The Gorge

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Jim Castle was groggy, his side like a small volcano spouting red heat. The woman, Dove, had done a fine job of trussing him up. The mistake had been in leaving Farrengalli behind as his bodyguard. The loudmouth was obviously scared, hiding in the woods as Ace Goodall hijacked the rafting expedition, running at the first warning shriek of vampire attack.

Not that Castle had much room for criticism. He’d failed The Rook, and maybe his getting shot was some sort of cosmic payback. The final joke in God’s pet little passion play.

Except the wound didn’t seem imminently fatal. Castle couldn’t even check out as another agent lost in the line of duty, to be forever enshrined with a bronze plaque at headquarters in DC.

After Farrengalli tucked him between the two leaning stones, positioned in a natural teepee, the idiot had abandoned him with a “Catch you on the flip side, Mulder.” Castle wasn’t sure where Farrengalli was headed, but he’d left the raft behind, along with some of the other dead weight from his backpack. He’d taken only the rations, some rope, and climbing gear.

Castle had no means of defense, and as darkness fell, he wasn’t sure he wanted to spend the night without rations or a weapon, even though the stones provided decent shelter. Mostly, he couldn’t bear being alone with his thoughts, feeling inept and useless. He’d lost a pint of blood and was a little woozy. He sipped at the dented tin cup of silty river water Farrengalli had left for him.

“Hey, Rook, what do you think?” he asked aloud through chapped lips. “Should I ride it out here? Or go for the glory one more time?”

He listened, and heard nothing but the rising hum of crickets and katydids, the croaking of early frogs, the ticking of droplets off the leaves, the incessant swish of the Unegama. So he’d been imagining Derek Samford’s voice all along. The thoughts had been his own. Not sure what was worse, the fact that he was cracking up or that even afterlife ESP had failed him, he decided he couldn’t bear the night alone. The blackness would press in and suffocate him.

Wait it out, he told himself, mentally mimicking The Rook’s voice. The climbers might reach the top of the cliff and call for help. You might be on a helicopter to Bethesda by midnight.

He didn’t believe it. He’d been an FBI agent too long to buy that type of rosy, bullshit happy ending.

Plus, he’d heard the shrieks. What had sounded like at least two of the preternatural killing machines, though the echoes off the gorge walls made them sound like an army. The woman and the Cherokee were probably dead by now. Waiting wasn’t the wise choice.

Which left him no choice.

With a groan he didn’t try to suppress, he raised from his sitting position, his side throbbing like a cavity in an oversize molar, each beat of his heart pulsing the pain through his entire body. He rolled onto his good side and crawled out of the opening onto the rock-strewn shore. The rain had stopped, though the mist was nearly thick enough to count as precipitation.

Castle crawled on his hands and knees to the place where Farrengalli had dumped the pack. He retrieved the air pump and crawled to the deflated raft, which lay over a low, dense bush. The metal pump clacked as he put weight on it, but he was determined now. Twenty feet had never seemed so far, and his wounded side felt slick and wet, as if the hole had resumed leaking.

He finally reached the raft, flipped open the primary valve stem, and attached the hand-operated pump. There were two valves on the raft, and Castle didn’t understand its construction, but figured he’d only need to inflate one section since he would be the sole passenger. He didn’t think he had the strength to finish even one. His ribs ached as he worked the lever, air hissing into the raft.

Castle checked the luminescent readout on his watch. 7:22. About fifteen or twenty minutes away from sundown. He wasn’t sure how much darker the gorge could get. The absence of electric lights, the veil of mist and clouds that would obscure the stars, and his own amped-up fear would combine to create the longest night of the millennium.

The rush of the river was a constant reminder of passing time, the slow leak of his blood, the utter smallness of a man in the grand scheme of nature. He’d never been lonely. FBI agents almost always worked as partners, as teams, as cogs in a well-oiled but still-human machine. He’d had his share of wives and women, sometimes both at the same time. He’d socialized with U.S. senators, been interviewed by the Washington Post, and had even swung a brief guest segment on America’s Most Wanted.

But here, in the churning bowels of the world’s oldest mountain range, he couldn’t lie to himself about his helplessness.

But he wasn’t ready to quit.

With the raft half inflated, he tugged it from its perch on the bush and dragged it toward the river. The raft made a sloughing sound as it trailed behind him like a giant used condom. Farrengalli hadn’t left a paddle, or if he did, it was tossed in the woods somewhere. Once Castle launched, he’d be at the mercy of the swollen river.

At the mercy of nature.

Maybe he had been at nature’s mercy from the moment he set foot in the Unegama Wilderness Area, sent off on a wild goose chase so he wouldn’t mess up the “real investigation” elsewhere. And to top it off, nature had rained down a flock of bloodsucking, predatory nightmares.

Castle used the elbow on his good side to ease his body over the smooth rocks, sand, and mud. His ragged side, the one sporting the Lincoln Tunnel of a flesh wound, bore the task of holding onto the raft. His feet, cold and tingling from poor circulation, contributed what they could, but they seemed so far away, Castle wasn’t sure his brain’s commands were reaching them.

Exhausted, barely halfway to the river, he rolled onto his back and opened his mouth, allowing drizzle to collect on his parched tongue.

We’ll have to work up a new assessment.

“Rook?” He said it aloud, maybe, though he wasn’t sure his tongue moved.

You might say that.

“You sound different. But I’m glad you’re back. I was getting… ”

It’s okay, my friend and partner. You can talk to me. I’m trained, remember?

“I was getting… ”

Trust me. I’ve been here for you, even after you let me down. Brothers in arms. To the end. And beyond.

Castle thought The Rook wasn’t sounding quite like The Rook anymore. He was talking less like a Behavioral Sciences guy and more like a host on a cheesy late-night horror series. Nevertheless, the relief flooding through Castle almost flushed out the pain and dread. He could say it.

“I’m scared.” He swallowed, the last word as wet and cold and stinking as a river rock.

Nothing to fear, my friend. I’ll deliver you.

“Partners can always count on each other, right?”

Pause.

About that new assessment…

Something moved by the edge of the forest, though in the murk Castle couldn’t tell if it was just a shiver of leaves in the wind. Even after three weeks in the gorge, he’d never noticed how full and teeming the wilderness was. A world apart, oblivious of the civilized and sane place ruled by phone lines, computers, television, and highways. This was a universe that made its own rules.

And sometimes breaks its own rules.

The Rook’s voice in his head sounded louder, colder, the words taking on more reverberation, as if spoken from a deep cave.

“Help me,” Castle whispered.

Derek Samford emerged from the undergrowth, trying his new wings, licking lips that had grown swollen.

He experimented with his throat: skeeee.

The two fangs were a little awkward, but Samford-thing thought he could make them work. With a little practice. And he planned on getting lots of practice.