'I'm fine,' she snapped, but she still accepted his help in returning to her feet.
Jay gasped. What he had at first thought were tears were lines of blood pouring over her eyebrows from a gash across her hairline.
'What?' She dabbed at her forehead, winced, and drew her fingertips away bloody. 'Oh, great. This is absolutely perfect.'
'Just a second.' Jay shed his backpack and removed a tee-shirt from the main pouch. He raised it to her forehead and pressed it to the wound.
'You could have at least picked a clean one.'
'Would you just hold still already?'
She rested her hand on his and held the shirt in place. Her blue eyes met his around the cloth.
'Thank you,' she whispered. Her skin against his created an electric sensation that shot through his entire body. 'You've always been there for me, haven't you? Every step of the way.'
He could feel himself blushing and nervously retreated a step, slipping his hand out from beneath hers.
'Just keep pressure on that cut.' Even his voice trembled. 'We need to catch up with the others, and I don't think the path is the easiest route.'
'Neither do I.' She offered the bloody shirt as evidence before placing it back against the laceration. 'I'll bet if we stay just to the side of the path and cut through the trees we'll find more solid footing.'
'It couldn't be any worse.'
'Besides, it can't be much farther to the top.'
She struck off into the jungle, winding around massive trunks and using vines and branches to pull herself up the steep slope. Jay followed, shining the light over her shoulder, for all the good it did. The manly thing to do would have been to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to safety---or at least take the lead, for God's sake---but he wanted to capture as much of this moment on film as possible. She had let her guard down for just a moment, and only for him. Perhaps after all these years, his perseverance was finally about to pay off.
Twenty minutes of strenuous exertion passed before a shifting aura of light bloomed through the trees ahead.
'It's a fire,' Dahlia called back to him. 'It looks like they managed to light the torches.'
Another few steps and Jay could see the small flames and the flickering glow on the wall beyond them. A swell of relief passed through him. He didn't think his legs had the strength to carry him much farther.
Movement drew his eye to the forest to his right, where the branches of a cluster of saplings swayed gently.
'Are you coming or what?'
He turned at the sound of her voice. She stared back over her shoulder at him, poised to step from the thicket into the clearing. Had something changed in the way she looked at him?
'Yeah,' he said, spurring his aching feet toward the crest, where she waited for him at the tree line.
He panned the camera across the clearing. The entire area was awash with an amber glow from the row of torches, minus the darkened section where one of the stone columns had long ago collapsed, and the arches of shadows built into the fortifications.
'I don't know what you want to do with this,' she said, proffering his shirt.
'You can keep that.' He smirked. 'Consider it a gift.'
'You are far too generous.'
A large, broad-leaved shrub shivered beside them. A handful of flies buzzed softly from beneath its protective branches.
Jay shined the beam toward the source of the motion, shoving aside shadows to reveal the slender trunk and the tangles of branches. Several black flies swirled in the light. To the left, a pair of almost milky, bluish spheres appeared behind the dripping leaves.
'It's another one of those weird butterflies,' he said. 'They must not be that rare out here after all.'
He turned the camera toward the creature, and twin golden rings reflected the beam.
The pattern on the wings hadn't done that before. But he hadn't filmed the butterfly at night either.
Another bush shook to his right, diverting his attention.
When he looked back at the butterfly, its lower wings shifted to reveal---
They weren't wings at all.
The light reflected from interlocking rows of razor-honed teeth.
Jay barely had time to turn as vegetation was shredded and thrown into the air. A heavy object slammed into him from behind, driving him to the ground. Pain exploded between his shoulder blades and what felt like frozen spikes prodded through his muscles and between his ribs.
The camera fell from his hand and landed on its side. The beam glared blankly toward a snarl of underbrush, momentarily highlighting Dahlia's pale face. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened in surprise. A blur of brown and shimmering green, and she was thrown sideways beyond the light's reach.
Arcs of crimson trailed in her wake.
Something flailed at his back as more shadows raced in from the periphery. His whole body convulsed in agony. He threw back his head to scream, exposing his neck---
He heard a whistle of air and then a gurgle.
Scaled appendages flashed past.
Feathers.
Claws.
A rush of blood flooded across the mud into the camera's light as he was jerked with a crash into the bushes and the blackness waiting within them, which buzzed with the wings of flies.
Chapter Ten
I
Sam had been so focused on the tedious ascent and her own frustrations that she hadn't noticed when Dahlia and Jay fell behind. Galen had run ahead to relay the news that the river was impassable to the rest of their party in the camp. She and Merritt had already been waiting at the trailhead for more than fifteen minutes, during which they thought they'd heard a scream in the distance before it was silenced by a clap of thunder. It felt as though the entire world was crashing down around her. There was no place left to run. The aura of death hung over the mountain in a palpable cloud that promised only pain and suffering. Hunter and the rest of his party had been killed here, the most recent casualties in a chain that spanned centuries.
'The path leads straight here.' Merritt nearly had to shout to be heard over the storm. 'There's no way they could have gotten lost.'
'We need to go back for them. What if one of them fell and is lying there in the mud, injured and in need of help?'
The expression on Merritt's face suggested he feared as much, but at the same time, she too could feel the oppressiveness of the situation, the dire inevitability of what was to come. It was an electrical sensation in the air, like the tingling potential that raised the hairs on one's arms before a lightning strike.
'I'll go back for them,' Merritt said. 'You find the others and try to figure out some other way to get us off this mountain.'
'We can't split up. I'm staying with you.'
'The hell you are. I need to know that you're safe.'
The look in his eyes startled her. For the first time, all pretense of cockiness was gone and she recognized genuine fear.
