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Entry tags:
"The Tiki Death Masks"
The Tiki Death Masks"
9/1-9/3/2016
I.
Just before dusk, with the red sun low over the ocean, a strange black helicopter landed on a remote beach in the Pacific. The craft bore no identifying numbers or logos and no external lights, and it descended with a total silence that was eerie. Someone standing almost within reach would have heard nothing more than a whisper like a breeze passing by.
As the rotors slowed to a halt, the hatch on the right side slid open with a hiss as pressurized air escaped. A mismatched couple hopped out onto the fine white sand. The man was a exceptionally muscular specimen several inches over six feet in height, with dark curly hair and a thick beard covering a weathered face. He wore tan work boots, jeans and a plain white T-shirt stretched tight over bulging pectorals and biceps.
Next to him, staring gleefully at the Pacific, was a petite woman only a bit over five feet tall and thin in build. She was dressed in a longsleeved tunic and pants of grey sharkhide with the rough side outward. A sullen pug face under short white hair broke into a delighted grin.
"Look at that, look at that!" she said. "Galvan, I must dive in!"
The big Melgar placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Steady, darling. We have to listen to our captain's briefing first."
"But the sea calls to me. I must go."
"Just a minute, Jin," came a voice from the copter. Striding around to join them was a dark-haired woman in a snug black outfit of boots, snug pants and a waist-length jacket. Holstered at her right hip was an odd-looking pistol with an extended needle-thin barrel. Lauren Sable Reilly was captain of their KDF team and her words carried unforced authority.
Standing next to the small blonde, Sable said, "Hold on. I'm afraid that once you get in the water, we won't see you again for a few days. You have a habit of disappearing into the ocean."
"Well, yes...." Demrak Jin admitted. In the increasing light, it could be seen that she was not quite Human. The stiff white hair had a texture like seal fur and the wide flat face with its cloudy blue eyes did not belong to any nationality found on the surface. She was a Gelydra from Ulgor.
Next to her, Galvan squeezed her shoulder reassuringly with a hand almost as big as her head. "This is like telling an eager young colt not to run, I know. But you can muster a little patience, Jin."
Disembarking from the rear of the stealthcopter CORBY came the two remaining members of the KDF team. Both wore black field suits like the one Sable had on. Timothy Limbo was a skinny young man with a mop of butter-yellow hair hanging into an enthusiastic face. Joycelyn Garimara was a slim woman with the smooth dark skin and thick hair of her Aboriginal tribe of northwest Australia. They lined up next to Galvan and Jin to face their captain.
"Oh man, Hawaii!" Timothy gloated. "Finally we go someplace decent. After we're done with this case, maybe I need to stay in Hawaii to keep an eye on the situation."
"Keep an eye on the cute wahines prancing up the beach, you mean." Joycelyn's tone was acidic enough to cut through metal.
"Aw, have a heart," he said. "I grew up in Vermont. Those winters....ACK! Snow to your chin, the pipes in the house always froze and the cars wouldn't start. Let me have some fun."
Staring out at the ocean, Sable allowed herself a smile. In her forties, she was older than the members of her new team. Her dark eyes watched Timothy with genuine affection. "Tell you what," she said at last. "Save a few of your personal leave days and we'll drop you off in Honolulu for a three day weekend."
"He'll just get in trouble," Joycelyn muttered, but the way she affectionately swatted the blond youth on the shoulder showed no harm was meant.
Galvan had folded thick arms over his massive chest and was gazing down the beach from where they had landed the CORBY. "I have not been here since the war," he reflected. "Early 1944. That was when I wore a garish costume as a 'mystery man.' I broke up a spy ring of Japanese agents posing as Nisei. How quickly the years go."
"Good thing you're a Melgar with their extended lifespan, Galvan. Otherwise, you'd be a wreck sitting in a wheelchair and mumbling to your nurse." Timothy Limbo laughed. "You look maybe forty-five but you're really a hundred and fifty."
"One hundred and forty-two years old," the powerful Melgar corrected him. "Years enough to make so many wrong choices..."
"Team, let's focus on the mission." Sable swung around to face her crew and they unconsciously lined up four abreast to face her. "The Governor contacted us two days ago. Unofficially and off the record as usual, but something weird and terrifying is going on in the outer islands. Something Midnight War."
"About time," Timothy said. "Things have been way too quiet lately."
Sable raised an index finger to shush him. "We are on Hanaue, one of the islands farthest out in the chain. By law, no settlements can be erected here and visitors need special permission to explore. But it is here that the HPD suspects Grandfather Kahuna has been hiding."
Jocelyn Garimara had been staring at the scenery. The CORBY had landed next to a steep rise of land where the beach gave way to rain forest. Now, as she tentatively rubbed a frond from the bush nearest her, she said, "Excuse me, captain. Haven't you noticed something odd? Why is the vegetation so dry and lifeless?"
They all looked around them in surprise at her words. It was true. The trees and bushes were oddly brown and withered. As Jocelyn bent the frond, it snapped and crumbled in her hands.
"That IS strange," Timothy added. "I was expecting Hawaii to be more lush. Like you see it on the National Geographic specials. This island looks like it's been through a drought."
"Very astute," Sable said. Their captain raised a hand to get their full attention. "I suspect it's a side effect of Grandfather Kahuna's gralic magick. His spells have drained the actual lifeforce from this island... just as he has stolen the lives of all eleven of his Human victims this past month. Five men, four women, two infants."
II.
They waited on white sands next to the CORBY. Rough granite boulders jutted out of the earth in one area, as if piled eight feet high by tremendous hands. Demrak Jin had to be physically restrained by Galvan from leaping into the ocean. "Discipline," she muttered to herself. "Duty. Shall a daughter of the House of Demrak let her impulses rule her?"
"I know it is not easy for you," the big Melgar said, drawing her near with a brawny arm across her shoulders. "After this case, you and I should return here and spend some personal leave."
"I would like that," the Gelydra said in a more subdued tone. Jin reached up to the ivory sheath across her back and drew forth the three-foot long bone knife she had crafted herself. She thumbed its blade and grinned wickedly. "In any case, my intstincts say we shall be lost in the bright madness of fighting soon enough."
Seeing Sable standing at the edge of the white sand, arms folded and staring out to sea, Jocelyn went to join her. "Any sign of this professor?" she asked.
"Not yet," Sable answered. Her deepset dark eyes had a distracted, out of focus glint that showed she was using her enhanced perception. Lauren Sable Reilly was attractive in an understated way because she never bothered with make-up and wore her straight black hair brushed straight back from a high forehead. Her snub nose and full lips, olive skin and high cheekbones, all showed her mixed heritage from an Irish father and a Cuban mother.
"Well, your eyes are more effective than binoculars," Jocelyn said with a smile. "There's no point in my even trying to spot this George Kimowaua if you can't."
Taking a moment to stretch and windmill her arms behind her, Sable said, "You're curious about him?"
"Of course. We flew straight here from Manhattan after a single phone call."
Sable sighed and went back to scanning the horizon. "Professor Kimowaua is eighty years old. He knew Kenneth Dred back in the days when Jeremy was first learning about the Midnight War. I've looked Kimowaua up. He's the author of five slightly controversial books about the pre-Polynesian peoples who lived in the Islands before the voyagers who would become known as Hawaiians arrived."
"Hmm, that's interesting. I hadn't heard of that before," Jocelyn said. Despite herself, she began standing next to her captain and peering out to sea. "Tell me more."
"Most historians are, well, dubious about Kimowaua's theories," Sable went on. "The problem is, he draws on Midnight War sources. Tel Shai lore, books of Forbidden Knowledge, all sources he can't really cite in a scholarly work. Most authorities respect his earlier research but simply dismiss him when he goes on about the pre-Hawaiians. His latest book SECRETS OF THE MENEHUNE has a healthy cult following, though."
Timothy Limbo had walked over to join them. "You know," he said, "Let me send a few of my caspers to look for this Kimowaua guy. They can go about fifteen miles before they want to get back to me."
"Good idea, Tim. I could use a break." Sable rubbed her eyes and went to lean back against the towering pile of naked boulders. She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment.
Holding out his hands palm up, Timothy summoned two of his caspers. Barely visible tornados a few inches high, they swirled and hovered over his hands, "Hey you guys," he cooed the way one speaks to puppies. "Settle down."
"I used to think these things were just gralic energy you were manifesting subconsciously," Jocelyn said. The Aboriginal woman leaned closer. Even at close range, the caspers were hard to spot. "But lately I've decided they are separate life forms that have attached to you."
"Like your Red Spectre?" he asked.
"Yes. I think so. We are both hosts to energy beings that are more our partners than our possessions." Jocelyn lifted a slim long-fingered hand as if to tap one of the manifestations but drew back at the last second.
"My friendly ghosts!" laughed Timothy Limbo. "If they ever start talking, we'll know for sure what they are. All right, fellas, see if you can find an old man in a speedboat." The tiny whirlwinds circled his head shot away, out over the sea.
After a second, Timothy said, "I can see what they see if I concentrate. They're skimming over the waves now."
"Good luck." Jocelyn saw that Sable had opened the pilot hatch of the CORBY and was leaning into the cabin, checking gauges and dials. She glanced around and found Galvan and Denrak Jin sitting on a boulder overlooking the surf that crashed against the shore. She smiled. Jocelyn had been certain that the couple would have broken up by now. But despite the frequent melodramatic breakups and passionate reunions, the Melgar and the Gelydra seemed to have a lasting bond.
All the members of her team were occupied at the moment. Jocelyn Garimara smiled to herself as she thought she should unleash the Red Spectre that was restrained within her slight body. The crackling dark red being would tear out over the ocean, speeding past Timothy's little ghosts at three times their speed.
But no. She had learned the hard way that it was best to use great power sparingly. Let the caspers observe and report. She would stand by. Jocelyn found one of the rounded boulders that stood at waist height and gratefully lowered herself to sit with her legs stretched out in front of her. Even at the CORBY's MACH-plus speeds, it had been a long and boring flight.
The two caspers skimmed back to the beach, circling Timothy Limbo excitedly. He held up an index finger and the tiny tornados spun around as if chasing each other. He grinned and said, "Good work, boys." Both manifestations popped out of existence as totally as two soap bubbles.
"There's a speedboat about five miles out, coming this way--" His words were cut off as a nearly naked man in a grotesque wooden mask leaped down off the boulders and slammed him to the ground.
III.
The strange attacker hopped lightly back up on his feet. Timothy sprawled where he had been struck down. Straddling the KDF member's unmoving form, the masked man laughed before stepping away.
He was a limber, athletic man of medium height, with golden-brown skin that shone with oil that had been rubbed in. Barefoot, with leather bracelets around wrists and ankles, he wore a plain white cloth wrapped around his loins. But all anyone saw was the bizarre wooden mask that covered his entire head.
Oval-shaped, the face of the mask was a stylized grimace with frowning eyes made of shells, a protruding beaky nose and a scowling mouth with teeth clenched in rage. The mask had been stained dark brown but the lips were bright red and the white shells for eyes stood out dramatically. Falling back from the crest of the mask was a thick mop of straight black hair.
As he hopped away from Timothy, the masked man was tackled headlong by a small hard bundle of fury. Demrak Jin had raced headlong across the beach and vaulted upward to crash into the stranger with an impact that sent them both tumbling to the sand. Pinning the masked man down, the Gelydra woman whipped out her bone-bladed weapon and drew it up for a killing blow... and then collapsed limply as the man touched the bare skin of one hand. The knife fell from her weakened grasp.
All this had taken place in less than a full second. Galvan was thundering toward the encounter, a massive juggernaut of superhuman muscle few living beings could have faced without dismay. He halted as the limp form of Demrak Jin was hurled straight at him. The big Melgar caught his lover in both arms as gently as he could and was distracted by checking to see if she had been harmed.
From over by the CORBY, Sable snapped, "Don't let him touch your skin! Jocelyn, the Gammon!"
Immediately, Jocelyn dropped to one knee and braced her hands on the sand. Up from within her emerged a dark red silhouette the same size as her body. Outlined in a flickering white aura, the Gammon made a crackling noise as it lifted up and swooped straight for the masked man.
Understandably alarmed, the intruder stepped back against the pile of boulders and held up his open hands defensively. From within the wooden mask echoed frantic words in an unknown language. The Red Spectre lunged toward the man but then, unexpectedly, stopped short and hovered in mid-air.
"My Gammon..." whispered Jocelyn, weakened by having her very lifeforce manifesting out of her body. "What do you fear?"
As the masked man laughed in triumph and stamped down from one foot to the other in a wild dance, the Red Spectre soared up twenty feet overhead. It swung behind the scene and then blasted into the formation of boulders with a sharp detonation like a true lightning bolt striking. Several of the rocks cracked open and split apart. The largest one, four feet across, came down to smash directly across the shoulders of the masked man.
Just like that, it was over. With that massive weight crushing him down, breaking bones and flattening out his lungs, the stranger was dead within a few painful seconds. Swinging around, the Gammon floated inches off the ground. Its featureless oval of a head seemed to regard the corpse mockingly and then it swept back to blur into Jocelyn's body.
The slender Aboriginal woman gasped and got to her feet. "Clever girl," she said out loud.
Coming up next to her, anesthetic dart gun in hand, Sable helped her teammate rise. "Your Gammon sensed that touching that man would be dangerous? So it used those rocks as weapons?"
"Exactly." Jocelyn rushed over to see how Timothy Limbo was, while Sable hurried over to where Galvan was holding Demrak Jin like an ailing child. Everyone was relieved to find the stricken KDF members were weak and listless but not in critical danger.
"Man, I'm tired," Timothy mumbled as Jocelyn helped him up into a sitting position. "I feel like I'm getting over double pneumonia."
With her enhanced perception, Sable could hear the speed and strength of their heartbeats, she could hear the clarity of how much air was being moved as they breathed. "I think you two will be fine in a few minutes. Your healing factor will kick in shortly. But I wouldn't recommend going through that again."
Content to be in Galvan's embrace, Jin raised her surly face. "Captain, that was horrible. That man... sucked my life from me. It was like being bled of every drop."
"Well, he's dead now," Sable said, taking a closer look at the Gelydra's cloudy blue eyes and seeming satisfied. "He's beyond hurting any of us."
As minutes went by, Demrak Jin and Timothy Limbo rapidly began to recover. The Tagra tea diet available only at Tel Shai gave them elevated healing abilities that modern medical science could not explain. Shortly, both were standing up and starting to take wobbly steps.
"Galvan, would you mind?" asked Sable as she pointed at the man pinned under the boulder.
The big Melgar bent down and used one hand to casually flick the heavy rock away. The ease which he did this was amazing, but his teammates had long ago become accustomed to Galvan's dramatic feats. Galvan was the one Melgar in his generation who had inherited the Legacy of Malberon.
From an inner pocket of her field jacket, Sable pulled out a pair of black latex gloves and snapped them on. Turning the body over onto its back, she examined it thoroughly. The rest of her stood well back to let her work. They were well aware how her grealic perception enhanced her senses to a level far beyond what flesh and blood eyes or ears or nostrils should be able to perform.
The man's eyes and mouth had been left wide open in death. He had long shiny black hair that was tied into a bun on top of his head. "I can't quite place his origins," Sable said finally. "He is most like a Samoan but has a less robust bone structure. Those ears are anamolous. Maybe some Northern Europe DNA in his ancestry? We'll take some samples. No tattoos. No scars. Perfect teeth. I'd place his age at twenty-six."
Meanwhile, Galvan had been checking out the wooden mask, which had a vertical split along one side from the impact. "I've seen ceremonial masks like this all over the South Pacific, over as far as New Zealand even. They are usually called 'Tiki Masks' although that's not strictly accurate. This one is... odd."
Peering over the big Melgar's shoulder, Timothy Limbo whistled. "It gives me the creeps and in a big way. Ack!"
Rising to join them, Sable brought her face close to the mask and sniffed, then scratched at its painted areas with a fingernail. "Mold on the inside that's only found in coffins. Unmistakable. This is Human hair from a young woman under twenty-one. I'm afraid each hair still has its follicles attached, meaning it was pulled out of the scalp by force rather than cut. That paint, though, is an even worse sign. This is rather gruesome, my friends. That paint is composed of rendered fat and ashes from Human corpses. This is a Menehune death mask."
IV.
Sable was busy scraping skin and hair samples and tagging them in clear plastic bags, then drawing a syringe of blood because without a pulse in the subject she could not simply fill a tube from a vein. The KDF team captain labeled each sample with a marker, then pulled her latex gloves off inside out and bundled them to be disposed of.
As she straightened up over the corpse, she first noticed her teammates watching a speedboat approach. This annoyed her. Even though she had been taking specimens, she should have caught the noise. Maybe she was becoming too reliant on her team standing guard...
The craft was a twenty-six foot 'Vagabond' made by Stillman, white with blue trim. It had an inboard motor and a semi-enclosed cabin in which an elderly man was working the wheel. As he neared the beach, he slowed the motors and drifted in as far as he could without grounding the boat.
"Ahoy there! You have got to be from the Kenneth Dred Foundation, who else could you be?" he called. At eighty, Professor George Kimowaua was a spry little figure not more than a few inches over five feet tall and badly bent forward by spinal arthritis. He had a healthy head of white hair and a billy-goat tuft of a goatee. Much of his bony face was concealed behind oversized mirrored sunglasses.
As the Professor threw the level that lowered the anchor chain at the stern of his boat, he tilted back his billed captain's cap and whistled. "My word, a Gelydra from Ulgor. And you, big feller, you're a Melgar if I'm not mistaken... if fact, I think you must be Galvan himself!"
"I am," Galvan said.
"Amazing! I have read so many of your exploits. You're the star of so many heroic tales. Seeing you in the flesh is surreal, it's like meeting a figure out of legend."
Galvan boomed with unforced laughter. "Don't stop, I love flattery. But Professor, you must meet the rest of us. Timothy Limbo. Jocelyn Garimara. And our team captain, Sable."
As he spotted the body lying face up on the sand, Kimowaua gave a start. "Wait. What? Who is that? He looks dead."
"With good reason," Demrak Jin snorted. She held up the wooden mask. "He wore this."
"Oh Lord, a Menehune death mask! He must be one of Grandfather Kahuna's followers." The old man swung a leg over the side of his boat and slid down into warm waist-high water. He began wading toward them. "We're all in mortal danger. And not just of death, but worse."
As the Professor neared the dry sand, Galvan extended a helping hand and easily lifted the old man up to stand beside them. Kimowaua stared with bulging eyes at the body. He pressed a hand to his chest and tried to calm down.
"Your pulse is way too rapid," Sable told him. Looking at his neck, she could clearly count each time an artery pulsed. "Deep breaths. Deep slow breaths."
"You don't understand it," he explained as he attempted to bring his voice down a tone. "I know this man. Or maybe I should say I knew him. He was called Puanani. In and out of juvenile detention, arrested as an adult several times for petty theft or assault and yet somehow he always managed to wriggle free.
"Was he an Hawaiian, then?" asked Sable.
"No. He claimed to be one of the survivors of the Old Blood as they call it, the Menehune, the people who lived on these islands before the Polynesians. Modern Hawaiians think of Menehune as wandering night spirits. Anthropologists dispute even the existence of the Menehune, you know. Despite all the linguistic evidence I've managed to-"
"We can discuss history when things are less hectic," Sable interrupted. "This boy Puanani attacked us. He had some ability to siphon away strength and vitality from a victim into himself.
What do you know about that?"
"It was the mask that enabled him to do that. I think the death masks use a spell created by the vile Darthim themselves. It's magick surviving thousands of years from the Darthan Age."
Still holding the wooden mask, Denrak scoffed. "Listen to me! Can you not all sense how evil this sigil is? It brings nothing good to the world. Come, Galvan, let us build a fire and reduce it to harmless ash."
"No! Heavens, no!" the Professor almost shrieked as he rushed over to seize the cursed mask. To his obvious surprise, he could not even begin to wrest it out of Jin's grip. Small and wiry as she was, her Gelydran body was dense as adaptation underwater life. She was much stronger than Human men a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than she was.
Kimowaua gave up the attempt. "That artifact has enormous value. It needs to be in a museum, to be studied with modern methods."
Demrak Jin gave him an openly hostile glare. She was not friendly under the best of circumstances. "You want to protect this horrible thing?!"
"Its historical value alone..." began the professor but Sable stepped in between the two of them with her arms raised.
"Hold it," she said. "For the moment, we'll secure the mask in the CORBY. In the hatch in the rear with the Eldar talismans. It should be harmless until we decide what to do with it."
Demrak Jin pouted and hugged the mask to her, turning her body slightly away. "Fire is best for something this foul...."
"Come on, hand it over." Sable held out her hand, snapped her fingers and took the artifact. Without a word, she slid open the rear hatch of the CORBY to reveal a small metal strongbox built into the hull. She tapped the combination lock, placed the mask inside and closed the door. When she slid the hatch shut and sealed it, its seams match the matte black surface of the CORBY so closely that they could not be seen.
"No one's getting that out without six hours behind a cutting torch," she said to her watching team. "The strongbox has ensalir strips across its edges and an Eldar starburst in the door. The mask is as secure as it can be."
The Gelydra had folded both arms across her modest bust and was fixing a stinkeye on the Professor. "I don't trust you," she announced in her usual blunt way.
Taken aback by the past few minutes, George Kimowaua seemed to struggle to find a response. He took off his nautical cap and ran a bony hand through his goatee. "Ah. Well. In any case, I must warn you all that there are certainly more of the Menehune here on this island. The police think that the cult hides somewhere on the Big Island but I am convinced they come here for their rituals."
"It would be convenient if they were all here," Jocelyn said. The Australian woman allowed anger to tinge her normally restrained voice. "We have come here to smash this cult and end their threat."
"Yes. Very well." Obviously uncomfortable at the open hostility from Jin, the Professor turned away from her to address the rest of the KDF team. "I believe there is a trail to their camp on the other side of this island. But there is no place to land your helicopter there. We should take my boat as close as we can."
"Agreed," Sable said. She had one hand resting on the butt of her dart gun. "Team, you go with Professor Kimowaua. I will remain with the CORBY. If needed, I can join you in our copter within a minute or so."
"Is your helicopter armed?" asked the Professor.
"Twin chain guns and anesthetic gas spray," Sable said. "But honestly, my team can handle themselves. Professor, lead them to the cult. Jocelyn, you are deputy on this case."
"Understood," the Aboriginal woman said. She unclipped a flat metal device from her belt and made an adjustment before returning it. They did not explain this, but the team knew that she had set her Link to transmit sound to Sable so everything that happened would be relayed.
Although Galvan and Demrak Jin remained in their own clothing, Timothy and Jocelyn were wearing the black field suits. Both of them tucked thin leather gloves into their belts and lowered their helmets on, leaving the visors up.
Following the Professor, the four KDF members waded out to the speedboat and climbed nimbly aboard. Kimowaua started the engine and threw the lever that retracted the anchor chain. Once that was stowed, he backed the craft out into deeper water and then headed to the west.
As the speedboat passed around a curved arm of the island and was lost from sight, Lauren Sable Reilly sighed. She wanted very much to have gone with them but it was important that Jocelyn get experience in command. Sable hoped to add some new members and she had picked Jocelyn to take over as deputy leader.
Fetching her own helmet from inside the CORBY, she fastened it on her head and twisted the right ear pod one click counterclockwise. The sound of a powerful motor came clearly inside her helmet and then Timothy's voice saying, "This is a sweet ride, professor. How long have you owned this boat?"
Smiling, Sable went over to sit on a boulder near the CORBY. She settled down to monitor the mission and hope her intervention wouldn't be necessary.
V.
Forty minutes later, Professor Kimowaua brought his speedboat close to the island. On this side, there were no beaches. Sheer granite cliffs extended down into the ocean. As they drifted closer, the Professor pointed up to a ledge ten feet above them. "That seems wide enough for several people to stand on comfortably."
"And above that ledge, vegetation begins," Jocelyn added. "That's the way into the interior. Wait. Professor, move a few feet forward, I think I see something."
With the motor at its lowest, Kimowaua brought his boat right up against the cliff. Jocelyn leaned over the railing and grabbed two steel spikes that had been driven into the rock.
"Here's the proof we needed," she said. "Someone, the cultists or not, went to the trouble of hammering these into stone. Good for mooring a boat, eh?"
"This is where I saw lights one night," the Professor said. "I think I was far enough away that they would have not spotted me in the gloom."
Demrak Jin made a disgusted snort and Galvan nudged her to be polite. Leaning over the railing, Timothy checked out the cliff at close range.
"Hey, I see lots of handholds and footholds. We can climb this with no trouble," he said.
"We're going in," Jocelyn said as she tugged on the thin leather gloves and lowered her helmet onto her head. She left the clear visor retracted into its internal track but could lower it instantly. Timothy saw her do this and followed her actions. Neither said so, but they now offered no exposed skin for the energy-sucking Menehune to grab.
"I'm certain I am not going to scale THAT wall," the Professor told them. "My athletic days are way behind me now. My bones are brittle as pretzel sticks."
"We could lower a rope to tie around you and then pull you up," Tim offered.
"Please. You don't understand. Wait sixty years and see if you become more cautious about taking chances. You're young and reckless."
Demrak Jin made a disgusted noise and strode to the opposite side of the deck. She spun, took three quick steps and leaped straight up ten feet to reach the rock ledge. In another instant, she had scrambled up on her feet and was peering down at them.
Seeing the flummoxed expression on the Professor's face, Galvan shrugged. "Yes, she is a strong little rascal. That comes from living at the pressure at the ocean depths. Up in open air, Jin is a bit overpowered for her size."
"I... believe it," Kimowaua said. "The Gelydrim of Ulgor. I helped Kenneth Dred write a short biography of Atron Ke but I remained skeptical about the reports of his abilities. Now I'm convinced."
Taking a length of rope that was coiled at the stern, Galvan tied one end to a steel spike and made sure the rest was secured. "You might as well shut down your engine," the Melgar champion said. "This will hold you in place."
As the Professor complied, Galvan seized the other steel spike and reached up to an outcropping on the cliff wall. Easily as any acrobat half his size, he pulled himself up, grabbed another handhold and was shortly standing on the ledge next to Jin.
In fact, being one of the strongest flesh and blood beings in the Midnight War, Galvan was quite capable of simply jumping up past the ledge entirely. But to do so would rock the speedboat and perhaps capsize it. He had learned to be careful with his abilities.
After watching his teammates, Timothy Limbo shook his head. "It's too bad we have to get by on mere normal Human strength," he grumbled. "But we each bring special gifts to the team." Following Jocelyn, he stepped up to the railing and began to climb. It seemed to him that a few footholds looked as if they had been augmented with a hammer and chisel to make ascent easier. Another indication that the Menehune cult had been operating here for some time.
When he and Jocelyn got within reach, Galvan leaned down to seize them by the arms in turn. He effortlessly picked them up bodily and placed them safely on the ledge.
Jocelyn shouted down to Professor Kimowaua, "Stand by until midnight. If we return then, we'll dive down into the water next to your boat rather than try to climb."
"And if you're not back by then?" the old man called back.
"Head back to where our copter is parked. Our captain is ready to come intervene if we need her. Thanks, Professor."
With that, Jocelyn Garimara examined the area around them. The slope leading up into the interior was gentle enough to allow walking along it without difficulty. Here was where the trees and bushes began and again they oticed how dry and lifeless everything appeared.
Timothy dropped to one knee and crumbled dirt between his gloved fingers. "I don't get it. You saw how green and lush the other islands were as we flew over them. It's as if rain fell everywhere but here."
"That's a characteristic of Darthan magick, all right," said Jocelyn. "Their spells draw away lifeforce wherever they are cast. You saw how those death masks sucked away your vitality."
"Yeah, that was no fun," Timothy said.
"Galvan, Jin... you two be careful not to let these cultists touch your skin! Okay, let's find a trail to follow."
Less than a minute later, Demrak Jin cried out, "Here! Footprints, three of them." She had found a path beaten into the dry dirt by several feet wearing boots rather than the ubiquitous flip-flops which Hawaiians called 'slippers.' A narrow open space led up through the thick if unhealthy underbrush.
Jocelyn Garimara squatted over the footprints for a moment. "Hmm, well, I wish I had Sable's microscopic vision but it sure appears to me that there have been many different feet going back and forth here. You notice that one set of prints is much deeper than the others?"
"Meaning one cultist is fat?" asked Timothy.
"Or that one cultist was carrying something heavy. Or someONE." Jocelyn replied with a stern undertone. She drew her dart gun and checked its CO2 charge.
"Say, if these Menehune came up the way we did, where's their boat?" Tim said.
"Probably one of them took the boat back to another island and will return for them. I hope that Professor Kimowaua has the presence of mind to take off if he sees another boat approaching."
"Unless he is one of them!" snapped Jin.
"Kenneth Dred trusted Kimowaua," said Jocelyn. "Before we left, I read in Dred's notes that he found the Professor a man of good character."
"That was a long time ago," the Gelydra said. "People do change."
"You may be right, Jin," the Aboriginal woman conceded. "But he is in his boat and, at his age, he's not likely to climb that cliff and attack us. Let's find the Menehune. Timothy?"
"Yeah, this is where my caspers show their worth." He held up his hands and four of the tiny whirlwinds swirled around him. In the fading light, the gralic manifestations could only be seen if someone consciously looked for them. "Go scout ahead, buddies," Timothy said and the tornadoes whizzed silently up the trail.
"Stand by, everyone," Jocelyn ordered. "This should not take long."
As they waited, Timothy stood with his head tilted to one side as if listening for something in the distance. He clapped one hand over his mouth and dropped back a few steps. "Oh. My. God. Get back here, guys."
"What is it, Tim? What did they find?"
"That missing girl? The attorney's daughter, Kristin Walton? We're too late to save her." As he spoke, the four caspers returned and circled close around his head in a comforting gesture. "Thanks, boys," he mumbled and the manifestations popped out of existence again.
"Give us a report. Now." Jocelyn allowed a little edge to her tone.
"It's pretty hard to take," Timothy said. "Maybe two miles up there, I counted twenty of the cult. They're under some sort of camoflauge netting hung between the trees. They're, well, they're cutting the Walton girl up. Blood all over. Her hair has already been pulled out. Some of the bastards were wearing those wooden masks."
"Are you sure she's dead?" asked Jocelyn.
"I'm afraid so," Timothy muttered, "She's been.. opened up. Damn. I thought I'd seen enough Midnight War that nothing would bother me but I feel sick to my stomach."
"This will not be endured a moment longer." Galvan said. He smacked his fists together with a sound like two rocks colliding. "We shall go and end this cult now."
"There's one guard keeping watch. A little over a mile from here. He's sitting on the ground next to a tree with a cheap little .38 in his hand."
"We'll take him out quietly. But we will use a little prudence in our attack," Jocelyn said. "Galvan, you and Jin, remember that you must not let the Menehune touch your skin. Timothy, check your dart gun. Everyone, if I release my Red Spectre, drop to the ground and get out of her way. Let's approach as quietly as we can."
With that, she spun on her heel and marched briskly up the faint trail. Up by her cheek, the needle-thin barrel of the anesthetic dart gun was ready for use. Behind her, her teammates followed with enraged expressions. Demrak Jin drew her bone-blade knife from its sheath across and held it point down as she hurried right behind the others. Her face was more feral than ever.
VI.
Opunui felt a sharp sting at the side of his neck. Damn mosquitos, he thought, the oil he had rubbed into his skin should have kept them away. The young Menehune reached up to slap at the bite and found to his surprise a thin metal dart sticking out of his skin. In the second it took for him to react, his mind was already foggy from the potent Trom-devised chemicals in his bloodstream. Before he could take a breath to yell a warning, Opunui fell over onto his side and began to snore.
Emerging from the undergrowth, Jocelyn lowered her dart gun and bent to take the youth's pulse. Strong and steady. The death mask cultist should sleep for an hour and then be nauseous for another hour after that. In her current mood, Jocelyn regretted not using a lethal weapon. More and more, she felt the anesthetic darts were just too merciful for the sort of enemies they faced.
Soon, moving more carefully than ever and making almost no noise, they peered out through the bushes at a scene that apalled even them.
Under a green and black camoflauge netting strung from tree to tree, a natural clearing was dimly lit by a few small torches stuck in the dirt. Twenty men and women wearing only white loinclothes and leather bracelets milled about a slaughter. Tied down face up on the ground, the dismembered naked corpse of a teen girl was stretched out. Her torso had been opened and most internal organs removed, her hair had been pulled out by force from from her scalp and her gaping mouth showing where her teeth had been yanked out.
Toughened as Jocelyn and Timothy had thought they were, they were stunned by the sight. What really struck them numb was that the Menehune were laughing and joking as they worked with the body parts. One of the men was tossing the girl's heart from hand to hand.
Five of the cultists were wearing the grotesque masks. Each one was shaped differently, pointed at top and bottom, oval or rectangular. Each had wildly exaggerated features, with staring eyes ors grinning mouths or wide noses that took up half a face. From each mask hung long Human hair, and each was painted with red lips or yellow stripes down the cheeks.
Reaching behind her, Jocelyn took Timothy's hand to offer support. He squeezed it tightly. She was taking in more details. Off to one side, an older Menehune with greying hair and a pot belly supervised the rendering of fat and blood in an iron kettle over hot coals. Two of the cultists were working on a new Tiki death mask, inserting hair from the dead girl through pinholes at the top of the mask.
One of the Menehune women knelt and raised the corpse's arm and moved it so it seemed the dead girl was waving. This provoked fresh laughter from the cult members but that laughter was abruptly cut off.
From the opposite side of the clearing, a weird shriek rang out like nothing anyone there had ever heard before. Diving headlong into their midst was a small figure dressed in sharkhide. Demrak Jin whirled and slashed in a berserk rage, the razored edge of her weapon slicing open flesh wherever she struck. After the first few stupefied seconds, the Menehune reacted and tried to strike her down. They could not make contact with her.
Raised on combat like all Gelydrim, Jin had fought multiple opponents many times before. She moved smoothly from one attack to the next, whirling and swaying out of reach and then lunging in again. The Menehune were falling as if they were not even trying to defend themselves.
Emerging into the clearing, Jocelyn held Timothy back with an arm across his chest. "We'll get in her way," she whispered. Across the clearing, they saw Galvan also holding back. The giant Melgar stood ready to intervene if needed but he had seen Jin in such a state before.
Only a handful of the Menehune were left, mostly the leaders who were wearing the masks. One tried to make a run for it, but Galvan stepped into his path. A single blow from that steel-hard fist split the wooden mask into fragments and threw the cultist back ten feet to hit the ground hard.
Singling out the older Menehune, Jocelyn extended her arm full length and dropped him with a carefully aimed dart. The elder sagged to his knees and fell face down on the edge of the clearing.
"You want him for questioning?" asked Timothy.
"Exactly. I assume he is Grandfather Kahuna," she replied.
Then it was over. Chest heaving, glaring around her as she turned in a full circle, Demrak Jin finally lowered her bone blade. Its edge was chipped where it had struck hips or thigh bones, and it was more red than white now. Jin herself had only a bruise on the side of her face where a thrown rock had connected. One shoulder of her sharkhide tunic had been ripped down to the collarbone by a dying hand. But none of the blood which covered her was her own.
Seeing Jocelyn and Timothy staring wide-eyed at her, Jin snorted. "Well? No high and mighty speeches? No recriminations? I am a daughter of Ulgor! We are born at the same time a shark is spawned and we share the spirit of that shark. You know this!"
Approaching her teammate, Jocelyn Garimara holstered her dart gun. She thumbed the stud on the crest of her helmet and its visor slid up into its internal track. "I have to say, if any lost souls deserved to die like that, these Menehune did."
Galvan had found a five gallon jug of drinking water and some clean cloths. He brought them over to his wild lover and she gratefully began scrubbing herself clean. Jin seemed most dismayed by the chipped away parts in her weapon. "This weakens it too much to rely upon. The blade will snap at some point. Ah, so be it. I have another one half done."
Angry as they had seldom seen him, Timothy Limbo stomped about the clearing claiming the Tiki Masks. He yanked them roughly off the still-warm bodies and made a pile of them over the hot coals where the fat had been boiling. He gathered some of the dry twigs and branches and soon had a fire blazing up to consume the masks.
As Jin got most of the blood off her, she turned to Galvan. "It was their laughing that set me off," she said in a more subdued tone. "Bad enough that they murdered and desecrated her, but they showed no respect. I had to do something."
Taking a wet rag, the Melgar champion began to wipe her back where she could not reach. "If you had not attacked them, the rest of us would have, darling. As soon as I saw what they had done, I swore in my heart that not one of them would escape here with their lives."
"I am glad to hear that, my love." Jin seemed satisfied that her weapon was cleaned and she sheathed it again. "Small comfort it may be to that child."
Jocelyn had gone over to the pitiful remains. "Poor girl. She had done nothing wrong. I doubt if she had heard of Menehune except as folktales no one believed. When we leave, I will give the HPD an anonymous tip so that she may be returned to her family for burial. At least they will have some closure."
The oldest cult member moaned and stirred in his drug-induced stupor. This roused Demrak Jin's temper to flare up again. "What, one still draws breath?"
"Stand down!" barked Jocelyn in a voice that carried the authority of her role as team leader. "I want one to question. Are there other families of Menehune in the islands? Are any true Hawaiians working with them, perhaps providing shelter and concealment? We want to make sure the cult is stamped out."
The small white-haired woman exhaled sharply. "Oh, very well. I see your point. You are more clear-headed than I am, Red Spectre."
Seeing a pile of blankets to one side, Jocelyn said, "Cover her up, will you, Tim?"
"Sure."
The Australian woman squared her shoulders and stood up straighter with an effort. She had seen so much carnage in the past few years. She would have thought she was jaded and blase about scenes of horror but this was upsetting her deeply. She took deep steadying breaths and went over to where the old man was sprawled.
"Come on, team," she said and got down on both knees. Reaching to an inner pocket of her field jacket, Jocelyn drew out a flat metal case that held five color-coded syringes. The one with the blue bands was the antidote to the darts. Not even considering using an alcohol swab first, she pinched the flabby skin on the old man's upper arm and injected the full contents.
Jocelyn carefully replaced the empty hypo and stowed the metal case back in its pocket. These were potent drugs she was administering without the victim's consent or without doing any blood work first to see if it was safe, so there was always a chance of adverse reaction. Five minutes crawled by in agonizing slowness. Then the old man shuddered, gasped and began to revive.
It was another few minutes before the Menehune had regained enough consciousness to become aware of the situation. He obviously felt very ill. The antidote to the darts had its own side effects. Finally, his eyes started darting madly around the scene.
"Yes, they are all dead. They deserved it." Jocelyn's deepset eyes under the Aboriginal brow ridge were cold and merciless. "Your own life is hanging by a thread itself."
"Who... ARE you?"
"Never you mind. Questions are for you to answer. Are you the one called Grandfather Kahune?"
"Me? Grandfather Kahune? No. I am just old Mahalani. I can serve the family by dealing with banks and stores and realtors because I went to school with the New Blood."
Jocelyn frowned even more than before. "Then where is Grandfather Kahune?"
"Heh. If you don't know... why do you think I would tell you? He will start over again. There are still dozens of Menehune living unsuspected among the Haole and the New Blood. New Tiki Masks will be made. The old ways will be brought back.."
"Oh, shut up," she snapped. Jocelyn rose to her feet. "We'll question him more thoroughly in the Brig. Right now, it's best we leave this island and send the police here to clean up. Galvan, will you carry him?"
"I suppose." The Melgar grabbed the old man and flung him none too gently over one broad shoulder. "We're getting out of here?"
"Yes. Back to the boat and we'll see what Professor Wakimuau has to say about all this."
"As if he doesn't already know everything," Demrak Jin observed sourly.
VII.
As they hiked back down the long slope toward the cliffs, Jocelyn unclipped her Link and beeped Sable. Getting an immediate response, she gave a concise report to her captain of the recent events.
"I'm standing by the CORBY, doing the usual checklist," Sable's voice replied clear and full from the Link. "We can have wheels up in one minute after everyone returns. Sorry to hear about the girl."
"Everyone seems traumatized by her death," Jocelyn replied. "Tim has had his friendly ghosts scooting around the island but they don't see any more Menehune. This mission seems about finished."
"Bring the Professor back here and we will discuss everything before leaving," Sable said. "Jin is convinced he's part of the Tiki death mask cult?"
"I am!" the blonde woman yelled at the device. "I can't believe none of you see it."
"You may be right," the voice of their captain admitted. "I saw no signs of stress from deceit... no subvocal tremors, no increased blink rate, no elevated adrenalin in the sweat. But that may just mean he's an adept liar or enough of a sociopath that he feels no guilt. Bring him here and we'll question him as well as the prisoner."
"All right, captain," Jocelyn said and broke the connection. She returned the Link to her belt and slowed her team as they neared the cliffs. Twelve feet below the brink, the sea lapped back and forth against the sheer granite. The two metal spikes in the cliff wall were covered by water now as the tide was coming in. But the speedboat was gone.
"He's running from our vegeance," snarled Demrak Jin.
"Steady there," Jocelyn told her. "Maybe he saw a boat in the distance and decided to get out of reach of more cult members. Or maybe he just gone a case of nerves and decided he'd rather be near Sable and the CORBY. Come on, we can double time across the island in a half and find out."
They reversed course and took off into the interior at a good trot. There was no danger of getting lost. The heads-up readout on the inside of their helmet visor included a visual compass and exact location by a GPS satellite whose signal they intercepted.
The hike was enacted in a weary silence. None of them were physically tired, not even Jin who had done all the fighting. But with the assignment seemingly complete, their bodies were lowering to normal readiness levels. Galvan carried the occasionally squirming old man without any apparent effort.
Trotting under the stars through the dry brush and between crazily bent palm trees, the KDF made good time. As they headed over the crest of a rise, they could see the beach where the black sharklike outline of the CORBY was resting. Sitting on boulders facing each other were Sable and Professor Kimowaua... and Sable was holding up the Tiki death mask.
VIII.
She had been sitting on a boulder facing out to munching on a high-energy protein bar. Her gift of enhanced perception came from being able to channel gralic energy into her various senses. Spotting the white flash of a seagull far out to sea, Sable focused her vision on distance. The bird shot up into her perception as if it were being held up at arm's length. She could clearly watch bird's eye rotate in its socket. There was so scarring on the gull's left leg that she noticed, as if it had been bitten by an animal, and she wondered what the story was.
Bringing her senses back to normal Human levels, she touched the Link communicator at her belt. Jocelyn had sounded unusually distraught when reporting a minute ago. In a way, Sable thought, she was glad that her team had not become thoroughly hardened and emotionally distant. It was a fine line between being able to cope with the horrors of the Midnight War and becoming so toughened as to not be empathic any more.
The sound of the speedboat preceded the sight of the white craft rounding the curve of the island. Sable rose and tugged down her field jacket where it had ridden up. In another minute, Professor Kimowaua had dropped the anchor chain and climbed over the side of his boat to start wading toward her.
"Hello, Professor," she called. "I heard from my team. The Menehune are all, well, dead. There was quite a confrontation."
"Oh. I see," the elderly man said as he emerged and stamped his feet to get water out of his deck shoes. "I dare say they deserved it. What of the Tiki Masks?"
"All burned to ashes. I think we are going to destroy the one in the CORBY's strongbox as well." She was watching his reactions but couldn't detect anything suspicious.
Coming up next to her, the Professor held out an expensive digital camera he had brought from the boat. "Wait, wait. At least we should take some photos and observations. The historical value of that artifact may be immense."
Sable considered this. "I don't see where that would hurt. All right." She opened the rear storage hatch of the copter and tapped the keypad of the strongbox. When she opened the safe, a faint but pungent odor seemed out. It definitely smelled of something dead.
She brought the death mask over and held it up. Leaning close, Kimowaua began snapping photos rapidly.
"Extraordinary, extraordinary," he mutttered. "I haven't seen anything quite like it. This reminds me of some Maori masks but more stylized..."
Holding the mask, Sable bent her head down to watch. She noticed a row of incised marks that resembled ancient runes. "How odd," she said. "Professor, you know what these mean?"
He frowned. "They look familiar. I can't quite place them. I understand you have powers of increased eyesight. Maybe you should look for anything suggestive?"
"All right." She turned the mask around to stare at its scowling face. In the dim starlight, she drew gralic force into her vision and the row of enigmatic characters expanded to clearly fill her sight. One symbol was repeated twice, it resembled a capital Y with a diagonal slash through the upright. Another was an oval with two horizontal strokes above it. She felt somehow as if she should be able to read this inscription. As she concentrated, the symbols swam about and appeared to be reshaping themselves into more familiar symbols.
Without realizing it, Lauren Sable Reilly reversed the wooden mask and raised it over her own head. As she lowered it, she had a glimpse of the mocking grin of Professor Kimowaua's goateed face....
Frighteningly loud, a sizzling crackle filled the air and Sable was thrown violently to the ground. Red light flashed bright enough to leave after-images. Struggling to clear her head, she felt her skin tingle as if near almost fatal levels of static electricity.
Hovering inches off the sand, the Red Spectre glowed ominously in the gloom. Tiny fragments of the wooden mask were strewn in all directions. The apparition turned its featureless head toward the Professor, who shrank back in primal terror. Lifting up, the energy being flashed back into the body of its Human host.
Running up full tilt, Jocelyn screamed, "Sable! Sable! Are you okay?"
"What? I don't..." The KDF team leader managed to get up on one knee and shook her head. Her skin still stung from being so close to the Spectre. Suddenly she realized what had just happened and glared at the Professor. "You!"
The rest of the team gathered around their leader. Galvan still held onto the elderly Menehune and now he held the man up in the air with one hand and shook him hard. "Tell us! Who is that man?"
The answer came with a cackle. "He is Grandfather Kahuna, you fools."
"I TOLD all of you that," spat Demrak Jin. "Why didn't anyone believe me? Arrgh!"
Spinning on one heel, the Professor headed back to the water in an attempt to reach his boat but he was too stiff and slow. Before anyone could intervene, the point of a bone blade was shoving out of the middle of his chest in a gout of blood.
Jin pushed the dying man face down on the sand and planted her foot on his back to hold him still as she tugged her long knife free. Going to rinse the blade in the sea, she turned her head back and gave her teammates a surly stare.
"Well? Will none of you apologize?" she said.
"All right, all right, Jin," Timothy replied. "You were right. Okay? You were right and we didn't listen to you. We're all sorry."
The small Gelydra swung her knife back and forth to whip water off it before returning it to her sheath. "Hah! That is all I asked."
Sable let out a shaky breath and dropped heavily onto the boulder where she had been sitting before. "I was going to put that mask on. Why would I do that? What's wrong with me?"
"Aw, I don't think it's you, boss." Timothy plopped down next to Sable and leaned up against her shoulder. "You know what? I bet either that Tiki Death Mask had some inisidous mystic influence. Or that geezer did. Maybe both of them."
"I agree," Jocelyn said. "He asked you to bring the mask out to be examined, didn't he?"
"Yes. He even said to examine it closely." Sable gave a visible shudder. "He was going to bring him into the cult... put me under his control."
"That's not going to happen to anyone now." Jocelyn gestured for Galvan to bring the prisoner over. "This man is the sole survivor of the Menehune, captain. His name is Mahalani if I remember right. I suggest we take him to our Brig to be questioned."
"Yes. Yes, you're right." Sable stood up and looked at the Australian knight. "Thanks, Jocelyn. Your Red Spectre came to the rescue just in time."
Perfect white teeth flashed in the gloom. Jocelyn said, "Oh, we have already saved each others' lives a few times, haven't we? What do you say? Are we getting away from this damn island?"
"Immediately. Leave the Professor and his boat the way we they are. We'll call the HPD once we're past Oahu and leave an anonymous tip." She turned and opened the rear compartment of the CORBY. "Secure the prisoner for the trip. Timothy, I want you at the stick. I'll take the co-pilot seat for the trip home."
They prepared for departure, Timothy starting the Trom impulse engines and setting the rotors in motion. Sable ran through the checklist of dials and gauges and display screens, since she had done an exterior examination just before the Professor had shown up. Galvan fetched handcuffs from their equipment locker and fastened the old Menehune to the leg of the metal bench.
Old Mahalani had laspsed into silence, as if the events of the day had finally begun to sink in. "Grandfather Kahuna was the wisest of us," he said. "Where will the Old Blood find another leader like him?"
Climbing up into the rear compartment, the Gelydra grumbled, "No one will believe me when I point out who he is, anyway."
From the pilot seat, Timothy chuckled. "Give it a rest, Jin. You're still annoyed about things that happened when you were little."
"With good reason," she said, fastening the strap across her lap. "Did I ever tell you how my father would not take me to see the War Squid tournaments? I was old enough. But he took my brother...!"
1/16/2018
9/1-9/3/2016
I.
Just before dusk, with the red sun low over the ocean, a strange black helicopter landed on a remote beach in the Pacific. The craft bore no identifying numbers or logos and no external lights, and it descended with a total silence that was eerie. Someone standing almost within reach would have heard nothing more than a whisper like a breeze passing by.
As the rotors slowed to a halt, the hatch on the right side slid open with a hiss as pressurized air escaped. A mismatched couple hopped out onto the fine white sand. The man was a exceptionally muscular specimen several inches over six feet in height, with dark curly hair and a thick beard covering a weathered face. He wore tan work boots, jeans and a plain white T-shirt stretched tight over bulging pectorals and biceps.
Next to him, staring gleefully at the Pacific, was a petite woman only a bit over five feet tall and thin in build. She was dressed in a longsleeved tunic and pants of grey sharkhide with the rough side outward. A sullen pug face under short white hair broke into a delighted grin.
"Look at that, look at that!" she said. "Galvan, I must dive in!"
The big Melgar placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Steady, darling. We have to listen to our captain's briefing first."
"But the sea calls to me. I must go."
"Just a minute, Jin," came a voice from the copter. Striding around to join them was a dark-haired woman in a snug black outfit of boots, snug pants and a waist-length jacket. Holstered at her right hip was an odd-looking pistol with an extended needle-thin barrel. Lauren Sable Reilly was captain of their KDF team and her words carried unforced authority.
Standing next to the small blonde, Sable said, "Hold on. I'm afraid that once you get in the water, we won't see you again for a few days. You have a habit of disappearing into the ocean."
"Well, yes...." Demrak Jin admitted. In the increasing light, it could be seen that she was not quite Human. The stiff white hair had a texture like seal fur and the wide flat face with its cloudy blue eyes did not belong to any nationality found on the surface. She was a Gelydra from Ulgor.
Next to her, Galvan squeezed her shoulder reassuringly with a hand almost as big as her head. "This is like telling an eager young colt not to run, I know. But you can muster a little patience, Jin."
Disembarking from the rear of the stealthcopter CORBY came the two remaining members of the KDF team. Both wore black field suits like the one Sable had on. Timothy Limbo was a skinny young man with a mop of butter-yellow hair hanging into an enthusiastic face. Joycelyn Garimara was a slim woman with the smooth dark skin and thick hair of her Aboriginal tribe of northwest Australia. They lined up next to Galvan and Jin to face their captain.
"Oh man, Hawaii!" Timothy gloated. "Finally we go someplace decent. After we're done with this case, maybe I need to stay in Hawaii to keep an eye on the situation."
"Keep an eye on the cute wahines prancing up the beach, you mean." Joycelyn's tone was acidic enough to cut through metal.
"Aw, have a heart," he said. "I grew up in Vermont. Those winters....ACK! Snow to your chin, the pipes in the house always froze and the cars wouldn't start. Let me have some fun."
Staring out at the ocean, Sable allowed herself a smile. In her forties, she was older than the members of her new team. Her dark eyes watched Timothy with genuine affection. "Tell you what," she said at last. "Save a few of your personal leave days and we'll drop you off in Honolulu for a three day weekend."
"He'll just get in trouble," Joycelyn muttered, but the way she affectionately swatted the blond youth on the shoulder showed no harm was meant.
Galvan had folded thick arms over his massive chest and was gazing down the beach from where they had landed the CORBY. "I have not been here since the war," he reflected. "Early 1944. That was when I wore a garish costume as a 'mystery man.' I broke up a spy ring of Japanese agents posing as Nisei. How quickly the years go."
"Good thing you're a Melgar with their extended lifespan, Galvan. Otherwise, you'd be a wreck sitting in a wheelchair and mumbling to your nurse." Timothy Limbo laughed. "You look maybe forty-five but you're really a hundred and fifty."
"One hundred and forty-two years old," the powerful Melgar corrected him. "Years enough to make so many wrong choices..."
"Team, let's focus on the mission." Sable swung around to face her crew and they unconsciously lined up four abreast to face her. "The Governor contacted us two days ago. Unofficially and off the record as usual, but something weird and terrifying is going on in the outer islands. Something Midnight War."
"About time," Timothy said. "Things have been way too quiet lately."
Sable raised an index finger to shush him. "We are on Hanaue, one of the islands farthest out in the chain. By law, no settlements can be erected here and visitors need special permission to explore. But it is here that the HPD suspects Grandfather Kahuna has been hiding."
Jocelyn Garimara had been staring at the scenery. The CORBY had landed next to a steep rise of land where the beach gave way to rain forest. Now, as she tentatively rubbed a frond from the bush nearest her, she said, "Excuse me, captain. Haven't you noticed something odd? Why is the vegetation so dry and lifeless?"
They all looked around them in surprise at her words. It was true. The trees and bushes were oddly brown and withered. As Jocelyn bent the frond, it snapped and crumbled in her hands.
"That IS strange," Timothy added. "I was expecting Hawaii to be more lush. Like you see it on the National Geographic specials. This island looks like it's been through a drought."
"Very astute," Sable said. Their captain raised a hand to get their full attention. "I suspect it's a side effect of Grandfather Kahuna's gralic magick. His spells have drained the actual lifeforce from this island... just as he has stolen the lives of all eleven of his Human victims this past month. Five men, four women, two infants."
II.
They waited on white sands next to the CORBY. Rough granite boulders jutted out of the earth in one area, as if piled eight feet high by tremendous hands. Demrak Jin had to be physically restrained by Galvan from leaping into the ocean. "Discipline," she muttered to herself. "Duty. Shall a daughter of the House of Demrak let her impulses rule her?"
"I know it is not easy for you," the big Melgar said, drawing her near with a brawny arm across her shoulders. "After this case, you and I should return here and spend some personal leave."
"I would like that," the Gelydra said in a more subdued tone. Jin reached up to the ivory sheath across her back and drew forth the three-foot long bone knife she had crafted herself. She thumbed its blade and grinned wickedly. "In any case, my intstincts say we shall be lost in the bright madness of fighting soon enough."
Seeing Sable standing at the edge of the white sand, arms folded and staring out to sea, Jocelyn went to join her. "Any sign of this professor?" she asked.
"Not yet," Sable answered. Her deepset dark eyes had a distracted, out of focus glint that showed she was using her enhanced perception. Lauren Sable Reilly was attractive in an understated way because she never bothered with make-up and wore her straight black hair brushed straight back from a high forehead. Her snub nose and full lips, olive skin and high cheekbones, all showed her mixed heritage from an Irish father and a Cuban mother.
"Well, your eyes are more effective than binoculars," Jocelyn said with a smile. "There's no point in my even trying to spot this George Kimowaua if you can't."
Taking a moment to stretch and windmill her arms behind her, Sable said, "You're curious about him?"
"Of course. We flew straight here from Manhattan after a single phone call."
Sable sighed and went back to scanning the horizon. "Professor Kimowaua is eighty years old. He knew Kenneth Dred back in the days when Jeremy was first learning about the Midnight War. I've looked Kimowaua up. He's the author of five slightly controversial books about the pre-Polynesian peoples who lived in the Islands before the voyagers who would become known as Hawaiians arrived."
"Hmm, that's interesting. I hadn't heard of that before," Jocelyn said. Despite herself, she began standing next to her captain and peering out to sea. "Tell me more."
"Most historians are, well, dubious about Kimowaua's theories," Sable went on. "The problem is, he draws on Midnight War sources. Tel Shai lore, books of Forbidden Knowledge, all sources he can't really cite in a scholarly work. Most authorities respect his earlier research but simply dismiss him when he goes on about the pre-Hawaiians. His latest book SECRETS OF THE MENEHUNE has a healthy cult following, though."
Timothy Limbo had walked over to join them. "You know," he said, "Let me send a few of my caspers to look for this Kimowaua guy. They can go about fifteen miles before they want to get back to me."
"Good idea, Tim. I could use a break." Sable rubbed her eyes and went to lean back against the towering pile of naked boulders. She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment.
Holding out his hands palm up, Timothy summoned two of his caspers. Barely visible tornados a few inches high, they swirled and hovered over his hands, "Hey you guys," he cooed the way one speaks to puppies. "Settle down."
"I used to think these things were just gralic energy you were manifesting subconsciously," Jocelyn said. The Aboriginal woman leaned closer. Even at close range, the caspers were hard to spot. "But lately I've decided they are separate life forms that have attached to you."
"Like your Red Spectre?" he asked.
"Yes. I think so. We are both hosts to energy beings that are more our partners than our possessions." Jocelyn lifted a slim long-fingered hand as if to tap one of the manifestations but drew back at the last second.
"My friendly ghosts!" laughed Timothy Limbo. "If they ever start talking, we'll know for sure what they are. All right, fellas, see if you can find an old man in a speedboat." The tiny whirlwinds circled his head shot away, out over the sea.
After a second, Timothy said, "I can see what they see if I concentrate. They're skimming over the waves now."
"Good luck." Jocelyn saw that Sable had opened the pilot hatch of the CORBY and was leaning into the cabin, checking gauges and dials. She glanced around and found Galvan and Denrak Jin sitting on a boulder overlooking the surf that crashed against the shore. She smiled. Jocelyn had been certain that the couple would have broken up by now. But despite the frequent melodramatic breakups and passionate reunions, the Melgar and the Gelydra seemed to have a lasting bond.
All the members of her team were occupied at the moment. Jocelyn Garimara smiled to herself as she thought she should unleash the Red Spectre that was restrained within her slight body. The crackling dark red being would tear out over the ocean, speeding past Timothy's little ghosts at three times their speed.
But no. She had learned the hard way that it was best to use great power sparingly. Let the caspers observe and report. She would stand by. Jocelyn found one of the rounded boulders that stood at waist height and gratefully lowered herself to sit with her legs stretched out in front of her. Even at the CORBY's MACH-plus speeds, it had been a long and boring flight.
The two caspers skimmed back to the beach, circling Timothy Limbo excitedly. He held up an index finger and the tiny tornados spun around as if chasing each other. He grinned and said, "Good work, boys." Both manifestations popped out of existence as totally as two soap bubbles.
"There's a speedboat about five miles out, coming this way--" His words were cut off as a nearly naked man in a grotesque wooden mask leaped down off the boulders and slammed him to the ground.
III.
The strange attacker hopped lightly back up on his feet. Timothy sprawled where he had been struck down. Straddling the KDF member's unmoving form, the masked man laughed before stepping away.
He was a limber, athletic man of medium height, with golden-brown skin that shone with oil that had been rubbed in. Barefoot, with leather bracelets around wrists and ankles, he wore a plain white cloth wrapped around his loins. But all anyone saw was the bizarre wooden mask that covered his entire head.
Oval-shaped, the face of the mask was a stylized grimace with frowning eyes made of shells, a protruding beaky nose and a scowling mouth with teeth clenched in rage. The mask had been stained dark brown but the lips were bright red and the white shells for eyes stood out dramatically. Falling back from the crest of the mask was a thick mop of straight black hair.
As he hopped away from Timothy, the masked man was tackled headlong by a small hard bundle of fury. Demrak Jin had raced headlong across the beach and vaulted upward to crash into the stranger with an impact that sent them both tumbling to the sand. Pinning the masked man down, the Gelydra woman whipped out her bone-bladed weapon and drew it up for a killing blow... and then collapsed limply as the man touched the bare skin of one hand. The knife fell from her weakened grasp.
All this had taken place in less than a full second. Galvan was thundering toward the encounter, a massive juggernaut of superhuman muscle few living beings could have faced without dismay. He halted as the limp form of Demrak Jin was hurled straight at him. The big Melgar caught his lover in both arms as gently as he could and was distracted by checking to see if she had been harmed.
From over by the CORBY, Sable snapped, "Don't let him touch your skin! Jocelyn, the Gammon!"
Immediately, Jocelyn dropped to one knee and braced her hands on the sand. Up from within her emerged a dark red silhouette the same size as her body. Outlined in a flickering white aura, the Gammon made a crackling noise as it lifted up and swooped straight for the masked man.
Understandably alarmed, the intruder stepped back against the pile of boulders and held up his open hands defensively. From within the wooden mask echoed frantic words in an unknown language. The Red Spectre lunged toward the man but then, unexpectedly, stopped short and hovered in mid-air.
"My Gammon..." whispered Jocelyn, weakened by having her very lifeforce manifesting out of her body. "What do you fear?"
As the masked man laughed in triumph and stamped down from one foot to the other in a wild dance, the Red Spectre soared up twenty feet overhead. It swung behind the scene and then blasted into the formation of boulders with a sharp detonation like a true lightning bolt striking. Several of the rocks cracked open and split apart. The largest one, four feet across, came down to smash directly across the shoulders of the masked man.
Just like that, it was over. With that massive weight crushing him down, breaking bones and flattening out his lungs, the stranger was dead within a few painful seconds. Swinging around, the Gammon floated inches off the ground. Its featureless oval of a head seemed to regard the corpse mockingly and then it swept back to blur into Jocelyn's body.
The slender Aboriginal woman gasped and got to her feet. "Clever girl," she said out loud.
Coming up next to her, anesthetic dart gun in hand, Sable helped her teammate rise. "Your Gammon sensed that touching that man would be dangerous? So it used those rocks as weapons?"
"Exactly." Jocelyn rushed over to see how Timothy Limbo was, while Sable hurried over to where Galvan was holding Demrak Jin like an ailing child. Everyone was relieved to find the stricken KDF members were weak and listless but not in critical danger.
"Man, I'm tired," Timothy mumbled as Jocelyn helped him up into a sitting position. "I feel like I'm getting over double pneumonia."
With her enhanced perception, Sable could hear the speed and strength of their heartbeats, she could hear the clarity of how much air was being moved as they breathed. "I think you two will be fine in a few minutes. Your healing factor will kick in shortly. But I wouldn't recommend going through that again."
Content to be in Galvan's embrace, Jin raised her surly face. "Captain, that was horrible. That man... sucked my life from me. It was like being bled of every drop."
"Well, he's dead now," Sable said, taking a closer look at the Gelydra's cloudy blue eyes and seeming satisfied. "He's beyond hurting any of us."
As minutes went by, Demrak Jin and Timothy Limbo rapidly began to recover. The Tagra tea diet available only at Tel Shai gave them elevated healing abilities that modern medical science could not explain. Shortly, both were standing up and starting to take wobbly steps.
"Galvan, would you mind?" asked Sable as she pointed at the man pinned under the boulder.
The big Melgar bent down and used one hand to casually flick the heavy rock away. The ease which he did this was amazing, but his teammates had long ago become accustomed to Galvan's dramatic feats. Galvan was the one Melgar in his generation who had inherited the Legacy of Malberon.
From an inner pocket of her field jacket, Sable pulled out a pair of black latex gloves and snapped them on. Turning the body over onto its back, she examined it thoroughly. The rest of her stood well back to let her work. They were well aware how her grealic perception enhanced her senses to a level far beyond what flesh and blood eyes or ears or nostrils should be able to perform.
The man's eyes and mouth had been left wide open in death. He had long shiny black hair that was tied into a bun on top of his head. "I can't quite place his origins," Sable said finally. "He is most like a Samoan but has a less robust bone structure. Those ears are anamolous. Maybe some Northern Europe DNA in his ancestry? We'll take some samples. No tattoos. No scars. Perfect teeth. I'd place his age at twenty-six."
Meanwhile, Galvan had been checking out the wooden mask, which had a vertical split along one side from the impact. "I've seen ceremonial masks like this all over the South Pacific, over as far as New Zealand even. They are usually called 'Tiki Masks' although that's not strictly accurate. This one is... odd."
Peering over the big Melgar's shoulder, Timothy Limbo whistled. "It gives me the creeps and in a big way. Ack!"
Rising to join them, Sable brought her face close to the mask and sniffed, then scratched at its painted areas with a fingernail. "Mold on the inside that's only found in coffins. Unmistakable. This is Human hair from a young woman under twenty-one. I'm afraid each hair still has its follicles attached, meaning it was pulled out of the scalp by force rather than cut. That paint, though, is an even worse sign. This is rather gruesome, my friends. That paint is composed of rendered fat and ashes from Human corpses. This is a Menehune death mask."
IV.
Sable was busy scraping skin and hair samples and tagging them in clear plastic bags, then drawing a syringe of blood because without a pulse in the subject she could not simply fill a tube from a vein. The KDF team captain labeled each sample with a marker, then pulled her latex gloves off inside out and bundled them to be disposed of.
As she straightened up over the corpse, she first noticed her teammates watching a speedboat approach. This annoyed her. Even though she had been taking specimens, she should have caught the noise. Maybe she was becoming too reliant on her team standing guard...
The craft was a twenty-six foot 'Vagabond' made by Stillman, white with blue trim. It had an inboard motor and a semi-enclosed cabin in which an elderly man was working the wheel. As he neared the beach, he slowed the motors and drifted in as far as he could without grounding the boat.
"Ahoy there! You have got to be from the Kenneth Dred Foundation, who else could you be?" he called. At eighty, Professor George Kimowaua was a spry little figure not more than a few inches over five feet tall and badly bent forward by spinal arthritis. He had a healthy head of white hair and a billy-goat tuft of a goatee. Much of his bony face was concealed behind oversized mirrored sunglasses.
As the Professor threw the level that lowered the anchor chain at the stern of his boat, he tilted back his billed captain's cap and whistled. "My word, a Gelydra from Ulgor. And you, big feller, you're a Melgar if I'm not mistaken... if fact, I think you must be Galvan himself!"
"I am," Galvan said.
"Amazing! I have read so many of your exploits. You're the star of so many heroic tales. Seeing you in the flesh is surreal, it's like meeting a figure out of legend."
Galvan boomed with unforced laughter. "Don't stop, I love flattery. But Professor, you must meet the rest of us. Timothy Limbo. Jocelyn Garimara. And our team captain, Sable."
As he spotted the body lying face up on the sand, Kimowaua gave a start. "Wait. What? Who is that? He looks dead."
"With good reason," Demrak Jin snorted. She held up the wooden mask. "He wore this."
"Oh Lord, a Menehune death mask! He must be one of Grandfather Kahuna's followers." The old man swung a leg over the side of his boat and slid down into warm waist-high water. He began wading toward them. "We're all in mortal danger. And not just of death, but worse."
As the Professor neared the dry sand, Galvan extended a helping hand and easily lifted the old man up to stand beside them. Kimowaua stared with bulging eyes at the body. He pressed a hand to his chest and tried to calm down.
"Your pulse is way too rapid," Sable told him. Looking at his neck, she could clearly count each time an artery pulsed. "Deep breaths. Deep slow breaths."
"You don't understand it," he explained as he attempted to bring his voice down a tone. "I know this man. Or maybe I should say I knew him. He was called Puanani. In and out of juvenile detention, arrested as an adult several times for petty theft or assault and yet somehow he always managed to wriggle free.
"Was he an Hawaiian, then?" asked Sable.
"No. He claimed to be one of the survivors of the Old Blood as they call it, the Menehune, the people who lived on these islands before the Polynesians. Modern Hawaiians think of Menehune as wandering night spirits. Anthropologists dispute even the existence of the Menehune, you know. Despite all the linguistic evidence I've managed to-"
"We can discuss history when things are less hectic," Sable interrupted. "This boy Puanani attacked us. He had some ability to siphon away strength and vitality from a victim into himself.
What do you know about that?"
"It was the mask that enabled him to do that. I think the death masks use a spell created by the vile Darthim themselves. It's magick surviving thousands of years from the Darthan Age."
Still holding the wooden mask, Denrak scoffed. "Listen to me! Can you not all sense how evil this sigil is? It brings nothing good to the world. Come, Galvan, let us build a fire and reduce it to harmless ash."
"No! Heavens, no!" the Professor almost shrieked as he rushed over to seize the cursed mask. To his obvious surprise, he could not even begin to wrest it out of Jin's grip. Small and wiry as she was, her Gelydran body was dense as adaptation underwater life. She was much stronger than Human men a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than she was.
Kimowaua gave up the attempt. "That artifact has enormous value. It needs to be in a museum, to be studied with modern methods."
Demrak Jin gave him an openly hostile glare. She was not friendly under the best of circumstances. "You want to protect this horrible thing?!"
"Its historical value alone..." began the professor but Sable stepped in between the two of them with her arms raised.
"Hold it," she said. "For the moment, we'll secure the mask in the CORBY. In the hatch in the rear with the Eldar talismans. It should be harmless until we decide what to do with it."
Demrak Jin pouted and hugged the mask to her, turning her body slightly away. "Fire is best for something this foul...."
"Come on, hand it over." Sable held out her hand, snapped her fingers and took the artifact. Without a word, she slid open the rear hatch of the CORBY to reveal a small metal strongbox built into the hull. She tapped the combination lock, placed the mask inside and closed the door. When she slid the hatch shut and sealed it, its seams match the matte black surface of the CORBY so closely that they could not be seen.
"No one's getting that out without six hours behind a cutting torch," she said to her watching team. "The strongbox has ensalir strips across its edges and an Eldar starburst in the door. The mask is as secure as it can be."
The Gelydra had folded both arms across her modest bust and was fixing a stinkeye on the Professor. "I don't trust you," she announced in her usual blunt way.
Taken aback by the past few minutes, George Kimowaua seemed to struggle to find a response. He took off his nautical cap and ran a bony hand through his goatee. "Ah. Well. In any case, I must warn you all that there are certainly more of the Menehune here on this island. The police think that the cult hides somewhere on the Big Island but I am convinced they come here for their rituals."
"It would be convenient if they were all here," Jocelyn said. The Australian woman allowed anger to tinge her normally restrained voice. "We have come here to smash this cult and end their threat."
"Yes. Very well." Obviously uncomfortable at the open hostility from Jin, the Professor turned away from her to address the rest of the KDF team. "I believe there is a trail to their camp on the other side of this island. But there is no place to land your helicopter there. We should take my boat as close as we can."
"Agreed," Sable said. She had one hand resting on the butt of her dart gun. "Team, you go with Professor Kimowaua. I will remain with the CORBY. If needed, I can join you in our copter within a minute or so."
"Is your helicopter armed?" asked the Professor.
"Twin chain guns and anesthetic gas spray," Sable said. "But honestly, my team can handle themselves. Professor, lead them to the cult. Jocelyn, you are deputy on this case."
"Understood," the Aboriginal woman said. She unclipped a flat metal device from her belt and made an adjustment before returning it. They did not explain this, but the team knew that she had set her Link to transmit sound to Sable so everything that happened would be relayed.
Although Galvan and Demrak Jin remained in their own clothing, Timothy and Jocelyn were wearing the black field suits. Both of them tucked thin leather gloves into their belts and lowered their helmets on, leaving the visors up.
Following the Professor, the four KDF members waded out to the speedboat and climbed nimbly aboard. Kimowaua started the engine and threw the lever that retracted the anchor chain. Once that was stowed, he backed the craft out into deeper water and then headed to the west.
As the speedboat passed around a curved arm of the island and was lost from sight, Lauren Sable Reilly sighed. She wanted very much to have gone with them but it was important that Jocelyn get experience in command. Sable hoped to add some new members and she had picked Jocelyn to take over as deputy leader.
Fetching her own helmet from inside the CORBY, she fastened it on her head and twisted the right ear pod one click counterclockwise. The sound of a powerful motor came clearly inside her helmet and then Timothy's voice saying, "This is a sweet ride, professor. How long have you owned this boat?"
Smiling, Sable went over to sit on a boulder near the CORBY. She settled down to monitor the mission and hope her intervention wouldn't be necessary.
V.
Forty minutes later, Professor Kimowaua brought his speedboat close to the island. On this side, there were no beaches. Sheer granite cliffs extended down into the ocean. As they drifted closer, the Professor pointed up to a ledge ten feet above them. "That seems wide enough for several people to stand on comfortably."
"And above that ledge, vegetation begins," Jocelyn added. "That's the way into the interior. Wait. Professor, move a few feet forward, I think I see something."
With the motor at its lowest, Kimowaua brought his boat right up against the cliff. Jocelyn leaned over the railing and grabbed two steel spikes that had been driven into the rock.
"Here's the proof we needed," she said. "Someone, the cultists or not, went to the trouble of hammering these into stone. Good for mooring a boat, eh?"
"This is where I saw lights one night," the Professor said. "I think I was far enough away that they would have not spotted me in the gloom."
Demrak Jin made a disgusted snort and Galvan nudged her to be polite. Leaning over the railing, Timothy checked out the cliff at close range.
"Hey, I see lots of handholds and footholds. We can climb this with no trouble," he said.
"We're going in," Jocelyn said as she tugged on the thin leather gloves and lowered her helmet onto her head. She left the clear visor retracted into its internal track but could lower it instantly. Timothy saw her do this and followed her actions. Neither said so, but they now offered no exposed skin for the energy-sucking Menehune to grab.
"I'm certain I am not going to scale THAT wall," the Professor told them. "My athletic days are way behind me now. My bones are brittle as pretzel sticks."
"We could lower a rope to tie around you and then pull you up," Tim offered.
"Please. You don't understand. Wait sixty years and see if you become more cautious about taking chances. You're young and reckless."
Demrak Jin made a disgusted noise and strode to the opposite side of the deck. She spun, took three quick steps and leaped straight up ten feet to reach the rock ledge. In another instant, she had scrambled up on her feet and was peering down at them.
Seeing the flummoxed expression on the Professor's face, Galvan shrugged. "Yes, she is a strong little rascal. That comes from living at the pressure at the ocean depths. Up in open air, Jin is a bit overpowered for her size."
"I... believe it," Kimowaua said. "The Gelydrim of Ulgor. I helped Kenneth Dred write a short biography of Atron Ke but I remained skeptical about the reports of his abilities. Now I'm convinced."
Taking a length of rope that was coiled at the stern, Galvan tied one end to a steel spike and made sure the rest was secured. "You might as well shut down your engine," the Melgar champion said. "This will hold you in place."
As the Professor complied, Galvan seized the other steel spike and reached up to an outcropping on the cliff wall. Easily as any acrobat half his size, he pulled himself up, grabbed another handhold and was shortly standing on the ledge next to Jin.
In fact, being one of the strongest flesh and blood beings in the Midnight War, Galvan was quite capable of simply jumping up past the ledge entirely. But to do so would rock the speedboat and perhaps capsize it. He had learned to be careful with his abilities.
After watching his teammates, Timothy Limbo shook his head. "It's too bad we have to get by on mere normal Human strength," he grumbled. "But we each bring special gifts to the team." Following Jocelyn, he stepped up to the railing and began to climb. It seemed to him that a few footholds looked as if they had been augmented with a hammer and chisel to make ascent easier. Another indication that the Menehune cult had been operating here for some time.
When he and Jocelyn got within reach, Galvan leaned down to seize them by the arms in turn. He effortlessly picked them up bodily and placed them safely on the ledge.
Jocelyn shouted down to Professor Kimowaua, "Stand by until midnight. If we return then, we'll dive down into the water next to your boat rather than try to climb."
"And if you're not back by then?" the old man called back.
"Head back to where our copter is parked. Our captain is ready to come intervene if we need her. Thanks, Professor."
With that, Jocelyn Garimara examined the area around them. The slope leading up into the interior was gentle enough to allow walking along it without difficulty. Here was where the trees and bushes began and again they oticed how dry and lifeless everything appeared.
Timothy dropped to one knee and crumbled dirt between his gloved fingers. "I don't get it. You saw how green and lush the other islands were as we flew over them. It's as if rain fell everywhere but here."
"That's a characteristic of Darthan magick, all right," said Jocelyn. "Their spells draw away lifeforce wherever they are cast. You saw how those death masks sucked away your vitality."
"Yeah, that was no fun," Timothy said.
"Galvan, Jin... you two be careful not to let these cultists touch your skin! Okay, let's find a trail to follow."
Less than a minute later, Demrak Jin cried out, "Here! Footprints, three of them." She had found a path beaten into the dry dirt by several feet wearing boots rather than the ubiquitous flip-flops which Hawaiians called 'slippers.' A narrow open space led up through the thick if unhealthy underbrush.
Jocelyn Garimara squatted over the footprints for a moment. "Hmm, well, I wish I had Sable's microscopic vision but it sure appears to me that there have been many different feet going back and forth here. You notice that one set of prints is much deeper than the others?"
"Meaning one cultist is fat?" asked Timothy.
"Or that one cultist was carrying something heavy. Or someONE." Jocelyn replied with a stern undertone. She drew her dart gun and checked its CO2 charge.
"Say, if these Menehune came up the way we did, where's their boat?" Tim said.
"Probably one of them took the boat back to another island and will return for them. I hope that Professor Kimowaua has the presence of mind to take off if he sees another boat approaching."
"Unless he is one of them!" snapped Jin.
"Kenneth Dred trusted Kimowaua," said Jocelyn. "Before we left, I read in Dred's notes that he found the Professor a man of good character."
"That was a long time ago," the Gelydra said. "People do change."
"You may be right, Jin," the Aboriginal woman conceded. "But he is in his boat and, at his age, he's not likely to climb that cliff and attack us. Let's find the Menehune. Timothy?"
"Yeah, this is where my caspers show their worth." He held up his hands and four of the tiny whirlwinds swirled around him. In the fading light, the gralic manifestations could only be seen if someone consciously looked for them. "Go scout ahead, buddies," Timothy said and the tornadoes whizzed silently up the trail.
"Stand by, everyone," Jocelyn ordered. "This should not take long."
As they waited, Timothy stood with his head tilted to one side as if listening for something in the distance. He clapped one hand over his mouth and dropped back a few steps. "Oh. My. God. Get back here, guys."
"What is it, Tim? What did they find?"
"That missing girl? The attorney's daughter, Kristin Walton? We're too late to save her." As he spoke, the four caspers returned and circled close around his head in a comforting gesture. "Thanks, boys," he mumbled and the manifestations popped out of existence again.
"Give us a report. Now." Jocelyn allowed a little edge to her tone.
"It's pretty hard to take," Timothy said. "Maybe two miles up there, I counted twenty of the cult. They're under some sort of camoflauge netting hung between the trees. They're, well, they're cutting the Walton girl up. Blood all over. Her hair has already been pulled out. Some of the bastards were wearing those wooden masks."
"Are you sure she's dead?" asked Jocelyn.
"I'm afraid so," Timothy muttered, "She's been.. opened up. Damn. I thought I'd seen enough Midnight War that nothing would bother me but I feel sick to my stomach."
"This will not be endured a moment longer." Galvan said. He smacked his fists together with a sound like two rocks colliding. "We shall go and end this cult now."
"There's one guard keeping watch. A little over a mile from here. He's sitting on the ground next to a tree with a cheap little .38 in his hand."
"We'll take him out quietly. But we will use a little prudence in our attack," Jocelyn said. "Galvan, you and Jin, remember that you must not let the Menehune touch your skin. Timothy, check your dart gun. Everyone, if I release my Red Spectre, drop to the ground and get out of her way. Let's approach as quietly as we can."
With that, she spun on her heel and marched briskly up the faint trail. Up by her cheek, the needle-thin barrel of the anesthetic dart gun was ready for use. Behind her, her teammates followed with enraged expressions. Demrak Jin drew her bone-blade knife from its sheath across and held it point down as she hurried right behind the others. Her face was more feral than ever.
VI.
Opunui felt a sharp sting at the side of his neck. Damn mosquitos, he thought, the oil he had rubbed into his skin should have kept them away. The young Menehune reached up to slap at the bite and found to his surprise a thin metal dart sticking out of his skin. In the second it took for him to react, his mind was already foggy from the potent Trom-devised chemicals in his bloodstream. Before he could take a breath to yell a warning, Opunui fell over onto his side and began to snore.
Emerging from the undergrowth, Jocelyn lowered her dart gun and bent to take the youth's pulse. Strong and steady. The death mask cultist should sleep for an hour and then be nauseous for another hour after that. In her current mood, Jocelyn regretted not using a lethal weapon. More and more, she felt the anesthetic darts were just too merciful for the sort of enemies they faced.
Soon, moving more carefully than ever and making almost no noise, they peered out through the bushes at a scene that apalled even them.
Under a green and black camoflauge netting strung from tree to tree, a natural clearing was dimly lit by a few small torches stuck in the dirt. Twenty men and women wearing only white loinclothes and leather bracelets milled about a slaughter. Tied down face up on the ground, the dismembered naked corpse of a teen girl was stretched out. Her torso had been opened and most internal organs removed, her hair had been pulled out by force from from her scalp and her gaping mouth showing where her teeth had been yanked out.
Toughened as Jocelyn and Timothy had thought they were, they were stunned by the sight. What really struck them numb was that the Menehune were laughing and joking as they worked with the body parts. One of the men was tossing the girl's heart from hand to hand.
Five of the cultists were wearing the grotesque masks. Each one was shaped differently, pointed at top and bottom, oval or rectangular. Each had wildly exaggerated features, with staring eyes ors grinning mouths or wide noses that took up half a face. From each mask hung long Human hair, and each was painted with red lips or yellow stripes down the cheeks.
Reaching behind her, Jocelyn took Timothy's hand to offer support. He squeezed it tightly. She was taking in more details. Off to one side, an older Menehune with greying hair and a pot belly supervised the rendering of fat and blood in an iron kettle over hot coals. Two of the cultists were working on a new Tiki death mask, inserting hair from the dead girl through pinholes at the top of the mask.
One of the Menehune women knelt and raised the corpse's arm and moved it so it seemed the dead girl was waving. This provoked fresh laughter from the cult members but that laughter was abruptly cut off.
From the opposite side of the clearing, a weird shriek rang out like nothing anyone there had ever heard before. Diving headlong into their midst was a small figure dressed in sharkhide. Demrak Jin whirled and slashed in a berserk rage, the razored edge of her weapon slicing open flesh wherever she struck. After the first few stupefied seconds, the Menehune reacted and tried to strike her down. They could not make contact with her.
Raised on combat like all Gelydrim, Jin had fought multiple opponents many times before. She moved smoothly from one attack to the next, whirling and swaying out of reach and then lunging in again. The Menehune were falling as if they were not even trying to defend themselves.
Emerging into the clearing, Jocelyn held Timothy back with an arm across his chest. "We'll get in her way," she whispered. Across the clearing, they saw Galvan also holding back. The giant Melgar stood ready to intervene if needed but he had seen Jin in such a state before.
Only a handful of the Menehune were left, mostly the leaders who were wearing the masks. One tried to make a run for it, but Galvan stepped into his path. A single blow from that steel-hard fist split the wooden mask into fragments and threw the cultist back ten feet to hit the ground hard.
Singling out the older Menehune, Jocelyn extended her arm full length and dropped him with a carefully aimed dart. The elder sagged to his knees and fell face down on the edge of the clearing.
"You want him for questioning?" asked Timothy.
"Exactly. I assume he is Grandfather Kahuna," she replied.
Then it was over. Chest heaving, glaring around her as she turned in a full circle, Demrak Jin finally lowered her bone blade. Its edge was chipped where it had struck hips or thigh bones, and it was more red than white now. Jin herself had only a bruise on the side of her face where a thrown rock had connected. One shoulder of her sharkhide tunic had been ripped down to the collarbone by a dying hand. But none of the blood which covered her was her own.
Seeing Jocelyn and Timothy staring wide-eyed at her, Jin snorted. "Well? No high and mighty speeches? No recriminations? I am a daughter of Ulgor! We are born at the same time a shark is spawned and we share the spirit of that shark. You know this!"
Approaching her teammate, Jocelyn Garimara holstered her dart gun. She thumbed the stud on the crest of her helmet and its visor slid up into its internal track. "I have to say, if any lost souls deserved to die like that, these Menehune did."
Galvan had found a five gallon jug of drinking water and some clean cloths. He brought them over to his wild lover and she gratefully began scrubbing herself clean. Jin seemed most dismayed by the chipped away parts in her weapon. "This weakens it too much to rely upon. The blade will snap at some point. Ah, so be it. I have another one half done."
Angry as they had seldom seen him, Timothy Limbo stomped about the clearing claiming the Tiki Masks. He yanked them roughly off the still-warm bodies and made a pile of them over the hot coals where the fat had been boiling. He gathered some of the dry twigs and branches and soon had a fire blazing up to consume the masks.
As Jin got most of the blood off her, she turned to Galvan. "It was their laughing that set me off," she said in a more subdued tone. "Bad enough that they murdered and desecrated her, but they showed no respect. I had to do something."
Taking a wet rag, the Melgar champion began to wipe her back where she could not reach. "If you had not attacked them, the rest of us would have, darling. As soon as I saw what they had done, I swore in my heart that not one of them would escape here with their lives."
"I am glad to hear that, my love." Jin seemed satisfied that her weapon was cleaned and she sheathed it again. "Small comfort it may be to that child."
Jocelyn had gone over to the pitiful remains. "Poor girl. She had done nothing wrong. I doubt if she had heard of Menehune except as folktales no one believed. When we leave, I will give the HPD an anonymous tip so that she may be returned to her family for burial. At least they will have some closure."
The oldest cult member moaned and stirred in his drug-induced stupor. This roused Demrak Jin's temper to flare up again. "What, one still draws breath?"
"Stand down!" barked Jocelyn in a voice that carried the authority of her role as team leader. "I want one to question. Are there other families of Menehune in the islands? Are any true Hawaiians working with them, perhaps providing shelter and concealment? We want to make sure the cult is stamped out."
The small white-haired woman exhaled sharply. "Oh, very well. I see your point. You are more clear-headed than I am, Red Spectre."
Seeing a pile of blankets to one side, Jocelyn said, "Cover her up, will you, Tim?"
"Sure."
The Australian woman squared her shoulders and stood up straighter with an effort. She had seen so much carnage in the past few years. She would have thought she was jaded and blase about scenes of horror but this was upsetting her deeply. She took deep steadying breaths and went over to where the old man was sprawled.
"Come on, team," she said and got down on both knees. Reaching to an inner pocket of her field jacket, Jocelyn drew out a flat metal case that held five color-coded syringes. The one with the blue bands was the antidote to the darts. Not even considering using an alcohol swab first, she pinched the flabby skin on the old man's upper arm and injected the full contents.
Jocelyn carefully replaced the empty hypo and stowed the metal case back in its pocket. These were potent drugs she was administering without the victim's consent or without doing any blood work first to see if it was safe, so there was always a chance of adverse reaction. Five minutes crawled by in agonizing slowness. Then the old man shuddered, gasped and began to revive.
It was another few minutes before the Menehune had regained enough consciousness to become aware of the situation. He obviously felt very ill. The antidote to the darts had its own side effects. Finally, his eyes started darting madly around the scene.
"Yes, they are all dead. They deserved it." Jocelyn's deepset eyes under the Aboriginal brow ridge were cold and merciless. "Your own life is hanging by a thread itself."
"Who... ARE you?"
"Never you mind. Questions are for you to answer. Are you the one called Grandfather Kahune?"
"Me? Grandfather Kahune? No. I am just old Mahalani. I can serve the family by dealing with banks and stores and realtors because I went to school with the New Blood."
Jocelyn frowned even more than before. "Then where is Grandfather Kahune?"
"Heh. If you don't know... why do you think I would tell you? He will start over again. There are still dozens of Menehune living unsuspected among the Haole and the New Blood. New Tiki Masks will be made. The old ways will be brought back.."
"Oh, shut up," she snapped. Jocelyn rose to her feet. "We'll question him more thoroughly in the Brig. Right now, it's best we leave this island and send the police here to clean up. Galvan, will you carry him?"
"I suppose." The Melgar grabbed the old man and flung him none too gently over one broad shoulder. "We're getting out of here?"
"Yes. Back to the boat and we'll see what Professor Wakimuau has to say about all this."
"As if he doesn't already know everything," Demrak Jin observed sourly.
VII.
As they hiked back down the long slope toward the cliffs, Jocelyn unclipped her Link and beeped Sable. Getting an immediate response, she gave a concise report to her captain of the recent events.
"I'm standing by the CORBY, doing the usual checklist," Sable's voice replied clear and full from the Link. "We can have wheels up in one minute after everyone returns. Sorry to hear about the girl."
"Everyone seems traumatized by her death," Jocelyn replied. "Tim has had his friendly ghosts scooting around the island but they don't see any more Menehune. This mission seems about finished."
"Bring the Professor back here and we will discuss everything before leaving," Sable said. "Jin is convinced he's part of the Tiki death mask cult?"
"I am!" the blonde woman yelled at the device. "I can't believe none of you see it."
"You may be right," the voice of their captain admitted. "I saw no signs of stress from deceit... no subvocal tremors, no increased blink rate, no elevated adrenalin in the sweat. But that may just mean he's an adept liar or enough of a sociopath that he feels no guilt. Bring him here and we'll question him as well as the prisoner."
"All right, captain," Jocelyn said and broke the connection. She returned the Link to her belt and slowed her team as they neared the cliffs. Twelve feet below the brink, the sea lapped back and forth against the sheer granite. The two metal spikes in the cliff wall were covered by water now as the tide was coming in. But the speedboat was gone.
"He's running from our vegeance," snarled Demrak Jin.
"Steady there," Jocelyn told her. "Maybe he saw a boat in the distance and decided to get out of reach of more cult members. Or maybe he just gone a case of nerves and decided he'd rather be near Sable and the CORBY. Come on, we can double time across the island in a half and find out."
They reversed course and took off into the interior at a good trot. There was no danger of getting lost. The heads-up readout on the inside of their helmet visor included a visual compass and exact location by a GPS satellite whose signal they intercepted.
The hike was enacted in a weary silence. None of them were physically tired, not even Jin who had done all the fighting. But with the assignment seemingly complete, their bodies were lowering to normal readiness levels. Galvan carried the occasionally squirming old man without any apparent effort.
Trotting under the stars through the dry brush and between crazily bent palm trees, the KDF made good time. As they headed over the crest of a rise, they could see the beach where the black sharklike outline of the CORBY was resting. Sitting on boulders facing each other were Sable and Professor Kimowaua... and Sable was holding up the Tiki death mask.
VIII.
She had been sitting on a boulder facing out to munching on a high-energy protein bar. Her gift of enhanced perception came from being able to channel gralic energy into her various senses. Spotting the white flash of a seagull far out to sea, Sable focused her vision on distance. The bird shot up into her perception as if it were being held up at arm's length. She could clearly watch bird's eye rotate in its socket. There was so scarring on the gull's left leg that she noticed, as if it had been bitten by an animal, and she wondered what the story was.
Bringing her senses back to normal Human levels, she touched the Link communicator at her belt. Jocelyn had sounded unusually distraught when reporting a minute ago. In a way, Sable thought, she was glad that her team had not become thoroughly hardened and emotionally distant. It was a fine line between being able to cope with the horrors of the Midnight War and becoming so toughened as to not be empathic any more.
The sound of the speedboat preceded the sight of the white craft rounding the curve of the island. Sable rose and tugged down her field jacket where it had ridden up. In another minute, Professor Kimowaua had dropped the anchor chain and climbed over the side of his boat to start wading toward her.
"Hello, Professor," she called. "I heard from my team. The Menehune are all, well, dead. There was quite a confrontation."
"Oh. I see," the elderly man said as he emerged and stamped his feet to get water out of his deck shoes. "I dare say they deserved it. What of the Tiki Masks?"
"All burned to ashes. I think we are going to destroy the one in the CORBY's strongbox as well." She was watching his reactions but couldn't detect anything suspicious.
Coming up next to her, the Professor held out an expensive digital camera he had brought from the boat. "Wait, wait. At least we should take some photos and observations. The historical value of that artifact may be immense."
Sable considered this. "I don't see where that would hurt. All right." She opened the rear storage hatch of the copter and tapped the keypad of the strongbox. When she opened the safe, a faint but pungent odor seemed out. It definitely smelled of something dead.
She brought the death mask over and held it up. Leaning close, Kimowaua began snapping photos rapidly.
"Extraordinary, extraordinary," he mutttered. "I haven't seen anything quite like it. This reminds me of some Maori masks but more stylized..."
Holding the mask, Sable bent her head down to watch. She noticed a row of incised marks that resembled ancient runes. "How odd," she said. "Professor, you know what these mean?"
He frowned. "They look familiar. I can't quite place them. I understand you have powers of increased eyesight. Maybe you should look for anything suggestive?"
"All right." She turned the mask around to stare at its scowling face. In the dim starlight, she drew gralic force into her vision and the row of enigmatic characters expanded to clearly fill her sight. One symbol was repeated twice, it resembled a capital Y with a diagonal slash through the upright. Another was an oval with two horizontal strokes above it. She felt somehow as if she should be able to read this inscription. As she concentrated, the symbols swam about and appeared to be reshaping themselves into more familiar symbols.
Without realizing it, Lauren Sable Reilly reversed the wooden mask and raised it over her own head. As she lowered it, she had a glimpse of the mocking grin of Professor Kimowaua's goateed face....
Frighteningly loud, a sizzling crackle filled the air and Sable was thrown violently to the ground. Red light flashed bright enough to leave after-images. Struggling to clear her head, she felt her skin tingle as if near almost fatal levels of static electricity.
Hovering inches off the sand, the Red Spectre glowed ominously in the gloom. Tiny fragments of the wooden mask were strewn in all directions. The apparition turned its featureless head toward the Professor, who shrank back in primal terror. Lifting up, the energy being flashed back into the body of its Human host.
Running up full tilt, Jocelyn screamed, "Sable! Sable! Are you okay?"
"What? I don't..." The KDF team leader managed to get up on one knee and shook her head. Her skin still stung from being so close to the Spectre. Suddenly she realized what had just happened and glared at the Professor. "You!"
The rest of the team gathered around their leader. Galvan still held onto the elderly Menehune and now he held the man up in the air with one hand and shook him hard. "Tell us! Who is that man?"
The answer came with a cackle. "He is Grandfather Kahuna, you fools."
"I TOLD all of you that," spat Demrak Jin. "Why didn't anyone believe me? Arrgh!"
Spinning on one heel, the Professor headed back to the water in an attempt to reach his boat but he was too stiff and slow. Before anyone could intervene, the point of a bone blade was shoving out of the middle of his chest in a gout of blood.
Jin pushed the dying man face down on the sand and planted her foot on his back to hold him still as she tugged her long knife free. Going to rinse the blade in the sea, she turned her head back and gave her teammates a surly stare.
"Well? Will none of you apologize?" she said.
"All right, all right, Jin," Timothy replied. "You were right. Okay? You were right and we didn't listen to you. We're all sorry."
The small Gelydra swung her knife back and forth to whip water off it before returning it to her sheath. "Hah! That is all I asked."
Sable let out a shaky breath and dropped heavily onto the boulder where she had been sitting before. "I was going to put that mask on. Why would I do that? What's wrong with me?"
"Aw, I don't think it's you, boss." Timothy plopped down next to Sable and leaned up against her shoulder. "You know what? I bet either that Tiki Death Mask had some inisidous mystic influence. Or that geezer did. Maybe both of them."
"I agree," Jocelyn said. "He asked you to bring the mask out to be examined, didn't he?"
"Yes. He even said to examine it closely." Sable gave a visible shudder. "He was going to bring him into the cult... put me under his control."
"That's not going to happen to anyone now." Jocelyn gestured for Galvan to bring the prisoner over. "This man is the sole survivor of the Menehune, captain. His name is Mahalani if I remember right. I suggest we take him to our Brig to be questioned."
"Yes. Yes, you're right." Sable stood up and looked at the Australian knight. "Thanks, Jocelyn. Your Red Spectre came to the rescue just in time."
Perfect white teeth flashed in the gloom. Jocelyn said, "Oh, we have already saved each others' lives a few times, haven't we? What do you say? Are we getting away from this damn island?"
"Immediately. Leave the Professor and his boat the way we they are. We'll call the HPD once we're past Oahu and leave an anonymous tip." She turned and opened the rear compartment of the CORBY. "Secure the prisoner for the trip. Timothy, I want you at the stick. I'll take the co-pilot seat for the trip home."
They prepared for departure, Timothy starting the Trom impulse engines and setting the rotors in motion. Sable ran through the checklist of dials and gauges and display screens, since she had done an exterior examination just before the Professor had shown up. Galvan fetched handcuffs from their equipment locker and fastened the old Menehune to the leg of the metal bench.
Old Mahalani had laspsed into silence, as if the events of the day had finally begun to sink in. "Grandfather Kahuna was the wisest of us," he said. "Where will the Old Blood find another leader like him?"
Climbing up into the rear compartment, the Gelydra grumbled, "No one will believe me when I point out who he is, anyway."
From the pilot seat, Timothy chuckled. "Give it a rest, Jin. You're still annoyed about things that happened when you were little."
"With good reason," she said, fastening the strap across her lap. "Did I ever tell you how my father would not take me to see the War Squid tournaments? I was old enough. But he took my brother...!"
1/16/2018