THIRTY-EIGHT

Her toes dug for purchase in the stiff weeds, her fingertips sought the cold metal teeth of a trap. Inch by inch she crawled along the cabin wall. Finally, she looked up. In the moonlight, four grimy panes of glass glimmered above her head.

She studied them. Three were intact, but half of one bottom pane had been broken out. The jagged hole would reveal the interior of the cabin clearly. It would reveal her just as clearly, but she had no choice. With a swift, silent intake of air, she scrambled up, and pressed herself against the wall. The broken pane was just beneath her shoulder. She would have to crouch down to see inside.

Mentally cursing the glistening moon, she eased down and turned her face toward the gap in the window. The air inside the cabin smelled sour, its breath redolent of gun oil and roasted meat and another sharp scent she could not identify. She inched forward, peering inside.

The amber firelight revealed a kitchen of sorts. Embers glittered orange in a stone fireplace. Close to the window stood a small table; on it lay magazines and a bottle of vitamins. Suddenly, she caught her breath. Propped against the vitamins was the smiling photograph of Jonathan and a blonde woman. Jodie Foster. Ulagu had been at Little Jump Off! He must have been following them since Friday afternoon.

The banked fire illuminated the back part of the cabin, but it left the front shadowy and impenetrable. Her heart sank. She would have to look in the second window, too.

She withdrew her face from the fetid warmth and dropped back on her stomach. Again she squirmed forward through the dirt, still groping for traps. To her right a curious indentation dimpled the earth. Probably an old well, she decided. It seemed odd that anyone would put a well so close to the side of a cabin, but this was Ulagu. Ulagu could put his well any damn place he pleased.

She crawled for what felt like decades, the rustle of her body moving through the weeds thunderous in her ears. Ulagu must surely have heard her by now. Any second he would storm out of the door, shotgun in hand. But nothing happened. The cabin remained so still she wondered if he hadn’t slipped away while she and Joan slept. Finally she neared the last window. She could make no mistakes now. Who knew what the snap of a twig might pull down upon her head?

Her whole body trembling, she rose to her feet. Except for a single top pane, all this glass had been shattered. If anyone was looking out this window now, she would soon be staring them straight in the face.

Resolutely, she steadied herself. Just let Alex be in there, she prayed silently. And please at last let her still be alive. Finally she turned to the empty mullions. Her eyes took a moment to accustom to the light, then the interior of the cabin materialized from the darkness.

A cot stretched beneath the window. Though the head lay cloaked in shadow, she could see two feet protruding from the end of a ragged blanket. Two feet with long toenails and a thick growth of hair. Ulagu, she realized with a calm which surprised her. Now where’s Alex? She squinted into the darkness. A puddle of moonlight fell on a knotted rope looped around the man’s ankle. The rope sloped to the floor, then led to a torn mat a short distance from his bed. Mary fought back a gasp. There, not six feet away, staring straight at her, sat Alex.

She huddled there nude, her eyes riveted to Mary’s face. Her golden hair hung matted and limp. Her upper lip was bloody, both eyes were almost swollen shut. Her skin seemed pulled too tightly across her skull.

For an instant Mary could only stare helplessly at the beauty who had once reigned as Miss Chance Station, Texas. The features that two days ago she had known as well as her own now looked like a stranger’s. How dare this man do that to Alex! How dare this man harm anyone. Kill him now , the voice thundered in her brain. Roar through this window and tear out his eyes.

Suddenly Alex blinked, then her mouth began to quiver in a feeble version of her old smile. She put one finger to her lips, then pointed at the sleeping man and shook her head. Mary nodded her acknowledgment, then smiled. Whatever else Alex was, at least she was still alive.

A row of raccoon pelts stood on stretchers across the room, while snake skins hung from the ceiling. In one corner stood a sagging table that looked like it might have been stolen from some flea market—trinkets and clothing and toys and sporting equipment jumbled together, dripping from the table to the floor. Souvenirs, Mary thought, the realization raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Ulagu takes scalps.

She pushed that out of her mind. Instead, she looked back at Alex and smiled. In the shadows, Mary could see hope rekindling in her friend’s face. They would have to be beyond careful now. One sound from either of them would get them both killed. Cautiously, she reached through the shattered window and extended her index finger. Alex rose noiselessly, careful not to disturb the rope that bound her to Ulagu. In the moonlight they pressed their fingers together. Not much, but enough. The spark that had bound them together for the past twelve years passed between them again. Mary mouthed the word “later” and withdrew her arm. Alex raised her hand in farewell. With an extragavant wink, Mary grinned and nodded, then began to back away.

She had taken only a few steps when she saw Alex’s mouth become a horrified gap in her face. Simultaneously she felt the ground beneath her right foot give way. With a deep whump she tumbled backwards. The base of her spine bounced once on something hard, then she began to slide. She scrambled to catch herself in the slick damp clay but the hole angled precipitously away; disastrously out of control, she slid lower and lower, until her left foot snagged something that felt like a small root. She trembled there suspended, her hands clutching the earth above.

Idiot, she scolded herself. You’ve tracked Alex through hell and half of Georgia, only to fall in a stupid well! She looked above her and saw only darkness and the stars, but then she heard voices. Alex’s, then a second, deeper one. Angry, yelling.

“What the hell are you doing, Trude?” The deep voice boomed like a cannon.

“Charting my horoscope, you pinheaded asshole!” Alex’s Texas twang sounded weak, but it still carried the sting of spurs. “Now just leave me alone! Go back to where you came from!”

The hoarser voice roared something back in a language Mary couldn’t understand; Alex’s shrill “Get out of here!” ended abruptly with a slap and a muffled cry.

As Mary struggled to cling to the ground above her she realized what was happening. Her fall had awakened Ulagu. Now Alex was creating a diversion to give her a chance to escape. By the sound of the voices overhead, she needed to move fast.

Quickly, she began to search for a foothold. Balancing on the one small root that held her, she nudged the earthen walls with her free foot. She had just found a small crack she could dig her toes into when she heard it. A soft, buttery sound. She cocked her head and listened. Surely she was imagining things. Surely this was just an old well this monster had forgotten to cover. But the sound continued. Suddenly it was joined by another; then a third.

“Oh, God!” she cried involuntarily, an icy sweat instantly bathing her skin. This was no well she had fallen into. This was Ulagu’s lair, and she had fallen into Ulagu’s snake pit.

Panicked, she dug her toes desperately into the earth. If she fell to the bottom she would die. You could survive one snake bite, maybe two. But a dozen? Two dozen?

“Inadu,” she cried the Cherokee word for snake as she scrambled frantically upward. If she could just lift herself enough to get her elbows above ground maybe she could get the leverage to pull herself out . . .

She felt for another toehold in the earthen walls. A shower of crumbly dirt sifted into the darkness below; the snakes rattled louder as Alex and Ulagu bellowed through the darkness above. She searched the walls with her foot. Finally, one toe found another minuscule crack. She pressed her foot into it and pushed up. Her shoulders trembled with pain, but it felt like she moved a fraction of an inch upwards.

She clung with her fingers and now dug her toes into the earth, this time a little higher. She pushed up. More earth sifted down on the snakes, but her right elbow had almost reached the grassy surface above. She pushed and kicked once more, then suddenly she could bend her arm. Pressing it hard against the ground, she pushed with her left leg and abruptly her other arm and shoulders were free. Cool, sweet air caressed her face. She tugged herself upright, then turned to the cabin. She saw nothing, but she didn’t need to. Alex’s screams resounded through the moonliight like souls being ferried into hell.

For a moment she crouched frozen in place. What should she do? Her first instinct was to run back and rip out Ulagu’s heart with her bare hands. But Alex had screamed “Go away” and “Get out of here” too many times for her to ignore. Was she just yelling at her captor, or was it some kind of message for Mary?

She cringed as their shouts still echoed in the air. Ulagu was big and strong. His blood would be hot now, his muscles limber and warm. She would have little chance hand-to-hand with someone like that. Better to leave now, the voice whispered inside her head. Better to sneak up and surprise him later.That was what Alex was trying to tell you.

She turned and wriggled through the grass as quickly as she could, certain she would be discovered; waiting for Alex’s screams to stop and a bullet to snap her spine. Her breath sounded like a windstorm in her ears. When she reached the back side of the cabin she gathered her strength for the final sprint to the creek, then, with only thirty more yards to go, she took off. Her lungs were on fire but her legs, her heart, kept pumping. Finally, the shadows of the bushes reached out for her as she plunged into their forgiving darkness. For an eternity she lay flat on her belly, the cool, damp rushes soft against her cheek.

When she caught her breath she sat up and looked back at the cabin. Once again it was silent and ominously still. Alex had either been beaten to unconsciousness, or to death. Suddenly Mary felt a heat begin to bubble inside her. A rage. A hunger. A desire for revenge. All at once she remembered the six stones piled upon her mother’s grave, and she realized that the one act that would redeem her lay ahead.

“Tonight you have six, Mama,” she said quietly, thinking of the mystical Cherokee number that would grant her absolution. She stared up at the high, white moon. “But tomorrow you shall have seven.”