"Silly superst.i.tion."

The sky darkened, the green canopy turning blue as dusk fell. The others were still waiting at the Jeep when they arrived.

"Any luck?" Nessa asked, taking a few steps toward them, her feet crunching in the wet dirt.

"No luck," Alfred replied. "These people don't want to talk to me."

"I think it's the hook," Ike offered. Alfred turned an icy glare toward him, but the effect was lost in the fog on his gla.s.ses.

"It's not the hook," Alfred insisted. "The Bantu man explained everything."

"What did he say?"

"According to him, the people of this village believe that the forest to the east is haunted."

"Haunted?" Nessa asked doubtfully.

Alfred nodded. "They believe that something terrible happened there long ago and now it is home to a powerful spirit. The spirit, he said, drives the animals of the forest mad and commands them to attack all that enter its lands. He said that the spirit can possess you and can take control of your mind. He also said that none who go in there ever come out."

Ike was not a superst.i.tious man, not even a semi-religious one, but he felt his heartbeat quicken. He remembered sitting around a campfire as a small boy as his uncle told him ghost stories and feeling the same thrill.

"What about the village?" Nessa asked.

"He didn't know of one," Alfred answered, shaking his head. "He said they call it Msitu wa Damu."

"Forest of blood," Ike repeated, recognizing the Swahili words. He noticed Delani and Gilles shift slightly. The South African gazed into the shadows of the surrounding forest.

Dark clouds moved across the sky, warning of a coming storm. With those clouds, came a light breeze, moving through the treetops. The canopy rustled overhead.

"Do the pygmies go there?" Ike asked.

"He said that pygmies no longer live in the forest there. Not even they will go inside," Alfred said.

"So there's no village?" Nessa asked.

"It appears not," Alfred replied with a shrug.

"I wouldn't be so sure there, Doc," Ike countered. "Right after we introduced ourselves . . . what was the first question you asked them?"

Alfred thought for a moment, trying to remember. "I asked if there was a village east of here."

Ike nodded. As soon as Alfred had asked that first question, the pygmies had turned from comedic to silent and distant. They did not have the look of people who were fearful, but rather the look of people who didn't want to give something away.

"What are you thinking?" Alfred asked.

"I think the pygmies were lying."

"About what? About the forest?"

Ike shook his head. "Did you ask them about the forest? Did one of them ever mention this spirit the Bantu man spoke of?"

"No."

Ike grinned slyly at Alfred and Nessa. "I'd bet everything that the pygmies know exactly where this village is."

Alfred scratched his chin, looking up at the sky as a breeze blew in low, rustling their shirts.

"Why would they lie?" Nessa asked.

Ike shrugged. "They could be protecting someone. Remember what happened to the village we just came from?"

"If that's the case, we could offer them money to tell us more," Nessa suggested.

Alfred shook his head. "They are from a hunter-gatherer society. They don't value material wealth as much. If they are serious about protecting this place, they won't be easy to bribe."

"I disagree," Ike said. "The one who can speak English and French seems like a very worldly bloke, wouldn't you say?"

"Definitely," Alfred agreed. After a moment, he added, "For a pygmy."

"Well, if he is so worldly, then I'd think he's learned the value of worldly riches," Ike went on. "You saw the clothes he was wearing."

"I think you have a very good point," Alfred said, smiling widely.

"I bet the right amount of cash and a promise of good intentions would get us far with him."

Nessa's lips drew into a rare smile, and Ike was shocked to see the expression aimed at him. When he returned the grin, doing his best to keep the crocodile out, she did not look away. For a few rich seconds, he looked straight into her dark eyes.

"Let's have a talk with him then," Alfred declared.

Nessa nodded, her smile fading and her body tightening up once again. She folded her arms in front of her chest. As she turned, Ike found his gaze slipping down her profile.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled in, crashing violently across the sky.

Temba's eyes went wide when the first stack of American bills dropped onto the table in front of him. They had got him alone on the porch while the others went in to get out of the rain. All around them, lightning and thunder crashed as the rain poured down in heavy, pounding bullets. Three more stacks of money landed beside the first in rapid succession.

Ike focused on the cornered pygmy, who stared transfixed by the sheer size and number of the bills.

Alfred leaned on the table, cut from a slice of an old tree trunk, and waited for Temba to give a reply.

The small man lifted both hands to his scalp and held them there, as though engaged in a personal struggle.

"I will explain," Alfred offered. "My friends and I are looking for a flower that grows in the forest there. We simply want to pick a sample of this flower so that we can use it to make a medicine."

Temba scoffed. "Medicine."

"It's true," Alfred insisted. "We are not friends with any of the local militias. In fact, a good friend of mine died at their hands yesterday. We would have no desire to lead them into that forest."

"If this flower has the medicine you are looking for, others will not come for it?" Temba asked, his expression showing that he knew the answer.

Alfred chose his next words carefully. "If others were to come for it, they would keep it a secret. It is within our best interest that no one else knows about it."

Temba gave him a doubtful look, until Alfred added, "That way no one else can profit from it. We would move the flower and plant it in our gardens so that we don't need to come into the forest to get it."

Temba thought about that for several moments. His eyes glanced back down at the stack of bills.

Ike circled around the table, boots clomping on the floor. He moved up behind Temba, who spun around, obviously not comfortable having the Australian behind him.

Ike spoke quietly. "Obviously this village exists, or you wouldn't be protecting it. We have a map. So either we go around chopping up the forest until we find it, or you can take the money and lead us there and make sure that n.o.body follows us."

"We're here only for the flower," Alfred put in. "We're not loggers, we're not farmers, and we're not friends of any of the militias. With you as our guide, we can all make sure this village stays a secret."

"Kuntolo and I will take you," Temba agreed. "But only the five of you. No others must know of this place. And we will not lead you into the forest."

"Because of the spirits?" Ike asked.

Temba shook his head. "There is nothing in that forest for anyone. It is a bad place."

"You don't believe in the spirits?"

Temba turned to look directly at the Australian. "Do you?"

When Ike shook his head, Temba grinned wide.

"If you don't believe in spirits, why do you think the forest is bad?" Alfred asked.

"It is not safe," Temba answered.

"But why?"

"It is not safe."

"All right," Alfred agreed finally. "You lead us to the village and we'll worry about the rest."

Temba nodded and reached across the table for the stack of bills. Alfred was faster, however, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed them off of the table with his hand. He held his hook up in warning. "We will pay you after we get there."

Temba grinned and then brushed a hand over his lips, wiping the thin smile away. "We will take you there in the morning. Tell no one where we are going."

7.

Brandon gripped Sam's ankle tenderly, turning her leg so the calf was visible. Her brown skin exploded into hot, swollen pink. The inflammation looked tender and bulbous. The edges were lined with fine dark streaks where her skin bunched up. Near the center of the rash, red blood trickled either from one of her many cuts or freshly torn skin where she had dug her own nails in.

"Do you remember cutting yourself?" he asked as he shone the flashlight down on her.

Outside their tent, the worst of the storm had pa.s.sed, but a steady stream of rain still fell, drumming on the flaps and the leaves of the nearby trees.

"I don't know," Sam said with a shrug. She exhaled harshly through her teeth. "I can't even feel it. That whole part of my leg just feels numb."

He grazed the edge with his fingers, feeling the skin squish under his touch.

"Ew . . . don't touch it," she squealed. "It could be contagious."

She leaned back with her arms propped on the tent floor so that she could stretch the infected leg out in front of her.

"Maybe a plant did this," he offered. "Something like poison ivy, I'm guessing."

"Some kind of killer jungle plant," she replied bitterly. "Maybe my whole leg will fall off."

"You should have worn pants."

"Yeah well, when we left I wasn't planning on getting shot down."

Brandon grabbed a pen from an open notebook beside him and tapped the pink edge of her skin with the b.u.t.t of the pen. He watched as the puffy skin indented softly and then returned to its previous shape, filling with liquid. "Did you feel that?"

She shook her head.

He moved over a half-inch and poked again. The skin there had the texture of a ripe grape. "Did you feel that?"

Again, she shook her head.

"Okay," he said. "This is what we're going to do. We're going to clean it off as well as we can and you're going to take the antibiotics from the first aid kit, and the aspirin for the inflammation."

"Okay, I guess." She regarded her leg as if it were leprous.

He eyed her, grinning. "Or I can just get the hacksaw. It's up to you."

She smiled and shook her head. His gaze stayed fixed on her pink lips as she leaned back onto the floor of the tent. As she sprawled out her shirt tightened around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, clinging from the moisture. "Just get it over with," she cried melodramatically. "Cut it off!"

Brandon crawled forward. He gripped her leg where the skin of her thigh met the bottom of her shorts and pinched the muscle firmly. "Maybe I should start here?"

She twisted underneath him, shrieking at his touch. She squirmed as he climbed up her body. His hand stayed at her thigh, as he slid one arm up her side and then rested on it. His chest pressed against hers, and he could feel her breathing underneath him.

He slid his hand up her thigh, feeling the top of her leg through the fabric of her shorts. She smiled, her hazel eyes locked on his. She closed them, lifting her head off the floor.

Their lips pressed together and he felt her skin on his face, slightly sticky from the humidity. His hand brushed across her shorts as he settled on top of her, the hard muscles of his chest pressing into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His shirt tightened on his skin, sc.r.a.ping his sunburn underneath.

He was only distantly aware that the drumming of the rain had stopped and the sounds of the forest had returned. The most poignant noises to him came from the wetness of Sam's lips and her small exhalations. He brushed his hand up higher, the fingers snagging for a moment on her waistband. He continued undaunted, slipping the hand up under her shirt, feeling the hot skin of her stomach. Her shirt was tight and, as he slid his hand higher, he pulled the shirt with it. His fingertips brushed softly over her ribs until his thumb and forefinger reached the wire of her bra. He stopped there as his excitement stirred.

His tongue tasted hers for a few more seconds, before he slid his hand higher, delighting in her softness.

Suddenly Sam stopped. She froze so abruptly that he wondered if he had done something wrong. She pulled her lips away and lifted him off her, turning to stare at the nearby tent flap. Her eyes were wide.