But she was stuck here, now, until Maria showed up. She went back to the first body, having no difficulty in the near pitch darkness, and got the keys. There were a lot of keys, and there was nothing left to do but to try them all when they needed one. She walked forward on narrow beams with perfect balance and reached the double doors to the boat house. There was, as expected, another padlock, this one on the inside. She began trying keys, and finally hit it, unlocking the lock but not yet removing it from the hasp. She went back to the door and checked outside. No sign yet of Maria, and that was trouble. She had to have the girl here before somebody noticed that nobody was back in the little office.
Finally, she saw a small figure creep back and forth in the shadows and finally approach. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, but she carried something in her hand.
Angelique did not worry now. She had the power to make it stick, and she used it. Maria kneeled before her in the darkness. Maria would be a good girl and obey.
“First, get some sand from outside,” Angelique ordered. “There! Good. Now put as much as you can in the gas tank of one of the boats. We will use the other.”
Now the doors were open and the chocks were removed, and Maria got inside while Angelique pushed. The boat slid almost silently into the water. Now the wild girl judged her distance and the bobbing of the boat and leaped, spear in hand, and landed in the boat.
Maria had tried the keys and found the right one, but waited for orders to turn the engine over. Angelique had hoped the boat would drift out a little, but instead it slowly turned and looked as if it were going to be carried in. There was nothing to do but try, hope the engine caught quickly, and gun it as the patrols raced to see what was going on.
“Do it!” Angelique commanded. “Do it before we wash ashore or crash into the pier!”
Maria turned the key and pumped the starter, and the connected outboard motors in the back coughed and turned over but didn’t start. Twice more she tried it, the noise seeming to echo and reverberate through the village and up the mountain, but to no avail. There was a sudden calling of voices from the town, and the sound of running feet.
Maria tried again as the boat, carried by the water flow, headed toward the pier. The engines coughed, then sputtered into life as the first footsteps hit the pier itself. Angelique found herself thrown down and to the rear of the boat as it suddenly took off.
Now there were great shouts, and spotlights came on all over the beach area. Dull-sounding popping noises came to them, and in and around the boat paint chips flew and small pieces of bullet richocheted.
Maria accelereated straight out, then turned and rounded the point to the west shore, the shore away from the meadow and the looming cliffs.
Angelique picked herself up but couldn’t manage more than a sitting position on the boat deck. The two rear seats were covered with vinyl and she didn’t even bother to try them; she felt safer and more secure sitting low as possible anyway. She had never realized what speed these boats had; the bow was pointing up, almost out of the water, and every time they cut across the current or the chop of light waves it gave a crunching sound and the entire boat shuddered.
She knew there were security patrol boats about, but if she could endure this discomfort she was not about to put in anywhere near Allenby Island. She managed to crawl up near to the manic, spellbound pilot.
“How long can this boat run?” she shouted over the roar. “How far can it go?”
“Three to four hours my beloved mother,” Maria responded.
There was a compass aboard. “Head north, then, away from those cursed antennas, until we can no longer see or feel the island. Then we will come around in a big circle and head west.”
She settled back on the floor of the boat, feeling a bit queasy. Now, if the Dark Man were correct, she should begin to feel the numbness return, feel all sensation slip away. She did feel seasick, but there was no sensation of a spell breaking. Rather, it was almost the sensation of a spell tightening around her, illusion becoming reality, what was imposed becoming what was.
She knew that there would be other patrols out looking for them, and that they would be easy marks for radar and any other tracking system, but it was a wide sea and there were many things both in and upon it.
She drew upon her inner strength and power to suppress the nausea, and eventually she felt better.
Off in the distance could be seen the lights of ships and various navigation lights as well. She instructed Maria to slow down to half speed and begin turning.
She had never expected to get this far, and now she had to make a series of decisions she hadn’t thought much about before. There were rocks and reefs out here that neither she nor Maria knew anything about, and certainly the main route to any nearby settled island would be the most watched. They had a compass, but no charts or other navigation aids to find this place, and she realized with a start that she didn’t even know the name of the town they sought. Worse, she was feeling some of the changes within her, some of the hardening, that might be part of the spell but might also be the price she was paying for being too much the ancient warrior witch of a forgotten tribe.
She had come a long way from being that poor, paralyzed, naive girl in the powered wheelchair, but the changes had not been in a direction she particularly liked. When all else had failed, she had won by using some of the same powers and methods that the Dark Man had used on her. She realized she needed time to think, to adjust, to understand herself and to plot her next course. Yet, what was best? To get straight there, before the alarms could be in full cry, was tempting—if they could make it, blind to the route. Or should she try to put in at one of the remote islands along the way, hide the boat and rest knowing that they would have the whole southern Caribbean covered. Greg had used a silent sailboat, and even then had been taken aboard a commercial ship. They didn’t have those options.
Greg had said that the village was small and very remote. She decided to instruct Maria to try for it, but not go in to the village. She crept forward to look at the speedometer, but she somehow couldn’t see or get a grasp of what it was saying. What else was happening to her?
“How fast are we going?”
“Twelve knots,” the pilot answered. “It is possible to do much more than that, my mistress.”
“As fast as you can on the right course,” she instructed. “May the spirits of sea and air take us there before sunrise.”
It was clear after a while, though, that no matter what they did they could not make the complete passage in darkness and they were rather conspicuous and in an open boat. There were boats out now from many nations, and they had been able to ignore them in the dark, making certain they were clear of any trawling nets. They had ignored several hails as it was, and clearly couldn’t do so in the light of day. False dawn was already making it easy to see, and the sun would be up any minute.
An island came up on their left; it was not much more than a large pile of rocks covered with thick vegetation, but it seemed possible to land on one side where the trees came right down to the water. The shape was sufficient to offer some disguise from the sea, and the overgrowth of trees made spotting anything by air unlikely. It was as good a place as they could hope for, although it was certainly uncomfortable and not foolproof. They had no rope and no anchor, and had to hope that the tiny inlet between jagged rocks would hold the boat fast.