Dark Storm (2 page)

Shelton, a compact man with burnt mahogany skin and rippling muscles, swatted at his own neck and then his chest, murmuring obscenities. “You threw it overboard, you big bastard, after you used the last of it.”

Shelton was a little friendlier than the other two engineers and not quite as obnoxious as Weston, but instead of making Riley feel safer, his proximity actually made her skin prickle. Maybe that was because his smile never reached his eyes. And because he watched everything and everyone on board. Riley had the feeling Weston vastly underestimated the other man. Clearly Weston thought himself in charge of their mining expedition, but no one was bossing Shelton.

“We should never have thrown in with them,” Riley murmured to her mother, keeping her voice low. Normally, Riley and her mother made the trip to the volcano alone, but when they’d arrived at the village, they found their regular guide too sick to travel. Alone in the middle of the Amazon, without a guide to accompany them to their destination, she and her mother decided to team up with three other groups traveling upriver.

Weston and his two fellow mining engineers had been in the village prepping a trip to the edge of the Andes in Peru, in search of potential new mines for the corporation they worked for. Two men researching a supposedly extinct plant had arrived from Europe seeking a guide to go up a mountain in the Andes as well. An archaeologist and his two grad students were heading to the Andes looking for a rumored lost city of the Cloud People—the Chachapoyas. All of them had decided to pool their resources and travel upriver together. The idea seemed logical at the time, but now, a week into the journey, Riley heartily regretted the decision.

Two of the guides, the archaeologist and his students and three porters were in the lead boat just ahead of them with a good deal of the supplies. Annabel, Riley, the researchers and the three mining engineers were in the second boat with one of their guides, Pedro, and two porters, Capa and Raul.

Trapped on the boat with eight strangers, Riley didn’t feel safe. She wished they were already halfway up the mountain, where the plan was to go their separate ways, each with their own guide.

Annabel shrugged. “It’s a little too late for second thoughts. We made the decision to travel together and we’re stuck with these people. We’ll make the best of it.”

That was her mother, always calm in the face of a brewing storm. Riley was no psychic, but it didn’t take one to predict trouble was coming. That feeling was growing with every passing hour. She glanced at her mother. As usual, she appeared serene. Riley felt a little silly saying she was worried when Annabel had so many other things on her mind.

Still bickering about the discarded bug spray, Weston flipped Shelton the finger. “The can was empty. There must be more.”

“It wasn’t empty,” Shelton corrected, disgust in his voice. “You just wanted to chuck something at that caiman.”

“And your aim was as bad as your mouth,” the third engineer, Ben Charger, chimed in.

Ben was the quietest of the bunch. He never stopped looking around with restless eyes. Riley hadn’t quite made up her mind about him. He was the most ordinary looking of the three engineers. He was average height, average weight, a face no one would notice. He blended, and maybe that made her uncomfortable. Nothing about him stood out. He moved quietly and seemed to simply appear out of nowhere, and he watched everything and everyone as if he were expecting trouble. She didn’t believe he was a partner with Weston and Shelton. The other two stuck together and obviously had known one another for some time. Charger appeared to be a loner. Riley wasn’t even certain he liked either of the other two men.

Off to the left shore, her eye picked up a white cloud, moving fast, sometimes iridescent, sometimes a pearly color as the cloud twisted together, forming a blanket of living insects.

“Fuck you, Charger,” Weston snapped.

“Watch your mouth,” Charger advised, his voice very low.

Weston actually stepped back, his face paling a little. He glanced around the boat, his gaze settling on Riley, whom he caught looking at him. “Why don’t you come over here, or better yet, Mommy come here and lick the sweat off me? Maybe that will help.” He extended his tongue toward her, probably hoping to look sexy, but he got a mouthful of bugs and ended up coughing and swearing.

For one terrible moment, when he called her mother “Mommy” and made his gross suggestion, Riley thought she might hurl herself at him and really push him overboard. But then, with her mother’s little snicker, her anger was gone, her unfortunate sense of humor kicking in. She burst out laughing. “Seriously? Are you really so arrogant you don’t know I’d rather lick the sweat off a monkey? You are just
so
gross.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the pearly cloud of insects growing closer, widening as they moved in formation over the water. Her stomach gave a little flip of fear. She forced air through her lungs. She wasn’t one to scare easily, not even when she’d been a child.

Weston leered at her. “I can see when a woman wants me, and baby, you can’t take your eyes off of me. Look at your clothes! You’re showing off for me.” He flicked his tongue at her again, looking for all the world like a snake.

“Leave her the hell alone, Weston,” Jubal Sanders snapped, impatience edging his voice. “Don’t you ever get tired of the sound of your voice?”

One of the two men researching plants, Jubal didn’t appear to be a man who spent a lot of time in a lab. He looked extremely fit and there was no doubt that he was a man used to a rugged, outdoor life. He carried himself with absolute confidence and moved like a man who could handle himself.

His traveling companion, Gary Jansen, looked more the part of the lab rat, shorter and slender, although very well muscled from what Riley had observed. He was very strong. He wore black-rimmed reading glasses, but he seemed every bit as adept outdoors as Jubal. The two kept strictly to themselves at the beginning of the journey, but somewhere around the fourth day, Jubal became a little protective of the women, staying close whenever the engineers were around. He said little, but he didn’t miss anything.

Although some other woman might be flattered by his protectiveness, Riley wasn’t about to trust a man who supposedly lived his life in a lab, but moved with the fluid grace of a fighter. Both he and Gary clearly carried weapons. They were up to something, and whatever it was, Riley and her mother had enough trouble of their own without needing to get involved in anyone else’s.

“Don’t be a hero,” Weston snapped at Jubal, “it won’t get you the girl.” He winked at Riley. “She’s lookin’ for a real man.”

Riley felt another small surge of anger wash over her and she whipped around to glare at Weston, but her mother laid a gentle, restraining hand on her wrist and put her head close to whisper. “Don’t bother, honey. He’s feeling like a fish out of water out here.”

Riley took a breath. At this late date, she wasn’t going to resort to violence over sexual harassment no matter how much of an ass the man was. She could ignore Don Weston until they went their separate ways.

“I thought he was supposed to be so experienced,” Riley answered her mother, her voice equally as soft. “They claim to be mining engineers who’ve traveled to the Andes countless times, but I’m betting they flew over the peaks and called that going into the rain forest. They probably don’t have anything at all to do with mining.”

Her mother gave a quick nod of agreement, warmth lighting her eyes all the same. “If they think this is bad, wait until we get into the jungle. They’ll be falling out of their hammocks and forgetting to check each morning for venomous bugs crawling into their boots.”

Riley couldn’t help but smile at the thought. The three engineers were supposedly from a private company seeking prospective mines in the mineral-rich Andes. She couldn’t see that any of them were very well versed in the ways of the rain forest, and they sure didn’t give much respect to their guides. All three complained, but Weston was the worst and most offensive with his constant sexual innuendoes. He spent a great deal of time snapping at the guides and porters as if they were servants when he wasn’t complaining or leering at her and her mother.

“I raised you away from here, Riley. The men in some countries have a different philosophy toward women. We aren’t considered their equal. Clearly he’s been raised to believe women are objects, and because we’ve come out here alone, unescorted by a dozen family members, we’re easy.” Annabel shrugged, but the faint humor faded and her dark eyes went very somber. “Keep that dagger close, honey, just to be on the safe side. You know how to handle yourself.”

Riley shivered. It was the first time Annabel had indicated she thought something was amiss as well. That moved Riley’s fanciful notions from ridiculous right back into the realm of reality. Her mother was always calm, always practical. If she thought something was wrong, then it was.

A bird sounded in the forest on the riverbank, the noise traveling clearly across the open water. To lighten her mother’s suddenly troubled mood, Riley cupped her hands around her mouth and repeated the call. She didn’t get the delighted laughter she’d hoped for but her mother did smile and pat her hand.

“That’s totally freaky how you can do that.” Don Weston had left off slapping at bugs and was now staring at her like she was some carnival sideshow. “Can you imitate anything?”

Despite her dislike of the man, Riley shrugged. “Most things. Some people have photographic memories that let them remember anything they see or read. I call what I have ‘phonographic’ memory. I can remember and repeat virtually any sound I hear. That’s one of the reasons I went into linguistics.”

“That’s quite a talent,” Gary Jansen remarked.

“Isn’t it?” Annabel slid an arm around Riley’s waist. “When she was little, she used to imitate crickets chirping inside the house just to watch me go crazy trying to find them. And heaven help her father if he slipped up and used language he shouldn’t in front of her. She could repeat it perfectly, right down to the pitch of his voice.”

Riley’s heart dropped at the sorrow and love in her mother’s tone. She forced a little laugh. “I was also good at mimicking my teachers, the ones I wasn’t particularly fond of,” she volunteered with a small, mischievous grin. “I could call from school and tell Mom just what a wonderful student I was.” Now her mother did laugh, and the sound filled Riley with relief.

To Riley, Annabel was beautiful. She was of medium height, slender, with dark wavy hair and darker eyes, flawless Spanish skin and a smile that made everyone around her want to smile. Riley was much taller, with bone-straight blue-black hair that grew almost overnight no matter how many times she cut it. She was very curvy, with high cheekbones and pale, nearly translucent skin. Her eyes were large and the color was nearly impossible to define—green, brown, Florentine gold. Her mother always said she was a throwback to a long-dead ancestor.

To her knowledge, her mother had never been sick a day in her life. She had no wrinkles, and Riley had never seen a single gray hair on her head. But now, for the first time, Riley saw vulnerability in her mother’s eyes, and that was as unsettling as the crackling in the air signaling a coming storm. Riley’s father had died only two weeks ago, and in their family, husband and wife rarely lived for very long without one another. Riley was determined to stick close to her mother. She could already sense Annabel pulling away, becoming more despondent by the day, but Riley was determined not to lose her. Not to grief, and not to whatever was hunting them on this trip.

Early morning had seen the last of the main river; the two boats were now traveling up a tributary toward their destination. In the reed-choked waters, the ever-present insects were getting worse by the moment. Clouds of bugs continually assaulted them. More rushed toward the boat as if scenting fresh blood. Weston and Shelton both went into a frenzy of cursing and slapping at exposed skin, although they both remembered to keep their mouths firmly closed after eating a mouthful of bugs. Ben Charger and the two researchers endured the insects stoically, following the example set by their guide and the porters.

The locals in their party didn’t bother to even slap at the bugs as the pearly cloud descended en masse. Riley could see the boat ahead and they were even closer to the shore, yet as far as she could tell, the bugs hadn’t attacked anyone aboard. Behind her, Annabel let out a soft startled cry. Riley spun around to find her mother completely enveloped in the cloud of insects. They’d abandoned everyone else and every inch of Annabel’s body was covered with what appeared to be tiny flakes of moving snow.

La Manta Blanca. Tiny midges. Some said tiny mosquitoes. Riley had never researched them, but she’d certainly felt their bites. They blazed like fire and afterward, the itch drove one crazy. Once scratched and open, the little bites became an invitation for infection. She dragged a blanket off the flat board seat and threw it over her mother, trying to smash the little bugs as she took her mother to the floor of the boat, rolling her as if she was putting out a fire.

“Get it off of her,” Gary Jansen called. “You won’t get them all that way.”

He crouched down beside Annabel and yanked at the blanket. Annabel rolled back and forth, her hands covering her face, the insects attached to every bit of exposed skin, clinging to her hair and clothes. Many were smashed from Riley’s efforts. She continued to slap at them, trying to save her mother from further bites.

Jubal snatched up a bucket of water and threw it over Annabel, brushing at the insects to get them off of her. The porters immediately added buckets of water, dousing her again and again, while Gary, Jubal and Riley scraped the soaked insects from her with the blanket. Ben eventually crouched down beside her and helped to pick the bugs from her skin.

Annabel shuddered violently, but she didn’t make a sound. Her skin turned bright red, as a thousand tiny bites swelled into fiery blisters. Gary rummaged through a satchel he carried and drew out a small vial. He began smearing the clear liquid over the bites. It wasn’t a small job as there were so many. Jubal held Annabel’s arms pinned so that she couldn’t scratch at the maddening itch spreading like waves across her body.