Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire (11 page)

Consciousness came to Gabriel in stages, like a shadowy striptease. First there was an awareness of a sound, a nearly subliminal hum just above the very bottom range of his hearing. Then a hazy sense of firelight flickering through his closed eyelids. A lush, sultry aroma not unlike crushed frangipani; and underneath the cloak of sweetness, an odor distressingly sharp and electrical, like ozone. Gabriel stirred, tried to stretch but couldn’t. When he opened his eyes, he discovered he was bound naked and spread-eagled on a pile of furs. Each limb was tied to a thick stake driven deep into the dirt floor, allowing perhaps a three-inch range of movement in his arms and only slightly more in his legs. Off to his right and level with his chest, there was a fifth stake, but instead of anchoring a part of his body, this stake was tied to a rope stretching straight up and across the dim, distant ceiling.

Gabriel strained and stretched his neck, evaluating his surroundings. As he appeared to be in a high-ceilinged room, it had to be another chamber inside the large central building—nothing else in the village was nearly that tall. By craning his neck, he could just make out, behind him, a triangular doorway draped
with tanned skins. Past his feet, a pit of glowing coals burned sullenly in the center of the room, raising the already high temperature, and past that was an odd wooden structure. An enormous tree trunk had been split in half and the halves—each the size of a good-sized canoe—hollowed out to form two long chutes that were propped up in a steep V-shape on a wooden scaffold. The rope tied to the fifth stake approached the chutes across the ceiling and then branched when it got to them, one end running down the middle of each. Above this, a large circular hole in the ceiling let in a shaft of reddish light. What ever lay beneath the shaft of light, where the angled chutes intersected, was hidden behind an elaborately woven screen decorated with more of the white blossoms that had rained down on Gabriel in the pit and decorated the queen’s bath. Whoever owned the floral concession around here was making out like a bandit, Gabriel thought.

Movement at the top of the chutes drew Gabriel’s eye and he squinted, trying to make out what was going on. The rope was twitching, almost as if it were attached to something inside the chutes that was squirming or struggling to get out.

He turned back at the sound of footsteps behind him. Queen Uta stood beside his head, towering over him with her strong legs planted wide and her fists clenched. She had on a minimal outfit of fur, one strip across her breasts and a minimally broader one around her waist. Her platinum hair had been brushed loose, flowing nearly to her hips.

“I see that you are awake, Gabriel Hunt,” she said. “And that you are prepared to perform your sacred duty.”

Gabriel was mortified to find that she was right.
Even tied down as he was and with no shortage of other things on his mind, Gabriel was responding to the sight of her sleek, oiled and barely dressed body much as Millie had when they’d first encountered her. He wished he had on at least the few strips of barkcloth their captors had allowed them then, to conceal his reaction, but the stripped-off kilt lay in a pile by his feet.

“I’d be better able to perform my sacred duty,” he said, “if I weren’t tied up like this. Why not at least release one of my hands? Wouldn’t you like me to touch you?”

She smiled and crouched down beside him, caressing his bare chest.

“Yes, Gabriel Hunt, I would like you to touch me,” she said. “But I cannot free your hands, not even one, because I cannot be sure that would be how you would use it.”

“Are you afraid I will hurt you?” Gabriel said.

“Hurt me?” She shook her head. “This is not my worry. I cannot allow you to kill yourself, not before you give me a child.” She slid a slim stone knife out from a strap of leather she wore around one leg. She set it on the floor beside the fifth stake.

“Kill myself?” Gabriel frowned at the knife. “Why would I do that?”

“It is a shame that you cannot ask your predecessor, Dr. Silver, this question.” She leaned in close. “But I am afraid his answer died with him.”

Gabriel felt a cold elevator plunge in his gut. From the far side of the room, he heard an anguished, muffled cry and then a rhythmic pounding, as of a fist beating against a wooden door. He looked toward the scaffolding with its V-shaped construction on top and saw that
the right-hand chute was rocking. And even muffled, he recognized the voice.

Velda.

“What have you done with her?” Gabriel said. The left-hand chute showed signs of movement as well. “Are they both here? The women who came with me?”

The queen stood, her eyes narrowing.

“Why do you care?” she asked. “Were they your lovers?”

“They’re members of my team,” Gabriel said. “I’m responsible for them. Like you are for your people.”

“You are responsible for them no more,” she said. “They are in their place and have their duty. You have responsibility for only one woman now.” She ran her hands up over her glistening golden flanks and taut belly.

The muffled shouts grew louder on the far side of the room.

“Your women are blessed,” the queen said. “They have the privilege to become brides of Unterg. Their sacrifice assures a strong healthy daughter.” She reached out to touch the fifth rope. “At the exact moment when the seed of child is put into my body, I cut this rope. The brides go to their destiny, and my daughter comes into hers.”

“What destiny?” Gabriel said, his throat constricting as he spoke.

“Unterg is a jealous god,” the queen said. “We must make him satisfied or he will give me a sick son instead of a strong daughter.”

Gabriel strained against the ropes holding him down. “You can’t do this,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

“Enough,” Uta said. “It is time. First, we ask the blessings of my ancestors.”

She stepped out of Gabriel’s sight for a moment and returned with a woven basket in her arms. Setting it down, she drew from its depths an intricate oval headdress studded with crimson feathers and carnivore teeth that looked razor sharp. She placed it reverently on her head. “We must both wear the sacred objects of my ancestors. This is the crown of my grandmother’s grandmother. And for you, the crown of my grandfather’s grandfather.” She bent over the basket again. As she did this, Gabriel turned his attention to the stone knife lying on the dirt floor. It was a good six inches out of his grasp. He struggled to reach it, all the muscles in his arm stretching to their limit, but there was no way.

The queen turned back, a flat, dark cap of some sort held between her hands. This was no primitive construction of tooth and bone and feathers—it was a man’s hat, somewhat battered and faded. From the back, it looked like it had once been part of a military uniform. “My grandfather’s grandfather was the first father of our tribe. You have a great honor, Gabriel Hunt, to wear his articles.”

She bent over him and set the cap on his head, then stood to admire it. Gabriel shook it off onto the ground beside him and saw her face twist with anger. “You will wear it,” she said in a tone of cold command. “You will not cast it off!”

Gabriel turned his head, curious to see if he could figure out where the cap originally came from. Maybe whoever had flown that ancient plane…?

His jaw dropped open in speechless astonishment when he saw the tarnished metal insignia above the black patent leather bill.

An eagle.

Clutching a swastika between its claws.

Queen Uta snatched the Nazi cap up off the ground and cradled it to her chest. She brushed it off gently and replaced it on Gabriel’s head, pulling it down firmly so the fit was tight. Then she strode purposefully across the room to the woven screen. “You will obey me,” she said. “You will obey, or your people will suffer the wrath of Unterg.”

She reached out and folded back the screen.

At the base of the two wooden chutes a spidery, jointed metal framework held up a round machine shaped like a fat, riveted steel onion. A verdigris-covered nozzle protruded from the bottom while above the top of the machine a giant concave lens perhaps six feet in diameter was suspended in metal clamps. The space between the lens and the top of the device seemed to shimmer and crawl with distorted waves like heat coming off summer asphalt. Looking at the shimmer made Ga-briel’s eyes ache and his head throb almost instantly.

The hum that had been buzzing softly in Gabriel’s ears since he came to was louder now.

And at the base of the two wooden chutes, trussed hand and foot and gagged, were Rue and Velda, each woman struggling furiously against her bonds. The
chutes were angled directly at the shimmering space under the lens and would have deposited them there if it hadn’t been for the rope descending from the ceiling and looped tightly around their wrists.

The machine was giving off a pulsing red glow that amplified the reddish light coming down from above.

Across its side, the metal onion bore the same stiff-winged eagle-and-swastika design as the military cap Gabriel had on. Slightly off center beneath the Nazi insignia were faint red letters: UNTERG. To the right of these letters, Gabriel could barely make out the ghost of three more, faded nearly to invisibility. An A…what might have been an N…and the last nothing but a fragment of a curve that could have belonged to an O, a C or a G. If you didn’t speak German, you might puzzle over the word, but Gabriel did speak German and had no difficulty guessing what it had been.
Untergang
. It was a word with several meanings, none of them good.

Ruin. Extinction. Doom.

“Witness,” the queen said, “Unterg’s power.”

She picked up a loose stone from the ground and carefully threw it into the shimmering space between the lens and the top of the machine. There was a blinding flash and the ozone smell sharpened until it was almost overwhelming. The stone was gone without a trace. Velda began to shout again behind her gag, and this time Rue joined her.

“Let them go,” Gabriel said, struggling but unable to get free.

The queen shook her head. “They must be given to Unterg,” she said. “It is the only way to assure a healthy daughter.”

“But you said if I
didn’t
obey my people would feel
Unterg’s wrath—now you’re saying they’ll be given to Unterg even if I
do
obey.”

“Oh,” Uta said, “I did not mean these two. I meant your
people
. You are American, you said. Is it not so? I meant I will spare the people of America—for a time—if you obey. If not…”

She turned a dial on a control panel at the base of the machine, near the nozzle. A metal cover slid open and Gabriel saw an old-fashioned display flip through a series of numerals with a loud clatter, like a mechanical sign in a train station. The whirling digits finally came to a stop and Gabriel strained to read them from across the room.

3853N7702W

Coordinates—38 degrees, 53 minutes North, 77 degrees, 02 minutes West.

The coordinates for Washington, D.C.

The nozzle at the base of the machine dropped an additional six inches with a loud clank, exposing a box like section at its base. A black button ringed with red protruded from its side.

“Through the earth’s core,” Uta said, “through the belly of your land and up from beneath, Unterg’s power will stream death upon your people. It was for this—to establish Unterg’s throne, and from it to stab at the depraved and greedy heart of America—that the first fathers came to this land some sixty-six cycles past.” A downcast look came over her face. “But Unterg took our fathers, one by one, before they could complete their task. When the last among them lay dying, he passed his duty to his queen. She passed it to my grandmother, who passed it to my mother, and my mother passed it to me, as I will pass it to my daughter and she to hers: to trigger Unterg’s wrath when the
command comes from afar, from Defuror, Unterg’s emissary on earth.”

Gabriel winced. “Der Fuehrer,” he said.

“Yes,” Uta said, “Defuror. We are to await his instruction—as we have awaited it with patience and reverence and humility for cycle upon cycle, generation upon generation. We are told to wait, and we wait; we are prepared to wait until the end of time. Unless,” she said pointedly, “a queen shall have no heir. In this event, the last queen must trigger Unterg’s wrath before she passes. And a queen may so trigger it sooner, if she believes her breeding of an heir is at stake.” She tapped the black button gently with a forefinger. “I shall, Gabriel Hunt. I shall trigger it, if you refuse to give me a daughter. I shall trigger it before your eyes and a thousand times a thousand of your kinsmen shall die, their blood upon your head.”

Gabriel tried to picture Lawrence Silver lying where Gabriel lay now, a frightened old man, a survivor of the camps, held prisoner once more by captors in Nazi regalia, being forced into complicity with a murderous plan left over from the Third Reich. With no prospect for escape, no way of knowing his daughter was on her way with help. Gabriel could understand why, when the opportunity arose, the man had seized it and chosen to end his life.

Gabriel would be given no such opportunity.

The queen came forward, walking slowly toward where he lay. “I shall do all this,” she said, “all these deeds of blood and calamity, I shall reave your world till none are left to cry for mercy; with no remorse shall I do these things, unless you give me what I require.”

She lifted one hand to her hip and drew open the
knot holding the fur wrap closed around her waist. It fell to the ground, leaving her bare beneath. Then she did the same with the fur top she wore, releasing her heavy breasts. The decorations of polished bone had been removed and in their place, hanging from the points of her engorged nipples, were circlets of tarnished metal. As she came closer, Gabriel recognized them as the lightning-bolt epaulets from an SS uniform.

“You will give me my heir now,” she said. Planting one foot solidly on either side of his torso, she lowered herself to her knees, straddling him. She leaned forward, her breasts hanging above his chest. The warm metal of the SS insignia scraped across Gabriel’s skin. Then he felt the wet length of the queen’s tongue run along his neck and the underside of his chin.

She reached behind her and took him in her fist. He bucked forcefully with his hips, arching upward, but she held on, squeezing hard with her knees against his sides like a bull rider. He twisted and bucked again, and this time she fell forward against him, chest to chest, her face landing next to his. “You are strong,” she said. “And vital.” Her voice rose exultantly. “You have more fight in you than the old man. And more of
this
—” She reached back and took hold of him again, in a grip that was almost painful. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, perhaps the feel of her lithe young body pressed against his, but he was, to his dismay, miraculously still tumescent.

She reared up, raised herself half a foot in the air using her knees for leverage, and plunged down, taking him deep inside her. “Now,” she said, “you shall fill me with your strong, vital American seed.”

He watched her lift the stone knife from where it lay beside the fifth stake. He strained to resist the climax
he felt building in him. But it was hopeless. She held him clenched tight with muscles as thoroughly developed as those of her powerful arms and legs; he felt them squeeze rhythmically as she rocked upon him.

She threw her arms wide and he saw the blade stroke against the taut rope, fibers parting as it passed. He shot a glance over her shoulder, toward where Rue hung by her wrists in one chute and in the other, Velda—

But Velda wasn’t in the other.

The rope that had held her wrists dangled empty.

Had that one swipe of the blade been enough to release her into the maw of the machine? But no—he’d have heard it if she’d fallen, would have smelled the ozone stench.

“Now, Gabriel Hunt!” the queen shouted, raising the knife with one hand and pressing down on his belly with the other. “Now!”

And she would have gotten what she wanted, had not a pair of hands hauled her off him by the throat at that very instant.

The queen’s headdress tumbled from her head as Velda hurled her to the ground.

For just a moment, Velda locked eyes with Gabriel. He saw the depths of pain in them, the inconsolable rage contorting her features. “Get me loose,” he said quickly. “We have to free Rue before that rope breaks.” A glance to the side showed that the rope was fraying rapidly, the twined strands snapping one by one as fewer and fewer remained to bear her weight.

But Velda didn’t look at the rope or stoop to untie him. She strode the other way, away from Gabriel and toward Uta.

The queen was trying to rise to her knees. “That old
man,” Velda growled, her voice low and savage, “was my
father
.” Velda laid her out with a vicious kick to the throat. Then she drew back her leg for another, but the queen snagged her ankle and pulled her down to the ground.

“Rue,” Gabriel called. “Hold on!” He strained to reach the fallen headdress, which lay on its side just inches from his right hand. He could feel the tip of one of the crimson feathers between his fingers. It took three tries before he was able to get a good enough grip on it to draw the headdress toward him, one slow millimeter at a time.

But eventually he had it—and rotating it between his fingers, he brought one of the sharp teeth with which the headdress was studded into contact with the rope. He began sawing.

As he did, Velda and Uta rolled past, clutched tightly in each other’s arms, both of them sweat-streaked and dirty and naked as the wild animals their struggle made them resemble. Gabriel saw Velda grab a fistful of platinum hair, wrenching it hard to the left; he was surprised Uta’s neck didn’t snap from the force. But it didn’t, and the queen responded by streaking a long-nailed hand across Velda’s throat, which erupted in furrows of blood.

Velda raised Uta two feet in the air with a kick to the stomach that sent the queen sprawling. An instant later, she was up again and slashing at Velda with the stone knife. Velda leapt back, out of the blade’s reach—and at that instant, the last knot around Gabriel’s right wrist parted. He swung his arm over and began tugging at the knots around his left. They had tightened from his struggles, but he could feel them begin to come apart as he worked at them.

He shot a glance at Rue and then at the dwindling rope holding her up. She was trying to wedge herself in the chute using her knees and heels, but it wasn’t working—she kept slipping. And her efforts were making the rope part faster. “Stay still,” Gabriel shouted. “I’m coming.”

He saw Velda throw a punch at the queen. Uta dodged, twisting out of the way and bringing the knife up to slash at Velda’s knuckles. Velda hissed and jumped back, shaking blood from her hand. She came back in with a low kick and the queen responded again with the knife, this time slashing at Velda’s calf. Velda swore, feinted right and then slipped in on the left, catching the queen by the wrist and disarming her with a brutal twist against the natural bend of the joint. The knife dropped from her grip.

Velda made a dive for the fallen knife and the queen instantly fell on her from behind, knocking Velda to the floor. She wrapped her legs around Velda’s chest, pinning Velda’s arms to her sides, then took hold of Velda’s hair and began bashing her face into the dirt. Velda managed to wrench one arm free and elbowed the queen in the kidney. She made another grab for the knife, but the queen brought her fist down, hard, on Velda’s wrist. Velda howled with pain.

Both women staggered to their knees, then unsteadily to their feet, but the queen lurched forward, butting Velda in the back with her head. Velda fell, landing at the edge of the fire pit. The queen dropped to the ground beside her, taking a fistful of hair and forcing her face toward the smoldering coals. Velda threw back a flurry of desperate elbows until finally one connected, knocking the queen to one side, but Uta came barreling back
and shoved Velda onto the coals. Velda rolled across the burning surface, sending sparks flying. The queen spun, reaching for the fallen knife.

That was when Gabriel finally got his left arm free—and the last strands of the rope holding Rue up snapped.

With a lightning-fast lunge, Gabriel swung over toward the stake, grabbing at the rope as it sprang into the air. He caught its end and held tight. Rue’s weight yanked him to a standing position as she slid down the chute. He heard her moan when her feet came to a stop within inches of the deadly lens. Pulling hard with both hands, he dragged the rope toward him, coiling it around his fists. The muscles of his arms bulged with the effort. One more pull—

As Rue reached the top of the chute, her weight toppled the wooden scaffold, sending her sprawling on the ground.

The sound caught Uta’s attention and she looked over. As she did, Velda grabbed her from behind, wrapping one arm tightly around her throat and pressing fiercely against the back of her head with the heel of her other hand. The queen’s face began to go purple. She was struggling for breath.

“Velda, no!” Gabriel shouted. He raced to undo the ropes around his ankles. “You’ll kill her!”

Velda looked over at him. When she spoke, it was with utter disgust in her voice. “So?” she said, and shoved hard with the hand at the back of Uta’s skull. They all heard the queen’s neck break.

The struggling body went limp in Velda’s arms.

She carried it to the doorway and shoved it through. Moments later, armed guards began pouring in, spears held high. A robed, older woman came in behind them,
Uta’s corpse held in her arms, its head lolling horribly. “Who,” she said, her voice halting, her accent heavy, “who…does this?”