Morbidly eager to see what was inside, I shined my light directly into the box. And for a moment, I could only stare.
I’d seen dead bodies before. Many, many times. But most of those were bad guysI’dkilled, or people who had died recently. Xaphan’s dead master was like no other corpse I’d ever seen. Little more than bones wrapped in the remnants of clothing, he bore a striking resemblance to a mummy I’d seen exhumed on The Discovery Channel years before. Like that mummy, this corpse’s skin was dark, discolored, and appeared to have been shrink-wrapped to his skeleton. And all of him—both flesh and clothing—looked dry and brittle, as if the slightest breeze might scatter him into billions of tiny dust particles.
Suddenly I had the macabre urge to blow on the corpse’s face, to see if it would really disintegrate… I resisted, of course. Barely. And mostly because I couldn’t stand the thought of breathing in powdered dead-guy.
Though I saw no sign that the body had actually burned, the entire coffin smelled like ash, even after four hundred years in a hole in the ground. A week earlier, I probably would have found that fact strange, but after befriending a hellhound, talking to a wraith, nourishing a succubus, and being hunted by a demon…well, my definition of “strange” was starting to evolve.
“Wow,” Cale whispered from my right.
I glanced at him. “You’ve never seen this?”
“It was buried four hundred years ago,” he said, still staring into the coffin. “How the hell could I have seen it?”
“I don’t know. You seem to know so much about it…”
He knelt, running one hand over the warm edge of the marble. “I’ve heard the stories all my life, but this is the first time I’ve ever actuallyseenthis particular part of my family dynasty. Or touched it.”
I focused my light on a plain, smooth stone urn topped with a matching, domed lid. It was tucked under the dead man’s arm, as if he were cradling it even in death. Or maybe clinging to it out of desperation. “Is that it?” But I knew the answer even as I asked the question. I could feel Xaphan inside. Listening… Waiting…
“It must be.” Cale bent to take the urn, and the moment it slid free of the dead guy’s arm, Orthus burst into a fit of barking. I spun toward him, and my jaw dropped as I took in the creature falling toward me from the branches above.
I caught a glimpse of a slim torso and four long limbsasI dropped face first into the ivy. My flashlight landed upside down in a pile of brush nearby and my right elbow slammed into the ground. Pain ripped through my newly healed arm. I rolled over, already going for my gun.
Overhead, the creature—a petite man in jeans and a dark, bulky shirt—angled his arced descent, shooting for the coffin. One long, plaid-clad arm shot out through a beam of moonlight, and he snatched the urn from Cale as he passed over the box.
I rolled onto my knees, aiming at the falling man, but he never hit the ground. Instead, he rose into the air again, in another long, graceful arc.
“What the hell?” I yelled as Cale pulled his gun. And that’s when I realized the small man hadn’t been falling at all. He’d beenswinging.The Tarzan motherfucker was swinging from a rope attached to another man clinging to the lowest overhead branch.
An instant later, at the apex of his upward arc, Tarzan tossed the urn over his head. I gasped. My eyes followed the prize, my aim tracking it as well, though shooting the djinni’s stone prison wouldnothelp our situation.
A third creature, this one female, swung upside-down from a nearby tree, passing through Cale’s flashlight beam. Long, dark hair trailed behind her as she arced toward the urn, which was now in a terrifying freefall. Reaching out easily, gracefully, she plucked itrightout of the air.
I could only watch, stunned into a rare moment of silence, and an even more rare inaction.
“What the fuck is going on?” My gaze climbed the woman’s body to the rope connecting her to a fourth creature hugging a tree trunk above her. “Who the hellarethese circus freaks?” I snatched my flashlight from the ground and tracked her, not quite surprised to find only madness reflected in her eyes. No sense. No anger or fear of any kind. I saw only blind, single-minded desperation.Obsession.
Whatever these creatures were, Xaphan had gotten to them.
“Imps,” Cale spat, bending to snatch his flashlight from the ground.
“What…?”Ohhh. Tarzan and friends weren’t swinging from ropes. They were swinging fromtails. Long, fur-less, fully prehensile tails, gripping each other at the mid-point of each “rope.” They swung through the trees with ease and grace, weaving among the branches and leaves like trapeze artists on powerful, flesh-and-blood swings.
“What the hell are they doing here?” I snapped, whirling to follow the woman’s swing to its conclusion.
Cale’s beam traced her path until she tossed the urn to her right, where a sixth—or maybe the first?—imp seized it just before it would have slammed into a broad, bare tree trunk. “I’m guessing they live here, at least in the off-season. Xaphan has enthralled them, just like he did with the digging crew.”
“Damn it!” I cursed, ducking as a dangling foot soared through the air on a collision course with my skull.
Orthus dashed back and forth across the clearing, growling viciously as he chased one creature after another. But one by one, they disappeared into the branches, only to drop into sight again a moment later. They were playing with him, and the frustrated hellhound never got close enough to carry out the bite promised by his furious bark.
Cale grunted, dodging a flying fist on his left. “Wecannotgive them a chance to open that urn.” His gun sparked as he fired, briefly illuminating half-a-dozen bodies dangling or swinging from limbs above us. The shot echoed throughout the forest, and the imp arcing through the trees with the urn tucked beneath one arm screeched with lunatic laugher as a clump of leaves exploded a foot behind his shoulder.
Over his head, his female spotter jumped, startled, and lost her grip on his tail. The man slipped from her grasp and dropped several feet. I sucked in an uneasy breath, sure the urn would crash to the ground and break open, releasing Xaphan—without a master to answer to.
But at the last second, the male imp’s tail caught a nearby branch as he fell. His fall ended in a new upward arc, propelling him toward the next tree, where another imp waited to grab him.
Damn, what a show!I couldn’t help thinking, as the imp—and the urn—sailed by, ten feet off the ground.Cirque du Soleil wouldlovethese guys!
