Entangled (46 page)

When Leoni fell through the colours of the laptop’s screen she experienced a horrible moment of déjà vu. The last time she’d done this she’d been on her way to a terrifying encounter with Sulpa. Now she was in another one of those tunnels – swooping swirls and turns, long vertical drops. It seemed to go on for ever. Then WHOOMF! She emerged from the transit out of body, invisible in the midst of thousands of Illimani warriors, on the bank of the same fast-flowing river where earlier the Angel had shown her Ria with her companions fleeing on rafts.

How much earlier?

Leoni saw the position of the sun had changed. Somehow morning had become afternoon and it seemed hours must have passed here while she’d gone through the transit. It was going to be hard to find Ria now.

She took to the air and hovered twenty feet above the jostling, agitated Illimani. In the thick of the crowd was a wide circle of clear space occupied by only one man. His back was turned to her, but she would recognise Sulpa from any angle. He looked like he’d been bathing in blood again – the evil fuck – and his hair was matted thick with it. He was also talking to himself, muttering very fast in some unknown language. It was scary, the way this babble kept pouring out of him.

Leoni was fascinated and terrified at the same time.

Would Sulpa somehow be able to detect her presence, even though she was out of body and he was not?

Even though this was all happening twenty-four thousand years ago?

She kept drifting closer until she was floating right over his head.

A dirty-grey sphere nestled in each of his hands, which he held out before him, palms up, fingers flexed, as though he were juggling. The spheres were about the size of tennis balls and had a filmy soap-bubble consistency, much like her own aerial body but opaque.

Leoni risked dropping lower. There was thick smoke swirling inside
the spheres in which, from moment to moment, strange hints of shape and substance threatened to appear.

Was that a wing? Was that a talon? Was that a haunch?

Just a littler closer and …

Now she had it …

Seemingly formed out of the smoke itself, a hideous little beast with muscular hind legs, clawed feet and folded leathery wings crouched within each of the spheres. The pair seemed to be identical combinations of bat, pterodactyl and gargoyle. Their gaping mouths were filled with tiny needle-sharp fangs. Their eyes, the colour of blood, were fixed adoringly on Sulpa.

Even if their master couldn’t see her while he was in his physical body, Leoni was sure his creatures could.

She had already begun to back away when they burst forth from the spheres, flapping their wings, and flew to perch on Sulpa’s shoulders. She saw them cock their heads as he whispered something to each of them. Then they leapt into the air and streaked towards the river.

Leoni knew with cold certainty they’d been sent after Ria. Keeping what she hoped was a safe distance behind them she followed.

The little monsters were flying very fast just above the midstream.

No problem. Leoni could do fast.

As she had discovered before, there was something exhilarating about being out of body, an amazing sense of freedom and boundless possibility that was almost … intoxicating. The feeling that you could do anything you turned your mind to. For an instant she thrust her consciousness thousands of feet into the sky and saw that the river ran through a fairy-tale domain of snow-capped mountains, steep green valleys, shining lakes and vast forests.

This was the land Ria called home.

Her sister in time.

Leoni swooped back to Sulpa’s little gargoyles. They were so close to the surface of the river they seemed to be sniffing the water. She settled into position a hundred feet above and behind them but they never once looked round and flew on, covering mile after mile – perhaps as many as thirty miles, she guessed. Then, without warning, they veered to their left, crossed the riverbank and began to speed across open rising country towards a distant wall of mountains.

Leoni could see nothing that would explain why they had changed direction, yet they had swerved like heat-seeking missiles locked onto their target.

She guessed Ria and her companions must have dumped their rafts here for the river to carry away and begun to trek overland, believing they’d travelled far enough from the Illimani horde to make a safe escape. They’d been careful to leave no tracks but Sulpa’s spies obviously had some other way to home in on them.

As she darted in pursuit Leoni felt a heavy responsibility. She had to help Ria somehow.

The air shivered in front of her and for a moment everything blurred, then swung back into focus.

She knew what it meant.

The Ayahuasca was wearing off. At any moment she was going to be returned to her own time and place.

She began to see the first signs – a smear of blood, a broken spear, part of a leather sandal, a pile of turds – that a large group of people had passed this way. How many had been on the rafts? Fifty? A hundred? She couldn’t be sure but the further they got from Sulpa the less care they were taking to hide their tracks.

The trail led past a lake and up a steep mountainside. There was a forest here, sprawling across the slope of the mountain. The gargoyles dived eagerly amongst the trees and within seconds, still deep in the forest, had caught up with the stragglers.

They were Neanderthals, all males, dressed in skins and rough weavings. Many were bloodied with cuts and stab wounds. Some were badly injured. But Sulpa’s creatures showed no interest in them. With increasing urgency and purpose, seeming more and more excited, they slalomed through the trees, shot across a broad clearing littered with corpses – had a battle been fought here? – and darted straight for a small figure being carried on an improvised stretcher in a mixed group of Neanderthals and humans.

Ria! She had been covered with wounds but fully conscious, her eyes bright and intelligent, when Leoni had glimpsed her earlier on the raft. Now she was unconscious, slumped in the stretcher, her deeply tanned skin a sickly shade of grey, her eyes ringed by huge dark circles. Most of her wounds had stopped bleeding but her leather leggings had been cut away over the outside of her right thigh to reveal an
ominous dark swelling, like some frightful tumour breaking through her skin.

Leoni saw it was to this the gargoyles had been drawn.

Although it was obvious that neither the humans nor the Neanderthals could sense their presence, Sulpa’s creatures had attached themselves to Ria’s leg. Their leathery wings were folded and their snouty mouths were thrust directly into the tumour, making disgusting guzzling and slurping sounds.
Oh, gross!
They were in ecstasy. Their eyes had rolled up in their heads. Slurp. Suck. Suck. There was something in there they hungered for.

The air shivered again, everything turned midnight black and a vast cloud of fireworks exploded before Leoni’s eyes. For an instant she could see nothing at all, seemed to be falling, seemed to be flying. The scene came back into focus just as Ria’s stretcher-bearers stepped out of the belt of forest and back onto open mountainside, and the succubi unclamped their jaws from her leg and flew up into the sky.

Leoni was after them at once and by the time they levelled out at a hundred feet she was already far above them.

Ahead of Ria’s little group a long line of Neanderthals trekked up the steep open grassland beyond the forest. They were stretched out in single file and the leaders were already close to the massive wall of cliffs, running for miles along the ridge line of an interlinked chain of rugged mountains, that seemed to be their ultimate goal.

As Leoni watched she saw the lead group move aside a section of the thick undergrowth that lay at the base of the cliffs, revealing a hidden path.

She looked down. Sulpa’s creatures had seen it too.

The air shivered and steadied, shivered again. Only seconds now, minutes at the most, and she would be out of here. Ria and her friends would never know Sulpa’s spies had followed them and found their hiding place. Within a day he would bring his army here and slaughter them all.

Leoni was determined that must not happen. And there was a simple solution. All she had to do was kill the gargoyles.

It was tricky. Leoni was out of body, and the gargoyles were clearly some kind of aerial species too. But aerial bodies could be held, damaged, detained – the way Don Apolinar had trapped her in his net, the way
she herself had fought Sulpa out of body. She remembered how it had been when she’d barrelled into him – solid resistance and a massive shock, not fog passing through fog. If the same rules applied here then she might be able to do some damage to his loathsome little monsters.

She dropped very fast, aiming for a point between them, and grabbed their scaly necks as she shot past. There was an immediate slap of contact, reassuringly solid and real, and she dragged them, shrieking and flapping their wings, towards the ground, alighting close to Ria as she was carried by on her stretcher.

It was good … to be able to do something for her sister.

Leoni tightened her grip on the creatures’ necks and felt them claw at her aerial body with their hind feet. Their wings hummed and vibrated with frantic energy, but they weren’t going anywhere.

SMACK! Just like that she smashed their snouty heads together.

SMACK! A second time for good measure.

SMACK! SMACK! They didn’t exactly have brains. Their skulls were full of smoke.

SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

Their aerial bodies were already disintegrating, evaporating, blowing away on the wind and soon Leoni was left holding nothing.

Another shiver of the air, very strong this time, before the image of the mountainside and the ragged column of fleeing Neanderthals came back into focus. As well as Ria, Leoni had counted only three other humans amongst the entire group, one also on a stretcher, the other two walking but with injuries.

She tried to imagine what events had led up to this moment, deep in prehistory, to which she was an invisible witness. Ria and her friends had made common cause with the Neanderthals to fight Sulpa. So much the Angel had told her. And Sulpa was in their land with his Illimani army to hunt down and kill those same Neanderthals – the last Neanderthals who would ever live on Earth – because he wanted to murder their goodness and innocence.

So there was something very special about this group of refugees fleeing up a mountainside in northern Spain. Something very precious and special. Something of great value that had to be protected.

She looked for Ria. The stretcher-bearers had already carried her hundreds of feet higher up the mountain towards the hidden path, and soon she would be safe.

Then a terrible thought struck Leoni. She had killed the little spies but whatever it was in that wound on Ria’s leg that had led them to her was still there.

It had to be extracted now or Sulpa would send more spies after her to sniff her out wherever she hid.

Leoni darted forward. Somehow she had to warn the injured unconscious girl.

The air shivered again.

Ria’s eyes snapped open and straight away she was fully conscious and aware of her surroundings. ‘Stop!’ she tried to shout, surprised at the weakness of her voice. She switched to thought-talk: ‘Stop. Please.’

Grondin was carrying the front of her stretcher. He looked around and sent her his thought-voice. ‘We have to get to Secret Place fast. Very dangerous to stop. Maybe followed.’

‘We must stop!’ Ria pulsed. ‘Sulpa shot something into my leg.’

‘Not stop now. Many need healing. All wait to get to Secret Place.’

‘NO! You don’t understand. Sulpa shot something into my leg. It’s still there. If we take it into Secret Place it’s going to lead him to us.’

‘How you know this? You been sleeping long time.’

Before she answered, Ria raised her head and looked around. They were on the mountainside beneath the cliffs that guarded Secret Place – far too close. Up ahead some of the Uglies had already reached the entrance. The mad Illimani kid Driff was carrying the rear of her stretcher. Over there were Ligar and Brindle, also on stretchers, each carried by two big Ugly braves from Grondin’s war party. Ria felt a lurch of concern to see that Brindle was still unconscious. Jergat and Oplimar were both walking, Bont, too, nursing his big axe as though it was a baby. There were cuts and bruises all over his body, but of the spear wound to his back, healed by the Uglies, there was almost no trace.