than his. It had to be. Another deep breath followed
. . . and again. Finally, Eric began to relax as he came fully awake. His nose
caught the distant, almost negligible scent of perfume. Michelle’s perfume. It
was a light, flowery-musky combination that she wore like no one else. It was
her scent. Never overpowering, even on the occasions where she had applied it
in his presence, the fragrance always sent him tumbling back through time.
He had watched the face so close in front of him
change through the years. From a gawky, bright red-haired tomboy to somebody
else’s stunningly beautiful prom date. From the ponytailed junior high school
archery champion to the amazingly attractive woman accepting her commission
into Federal law enforcement. And with each memory he kicked himself for not
having the guts to tell her the truth. With a sigh and slow blink, he managed
to push those thoughts away for the millionth time.
And for the millionth time, they didn’t stay gone. It
was their friendship. The one thing that Eric refused to sacrifice was the
relationship with his best friend, even at the ongoing cost of his heart. Or
maybe he was just afraid. He had been shot at by poachers, charged by bears,
threatened by drug dealers and organized crime smugglers, and he had taken it
all with a grain of salt. But the thought of somehow losing Michelle’s
friendship, and the dream of more that was intricately locked to it, always
sent the migration of butterflies straight to his stomach.
And yet, the memories of the past few days were
skewing his long held sense of reality. From hearing Michelle’s voice at
Walter’s store just a few days ago, to the yellow-eyed feral charging out of
the Gulfstream . . . and onward through Emily’s rescue and the battle at the
cabin. The world was changing right around him. Maybe it was time that he
changed as well. Maybe it was time to stop being afraid. Maybe this one moment,
right here—right now, was the last chance he would ever get to tell Michelle
that he loved her . . . that he always had.
Quietly sliding his left arm from underneath the light
covers, he slowly brought it up to her face. With a gentle touch, he gathered the
wavy tangles of hair that had fallen across her cheek, twirling them in slow
ringlets as his fingertips softly caressed her temple. Michelle’s lips parted
with a deep inhalation as she ascended from the heavy fog of sleep.
It was now or never, Eric thought.
“I love you.”
He had barely said it. The whisper of a whisper. A
single flap of a sparrow’s wing amid the onslaught of a hurricane. But he had
said it. And she had heard.
Her porcelain face, eyes still closed and dotted with
grains of sleep sand, broke loose and smiled with his words.
“I know,” she said as her right hand slid underneath
the covers and across his face, finally settling in a loose grip on the short,
damp hair at the back of his neck, “and I love you too, b ut you left me to die.” She had breathed out the last words
in a smoky, resonating voice. Sleepy eyes snapped open to reveal polished ebony
mirrors that reflected back a fisheye caricature of his own terror. Fingers
became inescapable bands of steel locked onto his hair . . . drawing him the
final few inches to her piranha-like teeth.
Eric screamed.
Chapter 2
Tap . . . tap . . . tap . “Eric, are you awake?”
Eric froze, rigid and disoriented as the twin
nightmares—unwilling to depart –locked in a conflict with his slowly waking consciousness.
Like ancient enemies battling for possession of his soul, they swirled and
whirled in a vortex of scintillating colors. Dark violet sparking with angry, jagged
shards of metallic green lightning struggled against a forest of blue-gray fog.
The cyclone twisted and tore with vivid flashes of shattered bones and sharp
teeth, but the growing, enveloping mist would not, could not, be denied. With a
final blaze of white-hot embers and