Entangled (39 page)

This body that Leoni was in – occupying, inhabiting, maybe even possessing – was in many ways very much like a regular body, with all the normal functions. But you could do things to it that your meat body back on planet Earth couldn’t handle.

For example, what was being done to her right now as she lay paralysed on the hard stone floor of the shadowy granite chamber.

Kneeling by her shoulder, Don Apolinar was shoving his thick stubby fingers through various parts of her skull. He was moving them around inside her brain. The pain and feelings of violation were horrible. Yet she felt detached from the ordeal. It was a bit like being raped: you went numb; you blotted it out and survived.

‘You cannot hide it,’ he said after a moment. ‘I with my magic will find it.’

She just had time to think
Hide what? Find what?
when he placed his hands over her ears and plunged all his fingers and both thumbs into her head in a great explosion of pain.

‘Tell me where it is,’ he hissed.

‘Use your magic, douchebag! I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’

He seemed to consider, a look of greed and violent machismo crossing his face. All his fingers were still inside her head, past the second knuckle. ‘Treasure!’ he barked. ‘In your brain she buried it.’

The thick fingers probed deeper and in a flash Leoni understood.

He meant the filament of crystal the Blue Angel had implanted in her left temple!

For some reason he wanted it. He called it treasure. Maybe this was the reason he’d grabbed her in the first place.

She was already fighting to suppress her memories of the surprise operation the Angel had performed on her when Don Apolinar grunted with delight and she knew he had read her mind. ‘See how easily you
surrender to me,’ he boasted. ‘Like a child. You have the force yet I overwhelm you.’ His hand shot towards her temple and hovered over the exact spot where the crystal was buried. A finger went in. A thumb. ‘Oh, I am so clever,’ he crowed. ‘This is
my
magic,
mine,
that has found the treasure!’

He lunged, seemed to catch hold of something, grunted with satisfaction and pulled hard. Leoni screamed – the pain was unimaginable – and Don Apolinar giggled. ‘Yes! Yes!’ – he sounded like he was having an orgasm – ‘I will take it now!’

She stared into his eyes, dark as smoked mirrors. In this paralysed state there was nothing she could do to prevent him from ripping the crystal thread out of her brain and she felt sure he would kill her when he did. But as he tightened his grip something distracted him. He faltered, tilted his head to one side and seemed to listen.

Leoni could hear it too – the sacred melody of an
icaro,
muffled and indistinct. She felt Don Apolinar’s grip loosen again. Leaving her prone and helpless on the floor, he removed his fingers from her brain and surged to his feet just as the granite wall of the great chamber split open and a small tawny eagle hurtled through the gap, so fast it was a blur. It flew straight at Don Apolinar, forcing him to dive, raked his face with its talons as it passed, and landed beside Leoni. She felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder and watched, stunned, as the eagle completed its transformation into a man.

Don Emmanuel! Of course!

As suddenly as it had set in, her paralysis left her. She struggled to her feet, tearing off and throwing down the choke chain and leash that still hung around her neck.

The two men were circling, their eyes locked, and a dangerous energy crackled between them.

Don Emmanuel gestured to Leoni to stay back and she moved to obey, keeping him between herself and Don Apolinar. Although she guessed the bodies both men inhabited were like her own – avatars with capacities their bodies on Earth did not possess – she couldn’t help but feel the inequality of the contest. It wasn’t that one was old and small while the other was tall and in his prime. Such attributes meant little in these realms of endless transformation. Rather, she sensed a spectacular difference of power, a difference of
force,
between the older and
the younger man. Hovering like a miasma about Don Apolinar was a capacity for malice, an appetite for cruelty and a lust for evil that Don Emmanuel could not match.

Both men began to shapeshift as they circled, one form merging into another in dizzying succession. Don Apolinar became a bear, a wolf, a lion, Don Emmanuel became a stag, a boa constrictor, a cayman. Too fast for the eye to follow, their shifts and changes cycled through countless different forms until suddenly they clashed in a blur of transformation. Roaring and bellowing, Don Apolinar became a tiger biting down on the neck of Don Emmanuel as a buffalo who transformed into a porcupine to break free and back into a buffalo to throw the tiger over his head. But the tiger was already changing into a great serpent that wrapped its coils around the buffalo which became a mouse that escaped and transformed into a snarling dog.

Darting around the edge of the circle, Leoni needed no second bidding to keep as far away as possible from all the various manifestations of Don Apolinar. Don Emmanuel had returned to the eagle form in which he had entered the chamber, but as he swooped and slashed she could see his strength was failing. Don Apolinar’s avatar had become a massive white jaguar, radiant with violent energy. He leapt, paws outstretched, and grappled with Don Emmanuel in flight. His claws raked a wing, spraying blood and feathers, there was a brittle crunch of broken bones and the eagle was smashed to the floor.

At once both men reverted to human form and Don Apolinar stood wide-legged in triumph, straddling the little Shipibo shaman who lay sprawled on his back, blood pumping from his chest and shoulder. His left arm was half torn from his body and grotesquely broken in three places. His eyes were wide and glassy.

‘Foolish little healer,’ sneered Don Apolinar. ‘Your magic weak, my magic strong.’ He stooped: ‘I think I kill you now, yes? Maybe cut out your heart?’

Leoni watched in a daze as Don Apolinar drew a long thin knife from a pocket of his white suit.

A club glanced off Ria’s shoulder, numbing her left arm, but she kept her balance, ducked under her attacker’s guard, drove her knife into his belly and twisted the blade as she drew it out. Two more braves were bearing down on her, their crazed blue eyes burning. She dodged between them, stabbed one, opened the other’s throat. She could see Brindle was in trouble, pressed hard by three Illimani braves. But he wasn’t asking for help. Nobody was. Bahat had fallen already. Ligar too … Ria fended off a spear, a blade sliced her arm, something heavy bashed into the side of her head and suddenly – it was as though a mountain had fallen on her – she was smashed to the ground amongst a forest of pale, hairy Illimani legs. She surged up again, stabbing blindly, but more huge blows knocked her back down and she tumbled, it seemed for ever, into darkness.

As consciousness seeped back Ria found a powerful grip fastened in her hair, dragging her body bumping and jolting over the ground. Her head pounded and her ears rang where she’d been clubbed. She blinked because her eyes were full of blood. Somehow she got a hand to her face, cleared her vision. A tall young Illimani was dragging her towards the meeting ground, tugging so hard on her hair that her scalp was about to tear free of her skull. She could see her flint knife tucked into his waistband beside a bouncing severed head, a cluster of penises and other grotesque trophies.

As the brave hauled her between two of the huge wooden posts that encircled the meeting ground she reached up her hands, seized his thick forearm, plunged her nails deep into his flesh, and threw all her weight against him. He stumbled in surprise, loosening his grip on her hair, and she was on him at once. With a howl she snatched her knife from his waistband and stabbed him in the groin, sawing the blade upwards before jerking it free. He fell screaming beneath her and she felt mad joy stirring in her heart. Where was the next Illimani to kill? Then a
big knuckly fist struck her full in the face and she was flat on her back on the ground again, unable to resist as her knife was wrested from her grasp, ears ringing, flashing lights dancing before her eyes.

Ria peered up, blinking through more blood, feeling dizzy and sick, and saw Grigo, flanked by Illimani braves, standing over her holding the knife.

She was still too dazed to fight back as he stooped and cut her leggings away from her hips, leaving her naked from the waist down. ‘You’re part of my prize,’ he explained, as he shoved her knife into his belt. ‘Lord Sulpa gave you to me.’ His face darkened: ‘But I guess you don’t get what that means.’ He leaned closer, dribbling spit, grabbed her hair and forced her onto her face, thrusting a knee between her thighs. ‘It means I finally get to fuck you, you BITCH. After that I’m going to burn you with your friends.’

Turning her head, Ria saw, with a leap of hope, that her companions were not dead. They were being herded together close to the bonfire at the centre of the meeting ground. Brindle was bleeding heavily from a head wound and Bont was carrying him like a child in his massive arms. Bahat was on the ground in a pool of blood. He moved, so he was alive. But he looked done for. Ligar was also hurt. Vulp, Rotas, Oplimar and Jergat were in better shape but all had taken savage beatings.

Grigo clamped his right hand onto the back of Ria’s neck. She could feel him squirming on top of her, his knee jammed up tightly between her buttocks, as he tried to unbelt his leggings. But it seemed he needed two hands for that and he let go of her neck again. She didn’t know why she found it funny but suddenly she was laughing and shrieking her defiance: ‘What’s the matter, Grigo? Can’t you find your prick?’

She raised her head.

A ring of Illimani braves, naked but for the weapons they carried and the ever-present spear-throwers slung across their backs, had gathered round to shout what sounded like encouragement to Grigo in their harsh, growly language. He grunted, punched the back of her head, and finally tugged down his belt and leggings with both hands, exposing a pale, floppy penis. ‘Look at that!’ Ria cackled through waves of giddiness and nausea. ‘You can’t even get it up’ – and her laughter spread to the five braves encircling them, driving Grigo into a frenzy.

WHACK! His fist smashed into the back of her head again and she
crumpled. Her face was turned to the side when she hit the ground and her eyes were open. Grigo was preoccupied with his limp, stinking cock – Ria could actually smell it from this close – and the Illimani were having too much fun watching, so she alone saw Driff, naked as the rest of his tribe, loping towards them with a tomahawk in each hand. He strode right through the ring of braves and, before anyone took notice, stepped in on Grigo, chopped one of the hatchets deep into his face and kicked him away from Ria as he tugged the blade clear.

At first the Illimani didn’t react – as though betrayal by one of their own was impossible even to contemplate. Driff charged them, his face pale, and in a heartbeat three of them went down, screaming and spouting blood. Two more surged forward to take their place but also fell under his hatchets. By then he’d lost the advantage of surprise and more braves converged on him from the larger group guarding the prisoners beside the bonfire. A spear pierced his side, a club glanced off his head and it seemed he must be overwhelmed.

Half naked, beaten and bloody, but momentarily forgotten, Ria rolled to her feet, ignoring savage jolts of pain, and retrieved her knife from Grigo’s belt. Then she darted into the melee to stab one of Driff’s attackers in the back, thrusting the long blade deep between his ribs, withdrawing it and slicing open a second man’s throat. As a howling scrum of close combat surrounded her she weaved and dived and killed again. She’d been lucky so far but she knew she only had moments left to live – Driff too: what madness had inspired him to try to rescue her? – when out of the corner of her eye she saw another long line of charging braves bearing down on them.

She cackled – why did the Illimani need reinforcements? – and shook her head to clear the blood from her eyes. Only then did she register that the new attackers were not more of the outlanders but Uglies, led by Grondin. His mission had been to bring the populations of the outlying camps into Secret Place and he must have worked fast, or encountered them already on the way, because he now commanded a powerful force of braves – perhaps as many as a hundred. Less than thirty of the Illimani scouting party still stood after the furious fighting of the past moments and they were soon killed.

‘Brindle, speak to me.’
Ria sent out her thought-voice as she ran towards the little group of her companions. But she saw that her friend was unconscious, his eyes rolled up in his head, blood dripping from a huge
gash in his skull. She tried again: ‘Speak to me, Brindle,’ and again there was no reply. ‘He gone very deep, Ria’, Oplimar told her. ‘Maybe don’t come back.’