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  “What exactly did I do to deserve such attention?” Mark tried to stand. His knees nearly buckled. He might have had a concussion, so he chose to sit.

  “You upset my employee. You see, he doesn’t know who you are, and you came in and lied to him. That’s not good.”

  “I wasn’t lying. I was referred here.”

  The man shook his head. “If you were, then I need to know the name of the person stupid enough to refer you here.”

  “I can’t give that to you.”

  The man wagged the stake at him. “See, now that’s what I thought you would say. Hence, the stake.”

  “You gonna stick it in my heart?”

  “Nah, no real pain there. The real pain is in your hands, feet, and tongue. Most nerve centers you have in your body. More even than your cock.” He leaned back in the chair and continued sharpening the stake.

  “Why not just use the knife?” Mark said matter-of-factly, as though this were the most normal conversation in the world.

  “Knife is smooth, it pierces. The wood, no matter how sharp I get it, is gonna leave splinters. It fragments, catches more of the nerves.”

  Mark closed his eyes again against a bout of vertigo and nausea. A blow to the head could easily kill a person. It wasn’t just a simple thing. He needed a hospital. The only way out of the room was a door behind the man, but Mark wasn’t anywhere near well enough to attempt that.

  “Well,” Mark said, “you must want something in order to not do that. So what is it?”

  “Perceptive.” The man laid the stake down then rose and paced the room. “Why did you apply for our company?”

  “The dental insurance.”

  He smirked. “I like you, brother. But I need a real answer.”

  They already knew who he was. He wondered how long he’d been out, then he reached back and felt for his wallet. It was gone. “All I did was walk into a hotel room and say I wanted a job. What law exactly did I break?”

  “Well, the thing is, we looked up your background. See, my bosses think you’re a spy, but I don’t think so.”

  “Spy? For what?”

  “Corporate spy. One of VN’s competitors.”

  “What?” Mark chuckled. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know. Especially since we picked up that little filly of yours, and she told us you were a private investigator.”

  The two men looked at each other in silence.

  “Who are you?” Mark asked.

  “Steven Russert. I’m in charge of security for VN on the island.” He shifted around, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the desk. “So, Marky Mark, what was it exactly you were investigating?”

  “Is Riki all right?”

  “Of course. We’re not barbarians.”

  Mark exhaled loudly. “I’m an American citizen. An American company is not going to murder an American citizen for asking for a job. So cut the bullshit and let me outta here.”

  Steven grinned. “I used to think like that. That there were countries and laws. Doesn’t work like that. Certain people and companies, a very select few, right around two-and-a-half percent of the world’s population, run the show. The law doesn’t apply to them. So please tell me what I ask. You seem like a nice guy, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Do your best.”

  Steven didn’t move for a moment, and then he chuckled. He hopped off the table and opened the door. “You’re free to go.”

  Mark rose, using the wall behind him for balance. He had called the man’s bluff and won. As he stumbled out the door, hoping he had enough in him to drive to the hospital, he said, “What is this all about? Really?”

  “What else? Money.”

  19

  The jungle here was denser than anywhere Eli George had been. And he’d been to ’em all.

  In Cambodia, he had been trapped in a jungle that didn’t seem to be part of the same planet. The shrubbery closed in so he couldn’t even see where he was going. He’d been on a security detail there as part of some diplomat’s efforts to up his profile in the country by going on expeditions. Probably to seem manlier, Eli thought. Manlier with ten fully armed guards at all times.

  The jungle in Cambodia was the worst place he’d ever been sent. Worse than the Sahara, worse than Afghanistan or Fallujah or Siberia. He thought that until he came to this place. A serene little island in Fiji that he thought would be like a vacation. The island itself, the cities and the beaches at least, were the best he’d visited. But the jungle kept him up at night. This damned jungle that never seemed to end.

  He patrolled with two other men, each of them spaced out about three feet, just enough that they could barely see each other. Any more than that, and the vegetation would swallow them up.

  “You ever worked for an oil company before?” someone named Donovan shouted from somewhere next to him.

  “Yes,” Eli said.

  “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

  Eli wished he could shut the man up. Donovan had been flapping his gums the entire time they’d been out on patrol. The third man, a native islander, hadn’t spoken a single word. Eli didn’t even know if he spoke English.

  When Eli didn’t respond, Donovan said again, “So which one you work at?”

  Eli sighed. “All of ’em.”

  “All of them? No shit. How long you been with the company?”

  The company. Shit. That’s all these fools ever talk about.

  The company was nothing more than a conglomeration run by two thirty-year-old punks who’d gotten lucky. They had landed the right security contracts and grown into one of the premiere security services providers in the world. That wasn’t how they made their real money, though. He’d seen it himself. The real money was in guns. Forget drugs, forget prostitutes, the real dealers were in guns.

  A decent rifle would bring ten times as much profit as any drug in a war zone. And thirty or forty times the investment in prostitutes. And the company had guns. Hundreds of the thousands of them, bought dirt-cheap from the old Soviet countries that needed to raise quick cash. The security, though profitable, was likely just a front to cover the gunrunning. So Eli had no illusions of what the company truly was. The oil company that contracted them probably knew, too.

  “Shut your mouth, Donovan,” he growled. “We got a job to do.”

  Donovan was quiet a moment. “Walking around in the jungle isn’t exactly much to do. I’m just making conversation. Hey, who’s that other guy that’s with us?”

  Eli glanced over in the man’s direction and saw nothing but jungle. He stopped and listened. Donovan’s footsteps circled around him and to the front, but his were the only ones. The other man was either standing perfectly still or wasn’t near them anymore.

  “Hey,” Eli shouted, “you there?”

  “I’m here,” Donovan said.

  “Not you.” Eli scanned the jungle. “Hey, anybody else here?”

  Donovan stopped as well. Now all he heard were the buzzing of insects and the chirp of birds. Occasionally, he heard the deep hoot of a monkey deeper in. Eli lowered the rifle slung on his shoulder. This damn jungle. It had given him the creeps the second he walked into it. The rumors didn’t help. Men disappeared in an instant, taken by things no one ever saw. Black things that hid in dark places.

  Eli had seen all sorts of things in his time with the company. Sharks the size of boats, spiders the size of dinner plates, birds that could carry off small children, but something about this damned jungle unnerved him. And the more it unnerved him, the more the fear grew in his belly.

  “Um…” Donovan said. “I don’t think he’s there.”

  “Hey!” Eli barked. “Yo. You there, man?”

  No response. Holding the rifle in front of him, Eli walked as quietly as he could. The jungle floor wasn’t meant to be quiet, though. It crunched with twigs and leaves, fallen branches, and other muck he didn’t want to look at.

  As he neared where the man should’ve been, he brushed aside veg
etation with his hand. Nothing. The damned fool had probably gone back or gotten lost, Eli told himself. Nothing more. It was easy to get lost out here.

  Eli took a step back. Their patrol took them out about a half mile from camp, then they looped south to meet another patrol. The two then worked backward through the jungle they’d just covered. The patrols went on like this day and night, effectively ensuring that somebody monitored every inch of the perimeter of the camp at least every ten to twenty minutes. It would be difficult for something large to get through without someone seeing it.

  As Eli turned away to meet up with Donovan, he spotted something on the jungle floor. He thought it was a pile of mud at first, mud with discolored debris in it. As his eyes focused, he saw it wasn’t that at all.

  Two gray hiking boots lay flat on the ground. The discoloration spattered the shoes. He didn’t need to get any closer to know it was blood. He’d seen it fresh out of a body many, many times.

  Eli first thought that the man had taken off his shoes because he’d sustained a leg injury then gotten lost in the jungle. The probability of those events taking place at the same time was astronomical. Odd how the mind did everything it could to explain things away as innocuously as possible.

  Eli knew that wasn’t what happened. Something had ripped the man away so quickly, the force knocked his boots off. A car was the only thing he’d ever seen able to do that.

  Something was out there with them.

  “Hey, Donovan.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Maybe twenty feet away. What do you see?”

  “We gotta head back, man.” Eli searched the jungle around him. The vegetation was so thick, it pressed in on him. Like thick green walls slowly closing in on all sides. “We ain’t finishin’ the patrol, man.”

  Eli gripped his rifle tightly as he backed away. A trail had been cut out around the camp so the patrols didn’t have to create their own each shift. Eli backtracked to the trail and began trudging to camp when he realized he couldn’t hear Donovan’s footsteps.

  “Donovan, you there, man?” He stopped and scratched his head. This damned heat made his skin itch as if thousands of needles poked him all at once. “Donovan, where are you, man?”

  His guts had tightened so much he felt sick. Never in his life had he felt real fear like this. When he was facing a squad of men, he knew they were men. Just men who bled and died. The darkness here was something different. He had no proof of it, but it was evil. This jungle was evil, and they had stepped inside it like sacrificial animals.

  The bushes swayed faintly. He thought perhaps it was the breeze, but the breeze was blowing north. The bushes were blowing toward the south. Something was in motion behind them.

  Eli lifted his rifle. He swallowed, his mouth dry as desert sand, and turned off the safety. Firmly tucking the rifle into him, he lightly touched the trigger. Automatic weapons were illegal back in the States but not here. His rifle, a modified Robinson Armament XCR, was one of the most powerful available. No doubt it could turn a living organism to paste in less than a few seconds. The problem was that it didn’t help calm him down.

  Something tugged on his shoulder, and he yelped. The years of grueling training, the life or death situations, the constant stress management training, it all flew out the window, and fear gripped him so completely, he felt like a kid lost in the jungle.

  He spun around with the rifle and saw Donovan’s smiling face.

  Donovan burst out laughing as Eli took in a deep breath, his knees weak. He felt like he could faint. Donovan hunched over, laughing so hard he was gasping for breath. Eli lifted the rifle and placed the muzzle against his forehead.

  “Hey, easy, big guy. Easy, it was just a joke.”

  Eli shoved him back with the rifle. “Shit ain’t funny.”

  Donovan got out a few more chuckles. “Sorry, man. It was just too good an opportunity. You’re so serious all the time.”

  “Get your ass back to—”

  Eli saw only a whip of blackness, as though a cloud had sped by overhead. The blackness lunged forward then snapped up, and with it went Donovan.

  Recognition hammered in his brain, the blackness a thick, slick surface that shimmered in the spackled sunlight through the jungle canopy. A head at least three feet across enveloped Donovan. It happened so quickly, Eli didn’t even have time to squeeze the trigger.

  The blackness lifted the man off his feet, and a loud crunch echoed through the jungle as the blackness coiled and coiled. Then the massive head spread wide, revealing a pink interior and several fangs the size of steak knives. Almost gingerly, the mouth widened and took in Donovan, starting with his head. Within a few seconds, Donovan was gone. Vanished into the gullet of whatever the blackness was.

  Eli screamed and depressed the trigger. He backed up. He hit the thing several times and it squealed, the rounds taking chunks out of it, but it didn’t back down. It was busy with the lump in its body that had once been a human being.

  One thought kept pounding inside Eli’s mind: run. Every part of him was saying, run. When he finally gave into it, his magazine was almost empty.

  Eli was about to turn when he heard a soft hiss behind him. The blackness he had shot at was still there, its massive head resting on its body as the lump slowly slid down the length of it.

  The hiss wasn’t it. It was something else.

  Eli turned, his mind a jumble of terror. He couldn’t focus on a single thought. Nothing came to him, and he didn’t know what else to do other than see what was there.

  The mass of blackness took up so much jungle that he thought it was part of the jungle itself. The only reason he knew it wasn’t was because it moved differently. Out of sync with the way the undergrowth was moving.

  The blackness reared up with a hiss, and he could see two black eyes the size of melons. Eli couldn’t breathe, or at least wasn’t aware whether he was breathing or not. The creature in front of him whipped out a forked pink tongue from its mouth. The tongue touched the skin on his face. A light touch, almost gentle.

  Eli looked down.

  The black tail wrapped around his legs, and before he could scream or run, it coiled so quickly and so powerfully, both his legs broke as he fell face first into the dirt. The thing kept coiling around him, immobilizing his arms and legs. It planted his face firmly into the muck, and he suffocated. His body couldn’t wait for air any longer, so he inhaled and sucked dirt.

  It lifted him, choking and gagging, to an upright position, but his feet were off the ground. The coils looped around him. They quivered, and muscles rippled underneath. Raw power. One coil caught him under the throat and covered his mouth. Only his nose, eyes, and the top of his head were exposed.

  Slowly, he became aware of his organs compressing as if being squeezed by trucks from two sides. His ribs shattered, and blood shot out of his nose and eyes. A loud snap echoed in his ears. The snap came from behind him, and he couldn’t feel anything below his neck. His back had been broken.

  Limbs did not respond. Neither did his voice. He could only move his eyes. Apparently, the blackness had been waiting for it. Eli lay on his back, his eyes darting around, taking in the sickening scene in front of him. It didn’t feel like it was happening to him. It was so horrific that his mind couldn’t accept that this was happening.

  The blackness opened its prodigious mouth. It was a darker red than the other one, but much, much wider. Inside, a black hole led to a nightmare he couldn’t even imagine. He tried to scream, to roll away, to stick his thumb into the creature’s eye, but nothing happened. He was completely and utterly helpless.

  The mouth enveloped his head first and began sucking the rest of him in.

  20

  Mark Whittaker stepped out into the light, but it wasn’t the sun. Adjoining the room in which he’d just been interrogated was another room, much nicer with carpets and decorations on the walls, leather furniture that looked new.

  Riki a
nd a man in glasses with messy hair sat on the couch. Riki was smiling as she spoke, and it appeared they were discussing their impressions of the island and the native Fijians.

  “What the hell is going on?” Mark said. “Are you okay, Riki?”

  “Ok?” she said, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  Steven brushed past Mark, a mischievous grin on his face. “I had a little fun with him. Sorry.” Steven stuck the stake into a potted plant surrounded by several shards of wood just like it. “No hard feelings, brother,” Steven said.

  “Who are you people?”

  Riki came over to him. “I heard you tried to attack their guards?”

  “Well, yeah, I had to. They were about to attack me.”

  Steven said, “No they weren’t. They were about to ask you to leave.”

  “Did you attack them?” Riki said.

  “Yes, but I told you, they were going to attack me first. What is this about?”

  “They called and asked me to come down. They said you attacked two of their guards, and they had to subdue you and you were hurt.”

  “But I thought—”

  “No, it’s not like that, Mark,” Riki said. “They’ve offered me a position.”

  “What position?”

  “Rather than have me write an article about what’s been going on, they’re having me join them. I can’t mention the specifics of certain things, of course, but if what they are telling me is true… I don’t know. This is going to change my life, I think.”

  Mark’s head was throbbing, and the pain was radiating primarily in his left eye. He closed that eye then rubbed it with the back of his hand. Predictably, that did nothing for the pain. “Riki, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “They’re going on an expedition. And they’ve asked me to come along and document everything. They get final proof of anything I publish, but I’ll be the only journalist along for this, Mark. This is huge.”