Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

He would try his damnedest not to, but already the task of staying upright was draining him. He needed to conserve all he could in order to blow the cave and not black out again before he could finish it. Right now, he had to deal with the more immediate problem in front of him.

Rio started toward her when she remained unmoving. He reached out for her, meaning to grab her backpack and haul her out, but before his fingers could close around it she withdrew something from one of the bag's pockets and brought it up in front of her.

"Okay, I'll go. I just...there's something I need to do first."

Rio scowled in the darkness. "What are you - "

There was a faint click, then a stunning blast of light.

Rio roared, wheeling back on instinct. More explosions of light fired off in rapid succession.

Logic told him it was a digital camera flash blinding him, but in a startling instant, he was hurtled back in time...back inside that Boston warehouse, standing beneath an airborne bomb as it detonated.

He heard the sudden boom of the explosion, felt it vibrate into his bones and knock the breath from his lungs. He felt the shower of heat in his face, the suffocating thickness of clouding ash as it engulfed him like a wave.

He felt the bite of hot shrapnel as it ripped through his body.

It was agony, and he was right there, living it - feeling it - all over again.

"Nooo!" he bellowed, his voice no longer human but transformed to something else, as he was, by the fury that ran through him like acid.

His legs gave way beneath him and he sank to the floor, his vision blinded by reverberating light and ruthless memories.

He heard footsteps scuffing past him in a rush, and through the phantom stench of smoke and metal and ruined flesh, he smelled the faint, fleeting traces of juniper, honey, and rain.

Chapter Four

Dylan's heart was still racing later that morning, after she and her companions had boarded the train that would take them from Jicin to Prague. It seemed ridiculous to let herself get so rattled by the vagrant she'd run into in the cave, even if he probably was a little bit psycho to be living up there like some kind of wild man. He hadn't harmed her after all.

Based on his bizarre meltdown when she tried to get some pictures of the cave before he could physically toss her out of there, she had probably scared him even more than he had her.

Dylan sat back in her compartment seat on the train, her computer open on her lap. Thumbnail images from her digital camera queued up on-screen as they downloaded to her computer from the thin black cable that connected the two devices. Most were from the past couple of days' travel, but it was the final handful Dylan was most interested in now.

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.

She zoomed in on the strange design.

What the hell?

The teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol was unmistakable, nestled within a series of curving lines and geometric patterns. Dylan stared at it in astonishment, and not a little confusion. This one mark was not unfamiliar to her at all. She'd seen it before, countless times. Not in a photograph, but on her own body.

How on earth could that be?