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  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.

  Riley clutched her mother’s hand tightly, murmuring nonsense. Her previous suspicions came roaring back to life. The tiny little midges had gone straight for her mother. There was no one more attuned to the rain forest than Annabel. Plants grew abundant and lush around her. She whispered to them and they seemed to whisper back, embracing her as if she were Mother Earth. When her mother walked through the backyard at their home in California, Riley was fairly certain she could see the plants growing right in front of her. For the forest to begin attacking her, something was terribly wrong.

  Annabel gripped Riley’s hand tightly as the two researchers lifted her to her feet and helped her stumble back to their sleeping area made private by the sheets and netting hung across thin ropes.

  “Thank you,” Riley said to the two men. She was all too aware of the stunned silence out on deck. She wasn’t the only one to notice that the white bugs had attacked her mother and no one else after their initial swarm. Even those knocked from her body had struggled to their feet and crawled toward her as if programmed to do so.

  “Use this on the bites,” Gary Jansen said. “I can make up some more once we’re in the forest if she runs out. It will take the edge off.”

  Riley took the vial from him. The two men exchanged a look above her head and her heart jumped. They knew something. That look had been meaningful. Profound. She tasted fear in her mouth and quickly looked away, nodding her head.

  Annabel attempted a halfhearted smile and murmured her thanks as the two men turned to go, giving the women privacy to find bites beneath clothing.

  “Mom, are you all right?” Riley asked, the moment they were alone.

  Annabel gripped her hand tightly. “Listen to me, Riley. Don’t ask questions. No matter what happens, even if something happens to me, you must get to the mountain and complete the ritual. You know every word, every move. Perform the ritual exactly as you’ve been taught. You’ll feel the earth moving through you and . . .”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Mom,” Riley protested. Fear was giving way to sheer terror. Her mother’s eyes reflected some inner turmoil, some innate knowledge of a danger she knew of that Riley was missing—more a terrible vulnerability that had never been there before. None of the married couples in their family ever long-survived the loss of a spouse, but Riley was determined her mother would be the exception. She’d been watching her mother like a hawk since her father, Daniel Parker, died in the hospital following a major heart attack. Annabel had been grieving, but she hadn’t seemed despondent or fatalistic until now. “Stop talking like this, you’re scaring me.”

  Annabel struggled into a sitting position. “I’m giving you necessary information, Riley. Just as my mother gave it to me. And her mother before her. If I can’t get to the mountain, the burden falls on you. You are part of an ancient lineage, and we’ve been given a duty that has passed from mother to daughter for centuries. My mother took me to this mountain, just as her mother took her. I’ve taken you. You are a child of the cloud forest, Riley, born there as I was. You drew your first breath on that mountain. You took it into your lungs and with it, the forest and all that comes with living, growing things.”

  Annabel shuddered again and reached for the vial Riley held. With shaking hands she drew up her shirt to reveal the tiny midges clinging to her stomach, brushing with trembling fingers to get them off. Riley took the vial and began smearing the soothing gel onto the bites.

  “When my mother told me these things, I thought she was being dramatic and I scoffed at her,” Annabel continued. “Oh, not to her face of course, but I thought her so old and superstitious. I’d heard the stories of the mountains. We lived in Peru and some of the older people in our village still whispered about the great evil that came before the Incas and could not be driven away, not even by their most fierce warriors. Stories. Dreadful, frightening stories handed down for generations. I thought the stories had been passed down mostly to scare the children and keep them from roaming too far from the protection of the village, but I learned better after my mother died. Something is there, Riley, in the mountain. Something evil, and it’s our job to contain it.”

  Riley wanted to believe her mother was delirious with pain, but her eyes were steady—even more, afraid. Annabel believed every word she was saying and her mother wasn’t given to flights of fancy. More to reassure her mother than because she actually believed the nonsense about some evil being trapped inside a mountain, Riley nodded.

  “You’re going to be fine,” she assured. “We’ve been bitten by Manta Blanca on previous trips. They aren’t poisonous. Nothing’s going to happen to you, Mom.” She had to say the words aloud, needing them to be true. “This was only a bizarre event. We know anything can happen in the rain forest . . .”

  “No, Riley.” Annabel caught her daughter’s hand and held it tight. “All the delays . . . all the problems since we arrived . . . something is happening. The evil in the mountain is deliberately trying to slow me down. It is close to the surface and is orchestrating accidents and illness. We have to be realistic, Riley.” Her body shuddered again.

  Riley hunted through her pack and came up with a packet of pills. “Antihistamines, Mom, take a couple of these. You’ll probably go to sleep but at least the itching will stop for a while.”

  Annabel nodded and swallowed the pills, chasing them with water. “Don’t trust anyone, Riley. Any one of these people can be our enemy. We must go our own way as soon as possible.”

  Riley bit her lip, refraining from saying anything at all. She needed time to think. She was twenty-five years old and had been to the Andes four times, not including when she was born in the cloud forest. This was the fifth trip that she remembered. The hike through the rain forest had been grueling, but she’d never felt terrified as she was now. It was too late to turn back and from what her mother said, it wasn’t an option. She needed to let her mother rest, and then they had to talk. She had to learn much more about the why of the trip to the Andes.

  She dropped the sheet in place as soon as her mother appeared to be drifting off and went out onto the deck. Raul, the porter, glanced at her and looked quickly away, clearly uncomfortable with the presence of both women. Goose bumps rose on her arms. She rubbed them away, turning to walk along the railing to try to put some distance between her and the rest of the passengers. She just needed a little space.

  There wasn’t enough room aboard the boat to find a quiet corner. Jubal and Gary, the two researchers, sat together in one of the few secluded spots, and judging from the expressions on their faces, they weren’t very happy. She gave them a wide berth, but in doing so ended up beside Ben Charger, the third engineer, the one she couldn’t quite make up her mind about. He was always courteous to both women and, like Jubal and Gary, seemed to be developing a protective streak toward them.

  Ben nodded at her. “Is your mother all right?”

  Riley flashed him a tentative smile. “I think so. I gave her an antihistamine. Hopefully, between that and the gel Gary gave us, the itch won’t make her crazy. Those are nasty little bugs.”

  “She must have been wearing something that attracted them,” Ben ventured, half stating, half asking. “Maybe a perfume?”

  Riley knew her mother never wore perfume, but it was a good explanation. She nodded slowly. “I didn’t think of that. The attack was so bizarre.”

  Ben studied her face intently, his eyes so watchful, she found his gaze disturbing. “I’ve heard you and your mother have come here before. Has anything like that ever happened?”

  Riley shook her head, grateful she could tell the truth. “Never.”

  “Why do you and your mother come to such a dangerous place?” Ben asked curiously. Again
he didn’t blink, or take his eyes from her face. He stared at her with the eyes of an interrogator. “It’s my understanding that even the guides haven’t traveled to this mountain. They had to get the information from a couple of others in the village. It seems such a strange destination for two women. There aren’t any villages on the mountain, so you’re not here for the linguistics.”

  Riley gave him a vague smile. “Mother’s work as a horticulturist and advocate for the protection of rain forests takes us many places. But we come here also because we’re descendents of the Cloud People and my mother wants us to learn as much as possible so the people aren’t forgotten.” She pressed her lips together and put a defensive hand on her throat. “That sounded mean. I love the rain forest, and I enjoy the trips with my mother. I was actually born in the cloud forest, so I think my mother thought it would be a good tradition to carry on, coming every few years.” She glanced toward the guide and lowered her voice. “We weren’t certain these men actually knew the way, that’s why we thought it would be safer traveling with all of you.”

  “I’ve never been,” Ben admitted. “I’ve traveled around many rain forests, but not to this particular mountain. I don’t know why Don said we all had been here before. He likes to think he knows everything about everything. Is the forest as dangerous as everyone says?”

  Riley nodded. “Very few people have ever traveled to this peak. It’s a volcano and, although it hasn’t erupted in well over five hundred years, I’m suspicious sometimes that it’s waking up, although mostly because of the way the locals talk about it. There’s some story handed down through the various local tribes about that mountain, so most avoid it. It’s difficult to actually find a guide willing to travel to it.” She frowned. “Truly, it has an off-putting feeling. You find yourself growing uneasy the higher you climb.”

  Ben ran both hands through his hair, almost as if he was agitated. “This entire side of the rain forest seems infested with legends and myths. No one wants to talk about them to outsiders, and all of them seem to involve some creature that preys on the lives and blood of the living.”