Blackbone (39 page)

His knees buckled and he was slammed into the floor, one leg bent almost double beneath him, but that pain lasted only an instant and was wiped away by a numbness spreading downward from his neck.

The djinn materialized out of the dark above, and now he saw what the arms were connected to. It towered over him, leering, its jaws opening wide, and its forked tongue flicking at him.

Then the claws punctured his neck and ripped out his throat.

The djinn’s immense hand rose, offering Hopkins’ gory flesh to an unseen god. Then Hopkins’s head dropped to his chest, and gratefully he saw at last that there was no body on the table after all. There never had been. It had all been in his mind. Only the djinn was real.

And in his glazing eyes, even the djinn became darkness.

Chapter 28

Rummaging in the pantry, Steuben found several large bags of salt, which Gilman helped him drag out to the mess hall. Each grabbing a bag, they began salting the hut. Loring poured a line of it across the doorway. Steuben scattered it on the floorboards. Gilman covered the windowsills. Loring brushed some under the back door then returned to watch Steuben stoke a fire in the potbellied stove.

When it was going strong and they could feel the warmth, they sat down in front of it and tried to relax, figuring that the smoke from the roof stack would eventually draw Hopkins. No one spoke. They all knew they had set themselves up as bait. The djinn would come for them sooner or later.

After a while, Gilman opened the door. The storm had died down. Snow was still falling, but it was no longer whipped about on raging winds. Gilman watched a breeze stir the grains of salt at his feet. The white line remained in place.

Looking up, he spotted a figure stumbling out from between the huts, coming toward him. As it got closer, he recognized Hopkins. Gilman signaled him. “Over here!”

Loring and Steuben joined him at the door. Loring studied the approaching figure intently.

Within a yard of the door, he stopped. Salt stirred on the threshold. Gilman urged him on impatiently. Hopkins stayed where he was, his gazing moving slowly from one to the other of them. All at once, his eyes rolled back into his head, he swayed, and toppled into the snow.

Gilman made a move to help him. Loring grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute,” she said.

“He’s hurt.”

“Let’s just wait.”

Hopkins didn’t move. Gilman shrugged off Loring’s restraining hand and descended the steps. He stopped, beginning to think about why she wanted him to wait. He stared at Hopkins’ body sprawled in the snow and wondered what was wrong with him. Why had he collapsed? Had there been a fight? Had the straggler attacked him? Hopkins’ .45 was still in its holster. Something about this struck Gilman as not being right.

Loring’s hand was on his arm again, pulling him back. He went back up the steps and watched her hold up the silver talisman and angle it to catch Hopkins’ vague reflection. She looked into it and gasped.

Gilman and Steuben looked. In place of Hopkins’ body lying in the snow was the reflection of something half-man, half-beast, crouched and watching them with the hungry look of a starved dinosaur.

Loring dropped the talisman. It dangled on the end of the chain as she stooped and grabbed a handful of salt from the doorstep. She flung it at Hopkins.

There was an unearthly howl of pain and rage as Hopkins’ body erupted out of the snow, twisted into impossible shapes then collected into what resembled the blistering stump of a tree made of smoldering flesh. In its place then rose a thick column of oily black smoke that coiled backward then hurled itself at the mess hall.

The smoke clove into two bands of cloudy blackness that encircled the space beneath the eaves. It seized the mess hall and began to shake it.

Gilman, Loring, and Steuben sprang back into the room. The salt jumped and flew about the doorway. The floor banged and cracked beneath their feet. The walls heaved. Clouds of black boiled against the windows and exploded the glass inward. Shards tore past them and ripped their clothing. Salt blew from the exposed windowsills and whipped about their bodies in a white swirl.

Gilman shoved Loring to the floor and held her down as the boards bumped and heaved beneath them. Steuben dove under a table.

Blackness seeped upward between the cracks, forcing the floorboards apart in an attempt to get through. Salt dropped through the openings and the howl rose again. The floor stopped moving, but the entire building began to shake. Then, beneath the potbellied stove, the floorboards finally buckled. They snapped and, on a roiling black cloud, the stove was hoisted into the air and tipped over. Hot coals spilled from the open grate. The dry floor ignited.

Behind them, boards splintered and one whole wall opened up. An impossible wind blew in, fanning the fire and carrying sparks to the opposite wall.

Gilman got up, pulling Loring with him, trying to reach the door, but the wind gathered force and propelled them across the room toward the fire. Sparks and salt blew around their heads. The floor around the stove was already an inferno, and the east wall was burning.

Steuben scrambled from beneath his table and tried to run for the kitchen. Boards splintered under his feet. He tripped and nearly fell through the floor. Blackness rose through the opening and gripped him. He screamed.

Grabbing one of the half-empty salt bags, Gilman threw it to Steuben, who turned it bottom up and emptied it over the lower half of his body. The blackness howled again, immediately released him, and shrank out of sight beneath the hut.

Steuben struggled to climb out of the hole as Gilman moved to help him. The wind blasted Loring backward. With a shriek, she crashed into the tables and was shoved back with them.

The nightform came billowing in on the wind, through the gaping hole in the west wall. It formed a black tornado in the center of the room and spun around at incredible speed. As Loring fought to disentangle herself from a crush of tables and chairs, Gilman struggled to free Steuben from the hole in the floor.

With a lurching shudder inside the tornado, the nightform abruptly became the djinn.

It stood stooped beneath the ceiling, its reptilian hide covered with dark, greasy fur. From the waist down, its body was goatlike, with yellowed cloven hooves. Long, powerful arms with clawed hands lashed out at Loring and Gilman, separating them. It took another swipe, and one of its talons hooked into the chain at Loring’s throat. She screamed as it was yanked away. The chain and Yazir’s silver talisman were flung into the flames.

Inches from the spreading fire, Steuben crouched and stared at the djinn’s burning eyes, its flicking tongue, its blood-flecked teeth.

Shoving a hand inside his coat, Steuben groped for the knife. He pulled it out and signaled Gilman to get Loring out the door.

Loring stared into the flames, searching for the talisman, but she couldn’t find it. As Gilman lunged toward her, the djinn swung at him and tore a strip off his coat. Steuben jumped between them and plunged his knife into the djinn’s thigh. The knife sliced deeply into thick flesh but drew no blood. Steuben wasted no time and yanked the knife out for another stroke, but the djinn caught him with a backhanded stroke that knocked him to the floor.

As fire roared along the north wall, descending from the burning roof, Gilman caught Loring about the waist and headed for the door with her, Seeing Steuben jump back up and crouch to attack the djinn with his knife again, she cried, “No! You can’t fight it this way!”

Gilman shoved her out the door. As she sprawled in the snow outside, he whirled to see the djinn backing Steuben into the fire. Something cracked above Gilman. He dove backward as a section of burning ceiling crashed down where he had been standing.

Looking up from the doorway, he saw that he was cut off from Steuben and the djinn. Through the flames, he could see Steuben thrusting and slashing with the knife. The djinn danced with him, intermittently snarling and roaring, imitating fearsome animal cries to frighten him.

Gilman tried to edge around the fire. He saw Steuben thrust again, then the great claws slammed downward and ripped away half of Steuben’s coat. Steuben bellowed in pain. Across his exposed side, Gilman glimpsed blood welling up from three gaping streaks. The flesh hung in strips.

Smoke from the fire was filling the mess hall, and it stung Gilman’s eyes. Coughing, he was driven back to the door and strained to see through the flames. Steuben vainly and furiously continued to slash at the djinn, which took his cuts with mocking laughter.

Then it abruptly evaporated into black smoke. In a soundless rush, it wrapped itself around Steuben and tried to crush him. He slashed at it frantically. Fire rose up from the floorboards around him.

“Steuben, get out of here!” Gilman called.

Flames shot up in front of Gilman, obscuring his view. The heat was intense. Smoke billowed into his face. He was forced out into the snow. Loring jumped up to help him.

Choking, Steuben continued to slash the air with his knife. Through eyes nearly blinded by smoke, he finally realized the blackness was gone from around his body, but now he was surrounded by flames. Panicking, he lunged through them toward the open wall.

The djinn rose up in front of him and forced him to stop with his body standing in fire. His trousers ignited. One of the djinn’s immense arms snaked around his shoulder. The djinn clutched him to its body and pressed its face close to his. Its jaws opened and the forked tongue darted out, leaving an acid burn on Steuben’s forehead.

Steuben stabbed upward with the knife, intending to disembowel the beast. But its free hand snapped his wrist. He screamed and dropped the knife. Both of the djinn’s hands went to his throat. Claws dug deeply into the back of his head. Roaring, the djinn lifted him off the floor by the neck and shook him violently.

One thought blossomed in Steuben’s tortured mind as the djinn ripped him in half—while he had lost the certainty of ever going home again, he had never lost hope. And now, he was truly on his way.

Loring pulled Gilman away from the mess hall only seconds before the entire west wall exploded outward. Splinters and fragments of board were scattered in the snow, and among them was Steuben’s mangled body.

Gilman instinctively moved toward him, but Loring yanked him back. “He’s dead—there’s nothing you can do for him.” She had seen the djinn standing in the flames, turning to whirling blackness and beginning to spiral out through the burning roof.

They ran for the nearest hut and crashed against the door. It was wedged shut. They banged on it and kicked it, but it wouldn’t open. Stumbling off the steps, they looked back. The mess hall was engulfed in a pillar of fire, lighting up the camp, spraying smoldering ash into the snowfall, dirtying the white blanket around them. Gilman wondered if the MPs were still watching from the fence on the hill and if they would obey his last order and stay out.

He could no longer see the djinn. The black whirlwind had disappeared, changing into something else. Loring tugged on Gilman’s arm and together they floundered through the snow to the next hut—the
Krankenhaus.

The door was open.

They stumbled in and slammed it shut. Gilman searched for a lock then remembered there were no locks in the prison huts. He leaped across the room and, grabbing a chair, braced it against the door.

“You think that will keep it out?” Loring asked quietly.

Gilman glanced at her. She was shaking. He sagged against the wall to catch his breath. “It finished Steuben,” he said. “Why didn’t it finish us?”

“I think—” Loring choked back a nervous sob. “I think it only wanted to separate us from the salt.”

“The salt, hah! What good did that do?”

“Didn’t you see what happened when Steuben poured salt all over it?”

“It got out of the way, but
it didn’t die.”

“Because it was in that cloud form. That’s like an in- between state for it. But when it takes on substance, I’m willing to bet—”

“Don’t bother betting.”

“Look, Gilman,” she said with a hard edge to her voice, “Major Steuben got in the way, so it killed him. But it wants us alive. One of us has to become the host.”

Gilman knew she was right. Maybe he had outsmarted himself by insisting they face it alone. “If we don’t kill it,” he said, “we might not walk out of here alive. If the djinn doesn’t get us, those men waiting on the hill won’t open the gate. And if they see us still walking around tomorrow and no sign of the monster, they may assume that .we’re
it
Then—bang, bang.”

Loring reflected on that while Gilman moved to a window on the east side and stared out at the burning mess hall. Steuben’s body was disappearing under a layer of ash and snow. The fire was dying down slowly.

“Do you think we can hold it off till dawn?” he said. “And if we do, will it die?”

“I don’t know, but if it’s as desperate for a host as I believe, and it doesn’t get one, something will change.”

“Christ, we’re operating on two volts of guesswork.”

Her eyes flared. “I’m sorry. The only thing I’m sure of is that it will come after us—soon. So we’d better be prepared.”