Dying Bites: The Bloodhound Files-1 (39 page)

He’s shaking his head. “You still do not understand. Cassius believes you have defected to Stoker’s side. Any communication from you will be viewed as disinformation at best, sabotage at worst. I have heard through my own sources that . . .”

He hesitates, then finishes. “. . . that orders have been given to kill you on sight. For some reason, Cassius now believes you to be as large a threat as Stoker himself.”

That stuns me. Not that Cassius could order my death—I think he’s ruthless enough to do almost anything, no matter what kind of price he pays personally—but because, somehow, I never thought my actions were irreversible. Some part of me always believed that I could stay cagey forever, that I didn’t truly have to commit to one side or the other.

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I was wrong. And now I’m stranded in the middle, having rejected both sides. Tanaka glances at me nervously. He’s really not sure if he’s made the right choice, either.

It’s going to be a long flight.

There’s excited chatter from the radio about four hours into our trip. Seems there’s some kind of massive seismic disturbance going on in the area and everybody from Tahiti to Pago Pago is worried about a tsunami.

“He’s done it,” I say. “Or he’s in the process of doing it, right now. Can’t this crate go any faster?”

“We are still at least an hour away.”

Not much I can do about that, so I shut up and sulk. At least Tanaka brought some food with him, which means I’m no longer ready to gnaw on my own leg—though I am ready to bite someone’s head off.

The cloud of seabirds circling in the sky is my first clue that we’ve arrived. I have no idea how they knew what was happening, or where they’ve come from—there are many islands in this part of the Pacific, but the nearest one is still at least a hundred miles away—but there are thousands of them, wheeling in a dense knot like the forming eye of a hurricane. Directly below is a small, barren island with a single mountain in its center, the vegetation on it a garish explosion of reds and oranges like fall in Vermont. The water surrounding the island is an earthen brown for half a mile in every direction, like a muddy iris surrounding a fiery pupil.

Mu. And not a cow in sight.

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We touch down. Unknown objects thump against the pontoons as we skim to a jolting, nerve-racking halt. Tanaka guides us right onto the beach, where we squelch to a halt in thick sludge.

I grab my gear and open the door. The smell that hits me is stomach-curdling, not just ripe but alien. The muck the pontoons are mired in has lain at the bottom of the ocean for millennia, no doubt full of organisms as bizarre as something from another planet. Now they’ve been heaved to the surface, where the change in pressure has made most of them pop like overfilled balloons. What I’m smelling isn’t just primeval underwater ooze, it’s the exploded guts of a few thousand deep-sea creatures; it must have been some of the larger ones we heard hitting the pontoons.

“Be careful.” It’s the last thing Tanaka says before morphing into were form.

We pick our way over barnacle-encrusted boulders while the seabirds wheel and cry overhead. They’re no doubt eager to consume the strange feast that lies before them, but none of them will land. The oranges and reds I saw are coral, looking more like sprawling expanses of some sort of exotic cactus in the harsh sunlight. Strands of seaweed cling to them limply, robbed of their usual swaying grace by gravity.

There’s only one artificial structure on the whole island—which is, I realize, only the exposed tip of what must be an immense underwater mountain—and it’s about halfway up the slope, set into the rock itself. A blocky gray building untouched by coral or seaweed, as if whatever was keeping the birds from landing was strong enough there to prevent any living thing from ever approaching. Tanaka and I glance at each other, then head for it without a word.

We circled the island once before landing, and I didn’t see any sign of Stoker—no other plane, nothing. Either he’s traveling by submarine or he’s been and gone. Not good.

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I spot a large footprint in the remains of a squashed, jellyfish-like thing. Since I doubt Bigfoot wears boots, it’s a good bet it’s Stoker’s.

The slope is hard going. It’s not that steep, but every rocky surface is slimy and the coral either breaks off in my hand or cuts me. By the time we reach the plateau the building is set on, my palms are bleeding from a dozen gashes. Tanaka has it easier, his lupine form strong and agile enough to keep his balance while ignoring any minor wounds. He helps me more than once, pulling me up or putting a steadying hand on my back. Every time he touches me, I feel a little jolt of shame—from him, not from me. Guess he still has some issues.

The building is obviously a temple. The statuary guarding the entrance is so monumentally ugly it’s kind of awe-inspiring, but only if you don’t study it too carefully. I’ve never seen sculpture that suggests bestiality, cannibalism, and necrophilia at the same time, and I can’t say I ever want to again.

The entrance is a square, black maw big enough to taxi a 747 through. I pull out a flashlight and we walk in.

The interior seems empty, except for puddles of foul-smelling water on the floor and more intricate carvings on the walls. It’s more like the entrance to a cave, the back wall no more than rough rock. No altar, no pews, nothing at all . . . nothing except for two squat shapes in the very middle of the floor, low enough to the ground that my beam misses them on its first sweep.

We get closer, our footsteps splashing echoes off the distant walls. The first shape is a thick stone disk, around twice the diameter of a manhole cover, a plug that’s clearly been removed from the round hole right next to it. The other is a machine, maybe the size of a German shepherd, with treads on top and bottom, two articulated arms ending in clamps, and some kind of camera and spotlight array on top. Muddy boot prints leading right up to and away from the hole tell me the rest of the story.
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“Whatever he came here to do, he’s done it,” I say. I stay a healthy distance from the hole but bend down and examine the device. “Some kind of remote-controlled robot, looks like. Whatever’s down there, he must have sent Rover to check it out first.”

Tanaka’s reverted to human form. “Ghatanothoa,” he murmurs. “If the stories are true, Stoker did not descend at all. If he had, he would not have returned.”

“You know about this thing?”

He shakes his head. “My superiors told me very little. Only that the being entombed here was supremely dangerous, and to avoid being in its presence at all costs. We should leave.”

“Yeah. But we’re taking that robot with us—and I think we should drag that plug back into place, too.”

He nods. It takes both of us to do it, but Tanaka doesn’t shift to were form for the extra muscle. It’s as if he doesn’t trust himself to become a beast in this place, as if his animal nature might get the better of him; better to be human and struggle than risk losing control and doing something terrible.

I get a whiff of something from the hole just as we slide the plug back into place. I back up, cursing and sneezing, rubbing my nose violently as if I could physically pull the odor out. What I smelled wasn’t bad in the sense of something rotten or pungent; it was just wrong. Deeply, horribly wrong, like fingernails down a blackboard turned into a scent, like getting an ice-cream headache from eating frozen worms.

We wrestle the robot down the mountain. By the time we get to the bottom we’re both muddy, scraped, bruised, and exhausted—me more than Tanaka, of course. The
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screeching of the birds is like a chorus of the damned overhead. I pause to get my breath back before we load the robot onto the plane.

“Tanaka,” I wheeze. “You said something back there, about your superiors. About them knowing about Ghatanothoa. If that’s true, why did Cassius keep me in the dark? What possible harm could it do to let me know what I was actually dealing with? Not that I was going to go down that hole anyway, but a little warning would have been nice. . . .”

“He did not tell you because he did not know.” Tanaka looks away, and I can feel shame radiating from him; the Urthbone effect seems stronger with him than other thropes, maybe because of the intensity of my first exposure. Or maybe he just feels that strongly about me. “The superiors I was referring to are not the NSA, Jace—it is the Nipponese Shinto Investigative Branch. I’m afraid I misled you. I must confiscate this probe in the name of the Japanese government.”

I stare at him. Now I know why he didn’t just wolf out and cart the robot back to the beach himself—he wanted me exhausted, less likely to resist. I go for my gun, but it isn’t there.

“I took it from you while we were climbing,” he says. “You were distracted.” I remember a steadying hand on my back, the little tremor of shame pulsing from it.

“You sonofa—” I stop, unable to think of a good substitute for “bitch” that’ll mean something to a thrope.

“I am sorry, Jace. This is too important to let personal relationships dictate our actions.”

The depth of his betrayal is beginning to sink in. “The whole ‘shoot on sight’ order from Cassius—you lied. You just didn’t want me making contact.”

“Again, I am sorry.”

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“So what’s the plan? Are you going to just leave me here, while you haul your prize back to Tokyo?”

“I see no need to maroon you. You may accompany me back to Japan, once I secure your weapons in a safe place.”

How considerate. I’m about to tell him I’d rather risk being stranded on an unholy island filled with nameless terrors and rotting fish than spend another minute with him when I see something on the horizon behind Tanaka. Five somethings, in fact, little specks getting bigger every second. I study them, my eyes narrowed, until I’m sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing—then I give Tanaka a big, evil smile.

“That’s okay,” I say. “I think my ride’s here.”

Five fighter jets in tight formation streak overhead like big, angry bees. Bees with the insignia of the USA clearly visible on their wings.

“If I were you,” I say, “I wouldn’t take off just yet. Not unless you want to come down again in a big hurry.”

When I see Cassius, I’m going to give that ancient, scheming, always-one-step-ahead bastard a great big hug.

“You ancient, scheming, always-one-step-ahead bastard,” I say, and punch him in the nose.

Okay, so I changed my mind. I had a lot of time to think about it while stuck in the brig aboard the SS Nosferatu, the aircraft carrier those fighter jets called home. Tanaka and I were ferried there by a chopper and several large thrope marines armed with what
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looked like multishot crossbows and aerodynamic meat cleavers. Tanaka didn’t put up a fight, and neither did I.

I was in the brig for around six hours, give or take. I spent most of it wondering what you used fighter jets for when you didn’t have bombs or guns—maybe they just drop golems on people they don’t like.

Two marine guards finally showed up and escorted me to an office, one that looks pretty much like any office anywhere—desk, filing cabinets, computer. Cassius is leaning against the desk, his arms folded, and I’m not really sure what I’m going to do until I do it.

It’s a mistake. Feels like punching a frozen side of beef. He raises his eyebrows while I swear and cradle my hand. “Feel better?”

“Oddly, no. Tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“We had a tracking spell on you. It deactivated as soon as you got to Easter Island and hit Selkie’s defenses, but by then we knew where you were going. What we didn’t know was how you left Rapa Nui—strangely enough, we had some problems with our satellite surveillance right around then.”

I wondered if it was a Japanese satellite. “Too bad. I could have told you where Stoker was going and you could have stopped him before he raised that damn island.”

“Not true, actually. Despite appearances, I don’t really have the U.S. Navy at my beck and call. Even after we figured out where you’d gone, delicate international negotiations were required before we could act—then we had to get forces into the area. Even with advance warning, we might not have been able to stop him.”

“Or maybe you didn’t want to.”

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“That’s absurd.”

“He brought that mountaintop up to get something. A weapon. And that’s what the NSA has been after all along, hasn’t it? Whatever he retrieved from inside the basement of that temple.”

“It’s not a what, it’s a who.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Elder God by the name of Ghatanothoa. Except he’s not really there, is he? Not in a physical sense.”

“Not exactly. It’s more like a certain aspect of him has manifested, while the rest still exists in another dimension. Possibly more than one; we’re really not sure.”

“And by ‘we’ you mean the bright boys and girls at Mc-Murdo Station, right? The ones that were studying the Shining Trapezohedron until Stoker stole it.”