Dark Storm Read Free Page A

smearing the clear liquid over the bites. It wasn’t a small job as there were so many. Jubal held Annabel’s arms pinned so that she couldn’t scratch at the maddening itch spreading like waves across her body.
    Riley clutched her mother’s hand tightly, murmuring nonsense. Her previous suspicions came roaring back to life. The tiny little midges had gone straight for her mother. There was no one more attuned to the rain forest than Annabel. Plants grew abundant and lush around her. She whispered to them and they seemed to whisper back, embracing her as if she were Mother Earth. When her mother walked through the backyard at their home in California, Riley was fairly certain she could see the plants growing right in front of her. For the forest to begin attacking her, something was terribly wrong.
    Annabel gripped Riley’s hand tightly as the two researchers lifted her to her feet and helped her stumble back to their sleeping area made private by the sheets and netting hung across thin ropes.
    “Thank you,” Riley said to the two men. She was all too aware of the stunned silence out on deck. She wasn’t the only one to notice that the white bugs had attacked her mother and no one else after their initial swarm. Even those knocked from her body had struggled to their feet and crawled toward her as if programmed to do so.
    “Use this on the bites,” Gary Jansen said. “I can make up some more once we’re in the forest if she runs out. It will take the edge off.”
    Riley took the vial from him. The two men exchanged a look above her head and her heart jumped. They knew something. That look had been meaningful. Profound. She tasted fear in her mouth and quickly looked away, nodding her head.
    Annabel attempted a halfhearted smile and murmured her thanks as the two men turned to go, giving the women privacy to find bites beneath clothing.
    “Mom, are you all right?” Riley asked, the moment they were alone.
    Annabel gripped her hand tightly. “Listen to me, Riley. Don’t ask questions. No matter what happens, even if something happens to me, you must get to the mountain and complete the ritual. You know every word, every move. Perform the ritual exactly as you’ve been taught. You’ll feel the earth moving through you and …”
    “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Mom,” Riley protested. Fear was giving way to sheer terror. Her mother’s eyes reflected some inner turmoil, some innate knowledge of a danger she knew of that Riley was missing—more a terrible vulnerability that had never been there before. None of the married couples in their family ever long-survived the loss of a spouse, but Riley was determined her mother would be the exception. She’d been watching her mother like a hawk since her father, Daniel Parker, died in the hospital following a major heart attack. Annabel had been grieving, but she hadn’t seemed despondent or fatalistic until now. “Stop talking like this, you’re scaring me.”
    Annabel struggled into a sitting position. “I’m giving you necessary information, Riley. Just as my mother gave it to me. And her mother before her. If I can’t get to the mountain, the burden falls on you. You are part of an ancient lineage, and we’ve been given a duty that has passed from mother to daughter for centuries. My mother took me to this mountain, just as her mother took her. I’ve taken you. You are a child of the cloud forest, Riley, born there as I was. You drew your first breath on that mountain. You took it into your lungs and with it, the forest and all that comes with living, growing things.”
    Annabel shuddered again and reached for the vial Riley held. With shaking hands she drew up her shirt to reveal the tiny midges clinging to her stomach, brushing with trembling fingers to get them off. Riley took the vial and began smearing the soothing gel onto the bites.
    “When my mother told me these things, I thought she was being dramatic and I scoffed at her,” Annabel