Arcadia Awakens (20 page)

They were in a corridor. Faint gray light filtered through open doorways. Rain hammered on glass.

Something moved at the far end of the corridor, then froze and stood there. Rosa saw only a black silhouette. It was impossible to see exactly what it was. A tiger. A lioness. As if exactly what kind of animal tore her apart made any difference.

The big cat was listening intently, ears pricked. A long black tail swung slowly back and forth, a sign of pent-up tension.

Neither she nor Alessandro moved from the spot. The drumming of the rain must be irritating the animal as well. It obviously hadn’t yet recognized the two of them as potential prey.

Now the cat began to move again. Came down the corridor with a flowing, silent elegance that was both majestic and murderous.

Alessandro let go of Rosa’s hand.

The animal disappeared through one of the open doorways. It wouldn’t stay long in the room beyond the doorway if it found nothing there.

Alessandro signaled to her, but she was faster. She was already racing down the corridor the other way. He followed her into a guest room with no door to its en suite bathroom. Strange that the doors had been removed from all the bedrooms. It reminded her of a zoo enclosure. A playground where animals could hide and chase one another. Was that what this house had been used for, before Iole was hidden here?

“The window,” whispered Alessandro.

She didn’t expect it to open, but he had only to press a lever down and the pane swung in. Rain pattered into the room, along with the smell of wet stone. They were in a side wing of the villa. Rosa saw rough lava rock below the window. You couldn’t see the perimeter wall here, as you could from the front of the house, but it was probably farther away, hidden in the dark.

“Can you jump down?” he asked quietly.

She looked back at the doorway over her shoulder. If there was something approaching on velvet paws, the deep darkness meant that not even a shadow would give advance warning.

She nodded vigorously. This was the upper story, and bare rock gleamed below. But the window came almost right down to the floor of the room, so it was less than nine feet to jump in all.

“I can go first and try to catch you,” he suggested.

The idea of landing in his arms like some captive fairy-tale princess was so silly that she almost smiled. She shook her head, climbed out on the narrow windowsill and past him, looked around for any animals stalking closer—and jumped.

The impact was much harder than she’d expected. She felt as if her legs had been rammed up inside her body. She lost her balance, fell forward, hands first, and landed on her knees. Rough lava rock tore her stockings, grazing her skin. At first she felt nothing, then it burned like fire, and she knew without having to look that she was bleeding.

Once the animals picked up that scent, there’d be no way of distracting them.

“All right?” whispered Alessandro from above.

Her face distorted with pain, she pushed herself up, swayed for a moment, and then stood upright. Her feet hurt, so did her legs and her hips. But when she cautiously moved, she decided that nothing was broken or sprained.

Blinking, she looked up at the window and stood aside. Alessandro glanced behind him and suddenly seemed to be in much more of a hurry. He took off from the sill, drew his legs up as he jumped, stretched his arms downward and landed neatly, crouching on all fours, his knees out at an angle. He didn’t even wince as he stood up, smiled at her incredulous gaze, took her hand again, and tried to drag her along after him. Her fingers, wet with rain, slipped out of his grasp, but she followed him anyway, stumbling slightly and gritting her teeth. At least she could still run.

They hurried past the facade of the villa, along a kind of ditch that ended on one side at the wall of the house and at the other against rocks. Somewhere in the darkness a big cat roared again; two others answered. At least one of them was out here. The roar had sounded very close.

They reached the end of the side wing. The lava rock to their left no longer rose as steeply. When Rosa looked cautiously around the corner, she saw that they had reached the front of the house. The perimeter wall surrounding the grounds rose thirty feet or so ahead. Alessandro had closed the gate to the front courtyard when they arrived, but it stood open now.

Rosa looked at him. Their eyes met. He seemed uncertain of himself, and she wondered whether that was because of the injury to her knees. The warm blood seeping through her torn stockings. He raised a hand. Before she could flinch back, he stroked her wet hair back from her face, leaned forward, and kissed her on the mouth. It was hardly more than a fleeting touch, but the protest inside her refused to pass her lips.

“Sorry,” he whispered. She thought he meant about the kiss, but he added, “For bringing you here.”

“I wanted to come,” she said tonelessly. “What about Iole? Do you think she’s still here?”

He shook his head. “If she’s alive, they’ve taken her away. Maybe I was wrong and Cesare kept his word. Something new, but not unimaginable.”

“That’ll make us look rather foolish if his animals tear us to pieces.”

“They won’t. Trust me.”

Through the rain his hair looked very black again, as it had down on the beach. His eyes seemed darker, too.

She pointed to the barred gate. “Is that the only way?”

“It’s the quickest. Just follow the road. Run, and don’t turn around.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll follow.”

“But why…?”

“Please,” he said urgently. “Just go on ahead. And wait—you have to memorize the number code for the gate down at the landing.” He told her a sequence of six figures. Only after a moment did she work out that it sounded like his mother’s date of birth. That would fit, if the two final numbers stood for a year.

Then they ran. Out of the shelter of the wall of the house, into the space between the villa and the perimeter wall, while the rain whipped into their faces and the roar of the big cats rose again.

A moment later something crashed into the armored glass of the windows from inside.

“Faster!” Alessandro was no longer trying to keep his voice down.

They ran through the gate, crossed the front courtyard, and turned onto the winding road. On the way up it had seemed endless to Rosa, but now she could see the shore below through the darkness and the rain. However, the landing was a few hundred yards farther north along the coastline. And there were all those bends, and pursuers behind them who wouldn’t bother to follow the road but would take shortcuts over the rocks.

Alessandro stayed a little way behind her, though he could run faster than she could. Her knees hurt, her legs felt strange. He could easily have overtaken her, but he hung back. She heard his footsteps and thought of what he had said:
Don’t turn around
.

All the same, she instinctively glanced over her shoulder. Asking Rosa not to do something was a surefire way of getting her to do it anyway.

Alessandro kept looking back himself, even now. There was something thirty yards or so behind them on the road, a blurred shape in the rain, moving much faster than they were and just on the verge of catching up.

Rosa looked ahead again so that she could stay on the road. She would fall at once among the rocks. She had to stay on the asphalt road surface and try not to slip in the rivulets of water.

When she glanced back once more, Alessandro had disappeared.

Shredded clothing was scattered on the road. The sight was like a hard blow in her back, making her stumble, and when she somehow caught herself up she stood there, swaying.

“Alessandro?”

Their pursuer, too, had stayed beyond the dark rocks at that last bend in the road. For a moment, even the pattering of the rain seemed to fall silent. Rosa stood in the middle of the road, eyes narrowed, staring up the mountain and hearing nothing but her own heartbeat and fast breathing. The raindrops seemed to fall from the sky in slow motion. She felt as if she could pluck each of them out of the air with her fingertips, one by one.

Rigid, she looked back up the road. At the clothes lying in the rain as it ran downhill. Reluctantly, she searched the ground for other traces. For blood mingling with the water.

A deep growl, unexpectedly close, reached her ears. She smelled the hot breath of a beast of prey. Not like the tiger in the forest, wilder.

Slowly, she turned her head to one side. Looked at the rock rising not nine feet away from the roadside.

A full-grown lion with a dripping mane stood there, mighty muscles visible under his wet, gleaming coat. His eyes were burning. He looked at her, the scent of her warm blood in his nostrils, his mouth half-open to bare the teeth that would be tearing at her any moment now.

She spun around and ran on, although she knew it was useless. She ran as fast as she could. Only when nothing pounced on her did she look back.

The blackness of the night was coagulating into a solid, supple body that leaped up the rock and rammed into the lion. The beast roared, lost his balance, and fell heavily to one side, snapping at his attacker and carrying the other animal down with him.

The lion crashed sideways onto the road with a furious roar. The second big cat landed on him, striking out with claws and fangs, shredding fur and flesh. Then it leaped over him, whirled around again, and turned to its opponent. The lion rose too, mad with pain and rage, and lost no time in counterattacking.

When a flash of lightning lit up the night, Rosa saw the second animal more clearly. The sight was still flickering before her eyes while she ran down the mountain, feeling numbed.

A panther, black as pitch, almost as large as his adversary, but slender and more supple. His open mouth full of gleaming teeth.

She carried the images and sounds of the fighting animals down the slope with her. She hardly felt the road beneath her feet, and saw the landing and the barred gate only when she had almost reached them.

A man barred her way. Rosa had no time to feel surprised. She rammed her shoulder into his chest with a groan and, running full tilt, leaped past him before he could grab hold of her, and reached the shore. Waves broke against the rocks, sending the surf three feet high.

Behind her, higher up the slope, the panther and the lion were locked in battle. The man called something that she couldn’t make out.

At the far end of the concrete landing, the lights of the
Gaia
shone through the driving rain.

Now only the barred gate stood between Rosa and the yacht. The numerical combination would open it—if she could tap it into the keypad in time. Water made the gleaming surfaces flow together like liquid steel.

Once again the man behind her called out. Heavy footsteps were coming closer. And she heard something else through the rain—the roars of several big cats.

She looked back. The figure was coming closer across the open space. Three shadows moved away from the black mass of the rocks.

Rosa found the flap by the gate and opened it. A red light shone above the keypad.

NUMERICAL CODE DELETED
, said the words on an illuminated panel.
NEW COMBINATION ACCEPTED
.

The man had changed the bloody code. She couldn’t get back to the yacht.

Cursing, she turned around, avoided her pursuer’s hands, and saw the three big cats racing up. Her one escape route led to the old weapons silo.

She ran through the broad entrance into the bare concrete room behind. Bent low to slip through the opening in the back wall.

The rank smell of beasts of prey surrounded her.

N
EON LIGHTING SHONE DOWN
from a gray ceiling, one of the tubes flickering and humming louder than the others. Insects crashed against the glass.

Rosa looked around, her breath coming fast and her heart thudding; she could hear it behind her eyes. Her head ached, and her vision was blurred.

The stench in the rectangular concrete room was terrible. Straw covered the floor, and there were several grates over openings in the walls that led to individual cages. Four of the grates were open, two closed. If there was anything alive in there, it wasn’t showing itself. The room outside the cages contained a wide water trough and huge bowls with shreds of dried meat on their rims.