Midnight Rising(7)

It didn’t matter he couldn’t remember placing it there, or that based on the mangled appearance of another of the cakes, he’d probably gone through this very exercise at least once before. He gathered up the supply of C-4 and carried them into the narrow mouth of the cave. He packed them into carved niches in the sandstone, just like Niko had told him to do. Then he went back into the cavern to retrieve the detonator.



Damn it!



The wires on the thing were all fucked up.



He had fucked them up. How? And when?



“Son of a bitch!” he roared, glaring down at the device, blind with a swift, sudden rage.



He felt dizzy with anger, his head spinning so badly it buckled his knees. He went down on the hard ground like his body was made of lead. He heard the detonator skid into the dust somewhere, but he didn’t reach for it. His arms were too heavy and his head was weightless, his consciousness floating, detached from reality, like his mind wanted to separate from the wreck of the body that caged it and fly away to escape.



A thick nausea pressed him down, and he knew if he didn’t work fast to get a hold of himself he was going to pass out.



It had been foolish to stop hunting all those weeks ago. He was Breed. He needed human blood for strength, for life. Blood would help him to stave off the pain and madness. But he could no longer trust himself to hunt without killing. He’d come too close, too many times, since he’d arrived here on this towering forest crag.



Too often on those few times he ventured out in hunger he’d nearly been seen by the humans living in the surrounding towns and villages. And since the explosion he’d survived in Boston a year ago, his was a face not soon forgotten.



Maldecido.



The word hissed at him from somewhere distant. Not the night outside, but from deep out of his past, in the language of his mother’s country.



Manos del diablo.



Comedor de la sangre.



Monstruo.



Even through the fog of his tormented mind, he recognized the epithets. Names he heard from his earliest childhood. Words that haunted him, even now.



The cursed one.



Devil’s hands.



Blood-eater.



Monster.



And so he was, more now than ever. Ironic that his life would begin in hiding, skulking like an animal among the night-dark woodlands and hills…only to end much the same way.



“Madre de Dios,” he whispered as he made a feeble, but failed grab for the detonator. “Please…let me end it.”





Dylan had barely set down her empty pilsner glass before another full one came to rest in front of her. It was the third round for the table since she’d arrived in the tavern and met up with her travel companions—this latest serving delivered with an extra-wide grin from the young man tending the bar.



“With my compliments, ladies,” he announced in thickly accented English, one of the few locals in the rural village who spoke anything more than Czech or German.



“Oh, my goodness! Thank you, Goran,” Janet exclaimed, giggling as she surrendered her empty for a fresh glass of frothy amber beer. “What a dear you are, telling us all about your lovely town and now bringing us free drinks. You really don’t have to do this.”



“My pleasure,” he murmured.



His friendly brown eyes lingered the longest on Dylan, which she might have taken as a bigger compliment if her companions weren’t all qualified for AARP membership. Dylan herself probably had five to ten years on the boyishly handsome barkeep, but that didn’t stop her from working his obvious attraction to her best advantage.



Not that she was interested in drinks or dating. It was Goran’s talk of the surrounding mountains and their various lore that held Dylan captivated. The young Czech had grown up in the area, and had spent a good amount of time exploring the very range where Dylan had been climbing that morning.



“It’s so beautiful here,” Nancy told him. “The tourist brochure didn’t lie; this truly is a paradise.”



“And such a vast, unusual terrain,” Marie added. “I think we’d need a whole month to see everything out there. Too bad we have to return to Prague tomorrow.”



“Yes, that is too bad,” Goran said, directing the comment at Dylan.



“What about caves?” She’d been trying to gather details for her story without being too conspicuous, knowing that the locals probably wouldn’t appreciate the fact that she’d ventured off the established trails to climb the mountains on her own. “I saw a few caves marked on our map, but I imagine there’s a lot more out there. Even some that haven’t been uncovered yet, stuff that’s not open to the public?”