Fury and the Power (16 page)

Her choice from the gun cabinets was a Benelli semiautomatic shotgun, which she loaded with five incendiary shells called "Dragon's Breath." Not the best ammunition to use in a dry season; more than hyenas were likely to be ignited from a single round. But they had fought fires before at Shungwaya. The water tanks were full, pumps in good working order.

And she was one woman, one gun. Three weeks past her twenty-first birthday.

She saw Etan Culver's face in a doorway and heard Pegeen sobbing as she walked back toward the veranda.

"A hyena will pull your face off from the eyebrows down. Or castrate you with one bite. But if you still want to take pictures, I can't stop you."

She didn't look to see if Etan had followed her, but she was careful not to let any of the bloodthirsty dogs out.

The were-beast was in the yard now, striding past a big jacaranda laden with pink foam in its blooming season. Hyena in their rump-sprung prowling around the
boma
serenaded the terrified horses with death threats.

Wouldn't do to fire in that direction
, Bertie thought.

Instead she brought the muzzle of the shotgun to bear on the ugly brown head closest to her, observing how the hyena's hard tufted skull did not seem a complete mismatch with the tiger's elegant body. Both animals had powerful necks and shoulders. But it was like admiring the anatomy of a nightmare.

The eyes of the spirit form astride the tiger's body were as empty as holes drilled in wet stone. Her body and teeth both bared, raven hair swirling around lush nakedness. She raised her hands above her head. There was a jingle of shackles, silvery notes in the air as Bertie jacked an incendiary shell into the chamber of the Benelli.

What the hell
, she thought.
Let's see what you're really made of
.

The were-beast was fifty feet from the veranda steps when Bertie fired, and was nearly blinded by the flame and smoke that spouted from the muzzle of the shotgun.

She had only a blurred glimpse of the tiger's long leap, the hyena's contorted, contemptuous mouth. Then it was gone, and she blinked at a narrow blaze on the lawn, like a bolt of lightning fallen horizontally and blackening the grass. She whirled on the veranda, expecting claws nearby, a fatal slash, but she was alone, the faces of dogs raging and demonic behind the beveled glass panes of the doors. They lunged against each other and the doors until one shattered. Then the dogs tumbled past Bertie in a dark torrent and were gone in spite of her screams, streaking over the burning lawn toward the hyena gang.

The were-beast had leaped twenty feet from the ground to a veranda roof and now she heard or sensed it climbing, claws digging into thick papyrus, woven tightly enough to shed a tropical cloudburst. Both roofs, one above the other, were slanted at a sixty-degree pitch from the ridgepole.

She couldn't tell yet if the thing was trying to dig down through the papyrus to get at her, but the roof seemed to bear up okay beneath tremendous weight. Shaking from her adrenaline rush, she swung the muzzle of the Benelli in a tight arc above her head. But the shotgun would be no defense, unless she wanted to bum the house down.

Bertie was backing into the house, eyes on the underside of the larger of the two roofs, when her attention was diverted by the jarring but welcome noise of the Augusta helicopter flying over at fifty feet, barely treetop level. Tom was back; and the searchlight mounted beneath the chopper was focused on the hyenas.

Charging dogs and blinding light; they disappeared in moments, almost magically, finding the cover of the brush-filled
lugga
. They easily outdistanced the savage dogs if not the helicopter, which continued the chase for half a minute. Then Tom turned toward the concrete pad. The fires on the lawn didn't seem to Bertie to be a big problem. The problem was the were-beast, and for a few very bad moments she had no idea of where it had gone. Her back was to a stone wall next to the shattered veranda door. She was looking, looking, strained to the breaking point, when she heard, above the racket of the landing helicopter, a high-pitched scream. Could've come from one of the houseboys, or Pegeen Culver.
The courtyard
, she thought, freezing in horror, crying and pissing now like a two-year-old child, couldn't help herself.

Then she saw the were-beast on the south lawn where pool mist drifted, heading away from the house with great loping strides. Momentarily bold in the moonlight, a beautiful monster but without the spirit-rider Bertie had seen a minute ago.

The were-beast covered fifty yards in less than three seconds, reaching the bungalow where Eden lived.

Bertie jumped at the crunch of broken glass in the doorway and threw down on Etan Culver. He jumped too, a good three feet away from the muzzle of the Benelli.

"No, no! It's me!" He fumbled with his movie camera, but the were-beast had vanished again, in tree-darkness near the bungalow.

"Get any pictures?" Bertie asked breathlessly.

"Are you insane?" Etan looked at Bertie's shotgun. "You bloody might have shot it!"

"Give me a break. Did you see how fast it moves? Who screamed?"

"Pegeen."

"Well, is she
okay
, damn it?"

"Oh, uh, I think so. She saw, thinks it was, a spectre, she said."

"Forget about the ghost. Anyway, it wasn't." Bertie was still on edge, feeling soggy and ill-tempered. Tom Sherard was coming toward them, a fire extinguisher from the chopper in his hands. He doused clumps of fire as he limped heavily across the rough farmyard. She wondered fleetingly what he had done with his lion's-head walking stick.

"Bertie!"

She wiped her eyes, which were still leaking. "We're okay! It's down by the bungalow!"

"What is?"

"You didn't
see
it?"

"All I saw were hyena about to massacre our dogs."

Four of the dogs had turned back and were catching up to Tom. Two missing. Hyena were whooping it up from cover, and no matter how often Bertie had heard them, still their eerie voices raised gooseflesh.

"Oh, man," Bertie said as Tom came up the steps to the veranda. "You have a treat in store. Better get us a couple of rifles, Tom. Fifties. It's the size of a Land Cruiser, I am not kidding."

"What are you talking about?" He looked in irritation at Bertie's shotgun. "What did you load that with?"

"Incendiaries." She shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I missed?'

He noticed the wet spot on her trousers, smelled it probably, but didn't embarrass her by commenting. He couldn't remember having seen her scared, by anything.

"It's our phantom tiger-hyena thing," Etan volunteered. "Only in the too, too solid flesh, from what little I saw of it." He looked regretfully at his expensive camera. "I'm afraid I didn't get a good shot myself."

Bertie nodded, teeth fastened to her under lip. Looking a bit windy, as the old safari hands put it. Tom took the shotgun from her and gently guided her inside.

"Sit down. Stay here."

"But—I feel safer with
you
, Tom! You haven't seen it. You don't know how fast it comes at you."

"Faster than a charging lion?"

"I—I don't know!"

"Survived a few of those. So I can cope, you see. Now you've done enough, let me take it from here."

Bertie's best dog, Fernando, came into the house on three legs, left hindquarters laid open to the bone by a hyena's near-miss. Fernando's tongue lolled, he was hurting, but he looked pleased with himself. He spread himself slowly at Bertie's feet and began to lick tattered flesh, eyes half closed.

"I'd better go find Pegeen," Etan muttered. "Left her beneath our bed." To Tom he said, "I don't suppose—"

"Absolutely not. One of us is all I can look after."

Tom went to the parlor and was back in thirty seconds with the .470 Holland and Holland double rifle his father had ordered for him when he was a year old.

Hassan came in from the veranda with his own rifle, not very out of breath after running a five-minute mile through bush.

"Where's Joseph?" Tom asked.

"He will soon be coming."

"Good," Tom said. "Well, shall we take a crack at this mysterious critter, Hassan?"

"If you say we must, Bwana Tom."

F
ive minutes past four in the morning. The moon was down, the brilliant litter on all the pathways to Eternity flashing forth in the black sky.

It would have been useful, Tom thought, to know what they were stalking. Lion, leopard, Cape buffalo; all dangerous game he had hunted, known their spoor, their cunning, and their power. A tiger combined with a hyena was not only an abomination, unearthly; it could possess a supernatural intelligence beyond his calculation.

Hassan wasn't happy either. They maintained ten paces apart, each covering the other's flank, as they walked slowly toward Eden's bungalow. A clump of fig trees on one side of the stone bungalow; otherwise there was no place for a large animal that had left no sign of its passing in the lush green of the lawn. All of the roof was visible. There was a stub of a stone chimney, thread of gray smoke visible against the Southern Cross.

The only door, oak with iron hinges, had been broken down and scattered like matchsticks. So the were-beast had gone inside. And possibly was still there.

Hassan let out a low moan as the sitting room of the bungalow became visible to them. He stopped, refused to budge with a taut shake of his head.

Tom didn't blame him. He saw it too.

Any sort of animal he'd been more or less prepared for. But not this.

She was near the hearth in near-darkness, the remaining coals in the deep fireplace glowing through the translucent, nude body. By contrast the sheaf of black hair between her shoulder blades, tapering to her tailbone, was as stark and earthy as a male lion's thick mane. She turned her head in response to their presence. Faint fire was reflected in the otherwise empty pits where eyes should have been.

Hassan moaned low in his throat. Hair crept up the back of Tom's neck.

When she turned full-front and began a slow drift away from the hearth, coming toward them, holding her hands bound in silver shackles away from the coldly beautiful, waxen body, Hassan broke. He dropped his rifle and departed with a strangled cry.

"Tom," Bertie said softly, and he'd never been so glad to hear anyone's voice. She was out on the lawn behind him. He didn't look around, but he was grateful that she'd ignored him and followed. He had had some weird experiences in Bertie's company, but this was totally beyond his ken.

Bertie spoke again.

"Ask her what they want."

"Can't you ask her?"

"This One and I, we're natural enemies. She won't speak to me."

"All right" he said, not understanding but not doubting Bertie, who had access to worlds of the afterlife where he could never go. "What do you want?" he said, his words followed by a tight involuntary grimace, the facial muscles a little out of control. Talking to a wraith.

Where is Eden?

He heard the voice in his head; his ears picked up Bertie's quick intake of breath.

"Answer her, Tom."

"What the f—"

"Please, Tom."

"I don't even know what this thing is."

"I do. Answer her."

"Eden isn't here," he said to the wraith. "She's gone away." He swallowed and added, "Nor will she be coming back to Shungwaya."

The wraith hovered three feet above the floor inside the doorway, quaking like hung silk in a faint draft. Tom felt its disapproval, then a scour of fear across his face, a burn of deep cold. God damn it, he was shaking too, and that made him angry.

Where has she gone?

"Piss off, sweetheart," Tom said, with more bravado than he felt.

Die then
, the wraith responded.

She broke apart like a large frowzy cobweb as the were-beast bounded toward him from the dark of the bedroom. Tom fired and had a half second to throw up an arm to protect his face. He was wearing an old leather shooting jacket of his father's, the arms layered with strips of linoleum and steel studs. He was thrown over backward with his arm in the jaws of a hyena, a bolt of pain stabbing to his shoulder as if he were being electrocuted. Then he heard another shot and the beast spat out his arm, moaned, and used Tom's body for a springboard, leaping away from him. The force of what amounted to a body blow from a heavyweight champ drove the air from his lungs. He heard the
crack
of another shot.

Half a minute to get his breath back. Bertie and Hassan were bending over him. Bertie's face was pinched from pain, her right arm hanging limp.

"We know two things," she said, breathing hard herself. "It doesn't like getting shot. And it bleeds real blood."

"Where—"

"Long gone. Won't return."

"Help me up, Hassan."

"I ran, Bwana Tom," Hassan said, looking sick from shame.