“That would do well with me also,” Warner said, turning as sailors arrived along the path with blankets and brandy, still others bore stretchers. “A wind is likely later this evening and rain, and I have no interest in being so close to shore when it arrives. But looking at your group it is my ship’s surgeon I think you’re in need of most.”
Van Resen gave another quick look along the trail.
“Sir, you are preoccupied with the jungle,” Warner said, drawing his pistol and glancing uncertainly after him. “Are there others in your group?”
“No,” Van Resen said, eager to leave. “All we found here were savages.”
“What of Harkon?” Captain Seward asked defensively.
“A native, but savage nonetheless,” the scientist said somberly. “She was made so by need.”
“We mustn’t tarry with savages about.” Warner’s eyes narrowed as he glared into the shadows. “Natural born killers!”
The navy captain turned and led them quickly with the others toward the yurt. None in the group noticed Van Resen’s final ambiguous look behind, nor heard him whisper: “Or supernatural.”
CHAPTER 38 – Cast Away
Gazda had stayed with the bone-faces too long. Over two days he had punished them for killing Ginny and Lilly, for threatening his new night ape tribe, for invading his lands—and he had not forgotten their role in his mother Eeda’s death.
The delay had cost him much, but it had taken much to satisfy him.
In the end, he had fed upon bone-faces until he felt bloated, and he was covered with clotted gore. And when he had dealt with those behind the wall of sticks, he hunted down any that had escaped. This he did with an exacting purpose and a grim focus that in no way diminished his satisfaction.
Finally, when his rage and vengeance were exhausted a great lethargy had come upon him and he slept for a time beyond his counting...
...to awaken ravenously hungry far from the bone-face lair, but with a long journey to the night apes and his tree-nest before him.
There had been no rush for he knew that Harkon and Ginny’s people did not move quickly in the jungle because they did not take to the trees, so it should have been easy for him to catch them.
And if his mates were dead, then what was the hurry?
When he arrived at the tree-nest near sun up, he found it abandoned, though his night time senses still told him much. The scent of many strange night apes lingered in the air, as if the greater tribe had come to reclaim Ginny’s group; but there was something else he scented that cast him instantly into sublime pleasure and then despair.
The smell of Ginny’s living blood and breath still drifted there—in the tree-nest, and trapped in the forest by the great blue water. He found it, her breath and scent—and recent it was, this happy and then painful proof that his mate still lived!
She had survived the blow to her head, but how? And why had the night ape Vanray told him she was dead? Unless they had all been mistaken—dazzled and confused by lightning and blood?
In a frenzy Gazda scoured his tree-nest, and surrounding jungle—casting for a trail that he could follow, and there he found so many tracks and scents from so great a number of invaders that he dropped to a knee in confusion as he struggled to understand.
If Ginny was alive, then why could he not find her?
His daytime weakness came upon him then, and just as his eyes were poised to shut a strange noise brushed his ears and enlivened his failing spirit.
The wind had changed as the day had aged, and Gazda saw that the sun had crossed the sky while he had searched for his mate.
But a warm breeze now blew from the water and with it came a rumbling sound.
He raced to the beach to stand for a time in the sun’s full glare where his skin burned to its bright touch, itched and prickled in the shining heat. He shaded his face with his hands and squinted through his fingers, searching for the sound far out where the sun hung over the water and glinted upon the waves.
With the jungle shadows sliding east behind him, he glimpsed a narrow column of thick black smoke rising.
A flat thing was there beneath it; a dark shape upon the water that threw up smoke as it moved toward the horizon. Sputtering, Gazda cast along the silent sand with only the throbbing sound in his ears, rolling with the waves to the shore.
Was this another trick of the night ape tribe? Like music was that noise? And did they make their nests to ride the waves? Beneath his own feet then, he was startled to see the sand disturbed and marked from the trees edging the beach down to the water.
This was where Ginny’s supple feet had left their final prints! There and there, toward the water were they pointed...so in the strange nest she must have been.
Gazda fell upon his knees with the waves lapping near as relief slowed his aching heart. It was good that she still lived—and yet, would she not have waited for him?
He remembered Ginny in the forest, remembered the many times they came together, and how they had lain in their leafy bower after. Eye to eye each had watched the other breathing.
In the highest trees they had slept and come together as mates. As king and queen they would have been.
For his blood was like her blood and her flesh his flesh.
But she was gone, and only tracks remained, a trail that would soon vanish, washed away by wind and wave.
Had Vanray and the others discovered Gazda’s truth, that he had drunk Lilly’s blood and almost caused her death? But had he not given her
