Suspicion slipped into Annabel’s eyes. Her hand closed around the protein bar gingerly, as if her own daughter might be trying to poison her.
Riley’s heart sank as her mother turned away from her, hunching her back and rounding her shoulders. She actually felt Annabel pulling away from her, distancing herself. The look in her eyes was both defeated and accusing.
Riley shook her head and squared her shoulders. Her mother was obviously ill, her grief overcoming her ability to function. Riley set her teeth and marched over to Jubal. She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder often to make certain no one dared approach her mother while she was away.
“Riley,” Jubal greeted with a slight nod. His gaze was restless, moving over the camp, up into the trees and along the ground. “Is your mother all right?”
Riley shook her head. “She’s exhausted, but she wants to get up the mountain. Maybe if we make it to the site, she’ll feel better. That’s my hope.”
“How far up the mountain?” Jubal asked. “The tremors are getting worse. The mountain hasn’t blown in hundreds of years, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. I’m not certain we’re going to be entirely safe on that mountain. Gary’s trying to get us some data. He’s got to wait for the satellite, but we should be able to find out if there are any changes to the shape of the mountain. Photographs of all these volcanos are regularly taken from space.”
Riley sighed. It wasn’t as if the tremors hadn’t gone unnoticed. “One more thing to worry about. Do you really think the volcano will explode?”
Jubal frowned thoughtfully. “It feels like it to me. I’m not certain it’s such a great idea to go up, although the plants we’re looking for are supposed to be close to the ruins. If those plants are really there, we need them.”
“Look.” Riley made up her mind to lay her cards on the table if she had to. She didn’t have much of a hand, but she was going to get the job done and protect her mother no matter what. The determination grew in her that she had to go and stop whatever was inside that mountain from getting out. “I know you and Gary are armed to the teeth. You’re not exactly hiding the fact from anyone.”
“I thought it might help deter anyone thinking they could use a machete to hack up members of our party,” Jubal pointed out.
She winced, feeling she deserved the slight reprimand. She shrugged it off. “I don’t like anyone prying into our business so the last thing I want to do is pry into yours …”
Jubal smiled at her, although there was no humor in his eyes. Maybe understanding. “But?” he encouraged.
“How did you get all those weapons and your equipment into this country? I’ve never even seen some of those weapons. You couldn’t possibly have gotten them onto a plane.”
“We have a few friends in this country with private planes and ships. They had everything we asked for waiting for us when we arrived. These plants are as important to them as they are to us. The plants have never grown anywhere but the Carpathian Mountains, and they’re extinct there. If these are truly the same ones, you have no idea what an important find it would be for us.”
She heard the underlying animation in his voice. He was telling her the truth—or at least part of it. There was an urgency about his need to go up the mountain and, God help her, she was grateful for it. She wouldn’t have to go alone.
“I need a gun.”
Jubal’s eyes met hers. She refused to look away. She
needed
that weapon and she wasn’t going to back down or be intimidated into backtracking. He was not going to get to look at her as a hysterical woman, because she wasn’t hysterical. She was absolutely serious.
Jubal’s eyebrow shot up. “Have you ever fired a gun?”
“Yes. I’m quite a good shot. My father’s best friend was a police officer, and he took me to the shooting range when I was ten and I’ve been shooting ever since.”
“Shooting a human being isn’t so easy, Riley. If you hesitate …”
“I would have tried to kill Raul with my knife last night,” she said, meaning it. “And I wouldn’t have hesitated, not with my mother’s life at stake. I won’t hesitate if I need to protect her,” she assured.
“What if you need to protect yourself?”
Her chin went up. She refused to look away, holding her gaze steady on his. “I’m not a shrinking violet, Jubal. If I need to defend my life, I’ll do it vigorously. And no one is going to harm my mother, not if I can help it. Will you lend me a gun?”
Jubal frowned and pulled a pistol from inside his light jacket. “Tell me what this is.”
She knew he thought she’d lied to him about knowing how to fire a gun. She sent him a sweet smile. “You’re holding a Glock 30 SF, 45 auto, a powerful, excellent weapon. My godfather gave one to me on my sixteenth birthday. It has a smaller grip, and I have small hands so it suits me quite well.”
Jubal sighed. “Whatever is up there, Riley, this isn’t going to stop it.”
“It will stop anyone traveling with us from trying to kill my mother.”
Jubal handed her the Glock. Her hand closed around the grip, taking it slowly. She checked the magazine to make certain it was full. He handed her a second magazine, which she slipped into her pocket and zipped the flap closed.
“Riley!”
Riley spun around to see her mother rushing toward her. Annabel’s face was white, her eyes wide with terror. Behind her, the ground had come to life—large, almost dinner-plate-sized tarantulas scuttling in the vegetation, coming down from the trees and looking very focused as they shuffled relentlessly forward.
Riley rushed to intercept Annabel before she could flee into the rain forest. “A tarantula bite isn’t fatal, Mom. Calm down. Irritation from their hair is sometimes worse than the bite.”
“They’re chasing me,” Annabel gasped, gripping Riley hard. She lowered her voice, hissing between her teeth, her eyes wild, hair disheveled. She looked nearly demonic. “They’re
chasing
me, Riley, can’t you see that? They want to kill me.”
Riley didn’t know what multiple bites from the large tarantulas could actually do, nor did she want to take any chances. She caught her mother’s wrist and pulled her toward Gary Sanders, who was closest to the small ribbon of a stream. Surely the spiders wouldn’t follow them into the water.
Annabel choked back a sob. “I can’t do this anymore, Riley. You have to go on without me. I just can’t …”
“Stop it,” Riley snapped as she pulled her mother over a series of stones and ferns to get to the stream. “We can do anything we have to do. You were the one who taught me that.”
She glanced behind her. Jubal, Gary and Ben formed a line of defense against the crawling spiders. She stopped her mother’s forward momentum before she could step into the stream.
“Let me take a look, Mom,” she cautioned. Piranha wouldn’t be in that tiny stream, but with all the strange attacks from insects and animals, she didn’t want to chance missing anything. “We’ll step in only if they get past everyone.”
Gary pulled a hose over his shoulder and stepped forward. The moment a spout of fire gushed from the flamethrower, the rest of the camp became aware something was wrong. Heads turned, one by one. Riley was glad she and Annabel were in the shadow of the trees. It looked as if the three men were being attacked, not the women. They were a good distance away. She added to the illusion by sitting on a rock beside the stream and drawing her mother down to sit beside her as if they’d been resting there in the shade.
Weston and Shelton predictably made a huge fuss, Weston actually running away from the spiders. Not only were they not close to him, but the migration was moving away from him. It didn’t matter. He berated the guides.
“You chose a rest stop right in the middle of killer spider territory. Are you trying to do us all in? I’m reporting you, and you’ll never get another guide job again,” he snapped.
Riley rolled her eyes. The guides ignored him, rushing to help the three men. The porters grouped together in a tight circle, watching. The archaeologist and his students stared at one another with shocked, almost comical expressions, as if they couldn’t quite understand what was happening. The three just stood there, openmouthed, while the ground came to life with large hairy spiders crawling through the vegetation. Her idea of archaeologists admittedly had been formed by the action-hero Indiana Jones movies, but Dr. Patton and his students were fast putting that fantasy to rest.
She could actually hear the spiders scuttling through the debris as they advanced, but the smell and sound of Gary’s flamethrower began to quickly drown out every other noise. Annabel covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth. Riley put her arm around her mother to comfort her.
Annabel moaned softly. “It’s so late, Riley. In a couple of hours the sun will go down.”
“We’ll leave in a few minutes,” she assured. “The guides will take us up the mountain and this will be over. We’re so close now.”
Annabel continued to rock back and forth, Riley’s arm around her shoulders for comfort, but all the while, Riley studied the members of their traveling group, trying to discern who she might be able to count on if things went wrong. The shivering in the ground told her bad things were bound to happen. All three guides had rushed to help the three men with the spiders. They didn’t appear to be afraid of them at all. In fact, they picked some of them up very gently and turned them around.
She found the way the three natives handled the tarantulas fascinating. They clearly wanted to save them, not destroy them. The tarantulas seemed confused, turning in circles, avoiding the hot flames. Gary switched off the very efficient flamethrower and, like Riley, watched the guides gently managing the spiders away from everyone and back into the rain forest.
Not one of the porters had helped, Riley noted. They huddled close together, whispering. Her heart sank. They would need a couple of porters going up the mountain and at least two would accompany Gary and Jubal with their guide.
“Come on, Mom,” she said. “We’re heading out again. Drama’s over. The guides dealt with the spiders, and we’re back on track.”
The ground shivered again. “We have to hurry,” Annabel whispered. “Hurry, Riley.” She glanced up toward the sky. The sun would be down in a short time.
Riley positioned herself directly behind her mother on the narrow trail the guides had chosen to make the last miles to the base of the mountain. She would argue with her guide later to keep going up the mountain. Right now, it was imperative that they just get moving. Annabel’s agitation grew with every passing minute.
Ben and Jubal went in front of Annabel, and Gary chose to bring up the rear behind the last porter. Riley was grateful she was a good distance from Weston and Shelton with several people between them. Once they actually got started, the guides and porters hacking out the dense trail, Annabel ceased muttering and just walked, her gaze on the back of Jubal’s shirt.
The whispers in their head started up an hour before the sun set. The sun had faded, bringing shadows into the rain forest, changing the appearance of plants to monstrous shapes. Riley could see the effects of the incessant buzzing in everyone’s head. For her, the sound was faded and far into the background, but even her mother began to mumble a protest.
Perhaps because of the danger to someone she loved, Riley’s senses seemed to increase with every step she took, along with awareness of her surroundings. She found herself seeing things she’d never noticed before. Individual leaves. The way the moss and fern grew and the flowers wound their way up trunks to the skies. For the first time in her life, she was wholly fascinated by the growth of the plants. She could hear the life force of the earth, a pounding beat that nearly drove out those soft meaningless whispers trying to invade her mind. For a few moments, as darkness began to drop its shroud, the surrounding plant life had seemed frightening; now it was exquisitely beautiful and even comforting.
The colors in the rain forest seemed far more vivid, even as night began to fall, flowers creeping up trunks and bursting across the ground. Moisture dripped, the sound musical rather than annoying. Riley felt as if the land she walked on recognized her for the very first time and was signaling acceptance of her presence. The hostility she felt was from an outside source, some subtle force she couldn’t yet identify, but felt weaving through the forest like a disease.
Behind her, the porter Capa muttered in his own language under his breath, hacking at the tangle of vines and flowers springing up as Annabel walked. Riley was careful to step close to her mother, covering her tracks, so the porter couldn’t tell the plants pushing through the thick vegetation hadn’t already been there.
Her mother glanced over her shoulder, back at Riley, looking exhausted. She sent her daughter a small smile and mouthed, “I love you.”
Riley felt a flood of love for her mother, streaming strong. She blew her a kiss.
Overhead, monkeys suddenly shrieked, so that the rain forest erupted into a cacophony of noise. The monkeys followed their every movement, running along the tree branches overhead throwing twigs and leaves. Some brandished branches threateningly and displayed teeth—another new phenomenon for Riley. In her experience, the monkeys and wildlife kept their distance.
Without warning, something landed on her back, driving her straight to the ground. Sharp claws gripped her shoulders, raking at her pack. She was hit again and again as more monkeys sprang from the trees, their combined weight knocking her backward. She heard Annabel scream and Jubal curse. The sound of Capa’s chanting grew loud above the shrieking of the monkeys.
“Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη.”
Frantic, screaming for Gary and Jubal, Riley fought to throw off the monkeys and pull out the Glock at the same time.
R
iley twisted out from beneath the pile of woolly monkeys, coming up on one knee, using a two-fisted grip to steady the gun. She couldn’t see anything. There were dozens of gray and olive, red-brown and black monkeys between her and Annabel. The ones leaping on her mother had driven her back into the dense brush, and all Riley could see were the furry bodies in some kind of shrieking frenzy. She didn’t dare shoot at them for fear of hitting Annabel.