Levitating a moment, he found he could perceive the boundaries of this prison. He couldn’t explain it. All psychological knowledge had left him, years of training and study washed down an invisible drain along with his soul. He didn’t need to explain it.
He could hear the slanted walls, the rubble strewn on the subterranean cavern floor, stalagtites dangling overhead like icicles frozen in the slow melt of aeons. Hear in a way he had never known, with a deeper and more basic understanding of his surroundings. At Quantico, he’d practiced with infrared goggles and thermal imaging systems, and those advanced technologies offered a fresh and bizarre perspective. This backward evolutionary step had enriched him far more deeply than anything found in the federal armory.
Samford, for the first time since his capture, realized he could move. Perhaps it was merely the freedom of dreaming. It didn’t matter. To his drained flesh and poisoned brain, movement meant flight.
He could escape.
While pursuing his master’s degree in behavioral psychology, he had encountered a theory suggesting the brain played tricks at the moment of death. Perhaps as a protective mechanism, certain portions of the brain took over, suppressing the frontal lobe, giving way to more primitive, reptilian emotions. Other electrical impulses created the illusion commonly referred to as “going toward the light” by those who had been pulled back from death’s door. According to the theory, this cushioning was nature’s way of easing the inevitable.
Suspended in pitch blackness, flexing his thin fingers, Samford crafted a rival theory, one drenched in the morass of nightmares and ignited by the lightning that had sparked the zoological soup.
Death was okay.
Death felt goddamned good.
But just as energy could be neither created nor destroyed, every natural transition had its price.
The price of death, of newfound freedom, was hunger.
He licked his lips and found he was no longer grinning. The persistent erection had lost its blood, along with the rest of his body, and his new sensory perception detected its flaccid wiggle between his naked legs. He spun like an acrobat on stunt rings, though he needed no safety net. In this new state of being, safety no longer mattered.
All that mattered was instinct and the lulling whisper of the night.
Not the night he now smelled seeping from a far crack in the cavern’s walls, but the truer night, the ultimate dark that feasted on the universe and would one day finish its meal, yet still suffer an endless ache for more.
Samford shook his wiry, withered limbs, and despite his dearth of blood, a mockery of feeling returned. He stroked the air like a beginning swimmer in shallow water, tentative. After flailing in place for long moments, wasting a precious stretch of night, he finally relaxed, letting his body do its own bidding.
He moved through the air, ragged wings fluttering behind him.
He realized why he’d heard no more scratching sounds and endured no more bites.
The others were gone, prowling for prey, sick with the same hunger he now endured.
He wouldn’t be hungry for long.
Beyond the opening in the mountain lay a world where Samford and his new kind had never really belonged. A world that had forgotten them, though the creatures themselves harbored an ancestral memory stronger than those who had thrived and populated the planet during their time of captivity.
Samford drifted toward the fresh air that was rich with the smell of the river, teeming with movement, ripe with red possibilities.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Damned redskin thought he’d leave me in the dust and steal my thunder.
Farrengalli worked his way up the rope. He was glad he’d reached the bottom of it before Raintree reeled it in. The first part of the climb had been easy, but a day of fast water and an afternoon of dodging bloodsucking Stephen King nightmares had worn him down a little. He was running on pure adrenaline now, and wondered what kinds of smells the creatures picked up on.
Probably fear. Or blood. Wonder if Dove’s on the rag?
One thing for certain. When they put the call in and the cavalry came swooping over the ridge in their black helicopters, Vincent Stefano Farrengalli was going to be in the spotlight taking credit. He’d propped Castle up in a nice little niche, a place where two boulders had fallen against each other. Castle was alert and seemed recovered from shock. In fact, he’d tried to talk Farrengalli into taking the raft, just the two of them.
Farrengalli had half the same idea: He’d take the raft by himself. But he’d already seen the power of the flooded river, and he knew he couldn’t handle the raft by himself. If any of the bloodsuckers attacked, he wouldn’t be able to fend them off while keeping the raft on course. Castle would be useless, except as ballast. Even if Farrengalli completed the solo run, odds were better that Chief and the Babe would strike pay dirt with their little cell phone trick, leaving Farrengalli in the drink when the reporters started their feeding frenzy.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Raintree said, peering over the ledge.
“The Bat-climb,” Farrengalli said, bracing himself to rest his forearms. “You know, in the Batman TV show, when him and Robin would walk up the side of the building. Except, really, they just turned the camera sideways, because you can see the wires tugging their capes straight out.”
“I ought to cut this rope and let you fall.”
“You might need me. What if those things attack while you guys are playing bondage with your ropes?”
“Where’s Castle?”
“I went to get some firewood, figured it would help him get comfortable. And the son of a bitch stole the raft while I was gone. Can you believe that? A fucking federal agent.”
Farrengalli renewed his assault on the slope, his sheer strength and size compensating where Dove had failed. He didn’t want to count on Raintree’s helping hand, as she had. He wasn’t sure how helpful it would be this time around.
“Did he inflate the raft while you were gone?”
Shit. Farrengalli hated being caught in a lie. It had always made him angry, but he also enjoyed the challenge. Honesty was for dumb-asses. Liars were smart, because they had to remember all their lies, whereas smart people only had to remember what really happened.
“Well, he ordered me to pump it up. Wanted the two of us to make a run for it.”
“ Ordered you? Without a gun?” Dove said, her head now poking over the ledge beside Raintree’s. In the growing darkness, he could barely make out the teeth inside her grimace.
“He’s got a badge. What did you want me to do?”
“I thought we decided-oh, screw it.” Raintree tossed down a second line. “Here’s a backup if you need it.”
“Preesh, my man.” Though Farrengalli had no intention of putting his weight on any line that Raintree hadn’t tried first. Besides, eight more feet of busting his balls and he’d be within reach of the ledge. Raintree wouldn’t try anything funny in front of Dove.
He’d slid the carabiner through his belt, the way they’d taught him on the reality show. But it felt a little bit faggy, like some goofy body jewelry or something. Safety was for sissies, anyway. What was the point of looking both ways to cross the street when God was probably dropping a fucking piano on your ass?
Faith, man, that’s the ticket. You got to believe in your own fucking self.
He propelled forward, hand over hand, water squirting from the rope as he gripped it. Dove and Raintree barely had time to move away before he launched himself up and over the rock edge. The ledge was about ten feet wide, with a few scrub pines and patches of moss clinging where dirt had collected over the centuries.