He couldn’t trust his senses, and the total blackness disoriented him. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard his cheeks quivered, and then flicked his eyelids wide open. Still dark. He tried to rise, but his chest and head were sandbags. Sleep tugged at him from somewhere in the base of his skull and he found himself smiling.
Death in the line of duty. That wasn’t so bad.
Except Goodall had nothing to do with his current situation. Samford had been plucked from the ground like a trout on the hook end of a fishing line. Fighting the drowsiness, he searched the muddy avenues of his memory. Images fell against each other like a domino game played with funhouse mirrors:
The spurt of blood arcing from his shoulder.
The rush of air up his windpipe, his own scream taking forever to reach his ears.
Scabbed, gnarled fingers making a noose around his ankle.
The world going upside down.
The rake of branches across his face as he was lifted.
Down in the hole, the pale and confused oval of Castle’s upturned face.
The sweep of wind as he rose higher.
The river far below, cutting a silver thread between the rocky cliffs.
Then, his vision clotting to gray.
Waking up here.
Or maybe not awake.
Maybe he was dead. That would explain some things. But his chest rose and fell, his fingers moved, his eyes opened and closed. The numbness of the wound had worn off, and though the pain still wasn’t great, it was enough to remind him that his nerves still functioned. And, apparently, his blood still flowed.
Something clicked to his right, a distance of maybe ten feet away, maybe twenty. The acoustics were strange, the sound eliciting a single muffled echo, suggesting he was in an enclosed space. He held his breath for a few seconds, listening. When the sound wasn’t repeated, he exhaled though his nostrils. He was in a cave. That explained the stale air.
But he would have to be deep in the Earth to be without light. Even the gloomiest, most overcast night held the faint gray of obscured stars. Maybe he’d fallen into the hole while helping Castle and had been hit on the head, and a landslide had sealed him up like a pharaoh tucked under a pyramid. Goodall could have rigged some type of follow-up bomb. That would explain Samford’s lack of consciousness, but it didn’t explain those disturbing memories. He reached for his face, felt the smile still frozen on his lips, and ran his fingers over his scalp and around his skull. No lumps, no other wounds.
Besides the gouge in his shoulder and a little exhaustion, he was fine. Nothing to do but wait it out and recover his strength, then get up and explore. In the meantime, he could play over Goodall’s assessment and guess the bomber’s next move, because Castle would want to resume the hunt once they were both The clicking sound came again, closer. Five feet, maybe. He thought again of hibernating animals. Animals didn’t hibernate in the fall. This was the season they spent growing fat, packing on pounds for the long winter ahead.
Samford willed his lungs to work steadily, though his heart banged against his rib cage like a meth junkie in a jail cell. Quantico didn’t train for sensory deprivation. Being held captive in a mountain cave wasn’t one of the scenarios designed by the FBI theorists. But was he really captive?
If he weren’t so tired, he would find out.
The click again, and behind it, a sinister rasp.
A click to his left, above him. The cave must be larger than he’d first thought. Enough headroom to stand.
Another click, and farther away, another. A soft flutter, then another, erupting into flapping.
Wings.
Bats.
Samford relaxed a little. Of course there would be bats in a cave. The winged mammals were as ubiquitous as mice, and, unless they were infected with rabies, were utterly harmless. Their sonar would detect Samford’s movements and inform the creatures that Samford was much too large to serve as prey.
The flapping grew more agitated, and was strong enough to stir the fetid air of the chamber. Perhaps full dark was coming on outside and the brood of bats was preparing to alight as one, to sweep out of the cave’s opening in that iconic and primordial image that launched a hundred spooky movies. But those images had always been accompanied by frantic squeaking. Why were these so silent?
The next click, like fingernail on bone, was so close to his wounded shoulder that he felt its vibration.
The flapping became frenetic, and a leathery wing brushed his face. The fluttering hovered nearer, and there must have been dozens of them. He tried to picture their faces, those wrinkled slits where eyes should be, their moist gray noses, tiny teeth behind black lips. The image didn’t comfort him.
It was touching his shoulder now, not with a finger, but with something softer. Even with the numbness, he could feel its velvety texture, with just enough abrasion to tickle him. It was the moist, sandpapery flesh of a tongue, one much too large to belong to a bat.
The tongue played around his wound as if wielded by a lover in the early stages of oral sex. Samford, despite the horrifyingly pleasant sensation, would have slapped it away, but his arms had become as heavy as his head. The drowsiness returned, and his groin flooded with warmth. He had an erection.
The tongue teased, and there was something doubly disturbing about it. There was no breath behind it. Whether a bear, a fox, or an oversize bat, it should be panting as it licked.
A memory rushed up, the image of the thing that had borne him aloft and carried him to this chamber that would serve as his sepulchre.
The tongue found the heart of the wound and entered. It grew more vigorous, wiggling as it found the nourishment it sought. Lips smacked with sticky residue. Another tongue joined the first, the flapping became a percussive rattling, the air of the chamber buzzed with clicking, slithery movement.
Through it all, Samford kept smiling, even as he screamed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bowie had slept maybe three hours total, but he’d only dreamt of Connie once. In the rest of his dreams, he’d been running a kayak down the Unegama in a Class III stretch popularly known as “Beaver’s Lick.” Class III waters were challenging for a beginner, and even carried a slight risk of injury or death, but such a run was nothing to an experienced paddler. In the dream, however, everything went wrong. Bowie’s paddle acted as if it were stirring molasses, the kayak took on water, and he found himself broadsiding boulders and getting caught in ripples. Worse, it had begun to rain, and Bowie couldn’t seem to make shore.
He awoke before dark, more tired than rested, his legs and lower back sore from the hike. The best way to get loose was to get moving, so he rolled up his sleeping bag and carried his clothes into the woods. The first birds were mouthing off about the start of another great day in the wonderful world, and nocturnal animals scuffed leaves as they returned to their daytime hiding holes. Bowie stripped nude and was about to wriggle into his water- resistant SealSkinz when a twig snapped behind him.
He turned, squinting into the underbrush, instinctively dropping the loose clothing in front of his crotch. “Hello?”
Dove Krueger laughed. “Your ass is so white, I thought it was a full moon.”
“Very funny. What are you doing out here?”
“When nature calls, there’s only one answer.”
“It’s a half hour before sunup. Why don’t you get some more sleep?”
“I’m not sleepy,” she said, her voice closer now. The forest was expectant with the coming day, right on the threshold of full life, but for the moment, the world hung in that eerie half light between night and morning.
She stepped out of the shadows into the lesser gray, moved his hands away, and felt for him. Her breath was warm on his cheek, and though he couldn’t quite make out her face, he could picture it as plainly as a photograph. She had washed, and smelled earthy, like chamomile and mint.
“An early riser, like always,” she murmured with approval.
