“We should get off the ground,” he told Chinook, “get higher.”
“Okay, good idea,” said Chinook, nodding quickly.
They lifted from the stream’s bank and flew in tight, cautious spirals up toward the jungle’s canopy. Shade didn’t want to get too deeply into the foliage—who knew what roosted there?—so he kept his distance, searching the tall trunks of the understory for a roost. He settled on a network of frail branches, which he thought were probably too weak to support anything bigger than him and Chinook.
He locked his rear claws, hanging upside down, and for the first time, was aware of the pain in his stomach. Ripping off the metal had left a raw gash in his flesh, still bleeding slowly. He caught a glimpse of Chinook’s wound, similarly ugly. “You all right?” he asked.
“It’s not too bad,” said Chinook. “How’s yours?” Shade shrugged. He was impressed with Chinook. Somehow he’d expected him to fall apart, but he was doing pretty well. Nothing on Marina, Shade thought with a pang, but after all, Chinook didn’t have nearly as much practice almost getting killed all the time.
Below them came a great thrashing of fronds and leaves, and Shade caught sight of a huge beast. It had a narrow, shaggy back that was easily four feet in length, and a thick, broad tail almost as long. Most unusual, though, was its snout, which looked like some kind of thick snake attached to its face. The beast plunged its snout into the earth and made a loud sucking noise. As it dragged back, Shade saw a long, whippy, ant-covered tongue dart out and slap around the edges of the snout, then disappear back inside. Good, Shade thought distantly. It ate ants, and it didn’t seem interested in climbing trees. After a moment it ambled out of sight, walking on the knuckles of its feet.
He’d never seen a more unusual creature, but nothing surprised him anymore. He felt dazed. So much had happened, and so quickly, everything was like a memory that belonged to someone else: the owls, Goth, the Humans chaining him with the metal disc, the cage, the flying machine, then the explosions. A fish that nearly ate him. It was all something distant, on the horizon of his mind, but like an approaching thundercloud he couldn’t avoid.
“Thanks, Shade,” said Chinook dully. “For stopping me.”
“Sorry I had to bite you.”
“If you hadn’t, I would’ve—” He flattened his ears and winced, as if trying to block a painful sound. Quietly he said, “Did you see them, my mother and father?”
Shade felt his breath go jerking out of him. He’d completely forgotten Plato and Isis had been taken too, and if they were loaded onto that flying machine…. He swallowed hard, scrambling for words.
Chinook’s voice was urgent: “I was looking for them, but there was all that echo noise in my head, and I couldn’t … I’m pretty sure I saw them once, and I called out, but they were so far away, they … did you see them?”
Shade shook his head, sick. “We don’t even know they were in that flying machine, Chinook. They might still be back at the Human building…. “
“You don’t have to lie. I’m not that stupid.” There was no anger in his voice, just a horrible hollowness.
“I’m not lying,” Shade said desperately. “We don’t know! Even if they got dumped with us, they might’ve survived.” But in his mind’s eye he saw the hundreds of bats streaming down into the inferno, vacant expressions on their faces. He couldn’t believe any of them had pulled away in time.
Marina.
His heart gave a horrible lurch. Was she in one of those containers too? Stop it, he screamed inwardly. You don’t even know she was on the flying machine. But what if she’d been blasted out into the sky with him and Chinook, and he just hadn’t seen her? She wouldn’t have followed the sound picture, he told himself; she was too smart for that.
“If we survived, they could too,” he forced himself to say. “We’ll go back and see in a bit, all right? We’ll rest up, and then we’ll go check it out. There’ll be others. There’ve got to be.”
Chinook didn’t seem to be listening. He was slowly turning his head as if seeing his alien surroundings for the first time.
“We’re going to live, Chinook. But we need a plan, all right?” He knew if he let go, his fear would gallop off with him. He needed to talk so he could drown out the whimpering of his own terror. How he wished Marina was here. Ideas, he needed ideas. “Let’s make a plan, Chinook.”
The other bat was still staring, stupefied, into the jungle. “Chinook!” Shade said. “Are you listening?”
“I want my father,” Chinook said quietly.
All Shade’s impatience evaporated instantly. “I know,” he said. “Me too.”
Chinook turned back to him, and Shade saw in his miserable face that same desperate, bottomless longing he himself had felt for so long. I want my father too. He had to look away, his body rigid as he fought the wrenching sob caught in his throat. He wasn’t afraid of crying in front of Chinook; he was afraid of not being able to stop.
He forced a shaky breath through his mouth.
“We’re going to see if there’re any survivors, then we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to warn the others.”
“All right,” said Chinook, sniffing back his tears. “Good. We should be able to make it back before dawn, right? We weren’t inside that flying machine too long.”
“No, but it goes much faster than us,” Shade said.
“Oh, right, right,” said Chinook. “So how far is it?” Shade inhaled. “Well, we were inside the flying machine for, say, three hours, maybe more?” He didn’t expect an answer from Chinook; but he found it comforting to talk aloud. It made him feel more organized, like he was thinking clearly, solving a problem. “So how fast does one of those fly?” He really had no idea. “When we got dumped into the sky, we were going pretty fast, what do you think, maybe a hundred wingbeats a second?” Chinook’s face was blank. “So what’s that work out to … in three hours that’s, what is it … over a million wingbeats.” He swallowed, feeling queasy. “That’s a long way.”
“Why’d they do this to us?” Chinook whispered.
“They’re just using us,” said Shade darkly.
“To burn their own buildings?”
“When we met Zephyr back in the city, Marina and me, he said the Humans were fighting a war of their own. Against each other.” It had surprised him at the time, and he’d quickly forgotten it. Now it came horribly back to him. “The Humans up north must be fighting the ones down here. And they’re using us to carry fire.”
“They were supposed to be our friends.” There was incredulity and dismay in Chinook’s voice. “What about the Promise?”
Shade was ashamed to admit, even to himself, that until he’d seen all those bats dying in flames, part of him still wanted to trust the Humans. Hoping, hoping that Arcadia was right, and it was all part of some plan. And no matter how horrible, how painful it was, it would all work out in the end. And maybe he’d even find his father too. All lies.
“There’s no Promise,” Shade said bitterly. “Goth was right all along about the Humans. They’re evil. They trap bats to study them. They knew how to put pictures into our heads, just like our song maps. And now they’ve gone and dumped us in the jungle.”
Something clicked behind him, and he turned hurriedly, but there was nothing there. Must’ve been a water droplet hitting a leaf.
“We’ve got to get out of here, Chinook,” he said. “I’m pretty sure this is where the cannibal bats come from.”
“Like Goth?”
He nodded, wondering if he should’ve told him. But what was the point of hiding things? He was too tired to lie, and he was going to need Chinook’s help if they wanted to survive.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” Chinook said miserably, looking up through the trees. “You figure there’re owls here too?”
Shade shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“The stars are different here,” said Chinook. Shade was surprised he’d noticed: He’d never thought Chinook was
very observant. Then again, Chinook had surprised him quite a bit lately. “How are we going to know where north is?”
“We’ll use the setting sun,” Shade said. “That tells us east, and we guess at north. We fly high enough, and keep the glow on the horizon as long as we can, and reset our course every twilight.” It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could come up with right now. Click.
That same sound. He turned, and this time a leaf was bobbing slightly, as if recently touched. Shade frowned. That twig wasn’t there before. It was closer.
Couldn’t be, he told himself impatiently. He stared hard. It was a fat twig, with a knobbly tip.
It twitched.
All at once the twig unfolded itself, and a hideously long neck rose up from a winged body, topped with a spear-shaped head. Jagged spines bristled from pincered claws. It was a bug, but the biggest bug he’d ever seen, almost a foot long—and that made it twice as long as Shade. Its camouflage was so excellent, he’d thought its body and arms and legs were just jutting twigs. It had big, blank, globular eyes. Two antennae sprouted from its head. Its mouth was beaked.
Before Shade could drop from his roost, the bug sprang onto him, its four gangly legs sinking into him as it reared up, claws open, trying to crush his head. He smacked the bug’s face away with his wing, but felt one pincered claw close around his left forearm, making it impossible to fly. He saw the bug’s other claw flex and come swinging in for his neck—
And then in a blur of silver-tipped fur, Chinook was upon the bug, sinking his teeth through the base of its gangly neck. Shade heard the crunch, and watched as the two halves of the insect fell from the branch, its legs and spiny claws still thrashing.
“That,” Shade said, shaking violently, “was one big bug. That was really close, Chinook. You”—he looked at the bigger bat in true amazement—”you saved my life.”
But Chinook was hanging motionless, eyes unblinking.
“Chinook, you all right?”
“That thing nearly ate us!” Chinook shouted. It was as if all his fear was only now flooding over him.
“Chinook, not so loud,” Shade said anxiously. “We don’t want—”
“The bugs here eat bats. What kind of place is this, Shade? You’ve got to get us out of here.”
“Chinook—”
“This is your fault! We could be back in the forest, but you kept complaining and saying it was no good, and … and … you made the Humans angry at us, and now look what’s happened. There’re cannibal bats, and giant fish and bugs bigger than us that can bite off our heads!”
Panic-stricken, he was making no sense, and he was going to wake the entire jungle. Shade struck him across the face with his wing, not too hard, but hard enough to shut him up for a second. Sudden anger smoldered in the bigger bat’s eyes, and Shade wondered if he’d done the right thing. He carried on, anyway.
“Chinook, you’ve got to take control of yourself, all right?” he whispered urgently. “You’re a big bat, a powerful bat. Look what you just did! I froze, Chinook. But you didn’t. You killed that bug.”
Chinook just stared at him, panting. “You killed that bug, Chinook.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“You didn’t think about it. You just did it. Instincts, Chinook, you’ve got the best instincts. You always have. You’re the best hunter and flyer in the whole colony!”
“We’re going to get eaten!”
“No way, Chinook. You know what? I’m glad you’re here.”
“You are?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Shade, and was surprised at how fervently he meant it. “You saved my life. Now I need you to be calm; I need you to help me out here. We’re going to get out of here alive.”
“Not if you’re this noisy.”
Shade jerked around and saw a bat beating the air overhead, inches from them. With a cold shock of relief, Shade saw he wasn’t a cannibal but a northerner, bigger than any he’d seen before. His fur was thick and dark, and he had low-scooped ears and the most ferocious set of incisors Shade had seen since Goth. Most unusual of all, he had a tail, not like Shade’s little stub, but a proper tail like a rat’s tail, pointed and whippy.
“Didn’t hear me, did you?” said the strange bat. “I could’ve been anything. Owl, tree snake, cannibal. And you’d be dead. You’re not in the northern forests now.” He peered at them intently. “You ripped off the discs, good. You’re not idiots, then.”
“Who are you?” Shade asked.
“Caliban, from the northwest forests. I survived too. And there’re others. Now be silent, and come with me.”
As Goth flew deeper into the jungle, he could see huge craters and furrows carved from the earth by fire. The Humans obviously did not just attack the city, though from what he’d seen, the damage was immense: buildings crushed and blackened, streets buckled. And now, as he flew farther over the jungle canopy, it struck him how quiet it was, as if the multitude of creatures who made their homes here had been bludgeoned into silence, or simply fled.
Still, it was impossible not to rejoice at being back in the jungle, the smells, the heat. Home at last. Zotz had brought him home.
The metal hanging from his stomach was heavy, but he knew he could reach the pyramid. The only question was how to remove the disc safely. He was not too worried. He knew the royal pyramid was home to some of the finest stone artisans in the kingdom. Their teeth were their tools, and they had honed and shaped them so they could cut stone and design intricate doorways—like the doors of the prison cells that held the sacrificial victims. He trusted them to remove the disc from his body.
And there.
Rising from the jungle was the pyramid, home to the royal family, the Vampyrum Spectrum. It was almost completely overgrown, its stepped terraces cloaked under a blanket of creepers and ferns and palms that had somehow found root in the cracked stone.
The Humans had built the pyramid hundreds of years ago, in honor of Cama Zotz, the bat god of the Underworld. Now they seemed to have forgotten him. They let the jungle swallow the pyramid up. Even so, small groups of men and women sometimes hacked their way through the jungle to leave offerings on the bottom steps of the grand staircase. Cut into the east face, the stairs led to the royal chamber that crowned the pyramid. His home.
There was another entrance, midway up the terraces, and Goth could see bats streaming back toward it as the dawn’s light filtered through the jungle. His brothers and sisters. Goth took a deep breath.
“I have returned!” he bellowed. “It is I. Prince Goth. I have returned!”
His voice echoed off the trees and stone like a roar of thunder, silencing the bird and insect song from the jungle.
“I am here!” he shouted again, and the Vampyrum swirled around him to look. Soon he was encircled. After so many months, it was a pleasure to be among his own kind: large, powerful bats. And yet, they weren’t as big as they should have been. Many had a lean, hungry look to them, their ribs showing through the fur of their chests. Still, he basked in their excitement as they greeted him.
“Prince Goth!”
“Where have you been?”
“We thought you’d been killed!”
“Everyone! Prince Goth has returned!”
“Hail, King Goth!”
He snapped his head around to find the speaker of the last words. “Who said king?”
“I’m sorry, My Lord,” said the bat, taken aback by the ferocity of Goth’s expression. “But your father has died. You now are king.”
The words of Cama Zotz slithered through his head. Do my bidding, then, and you will be king.
“When?” he demanded. “When did this happen?”
“Only four nights ago, during one of the firestorms. He was out hunting.”
“This is the cause of your firestorms,” he roared, lifting his wings high above his shoulders and revealing the metal disc sewn to his belly. “This is the Human fire that’s ravaged our jungle. They have used the northern bats as t
heir carriers. They thought they could use me to destroy other Humans, and myself. But we will use this against them, you have my promise. They have insulted us, and Cama Zotz, and they must be punished. I will avenge my father’s death!”
“Hail to King Goth!” the bat cried, and his words were taken up by the others, building to a chant that thundered deliciously in Goth’s ears.
“Now,” he said, ready to give orders, “send for the carvers. I want this metal shorn from me and stored carefully!”
“Your Highness, I’ve been waiting for you.” Goth looked and saw Voxzaco, flapping his crippled wings toward him. He was the chief priest, and his father’s closest adviser. Goth found him as repellent now as he had when he was a child. His spine was arched, and it made him a poor flyer. His fur had almost all fallen away with age, leaving mangy patches of strawlike gray among raw-looking flesh. His breath stank from the noxious berries and leaves he ate to fuel his visions; and even Goth had trouble meeting his gaze sometimes, his eyes so huge in his gaunt head that they seemed to swallow you up. He had always looked like this, as long as Goth could recall.
“Waiting for me?” said Goth in confusion. “You knew I would return?”
“Yes,” said Voxzaco. “It is on the Stone.”
Then the old priest’s eyes saw the disc beneath Goth’s belly, and a small cry escaped his throat. He could barely stay aloft for the trembling that wracked his body.
“What is it?” Goth asked in alarm.
“Yes,” muttered Voxzaco, eyes still locked on the Human disc. “Yes, I see now. It fits perfectly.” He wrenched his eyes away and looked at Goth. “Come, let me show you.”
Inside the royal chamber, Goth hovered over the deep bed of soft leaves which the carvers had prepared for him. Then, wings churning, he carefully lowered the metal disc onto it.
“Free me of it,” he ordered, and the carvers set to work instantly, their specially sharpened teeth raking at the chain that connected the disc to Goth’s body. While Goth hovered in agony, the carvers sawed through the metal links within seconds, and Goth soared upward in relief, and roosted. The metal ring was still in his stomach, and he did not welcome the idea of it being torn from his flesh, even by one of the royal surgeons.