Matt Archer: Legend (13 page)

“A pentagram, burned into the dirt?” Both of Mike’s eyebrows
shot up. “
Burned
into the ground?”

I nodded, chugging at a full canteen of water. The sun had
sunk below the horizon and twilight had set in. Unfortunately, the heat hadn’t
abated much, and I had to be hydrated and ready for a fight if Tink was right.
“Tink said someone had gotten here first and ‘called the darkness.’ Whatever
that means.”

“I’ll tell you what it means,” Brandt said, chewing on a
toothpick and looking pensive. His expression clashed with his tough guy
flattop and hard, dark eyes. “It means this this is going to be a long night.”

“Maybe not,” Lanningham said. “Maybe the call was for the
monsters that came last night.”

My knife flashed blue and an itching burn flared up the nape
of my neck.

“No such luck, Lanningham.” I unsheathed the knife. “They’re
on the way in.”

I turned to Johnson. “Tell everyone to move to the middle of
camp, close to the fire. And let Dorland know we’ll need every bit of ordinance
his has rigged up.”

Johnson nodded and set off for the tents.

“Any idea what’s out there?” Uncle Mike asked. “I’m tired of
this ghost crap. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

I closed my eyes to see if the knife-spirit would show me
anything. Flashes of shadows, running low to the ground…that was it. “No. But
they’re fast.” I opened my eyes and nodded at Brandt. “You getting anything?”

Brandt put his hand on his knife’s handle, then shook his
head. “Nothing.”

I listened for irony in his voice. To my surprise, there
wasn’t any. “Try checking again, because my knife-spirit is pinging me like
crazy.”

All I got from Brandt was a grunt. I didn’t have time to
worry about it, though, because the brush around camp rustled with the passage
of several creatures. I peered out into the night beyond the razor wire and
glowing orange eyes stared back.

Eight pairs of eyes…so far.

“There are more on the back side of camp,” Uncle Mike
muttered in my ear. He slammed a cartridge into his automatic rifle. Like he
said, force of habit. “I counted five.”

Thirteen. Now that was expected, at least. Monsters’ lucky
number.

 “Get everyone set, Major,” I told him, having gone into
full Army mode. “Brandt, go around to the back side. I’ll cover this end. Oh,
and Johnson?”

“Yeah,” he called from near the fire.

“Tell Tyson to hit the floods.” I focused on the nearest
pair of eyes. “I want to see what we’re dealing with.”

I opened up my consciousness to Tink a little bit more than
usual and allowed her to latch on. The zip of angry magic stinging my nerves
made me gasp. I slowed my breathing, trying to quiet my pulse. No dice; my body
was on red alert, man battle stations, and my heart stuttered in my chest.
Maybe letting her so far in had been a mistake. Too late to worry about that,
though.

The glowing eyes moved about, like the beasts were stalking
on all fours, waiting for the right moment to strike. I wrapped my fingers
tighter around my knife’s handle. It vibrated in a steady, low hum.
Anticipating.

The first floodlight came to life, illuminating our camp. It
didn’t penetrate the darkness enough to reveal our visitors, but it made an
impact. A keening growl started, growing in volume. The sound was some nerve-wracking
mix of a lion’s roar and fingernails on a chalkboard, and the hair on my arms
rose in response.

Steady
, the spirit commanded.

I jerked as she hit me with more power. I pushed back, but
the knife-spirit was having none of that. Tink would ride point tonight, and I
couldn’t do anything about it. She always freaked me out when she did this; it
was scary to be thrown aside at a whim, especially when she started working
some kind of voodoo on my senses. My vision sharpened such that I started to
see figures in the dark. The shadows outlined felines of some kind, but much,
much bigger than your everyday leopard. My hearing increased, too, turning that
horrible growl into a train derailment. I fought the urge to plug my ears as
the noise pounded my skull.

Then the growls went silent.

Here they come,
Tink whispered.

The first beast leapt out of the darkness, clearing the
razor wire by six feet, to land in a crouch behind me. I had a split second
glance of powerful back legs, a muscular chest and a mouth full of pointed
teeth before two more jumped the barrier.

The first Lion, or whatever it was, didn’t engage; it headed
for the team instead. Major Tannen barked orders, and the sky lit up orange
from the flame-thrower. I couldn’t turn to help, though. The two new monsters
came straight for me.

Now I got an up close and personal view. They looked like a
mix of lion and leopard, with tan fur and a cat’s eyes, but they stood on their
hind legs with ease, each more than a foot taller than me. Both Cats whipped at
my head with front paws the size of baseball mitts. I’d never survive a
two-on-one fight, so I circled around to keep them from flanking me. They bared
their teeth and growled, but I was quicker on my feet, and they weren’t able to
corner me.

This dance went on for a minute, then Cat-1 sprang and went
for a knockout blow. Three-inch claws whistled past my ear. Rolling into a
ball, I tumbled out of its reach and stabbed it in the thigh. The knife flashed
green and an inhuman cry spilled from my mouth.

Snarling, Cat-1 pounced. Somehow I got my hands up and its
stomach came down on the blade with the force of its full weight. My arms
nearly snapped under the strain, but I rolled sideways, dragging the knife
through its gut. The cat gurgled, spraying blood all over me. I kicked up at
its hip and knocked it to the ground.

Cat-2 was waiting. It leapt, paws out, and for one
hysterical moment, I thought it looked like Scar from
The Lion King
,
just without the mane. The knife-spirit gave me a quick snap behind the eyes to
remind me to focus, and I went down on one knee. The cat swiped air instead of
my head, and I stood as it passed over, knocking it off balance by butting it
hard in the chest with my shoulder. It slammed into the dirt, and I was on it
before it had a chance to regain its feet. It batted at my shoulder with its
paw, drawing blood, but the knife had me on override, and I hardly felt it. My
hand moved of its own accord, slitting the beast’s throat.

Something whistled over my head and seconds later, a ball of
fire exploded across the plain outside camp. Two dark figures ran in jagged
circles, screaming as they burned.

“That’s two, sir,” Dorland shouted. “The rest are too close
to be in range for grenades.”

I spun around to find four Cats actively attacking the team.
Somehow the guys had managed to kill two more, but nobody had their rifles out.
Instead, everyone except Lanningham waved torches at the creatures, while he hosed
anything that got too close with the flame-thrower. Dorland was busy reloading
a grenade launcher, standing at Lanningham’s back. Another body lay to one
side, a human. The solider had been raked open across the back and in the
orange light, I could see bone. I held back a gag; one more person I failed
because, even with Tink, I wasn’t fast enough.

Pissed now, I took a quick look around to get my bearings. I
couldn’t see Brandt at all, but shadows whirled and danced on the far side of
camp, so he must’ve been holding his own. Free to do other things, I charged
the nearest monster, jumping just before I reached it, and stabbed it right
between the shoulder blades.

As I rolled off, Lanningham hit it with the flame thrower
and the Cat dropped to the dirt, char-roasted and very dead.

The other three beasts realized a bigger threat had shown
up, because they wheeled around to face me. “Someone check Brandt,” I shouted.
Then, in a voice not my own, I rasped, “I’ve got this.”

The last thing I remembered with any clarity was seeing
Major Tannen’s eyes go wide.

A bizarre ballet raged around me, seen through a haze of
anger that burned lightning-hot. I danced around the cats and their whirling
paws. My arms swung and stabbed, parried and slashed, directed by a puppeteer
with divine reflexes. This was the first time I was even somewhat conscious
inside the vortex and a feeling of immense power grew inside my body until I
let out a battle cry that made the cats cower. They backed away, but I grabbed
one by the tail and dragged it backward until it was close enough to slice open
from shoulder to hip.

The two remaining beasts tucked tail to run, but we wouldn’t
allow that. No, they dared cross into our camp. They had stolen the lives of
men, women and children. We would have vengeance.

“We?” I croaked.

Yes,
the knife-spirit said, impatient
. Now run.

I took off after them. Under Tink’s influence, I was shocked
to find I could see in the dark. The savannah glowed a pale blue as I ran
through the brush, chasing the silver heat signatures in front of me.

And I was gaining on them.

I had no idea how fast I was running, but the Cats were sprinting
flat out on all fours. When I caught the first one, I jumped onto its back and
rode it just far enough to catch up to the second one before stabbing it in the
back of the neck where its spine met its skull. As it crash landed midstride, I
kicked off from its back and pounced on the second Cat so hard that we tumbled
over and over in the dirt.

Once we stopped rolling, the monster landed on top of me and
growled low in its throat. With something that sounded like a chuckle, it boxed
my ears between its giant paws. I saw three Cats for a second after that. I
stabbed weakly at the one in the middle and the beast on the left scratched my
left arm. The pain was distant, but enough to refocus my eyes so that I only
saw one Cat. I tried to roll away, but it pinned me with its back legs, pushing
the air out of my lungs with a whoosh.

The knife took over full time. I was thrown aside in my own
brain and my right hand lashed out, driving the blade up under the Cat’s jaw,
then twisting. The beast’s weight came crashing down across my torso but I
braced my feet and pushed hard with my knees until I lifted the Cat from the
ground, which give me just enough room to shimmy out from under the body.

I lay there for a few minutes. At least, I think it was a
few minutes. It might’ve been an hour; I’d had my bell rung, so I couldn’t be
sure. My head pounded as the knife-spirit withdrew, but I still felt Tink’s
pleasure from the fight pulsing through my blood.

In the distance, an animal howled, maybe a jackal. Even in
my woozy state, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to lie prone in the middle of the
Kalahari at night, especially while covered in blood. That was bound to attract
the wrong kind of attention and I might end up a snack for the more natural predators
out here.

Breathing hard, I picked myself up, marveling at how every
muscle in my body seemed to be hurt. My left sleeve was in shreds and three
long gashes ran down my arm, to match the scratch along my shoulder. Something
warm slicked my forehead, too. I probed my scalp and found a pretty good cut
actively trickling blood onto my eyebrow. My ribs ached from where more than
one Cat had tried to squash me.

The knife-spirit continued to withdraw, and as she did, each
of these hurts started making itself well known. I had no idea how far I’d come
from camp, but I felt like I’d been in a car accident then thrown off a cliff.
Each step was harder than the last, until I couldn’t keep going.

I collapsed in a heap on top of a prickly bush and passed
out.

Someone was talking way too loudly. Each word pierced my
skull like a bullet.

“I still can’t believe those cat things from last night,”
the man said. “They looked like these aliens I saw in a comic book once. It was
badass!”

“No,” Johnson’s bass rumble answered, sounding more than a
little annoyed. “It was terrifying, Sergeant. Did you see what they did to
Wilson? One of them gutted him with a single swipe. What if that had been you?
Would you think they were so badass then?”

“But, still! They were seven-feet tall and—”

I let out a groan and rolled onto my side. Bad idea. Before
I even opened my eyes all the way, I barfed over the side of my bunk, squinting
just enough to make sure I didn’t splatter my blanket. Someone had thought to
put a bucket on the ground by my bed; my lucky day. Parts of this team were
getting too familiar with the aftermath of my hunts.

The tent was awash in daylight, and my eyes launched a
protest by sending death rays into my forehead when I cracked my eyelids open.
Right, eyes closed—good. Eyes open—bad. I flopped back into bed, trying to find
a comfortable way to settle. Someone had wrapped my torso with an Ace bandage,
but my ribs still stabbed me every time I pulled in air. My forearms were
killing me, too, as if I’d tried to hold up a skyscraper with just my hands. I
groaned again, appropriately miserable.

“Matt, take it easy,” Johnson said. “We’ll fix it…just rest.
Tyson, go find the major.”

“How far from camp was I when you found me?”

Enough silence ticked by for me to realize I’d passed the limit
of everyone’s freak scale once again. Finally, Johnson said, “Half a mile.”

Half a mile? How was that even possible? On my best day, I
couldn’t do a mile in less than five and a half minutes. I might’ve run after
those Cats for about two minutes, but I doubted it was even that long. I flexed
my toes and searing pain ran up my shins. Maybe light speed could be added to
my list of knife-possessed talents, but if this kind of misery was the price,
I’d rather take a nice stroll next time.

“We get them all?”

“That depends,” Johnson said. “How many did you kill out on
the savannah?”

“Two.”

“We got them all, then. Brandt took care of the one that
tried to slink away with Wilson’s body after we’d cleaned out camp.”

I nodded once, wincing. We’d lost another man. I didn’t know
Wilson well, but it never got easier to hear. Doubts crept up, telling me I
should’ve been faster, that I could’ve saved him if only I…if only. My ribs
throbbed and I forced the thoughts away. “So now what?”

“Now,” Uncle Mike said from somewhere near the tent flap,
“we take Wilson, Peters and Azara home to their families for burial and the
rest of us go on a short furlough.”

I forced my eyes open. The tent swam to the point it looked
like the canvas walls might collapse. Nope, keeping my eyelids closed was still
the right option. After a steadying breath, I said, “But the threat’s still active.”

“Ramirez and his team will be here in two days to cover for
us while we’re gone. Colonel Black wants us rested and back here by December
twenty-eighth in advance of the eclipse,” Mike said. “He changed up the
schedule after my wife told General Richardson that Africa might be at the
greatest risk during the next cycle, based on an email she received from you
and Mamie. Julie doesn’t think Jorge needs an extra wielder this time and suggested
Ramirez come here instead, to see if we can eliminate the threat quickly and
move on to China and Australia.”

There was a pause. “Funny how I didn’t hear about this from
you or Mamie first.”

Oops. “Um, yeah.”

A cot squeaked and Johnson said, “I think I’ll go find
some…dinosaurs or something.”

“Thanks for bailing on me, man,” I said.

“Hey, you cost me ten dollars, Mr. Three-Point-Five GPA,”
Johnson said. “And this is family business…as in, none of mine.”

A breeze wafted across my face, announcing his departure out
the tent flap, and I was left alone to face the music, blinded by a headache.
This day just kept on getting better.

Mike let me stew a full minute before asking, “So when were
you going to tell me that you emailed Julie?”

“I emailed the
captain
because she’s military
intelligence and this seemed like intel.” I pried my eyes open again. My uncle
looked haggard, with cuts and bruises on his face and hands, but I’m sure it
was nothing compared to what I looked like. I dreaded the next time I saw a mirror.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”

“Of course…you’re right.” He sighed. “I think we’re all
stretched a little thin.”

My uncle had a gift for understatement. “Think you can do
something to stop the jackhammer going off in my skull?”

“I’ll send the medic in to give you a shot. Rest today, and
we’ll ship out after Ramirez gets here.” I heard the canvas rub together as
Mike opened the tent flap. “Oh, and Matt? Happy Thanksgiving.”

* * *

I woke from a nap on Saturday afternoon to the growl of an
approaching Humvee. I rolled onto my side, preparing to be the welcome wagon.
As long as I took it slow, I could get up from my cot without wishing I had a
pocketful of ibuprofen. My head was fine now; my ribs were another story. They’d
be healed in a few days, though, thanks to Tink’s ability to speed up my
recovery. Just in time to go home.

When I made my way outside, the glare of the sun fried the
top of my head, but I’d gotten used to the heat somewhat, and it felt good to
be up and moving around. Especially when I found out who was in the arriving
Humvee.

Major Ramirez was in camp.

He looked much better than the last time I’d seen him. He’d
regained most of the weight he’d lost while being held captive in the caves in
Afghanistan, and the shadows under his eyes had faded. His pallor was gone,
too. When Ramirez saw me, he flashed me a grin of white teeth, which shone
against healthy-looking brown skin. He looked strong, like a man who could lead
an army.

“Matt Archer, it’s been a while,” he said, crossing camp to
shake my hand. When I winced under his grip, he shook his head. “You look like
someone threw you in a blender and hit puree.”

“Sounds about right, sir,” I said. “I’m sure you were
briefed on all that already, though. How’s Jorge?”

Ramirez laughed; it was good to hear. “About the same. Comes
and goes as silently as a panther. There’s been some kind of sickness upriver,
so he spent a lot of time tending to those people while we searched for any
signs of supernatural trouble. We didn’t find a thing. The whole rainforest was
quiet.” He glanced at my face, probably admiring the greenish bruise on my
cheek. “Unlike here.”

“It
was
quiet here until Wednesday night. And it’s
been quiet since.” I tried to squash the uneasy feeling in my stomach. That attack
should’ve been the start of a real campaign, but it was like the Cats had
disappeared.

“Maybe it’ll stay that way while you’re on furlough, too.”
Ramirez stared out over the savannah. The scrubby bushes were more dried up
than usual and a dust cloud kicked up in a hot wind that hadn’t stopping
blowing for nearly two weeks. “This terrain doesn’t offer a lot of cover, does
it?”

“No, sir,” I said. “How’s your knife-ESP these days?”

He gave me a speculative look. “We’re on pretty good terms.
Not as good as you, of course, but it’s been decent about letting me know if
something’s—”

“Well, well, well, if it’s not the mighty Gator Killer of
the Amazon,” a voice called across camp.

I glanced over to see a stocky Master Sergeant waving at me.
I rolled my eyes skyward, seeking help from whatever was up there. Just the
sun. “How’s it going, Murphy?”

“Pretty good, other than being irritated that you had me
dragged out of a relatively nice jungle to hang out in the Kalahari at the
beginning of their summer.” Murphy came over and gave me an exaggerated, gentle
pat on the head. “We heard about your mishap. You feeling better, Boo Boo?”

I glared at Ramirez, who was laughing into his hand. “You
just had to bring him, didn’t you?”

Ramirez shook his head. “This one’s on you, Archer, for
getting us reassigned. But if you want, we can blame Mamie for her research
since she’s not here to defend herself.”

Johnson stalked by carrying a stack of crates and gave
Ramirez a dark look. “Do not take our Lord’s name in vain. Mamie might smite us
all the way from Montana.”

We all cracked up as Johnson professed his newfound faith.
“That girl has a lair in a dormant volcano somewhere, and she’ll rule us all
one day. Mark my words.”

He took off to direct the guys unpacking the new supplies,
and Murphy turned to me with a glint in his eye. “Archer, I’m still waiting to
hear if you made it to second base, yet. Last time I checked, we had failure to
launch.”

I just stared at him, my heart in my shoes; my status as
single must not have made the rounds. The crappy thing was that I had made it
to second base…just with the wrong girl.

Ramirez took one look at my face and said, “Not now, Master
Sergeant. The kid looks a little tired. Let’s cut him a break.”

Murphy glanced between us. “Sir, yes sir. I’ll…go help
unload the truck.”

He hurried off, sneaking a look at me over his shoulder. I’d
never seen Murphy without either a teasing smirk or a scowl; he was a hardass
of the first order. The worried, confused expression he wore now only made me
feel worse.

Suddenly the heat was too much, the sun too bright. “I
should go rest until it cools off a little.”

Ramirez nodded. “I’ll take it from here.”

I beat a quick path back to my cot, but once I got inside, I
heard Murphy talking quietly to Johnson behind my tent, having some kind of
private conversation. “…didn’t mean to sucker-punch the kid. I’ve never seen
him so stressed out, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, we’re all kind of concerned,” Johnson said. “He’s
been nothing but business out here. The kid he used to be, all earnest and
funny and eager? That Matt died somewhere in Afghanistan.”

“Seems like it.” With more mischief in his voice, Murphy
added, “You know, I think he just needs to get laid.”

“Murph, that’s your answer for everything,” Johnson rumbled,
but he sounded amused by the idea.

Did they really talk about me like that? Did they think it
was funny to be running around with a nearly seventeen-year-old virgin who was
so tied to his work that he couldn’t even keep a girlfriend?

I covered my head with my pillow, wishing I had enough brain
bleach to forget I’d ever heard that conversation.