“Stop,” she rasped, her voice weakened by the beating she’d taken and stolen by the wind. The pain in her broken face exploded again, bursts of brightly colored agony like fireworks in her brain. “Someone…”
From the corner of her eye, in the strange blue-white darkness of the storm, she saw a body on the ground. Darvill, one of her students. The long, thin limbs and shaggy beard were unmistakable, so she recognized him instantly. He’d been on sentry duty tonight.
If her brains hadn’t been scrambled by those punishing blows, she’d have sorted it out more swiftly. But now she knew.
Momentum picked up, and then she was sliding sideways, shushing against the snow until the swing lifted her entirely off the ground. Helen felt a moment of weightlessness as she sucked in a lungful of air.
As she plummeted over the edge, she screamed at last.
Too late.
TWELVE
Walker stands on the shore of the lake with an AR-15 in his hands, scanning the misty surface of the water. It ripples with a light breeze and he holds his breath, watching each tiny wave. The water is always warm, though the air is chilly. They are atop a volcanic mountain in Guatemala, three thousand meters above sea level, and the lagoon is an idyllic paradise of water and jungle born inside a volcanic crater. The mist atop the water might very well be steam. Walker hasn’t clarified that with his geologist yet. He’s been more focused on talking to the biologist about the things that have been slithering out at night and dragging the locals into the lake.
Witnesses describe them as nightmares. Serpentine bodies, long arms, hooked talons, and the teeth. All who’ve seen them mention the teeth.
Those they’ve taken eventually wash up on the shore of the lake, pale and bloated and drained of blood. The word “vampire” has come up several times, but Walker has laid down the law. Anyone who uses the word again is off his team, permanently. So they don’t speak the word anymore, but he can’t banish it from their minds. Only capturing or killing one of these fucking things will do that. Capture will be better. A previously unknown species showing up in such a remote location is a fascinating anomaly, and there will be a long study to determine their origin. His best guess is from inside the volcano itself, that the water goes deeper than anyone knew, through some kind of crack in the lake bottom. But none of that matters right now. Not when they’ve already killed three members of his team.
It’s nearly dawn. He whispers the names of members of his team who began this long night at his side but whom he has not seen for hours. As far as he knows, he is alone. So the chill of the night breeze and the mist off the lake makes him think of lonely nights afraid in his boyhood bed, when his father would insist that only babies needed their mommies in the middle of the night. Dreams were just dreams and he needed to grow up.
He’s nearly been killed seven times in his career. Walker is not afraid. Despite the chill and the mist and the fact that his team has vanished and he is alone, he is not afraid. But little Ben—his mom had called him Benny—that boy is terrified. Every breath he takes seems to have its own claws, and they drag inside his chest and cut him up with fear.
“Anyone?” he offers up to the predawn mist, and he hates how pitiful he sounds.
A splash out on the lake makes him freeze. Squinting to see through the mist, he takes a step into the water. Only ankle-deep, it’s too shallow for them to hide, but still his pulse quickens. The darkness has turned that shimmering blue that exists only in the hour before dawn.
The mist eddies and begins to thin, just enough for him to make out an object on the surface of the lake.
He narrows his eyes, shuddering as he makes out the shape of it.
Not an object at all, it’s a head, just barely above the surface.
A face, eyes glistening in the mist.
Human.
The curtain of mist draws back and in that blue darkness, Walker can’t take his eyes off of that face.
“No,” he whispers, and he takes another step into the water, heedless now of the danger.
He’s been holding off, not wanting to draw their attention, but now he clicks on the light attached to his weapon, and the tight, powerful beam finds that face. The eyes blink, but the fear in those eyes… etched in that face… the sight of that fear just about kills him.
“Daddy?” Llittle Charlie calls to him, his voice slithering across the water.
Little Charlie. Like Little Benny. Two little boys, filled with fear.
“It’s got me, Daddy,” Charlie says, his voice a hitching whimper. “I can feel it down there, holding on. My legs are cut. It’s got… I think it’s got its teeth in me.”
Walker wants to scream his son’s name but the sound won’t come out. He feels as if he’s turned to stone, but still he forces himself to move another step, the beam of light from his weapon trained on Charlie’s face… his weapon beamed on Charlie’s face.
The boy whimpers again and then he jerks in the water, causing a little splash, like something has tugged him from below. He calls out for his father again and now Walker can see the tears on his cheeks. Worse than the tears, worse than the fear, he watches the spark of hope extinguish in his son’s eyes. This little boy, only nine, knows he is going to die now.
That he is dying at this very moment.
“I love you, Daddy,” Charlie whispers, the words gliding along the water’s surface.
But Walker doesn’t hear “I love you.” He hears “good-bye.”
And it breaks him.
“Charlie, no!” he snaps, and he wades into the water.
Wades deep. Not caring what might happen to him or what’s happened to his team or the villagers. This is his son. The good thing he’s done, the gift he’s given the world that is meant to survive long after he’s gone.
He screams now.
A hand rises, dripping, from the water, and long fingers wrap around Charlie’s face. Walker can only see one of his eyes now, as Charlie begins to scream. The hand drags him down so slowly that the boy has time to call for his daddy one last time before the water enters his wide-open mouth and he is choking on it, drowning, just the top of his head and that eye and that horrid hand on him.
The thing rises up from the lake even as it drowns the boy. Its eyes glitter like cold orange embers. This is not the same as the monsters in the water. This is something else…. something worse.
Through the mist, Walker can see its horns….
He woke sweating, despite the cold. Woke with a shout that startled Father Cornelius, who lay on the other side of the tent. Woke swearing, and then rolled over onto his side, legs pulled up tight against his body.
Walker whispered his son’s name once, twice, and again, grateful to whatever gods there were that the boy was safe at home and not here with him. Not in the ark with the horned thing that had invaded his dreams.
Somehow it had infiltrated Walker’s mind, and he’d felt it there, even while he was sleeping. It knew him now and he knew at least a tiny sliver of it. He’d felt its evil, and no matter what happened, he could not let it get down off the mountain. The evil had been unearthed, but it could be contained.