Darkness at Dawn (17 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Jennings
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction
To her utter surprise, Paso stepped forward, pulling something from her sleeve. A flower with white, fragile petals. Paso held it delicately by its stem and offered it to Lucy. “By Buddha’s birth, my country thanks you for your service.” Once Lucy took the flower by its stem, Paso dipped more deeply than before in a curtsy, her robe belling about her feet.
Lucy blinked, not knowing how to answer.
The general stepped forward. “Welcome to Nhala, Dr. Merritt. I am General Changa. We have set up a laboratory for you in the Summer Palace. We followed the instructions given by the Manuscripts Department of the Smithsonian, and I understand you have brought some tools of your own. You will let me know if you need lab assistants. I am certain you wish to see the manuscript. Two of my men will accompany you there—”
Mike held up a big hand. “Wait a moment, General Changa. My fiancée has flown halfway around the world to help you restore this manuscript. I understand it is important to your people, but I must insist that she be allowed to rest. She is tired, cold and hungry.”
The general’s cold eyes snapped to Mike. His features tightened, his deep voice cold and commanding. “I am certain that Dr. Merritt—”
“Wishes to rest. Yes, she does.” Mike’s voice turned cold and commanding as well. “I am glad you understand that.”
The two men stared at each other in a test of male wills. Mike wasn’t backing down. The two all but sprouted antlers. The general inclined his head. “Of course, Mr., er . . .”
“Harrington.” Mike beamed, morphing right back to clueless, genial American businessman. You could almost forget that a couple of seconds ago he’d sounded dangerous. “Michael Harrington. Call me Mike. Everyone does.” He looked around at the torchlit scene, up at the walls disappearing into the misty sky, down at the brightly colored rugs laid down for the princess. “Beautiful place. Glad I decided to accompany Lucy, never been to this part of the world before. Farthest east I’ve ever been is Greece.”
He grinned.
The general spoke softly and two officers came forward. “You will be escorted to your room.” He fixed Lucy with his obsidian stare. “Dr. Merritt, I trust you will be rested enough to come to your laboratory tomorrow morning.”
Paso’s face tightened every time the general spoke.
Lucy pasted a smile on her face. Mike wasn’t the only one who could be a clueless American. “Sounds fine, General. Around ten o’clock, say? I’m wondering whether Princess Paso—”
“The princess has little time for social activities. Her brother is very ill. I will escort her back to the King’s Chambers. She insisted on being here to greet you, but her time is limited.” He bowed, watching Paso’s face. “Princess. It is time to rejoin your brother.”
Paso’s face was unreadable. Lucy noticed that she avoided having any part of her touch the general.
The general turned briefly to Lucy. “Dr. Merritt.”
Lucy bowed her head. “General.”
So that was the way of it. Not only was the general reducing a happy country to a state of sullen misery and harboring a bioweapons lab, he was threatening her friend Paso.
Lucy turned slightly and inclined her head again. “Princess.”
Paso looked back at her out of opaque, unreadable eyes, and Lucy understood perfectly.
Whatever General Changa planned, it was going to be over her dead body.
N
INE
INE
NIGERIA
NDOUMA lay in wait behind the huge bole of a cashew tree, spear at the ready. Across the leaf-strewn clearing, the branches of a small papaya plant shook as the bushpig rooted around for the sweet fruits that had fallen to the ground.
This was a very good day. Two hours before, Ndouma had skinned another bushpig caught in a snare an hour’s walk away. He’d quartered the animal and stored the meat in netting hung from the branches of a eucalyptus tree. The meat from that bushpig and this one would keep his village fed for a week.
He was a master hunter, just as his father and his father before him had been. It was a gift of the gods. His head was filled with mental maps of animal hunting grounds, trails leading to watering holes, hidden valleys where roving herds of antelope could be culled.
His father had taught him all the invisible signs to follow prey and had taught him how to interpret his dreams. Last night Ndouma had had vivid dreams of dying animals and he knew today would be a good day for hunting.
There!
For a second, the bushpig’s fleshy snout had peeked between the leaves. The bushpig turned back, and Ndouma could measure its size by the displacement of leaves. A big animal, as high as Ndouma’s upper thighs, good for three days of eating. Together with the other bushpig, it represented so much meat they’d have to smoke some of it to keep the maggots out.
Now Ndouma could hear the snuffling sounds the bushpig was making as it ate. A good moment for the kill, as the animal would be paying less attention to its surroundings and could be taken unaware.
Ndouma rose from his crouch in a slow, seamless movement, as his father had taught him, bringing his spear arm back.
At the last second, in which his spear would fly across the distance between him and the bushpig and pierce the pig’s heart, almost as a foreordained event, Ndouma was distracted by a small sound at his feet, like a person exhaling after holding his breath for a long time. A puff of air that shifted the leaves on the ground and distracted him just long enough for the bushpig to sense his presence and escape, squealing.
Ndouma downed his spear, disgusted, knowing that he’d be bringing only one bushpig into his village. He looked down at what had cost him several days’ worth of meat and frowned. He crouched and studied it. Made by man, and men of the city at that. There were no handmade marks. This was made by machinery.
He’d seen machined artifacts before, but nothing like this. A glass cylinder held together by a shiny metallic clamp. Part of the cylinder had exploded; shards of shiny glass littered the ground. He poked around with his finger, careful to avoid the cutting edges of the glass. His grandfather had been thrown through a window on one of his rare trips into a city and had nearly bled to death.
These shiny things
cut.
They didn’t stab or tear, they cut. Deep and sharp.
cut.
They didn’t stab or tear, they cut. Deep and sharp.
There was an odd smell in the air, something he didn’t recognize. That had to be man-made, too, because he knew all the smells of the jungle and could identify them easily. He didn’t have a category for the smell; he only knew it wasn’t natural. Like the smells of the copper mines, or the trucks that lumbered through roads at the edges of his tribe’s territory.
Ndouma sighed and looked up at the sun. It would take him until late afternoon to get back to where he’d hung the quartered pig from the tree, cut the nets down and haul the meat into the village. He didn’t have time to track another animal down.
Unease crept through him. This was not right.
The second pig should have been his.
In his mind’s eye he’d seen it. The straight, powerful throw of the spear, the animal’s squeals of surprise, then pain, the sounds tapering off quickly because Ndouma had been aiming directly for the heart. He was known far and wide as a marksman with his spear, and he and his family were always given the heart of his kills, with the sharp slice through the heart, to honor the accuracy of his throw.
It hadn’t happened.
And yet—he’d dreamed of dead animals, always a harbinger of success in the hunt. It troubled him to have clear dreams in darkness that weren’t echoed in sunlight. It was wrong. He’d followed his dreams all his life and trusted them as he trusted his eyes and his hands and his feet. He was even wearing his special ivory hunting amulet.
Troubled by the missed kill, Ndouma turned and made his way back to the first kill. At least he wouldn’t be going back to the village empty-handed.
But it turned out to be more than an hour’s walk. The sun had passed the treetops and was moving back to the earth when he finally tracked down the meat that was still hanging from the netting.
Ndouma’s steps were dragging. He was sweating so hard drops were falling off him when he reached the tree. Chunk of meat were swaying from the branches.
He was hot, burning. He could hardly breathe from the exertion of making his way back here, though he knew in his heart it was an easy walk.
He knew what he had to do—climb the trunk, crawl out onto the big tree limb and use the knife sheathed at his hip to cut the nets and let the chunks of meat fall to the leafcovered ground.
But it was beyond him. He leaned one-handed against the huge tree trunk and looked up. And up and up. It seemed as if the treetops brushed the sun, higher than the buildings his cousins said existed in Lagos. Higher than the mountains.
It was impossible to climb.
Maybe he was bewitched. That was it. His amulet was no protection against witchcraft, which was the only explanation for his weakness. He fell to one knee and stayed there, head bowed, drops of sweat falling so quickly from his brow he could hear the spatter on the leaves.
All of a sudden, the world turned from the deep green of the forest and bright blue of the sky to red.
The Devil’s work. This was clearly the Devil’s work. Ndouma had to hurry back to the village and get his most powerful amulet, perhaps ask the medicine man for a cleansing ceremony. It involved bloodletting and was painful, but so was this.
His stomach hurt, as if he’d swallowed knives.
There was no question now of carrying the meat back. He’d be lucky to make it back himself. He knew the location and could describe it to his brothers. Seventy paces in the direction of the setting sun from the monkeys’ watering hole. They could get the meat themselves.
He needed to be cleansed of the evil spirits. Now.
It was an hour’s walk back to the village, and it took him three. The sun had long since disappeared behind the trees and almost all the light in the sky was gone when he stumbled into the central clearing. He’d long since lost the strength to wipe the sweat from his eyes and had made it by sheer doggedness, because he could find his way home literally blindfolded.
He stopped in the middle of the clearing, right outside the chieftain’s hut, hands on thighs, head down, panting. Sweat poured off his body and he felt as if he were on fire. His knees trembled and he tried to straighten them. A hunter like Ndouma didn’t simply collapse to the ground. He had to stand straight, yet he couldn’t.
For a moment he was able to get outside himself, outside the horrific spell that was burning him up inside, and wonder why no one came. The village was used to him coming home from a hunting expedition with precious bush meat, the kids capering around him, the elderly women looking up from their chores and smiling.
No one.
He opened his eyes, blinking against the sweat, and turned his head painfully. Any movement felt like turning his head inside thornbushes.
It was close to dinnertime; the entire village should be outside their huts, the women cooking, the men in conversation. Yet there was only silence.
He scanned as much as he was able, every movement of his head sending a red hot spike of pain through his brain.
No one. Emptiness.
Had a rival tribe come along and slaughtered his people? There had been no war with the Mbekeli since his grandfather’s father’s time, but perhaps that was the meaning of his dream?
Had all the animals been killed? Because there were no human sounds and no animal sounds. No sounds at all.
Only smells. The smell of meat cooking, only unlike any meat he’d ever smelled before.
Ndouma looked again and saw them. On the ground. His wife and mother, his daughters. His son, belly down in the dust, unmoving. He stumbled to his wife, gathered her lifeless body in his arms and called to the gods above to tell him why this had happened. No one responded.
He looked around desperately, seeing more bodies.
The chief and his wife. Beyond their hut, to the right, was a campfire, a body he couldn’t recognize over it, as if he or she had fallen suddenly and had been unable to get up.
Blood around the heads, though he was unable to see any wounds. What could have done this? What kind of evil spirit could bring blood without wounds? What—
Ndouma suddenly jerked, his limbs flailing, completely outside his control. His stomach clenched mightily, as if he had been punched by a strong, invisible man. Maybe the same man who had killed his village?
He fell to his knees. An uncontrollable fountain of vomit spewed from his mouth, deeply red and thick. He could hardly breathe. His knees gave out and he kneeled in the dust and vomited again, the taste vile. The taste of death itself.
Even kneeling became too much for him, and he fell face-first into the dust, small puffs rising as his arms slapped the ground. He vomited directly onto the ground, so fast and thick the ground couldn’t absorb it. He found himself breathing in the foul liquid and coughed it out. The cough turned into another bout of vomiting. He barely had the strength to turn his head before more hot, sour liquid poured out of his mouth.
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