Out of the Night (12 page)

"Chupacabra?"

"Yeah. I guess one of its legs hit me in the jaw last night. My tooth's loose."

Lanie thought it was possible, but part of her worried that there might be another explanation. One that Mac wouldn't want to hear. Still, she had to try.

"Mac, maybe—"

"Not now, Lanie." He heaved a great sigh. "No deep, heavy talks, okay? I'm too tired to think, much less talk, about anything." He yawned, shoved the discarded cellophane wrappers to one side of the bed, and leaned back against the headboard.

"You're going to take a nap here? In
my
bed."

He cocked open one eye and patted the spot next to him. "You're welcome to join me—I won't bite." He smiled. "Sorry, poor choice of words under the circumstances."

He gave a soft chuckle, more to himself than anything, and slid farther down on the bed until he was stretched out, his head on the pillow. He fell sound asleep within minutes.

Still staring at him, Lanie let his offer play through her mind a couple of times. Even in sleep, he emanated virile masculinity, strength, and power. So much so, it was hard to remember that he'd been attacked and near death just the night before. Now, with another night gone and the dawn of a new day upon them, it made sense that he was tired. This need for sleep was his body's way of demanding the rehabilitative rest that he needed to recover.

Her internal dialogue ground to an abrupt halt.
Recover
? One night he was at death's door. The next, he's more or less fully recovered?
No one
healed that fast.

Lanie remembered what she'd read in her father's journal about the healing powers of the baby chupacabra's venom. Was her father's theory correct? Was the adult's venom even stronger? Was it capable of healing a man on the verge of death—or, taking the thought one step further, could it bring the dead back to life?

Her father hadn't had a chance to experiment with the adult—unless one counted the attack that killed him. Her father and Burton were evidence that the adult's venom could, in fact, bring the dead back—with one drawback.

Chupacabras turned the dead into vampires.

Again, the faint memory tugged at her. Her recall of odd facts and figures was a trait she'd found useful both in the research she'd done for her father and as a librarian. She thought that if she could access the Internet, given time, she might be able to find the source of the memory that kept eluding her. Not for long, she vowed. Just because her father and the other researchers were out in the middle of nowhere didn't mean that online research wasn't possible. Somewhere in this building, there was a satellite hookup and wireless access.

Knowing she'd seen her father's laptop earlier, she did another quick search of the room. Of course, it wouldn't be out in the open; that would be too easy.

She looked in the closet and almost missed it off to the side, the black case making it hard to see in the dark. She glanced at Mac as she pulled it out, wondering if her movements might wake him. He never stirred.

She knew the laptop had a wireless Internet connection; she'd tried to teach her dad how to use it before he'd left for the facility—how long ago had it been? She shrugged off the memory as she waited for the machine to boot up.

Within minutes, she was surfing through familiar cryptozoological sites. After four hours of hitting one dead end after another, she was no closer to finding the article. She'd explored every source she could think of, even going so far as to check out the Web sites dedicated to the chupacabra cult following that contained virtually no factual data whatsoever.

Frustrated, she looked away from the screen, letting her gaze roam to the narrow opening in the curtains through which the sun now shone. The chupacabra would be stone now, she thought, remembering the cool, rough texture of its skin. It was no wonder that it reminded her of a gargoyle, she thought. Then she smiled. That was it.

One of the theories on the origins of El Chupacabra was that they were Lucifer's dark angels, traveling across the dimensions of space and time, taking the physical form of gargoyle-looking creatures while in the "human" dimension.

It was the reference to Lucifer that helped her remember what she was looking for—
Children of the Morning Star
.

Finding the article was more difficult than simply keying the name into the search engine, but at least now she remembered where to look. Soon, she found the article.

The Children of the Morning Star was a village of vampires, located somewhere in the uncharted regions of the Amazon. Hans Guberstein, an adventurer whose expedition stumbled upon it in the late 1700s, discovered it. Of the twenty-man team, only Guberstein escaped alive, carrying back with him horrifying tales of human sacrifices and demonic creatures that, from their descriptions, had to be chupacabras.

Guberstein reported that the vampires survived off the blood of the humans they hunted or who stumbled across their village. Their dead victims were staked and burned, thus preventing the victims from rising later as vampires. It was a crude means of population control.

It was hard to tell from Guberstein's report whether the chupacabras were considered pets or deities by the vampires. Their preferred food source was goat's blood, but occasionally a chupacabra fed off a human. When that happened, the corpse was allowed to rise as a vampire and become a member of the extended family.

According to Guberstein, the chupacabra-created vampire was superior to the creature that arose from a vampire killing.

Many found Guberstein's tales outlandish and believed he'd contracted jungle fever while on expedition. Furthermore, they thought the rest of his team had died from the same fever or had been killed by wild animals. The village, its vampire residents, and the creatures were all assumed to be figments of his delusional imagination.

When Lanie had first read the story, years ago, she'd considered it an interesting but fanciful tale with no basis in fact. Now she wasn't so sure.

Her gaze fell on Mac's still form. If the venom turned a
dead
man into a vampire, what did it do to a
living
man?

The chupacabra's venom restored the life it took, giving the resulting vampire certain of its own traits in return—specifically the need to survive on blood. Clearly, Mac had received enough of the venom's restorative properties to heal him. Even old injuries seemed better, she thought, remembering how his limp appeared less pronounced.

What other changes were taking place? Would he, too, need to drink blood to survive?

A flicker outside the window distracted her from the disturbing thought. Walking over to peer through the crack in the curtains, she saw Dirk and his men gathered around a bonfire and knew they were burning the bodies.

Feeling suddenly stifled in the room, she logged off and went outside. The firefighter in her felt compelled to check that the fire was at no risk of spreading to the surrounding jungle. It wasn't that she didn't think the men knew what they were doing as much as she needed the excuse to get out of the building and do something.

"Ms. Weber." Dirk Adams inclined his head when she walked up to him a few minutes later.

"Lanie, please." She walked upwind of the smoke, wanting to avoid the stench. Doing a cursory visual inspection to assure herself that it was a controlled fire, she averted her gaze, preferring to focus on Dirk's face rather than the charred bodies being consumed by the flames.

"Where's our boy?"

Lanie smiled. Given Mac's size and personality, she wasn't sure "boy" was the right description for him. "He's sleeping. I'm not sure he's recovered from his attack," she hurriedly added, not wanting this man to think any less of Mac.

Dirk nodded, but his expression grew concerned as he studied her. "How are you doing?"

"I'm…" She paused, not really sure how she was doing. Dirk apparently seemed to understand because he gave her a sympathetic smile.

They stood in silence until the fire died down. Two men, one with a shovel and another holding the garden hose, stood nearby, ready to douse the last of the embers when needed. Beside her, Dirk checked his watch and Lanie thought he looked anxious. "Is something wrong?"

He glanced at her as if trying to decide what to tell her. "One of my men, Hector Munoz, is missing. He never came back from our search for Burton. A couple of the guys found what was left of his shirt lying in a patch of mangled underbrush. It was ripped to shreds and covered in blood. I sent another group out to look for him, but I don't hold out much hope. This part of the jungle is largely unknown." He fell silent for a moment, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. Then he glanced at his watch. "It's almost noon and we'll have to leave soon."

"What about your man?"

Dirk's jaw tightened as he took a breath and let it out. "I don't think there's anything left of him to find."

She nodded, understanding. Burton and her father weren't the only wild creatures lurking out there.

"You might want to wake Mac. He said he wanted to get to the airfield before dark, and if we don't leave soon, we won't make it."

Lanie returned to the room and found that Mac hadn't moved. The sound of his breathing came slow and steady.

"Mac, it's time to wake up." She spoke softly, so as not to startle him, but he didn't budge.

"Mac?" She raised her voice a little, but still he didn't stir. Laying her hand on his arm, she shook him gently—then again, but more forcefully.

Nothing seemed to penetrate his sleep. Frustrated, she crossed the room to the windows and threw open the curtains to let the sunlight in. Before she could turn around, she heard a strangled cry, followed by a loud thump. Whipping around, Lanie saw that Mac was gone, the rumpled sheets of the bed the only evidence that he'd been there.

"Mac?"

"What the hell are you doing?" His strangled yell came from the floor on the far side of the bed where she couldn't see him. "Trying to blind me?"

Lanie looked around at the room's soft, warm glow and frowned. "It's not that bright in here."

"The hell it's not. Close the damn curtains. It's killing my eyes."

This time, she heard the pain in his voice and hurried to comply. "Okay, they're closed." She went around to the far side of the bed and dropped to her knees next to where he sat with his hand covering his eyes.

Through his parted fingers, she saw him crack open a lid experimentally before pulling his hand away. Lanie noticed that his eyes were red and bloodshot. "Are your eyes usually this sensitive to the light?"

"No," he grumbled.

Lanie added one more item to her growing list of concerns about Mac, but didn't pursue the matter with him. Instead, she changed the subject. "Dirk said we're leaving within the hour for the airfield."

Mac nodded. "Okay, let's get packed."

Lanie looked around the room, seeing all her father's things. Leaving them behind was like saying good-bye to him all over again. Mac must have realized what she was feeling because he heaved a sigh, stood up, and walked to the closet where he found one of her father's small suitcases.

"Come on," he said, laying it open on the bed. "We can't take it all, so only pack the important stuff. I'll arrange to have the rest of it shipped to you."

She wanted to hug him, but settled for a heartfelt "Thank you." The room was small and she was able to go through the contents quickly. In the end, she settled for taking her father's journal, several books, his favorite sweater, the laptop—and his pipe, which she found tucked into the pocket of his sweater.

Mac spent the majority of the ride back to the airfield thinking about all the changes to his body. What at first had seemed like a simple reaction to a rude awakening had turned out to be a legitimate hypersensitivity to sunlight. Not only was he having to wear his sunglasses outside, but earlier, with all the light streaming in through the windows, inside the facility as well.

Running his tongue across his teeth, he experimentally touched each one to see which ones had been knocked loose. Strangely, only the two upper canines moved freely. How was it possible for the animal to hit him in the jaw in such a way that only those two teeth were affected?

Mac stopped his inspection when he felt Lanie watching him. He blanked his expression but refused to meet her eyes, keeping his own fixed squarely on the road ahead. He knew she was worried about him, but not because she cared. It was because she thought he was turning into a vampire.

Mac wanted to scoff. The idea was absurd, ludicrous. Absolutely friggin' crazy. So why didn't he feel like laughing?

Damn Burton
, he thought,
and damn that chupa
—
whatever the hell it was called
. Instead of driving Lanie back to the airfield and flying her home, he should be out scouring the jungle. However, being retired from the service meant he had no right to stay behind at a government facility, nor did he have the authority to order a full team of SEALs to fly down and search the jungle for him. The best he could hope for was to convince Admiral Winslow that Burton was…

Was what? A vampire? Mac almost snorted out loud at
that
imagined conversation.

Without the many stops they'd made on the trip out, the trip back to the airfield took much less time. Even with the time savings, though, they arrived after the sunset.

Mac pulled up to the main building, wanting to get them cleared for takeoff and under way as soon as possible. He was digging papers out of the glove compartment when Lanie spoke for the first time since they'd gotten into the Jeep.

"Where is it?"

He glanced up to see her perplexed expression. "Where's what?"

"The plane."

His gaze shot over to the stretch of tarmac where he'd parked his plane. It wasn't there. Thinking that the ground crew had moved it, he scanned the area, but still saw no sign of it. Twenty minutes later, Mac verified that the plane was nowhere on the grounds. It had disappeared.

He could think of only one man who might have need of his plane
and
was capable of taking it without anyone noticing until it was rolling down the runway.