, Al. I'm not. Not if it comes to a choice between my life and so many others. Anyway," I went on with forced cheerfulness, "we have to find the elixir first. If it even exists."
He snorted. "Yeah. Not to mention catching up with a guy that's got a good head start on us - in the middle of a maze where he's got a guide and we don't. In the dark. And it's raining. What kind of odds is Ziggy gonna give us on that?"
"Good ones," I shot back before Gushie could say anything. "Particularly since I know the short cut. Yun Shi's route goes up the outside of the mountain, but there's a more direct way, a tunnel up from the shrine."
"There is?" Al looked at me suspiciously. "How do you know?"
"The old man pointed it out to me this morning. And no, they wouldn't take Lascale that way. It's a forbidden path." I found myself smiling at the irony. "One open only to the dead."
The shrine was deserted. It had also been ransacked. The garlands of flowers had been broken and scattered across the mosaic floor, torn from their places so that the statues beneath could be lifted away. The wrought metal braziers had been stacked in a corner, the charcoal and incense they contained tipped out at the Buddha's feet. And the offering bowls and their contents had been kicked aside as no more than shattered shards of pottery.
Al's reaction to the sight - one lit only by the guttering of a single torch still held in its stanchion - was a low whistle of dismay. He'd paused between the pillars to shake some of the rain out of his hair, and he stared into the flicker of gloom with doubt settling onto his features.
My reaction was an angry one. Not so much at the sense of sacrilege as at the sheer vandalism the sight implied. The shrine had been treated with the same brutal and unfeeling violence that my friend had suffered earlier in the day, and the results had been just as damaging. Maybe more so. At least the bruises would heal.
I hope...
I shook the distraction away and strode across to the hidden door, its outline clear now that the statue that had stood before it was gone. Clear to me, at any rate. I somehow doubted that the eyes of living men would have seen it as certainly as mine; to me the night was filled with clarity, defined patterns of fire and shadow.
"It's - ah - a little dark in here, isn't it, Sam?"
Al's hesitant words confirmed my thoughts, and brought the beginnings of a smile to my face. My friend owns more courage than he knows what to do with - but he's got a superstitious soul and he's always been just a little wary of what might be lurking in the night.
Like vengeful ghosts.
And vampires...
"You don't have to come," I told him, and he scurried the rest of the distance with wounded reaction.
"I'm right behind you," he protested, reaching to lift the torch from its resting place. "You know," he added, with a hint of wistfulness, "this sort of thing is so much easier in the Imaging Chamber..."
I threw him a withering look, and he had the grace to look abashed. He was right, of course. But the observation was hardly a helpful one.
I didn't ask you to come back for me, Al. But you did. And I'm willing to bet that - given the option - you'd choose to do it again.
I dug undead fingers into the crack and heaved. Mortal flesh would not have budged the stubborn stone, but my muscles were long past the protests of pain and fatigue. The door shivered and then shifted, grating open to reveal a foreboding tunnel, a mouth filled with darkness which breathed out a chill and foetid air.
Al took an involuntary step backward. "A-a-a-ah," he laughed nervously, "are you sure about this, Sam?"
I wasn't. But I also knew we had no choice. I couldn't blame Al for his reaction; even I'd felt a shiver of fear reach out from the waiting darkness. And I was dead - one of the elite company entitled to walk this ancient path.
"You could always stay here," I suggested, conscious of his warmth, and acutely aware of my growing need. I knew I'd move faster alone. Much faster.
But would I also lose sight of my intentions?
"Uh-uh," he denied, taking a deep breath and steeling his resolve as he did so. "Last time I took my eyes off ya, kiddo, you got yourself killed. Again. Besides - hanging around here ain't such a good idea. If one of those nozzles decides to check how comfortable I am-"
"One of them just did," Gushie announced, popping into existence right in the tunnel mouth. Al jumped, his heart pounding into startled overdrive.
"Jeezus," he exclaimed. "Gushie, do you have to?"
I'd been equally surprised. But then, I'm used to it.
"Sorry," came the inevitable apology. "But there are half a dozen men with guns out there, trying to figure out which way you went. And Ziggy's odds are dropping again."
Not just the odds, come to that. The hologram's image was shot with interference, distortion flicking through him in uneven bursts. The Project would have been using a great deal of power to maintain a consistent contact during the day, and the effects were beginning to take their toll on the transmission.
"Caught between a rock and a hard place," Al muttered with feeling. "We'd better get going, Sam. And you," he added, frowning at Gushie, "had better get outta here before Ziggy blows all her fuses."
My chief programmer looked worried. Very worried. "Admiral?" he enquired warily. "Are you sure you want me to go?" And he glanced sideways at me as he said it. "I mean - no offence, Dr Beckett, but - you really are dead, aren't you-?"
Al didn't even bother to comment on that. He just threw me a long-suffering look and strode into the tunnel mouth, the torch in his hand setting shadows dancing in the dark.
"Yeah," I paused to confirm softly, "I'm really dead, Gushie. But I'm not damned. Not yet, at any rate..."
I stepped into the tunnel and pulled the door back behind me, not quite shutting it, but enough to ensure the casual searcher would not immediately identify it as an obvious escape route. Then I turned and followed the fire that strode ahead of me, the intrusive warmth of life that trespassed on the domain of the dead.
Following the temptation, drawn to it like iron to a magnet...
Somewhere behind me I heard the sound of the Imaging Chamber door open, and then - after a hesitant moment - I heard it close again.
The tunnel led upward; a slow spiral of ascent interspersed with carefully cut steps and short level passageways. Al's resolute stride had faltered after a while. The place had an oppressive atmosphere, even to my senses, and a good half of his determined energy was pure stubbornness and nothing else. He was tired; fighting the fatigue of a long and debilitating day when he hadn't been at his best to begin with. And he hurt. Not seriously, not savagely; but each step he took served to remind him of aches and bruises - along with the older abuses to his soul, which the engulfing fingers of the dark undoubtedly stirred in equal measure.
I lagged behind to begin with, anxious to detect any signs of pursuit, and equally wary of walking too close on his heels with the need and the hunger clawing at my sense of existence. But once his steps had slowed, once his initial bravado had become wary hesitation, I was there to lift the torch from his hand and lead the way further into the mountain. He offered no objections as I did so, merely finding me a brief and uneasy grin.
"I hope you're right about this, Sam," he muttered as I paused at an intersection and wondered which way to go. "I'd hate to be wandering around down here all night."
All night... I suppressed an inner shiver at the thought. He'd been right earlier. I was walking the edge, and the longer I did so the harder it would be for me to hold on to my self-control.
"It can't be far," I decided firmly and headed into the right-hand fork, since that had steps leading up, rather than the level passage to the left. We climbed a little further, and then the tunnel opened out into a sense of space, the torchlight sending our shadows flickering across a vaulted ceiling.
"Oh, my god..." Al breathed from behind me, halting in total disconcertion. I walked a little further into the chamber and held the torch aloft, staring at the sight it revealed.
Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground. Part Two. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1996 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson
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