Midnight Shadows

by Nancy Gideon

  "I know I've had about enough of this."

  She started for the lodge in great, fierce strides. For a moment, she'd begun to hope Cobb wouldn't follow, but then she heard his soft tread and knew he wasn't about to let it go. Cobb was a bulldog when he got something between his jaws. He came up beside her and before she had the chance to shoot him a warning glare, he sunk his teeth in and gave her a shake.

  "What did you see, Sheba?"

  "Nothing,” she hissed. “Nothing. I don't know what he's talking about."

  His hand on her elbow forced her pace to slow, but her heart continued its frantic race.

  "Then why are you so upset?"

  She faced him, seething with fury and panic. “Because I don't like people trying to stick memories in my head. I don't know what he's talking about. How would he know what I saw or didn't see? He made it up to weasel an extra twenty from you. You know why there are so many myths and scary legends told decade after decade? Because there's a buck to be made out of it. There's always some sucker willing and waiting to buy in and be taken for a ride."

  "Where's this ride taking us, Doc?"

  "Out there.” She pointed into the jungle. “Out there where the stories can seem so real..."

  "What? So real, what?"

  "That you begin to believe them.” She continued to challenge him with her stare, with her aggressive stance that dared him to make more of it. Finally, she relented with a heavy sigh. “Leave it alone, Cobb. I've got packing to do if I'm going to be ready to leave in the morning."

  "We wouldn't want to keep Paulo waiting, would we?"

  She searched for some ulterior meaning in his quiet claim and, finding none, she simply pulled away. This time, he didn't follow.

  * * * *

  Dammit, what had she seen?

  Cobb watched her break into a coltish run in her hurry to escape him and the provoking questions he might ask.

  Tomorrow they were going into the jungle. If she was this fragile here, where they were still surrounded by at least the vestiges of civilization, what was going to happen when they were swallowed up in the primitive abyss? Would she crack wide open or just go quietly insane?

  Cross's story had touched a raw nerve. Had the man done it on purpose, just to play with her head, or was there fact behind what she steadfastly called fiction?

  Lemos believed it would be therapeutic for her to confront her fears. Samuels was worried.

  Cobb was afraid it would be suicidal.

  He started toward the lodge, his steps slow to suit the ponderous turn of his thoughts. Why wasn't anything ever easy? Why couldn't Suzanne Kenyon have been killed for the drugs she was so fond of, or maybe by a disgruntled employee tired of her abuse? Why couldn't it have been wild animals that tore the throat from Paco Ruis as he gathered wood for his fire? Why did he have to care if Sheba Reynard's mental status shivered like fine crystal about to shatter?

  All part of the job. Part of the damn job. A job he'd begun to hate because it was the only thing he was good at. Concealing emotions. Playing games. Sneaking. Lying. Even stealing. Great qualities suitable for no decent job he knew of. Except for being a spook. Except for working for places like Harper who didn't care how the job was done as long as the results were favorable.

  Perhaps it was time to tell Sheba Reynard what he was really after.

  Perhaps, for once, the truth should start with him.

  She was standing on the wraparound porch, her long, lean form silhouetted by the faint light coming from inside her room. He allowed himself a moment of sheer lustful indulgence, picturing her waiting there in the shadows for him in nothing but lace and fantasies. No, she wasn't Stacy Kimball with her sinful curves and aura of sensuality that drove a man into hormonal overload. Sheba was like glimpsing at a dream—basic, simple in its necessity, yet still just out of reach.

  Travel and work. What a pair they were. He wondered fleetingly how she would react if he suggested they chuck all their independence for a shot at the suburban ideal. Mortgage, dog, kids and all. Would that be so bad?

  Surprisingly, his usual skittishness failed to save him from further musings.

  A home, a hearth and a bed with Sheba Reynard in it. Not exactly hell on Earth.

  Now that he was close enough for her to see his face, he made sure none of his thoughts were apparent. He smiled thinly and was ready to let loose some irreverent banter when she spoke one word.

  "Frank."

  Alert in every fiber, he bolted up onto the porch beside her. God, she was as white as those water lilies.

  "Doc, what's wrong?"

  She stepped silently aside, and he strode past her into her room.

  The light in the bathroom was on, sending out just enough brightness to catch in sparkly flashes on the diamonds set in the bracelet on her bed.

  Suzanne Kenyon's ankle bracelet.

  Chapter Twelve

  There was really no doubt.

  The second he saw it glittering there, a mocking obscenity, Cobb knew it had to have come off the ankle of the dead woman. And he was just as certain about who had put it there for Sheba to find. He backed out of the room and shut the door. Sheba's wide doe-in-the-headlights eyes lifted to his when he took her a bit too roughly by the arm.

  "Come on."

  She didn't ask where. She just went with him. That docility was more troubling than her temper of moments before. He steered her inside his room and told her sternly to wait there. The luminescent blankness of her stare made him hesitate a fraction of a second before leaving her alone.

  He did a quick yet thorough sweep of her room. No sign of forced entry, nothing else out of place. No surprises. He knew the MO. The bracelet he lifted carefully and bagged, planning to take prints off it later. The eventual results would be no surprise either, he was willing to wager.

  And just as he was about to leave, he paused. Sheba's big suitcase was open.

  Wondering if it, indeed, held the kitchen sink, he drew closer. Someone had ransacked it. Wondering what else it might contain? He glanced in and frowned in surprise.

  Bibles. Bibles, hymnals and prayer books.

  It was her father's suitcase.

  These were his books, his lessons, his notes. And as much as she might protest against their beliefs, still she carried them with her everywhere she went.

  A bittersweet pang shot through his heart because he had nothing to carry to remind him of the past.

  He closed the lid and snapped the latches, letting his palm linger on the lid.

  "I'll take care of her, Reverend Reynard."

  After turning off the light and snatching up a big fluffy robe he found hanging on the bathroom door, he went next door, not sure what kind of shape he'd find his guest in.

  The shower was running.

  Okay, that was good.

  He locked his door, checked the windows with professional paranoia then, satisfied, went to stand by the closed bathroom door.

  Steam curled out from beneath the door.

  He knocked softly.

  "Doc?"

  No reply.

  He knocked louder, keeping the worry from his tone as he called, “Doc, you need anything?"

  Just the sound of the running water.

  He gave her a few more minutes, just for propriety's sake, pacing all the while as a bad feeling curled in the pit of his stomach. Finally, he gave in.

  With a loud rap on the door, he bellowed, “I'm coming in,” and did so.

  The small bathroom was filled with mist. It billowed over the top of the fern-patterned shower curtain like a volcano about to blow.

  No more time for modesty, his or hers.

  He pulled back the curtain and was momentarily taken aback to find no one standing beneath the forceful stream of water. Where the hell was she?

  Then a soft, snuffling sound directed his attention downward.

  She was sitting on the floor of the shower, naked, hugging updrawn knees, shaking like a wet kitten. Her fixed st
are never lifted as he reached to turn off the faucets.

  "Save any hot water for me?” he asked casually as he draped a towel about her quaking shoulders. “Nothing worse than an inconsiderate guest. Up you go."

  He tended to her as if she were a child, ignoring her nudity and keeping up the gently chiding chatter because it distracted her from it, too. While she stood there, breathing in quick snatches, dripping and shivering, he fetched her robe and bundled her inside it. Only then did he pat her dry with brisk, impersonal efficiency. The discarded towel he wrapped turban-like about her hair.

  "Okay, that's a sauna and a rub down. Sorry, I don't do pedicures."

  She blinked, focusing on him somewhat dully at first then with increasing awareness. She sucked a shuddering breath.

  "You saw it, too."

  "Yes, I did."

  "I'm not crazy."

  "No, you're not."

  She went limp against him. “Thank God. Thank God."

  With Sheba hanging off him like sagging wallpaper, Cobb returned to the main room, leading her over to the edge of the bed. He'd hoped to deposit her there, but instead of releasing him, she pulled him down onto the coverlet beside her. He surrendered with only a tiny voice of caution whispering in the back of his brain.

  This is not a good idea.

  Because she was still shivering like a Chihuahua, he kept her tucked close against his side and reached across her to pull the lightweight bedspread over the both of them. Her arms were about his neck like a choke chain and her breaths tickled against his neck in quick snatches, but when she spoke, her voice was almost steady.

  "The first thing I remembered was waking up to bright lights and unfamiliar faces. Imagine my surprise to find I was no longer in Peru but in Pennsylvania amongst strangers. They told me it was a private hospital, conveniently leaving out the word ‘mental.’”

  "Doc, you don't have to."

  She ignored his quiet protest. “They wouldn't tell me anything, not where my parents were, not what I was doing a world away from everyone and everything I knew. Everyone was just so ... nice about avoiding the subject. I never heard the word crazy. They called it more polite things, like traumatized, repressed memory, but not what it was. Nuts. Looney Tunes, isn't that what you said?"

  "Shh,” he whispered against her brow as his hand stroked the towel from her damp hair. His fingers threaded through the curling locks to anchor her head to his shoulder. But she didn't want to be soothed or subdued. She'd had years of that kind of helpful smothering. Her tone grew stronger.

  "Then when I'd ask about my parents, they'd answer with questions. What did I remember? Why didn't I tell them? I thought they were the insane ones. What was I supposed to tell them? I didn't know. I had no idea. Eventually, I learned that my parents had disappeared and were presumed dead. I thought they were lying to me at first. I don't know if I ever accepted it. I just pushed it deep down inside and focused on finding a way to escape the questions. Those questions, the same ones over and over. I learned to give them the answers they wanted to hear. And then I learned to act normal.” She smiled against his shoulder, the gesture small and grim.

  "I made it my goal to fool people into thinking I was normal, that nothing terrible had happened in my past, that past I couldn't remember. For a while, it worked. If I didn't get too close, if they didn't get to know me too well, if I kept on the move. But that meant I was always alone except for the calls and letters I'd get from Paulo and the occasional gifts from Sam. But the loneliness was better than being different, than the whispering once they knew. Once they knew, I couldn't pretend to fit in any more. Then it was time to move on. I guess that would be kind of hard for you to understand."

  She rode the vibration of his quiet chuckle.

  "Not hard at all. In fact, I understand better than you know.” When she started to lift her head, questions at ready, he pressed her damp curls back into the protective lee of his shoulder, saying, “But that's a story for another time."

  "Another time,” she echoed softly, sealing that promise to heart.

  For a moment they lay together, sharing heartbeats and even breaths while their secrets held them apart.

  "So,” he prompted at last, “what made you decide to become a myth-buster?"

  "The dreams started. I guess I'd had them all along but I started to remember them."

  How to describe their true terror to him when they had no real substance? The dark, the sweaty heat and drumbeats that she soon realized were from her own heart thundering in her ears. The smell of the dank, rotting jungle and that subtle metallic scent mingling vilely just beneath it. And the panic, rising like a tide, stirring up a drowning whirlpool of fear and desperation. Running but never escaping. Hiding, praying the horror would pass her by. The pain in her palm, the surprise of finding it was from the medallion cutting into her fingers from the pressure of her grip.

  And the eyes, glowing hot and red, penetrating the darkness like twin laser beams. Closer, closer to finding her tucked back beneath the fronds, with insects swarming the blood that coated her clothing and skin.

  "What are you running from, Sheba?” he asked gently.

  "For the longest time, I thought it was just symbolic, that I was running away from my fear of the unknown. My father told me there were no monsters, that the godless made them up to explain away their fears. How could I explain away what I believe I saw that night? So I spent the rest of my life trying to strike down those myths, trying to prove the monsters weren't real. Until I'd close my eyes at night and they'd be there waiting."

  She had tried therapy, drugs, even hypnosis but what she'd buried, she'd buried too deep to be reached by mortal or medical means. What she'd buried was like the jungle, layer upon layer upon layer until there was no sense of solid ground.

  "It was easier to think it was madness,” she said at last. “It was easier to attack the very thing I was afraid of because every victory made me feel stronger, more ready."

  "For what?"

  "For this. All my earlier work was leading up to this, to confronting the one monster I could never explain away. Until I do, until I meet it head on, I'll never be truly strong."

  He was silent for a time, his hand moving absently through her hair while he mulled his silent thoughts with the same restless repetitions.

  "What if the monster's real, Doc?"

  "Of course it's real. I know that now. It's someone hiding behind those legends Cross spins so well. And that someone killed my parents.” Her tone toughened at that last claim, becoming hard as steel.

  "Sheba, what if the monster is real?"

  She did lift her head then in order to meet his gaze directly. Hers expressed her scorn and disbelief. And yet there were shadows lurking behind the bravado. Shadows he hated like hell to bring out into the open.

  "It's real,” he repeated.

  She reacted with a snorting laugh. “Real, as in the Fanged Deity the Indians worshiped before the Incas? Oh come on, Cobb, you can do better than that."

  But his expression remained somber and his stare unblinkingly sincere. “Sheba, there are monsters, and I know this one by name."

  She tried to laugh it off but the attempt at humor lodged in her throat, a hard, choking lump of horrible truth. Because she knew Cobb was not lying to her. But to say she believed him was to let her own personal demons loose. And she wasn't ready for that yet.

  "I've heard a lot of different names, Cobb. Which one are you picking?"

  "Vampire."

  Chapter Thirteen

  She was silent for a long beat, and he thought she was actually considering it.

  "Vampire,” she mused. “I haven't heard that one for a while.” Then her tone went dry as Lima's desert. “Really, Frank, I would have thought you'd be more original."

  "How's this for originality?"

  He seized her hand, his grip far from gentle as he placed her fingertips upon his savagely scarred cheek. He pulled her hand along that angled wound so she
could feel how very real every stitch had been.

  "A myth didn't do that, Sheba. A man didn't do that. A vampire did. His name is Quinton Alexander, and he's in Peru. You asked me what I was doing here. I came to do my own monster hunting.” He paused. “You're speechless. I believe that's a first."

  Sheba sat up, pulling her hand away from his warm, yet so obviously damaged face. Tugging the covers about her as if they'd shield her from the truth he was trying to force upon her, she shook her head.

  "There are no such things."

  Cobb came up on his elbow to regard her with a wry smile. “Oh, I would have been the first to agree with you there. Once upon a time."

  "Talk to me, Cobb. And make it damned convincing."

  So he told her about his previous job, that of spying upon a brilliant geneticist by the name of Stacy Kimball whose work for Harper Research was being funded by a reclusive Seattle billionaire and studied by the U.S. government for potential military application. Her field was genetic alteration and repair. And her test subject was Louis Redman, billionaire vampire. Both had a keen interest in the results—Redman to find a cure for his preternatural ailment, Stacy for a more deadly disease, that of cancer.

  And in spite of herself, Sheba was fascinated, drawn into the tale, suspending disbelief as Frank Cobb presented it with all the factual blandness of reading a police report. That was what made it so frighteningly real.

  "There'd been a series of attacks on women along the waterfront, attacks that escalated into murders. It was from a study of their DNA patterns that the Doc got on the trail of possible blood chemistry repair. I'm not a scientist, so I can't give you all the whys and wherefores, but the sample she found led her to suspect Redman was the killer ... a five-hundred-year-old killer. They made a business arrangement. If Stacy could study him for the potential good of mankind, she would try to cure him."

  "So where did you fit in?"

  "It was my job to keep her alive long enough to do it. You see, the real killer took a shine to the Doc and started leaving her little tokens from each of his victims."

  Sheba shivered at the significance. “Like the ankle bracelet."