Dark Storm (Dark #23)(8)
Author: Christine Feehan

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 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. "Han kalma, emni han ku kod 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."