Feeling suddenly stifled in the room, she logged off and went outside. The firefighter in her felt compelled to check that the fire was at no risk of spreading to the surrounding jungle. It wasn’t that she didn’t think the men knew what they were doing as much as she needed the excuse to get out of the building and do something.
“Ms. Weber.” Dirk Adams inclined his head when she walked up to him a few minutes later.
“Lanie, please.” She walked upwind of the smoke, wanting to avoid the stench. Doing a cursory visual inspection to assure herself that it was a controlled fire, she averted her gaze, preferring to focus on Dirk’s face rather than the charred bodies being consumed by the flames.
“Where’s our boy?”
Lanie smiled. Given Mac’s size and personality, she wasn’t sure “boy” was the right description for him. “He’s sleeping. I’m not sure he’s recovered from his attack,” she hurriedly added, not wanting this man to think any less of Mac.
Dirk nodded, but his expression grew concerned as he studied her. “How are you doing?”
“I’m . . .” She paused, not really sure how she was doing. Dirk apparently seemed to understand because he gave her a sympathetic smile.
They stood in silence until the fire died down. Two men, one with a shovel and another holding the garden hose, stood nearby, ready to douse the last of the embers when needed. Beside her, Dirk checked his watch and Lanie thought he looked anxious. “Is something wrong?”
He glanced at her as if trying to decide what to tell her. “One of my men, Hector Munoz, is missing. He never came back from our search for Burton. A couple of the guys found what was left of his shirt lying in a patch of mangled underbrush. It was ripped to shreds and covered in blood. I sent another group out to look for him, but I don’t hold out much hope. This part of the jungle is largely unknown.” He fell silent for a moment, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. Then he glanced at his watch. “It’s almost noon and we’ll have to leave soon.”
“What about your man?”
Dirk’s jaw tightened as he took a breath and let it out. “I don’t think there’s anything left of him to find.”
She nodded, understanding. Burton and her father weren’t the only wild creatures lurking out there.
“You might want to wake Mac. He said he wanted to get to the airfield before dark, and if we don’t leave soon, we won’t make it.”
Lanie returned to the room and found that Mac hadn’t moved. The sound of his breathing came slow and steady.
“Mac, it’s time to wake up.” She spoke softly, so as not to startle him, but he didn’t budge.
“Mac?” She raised her voice a little, but still he didn’t stir. Laying her hand on his arm, she shook him gently—then again, but more forcefully.
Nothing seemed to penetrate his sleep. Frustrated, she crossed the room to the windows and threw open the curtains to let the sunlight in. Before she could turn around, she heard a strangled cry, followed by a loud thump. Whipping around, Lanie saw that Mac was gone, the rumpled sheets of the bed the only evidence that he’d been there.
“Mac?”
“What the hell are you doing?” His strangled yell came from the floor on the far side of the bed where she couldn’t see him. “Trying to blind me?”
Lanie looked around at the room’s soft, warm glow and frowned. “It’s not that bright in here.”
“The hell it’s not. Close the damn curtains. It’s killing my eyes.”
This time, she heard the pain in his voice and hurried to comply. “Okay, they’re closed.” She went around to the far side of the bed and dropped to her knees next to where he sat with his hand covering his eyes.
Through his parted fingers, she saw him crack open a lid experimentally before pulling his hand away. Lanie noticed that his eyes were red and bloodshot. “Are your eyes usually this sensitive to the light?”
“No,” he grumbled.
Lanie added one more item to her growing list of concerns about Mac, but didn’t pursue the matter with him. Instead, she changed the subject. “Dirk said we’re leaving within the hour for the airfield.”
Mac nodded. “Okay, let’s get packed.”
Lanie looked around the room, seeing all her father’s things. Leaving them behind was like saying good-bye to him all over again. Mac must have realized what she was feeling because he heaved a sigh, stood up, and walked to the closet where he found one of her father’s small suitcases.
“Come on,” he said, laying it open on the bed. “We can’t take it all, so only pack the important stuff. I’ll arrange to have the rest of it shipped to you.”
She wanted to hug him, but settled for a heartfelt “Thank you.” The room was small and she was able to go through the contents quickly. In the end, she settled for taking her father’s journal, several books, his favorite sweater, the laptop—and his pipe, which she found tucked into the pocket of his sweater.
Mac spent the majority of the ride back to the airfield thinking about all the changes to his body. What at first had seemed like a simple reaction to a rude awakening had turned out to be a legitimate hypersensitivity to sunlight. Not only was he having to wear his sunglasses outside, but earlier, with all the light streaming in through the windows, inside the facility as well.
Running his tongue across his teeth, he experimentally touched each one to see which ones had been knocked loose. Strangely, only the two upper canines moved freely. How was it possible for the animal to hit him in the jaw in such a way that only those two teeth were affected?
Mac stopped his inspection when he felt Lanie watching him. He blanked his expression but refused to meet her eyes, keeping his own fixed squarely on the road ahead. He knew she was worried about him, but not because she cared. It was because she thought he was turning into a vampire.
Mac wanted to scoff. The idea was absurd, ludicrous. Absolutely friggin’ crazy. So why didn’t he feel like laughing?
Damn Burton, he thought, and damn that chupa—whatever the hell it was called. Instead of driving Lanie back to the airfield and flying her home, he should be out scouring the jungle. However, being retired from the service meant he had no right to stay behind at a government facility, nor did he have the authority to order a full team of SEALs to fly down and search the jungle for him. The best he could hope for was to convince Admiral Winslow that Burton was . . .
Was what? A vampire? Mac almost snorted out loud at that imagined conversation.
Without the many stops they’d made on the trip out, the trip back to the airfield took much less time. Even with the time savings, though, they arrived after the sunset.
Mac pulled up to the main building, wanting to get them cleared for takeoff and under way as soon as possible. He was digging papers out of the glove compartment when Lanie spoke for the first time since they’d gotten into the Jeep.
“Where is it?”
He glanced up to see her perplexed expression. “Where’s what?”
“The plane.”
His gaze shot over to the stretch of tarmac where he’d parked his plane. It wasn’t there. Thinking that the ground crew had moved it, he scanned the area, but still saw no sign of it. Twenty minutes later, Mac verified that the plane was nowhere on the grounds. It had disappeared.
He could think of only one man who might have need of his plane and was capable of taking it without anyone noticing until it was rolling down the runway.
Lance Burton.
Lance checked the dials and adjusted the plane’s altitude. Damn, it felt good to be in the pilot’s seat again—literally. He laughed at his own private joke, wishing he could have seen Knight’s face when he discovered his plane gone. He wondered how long it would take Knight to realize who’d stolen it. Probably not long, he admitted. Knight wasn’t stupid.
This time, however, his former commanding officer had no idea what he was up against. Even without looking around, Lance sensed the presence of the professor sitting in the back, watching over the dead
body of Hector Munoz. The two creatures were curled up farther back in the plane, resting quietly. The psychic bond that linked the adult chupacabra to Lance and the professor was an unexpected advantage. It allowed him to control the creature’s actions. It was like having his own attack dog—only on a much more lethal scale.
Dr. Weber’s theory was that during an attack, the chupacabra exchanged both venom and blood with its victim and that’s what caused the psychic link between them. An added advantage, in Lance’s opinion, was that the link extended to all victims of the same creature, so not only was he linked to the creature itself, Lance was linked to Dr. Weber—and he’d be linked to Hector, as soon as his old friend arose from the dead.
He only hoped they reached their destination before then. The memory of the gnawing hunger that had assaulted him on his awakening still plagued him, and he knew Hector would need a lot of blood, at first, to slake his own appetite.
He didn’t really anticipate any problems arriving at their destination, though. They’d flown most of the way the night before. Tonight’s trip shouldn’t take long at all.
Lance banked the plane, his mind moving to his plans for the future. The key to success was not lamenting what happened to him, but turning what happened to his advantage. And Lance intended to do exactly that. Things that he’d only dreamed of before now suddenly seemed very possible.
Damn, it was good to be alive, in an undead kind of way.
Chapter 7
Lanie sat in the back of the plane, too tired and stressed to worry about it crashing. Dirk’s jet was government issue, larger and in better shape than the one she and Mac had flown down, which also helped allay some of her fears. She gazed toward the front where Mac sat, talking to the other man. Dirk had offered them a ride as soon as he learned what happened, but now they were headed to Washington, D.C., not Houston. There simply hadn’t been enough time to make the detour.
Mac had spent the first part of the trip notifying both the U.S. military and the civil authorities about the theft of his plane, although he held little hope that they’d find it—at least not with Burton still aboard. Now Mac, Dirk, and the others were sharing “war” stories, which Lanie had listened to with interest, for a while.
Unlike Mac, who seemed full of energy, Lanie was exhausted, and it didn’t take long before the steady drone of the engines and voices lulled her to sleep. She awoke sometime later to find that Mac had taken a seat across from her and was on his phone, speaking in soft, warm tones. A jolt of jealousy shot through her when she realized who he must be talking to, and she quickly fought to suppress the unwanted emotion. She had no right to feel that way.
When he’d finished his conversation and hung up, he looked over at her and smiled. “You weren’t asleep very long.”
She gave him a small smile. “I don’t enjoy flying.”
“I happen to know that a couple of pain pills mixed with tequila will make you forget all about flying.”
She laughed softly and shook her head. “Tempting, but I think I’ll pass.”
He shrugged. “If you change your mind . . .”
“Thanks. So what happens when we get to D.C.?”
“We’ll make better time in this craft than in a commercial one, but it’ll still be after midnight when we land, so the first thing we’ll do is check into a hotel and try to get some quality sleep. Tomorrow morning, I want to meet with Admiral Winslow, and I was hoping I could talk you into going with me. I think I’m going to have trouble convincing him.” For the first time, he seemed unsure of himself.
“Uncle Charles and my dad used to spend hours talking about cryptids and various theories to explain them. He might be more receptive than you think, but I’ll be glad to go with you.”
“Great. After we talk to him, I probably need to stick around a couple of days. There’s still the matter of the inquiry, even if Burton isn’t here to testify. I’ll make arrangements to have you flown back to Houston. I was going to ask Keith, my partner, to come pick you up in that Falcon 2000 you admired back at my place.”
She remembered the day they left, which now seemed so long ago. “You know, I really don’t mind taking a commercial flight.”
He gave an understanding smile. “Okay. I’ll buy you a ticket.”
“I can—”
He held up his hand to interrupt her. “I insist.”
She smiled. “Okay. Thank you.” A big yawn stole over her and she covered her mouth, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Amusement lit his eyes as he stood up. “I think I’m going to leave you alone so maybe you’ll be able to fall back asleep.”
She watched as he returned to the front where Dirk sat. Soon the sound of their joking floated back to her, but despite being tired, she couldn’t seem to relax. Her mind worried over the little changes she’d noticed in Mac—the way he felt compelled to wear the sunglasses even indoors, the way he’d lifted her father’s suitcase full of books as if it weighed nothing, the total absence of his limp, his two loose teeth. She didn’t like the nature of the changes; they were too suggestive of what had happened to Burton and her father. If her fears were justified and Mac was turning into a vampire, she’d have to do something to deal with the situation. The question was—did she have it in her to put a stake through Mac’s heart?
An hour after they landed at Andrew’s Air Force Base, their taxi pulled into the circle drive of their hotel. They checked in at the front desk and found that Dirk had already called ahead to make reservations. Apparently Dirk was unclear about the exact nature of their relationship, so he’d played it safe and booked her and Mac connecting rooms. Lanie supposed that Dirk didn’t know about Babycakes.
The bellhop brought up what little baggage she had—her duffel bag, her father’s small suitcase, and the laptop. Mac tipped him and followed the man next door, leaving Lanie to stare about the room, feeling suddenly wound tight. Before she could decide what to do, a knock sounded at the connecting door.
“I’m starving,” Mac said when she opened her door. “How about a real meal? My treat.”
She knew she should say no, order room service, and enjoy a nice quiet meal. The last thing she needed to do was get to know him better. It was harder to stake someone you knew—and liked, wasn’t it? “Okay.”
“Great. The bar and grill downstairs is open all night—how ’bout we give that a try?” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Will it take you long to get ready?”
“No.” Lanie wouldn’t have known how to take hours to primp if her life depended on it. Besides, at two-thirty in the morning, the only thing that would make her look better was sleep.
Grabbing her purse off the desk chair, she slipped the strap over her shoulder and joined him at the door. “Ready.”
He stared at her in amazement and then a smile lit his face. “Let’s go.”
They had no trouble finding a table, and both ordered drinks as they waited for the waitress to take their food orders. Having been with Mac only under unusual circumstances, it seemed strange to suddenly find herself sitting with him in a restaurant having a normal meal.
“I am really hungry,” he said, staring at the menu. “I think the only food I’ve had in days was those sandwiches you made, not that I wasn’t damn glad to have them.” He glanced at her over the top of the menu, his eyes alight with a smile. “Know what you want?”
She considered her choices, thinking that she should do the ladylike thing and order the small salad. Screw it, she thought.
As soon as the waitress arrived, Lanie ordered a burger and fries. After handing the waitress her menu, she gazed about the room while Mac placed his order. Once the waitress had left, they resumed their conversation.
“So you retired after the bullet broke your femur?” she asked.
“Yeah—it was a self-initiated medical retirement. I regained the use of my leg after months of physical therapy, but it wasn’t one hundred percent.”
“You didn’t have to retire, though, did you? Was
n’t there something else you could have done?”
“Special-ops soldiers don’t do so well in the regular military; it’s a whole different mind-set and training. If I couldn’t be a SEAL, then I didn’t want to be in the Navy. So I retired.”
She nodded. “I understand that. What made you decide to fly private charters, as opposed to something else?”
“Like what?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. Don’t you special-ops guys usually start your own security agency when you quit the military?”
He laughed out loud. “You really need to check out the nonfiction section of your library more.” He winked to take the sting out of his words. “Seriously, I probably could have, but I wanted something that didn’t make me feel strapped down. I had my pilot’s license before I ever joined the Navy, and my old high school buddy, Keith Dey, was trying to start up the private charter gig, so I agreed to be his partner. I like it—there’s a freedom to be found in flying. It’s hard to describe.”
There were so many layers to this man, and Lanie felt like she was just beginning to see them.
“What made you become a librarian?” He grinned, reminding her of when they’d first met and she’d blurted out what she did for a living. “You seem to be into this, what was it again? Crypto—”
“Cryptozoology. It’s hard to make a living as a cryptozoologist. My father was a biochemistry professor at the local university for years. He taught classes and did consulting work for various drug and chemical companies. That’s how he earned a living. He did the cryptozoology on the side. The expeditions to find the various cryptids were done, for the most part, during spring, winter, and summer breaks.
“Then, as he became better known in the industry, people started paying him to do the cryptozoological stuff, and he eventually gave up the biochemistry. I, on the other hand, am not well known in the industry, and I’m not sure I’m that interested, but I knew I couldn’t live off my dad forever, so I needed to find something to do that I enjoyed, but that also paid the bills.” She smiled. “Becoming a librarian seemed the obvious choice. I started doing research for my dad at an early age. In fact, I knew the Dewey decimal system even before I knew how to spell Dewey decimal system.”
Out of the Night Page 9