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  Austin tried to control the racing pace of his heart. Casting a quick glance at Olivia, their eyes met.

  "Don't," she mouthed, shaking her head exaggeratedly.

  He winked at her.

  Wheeling around and aiming his Webley at the Colombian, Austin squeezed the trigger. The hammer dropped, its spur puncturing the cartridge's primer. The primer sparked the powder within, igniting and propelling the 265-grain lead slug along its short voyage from the revolver's muzzle into the fleshy part of Alvarez's shoulder.

  The wounded man, stunned and stumbling backward, fired his revolver from the hip, dropping the pilot to the ground amidst the rolling thunder of his weapon's concussion. Regaining his footing and cursing at the fresh, sharp pain in his arm, the Colombian stepped up to his fallen adversary and prepared to dispatch him with another shot. Alvarez grimaced, glancing at his bleeding wound, and said, "You know, man, you really should have brought a better gun."

  FORTY

  Leaping from his hiding place, Jeremy let out a war cry and opened fire with his Cobray, the spray of .380-caliber rounds chasing Alvarez back to his men. Instantly, the jungle erupted with gunfire as the Colombians engaged the armed members of the expedition. Clayton, undaunted by the hail-like barrage of slugs coming his way, moved like a panther through the dense brush, swiftly fanning to the left to get a better shot at the Colombians' flank. Leaves, shredded by wildly aimed rounds, drifted and fell in tatters like confetti.

  Olivia sprinted toward Austin as Henri called after her. A bullet slapped a tree inches from her head, throwing splinters against her skin. Diving beside the fallen pilot, she cradled his head and began looking for his wound.

  Grasping his leg, Austin gasped, "That was pretty barmy of me. Should have just given him one of the bloody plants."

  Ignoring him, Olivia lifted his hand from the wound in his thigh. "Let me look at it."

  "I'd rather you didn't," he said through clenched teeth. "Just go find Jeremy. Get back to the plane. Go home. I'll hold the line here."

  "I'm not leaving without you," she said, gripping his wrist and lifting his hand away from the wound. "It's not so bad," she said blithely, trying a little too hard not to show her panic. The wound had missed his arteries, but the sheer size of the projectile and the titanic force it had imparted made for a threatening wound. "No arterial blood, Austin. If we can just patch this, we'll be able to move you."

  "It's burning like hell."

  "Well you've been shot. It's not going to tickle," she said, tearing her long-sleeved shirt open along the buttons, sliding the fabric from her shoulders, and setting to work wrapping Austin's wound. The pilot, in spite of the pain in his leg, gazed at Olivia's trim figure, now veiled only by a sleeveless tank top.

  He mumbled, "I've been shot before, Olivia. This is actually burning—like bloody acid."

  Reexamining the wound, Olivia began carefully picking out shredded pieces of plant fiber. "You have some leaf bits in it…"

  Laughing, Austin cursed as he recalled the leaves he'd tucked in his pocket earlier. "That's your plant. I put a few leaves in my pocket when I first found them. I hate to break this to you, doctor, but anything that burns like that isn't all it's cracked up to be."

  Even as those words left his mouth, Austin began feeling a throbbing in his head—a cocaine rush pushing like nitrous through his veins. The world around him suddenly became perfectly clear, and it felt as though everything had slowed down to a crawling pace. His mind began processing his surroundings at lightning speed; he could hear Olivia's breath as it got pulled into her chest and rolled back out, the plink of firing pins striking primers and spent brass bouncing softly against the forest floor. Every minutia—the bugs crawling along the trunks of the trees, the droplets of moisture on the tips of every leaf—registered instantly and totally in his brain. His heartbeat thumped against his chest with an increased staccato rhythm while the veins in his arms swelled and pushed against his skin, his muscles contracting.

  He felt good.

  Really good.

  As if driven by a testosterone-fueled fury, the pilot leapt to his feet, the pain from his wound little more than a faint sting, and raised his revolver. Singling out one of the Colombians kneeling against a tree a little over a hundred yards away—a scratch shot considering the archaic weapon in his hand—Austin aimed the revolver's front blade a foot and a half above the man's head, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. The slow-moving round took a second to reach its target, but upon its arrival, Alvarez's man collapsed dead in a mist of blood.

  Olivia's mouth hung agape as she stared anxiously at the Brit.

  "I take back what I said about that plant," Austin panted frenetically, eyes wide, his voice echoing in his own head as though he'd shouted it inside a cavern.

  FORTY-ONE

  Lifting his hands from his head as gunshots and pained cries of wounded men filled the evening air, Henri glanced around nervously, but with specific purpose. His eyes settled on what he'd been looking for: Austin's bag, filled with the samples of Taxus bromelieaceae. As inconspicuously as he could with Christian hiding close by, the doctor swooped his hand through the pack's straps and began sprinting away from the firefight. His boots dug into the soft soil as he ran into the dense undergrowth, vanishing into the deepening shadows.

  He needed to hide or destroy the plant samples. That had been his final assignment from SenFlux, Hygeia's competitor, before they'd embarked.

  They'd come to him years before, when he was at his weakest. With his wife, Luciana's, medical bills swiftly mounting, he'd grown increasingly desperate; Henri would have done anything to get her the medicine and attention she needed, and the powers at SenFlux knew it.

  He remembered being awakened by a phone call in the early morning hours, after he'd fallen asleep in a chair at the foot of his wife's bed. Infuriated that anyone would call at such an hour and risk waking her, Henri snapped the phone from its receiver and prepared to berate the caller.

  "Dr. Rouillard, I have a business proposition that could prove very beneficial to you and your wife in your time of need. Meet me at the Andinita in twenty minutes, and I'll bring the first cash payment should you choose to assist us."

  After fifteen minutes pacing back and forth, chewing his lips until they bled, Henri decided to go. When he pulled into the dusty parking lot of the nearly dark cantina, he'd almost turned around and returned home. Almost.

  The SenFlux representative didn't mince words, bluntly offering thousands of bolivars in exchange for Hygeia's classified research. Henri stood to leave, insulted by the proposition, but paused long enough for the man to slide a leather briefcase, filled to the clasps with brightly colored bolivar bills, on the table. Henri knew what that money meant: time. Even just a little more time with his wife would be worth the risk and the shame. In the simplest terms, he told himself that an honorable career without his wife would still be a meaningless one.

  From then on, he'd slipped SenFlux regular insider information, leaking his research findings before Hygeia could put them to use. They'd reciprocated with a steady stream of cash. After his wife died, he'd asked to be allowed to stop the deception. They threatened to expose his industrial espionage if he even dreamt of stopping delivery. Henri knew that such an exposure would likely bring their company down with him, but whether through fear or some misbegotten sense of preserving his legacy in the scientific community, he complied and continued.

  Selling company secrets was like doing work for the mafia: You simply don't tell them when you’ve had enough; they tell you when you’re done.

  When Henri got word of the Taxus bromelieaceae plants and notified SenFlux that he'd be part of the retrieval expedition, he'd given them his ultimatum. These plants were the panacea that could crush Hygeia's competition, SenFlux included. They couldn't afford to let that happen. Finally, he had leverage. Henri offered to steal the plants, or at the very least make sure they didn't make it back to Hygeia's research faci
lity. And with this one final act of deception and disloyalty to his employer, he demanded an enormous final payout and his freedom.

  To that effect, he'd done all he could to discreetly sabotage the expedition from the beginning—feigning symptoms of Parkinson's disease to slow them down, destroying the satellite phone, and emptying Jeremy's gun to breed distrust within the group. They'd never suspected him. Christian had seen to that when his toy dinosaur gave them away to the hekura near the research outpost. That'd been dumb luck.

  But despite these hiccups, they'd soldiered on. So it had finally come to this.

  The heavyset researcher stopped at the edge of a muddy gorge, swung the bag back, and thrust his body into the toss. The bag was jerked from his hands, its contents spilling into the dirt. Looking over his shoulder, Christian's face—cheeks flush and hair plastered to his forehead—glowered at him. "What were you doing?"

  Henri attempted to scoop the plants back into the bag and resume running, but made it only a step before his research assistant tackled him to the ground. "You're stealing them. Why?"

  Planting a muddy boot against Christian's shoulder, the elder researcher kicked himself free and regained his feet. Henri snarled at him, "You just can't keep your nose out of anyone's business, can you? You shouldn't even be here!"

  The distant crack of a rifle followed the slap of lead against flesh. Stumbling backwards and dropping the bag, Henri held a hand to his chest, looking down at his crimson-covered palm before collapsing.

  Crawling toward the fallen man, Christian held his head with one hand, pressing against the frothing wound with the other.

  "Why?" the young man asked simply.

  Sighing and looking up at his research assistant exhaustedly, the Frenchman said, "It always starts with money, doesn't it?"

  "What? You were going to sell the plant? That was your plan? You can't even fly a plane; how did you expect to escape?"

  Shaking his head, the wounded man choked, "If this plant had made it back to the labs, Hygeia's competition would have ruined me. My reputation, my legacy, everything I've worked for, would be reduced to nothing."

  "But you're dying now, dammit. Was it worth it?" Christian choked, slamming a closed fist into the dirt.

  "You have a great deal of growing up to do, young man. I hope you don't do it quickly," Henri said, his breath coming in short wheezes. He smiled. Looking at the canopy of trees overhead, painted in the lavender and golden hues of the dying sun, he whispered, "It's a beautiful place to go, really." Turning back to face his companion with a look of urgency, Henri reached a bloodied hand to cradle the young man's head. "Please, don't tell Olivia. This would break her heart."

  "What should I tell them?"

  "Ma fille. Ma fille," Henri whispered distantly. With a rasping grunt, the doctor stiffened, his eyes taking on a far-away look as his hand fell from Christian's shoulder.

  FORTY-TWO

  Alvarez fingered the throbbing bullet wound in his shoulder as he knelt behind his line of men, each pouring on relentless—if indiscriminate—fire upon the Brit and his people.

  "Mascar verga!" He hadn't anticipated the Brit having the cajones to draw down on him like that. He should have just waited a few moments longer—until the expedition had come within range—and cut them all to pieces without warning.

  Swallowing hard and forcing himself to ignore the pulsing wound in his shoulder, Alvarez reloaded his weapon and began firing into the underbrush. It didn't matter that he couldn't see what he was aiming at, his men's weapons would do the work, but it needed to look as though no wound could prevent the fierce Raul Alvarez from rejoining the fight. Image was everything to a man in his position.

  The cries from a man on his right and the silencing of one of his guns caught Alvarez's attention. Gripped by his feet, the man's body suddenly swung into the center of a tree trunk, his ribcage fracturing with a dull thud. Alvarez froze.

  The freakish creature that had just murdered his man stared at him, green eyes aglow with a jaundiced light, purple-hued lips pulled into an ugly smile to reveal a mouth brimming with oversized, yellow teeth. The creature's hairless body was white to the point of near-transparency, webs of blue veins covering its hairless skull, broad chest, and arms so muscular as to resemble those of a steroid-infused bodybuilder. Standing from a crouch, the beast's spine still bent in a pronounced curve, it snickered.

  Alvarez recoiled, instinctively crossing himself as he mumbled, "Credo in carnis resurrectionem…"

  I believe in the resurrection of the body…

  Leaping atop another of Alvarez's men, one still oblivious to the death of his comrade at the creature's hands, the beast reached over his head, gripped his lower mandible and severed head from spine in one decisive movement.

  The body's finale, a wild burst of aimless nerve impulses, caused Alvarez's fallen man to reflexively twitch his rifle's trigger. The resulting spray of bullets traced a bloody line up the thigh, torso, and neck of a comrade standing beside him—the rifle's muzzle so close, it turned the skin fringing the man's wounds dark with scalding gunpowder.

  The drug lord fired at the creature with his Smith & Wesson as he beat a hasty retreat, his men only just beginning to recognize the new direction of the attack.

  Suddenly, the beasts multiplied in number. Dozens leapt upon his men, each of different sizes, but with those same hideous glowing eyes.

  Gripping a woody liana vine, the Colombian scrambled into the branches of a mahogany tree, wheezing loudly through his nose as carnal panic set in. The sudden skin-piercing grip puncturing his ankle forced a cry from his lips. Wrapping an arm around a branch to keep from being pulled to the ground, Alvarez swung his revolver down to face his aggressor. The hammer strike sent a 400-grain slug into the creature's brainpan, the three thousand foot-pounds of energy cascading gray matter upon the dirt below.

  "Pudrete en el infierno, you ugly piece of shit."

  Suddenly attentive to the silence that had fallen over the jungle, Alvarez knew beyond doubt that his men had been slaughtered.

  His artificially enlarged arm quivered from the weight of the revolver he kept aimed at the ground, his eyes scanning for movement.

  When he saw it, it was too late.

  One of the beasts had scaled a nearby tree, leaping from above and dragging them both to the ground. Alvarez swung his revolver to face the threat and let the hammer drop again.

  Click.

  Wrapping its teratoid hands around a massive stone, saliva dripping from the corners of its mouth, the creature brought the rock against the Colombian's head like a hammer against an egg, spilling his brains atop his shoulders.

  FORTY-THREE

  Sprinting alongside Olivia, Austin appeared unfazed by the wound still pulsing blood down his pant leg. They stopped when they'd reached Jeremy's side.

  "Where are the others?" Austin asked his copilot.

  "I don't know, brother. But I'm glad to see you alive—I thought that motherfucker Alvarez had murdered you. I was gonna have to collect on that case of beer you promised. And then it occurred to me that to do that, I'd have to brave bullets to search your body for your wallet. Maybe you should just pay up now."

  Austin let out a resentful, abbreviated laugh. "Not happening. I'll admit, that little wanker almost had me pipped to the post, but I always knew he couldn't shoot." Suddenly taking on the pensive look of a hound dog on a new scent, the pilot listened attentively. "The shooting stopped."

  "Good," Olivia said, relieved.

  "No, not good."

  The hekura's familiar laugh pierced the still air.

  "I bloody knew it. They followed us. We've got to get to the plane. Now," Austin said, tugging at Olivia's wrist urgently.

  "But what about Henri and Christian?" Olivia asked, pulling back against him as she scanned the tree line for her people.

  "And Clayton," Jeremy added reluctantly.

  "Clayton can take care of himself. At least he's armed. But the others, if we lea
ve them here, they'll be killed without a fight," Olivia implored.

  "Dammit," Jeremy cursed. "Okay. You two start for the plane, and I'll see about rounding up the others." Austin began to protest, but his friend held up his hand dismissively. "You're wounded, hermano. It's going to take you twice as long to get to the plane. You'd better start now."

  "No mate, I'm feeling good." Jumping into the air to prove his point, the Brit flinched—surprised at the returning pain. The plant's effect had begun to fade.

  "Sure you are. Get outta here," Jeremy said.

  Extending his arm, Austin shook his copilot's hand. "You'd better meet us there."

  "Hell, I'll beat you there," Jeremy said. "Be careful, all right? I don't want that case of beer that badly." He smiled genuinely at his friend before running into the darkening jungle alone.

  Jeremy knew that the fast-approaching nightfall would give advantage to the nocturnal beasts. The crew's window to make an escape was closing rapidly. Before long, they'd all be stumbling blindly in the dark—probably running in circles. Easy prey for the hekura.

  Spotting movement, against his better judgment, Jeremy called out to it. He held his breath and his Cobray close, his finger tight to the trigger.

  The shadowy figure waved and approached.

  It was Christian.

  Face covered in caked-on mud, the young man smiled hollowly. "Can we leave yet?"

  "That's a swell idea. Where's Dr. Rouillard?"

  Letting a fresh tear fall, the salty drop smearing a path through the grime on his face, Christian raised his crimson-stained hands so Jeremy could see them.

  "I see. All right kid, now's not the time to grieve. We need to get out of here before those hekura things kill us, too. Right?"

  "Yeah."

  "You got the plants?"

  "Yeah," he said somberly, checking once more that the samples were secure before shouldering the bag.