Page 73 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“I guess the night before last is eighteen years ago, since they’re the same.”

“This was in a dream. Now and then, not often, she comes to me in dreams. Two nights ago, she showed me your face. It was the first I’d seen you. Last night, when you came to get mybrothers’ hiking gear, I knew you were the one who would never lie to me and that we would do great things together.”

Evidently, they had left the front door open. Before Regis can ask what great things Wendy imagines they will do, a huge mountain lion, white as snow, enters the kitchen.

61

HAVING BECOME

Inside the torqued and cracked shell of the airplane that came to violent rest in the pine trees, the blood of pilot and passenger is so old that it has no attraction for the wild animals that were once drawn to the smell of it. Perhaps the raccoon, which was here when she arrived, has climbed to this aerie because it’s preparing to give birth to a litter of cubs in the days ahead; the height of this retreat and the fact that it is a human construct ensure that many predators will avoid the place.

The animal hasn’t come here in search of food. Its kind eat frogs, shellfish, crayfish, worms, mice, insects, fruit, nuts, and vegetables. The most it might find here are insects and not many of those.

The sharp claws of a raccoon and its characteristic courage make it a formidable adversary in a fight, so much so that its kind keep their distance even from one another unless they are mother and cubs of the same family. The individual that shares the ruined plane with Vida exhibits no aggression, but sits with its forepaws crossed on its breast and observes her with curiosity, eyes glittering in its bandit mask.

The raccoon doesn’t hiss at her or growl or twitter, as its kind do. It sits mostly in contented silence and occasionally purrs, as it watches while she cautiously barbers herself with the sharpcombat knife. Vida’s little ring-tailed companion reminds her of a photograph of a contemplative monk that she once saw in a magazine.

She is certain that if she took the animal into her lap and stroked its belly as if it were a house cat that had been in her company for years, it would not resist. It isn’t fear but respect for the raccoon’s dignity that prevents her from testing that belief.

Earlier, she sensed that she was Becoming. Now, because of the raccoon, she believes that she has Become. She is whatever the seer foresaw.

Your future will be full of strife and struggle, loss and grief, doubt and fear, and pain.

Your future will be full of peace and comfort, love and joy, hope and fortitude, solace and delight.

You’ll be a champion of the natural world and all its beauty, because you will neither wish to dominate it nor confuse it with what is truly sacred.

More than twenty-eight years of life have brought her to this moment, this place, have brought her out of the past and at last to the future foreseen. She might have many years ahead of her or only a few minutes. She can be a champion of nature either by standing fast as a protector of it or being murdered as José Nochelobo was murdered and becoming a martyr who inspires others. Her fate is not her choice. Her only choice is to resist or run forever, and she will not run.

62

THE KILL COUNT THEORY

In a most agreeable fever of anticipation, Rackman leads the way through the high forest, consulting the screen of the tracking device, which is strapped to his right wrist so that he can keep both hands on the AR-15. The moment will soon be at hand, the power and the glory that make life worthwhile.

Vector and Trott would rape the woman if they had their way, but Rackman has no interest in sexual assault, and he knows that his brother is likewise averse to forcing himself on a woman. Instead, Rackman and Monger are thrilled by the prospect of terminating her. This desire isn’t a perversion of the sex drive. That would be an unfounded allegation. The brothers have no patience with unfounded allegations. They would be no less aroused if their target was a man or an infant whose gender was unknown to them. If you want sex, you pay for it, just as you pay for food and drink and TV streaming services. Eat too much, and you’re a glutton; drink too much, and you’re a drunk; if you must have sex every day or even more often, you’re a satyr, a degenerate. That’s what the brothers believe, and they have too much pride to wear any of those labels. To take a woman by force risks imprisonment; to claim to love her and marry her is worse than prison as far as the brothers are concerned. Both rape and the profession of true love exaggerate the importance of sex and diminish whatis immeasurably more fulfilling—which is murder. Anyone can have sex; it’s a cheap thrill. However, most people aren’t capable of killing another human being. Taking a life is supposed to be left to God or governments, and both have kill counts to be envied, which is the first clue as to how much fun it is. An orgasm is a petty matter of a minute or less, with little risk other than a curable disease, but when you blow open someone’s head with a high-power round or carve someone’s guts out with a knife,you know you’ve done something big. You have set yourself apart from the ruck of humanity. Often the brothers can’t remember a woman’s face just a day after they paid for sex with her, but they long remember the faces of those they murder, which remain vivid in their deeply satisfying dreams. In dreams, those who have been murdered die over and over; Rackman and Monger can experience the terror and agony of their victims not as a petty matter of a minute or less, but repeatedly throughout the night, hour after hour. The surest measure of a happy life is a high kill count.

In the case of Vida, Rackman’s only regret is that he might have to kill her without seeing her face at the moment of death. Boschvark, now more directly their boss than when he employed them through the Bead mob, has developed a superstitious dread of the woman. The brothers don’t know the details, but the billionaire has supposedly declared,That freaking Gorgon, if she can be killed, I want her head on my aegis.Whatever that means. Boschvark is said to prefer that she’s shot on sight, at the distance that fate presents her, and time is of the essence.

The four blinking tech-tick locators clustered on the tracking screen bring Rackman and the assassination squad to the mangled airplane suspended twenty feet above the ground, in the embrace of two crash-damaged trees. Neither Rackman nor his brotherreads a newspaper or watches television news, which at best provide readers and viewers with lukewarm thrills of reported death and destruction, when daily life offers a much richer brew of the same. Nevertheless, Rackman heard of the plane crash back in the day when it happened, and he is only momentarily surprised by the suspended wreckage.

The signals are corroborated by the skinned bark of one pine and small freshly broken branches that indicate the route by which Vida ascended to this unlikely hideout. Even as the wordhideoutpasses through his mind, he realizes that the aircraft is not primarily a place of concealment. It’s instead a shooter’s platform, an ambuscade. As the point man, he is the primary target. He can’t see the woman. She’s well concealed, but she’s up there, finger on a trigger.

As Rackman sidles toward the cover of a nearby tree, he opens fire on the quarry’s roost, emptying the rifle’s magazine in three-round bursts. The skin of the aircraft is thin; the high-velocity rounds puncture it with hard barks of tortured metal. There’s no need to conserve ammunition. Among them, the four members of this hit squad have enough ammo to kill the woman at least three hundred times.

63

AZRAEL OR RHADAMANTHUS

Three hundred pounds of muscle. A mouthful of stilettoes. Claws that can strike to the bone. She’s white with pale-yellow eyes, but she isn’t an apparition. Ears pricked forward, nostrils flared, she seeks sounds and scents for which a ghost has no need in order to conduct a haunting. She stands in the doorway, observing the kitchen and its two occupants, not with what seems like predatory intent, but with solemn curiosity.

Primitive instinct tells Regis to rise and brandish his chair before him. Civilized intuition argues that such a move would be a challenge to the big cat and instigate an attack rather than prevent one. He sits up straight, hands gripping the arms of his chair, ready to thrust to his feet.

He takes his eyes off the cougar only to scan the table for a weapon—where there’s nothing more useful than a fork—and to glance at Wendy. Her reaction to the cat is as surprising as the arrival of the beast itself, for she appears relaxed and is smiling at their uninvited guest as if she purchased the feline in a pet store when it was just a cub and is proud of the magnificent adult that it has become.

Although he has not seen it until now, Regis has heard about the albino mountain lion that some locals insist predicts, by its appearance, an impending death.

“Azrael,” he says.

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