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the rough terrain—but it still surprised her. He just seemed as if he’d be more at home in a lab coat, the absentminded professor. Clearly he was brilliant. You couldn’t talk to him and not realize he was extremely intelligent, but he moved every bit as easily through the jungle as Jubal and he was equally as well armed and probably just as proficient with weapons. She was glad they had chosen to help her protect Annabel.
    The terrible buzzing in her head increased so that for a moment her head felt as if it might explode. She pressed her fingers tightly against her temple. She was looking directly at Gary when the pain exploded through her skull and rattled her teeth. He gripped his head at the same moment, shaking it. His lips moved, but no sound emerged. She looked at Jubal. He, too, was feeling the head pain.
    The words were foreign. Jumbled together, almost like a chant, but definitely words. She had excelled in studying ancient and dead languages as well as modern ones, but she didn’t recognize even the rhythm of the words—but both Jubal and Gary clearly did. She saw the expressions on their faces, the alarm exchanged in their eyes.
    Ben Charger staggered up to the other side of Annabel’s hammock, pressing his hands to his ears. “Something’s wrong,” he hissed. “This is about her. Something evil wants her dead.”
    Jubal and Gary nodded their agreement. The bats overhead stirred. Riley’s heart pounded hard enough that she feared the others could hear. She took a better grip on her knife and torch and waited in the darkness while Annabel moaned and writhed, as if evading something terrible chasing her, haunting her dreams.
    Raul came out of the shadows, machete clutched in his hands, muttering the same phrase over and over. “ Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη .”
    Riley heard the words clearly as the porter repeated them over and over. She knew most of the dialects of the tribes spoken in this part of the rain forest. She knew Spanish and Portuguese. She knew European languages and even Russian and Latin, but this was nothing like she’d ever heard before. Not Latin in origin. Not any of the dead languages she was familiar with, but the words meant something to the porter and—she glanced at Jubal and Gary—to the two researchers.
    Raul chanted the sentences over and over in a guttural, hypnotic voice. His eyes glazed over. She’d seen ceremonies that had placed recipients into trances and the porter definitely appeared to be in one, which made him doubly dangerous. Sweat poured from his body, dripping from him to splatter darkly across the leaves that were now crawling with thousands of ants. He shook his head continually, as if fighting the sound in his head, stumbling backward a few feet and then relentlessly moving forward again.
    Her mouth went dry as the bats overhead began to descend, dropping to the ground like menacing raptors, creeping through the vegetation. Beady eyes stared at Annabel as they used their wings like legs, propelling themselves toward their prey. Raul shuffled closer, his movements awkward, very unlike his normal easy movement, the murmured chant growing in volume and intensity with each step forward. Closer now, the jaguar gave another haunting, grunting cough. Riley could not believe what was happening. It was as if everything hostile in the rain forest was out to kill her mother.
    Riley lit her torch, holding it away from her body, and quickly began lighting the torches she’d placed around her mother. The torches flared, forming a low wall of light and fire around Annabel.
    Raul kept coming in spite of the fact that he tried desperately to stop himself. Each time he succeeded in moving backward, away from Annabel, his body would begin a forward motion again. Not fast. Not slow. A programmed robot, chanting louder, that same phrase over and over. A command now. A demand. “ Hän kalma, emni hän ku köd alte. Tappatak ηamaη.