Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

She double-clicked on one of the dark images from the cave, the first of the sequence. The photo expanded, filling the small screen of her laptop. Dylan considered the face that was all but concealed by a growth of overlong, unkempt hair. The dull, espresso-brown waves hung limply over razor-sharp cheekbones and fierce eyes that reflected back at the lens in the strangest shade of amber she'd ever seen. The jaw looked as rigid as iron, the full lips peeled back in a vicious snarl that wasn't quite hidden behind the large hand that had come up to block the shot.

Jesus, it wouldn't take much Photoshopping back at the office in New York to make the guy look positively demonic. He was more than halfway there already.

"How did your pictures come out, honey?" Janet's curly silver head leaned over from beside Dylan on the cushioned bench seat. "Good Lord! What is that ?"

Dylan shrugged, unable to take her eyes off the photo. "Just some whack-job squatter I ran into up at the cave this morning. He doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be the star of my next story for the paper. What do you think? Just look at that face and tell me if you don't see a blood-drinking savage who lurks in the mountains, waiting for his next hapless victim."

Janet shuddered and went back to her crossword puzzle. "You're gonna give yourself nightmares dreaming up stories like that."

Dylan laughed as she clicked over to the next image on the screen. "Not me. Never had a nightmare. In fact, I don't dream at all. Blank slate, each and every night."

"Well, consider yourself lucky," the older woman said. "I've always had the most vivid dreams. When I was a young girl, I used to dream recurrently about a white poodle with painted toenails who liked to sing and dance at the end of my bed. I would beg him to stop and let me sleep, but he just always kept singing. Can you imagine? He sang old show tunes mostly, those were his favorite. I've always enjoyed show tunes, myself as well..."

Dylan heard Janet's voice beside her, but as she scrolled through the rest of the cave photographs on her computer, she was only half-listening at best. In her frantic pan of the place, she'd gotten one decent shot of the stone crypt and a couple of the elaborate wall art. The designs were even more impressive now that she had a chance to really study them.

Interlocking arcs and graceful, swirling lines ran the entire length of the cavern wall, rendered in a dark russet-brown ink. It looked semi-tribal yet oddly futuristic - unlike anything she'd ever seen before. Still more symbols and intertwining lines decorated the side of the crypt...one in particular that made the fine hairs at the back of Dylan's neck tingle.>Where had he gone? She slid a glance at the large, open crypt a few feet away.

"Look, I know you're in here. It's okay. I didn't mean to frighten you," she added, even though it seemed absurd that she should be reassuring him. The guy had to be more than six feet tall, and even from the brief glimpse she'd gotten of him, she noted that his long arms and legs were thick with muscle. But his broken crumple on the floor of the cave had emanated pain and despair. "Are you hurt? Do you need some help? What's your name?"

No reply. Not a sound of any kind.

"Dobry den?" she called, trying to reach out to him with her pitifully limited knowledge of Czech. "Mluvite anglicky?"

No such luck.

"Sprechen zie Deutsch?"

Nothing.

"Sorry, but that's about all I've got unless you want me to break out some of my rusty junior high Spanish and really embarrass myself." She pivoted with her flashlight, angling it upward as she scanned the high walls of the cavern. "Somehow I don't think ?Como esta usted? is going to get us any further here. Do you?"

As she slowly turned, the light glanced off a jutting ledge high above her head. Some ten feet up was a sheer, arcing rise of sandstone. No way anyone could get up there.

Or was there...?

No sooner had she thought it than the thin stream of light shooting up to the ledge began to flicker. It dimmed steadily, then went utterly dark.

"Shit," Dylan whispered low under her breath. She banged the barrel on her palm a couple of times before somewhat frantically attempting to turn the damn thing on again. Despite fresh batteries installed before she left the States, the light was dead. "Shit, shit, shit."

Engulfed in total blackness, Dylan felt the first twinge of unease.

When she heard the scrape of rock overhead, every nerve in her body went tense. There was a long beat of silence, followed by the sudden crunch of booted feet hitting solid earth as whoever - or whatever - had been hiding in the shadows above now dropped to the floor of the cave beside her.

She smelled like juniper and honey and warm summer rain. But beneath all that was a sudden, citrusy spike of adrenaline now that he was near her. Rio circled the woman in the dark of the cave, seeing her perfectly while she stumbled in the abrupt lack of light. Her feet carried her backward...only to connect with a wall of stone at her spine.

"Damn it."

She swallowed audibly, pivoting to try another tack, then swore again as her useless flashlight slipped out of her fingers and clinked on the hard floor of the cave. Rio had burned precious energy in mentally extinguishing the device. Manipulating objects by thought was a simple Breed talent, but in his current weakened state, Rio didn't know how long he could hold it.

"Um, you're probably not in the mood for company," the woman said, her eyes wide in the darkness as they darted left and right, trying to locate him. "So, I'm just going to leave now, okay? Just gonna...walk right out of here." A nervous moan caught in her throat. "God, please, where is the frigging way out of this place?"

She took a step to the right, edging along the cavern wall. Away from the exit, although Rio saw no point in telling her that just yet. He kept moving, trailing her deeper into the cave, trying to decide what to do with his repeat intruder. When he'd first awakened, startled to find he was still alive and not alone, he'd reacted on instinct - a vulnerable beast fleeing to the safety of the shadows.

But then she'd started talking to him.

Coaxing him out, even though she could not have known how dangerous a proposition that really was. He was furious and half-mad in the head, a deadly enough combination on its own, but being near the female now reminded him that even though he was broken, he was still very much male.

To his marrow, he was still Breed.