Matt Hilton - Dead_s men dust

But we still had to check.

We got out of the SUV?fty feet shy of the Dodge. Cautiously we moved to the Dodge and checked it out. While I trained my barrel on the interior of the car, Rink moved in closer and checked the rear seat.

"Clear?" I asked.

Rink nodded me in closer.

"Check it out, Hunter."

I did. And I could do nothing but groan. The backseat was covered with blood. Not pools of the stuff, but enough streaks and smears to indicate that John didn't have much time left on this earth.

While I continued to stare at the mess in the car, Rink quickly checked the trunk of the Dodge,?nding it locked. Cain wasn't about to slip out from inside it while our backs were turned. Rink came to stand beside me and nodded to where patches of scuffed rock marked someone's passing. So did the periodic droplets of blood that glistened darkly against the paler surface.

We were off again. Fanning out so that a dozen paces separated us, we edged forward. Then no more than a hundred yards from the parked car, we reached the brink of the cliff. Out of the con?nes of the SUV, we could approach nearer to the cliff than before, so the void below us no longer appeared so empty. The cliff fell more than two hundred feet to a sloping embankment of shale and sand before leveling out into a natural amphitheater that extended farther than I could see. It was a great bowl shape, alkaline white, with gathering mist hanging over it like a multitude of specters. The sun-bleached basin reminded me of only one thing: the scooped-out, hollow interior of a human skull. I hissed. If Cain could call any place home, this would be it.

Outlined on the escarpment's rim, we made easy targets for anyone positioned below. We stepped back.

"Over there." Rink motioned. "Looks like a way down. Has to be the way they went."

I saw the fissure in the earth and nodded. Moving toward it, I peered over the edge. A casual glance probably wouldn't have revealed the fabricated steps leading down the cliffside, but they were what I'd been looking for. Cain had been here many times in the past; the steps were testimony to that.

"I'll take point," I told Rink. Then I set off. The steps weren't as sheer as they?rst appeared, and surprisingly, you wouldn't have had to be mountain-goat nimble to climb down. However, burdened with John, I did wonder how Cain managed to make his way down without tripping and carrying them both to their deaths. It gave me a healthy new respect for what the man was capable of.

I reminded myself that he was a trained Secret Service agent, that he was probably whalebone-tough beneath the unassuming exterior. Now I had to credit him with above-average strength and determination. He wouldn't be easy to take out in a chest-to-chest fight.

Rink didn't need guidance on how to handle our descent. He waited until I'd hit the bottom before he set off.

While he descended, I covered him. When he reached bottom, I stalked forward. Rink followed, scanning left and right, periodically behind. We traversed the slope of the bone-white hollow in that fashion until we found level footing. The ground was no longer as treach erous as it had been on the descent, but the mist rose up before us, obscuring our view. That was bad enough, but it also played tricks on our ears. As I stepped out on the sand, I could've sworn I heard the tinkle of music. I paused, turned back to Rink.

"You hear that?"

Rink's eyebrows knitted. "That a radio playing?" he whispered.

I shrugged, stepped forward. Between patches of mist, I thought I saw something move. In response, my hand swung toward it,?ngertip caressing the trigger of my SIG. Again the tinkle of music. Then the mist writhed and the shape I'd glimpsed was gone.

"What the hell was that?" Rink hissed at me. Which con?rmed I wasn't hallucinating.

"Don't know," I replied.

"Freakin' ghost," Rink muttered under his breath.

Music tinkled from in front of me. Like the dissonant chimes of a musically challenged orchestra. Once more I snatched a glimpse of the conductor waving his baton. And inured to horror as I'd become, even I cringed back from what stood before me.

"Crap," I breathed. Rink had been right; the monstrosity before me was indeed best described as a ghost.

Cain whistled while he worked. He kept harmony with every wince of agony from John, exhaled loudly in time with every grunt of pain, laughed when John ground his body against the rock wall in an effort to pull away from his slicing administrations. "The pain will go away soon," Cain reassured John. "Once I'm through the dermis, as far down as the bone, I'll be beyond the nerve endings." John howled. Cain stepped in closer, eyes like lasers, guiding the scaling knife with a surgeon's precision. In such deep concentration, the tip of his tongue poked from beneath the slash of his lips, writhing like a fat worm as he plied his tool. Beyond?esh was bone, and that would require effort. His whistling stopped, and now he moaned more often than John did. John was beyond agony now, beyond the point of human endurance. Cain sighed. His work wasn't the same, didn't hold the same satisfaction, if his subject wasn't around to appreciate it. Shaking his head, he stepped away. Then, hands on hips, he surveyed his work of art.

Not bad, I suppose, he told himself. Though it still lacked a certain?amboyant statement to?nish it off. If this was to be the magnum opus of both Jubal and Tubal Cain, he required a truly magni?cent centerpiece to?nalize it.

He slipped the scaling knife into his waistband, retrieved the empty gun from where he'd laid it on the?oor, and headed out into the night.

I've often wondered if there's anyone more supersti tious than a soldier. You'd think that with such a reliance on fact, science, and technology, the basis of modern warfare, there'd be no room for a belief in the supernatural. But there is the?rm belief in many a soldier's mind that paranormal skills are often within the warrior's arsenal. I am a believer in a sixth sense, the heightened ability to detect the unseen watcher, the sniper on the rooftop or the tiger hidden in the long grass. It's so widely believed that it has even been given a term: Rapid Intuitive Experience, the soldier's very own ESP.

I accept that the proof of such a thing is subjective, but it has saved my life enough times that I give it full credence. But up until now, despite my fanciful notions during the assault on Petoskey's building, I hadn't given the existence of ghosts much credibility. How could I? The number of men I've killed, I would go insane if I dwelled on the number who must haunt me.

Still, belief in ghosts or not, for more than a heartbeat I genuinely accepted that the thing in front of me was a vengeful spirit risen from its grave to exact retribution. I stepped back, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. And if the blade it held in its clawed?st had been animated, I doubt that I could've stopped it scything my head from my shoulders. "Holy Christ!" I heard the words, but was unsure whether it was me or Rink that said them. Maybe we both did.

Point Shooting is based entirely on the natural posture, the natural reaction to lifting the gun and?ring wherever danger presents itself. When confronted by this diabolical creature, my reactions failed me. The SIG hung useless by my side.

Then Rink was beside me. He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Hunter… we gotta keep moving, man. Can't let this damn thing throw us."

"It's a little hard not to," I croaked.

The miasma of fear gripped me, and it was an effort to shake free of it. When I did, it was through the exhalation of pent-up fear. "What the hell is it?" Rink asked. I looked again at the specter in the mist. A human skull grinned back at me. But I could see now that there was no life behind the recessed sockets, no drool dripping from its widely splayed teeth. It was a simulacrum, given the illusion of life by Cain's artistic dementia. The skull was mounted on a pole pushed into the sand. A tattered blanket was draped over a crossbar to give the semblance of a body. Hands and forearms-withered skin and tendons holding together the bones-were bound to other poles concealed within the blanket. I shuddered.