“What do you mean?” Mr. Quarrie asked.
“ I, and many of my peers were drawn to that geography in relation to a controversial scientific report. Learned men, colleagues poured over it diligently—even obsessively,” Van Resen answered, voice lowering. “At first most of us took part in defense of a great man, and later we all used what he had learned to destroy him.”
“What is the place in the north, doctor?” Mrs. Quarrie pleaded. Her husband held her with one thick arm about her shoulders. “What has it to do with Lilly?”
“Far north of that coast is a mountainous region—and I read of a castle there where lived a nosferatu—” the scientist was cut off as a loud thump and vibration shook the floorboards. By the volume all knew it came from the platform just outside the door.
“Is it Gazda and the others?” Virginia cried, half-rising.
“Wait, Miss James,” Van Resen said, folding the map and returning it to its place inside the cover. “Let us be certain!”
Van Resen slid the old book into his coat’s inner breast pocket before drawing his knife.
He handed the blade to Mr. Quarrie as a sudden repetitive creaking noise came from past the wall. The scientist grimaced to see that Holmes had left the Cossack blade and another kitchen knife by the entrance...
...just where an ominous shadow now slid across the lower edge of the door.
Van Resen did not get two steps before the portal burst open, and savage men charged out of the twilight shadow and into the cabin. They were naked, and their chests were covered with rustic armor of wood and bone, but most startling about them were the masks covering the face of each intruder.
Ringed about the edge with a ridge of coarse black hair, the warriors had skull faces!
The castaways had little time to react, but Van Resen shouted boldly and led the men in a valiant charge against the intruders as the women cried out for Lilly’s safety.
CHAPTER 29 – Prey in Sight
Harkon and Gazda arrived in the trees that overlooked the curious Bakwaniri village well after nightfall, with the huntress still reeling from her dizzying ride through the jungle canopy. She had experienced the ape-man’s strength and speed in daylight, but nothing could have prepared her for their harrowing charge through the nighttime forest.
Blind in the suffocating darkness, Harkon had felt like she was falling, and her firm grip on Gazda’s unnaturally powerful body was little comfort and could not dispel her nauseating sense that at any moment she would be crushed against the ground.
However it was clear to her that night was Gazda’s time of day, and despite the dark he either saw or sensed approaching obstacles and would with a wrenching action alter his route to protect his rider as they hurtled from tree to tree.
Clambering through the shadows had been terrifying, especially so during the seconds that the gibbous moon slid out of its cloudy cover, for then her eyes had either been dazzled by the sudden light or given a view of the mad risks she was taking upon the ape-man’s back.
It had been a terrifying lesson in his true powers that she was very happy to have survived.
Her tutelage had begun with Gazda’s waking.
Near sunset he had climbed out of the hole in the iroko tree, and excused himself with words and body language, explaining that he had to eat before they continued their journey.
While this had promised another delay, Harkon understood her strange friend’s need. She could not imagine the amount of food required to fuel his muscular form after the explosive power she had seen him unleash.
With the sun all but lost, she well knew the difficulties of hunting in the dark, though she doubted Gazda would share her handicap.
Harkon had seen him move in the forest at night, and with his senses tuned to the shadows, it was likely that this talent would transfer to his hunting prowess.
In the end, there had been no need for concern because the ape-man returned before she finished packing her gear.
The sun was down, and the sky had been turning from blue to dark purple when Gazda scurried up the side of the tree—no more than a blur to the huntress’ eye—with a beard of blood to mark his chin and lips and frame his glistening fangs.
As he wiped the stains away, he said, “Gazda...” and pantomimed climbing through the trees, before pointing at her and saying, “takes Harkon,” after which he half-turned and reached over his shoulder for her hands.
Harkon had reluctantly climbed onto his back.
So began their arboreal transit, passing like a nightmare in jarring spurts and frozen moments of terror. Harkon’s sense of falling had been immediate, marked by surging and swinging action that caused her senses to reel, and her guts to churn.
She had hoped she would grow used to the sensations and the dark, but such a thing was impossible for Gazda had no fear of death—and so he raced with a recklessness that would have been suicidal had Harkon attempted it herself.
This abandon had been characterized by one feat where after a long jump, Gazda caught the tip of a splintered branch that quickly gave away but deposited him within reach of a hanging vine that he used to angle their descent to a slanted branch that slowed him enough so they could carry forward through the trees again—after a terrifying drop.
That stunt had the huntress wanting off the ape-man’s back, preferring to run on her injured leg than go another foot with her companion.
But thoughts of vengeance had overridden her
