"Well, do ya think she'll be back tonight, Cammie?" Lord John Roxton asked his companion beside the fire. The dinosaur's yard-long head swung around and a huge eye squinted at Roxton's face. Cammie didn't have anything to say about ghosts so Roxton saluted his half-asleep pet with a nearly empty wine jug and followed that up by downing another swig.
Leaning back, he tugged his loincloth into a more comfortable place. At home at Avebury Manor, Roxton's hunting dogs wore more clothes, but it was either the loincloth or the way God made him since Roxton had almost nothing left fit to wear. He'd already re-soled his boots twice. Now the tops were rotting, and as for his trousers and shirts, even Worth himself couldn't have repaired all the various raptor rips, sword cuts and insect chews.
Cammie, seeing nothing that needed her attention, swung her head away from the bright campfire and stretched out on the granite shelf. She was asleep again in seconds. Cammie was short for "chameleon-asaurus," which was in itself had been a nickname bestowed by Malone as Summerlee's scientific designation had been unpronounceably long. It had, of course, included "summerleasis" or was it "challengersis"? He couldn't remember anymore, at least not tonight. And he'd just as soon not think about that devious bastard Malone.
Behind Cammie an irregular slash in the cliff side soaked up firelight and marked the entry to Roxton's home. Overhead a moonless, star-spangled black canopy slowly spun the night away.
Roxton ran a hand across Cammie's soft hide, and the cooling reptilian body stirred again groggily. "Sorry to keep you awake, old girl," Roxton whispered as he leaned forward to poke at the fire. "But it's a hell of a thing when a man lusts after a bloody haunt. Sure could use your thoughts on the subject."
Actually, Roxton thought to himself, I could use some reassurance that I'm not out of my mind. This Plateau never let up. Dinosaurs, Amazons, pseudo-Roman talking lizards, and fire-breathing dragons, Roxton had seen them all, and this month he could add a bona fide ghost to his list of peculiarities. Running his fingers through the loose stones on the ground, Roxton found one to his liking and threw at his fire. A spate of sparks blew out and floated up into the Plateau's night sky. The Plateau was a damned weird place to live. Every little thing took an odd bent. Worse than Avebury at its spookiest.
It was also Roxton's prison. Most likely he'd die here, and the sooner, the better as far as his head jailer, Malone's tattooed vixen Queen Veronica, was concerned. Although Roxton could almost agree with her, he wasn't going to join Malone. He didn't fancy harem life.
Roxton and Malone had been on one of their expeditions looking for Summerlee and Challenger when they'd stumbled onto a tribe of beautiful women whose lives seemed to focus on sex and the hunt, and who appropriately called themselves Amazons. As there had been no men at all, Roxton and Malone had thought they'd found heaven. Roxton, at least, knew better now. The Amazons were demons and their Queen Veronica, with her weird, creeping tattoos, the Devil incarnate.
Hadn't she turned Malone into a mindless sex toy? When Roxton had last seen Malone, he'd been standing behind his blonde queen dominatrix. His face had been impassively cold while Queen Veronica pronounced Roxton's exile. Malone had rested a hand on queen's shoulder and Roxton had seen Queen Veronica's tattoos crawling on Malone's arms, as though he'd been infected with them like a venereal disease … or a curse.
Roxton felt lucky he hadn't attracted Queen Veronica's fancy. She'd favored Malone from the first.
Cammie hadn't answered Roxton. She hadn't even raised her head. The golden eyes were closed and the nose flaps vibrated to regular breathing. For today's hunting Roxton had used spears instead of his usual bow and arrow. That meant harder riding to get closer for the kill. His steed must be exhausted.
Just as well. Not much anyone, human or dinosaur, could say to help Roxton. Being in love with a ghost was a sad state of affairs. Showed just how much the isolation was getting to him.
Roxton had another thought. "Then again, all my friends and family are ghosts. Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on the lot of them." His brother William, his father Lord Henry, Summerlee, Challenger, his Staff Sergeant in the Great War, Hagerson, and the whole of Company C, dead, the lot of them. Only his mother survived, if you could call her frantic London socializing a survival. Not for him it wasn't. He'd rather live in a cave. Wasn't it lucky that he did?
Roxton never knew when his ghost would show. For weeks she'd materialized right over there next to Cammie's long tail, in the same exact spot below his doorstep every time, always gazing fixedly at her empty hands, her hair loose and flying about like black flames and her eyes huge and dark. She was exquisite. A goddess. Perhaps she was the ghost of an ancient deity. Yeah, that almost made sense in a Plateau sort of way, Roxton thought as he downed the last swallow of wine. She was a goddess looking for her lost worshippers, Venus, Aphrodite, maybe even his personal favorite Diana, goddess of the hunt.
If Roxton had met her at a London soiree, he'd have known what to say. But how does one chat up a deity? Roxton had decided to ask her name and enroll as a believer. So this evening as the tropical sun had gone down, Roxton had prepared. He'd lit the usual evening campfire, pulled out the wine jug, and using Cammie as a convenient bolster, had leaned back to wait.
He was still waiting. Based on his eyeballs, which felt like they'd been dipped in beach sand, Roxton estimated the time to be at least midnight, probably later. She wasn't coming.
No doubt she'd left him. Everyone else had. Left him or died.
Rolling onto his knees, Roxton staggered to his feet. Cammie's snake of a tail lifted a few inches. The tip whipped about like a cobra, quivered and dropped back to the ground. But the dinosaur didn't wake up. "Some watchdog you are," Roxton grunted.
Unsteady from the wine, Roxton slowly skated his bare feet over the beaten dirt in what he hoped was the direction of the cave entrance. Behind him a thin straight line of blue light silently drew itself on the black night. His back turned to the phenomena, Roxton tottered unsteadily on. The line rapidly brightened and rounded into the shape of a woman holding something close to her face.
The campfire crackled and spit higher, and the air hummed frantically in a cacophony of warbles and whistles. Roxton spun around, overbalanced and unceremoniously sat down on the dirt. Hard. It pulled the loincloth up between his cheeks and squeezed his privates. Suddenly Roxton was wide-awake.
Awake and happy. His goddess had returned.
Cammie's eyes opened up. She snorted gently and tried to sniff the sparkling shape. She sneezed. In two years of hunting with Cammie, Roxton had learned to trust the dinosaur's senses far more than his own. If Cammie saw the goddess, she was real or at least really a ghost.
Cammie, Roxton and the night waited in silence, breathlessly adoring the visiting deity. Roxton forgot to ask for a name; he almost forgot to breathe.
A sound like a pistol pop shattered the worship service and triggered a wonder beyond comprehension. For Roxton's beloved ghost suddenly zipped from vague woman-shaped cloud to solid, softly rounded flesh … panicked softly rounded flesh … staggering, arm-flailing softly rounded flesh.
The goddess's tight-skirted Parisian walking dress -- and how long had it been since Roxton had seen one of those? -- hampered her balance. Lurching two steps, she smacked up against Cammie and in a struggle to stay upright grabbed a piece of Cammie's riding harness and pulled hard.
Cammie, startled by this unexpected development, reared up on her powerful hind legs and staggered off in the general direction of Challenger Creek, dragging the entangled goddess like one of their fresh kills. Although the night air made the dinosaur sluggish and uncoordinated, Cammie covered twenty feet in half as many seconds, the goddess thwacking behind and screaming more like a banshee than divinity.
Roxton ran after them trying to snag Cammie's trailing lead before she warmed up enough to take off at full speed. "No, Cammie! Halt! Whoa, girl! Come back to papa!"