by Jayne Castle
“Maybe it’s the energy here in the cave,” Rachel mused, looking around uneasily. “Maybe it’s triggering my memories of that night.”
“That’s possible,” Harry said, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about—trying to sound positive.
Should have paid more attention in para-psych 101 back in college. But he’d known from his teens that his interest in psychology was limited to the study of the monsters, and that was not the sort of subject you brought up in the classroom. He had not needed a degree to do what he did best. Hunting the bad guys came naturally to him because he could not only track them, he could also think like them. Always figured I was good at what I did because I had the same damn para-psych profile, he thought. But Rachel had told him that was not true. And she’d continued to insist on that even after she’d had a close encounter with his dark side.
Now she needed a little positive reinforcement and some helpful understanding and all he could come up with was, Don’t try to force it.
He pulled a bottle of water out of the pack and settled down on a convenient chunk of rock. Rachel was perched on another bench-sized boulder. She had Darwina in her lap and she absently stroked the dust bunny while she gazed fixedly at the rain falling steadily outside the cave. Her frustration and anxiety were palpable forces in the small space.
He drank some water from the bottle and tried to figure out how to handle the situation. He was no expert on amnesia. He was just the guy who got paid to keep the bad guys out of the Sebastian family’s business and out of the Preserve.
“Was the cave bigger than this one?” he asked.
“Yes.” She brightened a little. “Much bigger. But the way out was blocked by a crystal chamber. The only way into the chamber was through the waterfall. A second waterfall blocked the far side.”
“You’re talking about those frozen waterfalls that Jasper Gilbert is painting?”
“Yes, I’m sure of that much now,” she said eagerly.
“Lots of caves here in the Preserve,” Harry pointed out. He tried to be gentle about it, but there was no getting around the facts.
She sighed. “I’m not being terribly helpful, am I?”
“We’ll get there. Do you remember where you picked up the crystal flute?”
She frowned. “I think that Calvin gave it to me. He’s the one who told me how to use it.”
“So Dillard was in this big cavern with you?”
“Yes, at least part of the time.”
“Is he the monster that chased you?”
“No,” she said. “Someone else tried to stop me from escaping. But he couldn’t follow me through the frozen waterfall.”
“That’s how you got out?”
“Yes.” Rachel broke off on a long sigh. “Through the waterfall on the opposite side of the chamber. I ran along another tunnel and then I was outside in the night.”
“With the flute.”
“With the flute,” she agreed. She reached into the day-pack and took out the crystal flute. “I remember Calvin telling me to play it until I got out of the Preserve. He said that I was to listen carefully to the notes and that I should follow only the clear, pure ones. If the music seemed faint or off-key, it meant I was going in the wrong direction. I walked out of the Preserve playing this flute.”
“And good old Calvin Dillard was waiting for you on the other side of the fence. Interesting.”
Rachel glared at him. “I don’t know what is going on here but I am very certain that Calvin is not the bad guy in this.”
“Right.” Harry recapped the water bottle.
“Are you always this suspicious?”
“Until proven otherwise, yes.”
“I understand.” She was quiet for a beat. “Harry, I have this feeling that I need to remember everything, and soon.”
“You will,” Harry said, going for what he hoped was a soothing tone. “Meanwhile, we’ve got a job to do.”
“Find Calvin.”
“When we do find him, we’ll get a lot of the answers we need.”
“I just hope we’re not too late.”
“If they had intended to kill him inside the Preserve, they would have done so by now,” he said. “But we are following three sets of psi-prints. He’s still alive.”
She awoke sometime later. the darkness at the mouth of the cave told her that it was still night. The rain continued to fall relentlessly. Harry sat at the entrance, his back braced against the cavern wall. In the shadowy ultralight she could see that he had one leg stretched out. His other leg was bent at a casual angle. He rested one arm on his knee. She knew he had not slept.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, wincing a little at the feel of the unyielding stone beneath the thin plastic emergency blanket. The blanket worked well enough when it came to shielding her from the damp, but it did nothing to soften the hard rock floor.
“Do you think it’s necessary to keep watch?” she asked.
Harry turned his head to look at her. “Probably not. I doubt if anything is moving in this storm. I’ve been doing some thinking.”
Rachel looked around. “Where’s Darwina?”
“She took off a little while ago. She had the doll with her.”
“Good grief. Why would she go out in this rain?”
“She didn’t go outside.” Harry angled his head toward the back of the cavern. “I think she went hunting inside this cave. There’s no telling how far this network of caves and tunnels extends.”
Rachel looked toward the rear of the cave. The walls narrowed swiftly, but the tunnel was wide enough for a dust bunny.
“I suppose she knows what she’s doing,” Rachel said.
“My guess is she does. What woke you? Another dream?”
“Yes.” Rachel drew up her knees and hugged them, remembering the images. “Not one of the bad ones, though. I was using the flute to find my way out of the jungle.”
“You said Dillard told you how to use the flute.”
“Yes.”
“Where was he when he instructed you? At his place?”
“No,” she shook her head and looked around. “We were in a cavern like this one, only a hundred times brighter. He put the flute in my hand, told me how to use it, and then told me to run. That’s what I did.”
“Through the prehistoric sea where the monsters swam?”
“And through a waterfall of stone,” she concluded. She groaned. “But that’s all I’ve got for now.”
Harry uncoiled to his feet and walked to where she sat hunched on the emergency blanket. He sank down beside her and cradled her against his shoulder.
“You’ll have it all soon,” he said.
“Yes, I think so. Harry?”
“Yeah?
“What if I don’t like the truth when I finally recover my memories?”
“You’re afraid that you’ll find out that you’ve been wrong about Calvin Dillard?”
“Maybe. But there’s a worst-case scenario.”
He tightened his hold on her. “You’re afraid you’ll discover that maybe you’re more involved in this mess than you realized? That maybe you bear some responsibility for what is happening here in the Preserve?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She raised her head so quickly she almost collided with his jaw. He moved in the nick of time.
“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” she demanded.
He turned her in his arms and caught her face between his hands. “Intent is what matters, at least as far as I’m concerned. Maybe we’ll find out that you made a mistake or that someone suckered you into getting involved in something you should not have gotten yourself involved in. But one thing I know for sure, we will not discover that you deliberately set out to hurt anyone or do something illegal for the purpose of personal gain. Whatever your involvement in this thing, your intentions were honorable.”
She tightened her fingers in his shirt. “You know this, how?”<
br />
His smile came and went in the shadows. “Maybe because I’m psychic?”
“Harry, I’m serious.”
“So am I. Don’t ever forget that, Rachel.”
His mouth closed over hers, silencing any protest she might have made. A person could drive herself crazy worrying about the future, she thought. She had something very special right in front of her—a chance to lose herself in Harry’s arms again. She would be a fool not to seize the moment.
She gave herself up to the embrace, longing and need twisting through her.
“Harry.”
She gripped his shoulders tightly and opened her mouth to him. He eased her slowly onto her back and came down alongside her. Gently, deliberately, he opened her shirt and found her bare breasts. His palm was warm and firm and incredibly tender on her sensitive skin.
He kissed her throat, her ears, and then her nipples. She felt his hand glide downward over her stomach. He paused long enough to unfasten her trousers and tug the garment down to her ankles and off altogether. Her panties followed and then his hand was between her legs.
She lowered the zipper of his pants and he thrust into her waiting hand. He groaned when she encircled him.
He caressed her until she was full and tight and desperate; until she was pulling him to her, demanding that he give her what she craved.
And then he was inside her, filling her until she could not stand it any longer. She wrapped her arms around him and clung to him. He rode her until her release broke through her in throbbing waves that reached far out onto the spectrum.
He followed her over the edge, his climax powering through him. She opened her senses and watched his aura flare—not the graveyard-cold energy that he used to cloak himself in shadows and terrify his prey—but a hot, wild, masculine fire that resonated fiercely with the currents of her own aura.
“Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.”
He said her name as if it were a charm to hold against the darkness.
Rachel heard the gentle, silvery music of her bracelet. The small crystals cast an ultralight rainbow against the wall of the cave.
Outside the storm raged on, but inside the energy felt good, Rachel thought. It felt right.
Chapter 26
She awoke to the realization that the rain had stopped. The low light of another cloud-shrouded dawn illuminated the entrance of the cave. She sat up on the emergency blanket, wincing a little.
She looked around and discovered that she was alone. There was no sign of Darwina or Harry. She pushed herself to her feet and used her fingers to rake the hair out of her eyes.
The interior of the cave was still illuminated, but the glow was fainter now that the storm had subsided and morning, weak as it was, had arrived. She stretched and went to the entrance to search for Harry and Darwina.
There was no sign of Harry, but she saw Darwina perched on the edge of a grotto pool. Darwina waved the Amberella doll and chortled a greeting.
“Good morning to you, too,” Rachel said. She crossed the rough ground to the edge of the pool and took a closer look at Amberella. The doll had evidently taken a swim in the pool. The bright red hair and pretty gown were soaked.
“Good thing she’s hollow inside,” Rachel said. “At least she floats. What did you do? Throw her into the pool to see if she could swim?”
As if in answer, Darwina chittered gleefully, leaned precariously out over the edge of the pool, and dropped Amberella into the water. Rachel smiled when she saw the gently swirling currents of the pool carry the doll into a slow, graceful circle and then under the falls. The cascading water pushed the doll down out of sight, but she popped back to the surface a short time later and continued on her serene journey.
Darwina waited attentively, hind paws gripping the ledge, to grab the doll out of the water when she came back around.
“That looks like fun,” Rachel said. She looked around. “Where’s Harry? Did you toss him into the pool, too?”
“Over here,” Harry said. He emerged from the darkness of the trees, walked across the clearing, and rinsed his hands in the grotto pool. “Ready for breakfast?”
“Starving. Where did you go?”
“I was making use of the amenities,” he said.
She felt like an idiot. “Oh, yes. I need to do the same.”
“Go ahead but don’t wander off. Stay within visual range of the cave.”
“Trust me, the last thing I want to do is get lost.” She glanced at the pool. “Is the water safe to drink?”
“It’s salt water, not fresh,” Harry said over his shoulder. “I tried a sample earlier.”
“Really? How did salt water get this far inland on the island?”
“That grotto pool must be linked to some of the flooded caves on the island.”
She made her way toward a palm adorned with huge fan-shaped fronds that promised some privacy. When she had finished with her personal business, she went back out into the small clearing. She paused by the grotto pool to rinse her hands. She shook her fingers vigorously to dry them.
Amberella had almost completed another circuit of the pool.
When the doll glided out from under the waterfall, Darwina gripped the rocky rim with her hind paws and leaned forward, preparing to snatch the toy.
“Time for breakfast,” Rachel said. She turned to head back to the cave. “Catch Amberella and we’ll go chow down on some yummy energy bars.”
Darwina chortled.
The chortle turned into a hissing growl.
Rachel spun around in time to see that Darwina had sleeked out into full hunting mode, her fur flat against her small body, all four eyes glowing. Her fangs were showing. Not a good sign, Rachel thought.
Amberella had vanished. The water started to ripple and churn.
Darwina growled furiously and leaped into the pool. A long tentacle appeared. It was wrapped around Amberella. A second tentacle reached out for Darwina.
“Darwina, no,” Rachel shouted. She raced toward the grotto pool. “Come back.”
But it was too late. The tentacle snaked out and caught Darwina. The dust bunny screamed. That was the only way Rachel could describe the terrible, high-pitched sound Darwina made.
Rachel reached the edge of the pool. Terrified that the creature would drag Darwina under, she did the only thing she could think of. She grabbed one tentacle in both hands and hauled mightily in a desperate attempt to drag the water beast out of the pool and onto dry land.
“Harry!” she shouted.
The tentacle was slimy and so slippery Rachel was afraid she would not be able to hang on to it. But the creature seemed intent on snagging her as well. Two of its writhing limbs coiled around her upper arms and the struggle became a tug-of-war. The beast was heavy and powerful, but it was trying to hold on to three different prizes, two of which were struggling mightily.
More of the creature was visible now. A bulbous body appeared. The dome-shaped head was covered with dozens of slender, bobbing stalks. Each stalk was topped with what looked like a tiny eye. The dancing eyes glowed with paranormal energy. And then Rachel saw the beak that was the thing’s mouth.
She pulled hard, trying to use her weight as leverage, and wound up landing hard on her butt. The relentless tug of the beast was strong. She was being dragged forward by inches. The heels of her boots gouged grooves in the damp ground.
“Damn it, Harry, where are you?”
Darwina gnawed furiously on the tentacle that shackled her small body. Dark blood spurted. Evidently the wound annoyed the beast and it flung its prey clear. Darwina sailed a short distance through the air and landed with a soft thud. She bounced back to her six paws and charged toward the nearest flailing tentacle.
The water beast was half out of the pool, clinging to the rocks while it fought to hang on to Rachel. The myriad eyes jiggled wildly.
Rachel saw a small, silvery disc arc through the air and slice effortlessly through one of the tentacles wrapped around her arm. Dark blood gus
hed from the wound. The beast jerked violently in response.
The severed tentacle fell to the ground near Rachel and twitched wildly. An instant later, the other tentacle unwound itself from her arm. She was free.
Evidently sensing that it had taken on more than it could swallow, the water beast flung its remaining prey aside. Amberella flew across the clearing, the jeweled skirts of her Restoration Ball gown sparkling in the weak daylight, and landed in some green foliage.
The creature started to scramble back into the pond, but Harry got there first. He had a stout tree branch in one hand and swung it like a baseball bat. The branch connected with the bulbous body, knocking the bizarre animal off the rocks and onto the ground.
Rachel watched, horrified, as the creature flopped about frantically, gills heaving, for what seemed forever before it grew weaker and went limp. The psi-light winked out of the bizarre eyes, and the unmistakable aura of death silenced the atmosphere.
“Monster,” Rachel whispered. “Just like the ones I see in my dreams.”
Chapter 27
Harry dropped the tree branch and retrieved the disc-shaped knife. The adrenaline and psi were still heating his blood. He was going to have nightmares about this in the future, he decided. It had been a near thing.
He looked at Rachel. She watched him, dazed and maybe numb from the shock of battle. She was trying to catch her breath and steady her nerves.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.” She inhaled deeply. “Yes, I think so.”
Darwina appeared from a clump of bushes. She was once again fully fluffed. She chortled in triumph, waved Amberella, and scurried across the clearing to show Rachel her prize.
“You know,” Rachel said, “all things considered, it would have been easier to just buy you a new Amberella.”
Harry crouched and used some damp grass to wipe the black blood off the gleaming blade. He would clean it properly later. When he was finished, he pulsed a little energy into the disc. The razor-sharp cutting edges retracted into the medallion.
