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. “
Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη
.”
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. “
Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη
.”
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.
“
Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη
.” 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.
“Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη.”
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.