They dragged him to the far side of the camp and held him prisoner there. The archaeologist and his students hesitantly came across the ground to study the mess of dead and dying bats and to watch the others retreat from the flames ringing the hammock.
"Are you all right?" Dr. Patton asked. "This is bizarre. Did that man seriously try to kill one of you with a machete?"
He seemed as if he was waking from a daze. He looked so shocked Riley had an unexpected urge to laugh. He'd been tramping through the rain forest with them for four long days. He'd heard the stories of snake and piranha attacks over and over thanks to Weston, who didn't seem to be able to talk about anything else, and yet, for the first time, the archaeologist seemed to realize something was wrong.
He blinked, noticing the gun Jubal still held in his hand. "Something's going on here."
A sound escaped her throat before she could stop it. Hysterical laughter, maybe. "Was it the machete that tipped you off, the diabolical chant from hell or the horde of crawling vampire bats?" Riley clapped her hand over her mouth. There was no doubt she was hysterical to answer like that. But really? Something was going on? What was his first clue? He was taking the absentminded professor bit just a little too far.
"Easy," Jubal whispered. "She's safe now. I think it's over for the night."
Riley bit her lip to keep from retorting. The rain forest was filled with predators of every shape and size, all of them seemingly intent on attacking Annabel. How was her mother going to be safe from that? The sense of welcome, of homecoming they'd always experienced on their previous visits was utterly absent. This time, the rain forest felt savage and dangerous, even malevolent.
She forced her attention back to the remaining bats. Thankfully they were retreating from the light and the stench of their roasted companions. That knot in her stomach eased a little as she inspected the tree trunk and the branches above her mother. The insects were retreating, too.
"I should have helped you," Dr. Henry Patton said. "I don't know why I didn't."
His two students had followed him at a much slower pace, looking as dazed and confused as their teacher.
Riley bit back an angry accusation. None of this was the archaeologist's fault. Maybe he had the means and knowledge to understand the properties of a hallucinogenic plant and the entire expedition, but what would be his motives? What could possibly be any of their motives?
She swept a weary hand through her hair, exhausted. She hadn't dared to sleep in the last four nights, not since entering the rain forest. Not since that terrible whispering had begun. The endless buzz was enough to drive any sane man crazy, and clearly she was the least affected of their group.
The three guides and the rest of the porters circled Raul, restraining him with ties of some kind. He continued to chant that guttural, unfamiliar language, sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting, and kept trying to move toward Annabel's hammock. His cousins were forced to tie him to one of the trees to keep him from attacking her again. His hand was clenched in a fist as though he still gripped the machete handle. He swung his arm back and forth through the air in a disturbing pantomime.
"What is Raul saying?" Riley asked Jubal, once the excitement died down and everyone returned to their hammocks. She nodded at the porter tied to the tree and watched Gary's expression. "I can see that both of you recognize the language." She looked Jubal right in the eyes. "Don't deny it. I see the looks you two give one another. There's no doubt that you know what he's saying."
Jubal and Gary turned almost simultaneously to glance over their shoulders at Ben Charger. It was obvious they didn't want to talk in front of anyone else.
"Let me give you a hand clearing away these bats," Gary said.
Riley deliberately began to make a sweep of the dead and dying bats surrounding her mother. It was ugly, sickening work. Both Jubal and Gary pitched in, which was a good thing because she would have followed them back to their hammocks for an explanation.
Ben worked with them for a few minutes, kicking the roasted bodies away from Annabel's hammock, but when Gary began digging in the vegetation to dispose of them all in a mass grave, the engineer called it quits.
"I don't think you'll need me any more tonight. Things seem to be settling down."
Only then did Riley realize the terrible buzzing in her head had faded away. Although she couldn't hear it anymore, she could tell by the red eyes and the frowns on the faces of the others that it hadn't stopped altogether. "Thank you so much for your help. I wouldn't have gotten them all without you. You acted fast."
Ben shrugged. "They went right for her. I wasn't going to stand by and let her get hurt. I'm a light sleeper. If anything happens again, give a shout and I'll come running."
Riley forced a brief smile. "Thank you again."
Ben rubbed his temples, scowling as he turned away from her. Riley helped push the remains of the bats into the hole Gary had dug, waiting until Ben was out of earshot before she turned to Jubal.
"All right," she said, "he's gone. Now tell me what Raul was chanting. And what language was he speaking? It's certainly not native to this country or any tribe here in the Amazon."
Jubal slipped his gun into some kind of harness beneath his loose jacket. Riley found it interesting that he hadn't put it away until Ben had left.
"The language is an ancient one," Jubal said. "It originated in the Carpathian Mountains, but there are very few who still speak or even understand it today."
She frowned at him. "The Carpathian Mountains? How in the world could a poorly educated porter from a remote village in the Amazon come to know and speak an ancient European language that even I've never heard of ? Never mind. We can talk about that later. For now, I want to know what he was saying."
Jubal looked over her head at Gary.
"Don't do that. Look at me, not him. I know you understand what he said," Riley insisted. "That man was trying to kill my mother. And the whole time he kept saying 'Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη.'" She repeated the phrase with perfect pitch, intonation, sounding exactly like Raul. "I want to know what it means."
Jubal shook his head. "I don't know the answer to that. I really don't, Riley. I'm not as good at the language as Gary is, and I don't want to make a mistake. I think I got the gist of what he was trying to say, but if I mistranslate and alarm you ..."