Letting him down.
When he was all hung up.
He laughed again, as Farrengalli’s weight was lifted from him. Then he heard Dove’s voice again.
“Robert!”
Robert. She said his name with affection and urgency. The way she might if they had made love “Help me pull the rope up,” she shouted.
“Fuck, no! The crazy redskin tried to scalp my ass.”
“Help me. I’m not strong enough-”
“Sorry, babe. You’re a good lay and all that, but you’re on your own. Don’t you fucking get it? We’ve all been on our own all along.”
Odd, Raintree thought, blood pooling in his head and making him dizzy even as it leaked down the granite wall. The river should be falling out of the sky any minute now.
He thought of the two of them below him, naked as Adam and Eve, sharing the apple and the worm.
“Help me, you bastard!”
Raintree felt a dull, distant tugging on the rope. Dove was strong, but not strong enough. Just as well. Raintree’s only regret was that his fingers were too numb to dig into the medicine bag. A few Valiums would be the perfect topper for this bum trip.
Bum trip. Skipping rope. Amateur technique.
He stared out across the Unegama Gorge, dangling from the heights of Attacoa, the place his Cherokee forefathers had ascended in search of wisdom. He had come up short, that was all.
The rain started again, though the moon still cut though the clouds enough to throw a strange gleam on the sacred stack of stones.
One of the Raven Mockers flew from the cooling mists above, lost and late. It paused in the air, its hueless skin slick from rain or an unwholesome sweat. Then it altered course as if receiving a silent telegraph.
Toward Raintree.
As it closed the distance, Raintree realized this was what he had sought. This hideous, gray, knotty-limbed creature, this ancient evil spirit, was his animal guide.
This was his totem, his medicine.
The object of his vision quest.
The Raven Mocker drew near, uncertain, as if sizing up a possible adversary. Or else having no idea where to sink its curved, yellow teeth.
Good acid, Robert Raintree thought, as the flicker of stunted wings cast a soft, ill wind across his rain- spattered skin. Because my spirit guide is a white man gone gray. It has Jim Castle’s face.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Clara awoke in utter darkness, or maybe she wasn’t awake and this wasn’t darkness, but a new state of being.
Maybe she hadn’t slept at all. Or maybe she’d always been asleep and the dream merely changed phases.
Hands crawled the length of her belly, and she wondered if it was Ace, wanting some hurried, empty, dry intercourse. She slapped at the hands, though her arms felt heavy, full of sand. The grogginess of dreams infected her and slowed her movements. She felt as she had one night at Radford, when the philosophy professor had drugged her with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, despite her being a willing partner in perversity. The drug had not been used to ease her pain, for the good doctor knew they both enjoyed the sensations too much to dull any of its sharp edges.
No, the drug’s sole purpose had been to erase her subsequent memory of the event. To this day, she had never been certain of the doc’s exploits, only that she’d bled from her vagina and rectum for a week, bruises mottled her breasts, and her back and buttocks had been covered with welts. The doctor called a few weeks later and asked if she had enjoyed it. She answered in the affirmative, and even saw him on several other occasions, though the doctor must have used up his entire bag of tricks, because she quickly grew bored with him.
Perhaps because he knew the limits and had observed them. Not just his own limits, whether moral or physical or legal. No, he’d been reined in by a social order that promised freedom, shouted it as a slogan, and sold it like a commodity, but when real freedom opened up the possibilities before its believers, they turned their cowardly faces away.
She had known limits. Ace’s cold, slick hands could fondle and penetrate her, but they would never touch her. None of them had ever touched her, not even those who had punished her the most deeply or hit her the hardest.
“Don’t, Ace, I’m sleepy.” Her tongue was thick, and the words slurred.
Ace wasn’t giving up. You had to give it to the human cockroach, he was persistent. The Bama Bomber had a “never say die” attitude, a “can do” spirit, a “kill them all and let God sort them out” mentality.
Even if he was a lousy lay.
The hands moved over her belly, up to her swollen nipples. They pinched gently, and she felt her nipples grow larger. Shit. Ace had hit her weak points. She moaned, despite her discomfort.
She was on her back, lying on something hard. She recalled Ace’s quick screw by the river, just before they’d hijacked the rafting expedition, how he’d derived pleasure in the slap of her bare flesh against unyielding granite.
She laughed. She’d been hit harder by better. Her new motto.
The hands- Jeez, had he grown an extra pair in the night? — now went along her legs, caressing the insides of her thighs. Gentle, soothing, arousing, the sharp fingernails tracing along her flesh, applying just enough pressure to mark the skin.
As if Ace had found an instructional manual on foreplay.
She moaned again, and Ace’s tongue flicked across her lips. Then at her belly button, then both at the same time.
Two tongues?
If not Ace, then who?
The group of rafters?
No, they were probably all dead by now.
Dead by now…
As full memory and awareness came flooding back, she tried to sit up, but the hands confined her. Besides, she was languid and exhausted. The hands were gentle, soothing.
Not hands… claws.
She remembered glimpse she’d had of their gray, knotty power, as one of them carried her into darkness. She was in their lair.
She cringed, waiting for the hands to squeeze her, the teeth to sink in, the blood to flow.
No.
These creatures weren’t going to kill her, or they would have already done so.
They wanted something.
She fought for control, pushed at the claws that felt along her belly.
They wanted Little Ace.
A liquid flush erupted from deep in the bowels of the lair. The claws hesitated, and unseen wings flicked uneasily. The fluid rumble sounded again, and the stone vibrated beneath Clara’s back. Something heavy fell, followed by a splash.
Splash?
Another rumble, and the claws left her, the air filled with rustling and stirring, leathery tongues licking parched, swollen lips. She could feel the wind of their wings, and the air of the confined space had taken on a damp quality. The flushing sound was rivaled by a rushing hiss far away.
