Hellenic Immortal (29 page)

It was not November, but obviously somebody in the park office had seen the weather report (which we, equally obviously, had not) and concluded that shutting down the road early would be prudent. A large metal rail had been pushed across the road, blocking the way.

But Hippos would not be deterred. He and Staphus climbed out, and with a little work, managed to reopen the road by pushing the rail aside. I suppose it was foolish for the park rangers to not have a car out at the barrier, but conversely who would be stupid enough to ignore a warning like that? Other than us?

We made it another ten miles or so before the predictable happened and Hippos lost control of the van. To his credit, he had been able to keep us on the road in very bad conditions for nearly three hours before this happened, and in a fairly judgmentally impaired state. (From Athens to Seattle, we’d been traveling for twenty-four hours and I don’t think he got any sleep at all. I had; I slept on the plane. But satyrs don’t need much sleep.) We skidded and fishtailed along the empty, snow-covered road before crashing softly into a snow bank on the northern side, which was good as the southern side consisted of a steep drop directly into the Skagit River. Equally good, he missed all the trees. But the van ended up stuck where it had come to rest.

This had put Hippos in an even fouler mood, if such a thing were possible.

*
 
*
 
*

We got in a good hour of off-path hiking before hitting a real trail. This was a cause for celebration, and a chance to stop for a minute and get a second wind.

Ariadne sat down in the snow against a tree and pulled back her hood to shake some of the sweat loose from her long, black hair. I sat down beside her.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Azure Lake,” she said quietly. “It’s not far from the base of Mount Terror.”

“Mount Terror? You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.” She reached inside her voluminous parka and emerged with a bottle of water. It took an effort to get the cap off with her snow-covered gloves, but she managed it eventually. “Have you ever walked through a storm like this?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied. “Before the glaciers over Europe receded, I spent a lot of time hunting in these conditions. Not the sort of thing you do unless you really have to.”

She stared at me. “You lived through an ice age?”

“I was born at the tail end of one, yeah, but in central Africa. Much nicer weather there.”

“If we both survive this, you’ll have to tell me about it.”

I laughed. “This was your idea. You make it sound like we’re both captives.”

“I’m trying to save something important,” she insisted. “If I could do that from a warm bed, I would.”

Hippos, who had been looking at a trail map that was being slowly taken apart by the wind, stepped up and said, “We take this path for a ways, until it branches off here.” He tried showing this to Ariadne on the map, but it was impossible to hold it still.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

“Are you ready to continue?” He and the other satyrs didn’t look at all winded. Forest travel for them was in their blood, although their people didn’t historically have to deal with conditions like this.

“Yes,” she said.
 

He pulled her to her feet. I had to stand up on my own, a matter that my thighs disapproved of. That’s where you feel it when you walk in the snow—the thighs. The pain comes from having to lift your whole leg up just to take another step forward. I also had wind burn on parts of my face, and I hadn’t felt my fingers for more than an hour. About the only thing that was working out was that I’d lost feeling in both feet, which made the blistering from the oversized shoes less painful.

“And you,” Hippos began, looking at me, “you can continue?”

“Would you consider seeking shelter until the storm passes?”
 

“I would not.”

“Then lead on, ambassador,” I said.

Ambassador was my new name for Hippos. It seemed to annoy him, which worked fine for me. I started calling him that as soon as we got aboard the 727 from Athens, which happened to be a private jet owned by the Greek government. It turns out Hippos is the deputy ambassador to the United States. That was how they managed to get someone whose wrists were lashed together with twine into the country without having to answer awkward questions at customs. I was tempted to write my congressman about the lax post-9/11 security, but I’m not really a U.S. citizen and thus don’t have a congressman.

With Hippos again leading the way, his GPS device apparently frozen to his right hand, I fell in line with Ariadne and continued the slow march. Neither Dyanos nor Staphus seemed concerned enough about this to say anything.

“Still worried you’re about to die?” she asked, without looking. “Cassandra could have been wrong.”

“Oracles aren’t wrong, they’re just misinterpreted,” I said. “What did she tell you, anyhow? You seemed to have gotten a much more detailed prophecy than I did.”

“It was longer than yours, certainly,” she agreed. “Detailed? Not really. But I’m working with two prophecies. There wasn’t much overlap between them, and I have a lifetime of experience interpreting the subtleties of prophetic statements.”

I considered pointing out that I’ve had two or three lifetimes’ worth of experience doing the same, but that would have just led us back around to the fact that I was expecting to die, which I didn’t feel like talking about anymore.

I changed the subject. “Here’s something I’m not clear on. What does your ex think this nymph is going to do for him?”

“Defend the natural world in a way he can’t,” she offered.

“What happens if it doesn’t feel like doing that?”

“He seems to be under the impression that he is you, and that you can control a nymph.” She looked at me directly, which is difficult with a hood. “Can you?”

I laughed. “Of course I can’t. I’ve never seen one. I don’t even know if they exist.”

She stared at me.

“What?” I asked.

“It is
very
hard to tell when you’re joking.” She marched ahead before I had an opportunity to figure out what that meant.

*
 
*
 
*

The storm only got worse. I have been in plenty of hairy situations in my life, weather-wise, and truthfully this didn’t come all that close to any of the nastier ones, but that didn’t mean it had no ambition in that direction. Twice we strayed from the trail and didn’t realize it for several minutes and were forced to follow our own steps back.

As I was in the middle of the pack, it was possible for me to see both Dyanos in front and Staphus in back, but I seriously doubted whether Staphus could see Dyanos or vice versa. And when the wind really picked up, I couldn’t see anyone.

Despite this, I got the sense that we weren’t entirely alone. Every now and then, I’d catch a whiff of campfire smoke, but nobody was going to be getting a fire up in these conditions so it had to be an old one. Wind direction indicated the source was to our left.

I was pretty sure I could track it.

I wasn’t thinking about escaping, per se. The problem with conditions this severe, is that it’s really difficult to survive in them alone with no provisions—the satyrs had all of the supplies—so while I was heading to what I thought was probably my own death, death by exposure was much more definitive. But if whoever was out there had a link to the outside world, that could prove useful. I didn’t know if I had the resources to stop the impending ceremony, but I knew someone who might.

So as we progressed, I allowed myself to drop behind Ariadne just a bit, enough to stretch the line in which we were traveling even thinner. Checking Staphus’s progress behind me, I identified a large tree stump on the side of the path and then counted the number of seconds it took before he passed by the same tree stump. It was a ten-count. Then I waited until we reached a rise, a point where the trees offered less protection from the winds.

A quick leap off the path, and onto a downward slope, and in a second or two I was in the trees. Even though I fell over twice—a combination of numb feet and an uneven surface—I still managed to reach a dense copse before I even finished my ten-count, and then I ducked down and waited.

Incidentally, this was not the same thing as vanishing into the woods near Mount Parnitha. I was good, but I couldn’t make footprints disappear and once they noticed I was missing they’d be able to double back and find my trail. If I were a satyr, I could resolve this by climbing a tree and jumping from limb to limb, but that wasn’t happening.

Once I was certain nobody was tracking me, I sniffed the air to see if I could pick up on the campfire again. This would have been easier if I had a werewolf’s nose, or a satyr’s, or really anything but a frozen human nose. Still, after a few shifts in the wind I picked it up; it was downhill from where I stood, in a small ravine.

I stumbled down the hill until I reached the bottom of the ravine, then leaned up against the nearest tree and tried to quiet my breathing as I listened again for a sign of someone following me. I didn’t hear anything. However, my ears were covered by a fur-lined hood, it was windy, and satyrs can still move pretty fast, so there was no telling how long I had.

And then I did hear something. It wasn’t coming from the top of the hill, though; the noise was a few yards further along the ravine.

“Someone here?” I called out.

I pushed ahead toward the noise. As I got closer, I realized I was listening to a radio. Classic Rock, it sounded like, or whatever passes for it now.
 

It didn’t make any sense.
 
Who would leave behind a radio?

I crested a small rise and saw . . . well, it wasn’t pleasant. It appeared somebody in the woods was a very messy eater, and the meal had been two, or possibly three, human beings. I could see the remains of a tent, a toppled Hibachi, a sleeping bag that would be of no use to anybody any longer, and various and random people parts covering everything.

Whenever coming across a scene like this, there is one important rule to keep in mind—find out if whoever or whatever did it is still there. So I crouched down exactly where I was and watched for signs of movement while my thoughts raced through the land animals with which I was familiar that would be capable of such a thing. A bear seemed obvious, but most self-respecting bears were sleeping this time of year. A lion or a tiger perhaps, but the last time I checked there weren’t any in North America outside of the zoos. It actually looked like the work of a dragon, but I hadn’t seen one since the fifteenth century and I didn’t think anyone else had either. That left only one animal—man. But it’d have to be one huge man.

Although it was possible a demon had done it. They were big enough, strong enough, and vicious enough to cause this kind of damage. But it didn’t feel right for a demon. Usually the violence they commit is of the brute force variety. These people had been sliced up like someone had been trying out a large Ginsu knife on them. It could also have been a vampire with very poor impulse control or a profound hatred of Classic Rock, but the attack had happened within the past hour and it was daytime. Granted, the sun was blocked by clouds, but I didn’t know of any vampire who would take a chance like that.

I knew how recent the attack was because of two things. One, it had been snowing all day but the blood was mostly on top of the snow rather than covered by it. Two, the bodies were steaming.
 

There was no sign of the attacker. I got up and walked into the center of the small clearing and checked out the massacre up close.

It had been three people, two men and a woman. I determined this by counting heads. My guess was they had left the path to get away from the wind—the ravine offered a lot of protection—started a fire and planned to wait it out. The fire didn’t last long, but the rest of the plan was solid, except for the part where they were torn into pieces.

Up close, it looked more and more like somebody had used a knife of some sort. Or a sword, actually, given the amount of damage I was looking at.

Had there been a fourth member of the party? Someone who likes going out into the woods with a katana, maybe? But I saw no tracks leading to or away from the bodies—they were all within ten feet of one another—other than mine. There were these odd spots in the snow where grass poked out, but those hardly qualified as tracks.

Something else caught my attention. It was their expressions. All of them had died with their eyes open, which is unusual enough but more so in this case because
each
of them bore a look of surprise. I could understand if the first victim was surprised, but the other two would surely have had time to register a different emotion before their heads were separated from the rest of their bodies. How do you surprise three people that completely? And permanently?

“A nymph,” I muttered, remembering what Ariadne had said. A terrible idea began to take shape. I tried to ignore it.

I eventually found the radio, which had moved from E.L.O. to a portion of the Bachman-Turner Overdrive oeuvre. It was hitched to the back of one of the men’s backpacks. I turned it off and then riffled through the rest of the bag, which was fortunately intact.

Settled at the bottom, under a set of spare clothes, I found a satellite phone.

It took me a minute to dig the card out of my pants—underneath the snow pants— quietly thankful both that I hadn’t changed out of the jeans and that Hippos had never ordered anybody to go through my pockets.

I dialed Mike Lycos’s number.

And that’s exactly where my luck ended.

“Hi, you’ve reached special agent Mike Lycos. Please leave a message and a contact number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Beep.

“Mike, it’s Adam. I’m in the North Cascades. Get to Azure Lake as soon as you can and you’ll find Gordon Alecto and Ariadne Papos. Bring lots of very big guns. I’m going to . . .” And then something hit me hard, knocking me several feet away and onto my ass, and spinning the phone off into a snowdrift.