Nosferatu

19

Their driver was obviously nervous, afraid even, when the jeep jerked to a halt. He almost pushed them out. Promising to return the next night if they hadn't arrived back at camp, he pointed out the way to them.

"Half a mile, that way. If you hear the cheetahs cry, walk on. Don't shoot." Eyes wide with apprehension, he hastily turned the vehicle around and sped away.

"Keep that H amp;K hefted, Tom," Michael said, directing his flashlight ahead of them. In his other hand was a Predator.

They didn't see the cats, only heard them, but it wasn't the growling they'd expected. Rather, the short, high call of the cats was more like a protesting meow. It certainly didn't seem to compare with the roaring of the lions.

Treading the savanna carefully, they almost didn't realize that they'd found Shakala until they looked closer at the trees looming into view against the clear, starlit sky. The branches seemed oddly twisted, almost into a woven helter-skelter shape, a copse of them lined up like the arms of veldt soldiers. Glittering yellow eyes looked down at them from vantage points high overhead. Then, as much by instinct as anything else, given the silence of the footfalls, they realized they were encircled.

One of the elves stepped forward from the advancing phalanx. Though he was obviously tall, lean, and strong, it was impossible to see his exact form. Only the lightness of the belted loincloth and the cape around his shoulders demarcated him from the night which otherwise blurred with his immaculate blackness.

Michael let the gun fall slowly to his side and the others followed his cue. "Shakala said he would see us if we

came," he said quietly. There were too many spears not to be damned polite here, and those were just the obvious weapons.

"We were not told there would be a kaffir," the man said viciously. "There will be a price to pay for that." The group with him advanced another step, only yards away now, perhaps forty or fifty strong. Kristen cowered beside Serrin and tried to look as small as possible. The elf was shaking, aware that there were shamans with this group, sensing their power. They would be far more dangerous than their spears if this came to violence.

The Zulus stood silently around them, staring them down, deliberately letting the tension build. Then, from the trees before them, a figure sprang fully thirty feet to the ground, landing perfectly on all fours and then rising to his seven-foot height, folding his arms and surveying them with fierce intelligence. Power screamed from the Zulu elf; Serrin was confused, sensing the aura of a mage but seeing him dressed in the unmistakable trappings of a cat shaman.

"Shakala, I presume," Michael said with the hint of a nod. The elf ignored him at first, turning his eyes to Kristen.

"Be glad this is no sacred place, kaffir, or I would rip your throat out," he growled. Then he turned to Tom, at whom he gazed long and hard. Sensing that this was some kind of staring-down contest, the troll looked back into the Zulu's eyes, refusing to yield. The elf's face hardened for an instant, and then a playful smile spread over his angular face. The expression might have been that of a cat playing with its helpless prey.

"We've come to ask for your help. We know that someone tried to kidnap you. It's possible they may try again," Serrin began. Since Shakala had ignored Michael, he thought it best to speak up.

Shakala's eyes turned to him as soft light spread around from objects some of the Zulus were carrying. They weren't torches, or didn't seem to be; Serrin thought he felt the aura of magic on them, but he was locked into the shaman's gaze. Despite the situation, Serrin couldn't help registering the beauty of the man. With that aquiline

nose, the high bones of his face, the elegance and proportion of his hard body, he looked like a prince.

Shakala laughed. It was an extraordinary sound, tinged with the high call of a cheetah at the beginning and with the growl of a lion as it faded away.

"No one will try again," he said derisively. "And why should I help you, little mage? What do I care about you?"

"Nothing," Serrin said quietly. "But the same people also tried to get me. And others have been taken, and killed. It's possible they might come back for more of your people. We just don't know."

He wasn't lying. For all he knew, that might be true. Shakala stared as if trying to ferret the truth out of Serrin.

Still not replying, he abruptly turned away and pointed at Tom.

"I may speak with him," he said. "Perhaps. If I do not just kill him first. He is either very brave or very stupid

to come here with Mujaji's mark on him. What I am inclined to think" he flashed his brilliant, sadistic smile again "is that he is probably very stupid. Either way, he will not leave with the mark upon him."

Tom stood his ground, unflinching. He didn't know just what the shamans of Table Mountain had done to him. He had been shown the stone and the ocean, felt something of their immanence within him and marveled at it, but he hadn't realized that it could be sensed by other shamans. Bear had not changed inside him; she had not shown any displeasure at what had happened. The elf was gesturing to him, leading him into the circle of trees. Half the surrounding elves formed a circle around them, the others ringing Serrin, Michael, and Kristen. Weapons other than spears were visible now as metal gleamed in the gentle light.

"This is my place," Shakala cried out. "I am prince here. Beware princes, troll, for they are less easy to placate than kings and they take their sport far more seriously." It would have sounded pompous, even ridiculous, had the Zulu elf not looked so striking and beautiful in the barely illuminated darkness.

Tom had met some Cat shamans in his time. They were unpredictable, capricious, and vain, often cruel but sometimes gentle and protective. Shakala didn't seem to be of the latter variety. The troll didn't know anything about Cheetah, but Shakala's words seemed to say that it was a more dangerous totem than Lion. Shakala was going to make sport with him. The troll knew that if he hosed it here, they were all dead. He begged Bear not to send him berserk if Shakala taunted him too long, too hard. When his weapons were taken by Shakala's retinue, he had only himself to depend upon.

Before his eyes the elf's form began to change. His hands became heavily clawed, furred paws. His head changed into that of a cheetah, its powerful canine teeth gleaming, yet the troll could still make out the elf's own features against the animal's face. This wasn't an illusion. Tom was bewildered. Was Shakala a shapeshifter taking elven form and now changing it? No, he didn't sense that. Was he perhaps masked? What was this creature?

The Cat shaman padded around him, now and then stopping to crouch and let out a low growl. The troll also moved in a circle, walking backward, always keeping his face to Shakala. Then the Cat shaman broke into a sprint and raced around to the troll's flank, clawing him hard enough to draw blood. It was only a scratch, but it stung Tom, who realized his adversary was far too swift for him.

Shakala rolled over at the end of his sprint and lunge, then was back on his feet in a single movement.

It's like a homicidal ballet, Serrin thought, unable to tear his eyes away from Tom. Kristen had meanwhile buried her face in his shoulder.

The Cat shaman circled and sprang once more; again the troll was too slow, taking a raking wound to the shoulder. A third attack, after another circling ritual and strike, left him with a flesh wound at the back of his left leg, the cheetah's favored hamstringing. The wounds were still superficial, but Tom felt the anger rising inside him. Please, Bear, no, he begged. If I strike at him, he will kill me. He will have my friends killed.

He had to exert every shred of his will into holding back the growing urge to pounce on the cheetah as it lay in the grass now, quiet and still. Tom knew the creature was inviting him to strike, and his desire to leap on to it, then squeeze the life out of it with his powerful arms, was growing by the second. The next instant the cat pounced straight at him and raked at his chest through the flimsy khaki, leaving a bloody arc of stripes across his flesh.

Shakala retreated again and lay on his back before the troll. It was the classic submissive gesture of a cheetah, back legs curled up and ready to defend itself by rolling into a ball and hiding its underbelly if attacked. He was provoking the troll to attack as persuasively as he could. Blood roared in Tom's ears as it spread across his shirt. He summoned every ounce of will into forcing himself to remain still.

They remained that way for one endless, eternal minute, the stain of blood spreading slowly over the troll's chest, the Cat shaman saying to and fro very slowly, waiting for the troll to strike. Tom balled his fists and bit on his tongue, trying to focus the pains all through his body into resistance. He did not close his eyes, but still stared at the waiting cat. He longed with every ounce of instinct to crush his tormentor, lying so invitingly in the grass. He fought that longing with everything better than instinct that he possessed.

Shakala got to his feet very slowly and advanced. He stood directly in front of the troll and stared up at him. Serrin shook with fear, desperate to help Tom with some spell, some strengthening of his will, but knowing all too well that the eyes of the shamans other than Shakala were on him. All he could do was pray.

Shakala put his paws on Tom's shoulders. Rivulets of blood came from the marks the claws made as they penetrated the troll's flesh, and still the troll did not waver. The cat's head reared back, then he spat in Tom's face.

Tom roared and wrapped his arms around Shakala. The huge biceps of the troll, gleaming with blood, strained as he crushed the body of the elf, squeezing with all the focused rage of his torment and humiliation.

But there was nothing there.

High above him, the great cat leapt from a tree and landed on the troll's back, knocking him to the ground. It

sank its muzzle into the nape of Tom's neck and bit down hard.

Lying under the cat's furred body, Tom's fury evaporated like veldt dew in the sun. He felt huge paws around him, but they were those of Bear and not Shakala, protective arms holding him close and safe. There wasn't any more pain. The bite was not deep; he was not being killed. He curled up, feeling his huge body so ridiculously small in Bear's embrace.

Shakala got up from him, blood on his muzzle and paws. In an instant, the cat form faded and the elf who had greeted them re-appeared. He looked down at the troll, staring hard, completely ignoring the others.

For one horrible moment, Serrin thought Tom was dead. But he'd taken no more than half a step forward before two spears were at his throat and a gun barrel at his back. Shakala did not move a muscle.

"Take them away," the Zulu elf muttered with a wave of his hand to the warriors surrounding Serrin, Michael, and Kristen. "Bring them back at noon." Spears directed the three of them away, into the trees.

"He moved. I think he's still alive," Michael whispered to Serrin. "By God, what have we got ourselves into?"

Serrin didn't want to think about it. He was only too aware that he was the one who had brought Tom here. If the troll were still alive, it was impossible to guess what might be the effect of the ordeal and humiliation. If it hits him the way love did, Serrin thought, I've just cost him his life in a way far worse than being killed by that madman.

The troll came to his senses just after dawn. His wounds were healing even without the application of his own meager power. He was lying in a clearing, the red ring of dawn on the horizon and a bright and brilliant morning chorus of birds and insects all around him. Shakala sat beside him, simply an elf now, but his whole posture intent. He offered Tom water, bread, dried meat, oranges. The troll skipped the flesh and ripped the orange apart. The elf smiled.

"You are weak, but you use everything you possess,"

Shakala said. "Your body is spoiled for power, but you are greater than you should be. You are wise, but you will not be shamed too far. This is my place," he said, "and you respected that. I am surprised by you."

The troll grunted. "I don't know much about your ways," he said finally. Shakala was obviously prepared to talk with him, but there were limits to how friendly he could be with someone who'd taunted and wounded him repeatedly.

"I will not allow the mark you bore here," Shakala said angrily. "I burned it from you. Now you have my mark for my enemies to see."

Great, Tom thought, that should be real handy if we have to go back to Cape Town. The Xhosa shamans ought to just love that.

"We came because we're trying to keep people from being killed and we need help," Tom said quietly. "The men who tried to steal you. They also tried to kidnap my friend. We know something about who they serve." Shakala sat and waited.

"We believe he is a nosferatu. A vampire, a bloodsucker," Tom added, uncertain whether this shaman would know the word. Come down to it, Tom wasn't entirely certain himself. "He takes only certain people. They have something special in their blood which he needs to feed on."

Shakala's eyes narrowed. "How do you know this?" he said quietly, taking a strip of meat into his hands and ripping it apart.

"Michael, the man with us. You did not speak with him," Tom began.

"Ha!" Shakala snorted. "He has no power. He is an empty shell."

"Possibly." Tom didn't really want to argue that now. "But he was able to use computers to study the medical histories of the kidnapped people." Then the troll remembered the thing that had puzzled Michael.

"We came also because Michael said that there was no history on you. Nothing on any official computer he checked. He didn't understand how the people could have

found you. How could they have known you had the right kind of blood?"

Shakala was thoughtful, chewing on his meat while Tom felt himself becoming drawn to the elf in spite of himself. The Cat shaman had more power within him than Tom felt he could ever know, and his languorous beauty was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was hard to dislike someone so physically perfect, even after the previous night.

"It could be done by magic," Shakala said slowly. "Perhaps. By ritual magic."

"It could," Tom agreed, "but that would take a very, very long time. And unless they had something of you, it would be virtually impossible. Is there anyone who

He stopped in mid-sentence. He'd been about to ask Shakala whether someone might have a piece of him hair, blood, something that he had once owned and that was precious to him that could be used for ritual magic. But that was like asking someone to reveal their greatest weakness, the means by which they could best be disabled, attacked, killed. It wouldn't be the smartest thing to ask this elf, so he stopped himself from blurting it out. But the elf knew anyway.

"There is something," the elf mused. "Blood. When I was a child, before the Zulu Nation was born, there was an epidemic here. There were not enough Awakened to deal with it. They used drugs to treat it as best they could. They took blood samples to find out whether the drugs could be used safely. The drugs were dangerous; some died from taking them. An allergic reaction," he said, looking slyly at the troll.

It was a neat counterpoint. Tom had touched on a possible vulnerability of the elf, and he had touched on Tom's own. Like all trolls, Tom suffered from a severe allergy in his case, to silver. Like the elf, he would never want anyone else to know the precise details of his weakness.

Looking pleased with himself at the troll's reaction to his barb, Shakala continued. "The blood was returned years later from the old hospital. We Awakened beings could not permit it to remain in the hands of others," he

said, "But perhaps records were kept. That would be the one possibility. That would be one way someone might learn."

"Wouldn't that be on a computer?" Tom asked.

"Somewhere. But which one? Would it be one your friend, this man, has searched?"

"I don't know. Probably not," the troll replied uncertainly. "But I don't know much about computers myself."

"Do we need to know?" Shakala said.

We. It was the first time he'd used that word. Tom felt as if the elf was giving him respect at last. He may be greater and more powerful than I am, the troll thought, but he is still a shaman and he too serves and acknowledges something greater and more powerful, in turn, than himself.

"This hospital. Is it still there?" Tom asked, more relaxed now.

"Yes, but it is now used as a laboratory," Shakala said slowly. "They grow many unusual plants there. It is masked with powerful magic and protected by many warriors. Those who work there are brought from outside the Nation."

"You can tell us where this place is?" Tom asked. He was desperate for the right answer, but the one he got wasn't exactly what he'd hoped for.

"I will take you there. If they have my blood in their machines, and they have used it to try to kill me, then I shall destroy them," the Zulu said, the calmness of his voice making the words even more chilling.

"Ah," the troll said.

"Tom!" Serrin shouted in relief. "Hey, chummer, is it ever good to see you!" He tried his best to embrace the troll, but his arms couldn't quite make it around the huge torso. "Are you all right?"

"We've spoken," Tom said, shrugging off his friend's concern. He didn't have words to waste reassuring the elf that he was healed. It should have been obvious. "Things are going to get complicated." Keeping it brief and to the point, he repeated what he'd learned from Shakala.

"Well, if the information is on a private database, I

wouldn't have got it," Michael said. "I checked governmental sources and medical company databases, and the latter only when I had to. "Depends what kind of hospital, too. If it was a charity, for instance, I wouldn't have checked into it. The same if it's been taken over by a corporation." Something nagged at Michael, something lurking at the back of his mind, refusing to reveal itself. Tom's story certainly explained why information on the Zulu hadn't turned up in his searches. Something else, he thought. Come on, you deckhead, there's something else, what is it amp;

"The problem is that he intends to use his warriors to destroy the place," Tom said, explaining Shakala's logic.

"But there's no point. The same information could have been duplicated elsewhere. His blood-group information could be in half a dozen places around the world by now. It's not going to do him any good to destroy this place. Hell, you can't use blood group data for ritual magic anyway, can you? Don't you need the blood itself?" Michael fretted.

"You're right. Everything you say is rationally true," Tom said with a rueful smile. "But you try telling him that."

"Did he get any ID on the people who came after him? How did the attempted kidnapping even get public? There aren't any media hacks out here. And what

"Hey, slow down, chummer," the troll protested. "The hit team came in a chopper, apparently. He lost two of his people, but his warriors didn't draw any blood so Shakala couldn't use ritual sorcery to track them. He got hit with a trank shot, but enough of his people turned up fast enough to keep the kidnappers from carrying him off. Shakala did get a look at one of them, though. A white man. Guess what? He had a scar on the left side of his chin. Shakala says there was something, something 'wrong' about the guy's aura. He can't be precise because the bullets were flying too fast and heavy for really precise astral perceptions right then."

"So it's the same man, the same outfit," Serrin mused. The description proves it. If you didn't tell him what I saw, that is."

"Come on, I'm not that dumb," the troll protested. "No, he said it right out."

"How did he do that stuff when you grabbed him?" Michael asked. "One minute you had him, the next he's in the trees above you. You ought to learn that trick, Serrin."

"I wish," the elf said fervently. "You said he was a mage. But he looks like a shaman. I see both. Maybe the usual classifications don't apply out here."

"Well, anyway," Tom said, "the reason the incident made the news was because a government minister was in the area at the time. Photo opportunities in the game reserve, tourist stuff. When they heard gunfire, the snoops and photographers with the group lit out after a real story. Just a lucky break."

"Are they going to kill me?" Kristen blurted out at last. She was terrified by the threatening body of Zulu men.

"No, I don't think so," the troll chuckled. "Shakala's happy enough. Seems he took a dislike to the Xhosa shamans putting some kind of mark on me. All that ritual last night was him replacing it with his own."

"Some ritual," Serrin protested.

"Yeah, well. I think I learned something from it," the troll mused.

"I suppose it's a bit like lemurs," Michael said a little uncertainly.

Serrin looked completely dumbfounded by this remark, "Lemurs?"

"Well they scent mark. If it's their territory, they piss on it to say it's theirs. If they come across some intruder, they mask his scent with their own. Sort of." Michael was finally succumbing to the effects of sleeplessness after a restless night, and realized he'd managed to talk himself into trouble.

"So you take me for a tree to be pissed on?" Tom said, faking anger. He was actually amused, realizing that for once the Englishman had been caught off-guard. The troll intended to make the most of the opportunity.

"Well, no, I mean, it's the concept of the thing," Michael said lamely.

"You dumb fragger," Tom growled, grabbing the Englishman by his jacket and hauling him a foot off the ground. "You don't know drek."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean " Michael began.

"Lemurs don't live in Africa. They're South American. I know; saw it on the trid once. If you're going to get me pissed on by something, then you should make damn sure it belongs out here, you dumb Englishman," Tom laughed, setting Michael back down on the ground.

Serrin was about to join in the laughter when he saw reinforcements beginning to arrive. The spears had looked nasty enough, but sixty of these Zulus armed with SMGs and assault cannon opened up whole new vistas of mayhem.

"I just hope there's still some kind of evidence left by the time these boys are done with it," he said hopefully.