Priestess of Murder (3 page)

And a twig snapped beneath Eve Starr's feet!

The sharp crackle of dried wood breaking beneath the pressure of a
careless foot, so little a thing to save one from blithering madness! It
forced reason into Leila's shuddering terror, stung her to sanity with the
realization that this was not a disembodied ghost advancing toward her
through the obscurity of the fear-filled wood, that it was flesh and blood,
that it was—

"Eve!" Leila moaned, finding strength somehow to stand up. "Eve!"

Startled, the dusky-haired girl swung around to her, fright distorting her
bloodless countenance.

"Who's there?" she gasped. "Who is it?" Her eyes were burned-out coals,
dark horror pitting the blanched whiteness of her visage. "Who—?"

"It's Leila, hon. Leila Monroy."

"Leila!" Stark terror in that gusted exclamation. "Leila!"

Her hand went up to her throat—to the blue bruises that splotched
its whiteness, the marks of throttling fingers. Of whose fingers? Leila
Monroy knew that she must ask the terrible question, though she was terrified
of what the answer might be.

"Eve," she blurted. "Eve! Who did that to you? Who? Was it I? Was it I,
Eve?"

"Leila!" Eve hadn't heard her. "Don't touch me." Or had she heard and was
this the awful answer to the momentous question? "Keep away."

The girl whirled, dashed away.

Started
to dash away. She stumbled, went to her knees, snatched for
support at the rattling withes of a low bush, swayed there in pitiful
weakness. She was feeble, so feeble. The cold and the damp of the woods would
kill her before morning if she were left here alone.

"Eve," Leila said, not moving, not daring to move. "I won't hurt you."
Almost without volition her arms went out, appealing, to her friend. "Let me
help you. Let me help you get home."

Eve's free hand fumbled at the grisly marks above the pallid round of her
voluptuous breasts as though the very sight of Leila reawakened their
agony.

"No," she whimpered. "Haven't you done enough to me already?"

She pulled herself to her feet, staggeringly, painfully, started to fall
again.

Leila jumped forward to catch her. Eve screamed, somehow found footing,
lurched away from her grasp. Leila stopped, tried again.

"Listen to me, Eve. I may have—I may have been mad before, but I'm
sane now. You'll have to believe that I'm sane. Because you can't get home
alone. You can't. You'll die out here in the woods. Please believe me. Please
let me help you." And all the time and inner voice was saying, "If she dies,
you have killed her."

"Help me!" Eve's husked tones were bitter, accusing. "You help me!
Murderess!"

She screamed that last expletive, and then she had whirled and was
running, stumbling, dazedly, impelled only by the false strength of a
terrible fear.

"Eve!" She couldn't last long. "Eve!" She would drop far in the tangled
depths of the woods. "Eve!" Leila reeled after her.

Strangely enough, Eve managed to keep just ahead of her, just beyond
reach. She was a flitting, staggering form just ahead of Leila, always just
ahead, always just about to drop, but somehow keeping on her feet, somehow
maintaining a little space between them. The reason for her chase slid away
from Leila. She knew only that she must catch the luminous wraith she
pursued, knew only that she must keep going through the nightmare blackness
of the impeding forest. Knew only that the uncanny compulsion was upon
her—

A denser grouping of stygian tree-trunks swallowed Eve for an instant.
Leila plunged through them—stopped. Eve had disappeared. She wasn't
anywhere in sight, and there was no sound to tell where she had gone.

Had she, after, been pursuing a phantom created by her own mad brain? Was
she doomed forever to wander in a dreamland of dread in which she would be
unable to distinguish the real from the unreal? Doomed forever—see,
these very trees seemed instinct with a baleful life. They seemed to be
closing in on her.

One of them
was
moving, was coming toward her with a slow,
infinitely evil deliberation. It couldn't be moving! She was imagining it.
How could a tree move?

It wasn't a tree. It was a bent, massive figure of a man; huge, browless
head set neckless on gargantuan shoulders; bronzed, naked torso gleaming
eerily in the moonlight; little, pig-like eyes glowing redly out of an
imbecilic, drooling countenance. It was the Monster of the Cliff!

But she had killed the Monster. No, that was Foster Corbett she had
killed. This Monster didn't exist. It was a figment of her imagination, this
bestial thing that crept inexorably toward her. It wasn't there at all and
she wouldn't run from it. If she didn't run from it it would vanish and she
would be sane again. She must not be afraid of it. She must not be afraid of
the big-muscled arms that seemed to reach out for her, of the stubbed and
fearful talons.

That closed on her arms with a sudden, fearful pain that told her the
thing was real. That told her too late that it was real.

Leila screamed, but the shrill cry of her terror and her agony was drowned
by the ferocious, overwhelming roar of the Monster. Towering over her, he
slammed her against the shaggy, unyielding bark of a giant tree behind her,
trying to crush her, it seemed, into the very heart of the quivering timber,
driving breath from her so that she could scream no longer.

She could not scream, but she could flail desperate fists against the
steel-hard thews of his giant arms. The beast laughed at her puny
efforts—chatteringly, gibberingly. His black-lipped mouth opened to
display yellow, rotted fangs, a cavity in which the flesh was not red but a
hideous black.

Leila writhed, jerked free. Almost jerked free. The Monster's knee came
up, thrust excruciatingly into the softness of her abdomen, pinned her
helpless against the rough tree-bark behind that cut through her flimsy dress
and stabbed her with countless tiny points. Pinned her helpless, so that one
of his bestial paws released its grip and flew to the neckline of her frock.
It tore downward, as the seamed, hairless countenance mowed with insensate,
obscene glee.

"Pretty," the thing chattered. "Pretty," and his leathery palm fumbled at
Leila's breast, rasped it with a lewd caress. "Calban likes."

The girl's hand spatted against the indurated cheek, her toes banged at
the Monster's shins. He squealed like a stuck pig and his fingers flew to her
throat, clutched it, constricted.

Leila's lungs pumped unavailingly, fighting for air they could not find.
The brutal digits tightened still more, till the girl thought they must cut
right through the flesh, must squeeze clear through her neck. Knives stabbed
and twisted within her chest, invisible fingers gouged at her eyes. The
glaring, ferocious visage of her tormentor vanished in a great, roaring
blackness.

Through which she seemed to hear a high, piercing whistle. The roaring in
her skull was drowned in the blast of Calban's feral roar. The whistle came
again, and Leila crashed to the ground as the terrible grip on her throat,
the pinning thrust of the bestial knee, were released.

Leila wallowed in her distress, while somewhere above her a tumultuous
sound crashed momentarily and died away. She pulled air into the sore agony
of her lungs.

"Leila," Stan cried, somewhere above her.

It wasn't Stan. It couldn't be Stan. Stan was lying dead in the old house
that had suddenly become an abode of horror. Stan had bled to death there
because she had not been able to get to him in time to save him.

"Leila, darling!"

Hands were tugging at her, were rolling her over. Stan's hands. His dear
face was looking down at her, anxiety clouding his eyes. Stan's face...

"Leila! Speak to me. Leila!"

The girl sat up. He was disheveled. His trooper's uniform was gashed, torn
by the tearing brambles of the forest, and there was a livid weal across his
tanned cheek that a lashing tendril had made. But he was alive. It was Stan
who had saved her, at the last possible moment, from an awful death.

"Stan! What—how did you get here? How...?"

"I was knocked out, there in your house, I came to, heard the back door
close. I rushed out there and saw you vanishing into the woods. I've been
hunting for you...
"

"Then wasn't..."

"Don't talk now," Stan silenced her. "You're hurt, exhausted. When I get
you home, get you warm, you can tell me all about it."

He was tender, solicitous. He loved her still. Leila nestled in his arms,
thrilling to his strength, thrilling to the feel of his heart heating against
her own. She would obey him, she would keep quiet for a few minutes. If she
started to talk, if she told him that it had been Eve he had seen, not her,
she would have to tell him the rest.

She would have to tell him that the girl in his arms had killed his
father. How could she tell him that? How could she?

The black trees of the forest slid by, rustling in the night. Leila
whimpered. "Hush, darling," Stan murmured. "We'll soon be out of this. We'll
soon be where it's warm and light."

Light. Would there ever be light again in her dark soul? Darker than ever
now. Thought burred through Leila's aching brain. Stan had been attacked in
the house, had been knocked unconscious. That was evident. Foster Corbett
must have done that, lying in ambush. Then Leila must be sane.

But Eve Starr's actions had confirmed the awful speculation that it was
Leila who had attacked her. Leila, in whose mind no memory remained of the
terrible deed. That proved her insane.

There wasn't any answer. There couldn't be any answer, because she didn't
know how much of her experiences was real, how much she had forgotten, how
much she had imagined. The Monster, for instance. Stan's coming had saved her
from him, but Stan didn't seem to know anything about him. Had that lecherous
attack been only her own madness? Had her own maniac fingers torn the clothes
from her shoulders; clamped, tightening, about her own throat?

Or had Stan's call, his threshing approach, frightened the brute away
before the trooper could see him?

Over Stan's shoulder Leila saw a shadow move, high up on the bough of a
tree. It haunched, came sprawling down; great arms flailing; spread,
spatulate talons clawing for Stan's throat!

"STAN!" Leila Monroy shrieked and contorted in his arms,
driving her forehead against his chest. This instantaneous inspiration of her
terror was the only thing that could have saved her lover. It unbalanced him,
sent him reeling backward, and the down-dropping monster missed his mark.

The brute crashed down into the underbrush, was momentarily tangled in the
whipping leaves. In that instant Leila slipped from Stan's hold as the
trooper recovered his footing and reached for his holstered gun. Calban
bellowed, soared from the ground. His shaggy arm lashed ahead of him with a
cobra's lightning-like lash, struck Stan's gun-wrist, pounded the weapon from
it. Its metallic gleam sliced into the underbrush and the antagonists came
together with a thud of flesh against flesh that was thunderous to the
terrified girl.

Stan's fists pumped, two flashing pistons, into Calban's taut belly. The
monster's muscle-bulging arms clamped around the trooper in a rib-cracking
clinch. They swayed, black and gigantic in the eerie forest light and from
the taut, straining agony of that clinch burst an appalling cacophony of
bestial sounds, of growls and vicious snarls.

A shrill, piercing squeal forced by unendurable pain from a strong man's
lips galvanized Leila into action. She dropped to her knees, searching
frantically in the meshed, baffling underbrush for Stan's gun. The tumult of
that eerie battle increased, behind her. A chattering, mindless scream
signaled that Stan had got home a telling blow.

"Run, Leila," the man yelled. "Get away. I can't—hold him."

The girl twisted, saw Calban, momentarily driven away from Stan, closing
in again. Her lover met the renewed attack by a ferocious uppercut exploding
from a crouch. His fist landed on the monster's jaw with the blast of a rifle
shot, his other fist crashed against the brute's chest. The devastating blows
might have been flicks of a fly's wings for all the effect they had. Calban
was not even staggered. His huge paw closed on Corbett's neck, engulfing it
with its vast span. His swarthy other hand drove for the man's groin.

Somehow a thick stick was in Leila's hand and she was hurling herself,
shrilling primitive fury, at the monster. Her improvised club pounded against
Calban's forehead. He roared, with anger rather than pain, and the hand that
was reaching for Stan's groin flicked sidewise instead.

It struck Leila in midair, catapulted her backward, crashing her into the
threshing cushion of a bush. Jarred and half-stunned, she saw Calban's attack
focus again on Stan, saw her lover swept from his feet, saw him lifted high
above the grisly creature's head by straining arms shaggy with a beast's
black hair.

The terrible tableau etched itself on Leila's mind. The gorilla-like
brute; his bestial ferocity the more horrible for the fact that he was no
beast but a man degraded, obscenely decadent; poised momentarily motionless
as he gathered his forces for the throw that would smash Stan to a pulp.
Above his head Stan was as motionless—rigid and helpless in the
gigantic grip of Calban's leathery hands at armpit and crotch, his face
contorted and pallid, his eyes staring in agony.

For an eternal moment that awful pause persisted. And then the lurid gleam
of Calban's beady, savage eyes flared more redly and the muscles in his huge
arms writhed snakelike beneath their hairy skin, and Leila knew that in the
next instant they would sweep downward.

From somewhere a whistle shrilled high and piercing, through the quivering
terror of the woods. It came again, the strange high sound that once before
Leila had heard through black clouds of death swirling about herself. It
froze Calban to an astounding paralysis, leashed him as though it were a
chain writhing about his savage limbs. Leila could almost see the
death-thought seep unwilling from the black and terrible frame.