They were inside.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Peru
As the hours passed, the clearing Jaden had chosen slowly shrank. The wind blew, while countless animals above and below them encroached like a living fist. If Randolph remained silent, he could hear the trees creaking beneath their weight. He remained in his upright form but allowed his fangs to retreat beneath his gums so they weren’t piercing his cheeks in a gruesome show of force. His claws stretched out to their full length and drove deep into the fertile soil when he crouched down to bury them as well as the powerful hands from which they grew.
“I don’t suppose there is a need to let him know we are here?” he inquired.
Jaden laughed under her breath. “No.”
“Legends say, no matter what any living thing does, one of the Mist Born will know about it.”
“Those are legends. We above all creatures know how convoluted those can be.”
“The legends of the Mist Born are beyond convoluted,” Randolph said. “They become muddier every time another group of humans tries to figure them out. Tales of Icanchu refer to twins. Is there another Mist Born within these trees?”
“There is only enough room for one,” she said while gazing up at the dense greenery that closed in on her from all sides. “Does that ruin your plans?”
“The only thing that would ruin my plan is if Icanchu himself is nothing more than a story.”
Something rustled in the leaves near Randolph’s feet and something else shook the branches over his head as well as behind Jaden. While he stood up to get a look at what might be creeping in on him, she closed her eyes and lifted her chin as if to smell the wind or bare her throat to an all-encompassing opponent.
Reflexively, Randolph shifted into a form that he would have shown to the Skinners or the human military. Fangs extended from bloody gums. Muscle swelled into layers equally suited for protection or combat. Although the Full Blood didn’t know what Icanchu might look like, he knew the legends that told of a demon in a body of fog, a creature with a thousand mouths or a serpent lord that could crush the life out of the mightiest warrior if the mood struck him. He had already dealt with one Mist Born, and knew they were not demons or ghosts. Kawosa had his limitations, but if only a fraction of the legends were believed, Icanchu was mighty even by Mist Born standards.
“Where are you?” Randolph roared. “Show yourself!”
The trees shook. Not just some or most of them, but all. No matter which direction Randolph chose to look, he found quaking branches and leaves fluttering toward the ground. Smaller animals bolted from dens or whatever cover they’d taken to hide from the pair of Full Bloods, only to be swept up by opportunistic snakes that dipped their long bodies down and captured the frantic creatures within inescapable coils.
“Stay still, Birkyus,” Jaden urged.
Having given himself over to the primal survival instincts that always fought for dominion within him, he bellowed, “Point me toward the Mist Born or hold your tongue!”
She knew better than to try and calm him, so she just made certain to stay out of his reach. When the snakes dropped down to wrap around her arms and brush against the side of her face, she pulled in a breath and forced herself to remain calm no matter how badly she wanted to join Randolph in his display.
The blood surged through his veins, powering his mighty form like a steam engine. Every time he raised his fists and brought them down, they slammed against the dirt to shake even more leaves from their branches. The touch of a serpent’s body against his ankles unleashed a desperate howl that raked against his throat and thundered to the narrow strips of sky he could see through the jungle’s leafy canopy. One of the serpents encircled his leg and tightened, so Randolph tore it apart with a swipe of claws that also ripped into his own flesh. Another snake wriggled between his toes, only to be crushed when he shifted the shape of his foot so it could clench shut like a knot within a rope. And still the snakes came. Bodies of varying lengths, color, and texture rose up from the earthen floor and dropped down from the trees. Randolph slashed at them until he realized he was wasting his strength. The blood he’d spilled didn’t smell like anything he’d ever encountered. He stopped then, pressed his palm against his fur and lifted it to his nose so he could draw the scent even deeper into his lungs. Something about it was familiar. He’d last smelled it when the wing was torn from Kawosa’s shoulder.
The snakes gripped his legs but didn’t try to drag Randolph down.
They slithered through his fur but didn’t sink their fangs into his flesh.
Leathery bodies emerged from the soil and every tree to form a living, writhing wall between the Full Bloods and the outside world. Once that wall closed in around them, the world they knew disappeared. Randolph enjoyed the solitude of the jungle, but this was something else.
“Move your scouts away from me before I shred them all,” Randolph warned.
A breath rolled through the jungle. The inhalation caused every one of the snakes to expand, and when those serpents exhaled, they expelled the stink of mold that had grown on the bottom of a thousand year-old rock. Closing his fingers around the snake that wriggled over his palm, Randolph realized it swelled with the same heartbeat that echoed within all of them. A chill rolled through his body when he felt dozens of forked tongues flutter against his fur.
Now that his instincts had settled, he studied the serpents surrounding him. They weren’t unlike other snakes he’d seen in other forests, deserts, or prairies, apart from one major difference. None of these had a tail. Serpent bodies hung from above and wriggled below, but he couldn’t see where any of them ended. After looking closer, he couldn’t even be certain they all had heads. Much of the leathery muscle was encased in scales that simply came up from one pile of leaves, disappeared beneath another, went up into some trees, dropped down again, wrapped around his waist, slithered down his leg and submerged into the dirt. When he looked up again, he found himself staring into the wide, churning brown orbs that could only have belonged to a Mist Born.
Its head was larger than Randolph’s. Considering how far back it stretched along a thick tube of a body covered in dark green and darker orange scales, it may have been as big as his own torso. Vaguely snakelike in shape, the head also shared qualities with an alligator. Its snout was long and wide, capped by slits that opened and shut with every breath. Ridged brows met above its eyes and extended all the way back to the smooth bumps that could have been its ears. And after taking all of that in, Randolph was brought back to its eyes.
Instead of a pupil and iris, they contained a thick substance the color of old mud that slowly boiled inside thick glassy orbs. Those eyes took him in as the large, scaly head slowly recoiled and was raised by a body that flowed all the way back into the dense masses of the jungle and was thicker than a cluster of telephone poles.
“Icanchu?” Randolph asked.
The churning eyes blinked and the head nodded once.
Without being asked to do so, Randolph Standing Bear did something he’d never done to another living thing. He did something that had never even occurred to him as a possible course of action in all of the most difficult turns his life had taken. Lowering his head, he averted his eyes and knelt before something that was undeniably greater than he.
“One Full Blood on these lands is a presence I barely tolerate,” the Mist Born said in a voice that was neither hiss nor growl. “But you have already been in the presence of one such as I.” Icanchu’s voice escaped from between lips that barely parted, rolling like fragrant smoke in the back of a throat that could very well have stretched all the way back to the river. His words had the flavor of an accent culled from fifty countries, curling around a thick tongue that was split into three segments.