The Boys from Santa Cruz

9

The shortcut, obviously, had been a success. Asmador had regained the marked trail a quarter mile below the sign pointing to the Omphalos, long before the humans could possibly have reached it. To make sure, he’d knelt to examine the tracks again, and had been pleased to discover that those few footprints that could still be distinguished in the trampled dirt all pointed uphill.

By then, the sun was working Technicolor wonders in the west. The sky in that direction, what little Asmador had been able to see of it through the leafy canopy, had turned pink, shot through with bloody streaks of crimson. Nearer the ground the air seemed to have taken on an eerie goblin green glow. He’d marched on, lightly tapping the ground with the springy, curved tip of the bow every few steps, while chanting the names of the Infernal Council:

Furcalor, Hornblas, Satan, Rosier,

Lucifer, Xaphan, Succor, Dozier.

Astaroth, Azazel, Abadon, Moloch,

Paimon, Rimmon, Kobadon, Misroch.

Exael-

Hearing the sound of human voices a little farther up the trail, Asmador had ducked off the side of the path to count them off as they hiked by. There’d been twelve altogether, ten in orange bracketed by two in blue. But no Oliver and no Epstein. Turning his back on the trail, Asmador had plunged deeper into the woods, circling downhill in his stealthy half crouch until he’d cut ahead of the humans again. Then he’d showed himself, stepping into the middle of a straight, tunnel-like stretch of trail and assuming the classic archer’s position.

The blue shirt in the lead had braked and spread his arms wide to shield the ones behind him with his body. “Let’s turn around, troopers,” he’d called calmly over his shoulder. “Candy, take them-”

Asmador still wasn’t sure whether he had released the arrow or it had released itself. Either way, it had felt so right and so preordained, the twang of the bowstring, the zzzzip of the arrow, the dull thump of the arrowhead striking home, the faint, shivering vibration of the feathers at the end of the shaft. Then the target had collapsed backward, and all was chaos at the other end of the tunnel, and all was calm at Asmador’s end. Coolly, he had reached behind his back for another arrow, but by then the humans had fled screaming up the trail, the last two dragging Blue Shirt’s body between them.

And now it is nearly dark under the trees; the undersides of the leaves are black against the violet gray of the sky. Asmador shucks off his backpack, returns the unused arrow to the quiver, and rummages around for the night-vision goggles. It takes him a few minutes to figure out how to work them. There are two switches, one to activate the goggles and the other to turn on the narrow infrared beam mounted above the eyepieces, which focus like binoculars. He soon gets the hang of it, though, and sets off up the trail again, following the bobbing neon green shaft of light up the glowing neon green tunnel, and taking up the singsong chant where he’d left off earlier:

Exael, Mastema, Beliar, Carnivean,

Minos, Asmodeus, Belial, Leviathan.

Beleth, Beelzebub, Behemoth, Baal,

Adramelech, Gressil, Hauras, Rofocale…