Black Mountain (14 page)

Alex raised himself to his hands and knees, head down, and pounded his fist hard into the dirt, again and again. Adira could feel the blows through the soles of her feet. He raked up dirt and small rocks in each hand, then crushed his fists hard into the ground, reducing the stones to dust. He rose to his knees and roared in agony. Adira had only heard that sound in battle, from humans suffering mortal wounds.

She realised he was shouting a woman’s name . . .
Kathleen
.

His mother!
she thought in horror.
What is he remembering?

Alex struck the ground again, as though trying to break through to somewhere below its surface. Blood ran from his nose and she saw that his teeth were gritted. His eyes were open but unfocused. He fell forward onto his hands and shook his head as if to clear it. He was breathing hard.

When he spoke, the words were so soft she couldn’t make them out.

‘What, Alex? What is it?’

His hand shot out and grabbed the front of her shirt, pulling her to face him. His eyes were focused now, and volcanic with fury. He roared in her face and shook her. ‘Why did you lie to me?’

It was the moment she had been dreading: the return of his memories before she was ready – before either of them was ready – to deal with them.

She grabbed his wrist. ‘I never lied.’

Alex’s other hand came up towards her. She doubted he was going to hit her, but her training took over. Almost automatically she brought her free hand around flat to strike him under his chin with enough force to jam his face upwards. He released her shirt and took a step back, but didn’t fall. Instead he came back at her, fast. She needed to slow him down so she could talk to him. She was aware of what he could do if his rage overtook his logic.

She braced herself and struck out twice. The closed fist strikes were part of a Krav Maga combination designed as a fast take-down against the most formidable opponents. Alex took both blows, then swung an arm down to block her next kick. He moved fluidly and Special-Forces-fast.

His mother’s name isn’t the only memory coming back to him
, Adira thought with growing trepidation. For the first time in her life, she realised she couldn’t win.

‘Stop, Alex.’

He ignored her and yelled again, ‘Who am I?’ Not one of her punches or kicks landed now; he was in control. His face was furious. ‘You’re no hospital worker. Who are you?’

She backed up, trying to stay out of his reach. ‘Alex, you’re still disorientated, you need to –’

‘
I need the truth
.’ He moved at a speed that left her flat-footed, and before she realised it he had hold of her again. He brought her face close to his own. ‘I am Alex Hunter. There is no Horowitz. For the last time,
who are you
?’

She went to strike out again, but knew it was futile. The game was up. She dropped her arms to her sides and went still in his hands. ‘Let me go.’

His jaws worked and his eyes burned into hers, but after a few seconds he pushed her away. She took a few steps back, turning away from him so she could think. The voice of her uncle, the general, came to her mind –
sometimes gamblers win
.

And now I must gamble
, she thought.

She spun back to him. ‘It’s true – you
are
Alex Hunter, an American soldier. When you were sick, dying, your country abandoned you and we rescued you . . . I rescued you. We saved your life when everyone else had given up on you. We
were
close, you and I . . . you just don’t remember.’

Alex shook his head, frowning. She could tell he was trying to draw more memories from his fragmented mind, to verify what she’d told him, or to find fault with it. She waited.

‘I need to go,’ he said. His eyes had lost their fury now; his gaze was level and emotionless.

‘Back to the hotel?’ She nodded, feeling that perhaps she’d won this round.

He shook his head, and a sudden jolt ran through her. ‘You need to go where, Alex?’

He seemed to think for a moment, then looked directly into her eyes. ‘Home. With you, or through you, and anyone else who tries to get in my way.’

She held his gaze, her mind working furiously. This was her ground-zero moment – if she lost him, she’d lose everything.

‘You’ll never make it without me,’ she said.

THIRTEEN

Chief Logan sat at his desk scrolling through the Medical Examiner’s report on the contents of the lion’s digestive tract. He was relieved that he didn’t have to make a call to Clark and Helen Wilson to tell them that their little girl had been taken by a lion –
a freakin’ lion in Asheville, for Chrissakes
! But he couldn’t shake the morbid feeling that something else was out there. There’d just been too many weird goings-on lately.

He really wanted to believe that Emma Wilson was still alive, that she’d wandered off after some late-season deer maybe, and then got lost in the dark. That she was huddled in a sheltered hollow somewhere below the snow line. The reality was, he’d have been satisfied even if they found her small body curled up and frozen solid, proof that she’d gone to sleep in the cold and never woken up. A horrible thought, given the pain her parents would feel, but still better than the crazy alternative that was floating around in his mind.

Logan lifted the cover of a folder on his desk and slid out the photos from Amanda Jordan’s camera. The hulking shape in the falling snow caused a knotted feeling of disquiet in his gut.
Yep, finding little Emma frozen, but untouched, would not be the worst thing that could happen
, he thought again as he closed the folder.

The chief sipped his coffee, barely tasting the bitter liquid as his mind continued to work. He had too many questions, and any answers he received only led to more questions. In a month, the snow would start to fall in earnest, and then the winter folk would arrive for skiing, schnapps and fistfights with the locals. He’d prefer to keep everyone off the mountain until he knew exactly what was going on, but that wouldn’t win him any friends in the local business community.
Better not take another call from the mayor just yet
, he thought glumly, pushing the folder to the back of his desk. He slumped a little lower in his chair. Truth was, he had no idea what to do next.

The phone beeped, and he frowned at it for a few seconds before picking it up. ‘Shelley, I thought I said –’ He stopped as he processed her reply: an urgent call from the field. Right now, he needed any information he could get. He sat forward. ‘Patch it.’

Logan listened solemnly, his face seeming to age on the spot. ‘Good god,’ he whispered. ‘Time of death?’ His voice rose. ‘Just freakin’ make a guess then.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Uh-huh, that’s probably after the lion was already dead. Okay, tell Ted Brandon to get his boys out there. I’ll be on my way in another twenty minutes.’

Logan hung up and sat in silence, wishing he had any other job besides the one he held. The phone beeped again and he lifted the handset slowly to his ear.

‘Chief Logan?’

Logan was relieved to hear the young professor’s voice; he didn’t feel ready for anything else from the field right now. ‘Professor Kearns, what can I do for you? I’m a little busy right now.’

‘Chief, the Wilson place – we were just out there and –’

Logan felt like being angry with someone; Kearns would do. He cut the man off. ‘What the fuck were you doing out there?’

‘We found something.’

The angry curl of Logan’s lips flattened as he waited for the university professor to continue.

‘Some tracks,’ Kearns added.

‘We know the lion was there, Professor Kearns.’

‘No, I mean yes . . . we know the lion was there, but these were a different type of print, something . . .
strange
. You remember the photographs of the shape in the snow up on Black Mountain? Well, we got a connection.’

Logan pulled the folder back towards him and flicked it open. He tapped the hulking shape with one large finger, thinking. He felt a leaden ball starting to grow in his gut.

‘You there, Chief?’ Logan grunted and Matt Kearns continued. ‘The friend I mentioned, Charles Schroder, he specialises in these types of occurrences. He thinks we might have something up here that we need to be . . . cautious with.’

‘Cautious? What does that mean – it’s dangerous?’

‘Maybe . . . probably.’

Logan thought furiously, weighing up what he knew against what he didn’t. The imbalance was too great not to use everything he had at his disposal.

‘Professor Kearns, there’s been an attack and a disappearance out at the Hunter place. Might be something else . . . strange. I can pick you up out front in ten minutes if you feel like tagging along.’

*

Matt felt a sense of déjà vu as he and Charles watched the police forensics team pick over the Hunter place for clues. Just like Emma Wilson, Kathleen Hunter had disappeared. But unlike the Wilson case, which had offered up very little in the way of evidence for the police, this time there were traces of a struggle. It was unlikely that Kathleen Hunter, a woman in her seventies, could have survived that much blood loss.

Matt put a hand over his nose and mouth to try to mask the thick, coppery scent lingering in the air. He’d never been to a crime scene before, and at first he’d tried not to react to the ghastly tableau, detaching himself from its violence as if it were simply a scene from one of the hundred horror movies he’d watched. But the more he became immersed in the detail, the more nauseated he felt. Matt couldn’t help empathising with the woman, alone and frightened in the night. He’d known terror himself, had seen people he loved brutally killed by a creature that had come out of the stygian deep. It tormented his dreams to this day.

Charles nudged him to get his attention as two police officers carried a stretcher towards their truck. As they came closer, Matt put his hand up to stop them. He lifted the blanket and saw the battered body of an enormous dog. Its eyes had rolled back into its head, and the neck looked soft and boneless beneath the fur. Matt made a sound of regret.

Charles made to lay his hand on the dog’s muzzle, but one of the officers yelled a sharp rebuke almost directly into his ear. Matt saw his friend flinch, but to his credit he didn’t step back.

Matt held up his hand again, this time in a placating gesture. ‘It’s okay, officers, we’re working with Chief Logan – we’re consultants.’ He yelled over the men’s heads, ‘Okay, Chief?’

Logan looked around and seemed to sum up the situation immediately. ‘Give ’em what they need, boys,’ he yelled back, then went back to talking to Ted Brandon.

Charles lifted his hand to the dog again and ran his fingers deftly from its head down its back and along its limbs, feeling the bone breaks and joint separations and inspecting the lacerations. At the flanks, he worked his hand slowly back up the body, returning eventually to the head. He examined the snout, then lifted the dog’s lips. He quickly brought his face closer, then fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a sample tube and a set of surgical tweezers.

‘Hold this,’ he said to Matt, and held out the small container without turning, his eyes riveted on whatever he’d found in the dog’s mouth. He pulled back the heavy lip and used the tweezers to tug something from between the teeth. He exhaled slowly and turned to Matt, his eyes round with excitement. ‘Look . . . and some of the dermis is still attached.’

The tweezers held a small tuft of reddish-brown hair, coarse and bloody. Matt could see the small plug of glistening flesh that bound it together.

He uncapped the vial and Charles carefully dropped the sample in. He pocketed the tweezers, then took the tube from Matt’s hand and capped it. He held it up so they could both examine its contents. The hair was unbelievably thick, and oily looking. Charles shook the vial, uncapped it again and waved it under his nose. He nodded, then extended it for Matt to smell.

Matt recoiled from the rank odour. ‘
Phew
, what is that?’

Charles didn’t answer as he screwed the plastic cap on tightly. ‘We need a lab, pronto, before this degrades.’

‘Finished?’ one of officers asked, looking bored.

Matt stepped closer to the dog on the stretcher and placed his hand on its huge shoulder, stroking the fur. ‘Musta been some fight. Where are you taking it?’

The officer covered the dog’s head with the blanket again, to keep away an inquisitive fly. ‘Chief wants an autopsy.’ He nodded to his partner, then motioned with his head to the truck.

Matt yelled after them, ‘Hey, any chance of a lift to the university?’

*

The officers dropped Matt and Charles a good mile from the university. Neither complained, however, as the ride had taken place in an uncomfortable silence, Matt’s occasional questions eliciting little more than grunts from the two officers. Matt was also glad of the fresh air; the same revolting smell he’d sniffed in the vial emanated from the dog on the stretcher.

The two men walked in silence along the university drive. Matt had given up asking Charles about the sample; the most his friend would give him was, ‘Not yet.’ The late season sunshine was pleasant on Matt’s shoulders, and coaxed a low zumming from crickets and cicadas in the long grasses beside the road. Matt let his mind wander across the strange events of the last few days. He was worried that he might have got himself and Charles into something a lot more complex and dangerous than he’d originally expected. His stomach tightened.

Charles’s quiet voice broke his reverie. ‘Ten o’clock.’

‘Huh?’ Matt saw that although Charles was facing forward, his eyes were focused on the field to their left.

‘Don’t look,’ Charles said softly, but of course Matt did.

An old man in an oversized blue chambray shirt stood like a withered fence post amongst the long grass. Even from this distance Matt could see that his rheumy eyes were fixed intently on him and Charles. After they’d passed, Matt could still feel the scrutiny like a laser on the back of his neck. He couldn’t resist looking back, but the field was empty. He saw that Charles was looking into the deserted field too.