by Terry Spear
She was already closing her eyes, opening them, and then shutting them again as if she was having the most difficult time keeping them open.
“Sleep,” he said quietly, pulling off his boots, then his trousers. He figured she had already had quite an ordeal—getting lost alone in the jungle, coming across two jaguars that had scared the pants off her, and more than likely getting very little rest for however long she had been lost. “We’ll talk again in the morning.” He crossed the floor to the sole table in the hut, saw his sister watching him through the screen door, and shook his head.
He knew what she hoped for, but he wanted to make sure Maya understood that he and Kat couldn’t go there. Then he turned off the lamp and retired to his sister’s bed. The rain began again, making a lulling sound as it hit the tree canopy above them and their own thatched roof. He thought the sounds and scents would help him sleep—the fresh smell of rain and the steady downpour, the ceaseless sounds of cicadas and other insects offering a cacophony of various pitched songs, a frog in a nearby fig tree making a knocking sound, and the scurrying of some rodent through the leaf litter on the forest floor. But he couldn’t quit worrying about the woman resting in the bed across from him and wondering how he could safely get her to civilization sooner rather than later.
Much later that night, Kat’s soft moans awoke him from a light sleep, and he quickly sat up and stared in her direction. A nightmare? Dreaming of jaguars attacking her? Her guide abandoning her? Fear of snakes? The threat of the men who had been slashing through the jungle? Or of Gonzales’s men shooting her?
He took a deep breath, listening to her ragged breathing, and stared at her through the mesh.
Or had something else caused her to moan in her sleep?
Something much worse?
***
Kathleen was used to Florida heat and humidity and the feel of semitropical weather, but the Amazon was much more tropical than that. Hotter, muggier, buggier.
Being in the rain forest was like living in the primordial soup where life began. Even scientists studying Amazon plant life had to admit they had not discovered all the varieties growing in the canopy. She felt saddened at the thought that they might never have the chance if the trees were cut down and the rain forest destroyed, along with the animals that lived there.
Millions of cicadas sang through the night, reminding her of Florida. But the black howler monkeys—screeching in alarm way up in the treetops when something, maybe an anaconda, had come a’calling—brought her back to the South American Amazon far, far from home.
She tossed and turned, feeling the heat boiling her blood, the jaguar’s scratches burning down the back side of her thigh, her knee throbbing with pressure—the tissue bruised and swollen—and her cheeks and hands sizzling from the sunburn she had gotten while traveling up one of the rivers by canoe. Even her old bullet wounds seemed as hot as fire all over again, scorching her from the inside out.
She moaned, miserable, soaking in sweat, and so sleepy she could barely stay awake but in so much pain that she couldn’t drift off all the way.
A masculine voice intruded in her world, worried, deep, baritone, soothing. She couldn’t see the figure in the inky blackness because her eyes were blurry with hot tears.
“Kat,” he said again, then a cold hand pressed against her forehead, leaving an icy imprint as he cursed aloud. His soothing voice was incongruous with his angry words.
“What’s wrong?” a woman’s voice asked, soft and worried as she drew close.
“She’s burning up with fever.”
The woman sucked in her breath. The sound of rain pouring down on the roof overhead should have drowned out any other sound, Kat thought, as hard as it was coming down. But she heard the woman’s audible gasp and wondered who she was. Wondered who he was. And where she was right now.
Her eyes burned and she couldn’t focus, couldn’t see much more than a blur. The hut was too dark to make out anything more than that.
The boards creaked as someone moved across them. Then her cover was pulled away and a wet cloth placed on her forehead.
Neither the man nor the woman spoke again, but Kat was drifting in and out of her world, thinking of all the fevers she could have contracted in the jungle—malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever—and believing she had every one of them at the same time.
“She should have had the vaccination for yellow fever before she entered the jungle,” the woman said.
“She should have,” he agreed.
But had she? Kat couldn’t remember.
“But if she traveled into the jungle too soon after getting the vaccination…” the woman said, her words trailing off.
“Hopefully she was vaccinated early enough before she entered the Amazon. We’ve still got a supply of medicine for malaria, but there’s nothing we can do for dengue fever, if that’s what she has,” he said.
Everything grew silent except for the sounds of the jungle. The doves cooing somewhere nearby. Frogs croaking. Cicadas chirping.
Kat heard men’s screams, bullets showering the jungle, and felt her wrists burning where the rope tied them tightly together to the metal pole. The damnable metal pole secured deep in the hard-packed earth so there was no way for her to pull free. If she could have gotten a knife to cut through the ropes… Then she thought about the bleeding… her leg, her arm… she was going to bleed to death first. She had to stop the bleeding. She could see her Army buddies scattered around the large tent, dead and covered in blood, could smell the stench… heard Roger…
No, he wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. Not on this mission.
The rain forest. She was in the rain forest. But not there. Not in the tent with the dead men. Somewhere else.
Her wet shirt lifted, and Kat felt exposed and cold. She began shivering violently.
“No rash. Probably not dengue fever. Get a fresh cloth, Maya.”
Maya. Who was Maya?
“And bring me the medicine for malaria. We’ll try to get her to drink some water.”
Kat’s eyes drifted shut.
If she had thought how miserable she would be on a second trip to the jungle… the first fighting the bad guys, the second… the second… What was she doing here again?
She wasn’t fighting the bad guys this time, was she?
She should never have come here. The Army… they wouldn’t let her go on another mission. The doctor said she was… was not right yet.
Tears blurred her eyes. She swallowed hard, trying to recall why she was here again in the jungle.
The doctor.
He said if she could… if she could what?
Her thoughts drifted again.
The jaguar rested his head in her lap, and she sighed, comforted by his presence. She had never visited anywhere that was as primitive and teeming with life as the Amazon. And she had found just what she had wanted to see—a jaguar, well, two of them, running in the wild—and felt the peace of the jungle when before it had just been a mission. A mission gone bad. And Connor, he had come for her before and he had come for her now.
She let out her breath hard and sucked in more soggy air.
The jaguars had even protected her in the tree. Now how astonishing was that?
But then someone was trying to cut through the ropes binding her wrists, and she screamed. Or tried to scream. Maybe the howler monkeys were screaming. Maybe it wasn’t her at all.
“Kat, it’s all right,” the man said, his voice soothing as he held her hand and ran a cool cloth over her cheek. “It’s all right. You’re having a nightmare. You’re safe.”
Her thoughts were so random as they shifted from one to another that she could barely catch hold of one before another intruded. She thought of Manuel and losing him in the jungle. How his friendly, South American charm had won her over. He was smiling at her. Talking with her in his broken English. Giving her a great guided tour, pointing out a howler monkey watching them from a tree overhead, showing her a yellow-and-bl
ack poisonous dart frog and a strawberry dart frog on a fig leaf nearby. An anaconda was coiled around the base of a tree, nearly invisible to her until Manuel showed it to her.
She moaned and someone brushed her hair away from her cheek.
She thought of sitting in the early-morning hours at the Spanish café where she was to meet Wade Patterson, who was supposed to lead her to where Connor Anderson was staying. What had become of Wade? How had she missed meeting him in the café? She thought she’d gotten the time wrong. The place wrong. But she hadn’t.
And then the sunny café faded and she was once again in the lush, green jungle, the jaguar again looming before her on a branch as if he was trying to distract her, comfort her. He nudged her with his broad head, then rested it in her lap. Immediately feeling protected in the dark jungle, she reached out to pet him.
She found her hand wrapped in larger hands.
“You’ll be all right, Kat,” the man said, his voice dark and low and comforting.
The chills receded, but the suffocating heat took hold again. She was in a sauna, sweating every ounce of water out of every cell in her body as she faded off into the humid, hot ozone.
Chapter 5
The rain had stopped some hours earlier, but the drums had been pounding since then. Connor was certain the local natives were having one of their celebrations deep in the rain forest, but the beating made his head throb, as sick as he was with worry that Kat would die. She had come to the jungle, gotten lost, and contracted a fever —and none of that was his fault. But he couldn’t shake the concern that it would be his fault if she died on him. The immediacy of the situation—her being near death and under his care again—was like déjà vu.
He didn’t want to take her to the resort any longer. He wanted to take her back to the States where she could have competent care until she was well again. But transporting her there quickly wasn’t possible.
She watched him through blurry eyes set in a face that was very pale except for her red cheeks. But she wasn’t really watching. She was staring through him into a world of her own once more, semilucid and then confused and incoherent again.
“Kat?”
She hadn’t once spoken in coherent words since the fever had struck. Just moans and groans and a frustrated “no” when he had tried to keep her covered when she was too hot again after shivering with chills. Several times she had reached for something. What was she trying to get to? At times she seemed comforted by something and at other times, terrified.
Connor heard rustling at the table and glanced in that direction to see what Maya was doing. She was searching through Kat’s backpack.
“Anything in there that will tell us more about her?” he asked quietly.
Maya pulled out a passport. “She’s an Aquarius, born the first of February, and she’s four years younger than us. Hmm… Mom was an Aquarius, and she said that was why she was honest and loyal…”
“Not about staying with us,” Connor grumbled.
“And independent like Kat is, having come to the jungle alone. And she’s friendly, too.”
“The downside?” Not that Connor ever put much stock in Zodiac signs or their supposed meanings.
“Contrary, unpredictable, detached, unemotional. I think she’d fit right in with a couple of Aries like us.”
He grunted.
“Sure. You and I are both adventurous and impulsive, courageous and confident—she can’t help but be swept up in our enthusiasm for life.”
“Maya,” he warned, not wanting her to think they were taking the woman home with them like she was some kind of pet they could nurture and make their own.
“She was born in Merritt Island, Florida,” she said, ignoring him. “So she’s a Florida girl.”
The dark side of being an Aries, if any of it was true, was that Maya was definitely impulsive. A lot more so than he was, and he knew she was trying to get him to accept taking Kat into their family.
“The injuries she suffered on her Army mission here don’t seem to have caused any serious permanent damage,” he said, changing the subject to one that was more important.
“You said she was the only one who was still living when her people came to rescue her. You saved her life, Connor. She’s grateful.” Maya rummaged around some more in the pack. “There’s nothing else in here except survival stuff and more clothes and a credit card.” She zipped up the bag, then joined Connor at the bed where Kat was still tossing and turning.
Maya put her hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you hunt supper for us? I’ll spell you for a while.”
He didn’t want to leave Kat for a minute, worried she might slip into a coma and die. But another worry consumed him. What if his sister bit Kat, trying to turn her?
But he didn’t think she would. Not as sick as Kat was. Unless she thought that by turning her, Kat would get well more quickly.
He cast his sister a warning look. She regarded him as if she didn’t know what he was inferring, all innocence. Maybe she was totally innocent at the moment. Maybe deep down, he wanted Kat turned so she could be his.
He shook his head at the notion and left the hut, climbed down the stairs, removed his clothes, and tucked them on a shelf below the floor of the house on stilts, and then shifted. He ran as a jaguar, smelling the air, searching for dinner, and wishing he had some way to get Kat to a hospital and well again.
***
Had she caused Kat to be so sick? Maya had been beside herself with worry. And so had her brother. Connor had only left to catch fish for them or take down a tapir, or one time a caiman, and then she had prepared their meals. Otherwise, he had stayed by Kat’s side, trying to cool her down and keep her hydrated. He had barely let Maya take care of her.
Maya studied Kat’s bullet wounds, tracing the scarred tissue. She wondered if the jaguar healing genetics would heal the tissue, making it like new again, when she was able to turn Kat. Did the injuries ever trouble Kat? Maya hoped she could cure her of anything that might cause her difficulty. When Kat was better, Maya intended to ask her subtly about her injuries and what had happened when Connor had taken care of her.
Connor had tired of questioning Kat about her family, so Maya took up where he had left off. Maya’s questions were more important, though. “Where’s your family? Do you have a husband? Boyfriend? Fiancé?”
Kat shook her head no, moaned as if moving her head like that made it hurt, and then closed her eyes. Was that a no? No what? No husband, boyfriend, fiancé, or family?
Maya had been in such a panic to try and turn Kat quickly before Connor caught her that she hadn’t thought of the repercussions. Kat would have to dump a husband, boyfriend, or fiancé if she had any of those.
Maya drew nearer to the bed shrouded in mesh netting, poked her hand inside, and then held Kat’s hot hand. She stroked Kat’s hand with her thumb. “I always wanted a sister,” Maya said quietly.
Kat’s eyes opened, and despite their bleariness, Maya swore that Kat seemed to focus more on her eyes this time.
“Kat,” Maya quickly said, still in the same hushed voice, “do you have family?”
Kat shook her head, almost imperceptibly. Maya’s heartbeat and breathing increased rapidly. She wanted to shout for joy. Kat was an orphan, and she would be Connor’s mate.
And Maya’s family, too. She couldn’t wait for Connor and Kat to have cubs. To cuddle a couple of rambunctious, curious cubs in her arms. Maybe as many as four. She would help Kat raise them—just like a good aunt would. Not that Kat would birth a litter of jaguar cubs. She would probably birth them as a human, like their mother did them. Then they would shift when they were little whenever their mother did.
Her mother had later explained to Maya—as kind of a birds-and-the-bees lecture—that the shifter chose which form she would take to have her offspring. And the cubs would change with the mother’s shifting until they were older and understood the risk of shifting whenever humans were around.
Yes! This was j
ust too good to be true. Then Kat could help Maya find a mate since Connor hadn’t been looking all that hard.
“Kat, you don’t have a brother, do you?”
Kat closed her eyes.
No brother. No family. Of course, no brother.
“No boyfriend, right?”
But Kat appeared to be sleeping now. Maya looked around, listening for any sound that her brother was nearby, and heard nothing but jungle noises—the birds and bugs and monkeys. She got up from her chair and walked over to each of the windows, looking for any sign of Connor. None. She and Kat were perfectly alone.
She returned to the bed, and for the first time since she had scratched Kat, Maya pulled aside the bedcover and moved Kat’s leg to see if it was still scratched or if the scratches had faded away like a shifter’s would.
They were angry and red and looked infected. Maya sucked in a breath, held back tears, and wanted to sob out loud. She had only wanted a sister, a mate for Connor. Because of the jungle conditions, she might have infected Kat, giving her a slow and painful death instead.
***
Lightning flashed in the heavens above and thunder rumbled all around them as the afternoon rain steadily tapped on the thatched roof of the hut and the broad leaves of the surrounding trees. The rainwater funneled ever downward toward the jungle floor beneath the hut, which was situated high above the ground on stilts. Connor sat beside a sleeping Kat, running a wet cloth over her bare arm while his other hand held hers in reassurance. Though he wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure her… or himself.
The next day, she was still hot, still tossing and turning, still half out of her head.
How horrible Maya had to have felt when he’d been sick. At the time, he hadn’t comprehended why she’d alternately been so upset and angry with him. But now seeing Kat so ill, he felt the same fear surging through his blood. Though their shifter genes helped to heal them, some wounds could be fatal for him and Maya, and some illnesses difficult to overcome. But Kat was only human.
He breathed in the dampness mixed with the faint fragrance of gardenias from the wet cloth, a mixture Maya had made from wildflowers and hand sanitizer, as he slid the cool, moist cloth over Kat’s shoulders and collarbone and throat.