Dark Storm (Dark #23)

Dark Storm (Dark #23) Page 2

Nights were hell in the jungle. Right at sunset, the buzzing started. It wasn't as if the insects were silent-they were producing a constant steady drone-but Riley could push the sound away. This was something altogether different-a soft, persistent noise, a low frequency that jangled every nerve in the body. She'd awakened to the strange noise the very first night they entered the rain forest.

Strangely, Riley couldn't identify the low, irritating buzz, nor could she tell if it was outside or inside her head. She'd observed several others-including her mother-rubbing their temples as if their heads ached, and she feared that same low frequency of whispers one couldn't quite catch was invading insidiously, adding to the danger of their travel. During the day the whispers were gone, but the effects lingered.

Her senses, since entering the rain forest, seemed to have blazed to life and were working overtime. She noticed every little suspicious glance toward her mother. Jubal Sanders and Gary Jansen were armed to the teeth and she was very envious of their weapons. The two moved in silence, kept to themselves and watched everyone. She came to the conclusion that they knew a lot more about what was going on than they let on.

Don Weston and his friend Mack Shelton were a pair of idiots as far as she could see. Neither had ever made the trek into a rain forest, and clearly they were afraid of everything. They blustered, complained and bullied the porters and guides when they weren't leering at Riley or feeding the rampant distrust among the travelers.

Ben Charger seemed much more knowledgeable about the rain forest and the tribes occupying it. He'd done extensive research and had come prepared. He didn't like either Weston or Shelton, but had to work with them and clearly wasn't happy about it. He spent a lot of time talking to the guides and porters, asking questions and trying to learn from them. Riley couldn't really fault him for anything. Perhaps she was just nervous about everyone at this point.

The archaeologist and his students were very excited and seemed completely oblivious to the tension running through the camp, although she noticed they were uneasy at night, sitting close to the fire. They seemed driven, amicable and very focused on their mission. Dr. Henry Patton and his two students, Todd Dillon and Marty Shepherd, were more excited about the ruins they'd heard about than interested in whether or not a woman in their company was bringing bad luck to the travelers. They seemed young and naive, even the professor, who was in his late fifties. His entire world revolved around academia.

Riley felt a little sorry for all three archaeologists, that they were so clueless, and more grateful than ever that she'd chosen to concentrate her studies on modern languages rather than dead ones. She enjoyed traveling, talking with people and living life too much to be locked in an ivory tower, poring over dusty tomes. Of course, she'd studied ancient languages as well, but primarily as a window to the evolution of languages and their impact on various cultures.

Riley glanced toward Raul and Capa, the two porters who had shared the boat with them coming upriver. She didn't like the way they whispered and sent surreptitious glances toward Annabel's sleeping hammock. Maybe that terrible buzzing in her head was making her as paranoid as everyone else, but in any case, there was no sleeping. She didn't just have to worry about the men in her camp; the insects and bats and every other night creature seemed to stalk her mother as well.

She'd gone four nights without sleep, watching over her mother, and it was beginning to show, fraying her nerves so that she found it nearly impossible to tolerate Weston's snide, leering presence. She didn't want to add to the problems by being ugly to him, but she was definitely at that point. The fire blazed bright. Just outside the ring of fire, a jaguar coughed. He seemed to follow them, yet when the guides went out to check in the morning, they couldn't find tracks. It was impossible not to be affected by that sawing, grunting cough.

She could hear the slow fluttering of wings over Annabel's head. Vampire bats landed in the trees, brushing the leaves and filling the branches until the tree groaned, trying to support the weight of so many. Riley swallowed hard and slowly turned her head toward the leaping fire. The porters and guides stared at the tree filled with hanging bats. The creatures had gone from interesting to sinister in a matter of seconds for the fourth night in a row.

Pedro, the guide, and Raul and Capa, the two porters from her boat, moved a little into the shadows. All three gripped their machetes. The looks on their faces as the flickering flames revealed their expressions frightened her. For one heart-stopping moment, the men seemed every bit as threatening as the bats. Riley sat up slowly. She'd left her boots on, knowing she'd be protecting her mother.

Annabel slept restlessly, groaning at times. Her mother had always had acute hearing, even in her sleep. A cat walking across the floor would wake her, but since entering the rain forest, she seemed exhausted and weak. At night she twisted and turned in her hammock, sometimes weeping softly, pressing her hands to her head. Even when the bats dropped to earth and surrounded her, using their wings to propel them through the thick vegetation, Annabel never opened her eyes.

Riley had prepared her defenses carefully, using torches she could easily light, even going so far as to build a small circular fire wall around her mother's sleeping area. As she unhooked her netting, she caught sight of Raul creeping toward her. He was staying low and to the shadows, but she could make him out, sliding from one dark place to another, stalking prey. Riley glanced over at her sleeping mother. She feared Annabel was the porter's intended prey.

Heart pounding, tasting fear in her mouth, Riley slipped from her hammock and drew her knife. Going up against a machete, especially one wielded by a man who used one on a regular basis, was insane, but he was going to have to go through her to get to her mother, just as the vampire bats would have to do. And it wouldn't just be her knife, if he came at her mother. Riley picked up a torch and held it to the low fire she'd prepared earlier as a defense against the bats.

She would kill him if she had to. The idea made her sick, but she steeled herself, going through each move in her head. Practicing. Bile rose, but she was determined. No one-nothing-would harm her mother. She'd made up her mind, and nothing would stop her, not even the idea that what she was about to do might be considered premeditated murder.

Raul inched closer. Riley could smell his sweat. His scent was all "wrong" to her. She took a deep breath and let it out, easing toward her mother's hammock, putting her feet carefully in position. She could feel the ground under her, almost rising to meet each footfall. She'd never been so aware of the heartbeat of the Earth. Not a leaf rustled. No twig snapped. Her feet seemed to know exactly where to step to keep from making a sound, to keep from twisting an ankle or falling on the uneven ground.

She positioned herself in front of her mother's hammock, picking a spot she could easily move in to try to keep any attack from her. Movement close to her sent her pulse pounding. A man's shadow loomed over the hammock, thrown by the flames in the fire pit suddenly leaping toward the sky. She never would have seen him otherwise. Jubal Sanders was that quiet. She twisted fast to face him, but he'd gone past her to take up a position at the head of Annabel's hammock. Had he wanted to kill her mother, she would already be dead-he'd been that close without Riley's knowledge.

She knew, almost without the confirmation of turning her head, that Gary Jansen was at the foot of her mother's hammock. She'd spent the last four days trekking through the hardest jungle possible and she knew the way he moved-silent and easy through the rough terrain-but it still surprised her. He just seemed as if he'd be more at home in a lab coat, the absentminded professor. Clearly he was brilliant. You couldn't talk to him and not realize he was extremely intelligent, but he moved every bit as easily through the jungle as Jubal and he was equally as well armed and probably just as proficient with weapons. She was glad they had chosen to help her protect Annabel.

The terrible buzzing in her head increased so that for a moment her head felt as if it might explode. She pressed her fingers tightly against her temple. She was looking directly at Gary when the pain exploded through her skull and rattled her teeth. He gripped his head at the same moment, shaking it. His lips moved, but no sound emerged. She looked at Jubal. He, too, was feeling the head pain.

The words were foreign. Jumbled together, almost like a chant, but definitely words. She had excelled in studying ancient and dead languages as well as modern ones, but she didn't recognize even the rhythm of the words-but both Jubal and Gary clearly did. She saw the expressions on their faces, the alarm exchanged in their eyes.

Ben Charger staggered up to the other side of Annabel's hammock, pressing his hands to his ears. "Something's wrong," he hissed. "This is about her. Something evil wants her dead."

Jubal and Gary nodded their agreement. The bats overhead stirred. Riley's heart pounded hard enough that she feared the others could hear. She took a better grip on her knife and torch and waited in the darkness while Annabel moaned and writhed, as if evading something terrible chasing her, haunting her dreams.

Raul came out of the shadows, machete clutched in his hands, muttering the same phrase over and over. "Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ��ama��. Tappatak ��ama��."

Riley heard the words clearly as the porter repeated them over and over. She knew most of the dialects of the tribes spoken in this part of the rain forest. She knew Spanish and Portuguese. She knew European languages and even Russian and Latin, but this was nothing like she'd ever heard before. Not Latin in origin. Not any of the dead languages she was familiar with, but the words meant something to the porter and-she glanced at Jubal and Gary-to the two researchers.

Raul chanted the sentences over and over in a guttural, hypnotic voice. His eyes glazed over. She'd seen ceremonies that had placed recipients into trances and the porter definitely appeared to be in one, which made him doubly dangerous. Sweat poured from his body, dripping from him to splatter darkly across the leaves that were now crawling with thousands of ants. He shook his head continually, as if fighting the sound in his head, stumbling backward a few feet and then relentlessly moving forward again.

Her mouth went dry as the bats overhead began to descend, dropping to the ground like menacing raptors, creeping through the vegetation. Beady eyes stared at Annabel as they used their wings like legs, propelling themselves toward their prey. Raul shuffled closer, his movements awkward, very unlike his normal easy movement, the murmured chant growing in volume and intensity with each step forward. Closer now, the jaguar gave another haunting, grunting cough. Riley could not believe what was happening. It was as if everything hostile in the rain forest was out to kill her mother.

Riley lit her torch, holding it away from her body, and quickly began lighting the torches she'd placed around her mother. The torches flared, forming a low wall of light and fire around Annabel.

Raul kept coming in spite of the fact that he tried desperately to stop himself. Each time he succeeded in moving backward, away from Annabel, his body would begin a forward motion again. Not fast. Not slow. A programmed robot, chanting louder, that same phrase over and over. A command now. A demand. "Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ��ama��. Tappatak ��ama��."

The porter appeared not to see the macabre bats with their disturbing wing crawl. His glazed eyes remained fixed on Annabel, the machete in a two-handed grip as he approached.

"Riley," Jubal said. "Get inside the circle of light and keep the bats off with your torch. Let me handle Raul."

She tried not to be relieved. It was her duty to protect her mother, but the porter's diabolical mask, filled with some insane, fanatical zealous purpose, was truly horrifying. She slipped back into the circle of fire closer to her mother.

Jubal Sanders lifted a gun as he raised his voice. "Pedro, Miguel, Alejandro," he called to the three guides. "Stop him before I shoot him. And I will shoot. If you don't want Raul to die, you'd better restrain him. He's got about seven more seconds and then I pull the trigger."

There was no doubt Jubal was fully prepared to shoot the porter. His voice resonated with command, although delivered in a low, firm tone. Time slowed down. Tunneled. Riley saw everything as if in a distant dream. The inevitable turn of heads, the expressions of fear and shock. The shuffling forward of the bats. The porter one step closer. Jubal, calm, gun in hand.

Miguel, Pedro and Alejandro, all brothers, rushed toward Raul while the others stood undecided, apparently in shock at the porter's clear intention of murdering a woman. Dr. Patton and his two students seemed to notice for the first time that something was wrong. All three stood up quickly, staring in horror at the scene unfolding. Flames rose eerily from the main fire pit and streamed from the torches placed in the ground as if a wind had suddenly gusted, but the air was still.

"Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ��ama��. Tappatak ��ama��." Raul continued to chant the foreign phrase over and over.

Riley could hear the words distinctly now. She recognized the strange cadence buzzing in her ear, as if that same refrain, although distant for her, was being fed into her mind-into all of their minds. There were dozens of hallucinogens in the rain forest that the guides and porters, probably the researchers and anyone in the group could know about. Anyone could be responsible for these attacks on her mother. Weston fed the superstition, although both he and Shelton appeared to be sleeping restlessly in their hammocks, unaware of the unfolding drama.

Time ticked by in slow seconds. Raul continued doggedly forward. Jubal didn't blink. He could have been carved from stone. The bats shuffled toward Riley, closing in on the flaming torches and the circle of light around Annabel.

"Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ��ama��. Tappatak ��ama��."

Her heart slammed hard, beat after beat, that same menacing rhythm of the porter's diabolical chanting. She realized immediately that even the bats were dragging themselves toward Annabel at that same exact pace. Everything around her, from the bizarre swaying of the trees to the dancing of the flames in spite of the stillness of the wind, leapt to the porter's chant. That chant was emanating from inside their heads. Someone in the camp had to be targeting Annabel, using hallucinogens and casting suspicion on her. The fact that the plants and trees responded to her only fed superstition. It made no sense at all.

Miguel and Pedro closed in on one side of Raul. Their brother, Alejandro, came in fast from the other side. All three frowned in concentration, shaking heads to get that wicked chant out of their minds while they tried to save the porter from Jubal's gun. He was related to them in some way, Riley remembered, but many of the villagers were related. Their affection for him thankfully overcame the terrible hallucination Raul seemed trapped in.

As they closed around him, grabbing his hand to keep the machete out of play, the porter continued to try to walk forward, ignoring the three guides hanging on to him. He kept up his macabre chant. Riley swept her torch across the ground as the first line of bats came too close to her mother, even as she tried to puzzle out the meaning of those strange, guttural sounds emerging from Raul's mouth.

The scent of burned flesh permeated the air. Bats scrambled back as she swung her torch again in a circle, low to the ground, driving the creatures back and away from her mother's hammock. Two were already starting up the tree trunk. She jabbed at them both with the business end of the torch and then, when they caught on fire, knocked them to the ground, kicking at the fireballs to get them away from Annabel.

She heard the scuttle of the wings dragging through vegetation behind her and she whirled around to find the bats had circled to the other side of the hammock. Ben Charger caught up a torch, the flames throwing his face into sharp relief. Deep lines cut into his face, making him look maniacal. His eyes blazed with a kind of fury. For a moment she was afraid for her mother, but he took the torch and swept it over the approaching vampire bats, driving them back, setting the persistent ones on fire.

Gary battled more on his side of the hammock. She raced around behind Jubal and swept her torch across the line of bats sneaking their way beneath the hammock from that direction. The smell was horrible, and she couldn't stop coughing as black smoke rose around them. Annabel never woke, but twisted and fought in her hammock as the three men helped Riley protect her.

Miguel and Pedro dragged Raul away, through the thick vegetation, as he refused to stand, refused to retreat, trying desperately to continue forward in spite of the threat of the gun. The porter continued to repeat the same phrase over and over. The others growled commands at him, but he didn't hear, so far gone into his hallucination. Alejandro retrieved the machete, keeping it well clear of Raul's seeking hands.

They dragged him to the far side of the camp and held him prisoner there. The archaeologist and his students hesitantly came across the ground to study the mess of dead and dying bats and to watch the others retreat from the flames ringing the hammock.

"Are you all right?" Dr. Patton asked. "This is bizarre. Did that man seriously try to kill one of you with a machete?"

He seemed as if he was waking from a daze. He looked so shocked Riley had an unexpected urge to laugh. He'd been tramping through the rain forest with them for four long days. He'd heard the stories of snake and piranha attacks over and over thanks to Weston, who didn't seem to be able to talk about anything else, and yet, for the first time, the archaeologist seemed to realize something was wrong.

He blinked, noticing the gun Jubal still held in his hand. "Something's going on here."

A sound escaped her throat before she could stop it. Hysterical laughter, maybe. "Was it the machete that tipped you off, the diabolical chant from hell or the horde of crawling vampire bats?" Riley clapped her hand over her mouth. There was no doubt she was hysterical to answer like that. But really? Something was going on? What was his first clue? He was taking the absentminded professor bit just a little too far.

"Easy," Jubal whispered. "She's safe now. I think it's over for the night."

Riley bit her lip to keep from retorting. The rain forest was filled with predators of every shape and size, all of them seemingly intent on attacking Annabel. How was her mother going to be safe from that? The sense of welcome, of homecoming they'd always experienced on their previous visits was utterly absent. This time, the rain forest felt savage and dangerous, even malevolent.

She forced her attention back to the remaining bats. Thankfully they were retreating from the light and the stench of their roasted companions. That knot in her stomach eased a little as she inspected the tree trunk and the branches above her mother. The insects were retreating, too.

"I should have helped you," Dr. Henry Patton said. "I don't know why I didn't."

His two students had followed him at a much slower pace, looking as dazed and confused as their teacher.

Riley bit back an angry accusation. None of this was the archaeologist's fault. Maybe he had the means and knowledge to understand the properties of a hallucinogenic plant and the entire expedition, but what would be his motives? What could possibly be any of their motives?

She swept a weary hand through her hair, exhausted. She hadn't dared to sleep in the last four nights, not since entering the rain forest. Not since that terrible whispering had begun. The endless buzz was enough to drive any sane man crazy, and clearly she was the least affected of their group.

The three guides and the rest of the porters circled Raul, restraining him with ties of some kind. He continued to chant that guttural, unfamiliar language, sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting, and kept trying to move toward Annabel's hammock. His cousins were forced to tie him to one of the trees to keep him from attacking her again. His hand was clenched in a fist as though he still gripped the machete handle. He swung his arm back and forth through the air in a disturbing pantomime.

"What is Raul saying?" Riley asked Jubal, once the excitement died down and everyone returned to their hammocks. She nodded at the porter tied to the tree and watched Gary's expression. "I can see that both of you recognize the language." She looked Jubal right in the eyes. "Don't deny it. I see the looks you two give one another. There's no doubt that you know what he's saying."

Jubal and Gary turned almost simultaneously to glance over their shoulders at Ben Charger. It was obvious they didn't want to talk in front of anyone else.

"Let me give you a hand clearing away these bats," Gary said.

Riley deliberately began to make a sweep of the dead and dying bats surrounding her mother. It was ugly, sickening work. Both Jubal and Gary pitched in, which was a good thing because she would have followed them back to their hammocks for an explanation.

Ben worked with them for a few minutes, kicking the roasted bodies away from Annabel's hammock, but when Gary began digging in the vegetation to dispose of them all in a mass grave, the engineer called it quits.

"I don't think you'll need me any more tonight. Things seem to be settling down."

Only then did Riley realize the terrible buzzing in her head had faded away. Although she couldn't hear it anymore, she could tell by the red eyes and the frowns on the faces of the others that it hadn't stopped altogether. "Thank you so much for your help. I wouldn't have gotten them all without you. You acted fast."

Ben shrugged. "They went right for her. I wasn't going to stand by and let her get hurt. I'm a light sleeper. If anything happens again, give a shout and I'll come running."

Riley forced a brief smile. "Thank you again."

Ben rubbed his temples, scowling as he turned away from her. Riley helped push the remains of the bats into the hole Gary had dug, waiting until Ben was out of earshot before she turned to Jubal.

"All right," she said, "he's gone. Now tell me what Raul was chanting. And what language was he speaking? It's certainly not native to this country or any tribe here in the Amazon."

Jubal slipped his gun into some kind of harness beneath his loose jacket. Riley found it interesting that he hadn't put it away until Ben had left.

"The language is an ancient one," Jubal said. "It originated in the Carpathian Mountains, but there are very few who still speak or even understand it today."

She frowned at him. "The Carpathian Mountains? How in the world could a poorly educated porter from a remote village in the Amazon come to know and speak an ancient European language that even I've never heard of ? Never mind. We can talk about that later. For now, I want to know what he was saying."

Jubal looked over her head at Gary.

"Don't do that. Look at me, not him. I know you understand what he said," Riley insisted. "That man was trying to kill my mother. And the whole time he kept saying 'Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ��ama��. Tappatak ��ama��.'" She repeated the phrase with perfect pitch, intonation, sounding exactly like Raul. "I want to know what it means."

Jubal shook his head. "I don't know the answer to that. I really don't, Riley. I'm not as good at the language as Gary is, and I don't want to make a mistake. I think I got the gist of what he was trying to say, but if I mistranslate and alarm you ..."

"The man came after my mother with a machete. I don't think it's going to be more alarming than that," Riley snapped and was immediately ashamed of herself. She needed this man's help. Gary, Ben and Jubal had no doubt not only saved her mother's life, but probably her own as well. "I'm sorry. You helped defend my mother, and I appreciate that. But I'm afraid for her and I need to know what I'm dealing with."

Gary moved around Annabel's hammock to stand in front of Riley. "I'm sorry this is happening to both of you. You must be very frightened. It sounded to me, and this is a loose translation, that he was chanting 'Death to the cursed woman. Kill her. Kill her.' That's as near as I could make out." He looked at Jubal. "Did you get the same thing?"

Riley knew he'd switched his attention to Jubal in order to give her time to recover. She'd suspected the translation would be something threatening-but still, she felt as if someone had punched her in the gut and driven every bit of air from her lungs. She forced herself to breathe as she looked up at the night sky through the canopy, a film of hazy leaves. Who would target Annabel? She was an amazing, kind woman. Everyone she met loved her. The attack didn't make sense at all.

"Raul has definitely spent his entire life here in the rain forest. He truly doesn't have that much contact with outsiders, none of the villagers do. How would he ever pick up such a nearly extinct, clearly foreign language?" Riley struggled to keep the challenge out of her voice.

Without a doubt this man had saved her life, but Jubal Sanders and Gary Jansen researched plants. They both admitted they'd come to the Andes in search of a plant that was supposed to be extinct everywhere else and that the plant was native to the Carpathian Mountain range in Europe. If this language had originated in that same area, what were the plant and language doing in South America? And what a coincidence that everyone in their traveling party was experiencing the same hallucination all wrapped around this ancient language both men understood?

Jubal shook his head. "I have no explanation."

He was lying. He looked her straight in the eye. His expression didn't change, his handsome face carved with worry lines, his jaw and mouth firm, but he was lying.

"Oh, yes, you do," she retorted. "And you're going to tell me what it is, right now."

Gary sighed. "Just tell her, Jubal. Worst case, she'll just think we're as crazy as the porter."

"Honestly, we don't know for certain what's going on, but we have our suspicions. We've seen things like this happen before in other parts of the world." Jubal hesitated. "Do you believe in the existence of evil?"

"You mean like Satan, the devil?"

"Sort of, but I'm not talking about God and the angels."

Riley forced down her first reaction. Strange things happened in the Amazon. And her mother certainly had gifts that couldn't be explained. There was the trip to the Andes every five years and the ritual performed on the mountain. There were also rumors, the legends and myths handed down of a great evil having destroyed the Cloud People and then the Incas. Of course, no one believed it, but what if it was the truth?

"Yes," she admitted, "I believe in evil."

Jubal hesitated again. " I-we-suspect that something ancient is out here, an evil being that has the power to command the insects and to prey on our minds, to trick us into believing things that aren't true."

Riley instantly recalled her mother's agitated rambling about the evil trapped in the mountain. The two of them were traveling to the mountain to reseal it, to keep the volcano from exploding, and Annabel was worried about being late. Riley knew generations of women had come to this mountain, and the trip had been even more rigorous and dangerous in the past, yet they'd continued to travel to that same spot and perform the same ritual.

So could it possibly be true? Was there really something evil trapped in that mountain? Something the women of her family had been keeping contained for hundreds-possibly even thousands-of years? Riley shivered, pressing a hand to her knotted stomach.

"Why would this evil thing target my mother?"

"Clearly it considers your mother a threat to it in some way," Gary said.

"Something is happening. The evil in the mountain is deliberately trying to slow me down. It is close to the surface and is orchestrating accidents and illness." Riley shivered, remembering her mother's fearful warnings. She'd brushed them off as shock-induced ramblings, but now Riley wasn't so sure. Could it possibly be true?

Jubal shifted closer to her mother's hammock. Riley nearly leapt at him, but his body language exuded protection. He faced the forest, his body alert. She became aware of the silence then. The constant, never-ending drone of the insects had disappeared, leaving behind an eerie silence.

Instinctively Riley stepped close to her mother. Annabel writhed. Moaned. Sweat beaded on her body. Her hands rose and she began a complicated pattern of movement, a mesmerizing twisting of her fingers and hands, a conductor of a symphony, yet each flowing motion was precise and beautiful. Riley had seen those movements several times. Her own hands automatically followed the pattern, as if the memory was pressed into her bones rather than her mind. She made the effort to keep her arms down, but she couldn't stop her fingers and wrists from twisting with her mother's, or the flutter of graceful motion.

Her mother's body turned toward the east and Riley found herself facing the same direction. She could feel the flow of earth rising from beneath the soles of her feet, moving through her like the sap through the trees. A heart hammered, deep beneath the soil. She could feel her pulse syncing to that steady drumming beat. She felt grounded, roots spreading beneath her to find that beckoning life force deep in the earth.

She felt the individual plants, each of them with their own character and personality. Some poison, some antidotes. She recognized them as sisters and brothers. She felt them take root inside of her, spreading through her veins, into her internal organs, and wrapping around her very bones until her veins sang with the lifeblood of the rain forest.

Awareness of every living tree, shrub and plant nearby rose until it was absolutely acute. Heart and soul reached out to them and they reached back, feeding her courage and resilience, the earth her mother, willing to aid her at any turn. She felt a stain of evil spreading through the ground itself, seeking a target. But something else was there as well-something strong and brave. Predatory. Protective. Hers. Abruptly she pulled herself back.

Apparently, Jubal and Gary weren't far off with their assessment of the situation after all. This was no mass hallucination, but a carefully orchestrated plot to attack her mother, to delay her trip to the mountain and prevent her from carrying out the centuries-old ritual. Riley couldn't tell why, or what was in the mountain. She could only discern that it was desperate to get out, to survive, and it would use any means available to do so-including killing her mother.

So this was why her mother was so in tune with plants. She felt them, was connected to them, and not in some small way. Riley had never felt that connection before, and it occurred to her that some form of awareness and power was being transferred to her. That possibility only alarmed her all the more. Was her mother inadvertently doing something in her sleep to pass her knowledge on to her daughter, as she'd said each generation of their ancestors did before their deaths?

"What is she doing?" Jubal asked, curiosity in his voice. Curiosity and something else. Recognition, maybe?

Riley actually started, so caught up and absorbed by the myriad plants around her and the feeling of being almost transformed, mesmerized by the existence of such intense life all around her that she'd nearly forgotten there were witnesses to the ritual movements her mother performed up on the mountain. Both Jubal and Gary looked at her with far too much knowledge.

Riley shrugged, reluctant to explain her mother to anyone, although she felt as if the two men had earned an explanation-she just didn't have an adequate one.

"Have you seen these movements before?" Jubal asked. "The way she's moving her hands is almost ritualistic."

"Yes." Riley had been as honest as possible and felt they had been as well. Both were skirting around each other, reluctant to say something they couldn't take back.

"I've seen similar gestures in the Carpathian Mountains," Jubal admitted. "When we've worked in the remote parts of the mountains. Has your mother been there before? Does she have any ties to Romania or any of the countries the range goes through?"

Riley shook her head adamantly. "We've traveled to Europe once, but nowhere near the Carpathian Mountains. We mostly stay in South America. Mom's come here many times. Most of the women in my family were born here, my mother included. We're descendents of both the Cloud People as well as the Incas so my family has always had a huge interest in this part of the world. My mother was raised here and only went to the States when she met and married my father. He was from there."

"Are you adopted?" Jubal asked. "You don't look anything like your mother."

Riley pressed her lips together. She'd heard that all of her life. She was tall and curvy with translucent skin and large, very different oval eyes. Her hair was as straight as a board and as black as midnight. Her mother was slender, of medium height, with wonderful olive skin and curly hair.

"I'm not adopted. I look like one of my great-great-grandmothers. She was taller with dark hair, at least if the drawings of her can be believed. Mom showed them to me once when I was all upset because I towered over everyone in middle school."

She was talking too fast, too much, as she sometimes did when she was upset. They were asking a lot of personal questions. What did it matter if she didn't look like her mother? Why were they so interested? She just wanted to grab her mother and make a run for it. If not for the fact that the forest itself seemed intent on attacking them, she might have done just that. Her mother had an amazing sense of direction when it came to the mountain. Twice when they'd made the journey and the guides were lost, it had been her mother who had found the way.

But now, with Annabel sick and the attacks on her growing more violent, Riley didn't dare separate from the group. Jubal and Gary offered a level of protection she couldn't afford to dismiss.

"Thank you both so much for your help. I have to get some sleep tonight. I don't know why the forest has gone silent, but I don't feel any immediate threat. I don't want my mother to know about this right away. I want to tell her myself and see if she has any ideas why these attacks on her are happening."

She needed time alone with her mother, and that was nearly impossible surrounded as they were by the various travelers. The guides and porters regarded them with suspicion now, and that would make privacy even more difficult.

"Go ahead and sleep," Gary said. "We'll keep an eye on things."