Circle Series 4-in-1 Page 3

  His eyes snapped open. Snickers? His mind wrestled between throbbing pain and the terrible fear that he wasn’t alone.

  From a branch not five feet above him hung a large, lumpy growth the length of his arm. Next to the growth hung another, like a cluster of black grapes. If he hadn’t fallen, he might have hit his head on the clumps.

  The growth nearest him suddenly moved.

  Two wings unfolded from the growth. A triangular face tilted toward him, exposing pupil-less eyes. Large, red, pupil-less eyes. A thin pink tongue snaked out of black lips and tested the air.

  He jerked his eyes to the other growths. A thousand black creatures clung to the branches surrounding him, peering at him with red eyes too large for their angular faces.

  The bat closest to him curled its lips to expose dirty yellow fangs.

  Thomas screamed. His world washed with blackness.

  3

  HIS MIND crawled out of darkness slowly, beating back images of large black bats with red eyes. He was breathing in quick, short gasps, sure that at any moment one of the growths would drop off its branch and latch onto his neck.

  Something smelled putrid. Rotten meat. He couldn’t breathe properly past the stuff in his face, this bat guano or this rotten meat or—

  Thomas opened his eyes. Something was sitting on his face. It was clogging his nostrils and had worked its way into his mouth.

  He jerked up, spitting. No bats. There were big black bags and there were swollen boxes and some of them had broken open. Lettuce and tomatoes and rotten meat. Garbage.

  High above, the building’s roof drew a line across the night sky. That’s right, he’d been hit on the head and he’d fallen into the alley, into a large garbage bin.

  Thomas sat in slimy vegetables swamped with a moment of intense relief. The bats had just been a dream.

  And the men from New York?

  He hauled himself up by the lip, glanced down a vacant alley. Pain throbbed over his temple and he winced. His hair was matted with blood, but the bullet must have only grazed him.

  There were two possibilities here, depending on how much time had elapsed since he’d fallen. Either the shooter was still making his way toward Thomas, or the shooter had already come and gone without digging through the garbage bin.

  Either way, Thomas had to move now, while the alley was empty. His apartment was only a few blocks away. He had to reach it.

  Then again, if they knew where he lived, wouldn’t they just wait for him there?

  He crawled out of the bin and hurried down the alley, glancing both ways. If they knew where he lived, they would have waited for him there in the first place, rather than risk confronting him in the open as they had.

  He had to get to the apartment and warn Kara. His sister’s nursing shift ended at one in the morning. It was now about midnight, unless he’d been out a long time. What if he’d been out for several hours? Or a whole day?

  His head ached, and his new white Banana Republic T-shirt was soaked with blood. Ninth Street still roared with traffic. He would have to cross it to get to his apartment, but he didn’t fancy the idea of scurrying down the sidewalk to the next intersection for all to see.

  Still no sign of his attackers. He crouched in the alley and waited for traffic to clear. He could vault the hedge, cross the park, and get to the complex over the concrete wall in the back.

  Thomas closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. How much trouble could one person possibly get into in the span of twenty-five years? Never mind that he’d been born an army brat in the Philippines, son of Chaplain Hunter, who’d preached love for twenty years and then abandoned his wife for a Filipino woman half his age. Never mind that he’d grown up in a neighborhood that made the Bronx look like a preschool. Never mind that he’d been exposed to more of the world by the age of ten than most Americans were exposed to in a lifetime.

  If it wasn’t Dad leaving, it was Mom going ballistic and then sinking into bottomless depression. That’s why these men were here now. Because Dad had left Mom, and Mom had gone ballistic, and Thomas, good old Thomas, had been forced to bail Mom out.

  Admittedly, what he’d done to bail her out was a bit extreme, but he’d done it, hadn’t he?

  A fifty-yard gap opened in the traffic, and he bolted for the street. One horn blast from some conscientious citizen, whose idea of a desperate situation was probably a dirty Mercedes, and Thomas was across. He vaulted the hedge and sprinted across the park under the shadows of lamp-lit aspens.

  Amazing how real the bat dream had felt.

  Three minutes later, Thomas rounded the exterior stairs to his third-floor apartment. He took the stairs two at a time, eyes still peeled for any sign of the New Yorkers. None. But it would only be a matter of time.

  He slipped into his flat, eased the door closed, twisted the deadbolt home, and dropped his head on the door, breathing hard. This was good. He’d actually made it.

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. Eleven p.m. Half an hour since that first bullet had plowed into the brick wall. He’d made it for all of one half hour. How many more half hours would he have to make it?

  Thomas turned and walked to the chest under the window. The flat was a simple two-bedroom apartment, but one glance and even the most jaded traveler would know its inhabitants were not your average, simple people.

  The north side of the room looked like it could be a set piece of one of Cirque du Soleil’s extravagant acts. A large ring of masquerade masks circled a huge globe, six feet in diameter, cut in half and hung to give the appearance it protruded from the wall. A chaise lounge rested below amid at least twenty silk throw pillows of various designs and colors. Spoils of Thomas’s travels and episodic seasons of success.

  On the south wall, two dozen spears and blowguns from Southeast Asia surrounded four large, ceremonial shields. Below them stood no fewer than twenty large carvings, including a life-sized lion carved out of ironwood. These were the remnants of a failed attempt at importing exotic artifacts from Asia to sell in art houses and at swap meets. If Kara knew that the real purpose of the venture had been to smuggle crocodile skins and bird of paradise feathers in the carvings’ carefully hollowed torsos, she would have undoubtedly thrown him out by the ear. The streets of Manila had taught her a few lessons as well, and his older sister could handle herself surprisingly well. Maybe too well. Fortunately, he’d come to his senses without the need for such persuasion.

  Thomas dropped to his knees and threw open the lid of an old chest. He twisted around, saw that the door was indeed firmly locked, and began rummaging through the musty wood box.

  He grabbed handfuls of papers and dumped them on the floor. The receipt was yellow; he was sure of that. He’d buried it here four years ago when he’d first come to Denver to live with his sister.

  A thick ream of paper came out in his hands. He grunted at the manuscript, struck by its weight. Heavy. Like a stone. Dead on arrival. This wasn’t the receipt, but it arrested his attention anyway. His latest failed endeavor. An important novel entitled To Kill with Reason. Actually it was his second novel. He reached into the box and pulled out the first. Superheroes in Super Fog. The title was admittedly confusing, but that was no reason for the self-appointed literary wizards scouring the earth for the next Stephen King to turn it down. Both novels were either brilliant or complete trash, and he wasn’t yet sure which. Kara had liked them both.

  Kara was a god.

  Now he had two novels in his hands. Enough dead weight to pull him to the bottom of any lake. He stared at the top title, Superheroes in Super Fog, and considered the matter yet again. He’d given three years of his life to these stacks of paper before entombing them in this grave with a thousand rejection slips to keep them company.

  The whole business made his stomach crawl. As it turned out, dishing out coffees at Java Hut actually paid more than writing brilliant novels. Or, for that matter, importing exotic carvings from Southeast Asia.

  H
e dropped the manuscripts with a loud thump and shuffled through the chest. Yellow. He was looking for a yellow slip of paper, a carbon-copy sales receipt. The kind written by hand, not tape from a machine. The receipt had a contact name on it. He couldn’t even remember who had loaned him the money. Some loan shark. Without that receipt, Thomas didn’t even know where to start.

  Then it was there, in his hand.

  Thomas stared at the slip of paper. Real, definitely real. The amount, the name, the date. Like a death sentence. His head swam. Very, very, real.

  He lowered his hand and swallowed. At the bottom of the chest lay an old blackened machete he’d bought in one of Manila’s back alleys. He impulsively grabbed it, jumped to his feet, and ran for the light switch by the door. The place was lit up like a bonfire. It was these kinds of stupid mistakes that got people killed. So says the aspiring fiction writer.

  He slapped off the lights, pulled back the curtains, and peered out. Clear. He released the drape and turned around. Faces peered at him. Kara’s masquerade masks, laughing and frowning.

  His knees felt weak. From loss of blood, from the trauma of a bullet to the head, from a growing certainty that this fiasco was only just beginning and it would take more than a whole lot of luck and a few karate kicks to keep it from ending badly.

  Thomas hurried to the kitchen, set the machete on the counter, and called his mother in New York. She answered on the tenth ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “Tommy.”

  He released a silent breath of relief. “It’s Tommy. Um . . . you’re okay, huh?”

  “What time is it? It’s after one in the morning.”

  “Sorry. Okay, I just wanted to check on you.”

  His mother was silent.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, Tommy. I’m fine.” Pause. “Thanks for checking though.”

  “Sure.”

  “You kids doing okay?”

  “Yes. Sure, of course.”

  “I talked to Kara on Saturday. She seems to be doing well.”

  “Yeah. You sound good.” He could always tell when she was struggling. Depression was difficult to hide. Her last serious bout had been over two years ago. With any luck the beast was gone for good.

  More to the point, it didn’t sound like there were any gunmen in her apartment, holding her hostage.

  “I have to run,” he said. “You need anything, you call, okay?”

  “Sure, Tommy. Thanks for calling.”

  He dropped the receiver in its cradle and steadied himself on the counter. He was really in a pickle this time, wasn’t he? And no quick solutions were coming to mind.

  He had to get off his feet.

  Thomas grabbed the machete and hurried to his bathroom, head swimming. He stood in front of the mirror and ran his fingers along his head wound again. No more bleeding, that was good. But his whole head throbbed. For all he knew, he had a concussion.

  It took him less than five minutes to clean up, change his clothes, and don a baseball cap. He walked back out to the living room and collapsed on the couch. Kara could dress the cut properly when she got home.

  He lay back and thought about calling her at work but decided an explanation over the phone would be too difficult. The room began to spin, so he closed his eyes.

  He had an hour to think of something. Anything.

  But nothing came.

  Except sleep.

  4

  THOMAS WASN’T sure if it was the heat or the buzzing that woke him, but he woke with a start, snapped his eyes open, and squinted.

  Impressions registered in his mind like falling dominoes. The blue sky. The sun. The black trees. A lone bat perched high above him, like a deformed vulture. Thomas held perfectly still and stared up through slits, determined to make sense of what was happening.

  He’d just had another incredibly lifelike dream of a place called Denver.

  For a fleeting moment he felt relieved that his dream was only that, a dream. That he really hadn’t been shot in the head and that his life really wasn’t in danger.

  But then he remembered that he really was in danger. He had banged his head on a rock and cut his foot on the shale and passed out under the red gaze of a hungry bat. He wasn’t sure what he should fear more, the horrors in his dream or the horrors here.

  Bill.

  Thomas opened his eyes wide and ran them in circles to view as much as he could without having to move. He couldn’t see where the buzzing came from. Stark, square branches jutted from the leafless trees. Lifeless, charred trees.

  He concentrated, grasping for memories. None that preceded his fall came to mind. The amnesia had locked them out. His surroundings looked oddly familiar, as if he’d been here before, but he felt disconnected from the scene.

  His head ached.

  His right foot throbbed.

  The bat didn’t look as threatening as it had last night.

  Thomas slowly pushed himself up to his elbow and glanced around the black forest. To his left, a large black field of ash lay between him and a small pond. Fruit that he hadn’t seen last night hung on the trees in a stunning variety of colors. Red and blue and yellow, all hanging in an im-possible contrast to the stark black trees. Something seemed very wrong here. More than the strange surroundings, more than the fact that Bill had disappeared. Thomas couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Except for the one high above, the bats were gone. He knew about the bats, didn’t he? Somewhere back in his lost memories, he was completely familiar with bats. He knew that they were dangerous and evil and had very sharp teeth, but he couldn’t remember other details, like how to avoid them. Or how to wring their necks.

  A blanket of black rose from the field. The buzzing swelled.

  Thomas scrambled to his feet. What he’d thought was black soot on the field was actually a blanket of flies. They buzzed a few feet off the ground and then settled again. As far as the clearing extended, the squirming, black-winged insects crawled over one another, forming a thick, living carpet.

  He backed up, fighting a sudden panic. He had to get out of here. He had to find someone who could tell him what was going on. He didn’t even know what he was running from.

  But he was running, wasn’t he?

  That’s why he was having those crazy dreams of Denver. He was dreaming of running in Denver because he really was running. Here, in this black forest.

  He glanced back in the direction he assumed he’d come from, then quickly realized he had no idea which direction he’d truly come from. Behind him, the sharp shale that had sliced into his feet and arms. Beyond the shale, more black forest. Ahead, the field of flies and then more black forest. Everywhere, the black, angular trees.

  A cackle rasped through the air to his right. Thomas turned slowly. A second bat within spitting distance stared at him from its perch on a branch. It looked like someone had stuffed two cherries into the flier’s eye sockets and then pinned its eyelids back.

  Movement in the sky. He glanced up. More bats. Streams of them, filling the bare branches high above. The bat nearby did not flinch. Did not blink. The treetops turned black with bats.

  Eyes fixed on the lone creature, Thomas backed into a rock and reached out his hand to steady himself. His hand touched water.

  A chill surged through his fingers, up his arm. A cool pleasure. Yes, of course, the water. Something was up with the water; that was another thing he remembered. He knew he should jerk his hand out, but he was off balance and his eyes were fixed on the black bat, who stared at him with those bulging red eyes, and he let his hand linger.

  He dropped to his elbow and pulled his hand out of the water, turning to it as he did.

  The small pool of water pulsed with emerald hues. Immediately he felt himself drawn in. His face was eighteen inches from this shimmering liquid, and he desperately wanted to thrust his head into the puddle, but he knew, he just knew . . .

  Actually, he wasn’t
sure what he knew.

  He knew he couldn’t break his stare and look off somewhere else, like at the buzzing meadow or at the canopy still filling with black bats.

  The bats screeched in delight somewhere in the back of his mind.

  He slowly dipped a finger into the puddle. Another shot of pleasure surged through his veins, a tingling sensation that he liked. More than liked. It was like Novocain. And then he felt another sensation joining the first. Pain. But the pleasure was greater. No wonder Bill had—

  A shriek pierced the sky.

  Thomas’s eyes sprang open and he stared numbly at his hand. Red juice dripped from his fingers. Red juice or blood.

  Blood?

  He stepped back.

  Another shriek high above him. He looked at the sky and saw that a lone white bat was streaking through the ranks of black beasts, scattering them from their perches.

  The black creatures gave chase, obviously opposing the presence of the white flier. With a piercing cry, the white intruder looped over and dived through the squawking throngs again. If the black bats are my enemies, the white one might be my ally. But were the black bats his enemies?

  He looked back at the water. Pulsing, wonderful. It occurred to Thomas that he wasn’t thinking clearly.

  A shrill call like a trumpet sounded from the white bat’s direction. Thomas turned again and saw that the white bat had circled and was streaking over the meadow, trumpeting as it blasted through the horde of black flies. And then Thomas caught a single, brief glimpse of the white bat’s green eyes as it swooped by.

  He knew those eyes!

  If he wanted to live out this day, he had to follow that white flier. He was sure of it. Thomas tore his feet from the ground and lurched toward the meadow. His flesh throbbed from the cuts of yesterday’s fall and his bones felt like they were on fire, but everything was suddenly quite clear. He had to follow the white creature or he would die.

  He forced his legs forward and ran into the meadow despite the pain. He’d made it this far into the black forest by running, hadn’t he? And now it was time to run again.