Rio lay listening to her, fear swamping him in waves at the thought of her succumbing to blood poisoning. Her skin burned against his. He bathed her with cooling water, kept the door open with the mosquito net hanging down both at the door and around the bed. The lantern was extinguished to keep the bugs from entering.

The rain persisted, a steady rhythm until the next storm hit about an hour later. It raged with enough force to blow rain through the heavy canopy. Rio slid out of bed, padded across the room to close the door. He stood for a long time staring out into the darkness, breathing in the scent of the rain, the call of the jungle. The chorus of male frogs sang off-key, joyfully hunting mates, adding to the lure of the forest. For a moment the wildness was upon him, beating in him with the need to shift, to escape. But the call of the woman was stronger. He sighed and closed the door firmly, shutting out the wind and rain. Shutting out the heady sounds of his world. He crawled back into bed, pulling the light cover over both of them, wrapping his arms around her and welding his body to hers. He was exhausted, but it took time for his body to relax, for his mind to let go. He fell asleep with a knife under his pillow and a woman in his arms.

4

THERE were nightmares. One simply ran into the next. Rachael felt she lived in a sea of pain and darkness where nothing made sense but a male voice pitched low as it murmured soothingly to her. The voice was a lifeline, pulling her from the darkness where teeth and claws savaged her body, where bullets whistled by and thudded into bodies and blood flowed and hideous creatures lay in wait to attack her.

Shadows moved in the room. The humidity was oppressive. A cat made a chuffing noise. Another answered with a gruntlike cough. The sounds were close, within a few feet of her. Every muscle in her body reacted, tightening in terror, increasing the pain in her leg. She couldn’t move her body and when she turned her head, she couldn’t see enough of the room to locate the source of those wild, cat sounds.