Bowie caught up, breathing hard right behind him. “Jesus,” the rafting guide whispered.
“Not exactly,” Ace said. He was calm, his pulse and hands as steady as they had been when he’d planted the clinic bombs. Some of his fellow patriots were hot-blooded, ranting about revenge and revolution, but Ace approached his duty with patience and humility. He was a servant. Rewards would surely follow, but not on this mortal plane.
“How many of them are there?”
“They are legion. Don’t you read the Good Book?”
“Not lately.”
“You ought to. Lot of wisdom in them pages.”
“Any instructions on this kind of thing?”
Ace watched another small flock of the creatures descend and swerve into the cave, their gray flesh making them look like glass ravens in the moonlight. “There’s one of yours,” he said, pointing.
“Shit. Can’t be.”
“Proof that he wasn’t worthy. I expect your other people will be along shortly.”
“Vampires. Farrengalli was right.”
“Call them whatever you want. They’re unfit. Cast into eternal darkness.”
“She’s already dead, you know.”
Ace shook his head as the stream of demons slowed and the gorge again fell hushed except for the riffing melody of the river. “Don’t matter none. Being dead don’t get you off the hook. And they ain’t getting’ my baby. Dead or alive.”
Ace stepped from the low, concealing trees and walked toward the light.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Raintree heard Dove call his name as he took Farrengalli over the edge and into space. Or maybe he imagined it, because the loud smack as he and Farrengalli slammed into the side of the cliff was followed by exploding fireworks inside his skull.
The intensity of the headache was rivaled by the orange strip of napalm in his leg. He was dimly aware of the naked man hanging onto him with a passion Farrengalli had probably never shared with a lover.
He opened his eyes, and the river was above him, its rapids pale in the light of the grounded moon.
Farrengalli’s arms were wrapped around his waist, hooked in his belt. The two of them were swaying, and Raintree understood.
Amateur technique. Poor awareness. The kind of thing you’d expect from a pill-head.
He’d left the safety rope secured in its anchor, coiled loosely at the edge of the cave. His foot had tangled and aborted his kamikaze attack. Hanging upside down, his leg broken and the tendons separating further by the second, blood pouring from his scalp and nose, he could only imagine how silly he must look. A red puppet on a yo-yo string. He laughed.
Farrengalli planted his toes on Raintree’s chin, launching himself upward, grabbing for the rope. Raintree was too weak to hold onto him, the Olympic grip now impotent. His back was pinned to the mat, the ref counting down.
Farrengalli skinned up Raintree’s devastated leg like a summer camper climbing a greased pole for a watermelon. Just before abandoning him and scaling the rope, Farrengalli reached for the belt, tugging at the fanny pack that held the cell phone.
Raintree closed his eyes, focused the LSD chaos into a gleaming beacon of purpose, and jabbed his thumb into the back of Farrengalli’s hand. Farrengalli yelped and let go of the belt. Raintree laughed again.
Two points for a reversal, but the ref was still counting him down and out.
The rope wiggled, sending electric fire though his body. The oxy was letting him down when he needed it most.
Letting him down.
When he was all hung up.
He laughed again, as Farrengalli’s weight was lifted from him. Then he heard Dove’s voice again.
“Robert!”
Robert. She said his name with affection and urgency. The way she might if they had made love “Help me pull the rope up,” she shouted.
“Fuck, no! The crazy redskin tried to scalp my ass.”
“Help me. I’m not strong enough-”
“Sorry, babe. You’re a good lay and all that, but you’re on your own. Don’t you fucking get it? We’ve all been on our own all along.”
Odd, Raintree thought, blood pooling in his head and making him dizzy even as it leaked down the granite wall. The river should be falling out of the sky any minute now.
He thought of the two of them below him, naked as Adam and Eve, sharing the apple and the worm.
“Help me, you bastard!”
Raintree felt a dull, distant tugging on the rope. Dove was strong, but not strong enough. Just as well. Raintree’s only regret was that his fingers were too numb to dig into the medicine bag. A few Valiums would be the perfect topper for this bum trip.
Bum trip. Skipping rope. Amateur technique.
He stared out across the Unegama Gorge, dangling from the heights of Attacoa, the place his Cherokee forefathers had ascended in search of wisdom. He had come up short, that was all.
The rain started again, though the moon still cut though the clouds enough to throw a strange gleam on the sacred stack of stones.
One of the Raven Mockers flew from the cooling mists above, lost and late. It paused in the air, its hueless skin slick from rain or an unwholesome sweat. Then it altered course as if receiving a silent telegraph.
Toward Raintree.
As it closed the distance, Raintree realized this was what he had sought. This hideous, gray, knotty-limbed creature, this ancient evil spirit, was his animal guide.
This was his totem, his medicine.
The object of his vision quest.
The Raven Mocker drew near, uncertain, as if sizing up a possible adversary. Or else having no idea where to sink its curved, yellow teeth.
Good acid, Robert Raintree thought, as the flicker of stunted wings cast a soft, ill wind across his rain-spattered skin. Because my spirit guide is a white man gone gray. It has Jim Castle’s face.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Clara awoke in utter darkness, or maybe she wasn’t awake and this wasn’t darkness, but a new state of being.
Maybe she hadn’t slept at all. Or maybe she’d always been asleep and the dream merely changed phases.
Hands crawled the length of her belly, and she wondered if it was Ace, wanting some hurried, empty, dry intercourse. She slapped at the hands, though her arms felt heavy, full of sand. The grogginess of dreams infected her and slowed her movements. She felt as she had one night at Radford, when the philosophy professor had drugged her with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, despite her being a willing partner in perversity. The drug had not been used to ease her pain, for the good doctor knew they both enjoyed the sensations too much to dull any of its sharp edges.
No, the drug’s sole purpose had been to erase her subsequent memory of the event. To this day, she had never been certain of the doc’s exploits, only that she’d bled from her vagina and rectum for a week, bruises mottled her breasts, and her back and buttocks had been covered with welts. The doctor called a few weeks later and asked if she had enjoyed it. She answered in the affirmative, and even saw him on several other occasions, though the doctor must have used up his entire bag of tricks, because she quickly grew bored with him.
Perhaps because he knew the limits and had observed them. Not just his own limits, whether moral or physical or legal. No, he’d been reined in by a social order that promised freedom, shouted it as a slogan, and sold it like a commodity, but when real freedom opened up the possibilities before its believers, they turned their cowardly faces away.
She had known limits. Ace’s cold, slick hands could fondle and penetrate her, but they would never touch her. None of them had ever touched her, not even those who had punished her the most deeply or hit her the hardest.
“Don’t, Ace, I’m sleepy.” Her tongue was thick, and the words slurred.
Ace wasn’t giving up. You had to give it to the human cockroach, he was persistent. The Bama Bomber had a “never say die” attitude, a “can do” spirit, a “kill them all and let God sort them out” mentality.