Jungle Of Steel And Stone (25 page)

"Veil, I can't just—"

"You'll do as I say, Reyna. End of discussion."

* * *

Veil knelt beside a tree and stared out over a moonlit expanse of grave markers, listening for the tinkle of bells and thinking of the other men who were undoubtedly close by, also watching and listening. He was going to have to be fast, Veil thought. And lucky.

Suddenly the line shook, and there was the sound of bells. To his left.

"Hey!" a man shouted. "There's some kind of line strung across here!"

Veil sprinted silently through the trees. He had gone fifty yards when a figure lurched out at him from behind a tree, to his right.

"I've got—" the man managed to shout before Veil broke his neck. The revolver in the man's hand went off, shattering the stillness.

"Reyna, it's over!" Veil shouted as he picked up the dead man's gun and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. "They're all over the place! Get out of here!"

He was answered by a fusillade of bullets that ripped through the leaves and branches around him and thudded into the tree trunks.

"Veil? Are you all right?"

"Be quiet! Get out of here! Run!"

There were more shots. Veil ducked and cursed when he heard Reyna call out what he assumed was a warning in K'ung.

There was an answering cry—a distant, ululating, banshee howl that filled the void of night like a physical presence and seemed to come from all directions at once; it began as a low, quavering moan, then abruptly climbed the scale to a warbling, high-pitched scream broken by clicks.

The strange, chilling cry was repeated once, and in the

deep, prolonged silence that followed, it was as if time had been stopped.

That silence was broken by Reyna's startled scream of terror.

"Don't hurt her!" Veil shouted as he ran toward the sound of Reyna's voice. "I'm coming out!"

"Veil, stay away!"

Guns barked in the darkness, and bullets slapped through the leaves just above Veil's head, but he kept running. He shifted the gun in his waistband back against his spine, then slowed as he approached the open, moonlit area in front of the trees where he had left Reyna. He sucked in a deep breath, then slowly walked out into the cold, pale moonlight. He stepped up on a grave marker and raised his hands in the air.

"Here I am," Veil announced, tensing his stomach muscles in anticipation of a bullet he was certain was about to slam into him. "Don't hurt the woman."

A disembodied voice came from somewhere inside the wooded area. "Right this way, pal."

Veil, keeping his arms raised, stepped down from the grave marker and walked toward the sound of the voice. He sighted Reyna the moment he passed into the trees. She was standing in front of a large oak tree, flanked by two men with guns. The man to her left had the fingers of one hand wrapped in her hair and was holding Reyna's head back at a sharp angle. The second man had his gun pointed at Veil's chest.

"That's it," the short, swarthy man holding Reyna said as Veil came within a few paces of them. Veil stopped. The man turned his head slightly, shouted, "I've got Kendry and the woman! Any sign of the African?"

"No!" a man's voice called back. "Hey, that son of a bitch killed Richie!"

"What do we do with them now?" the swarthy man asked his partner.

"We know the nigger's out there; that had to be him doing the screeching. We gotta go out and get him."

"Maybe he'll come to us if he knows we're going to kill his friends."

"Nah. The guy's a fucking savage. He won't give a shit. We're wasting our time with these two. Let's kill 'em like Nagle said we should do in the first place, then we'll go help the other guys look."

"Right," the swarthy man said perfunctorily, tightening his grip on Reyna's hair as he leveled his gun at Veil's head.

Veil watched the man's finger begin to tighten on the trigger. He was about to dive and roll to the side when a dark, silent shape literally seemed to rise from the night behind the man holding Reyna. There was a strangled scream, and suddenly there was an arrow protruding from the man's neck. The dead man's finger twitched on the trigger, sending a bullet whining past Veil's left ear.

Startled, the second man had jumped, then started to turn around as his partner had screamed. What he saw was a black wraith hurtling through the air toward him. The gunman shrieked and fired wildly as a spear narrowly missed his head. Then the bushman was on him. The man pounded at Toby's shoulders with the butt of his gun. Finally Toby's body went limp, and his fingers slipped from the man's throat as he slumped to the ground and lay still.

There was no time for Veil to pull his gun from his belt, and no way to fire past Reyna if he could. He leapt forward and swung. The gunman, taking aim at Toby, caught Veil's movement out of the corner of his eye and turned just enough to take the full force of the blow over his left ear. Veil's fist smashed into the man's temple, crushing the thin layer of bone and the brain beneath.

Reyna dropped down beside the fallen Toby as Veil grabbed his gun, crouched and turned, ready to fire at any sound or movement.

"Hey!" a voice shouted somewhere out in the night. "What the hell's going on over there?"

Veil knelt down beside the sobbing Reyna and felt for Toby's pulse. "He's alive," Veil said, relieved to feel the faint but steady beat of the bushman's heart, "but barely. The wound on his head looks as if it may be infected, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has a concussion."

"Hey, Jimmy!" the voice called. "You guys still over there?" There was a pause, then a tense, "Okay, I'm going to get some help!"

"Let's go," Veil said, lifting Toby in his arms. "You take the Nal-toon."

"Go where?"

"Straight ahead, through the bottleneck and into the other section. We need a place to hide, and this certainly
isn't it."

"I'm going ahead," Reyna said, picking up the Nal-toon and darting away, gliding over the ground like some huge moth in the moonlight.

Cradling Toby high on his chest, Veil trotted at a steady pace and, after a time, emerged from the bottleneck into a field of older graves marked by towering tombstones and an occasional mausoleum.

Suddenly Reyna, out of breath from the exertion of running with the Nal-toon, appeared beside him. "There's an old mausoleum off to the left," she said, panting. "A big one. It's hard to be certain with all the shadow, but it looks as if the seal might be broken and the door slightly open. The problem is that there's a high fence around the whole thing, and it's padlocked."

"Go," Veil said curtly.

For the past few minutes the night had been filled with the sound of sirens as the police, alerted by the gunfire, had converged on the cemetery from all directions. Now, as Veil jogged after Reyna, beams of light began carving the darkness around them, and the static-broken voices of men speaking through walkie-talkies could be heard.

Veil rounded a sculpted angel and found himself before a huge, fenced-in mausoleum. Reyna, shaking with panic, was punching at the ancient, rusted padlock on the gate.

"Get away from there," Veil said evenly as he gently lay Toby down on the ground.

Veil stood with his legs slightly apart before the lock, staring down at it, emptying his mind of all concern about the strength of the metal and the approaching police. He waited until he felt power manifest itself as a small, warm ball just behind his navel, then abruptly raised his right arm and chopped with the heel of his palm against the upper part of the lock. Nothing happened. Calmly, ignoring the walkie-talkie voices that now seemed to be all around them, Veil relaxed his muscles, then squared off again. He waited for his power to focus, then snapped his hand at the lock again. The lock snapped apart.

Reyna removed the lock and pushed the gate open. Veil lifted Toby in his arms, stepped into the mausoleum courtyard, turned, and waited. Reyna stepped through with the Nal-toon, then closed the gate behind her, wincing as it squeaked on its rusty hinges. She reached through the bars, put the lock back in place, and squeezed it shut. Rust and friction held it in place.

"You go ahead!" Reyna whispered urgently, placing the Nal-toon on top of Toby's still body. "I have to clean up behind us!"

Veil crossed the courtyard and squeezed through the narrow opening where the door was ajar and into the utter darkness of the crypt. He eased Toby and the Nal-toon to the floor, then turned and watched as Reyna, crabbing backward on her hands and knees, attempted to erase the evidence of their passage. Her hands flew as she straightened the tall grass and clumps of weeds that had been bent or crushed. She made it to the crypt and slipped through the opening just as two uniformed policemen appeared from behind the stone angel.

Veil and Reyna huddled together as one of the policemen tested the gate. There was the grating squeal of metal—but the lock stayed in place. The policemen moved on.

Veil and Reyna moved back and sat down on the dirt floor of the moldering crypt. Despite the fact that they were touching, they could not see each other. Except for the bar of moonlight at the opening, the heavy, dank darkness was total. Things scuttled around them on the floor. They sat without speaking, listening to Toby's rattling, hoarse breathing as they waited for the dawn.

V
eil rested on his haunches, back braced against the rough, clammy stone of the crypt, staring out through the narrow gap at the entrance. He felt Reyna come up behind him, grunted with pleasure when she put her hands on his shoulders and began to knead the thick, stiff muscles around his neck and collarbone.

"How's Toby?" Veil asked quietly.

Reyna sighed as she rested her head on Veil's back. "He's conscious, but he's burning up with fever. The wound on his head looks terrible. It's very swollen, and there's a lot of pus."

Veil straightened up and went to the rear of the mausoleum where, two hours earlier, they had built a small fire to see by and to ease Toby's racking chills. Cracks in the stone provided some ventilation, and Reyna had carefully selected the wood to be burned, but there was still enough smoke to make Veil's eyes tear. Toby did not seem to mind. The warrior-prince sat propped up against the fungus-covered burial vault. His one good eye glowed like a cat's in the firelight as he stared back at Veil. Veil smiled, but Toby's face remained impassive.

"I'm looking at one tough man," Veil said thoughtfully. "I can't believe he got this far, much less had the will, strength, and guts to attack those two men. Please tell him for me that he is the finest warrior I have ever met, and I honor him."

Reyna translated Veil's remarks, but Toby remained silent. He took a large pinch of the heroin that had dribbled from the base of the Nal-toon, sniffed it. His eyelids fluttered.

"From the way he's been snorting that stuff," Veil continued, "I'd say he's on his way to becoming a fullblown addict."

"It's all right," Reyna replied in a firm voice. "It's a miracle that a substance which destroys countless lives helped to save Toby's. It kept him going. God provided it for him. When the time comes that Toby no longer needs it, God will take away the craving." She paused, bowed her head. "Damn, I could hang myself for losing that radio. Now we don't know what's happening or who could be out in the cemetery looking for us. Toby needs medicine and bandages, and we
all
need food and water."

"We can't move yet, Reyna. You'd better believe that the bad guys are still out there someplace." As well as Carl Nagle, Veil thought, but he didn't say so. "What were you two talking about before?"

Reyna shrugged her frail shoulders. "Nothing important. I was just trying to ease Toby's pain with talk—and reassure him. If and when we do get some medicine for Toby, I'm afraid that it may be a job to get him to take it. He thinks the heroin is the only medicine he needs."

"Well, that's understandable. It's all he's had to hold him up so far."

"Also, he still isn't sure he trusts us." She paused, smiled thinly. "When I picked him up at the airport, I told him we were in New York City. All this while he's been thinking that we're all one tribe called 'Newyorkcities.' Betrayal of the tribe is not something a K'ung can easily understand. Good grief."

Veil studied Toby, the filthy, festering wound on the bushman's face, and made a decision. "I know something about thirst," he said in a flat voice, "and this man is suffering. I'm going out to get some things. We can't wait until night. Without water, Toby may not last through the day."