The Gorge Page 8

  “Dove, stop,” he said, though his hands betrayed him by reaching for her hair and urging her head forward.

  After ten seconds of sweet torture, she backed off and said, “Stop now?”

  “Damn you.”

  In the dimness of approaching morning, he saw the gleam of her grin. Then her mouth was busy again, but Bowie had other ideas. He pressed her shoulders and eased down beside her until they were lying side-by-side on their discarded clothes. Leaves scratched at his bare skin, but he scarcely noticed. His senses were consumed by the heat at the center of her body, the seat of her soul, the moist, inviting tunnel that demanded exploration. He tongued and caressed her until she mewled; then she gouged her fingernails into his back and pulled him on top of her. She rubbed his aching hardness against her damp opening, then guided him inside. It fit like always, like new. She arched her back, throwing herself up to meet his slow penetration.

  “I don’t love you,” he whispered, biting her ear.

  She timed her words with his thrusts. “I… never… wanted… you… to.”

  “Good.” Her neck was slightly salty and her hair smelled of wood smoke, with a hint of rosemary and mint. He tasted it again just to be sure.

  “You’ve gotten better. Have you been practicing?”

  “Does my hand count?”

  “I want this to last.”

  “Three days.”

  “No, I mean you. This.”

  He shut her up by putting his tongue in her mouth. She hadn’t brushed her teeth, but neither had he. Nature didn’t care. Nature didn’t even notice.

  She rolled him over and sat astride his hips. The light was better now and he gazed into her half-lidded eyes. He wondered what she was thinking about, figured nothing, and decided he didn’t want to think, either. He moved with her, against her, around, and she leaned down so her nipples brushed against his as she rocked back and forth.

  “The others can’t know about this,” Bowie said.

  She stopped moving. “Stop now?”

  He pushed up against her. His back was no longer sore. His back had never been better. His legs were fine, too. Other things were improving by the minute.

  He reached for her hips so he could control her movements, but he didn’t need force. They were already in synch, grinding out a rhythm as old as the river. Their sweat sprang against the September air, enhancing the slickness between them.

  From the camp came Farrengalli’s voice, calling out for Bowie. He wondered if anyone would come this way to heed the call of nature. He smiled. He didn’t give a fuck. Well, he only gave one fuck.

  “Are you close?” she whispered, slowing until her motion was almost imperceptible, a blissful Sisyphus stone pushed to the mountain peak.

  “You wanted this to last.”

  “We’ve got a river to run.”

  “The river will still be there.”

  “Do you love me yet?”

  “Never, bitch.”

  “Finish me, asshole,” she whispered, and her words harmonized with the sibilant wash of the Unegama.

  Her movements became more urgent, and Bowie was all too familiar with the quickened breath, the slitted, almost reptilian eyes, and the pinking of her cheeks. Her climax coincided with the splintered arrival of the sun, and she bit his shoulder to keep from crying out. The pain turned strange in Bowie’s brain, combining with the rush of primal joy that coursed up from his toes. She sensed his approach and writhed away in silent passion, whimpers squeezing between the teeth that sank deeper into his flesh. His entire body became a giant, throbbing organ and he exploded like the dawn.

  Dove collapsed on top of him in a twin pounding of hearts. She relaxed her mouth and let her head drop against his shoulder. Wetness tickled the skin under his arm and her breath made a soft breeze against his neck. His hands slid from her hips to the small of her back. At the volcanic center where they were joined, Bowie couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. Like always.

  “I lied,” he said when the treetops stopped spinning.

  “I know,” she said. She lifted her face to look at him. Her mouth was smeared with his blood.

  “Hungry?”

  “Not anymore.”

  The leaves scratched his back and his legs. One of his feet was planted against a stump. An ant crawled along his hip and he twitched, causing Dove’s breasts to wiggle against his chest.

  “Again already?” she asked with a grin. She licked the blood from her lips.

  “They’ll be wondering where we are.”

  “Let them.”

  He took her by the arms, rolled her to the side, and reached for his SealSkinz. “Let me go first. You come in two minutes.”

  She giggled. “I may be easy but I’m not that fast.”

  “Very funny. Sorry I called you a ‘bitch.’” He wrestled his legs into the tight, water-resistant SealSkinz.

  “I’m used to it.” She had her own waterproof outfit, an older model that was scuffed and frayed, sky blue with a broad yellow stripe down the middle. “By the way, which lie did you tell this time?”

  “Does it matter?” He adjusted his crotch inside the SealSkinz and rolled the single piece the rest of the way up his torso, stretching the rubberized fabric. He’d only been with one woman since the last time with Dove. During his marriage, he’d averaged ten times a week. Now, he realized with dismay, he was lucky to get lucky once a year. He apologized to his penis for the hibernation, though it was fairly content and dreaming at the moment.

  “See you at launch,” he said, walking the perimeter of the clearing so he and Dove wouldn’t exit from the same point and arouse suspicion.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In many ways, losing a partner was worse than taking a bullet yourself.

  In addition to the shame of letting Ace Goodall slip away, Jim Castle now had a permanent black mark on his record. Assuming The Rook was actually dead. Castle didn’t quite accept the image of the winged creature carrying a grown man into the sky as easily as a hawk might rip a mouse aloft. But The Rook’s yell of pain had been real, and against the small, still sounds of the night and the susurrant river, it seemed to echo off the trees and around the hard shell of Castle’s skull.

  Agents accepted the possibility of dying in the line of duty. That was part of the excitement of the job. The rush of adrenaline came with the territory, and premature and eternal retirement was an occupational hazard. But just as airline pilots believed their next flights wouldn’t be that one-in-a-million with an unhappy ending, in the back of their minds, all agents believed it wouldn’t happen to them.

  And if you lost a partner, you expected it to happen by the book: a car crash during a high-speed chase, a shoot-out in a hostage situation, or an explosion during a security detail. Maybe even through someone else’s goof, like the failure to see a trip wire. You didn’t expect some deformed bird of prey to pluck your partner from the sky and dangle it like a rag doll.

  But was it a bird?

  Of course it was a bird. A giant one, sure, a bizarre backwoods species so rare that it hadn’t been discovered. New animals popped up all the time, mostly just before they became extinct. The Amazon jungle was full of This isn’t the Amazon. This is the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The world’s oldest mountain range, like The Rook said, but these peaks had been prowled by the Red Man, the White Man, and maybe even the Little Green Men From Mars, and no one had ever reported such a man-eating fowl.

  Castle had moved away from the collapsed section of hillside. He wanted to be as far away from the scene of the attack as possible. He’d collected their backpacks and gone to Goodall’s camp, figuring to wait out the night, collect what clues he could find in the morning, and hike back to civilization. Once there, assuming he could make it without The Rook’s compass and memory, he’d file a report, turn in his badge, and check himself into an orderly brick building with daisies bordering the porch and grass that stayed green year round. A clean, well-lighted place, with bars ov
er the windows through which no giant birds could crash.

  The forest at night had taken on a menacing quality. A skein of clouds filtered the quarter moon, and the tall branches were like wicked arms twisted by a thousand winds. Leaves rattled in the underbrush, and each new scraping sound hearalded the stealthy approach of the bird-beasts. He found a rough trail, one not marked on any map and likely the path of both prey and predator, and followed it along the ridge.

  His backpack held a flashlight, but he was afraid to use it. The light might summon the creature-or creatures, if the thing in the hole had been of the same species as the flyby nightmare-and with the night closing in, his years of training failed him and he became the lost boy in the big, cold bed, the shadows holding terrible monsters. Only this time, he didn’t have a mother who would come running when he called. Not that he’d called her often. Even then, he’d had a deep streak of pride that battled his fear. Here in the Unegama wilderness, there was no one to peek into the dark spaces and declare them safe.

  He wondered how much he would fudge the report. The Rook was relatively young and had never married. No kids. That should have been a comfort, but somehow the lack of survivors made his death (and Castle couldn’t accept any other outcome) all the more empty, as if his genetic soup had poured into the ground and been lost forever.

  Yes, the report would be fiction. It had to be. The Rook would fall from a cliff, in hot pursuit of Goodall. That might earn him posthumous recognition and save Castle some shame. It would also send extra personnel into the area as they looked for a fallen hero along with the mass murderer who had caused The Rook’s death.

  Except they couldn’t save Castle. Whether he made it through dead or alive.

  The rough animal trail turned into a rippled wash of soil, the erosion of centuries creating a series of natural steps down an embankment. Water flowed downhill, and the river eventually joined up with Lake Chotoa. The lakeside was densely developed, though mostly for summer homes. Few people would be there this time of year, but Castle would get help. There were probably even cell phone towers there. With the radio batteries dead, the cell phone was his only means of communication. But the phone had been rendered useless here in the gorge, blocked from signals and isolated from other systems. Reaching the lake might again connect him with the real world and its sane, solid angles. A world without man-sized, man-eating birds.

  Castle scrambled down the wash, senses tuned to the crunching leaves beneath his boots. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his ears strained against the soft roar of the river for any odd sound Like the flap of giant wings -

  Such as Ace Goodall’s footsteps.

  Goodall couldn’t have gone far, even if he’d fled camp shortly before sunset. The Bama Bomber would be slowed by his gear, and he may have hooked up with the woman again. The Rook said Goodall’s assessment revealed a man in desperate need of attention, the kind who probably clipped newspaper articles about his crimes. Such a pathetic mind would crave the company of someone who would see him as a hero, and in turn Goodall would be compelled to show off with increasingly reckless and aberrant behavior. It would be the desperate codependence of a sadist and masochist, The Rook had said.

  The two had undoubtedly planned the trap. The girl by the camp, posing as bait, while Goodall hid in the woods with three kinds of weapons. The Rook had even warned that Goodall might use her as an unwitting guinea pig, pack a sleeping bag with explosives, and detonate it as the agents closed in on the camp. Castle and his partner had been ready for all contingencies but one: a wrong step, a big kablooey, and the unleashing of an unnatural beast.

  The wash bottomed out on a wider section of trail, one that was still primitive but passable. If Goodall and the girl were reunited, they’d be moving slowly. Like him, they were probably headed for the river, wanting to take the fastest possible route to escape now that their whereabouts were known. Perhaps Castle could catch up with them and take down Goodall. No one would blame him for killing the subject. Goodall was wanted dead or alive, with a $100,000 bounty out for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Killing the murderer would maybe ease some of the acid that roiled in Castle’s gut, the juice of failure and fear.

  Forget the bird-beast. Forget The Rook. Forget little Jimmy Castle, the kid who shivered under the blankets. This one’s for law and order.

  Yeah, sure. Let’s fall back on that one. Duty.

  Because you know what’s under the bed, and you’re too afraid to peek.

  Castle drew his Glock and jogged silently through the murk of night, not buying his own line of bullshit.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The fuck she thinks we are, beavers? Why did I let her talk me into coming down to water? We’da been better off hiking out the way we came in and taking our chances thumbing south.

  Up close, the river was both faster and deeper than it had appeared from the high ridges. A few big boulders jutted up wet and gray, the current beating froth between them. Ace Goodall couldn’t swim, and his fear of the water was almost as bad as his fear of heights. No way would he let on to Clara, though. After all, this was all her fault. If she hadn’t fucked up when the agents came snooping around, Ace would be waking up to instant coffee and a packet of instant oatmeal. Instead, he was forced to lie on his belly and scoop river water into his mouth. No telling how much fish piss he was drinking.

  Clara knelt beside him, splashing cold water on her face. They had slept for an hour or so, Ace leaning against her so he’d wake up if she tried to run away again. Even though God was on his side, God didn’t do much to cut out the loneliness. The joy of setting off those clinic bombs had faded and left him hollow, and even the newspaper clippings didn’t quite cheer him up. Sure, his mission was important, but it wasn’t until he met Clara that he found true pride in his work. In her, he had a partner, but most importantly, he had someone who admired him and appreciated the role God had given him. Even though she was still a dumb, highfalutin bitch.

  “What now?” he asked, raising his voice over the water.

  “I guess we follow the river,” she said. “It ought to come out somewhere.”

  “Sure. It comes out at the ocean. What other bright ideas do you have? Want me to gnaw some damned trees in two so we can build a raft?”

  “Ace, don’t get mad. We got away, didn’t we?”

  “Thanks to the angels. But I don’t see them nowheres now. Looks like we’re on our own.”

  He squinted toward the east, where the sun rose like an egg yolk sliding up a greasy griddle. The river was loud and the tinkling, splashing, and gurgling hurt his ears and set him on edge. Sharp, high-pitched sounds had always bothered him. Maybe because his dad had worked him in the sawmill at the age of six, when Ace’s job had been to carry away the scrap bark. The rusty blade was as tall as Ace, with teeth as big as those in a shark’s grin.

  Ace had been there the day his dad had lost three fingers to the mill. Not in the saw, but in the great fan belt hooked to the gasoline engine that drove the blade. The fingers had kicked out and bounced off a pile of wood chips at Ace’s feet. He’d looked down at them, thinking how they didn’t look like fingers once they were no longer attached to a hand. More than anything, they resembled fat, pale grubs that had swollen and popped. A good lesson. When you take something out of its rightful place, it don’t belong no more. His dad had wrapped a dirty handkerchief around the maimed limb and met the day’s quota. The fingers lay where they were until the sawdust and wood chips covered them.

  “About how far do you think it is?” Clara asked. For an uppity rich bitch with an uppity name, she looked like hell. Watery, purple pouches bulged under her bloodshot eyes, her hair was oily and tangled, and her clothes were damp and dirty. She was way too scrawny, and Ace wondered not for the first time if she was the kind who threw up after eating. He heard some of those uppity rich bitches did that sort of thing.

  He wondered if Eve had thrown up after the first bite of the apple, o
nce she knew the thing was poisoned with sin and forbidden knowledge. Hell, no. Of course not. The natural thing to do, the woman thing, was to poison Adam.

  “I reckon three or four miles,” he said, pulling a guess out of the air. Lying had never been a problem for him. “At least if we stick to the river, we know we’re going downhill.”

  “Think the police will know about the agents yet?”

  “Don’t hardly see how. They ain’t been dead long enough to go missing. Of course, there might be other ones already in the woods that we ain’t seen yet.”

  “What will they do to you for killing them?”

  He sighed, but the sound was lost in the sweeping roar of the river. “How many times I got to tell you? It was the angel that killed them, not me.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the one they’ll blame.”

  Ace had to agree with that. The law had always nailed his ass for the least little infraction. Every time someone tossed a rock through a school window, little Robert Wayne Goodall took the fall. When the neighbor’s cat turned up skinned and hanging from a tree branch, Bobby Wayne’s ass was also swinging in the wind. When a fire took down the new Sunday school wing of the Beulaville Baptist Church, Goodall drew his first stretch, a three-month cakewalk in a juvenile detention center in Mobile. That’s where he earned the nickname “Ace,” partly for his skill at poker and partly because he’d fought off a big German goon who’d wanted Bobby Wayne to swallow his one-eyed bratwurst. The German had eventually found another sweetheart and befriended Ace, and they’d spent their sentences swapping out cigarettes, lies, and survival tips.

  Bouncing from juvie to high school had been a case of frying pan to fire. The probation officer was on him like a green fly on shit, and Ace could hardly score a joint without the crew-cut motherfucker reading him the riot act. Home life was hell, his mom lost in the Bible and Dad a hopeless workaholic who couldn’t understand why his little Bobby Wayne couldn’t straighten up and follow in his footsteps. After all, Dad may have lost a few fingers, but he still had ten toes and they all pointed toward God’s golden stairway.