Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [30]
She rummaged in the cupboard until she found a tin with a cat on the label. ‘I hope that means cats are supposed to eat this,’ she told Ocelot. ‘It could be embarrassing if it’s a relative of yours.’ A thought struck her. ‘Hey, cat? How do you open this thing?’
The phone rang.
Bernice looked over her shoulder at it. She put the tin of cat food on the floor, leaving Ocelot sniffing uselessly at it. Uncertainly, she picked up the receiver, and said, ‘Hello? Yes?’
‘You must return at once to the hospital,’ said the voice on the other end. ‘There’s been an accident… Señor Alvarez is –’ Click. Dead. The line was dead.
Bernice just stood there, looking at the phone.
In the kitchen, Ocelot stood on the table, his fur sticking out like porcupine quills, and hissed and hissed and hissed.
* * *
Fitzgerald hung up the phone. The phone box was a rectangular island of yellow light, a fleck of civilization in the darkness. Stay inside, and you had access to people, to help, to the world. Step outside, he thought, and you were back in the jungle.
The jack‐handle was weighty and hot in his hand. He saw the light go out in the apartment above, and stepped out into the jungle.
* * *
The luminescent dial of Ace’s watch told her it was around midnight, local time. She had been snoozing for the last few miles, just listening to the night sounds.
‘This is the right place,’ said Achtli, very softly.
‘Have you been here before?’ asked the Doctor, his voice coming out of the dark.
‘Not by boat, or by foot,’ he said. ‘But I know, I feel…’ He looked around. ‘The same feeling that the mushrooms give me is here. In the air and in the water.’
Ace folded away her blanket and picked up the weapons they had brought.
‘I’ve heard about this place,’ said Iccauhtli, taking his sword from her. ‘It’s said that anyone who comes here dies. Quickly or slowly, at once or many years later.’
‘Oh great,’ said Ace. ‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’ Iccauhtli didn’t answer, but she knew why: he didn’t want them to think he was afraid.
The brothers hauled the canoe onto the shore. Except for the frogs and the wind, it was completely quiet. The Doctor held the torch, standing at the centre of a pool of reddish light. ‘Have many people come here, Iccauhtli?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve just heard the stories – the place where no grass grows, a cave or a place in the hillside that’s been cursed by the gods. One story says that an unfaithful priest fled here and was finally caught and slain on the hill.’
‘It’s not far from here,’ said Achtli. ‘Not far.’ The hill loomed above them, another dark shape in the dark night.
Then, with a cry like a wounded bird, the bandits attacked.
Iccauhtli shouted as the figures came out of the darkness. He blocked a blow with his sword as Ace snatched up a weapon for herself. She caught a flash of the Doctor’s face, heard Achtli cry out, saw the torch whirl and land on the grass, sputtering in the wetness.
Someone rushed her, and she brought the sword up between them, seeing a glitter of red light off the attacker’s obsidian knife. She snapped her foot up into her assailant’s groin, hearing a satisfying yelp, and danced backwards, swinging the sword in a mighty arc to smack into his side.
He screamed. She roared, wrenching the weapon free, feeling blood spatter onto her face. Someone was shouting her name, but she couldn’t hear anything except the battle.
* * *
The lift smelled of hot oil and cigarettes. It groaned tiredly as it crawled towards the lobby of Cristián’s block of flats.
The doors opened with a mechanical sigh. Benny hurried into the lobby, noticing for the first time the tacky orange carpet, the Smokers Please thing, a spot where the striped wallpaper was peeling. She remembered Cristián’s comment about the hideous decorations in hotels.
Suddenly, for no real reason, she had an overwhelming sense of homesickness – for Beta Caprisis, for the