"It's coming back!"Mfuni's voice broke in terror.
Ignoring him, she turned her attention to her husband. He lay on his back, his face gray. His shoulder was misshapen and covered with a clotted mass of blood. "Helen," he said hoarsely, struggling to rise. "Get your gun. Now."
"Aloysius--"
"For the love of God, get your gun!"
It was too late. With another earsplitting roar, the lion burst from the cover, sending up a whirlwind of dust and flying grass--and then he was on top of her. Helen screamed once and tried to fight him off as the lion seized her by the arm; there was a sharp crackling of bone as the lion sank his teeth in--and then the last thing Pendergast saw before he passed out was the sight of her struggling, screaming figure being dragged off into the deep grass.
4
THE WORLD CAME BACK INTO FOCUS. PENDERGAST was in one of the rondevaals. The distant throb of a chopper sounded through the thatch roof, rapidly increasing in volume.
He sat up with a cry to see the DC, Woking, leap out of a chair he'd been sitting in at the far side of the hut.
"Don't exert yourself," Woking said. "The medevac's here, everything'll be taken care of--"
Pendergast struggled up. "My wife! Where is she?"
"Be a good lad and--"
Pendergast swung out of bed and staggered to his feet, driven by pure adrenaline. "My wife, you son of a bitch!"
"It couldn't be helped, she was dragged off, we had a man unconscious and another bleeding to death--"
Pendergast staggered to the door of the hut. His rifle was there, set in the rack. He seized it, broke it, saw that it still contained a single round.
"What in God's name are you doing--?"
Pendergast closed the action and swung the rifle toward the DC. "Get out of my way."
Woking scrambled aside and Pendergast lurched out of the hut. The sun was setting. Twelve hours had passed. The DC came rushing out after him, waving his arms. "Help! I need help! The man's gone mad!"
Crashing into the wall of brush, Pendergast pushed through the long grass until he had picked up the trail. He did not even hear the ragged shouts from the camp behind. He charged along the old spoor trail, thrusting the brush aside, heedless of the pain. Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen--and then he burst into the dry pan. Beyond lay the vlei, the dense grass, the grove of fever trees. With a gasp he lurched forward across the pan and into the grass, swiping his weapon back and forth with his good arm to clear a path, the birds overhead screaming at the disturbance. His lungs burned, his arm was drenched in blood. Still he advanced, bleeding freely from his torn shoulder, vocalizing inarticulately. And then he stopped, the ragged incoherent sounds dying in his throat. There was something in the grass ahead, small, pale, lying on the hard-packed mud. He stared down at it. It was a severed hand--a hand whose ring finger was banded with a star sapphire.
With an animalistic cry of rage and grief, he staggered forward, bursting from the long grass into an open area where the lion, its mane ablaze with color, was crouching and quietly feeding. He took in the horror all at once: the bones decorated with ribbons of flesh, his wife's hat, the tattered pieces of her khaki outfit, and then suddenly the smell--the faint smell of her perfume mingling with the stench of the cat.
Last of all he saw the head. It had been severed from her body but--with a cruel irony--was otherwise intact compared with the rest. Her blue-and-violet eyes stared up sightlessly at him.
Pendergast walked unsteadily up to within ten yards of the lion. It raised its monstrous head, slopped a tongue around its bloody chops, and looked at him calmly. His breath coming in short, sharp gasps, Pendergast raised the Holland & Holland with his good arm, propped it on his bad, sighted along the top of the ivory bead. And pulled the trigger. The massive round, packing five thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy, struck the lion just between and above the eyes, opening the top of its head like a sardine can, the cranium exploding in a blur of red mist. The great red-maned lion hardly moved; it merely sank down on top of its meal, and then lay still.
All around, in the sunbaked fever trees, a thousand birds screamed.
PRESENT DAY
5
St. Charles Parish, Louisiana
THE ROLLS-ROYCE GREY GHOST CREPT AROUND the circular drive, the crisp crunch of gravel under the tires muffled in places by patches of crabgrass. The motorcar was followed by a late-model Mercedes, in silver. Both vehicles came to a stop before a large Greek Revival plantation house, framed by ancient black oaks draped in fingers of Spanish moss. A small bronze plaque screwed into the facade announced that the mansion was known as Penumbra; that it had been built in 1821 by the Pendergast family; and that it was on the National Register of Historic Places.
A. X. L. Pendergast stepped out of the rear compartment of the Rolls and looked around, taking in the scene. It was the end of an afternoon in late February. Mellow light played through the Greek columns, casting bars of gold into the covered porch. A thin mist drifted across the overgrown lawn and weed-heavy gardens. Beyond, cicadas droned sleepily in the cypress groves and mangrove swamps. The copper trim on the second-floor balconies was covered in a dense patina of verdigris. Small curls of white paint hung from the pillars, and an atmosphere of dampness, desuetude, and neglect hung over the house and grounds.
A curious gentleman emerged from the Mercedes, short and stocky, wearing a black cutaway with a white carnation in his boutonniere. He looked more like a maitre d' from an Edwardian men's club than a New Orleans lawyer. Despite the limpid sunlight, a tightly rolled umbrella was tucked primly beneath one arm. An alligator-skin briefcase was clutched in one fawn-gloved hand. He placed a bowler hat on his head, gave it a smart tap.
"Mr. Pendergast. Shall we?" The man extended a hand toward an overgrown arboretum, enclosed by a hedge, that stood to the right of the house.
"Of course, Mr. Ogilby."
"Thank you." The man led the way, walking briskly, his wingtips sweeping through the moisture-laden grass. Pendergast followed more slowly, with less sense of purpose. Reaching a gate in the hedge, Mr. Ogilby pushed it open, and together they entered the arboretum. At one point he glanced back with a mischievous smile and said, "Let us keep an eye out for the ghost!"
"That would be a thrill," said Pendergast, in the same jocular vein.
Continuing his brisk pace, the lawyer followed a once-graveled path now overgrown with weeds toward a specimen-size weeping hemlock, beyond which could be seen a rusting iron fence enclosing a small plot of ground. Peeking up from the grass within was a scattering of slate and marble headstones, some vertical, some listing.
The gentleman, his creased black trouser cuffs now soaked, came to a halt before one of the larger tombstones, turned, and then grasped the briefcase in both hands, waiting for his client to catch up. Pendergast took a thoughtful turn around the private graveyard, stroking his pale chin, before ending up next to the dapper little man.
"Well!" the lawyer said, "here we are again!"