John Connolly - The Wrath of Angels

‘Malphas,’ I said.

‘Why would he stay out here?’ asked Louis. ‘Assuming Wildon and the pilot died in the crash, he was free and clear. He could just go back to doing whatever he was doing before Wildon found him.’

‘Could be that he didn’t want to,’ I said.

‘You think he liked the outdoor life so much he decided to spend part of his time in a ruined fort making collages from pornography?’

It didn’t sound likely. Liat watched us both, following the conversation on our lips.

‘Part of the time,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘You said he spent “part of his time” at the fort. This doesn’t look like a permanent dwelling, and those pictures on the wall were put there recently. Where does he spend the rest of his time, and why would he hole up in this place anyway if he’s made a permanent home somewhere else?’

I looked to Liat, but she had turned her back on us. Now she beckoned us to join her as she examined something carved into the wood, light against dark.

It was a detailed representation of a young girl’s head, two or three times normal size, her hair long and curling from her scalp like the bodies of snakes. Her eyes had been cut deeper and larger than the rest of her, the ovals of them so big that I could have placed my fist in them had they not been filled with teeth, the roots of them impaled in the white wood. There were more teeth in her huge mouth, except these ones were root-out, giving them the appearance of fangs. It was terrifying in aspect and effect.

‘If you’re frightened of something, where better to hide than a fort?’ I said.

‘A fort with no gates?’ said Louis.

‘A fort with bad memories,’ I replied. ‘A fort with blood in its walls and its dirt. Maybe a fort like that doesn’t need gates.’

‘He was frightened of a little girl?’ Louis sounded skeptical.

‘If what I’ve heard about her is true, he had good cause to be.’

‘But he stayed out here, even though he was scared of her. I guess that plane must be real important to him.’

Liat shook her head.

‘Not the plane?’ I said.

She mouthed the word no .

‘Then what?’

She made it clear that she didn’t know. In the fading light, and the shadows of the old fort, I almost missed the lie.

Almost.

50

Ray Wray was running.

He wasn’t sure how it had all gone so wrong so fast, but he knew now that he and Joe had been out of their depth right from the start. They should have backed away the first time that the kid and the woman had come near them, except Joe owed them and they were calling in the debt, and Joe had given Ray to understand that these weren’t the kind of people on whom one reneged. He was just grateful to Ray for tagging along, even if Ray wouldn’t have been anywhere near those woods if he hadn’t been so desperate for cash.

They’d made good progress from the start. The kid might have been spookier than a haunted house on Halloween, but the little bastard could move, and there had been no complaints from the woman about the pace that had been set, either on her own behalf or the kid’s. While Joe had the map, and a good sense of where they were going, it often seemed to Ray that it was the woman who was guiding them, and not the other way around. When Joe paused to check his malfunctioning compass, the woman would simply keep on walking, the kid trotting behind her, and when Joe and Ray caught up with them there was no need to alter direction.

Ray figured they were less than a mile from the fort when the first arrow struck. His first thought was, Indians! which was absurd and unhelpful but there was no understanding the workings of the human mind. Even as he hit the ground, and heard Joe swear, he’d found himself giggling, and it was only when he looked up and saw the arrow buried in the trunk of a white pine that he stopped laughing and began considering that he might die out here.

Joe was a few feet to his left, trying to find the source of the arrow.

‘Hunter?’ asked Ray, but he asked more in hope than expectation. They were still wearing their orange bibs. There had been some discussion about it, but Ray and Joe had finally taken the view that, with a woman and a kid in tow, it was better to be safe. It would have to be one dumb-ass bow hunter who’d shoot an arrow at someone in orange.

‘No fuckin’ way,’ said Joe, which was just what Ray had thought.

The Flores woman was using a thick oak for cover. Still searching the forest for the source of the arrow, Joe called back to her.

‘Miss Flores, you got any idea who that might be?’

Something darted behind a wind-tipped hemlock, the old tree resembling an animal more than vegetation, its body seemingly poised to rise up on its roots and stride through the forest. The moving figure revealed itself to be a big man, his head misshapen, the bow clearly visible in his hand. Ray didn’t think: he just fired. There was an explosion of bark from the hemlock, and then Joe was firing too. The man retreated fast, limping some yet still nimble, but Ray was pretty certain that one or other of them had winged him. Ray had seen him stumble awkwardly on the third or fourth shot: upper body, maybe the right arm or shoulder. It was only when he and Joe stopped shooting that he realized the Flores woman had been shouting. Against the fading echo of the shots, and the ringing in his ears, he heard the word ‘No!’

‘The hell do you mean, “No”?’ asked Joe. He had emptied his rifle, and was reloading from a prone position, lying on his back while Ray provided cover for him.

‘I don’t want him hurt,’ said Flores.

‘Miss, I signed up to get you to that airplane, and get you safely out again,’ said Joe. He finished reloading and scanned the trees. ‘I did not sign up to get myself killed.’

The arrow seemed to materialize in Joe’s left leg. One second he was just lying there, preparing to say something else to Flores, and the next the three-blade head had punched its way straight through his thigh, and Joe’s mouth was wide open in a scream as the blood began to spill, the wound already hemorrhaging massively. Ray had never seen so much blood pump so quickly from a man. He moved to help as Joe rose up and a second arrow hit him low in the back, and Ray knew instantly that Joe was going to die. He coughed up a great spray of red as Ray crawled to him and, using his friend’s body as cover, began shooting into the forest, hoping to hit something, anything. Joe just grunted as the third arrow struck his back. This one must have pierced his heart because his body shook hard once beneath Ray and then went still.

But that final arrow had given Ray an opening. He’d seen the figure again, just as the arrow was loosed, and now he had a target. He got the man in his sights and was about to pull the trigger when a hand yanked his head back and the shot went wild. Ray took a punch to the side of the head. It wasn’t much of a blow, but a trailing finger caught his left eye, the pain blinding him for a few seconds. He lashed out, and felt his fist connect with lips and teeth. When he looked around, the boy was lying on the ground, his mouth red from a split lip.

Ray turned the rifle on the child.

‘You move and I’ll put a bullet in you,’ he said, but it wasn’t the boy who moved. To his right, Ray saw Darina Flores rise to her feet and begin walking in the direction of the old yellow birch behind which Ray had glimpsed their attacker. She was calling out to him, calling a name.

‘Malphas!’ she said. ‘Malphas!’

The boy crawled away from Ray. Once he was safely distant, he got to his feet and followed the woman, blood spilling from his damaged gums. He did not look back.

That was when Ray made his decision. He tore off his orange vest and started to run.