Dark Storm Read Online Free PDF Page B

could hear the slow fluttering of wings over Annabel’s head. Vampire bats landed in the trees, brushing the leaves and filling the branches until the tree groaned, trying to support the weight of so many. Riley swallowed hard and slowly turned her head toward the leaping fire. The porters and guides stared at the tree filled with hanging bats. The creatures had gone from interesting to sinister in a matter of seconds for the fourth night in a row.
    Pedro, the guide, and Raul and Capa, the two porters from her boat, moved a little into the shadows. All three gripped their machetes. The looks on their faces as the flickering flames revealed their expressions frightened her. For one heart-stopping moment, the men seemed every bit as threatening as the bats. Riley sat up slowly. She’d left her boots on, knowing she’d be protecting her mother.
    Annabel slept restlessly, groaning at times. Her mother had always had acute hearing, even in her sleep. A cat walking across the floor would wake her, but since entering the rain forest, she seemed exhausted and weak. At night she twisted and turned in her hammock, sometimes weeping softly, pressing her hands to her head. Even when the bats dropped to earth and surrounded her, using their wings to propel them through the thick vegetation, Annabel never opened her eyes.
    Riley had prepared her defenses carefully, using torches she could easily light, even going so far as to build a small circular fire wall around her mother’s sleeping area. As she unhooked her netting, she caught sight of Raul creeping toward her. He was staying low and to the shadows, but she could make him out, sliding from one dark place to another, stalking prey. Riley glanced over at her sleeping mother. She feared Annabel was the porter’s intended prey.
    Heart pounding, tasting fear in her mouth, Riley slipped from her hammock and drew her knife. Going up against a machete, especially one wielded by a man who used one on a regular basis, was insane, but he was going to have to go through her to get to her mother, just as the vampire bats would have to do. And it wouldn’t just be her knife, if he came at her mother. Riley picked up a torch and held it to the low fire she’d prepared earlier as a defense against the bats.
    She would kill him if she had to. The idea made her sick, but she steeled herself, going through each move in her head. Practicing. Bile rose, but she was determined. No one— nothing —would harm her mother. She’d made up her mind, and nothing would stop her, not even the idea that what she was about to do might be considered premeditated murder.
    Raul inched closer. Riley could smell his sweat. His scent was all “wrong” to her. She took a deep breath and let it out, easing toward her mother’s hammock, putting her feet carefully in position. She could feel the ground under her, almost rising to meet each footfall. She’d never been so aware of the heartbeat of the Earth. Not a leaf rustled. No twig snapped. Her feet seemed to know exactly where to step to keep from making a sound, to keep from twisting an ankle or falling on the uneven ground.
    She positioned herself in front of her mother’s hammock, picking a spot she could easily move in to try to keep any attack from her. Movement close to her sent her pulse pounding. A man’s shadow loomed over the hammock, thrown by the flames in the fire pit suddenly leaping toward the sky. She never would have seen him otherwise. Jubal Sanders was that quiet. She twisted fast to face him, but he’d gone past her to take up a position at the head of Annabel’s hammock. Had he wanted to kill her mother, she would already be dead—he’d been that close without Riley’s knowledge.
    She knew, almost without the confirmation of turning her head, that Gary Jansen was at the foot of her mother’s hammock. She’d spent the last four days trekking through the hardest jungle possible and she knew the way he moved—silent and easy through