She willed them into submission with the same steely control she'd been practicing most of her life. Dylan Alexander did not cry. She hadn't since she was that brokenhearted, betrayed little girl watching her father speed off into the night.
No, getting sloppy with self-pity and hurt never did her a lick of good. Anger was a much more useful coping method. And where anger failed, there were few things that couldn't be fixed with a healthy dose of denial.
Dylan turned away from the window and shoved her bare feet into her well-worn pair of trail shoes. Not trusting to leave her computer unattended in the room, she slipped the slim silver laptop into her messenger bag, grabbed her pocketbook, and headed out to find Janet and the others. Maybe a little company and chitchat wouldn't be so bad after all.
By dusk, most of the humans traipsing through the woods and along the mountain paths had gone. Now that it was fully dark outside the cave, there wasn't a soul around to hear the explosion Rio was rigging to go off from within the lightless space of rock.
He had just enough C-4 on hand to permanently seal the cave's entrance, but not so much that he would bring the whole damn mountain down. Nikolai had thought to make sure of that before the Order had left Rio there to secure the site. Thank God for that, because Rio sure as hell didn't trust his cracked brain to remember the particulars.
He cursed sharply as he fumbled one of the tiny wires on the detonator. His vision was already starting to swim, irritating him even more. Sweat broke out on his brow, dampening the overlong hanks of hair that hung down into his eyes. With a snarl, he swept his hand over his face and up his scalp, staring fiercely at the lumps of pale explosive material in front of him.
Did he stuff the blasting caps into the cakes yet?
He couldn't remember...
"Focus, idiot," he berated himself, impatient over the idea of something that should come so easily to him - and had, before he'd gotten his bell rung in that warehouse back in Boston - should now take him literally hours to even get started.
Add to that his body's sluggishness from deprivation of vital blood and he was a real piece of work. A goddamn waste of space, that's what he was.
With a surge of self-hatred fueling him, Rio stuck his finger into one of the small puttylike blocks of C-4 and tore it open.
Good. The charge was in there, just like it should be.
It didn't matter he couldn't remember placing it there, or that based on the mangled appearance of another of the cakes, he'd probably gone through this very exercise at least once before. He gathered up the supply of C-4 and carried them into the narrow mouth of the cave. He packed them into carved niches in the sandstone, just like Niko had told him to do. Then he went back into the cavern to retrieve the detonator.
Damn it!
The wires on the thing were all fucked up.
He had fucked them up. How? And when?
"Son of a bitch!" he roared, glaring down at the device, blind with a swift, sudden rage.
He felt dizzy with anger, his head spinning so badly it buckled his knees. He went down on the hard ground like his body was made of lead. He heard the detonator skid into the dust somewhere, but he didn't reach for it. His arms were too heavy and his head was weightless, his consciousness floating, detached from reality, like his mind wanted to separate from the wreck of the body that caged it and fly away to escape.
A thick nausea pressed him down, and he knew if he didn't work fast to get a hold of himself he was going to pass out.
It had been foolish to stop hunting all those weeks ago. He was Breed. He needed human blood for strength, for life. Blood would help him to stave off the pain and madness. But he could no longer trust himself to hunt without killing. He'd come too close, too many times, since he'd arrived here on this towering forest crag.
Too often on those few times he ventured out in hunger he'd nearly been seen by the humans living in the surrounding towns and villages. And since the explosion he'd survived in Boston a year ago, his was a face not soon forgotten.
Maldecido.
The word hissed at him from somewhere distant. Not the night outside, but from deep out of his past, in the language of his mother's country.
Manos del diablo.
Comedor de la sangre.
Monstruo.
Even through the fog of his tormented mind, he recognized the epithets. Names he heard from his earliest childhood. Words that haunted him, even now.
The cursed one.
Devil's hands.
Blood-eater.