Chapter Twenty

The earth shook. The ground spilled outward like the Red Sea. Bodies tumbled up and onto the surface.

I stumbled, then fell. A hand shot out of the dirt right next to me; a red beaded bracelet encircled the wrist.

I watched, mesmerized, horrified, as Helen’s face emerged from the dirt. On her other side lay her twin. I guess they’d been punished more severely than I thought.

I dragged myself to my feet, glancing around for Mezareau, but he was gone. I stood alone in a graveyard that was spitting up people all around me.

Concerned they’d start to grab my ankles, or chase me as I ran screaming, I staggered toward the hut.

However, no one followed. No one was moving. They still looked pretty dead.

Maybe Mezareau had needed something more to reanimate the corpses. I shoved aside the curtain, caught my feet in the long red robe, and practically pitched headfirst into the room.

Whatever he’d put into my ram kicked in with a vengeance. Swirling colors appeared at the edge of my vision, along with wispy tendrils like smoke. I heard a whisper behind me, spun around, but nothing was there.

My body became coated with a light sheen of sweat. I could hear my own breathing, a labor in my lungs.

I was both hot and chilled, uncomfortable. I wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep until this all went away.

I probably would have, too, except drams began to pulse on the air. I ran outside, but the clearing was empty—except for the bodies.

“Where are they?” I plunged into the jungle, determined to find out.

I wandered to and fro, round and round; I couldn’t get a bead on where the sound originated. At times I thought the bone-j arring thuds were merely echoes of my racing heart inside my aching head.

My skin felt too small for my body. My fingernails itched. My nose burned. Perhaps I had a fever.

“Mezareau!” I shouted, my voice barely audible above the beat of the drams. “Come and get me!”

I threw out my arms, spun in a circle, my hands smashing against branches, sending leaves cascading every which way. I began to giggle—definitely drunk, if not dragged—then I caught my toe on something and fell to my knees.

The growl reverberated from the ground through my palms, making my teeth rattle. Slowly I lifted my head and came face-to-face with a leopard, lips drawn back in a snarl, just like the one on the wall of Mezareau’s hut.

The wispy smoke swirled across my vision; all of the colors collided. My eyes rolled up; I went down.

Face-first into the ground as I fainted.

My dreams were fevered visions of death, blood, and the eyes of a jungle cat. Voices whispered, reciting names I didn’t know, the echoes dying away into a swirling, colored midnight.

Corpses rose from the earth and marched across the land like an army, destroying everything in their wake.

Wild animals prowled—wolves, coyotes, lions, tigers, and leopards—all with human eyes. The night came alive with their calls.

The moon pulsed behind my closed eyelids to the beat of the drums in my head. I came awake with a sharp gasp into a night gone still and silver. I lay on the ground; the leopard was gone. Instead I saw Sarah. Far away in the jungle, she beckoned me.

I sprang to my feet and ran, but so did she. The farther I went, the farther away she seemed. Her laughter filled the night; the scent of her skin filled the air; the ache of missing her spurred me onward.

I was almost close enough to touch her when she turned. One look at me and my little girl screamed, and then she wouldn’t stop.

Glancing down, I saw that I was a leopard and my fur was covered in blood.

I awoke next in a hut bathed in moonlight. Naked, my body tangled with that of another. I stiffened, prepared to struggle, but the low, throaty murmur made me pause.

I knew the scent of his hair, the slide of his skin, the taste of his mouth against mine. “Murphy.”

I doubted he was any more real than Sarah, but right now I needed a better dream. I clung to him as if my life hung in the balance. My sanity certainly did.

The room darkened as the moon fell down. Urgency overcame any unease. I needed the darkness, the total night; I wanted to do things to him that weren’t done in the sun.

As I tangled my fingers in his hair, my knuckles brushed the beads, and my thumbs traced the line of his j aw, the curve of his neck. I pressed him backward until my body sprawled over his. His erection brushed my stomach as I explored with my mouth the soft skin stretched taut over his collarbone.

With gentle nips of my teeth and swirls of my tongue, I took my time moving downward; the longer this dream continued the better. He quivered with anticipation as I brushed my cheek over his stomach, then drew my thumbnail along the hollow at his hip.

His penis j erked against my breasts—eager, edgy—and I leaned forward letting my warm, moist breath brush the tip. I put my tongue out slowly, stopping just short of touching him before I leaned back.

He groaned and I took pity, rubbing my thumb over him, then taking him in my palm and stroking him —at first slowly, gently, then harder, faster, replacing my hand with my mouth, relishing the flavor of strength, the power and the heat.

Suddenly I flew onto my back, and his body covered mine. He filled me in a single deep thrust. I arched, bowing off the blanket to meet him.

I wanted him rough, demanding. I couldn’t afford to think of anything but this. He lifted my legs, hooked my knees over his hips, and drove into me, the slap of flesh an enticement, reminding me of the beat of the drums in a far-off jungle.

I j erked my mind off that memory, forced myself back to this one. Reaching up, I hooked my hand around his neck and drew him downward.

I wanted to mark him as mine forever. Foolish—he wasn’t a forever kind of guy. But this was my dream and I could do as I wished, so I buried my face in his neck as he buried his body in mine, again and again.

My teeth scraped the pulsing vein just above his collarbone; I drew his skin between my lips and tasted life, salt, and man. I could hear the rush of his blood, and for just an instant, I wanted to taste that, too.

He stiffened, stilling inside of me. The release began—his, mine, I wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter, because suddenly it was both of us.

Best of all, deep in the thralls of a dream orgasm, I forgot all about the moon and the leopard, but strangely, I still wanted the blood.