Midnight Rising(10)
Where had he gone? She slid a glance at the large, open crypt a few feet away.
“Look, I know you’re in here. It’s okay. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she added, even though it seemed absurd that she should be reassuring him. The guy had to be more than six feet tall, and even from the brief glimpse she’d gotten of him, she noted that his long arms and legs were thick with muscle. But his broken crumple on the floor of the cave had emanated pain and despair. “Are you hurt? Do you need some help? What’s your name?”
No reply. Not a sound of any kind.
“Dobrý den?” she called, trying to reach out to him with her pitifully limited knowledge of Czech. “Mluvíte ánglicky?”
No such luck.
“Sprechen zie Deutsch?”
Nothing.
“Sorry, but that’s about all I’ve got unless you want me to break out some of my rusty junior high Spanish and really embarrass myself.” She pivoted with her flashlight, angling it upward as she scanned the high walls of the cavern. “Somehow I don’t think ¿Como esta usted? is going to get us any further here. Do you?”
As she slowly turned, the light glanced off a jutting ledge high above her head. Some ten feet up was a sheer, arcing rise of sandstone. No way anyone could get up there.
Or was there…?
No sooner had she thought it than the thin stream of light shooting up to the ledge began to flicker. It dimmed steadily, then went utterly dark.
“Shit,” Dylan whispered low under her breath. She banged the barrel on her palm a couple of times before somewhat frantically attempting to turn the damn thing on again. Despite fresh batteries installed before she left the States, the light was dead. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Engulfed in total blackness, Dylan felt the first twinge of unease.
When she heard the scrape of rock overhead, every nerve in her body went tense. There was a long beat of silence, followed by the sudden crunch of booted feet hitting solid earth as whoever—or whatever—had been hiding in the shadows above now dropped to the floor of the cave beside her.
She smelled like juniper and honey and warm summer rain. But beneath all that was a sudden, citrusy spike of adrenaline now that he was near her. Rio circled the woman in the dark of the cave, seeing her perfectly while she stumbled in the abrupt lack of light. Her feet carried her backward…only to connect with a wall of stone at her spine.
“Damn it.”
She swallowed audibly, pivoting to try another tack, then swore again as her useless flashlight slipped out of her fingers and clinked on the hard floor of the cave. Rio had burned precious energy in mentally extinguishing the device. Manipulating objects by thought was a simple Breed talent, but in his current weakened state, Rio didn’t know how long he could hold it.
“Um, you’re probably not in the mood for company,” the woman said, her eyes wide in the darkness as they darted left and right, trying to locate him. “So, I’m just going to leave now, okay? Just gonna…walk right out of here.” A nervous moan caught in her throat. “God, please, where is the frigging way out of this place?”
She took a step to the right, edging along the cavern wall. Away from the exit, although Rio saw no point in telling her that just yet. He kept moving, trailing her deeper into the cave, trying to decide what to do with his repeat intruder. When he’d first awakened, startled to find he was still alive and not alone, he’d reacted on instinct—a vulnerable beast fleeing to the safety of the shadows.
But then she’d started talking to him.
Coaxing him out, even though she could not have known how dangerous a proposition that really was. He was furious and half-mad in the head, a deadly enough combination on its own, but being near the female now reminded him that even though he was broken, he was still very much male.
To his marrow, he was still Breed.
Rio breathed in more of the female’s scent, finding it hard to resist touching her pale, rain-dampened skin. Hunger flooded him—hunger he hadn’t known for some long time. His fangs surged from his gums, the sharp points jabbing the soft flesh of his tongue. He was careful to keep his eyelids low over his eyes, knowing the topaz-colored irises would soon be awash in the glow of fiery amber, his pupils thinning to vertical slits as the thirst for blood rose in him.
That she was young and beautiful only deepened his desire to taste her. He wanted to touch her…
He flexed his hands, then fisted them at his sides.
Manos del diablo.
He could hurt her with those hands. The strength given him by his vampire genes was immense, but it was Rio’s other skill—the terrible talent he’d been born with—that could do the most damage here. With a centered thought and a simple touch, he could draw away human life in an instant. Once he’d come to understand his power, Rio had managed it with judicious, rigid control. Now anger ruled his deadly gift, and the blackouts he suffered since the warehouse explosion had made it impossible for him to trust himself not to do harm.