BREEDING GROUND Madelaine Montague BREEDING GROUND By Madelaine Montague BREEDING GROUND Madelaine Montague © copyright by Madelaine Montague, January 2007 Cover Art by Jenny Dixon, © copyright January 2007 New Concepts Publishing Lake Park, GA 31636 www.newconceptspublishing.com This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence. BREEDING GROUND Madelaine Montague Chapter One He awakened slowly, reluctantly, uncertain at first what had sent ripples through his psyche to disturb his slumber. He had been drifting so long that awareness of his surroundings had slowly but surely eroded until only some event of magnitude, he knew, would have penetrated the deep, dreamless sleep that he’d sought. It was that realization that encouraged him to shake off the temptation to ignore the ripples, and he roused himself to see what it was. People, he thought, surprised, not pleased, but it was not merely ‘the people’, he discovered, those he had once walked among, called brother—come to despise. Others were among them, pale skinned, pale eyed. This tribe he had no familiarity with. He wavered, torn between curiosity about these others and the hate that had sent him into his slumberous state long, long ago, so long ago that the hate had become little more than apathy. Rising finally, he stretched, expanding his psyche outward, and then he walked among them, studying the others, watching them. They were digging, he discovered, for what he could not determine, but it answered the question. This had caused the ripple, the disturbance that had shaken him from his rest. His curiosity waned. He had no idea what they were about, but he had no real interest either. Then he saw her. Intrigued, he settled to watch her and he discovered that the longer he watched her, the more absorbed he was. This one was different. * * * * “Look out!” “Rock slide!” “Run!” The ominous sound of colliding, rolling, bouncing rocks rapidly built from a warning rumble to a deafening roar punctuated by the shouts that first drew her attention and the screams of fear and pain that quickly followed the first shouts. Gabrielle LaPlante lifted her head like an animal sensing danger at the first rumble, freezing as her gaze swept the dig site and finally focused on the threat. Her eyes widened as she saw the wave of dirt and rocks racing down the mountain side like a black tide, but everything inside of her seized, even her breath in her lungs. It was over almost before anyone had realized what was happening. Through the cloud of dust that rose from the foot of the mountain where the debris settled, Gabrielle saw a twisted human arm jutting skyward. Coated with dirt from the soil dislodged by the falling rocks, she stared at it for many moments before her brain finally registered that it actually was an arm, not a bizarre, twisted tree root that resembled a human arm. Released finally from the shock that had rooted her to the spot, she surged forward, launched into a run as the workers that had scattered halted and turned to race back. She was among the last to reach the downed worker, but it wouldn’t have mattered, she saw, if she’d been the first. The man hadn’t suffocated. A rock twice the BREEDING GROUND Madelaine Montague size of his head had crushed his skull. As short as she was, the native South Americans that made up the bulk of the laborers for the dig were as short, or shorter, and she had no trouble seeing over the men that clustered in front of her. She was sorry that was the case. The image seemed to burn itself inside her mind. Nausea rolled over her. She stumbled back, turned, looked numbly around the dig site for several moments and fled to the tent that had been assigned to her as her temporary home away from home. A forensic anthropologist on loan from the Dade Museum of Human History to investigate the first, and only, skeletal remains found at the scene, which turned out to be the body of a two hundred year old Indian who’d died while hunting not an ancient settler of the area, she had never considered herself superstitious. She’d learned to appreciate and respect the customs and beliefs of various cultures and ancient civilizations, but she didn’t believe. She’d been uneasy ever since she’d arrived at the dig, however. She’d dismissed it. This was her first field operation and a certain amount of trepidation was to be understood, particularly considering the remote location. They were miles and miles from the nearest speck of civilization, and even that couldn’t be truly categorized as civilization, not in her book, anyway. The village was a throw back, virtually untouched by modern civilization. She’d regretted taking the assignment almost as soon as she’d agreed to it. She regretted it even more as they left the tiny airstrip and set off in ancient vehicles down narrow twisting roads, traveling deeper and deeper into thick, twisted jungle filled with more poisonous creeping, slithering reptiles and insects than any other part of the world. The trip alone had been enough of a jolt to her system to account for her jitteriness—paddling for miles and miles in canoes that sat barely above water level and watching snakes and crocodiles slither past. It had comforted her somewhat when she’d arrived to find the dig well in progress. The jungle had been cut back. The dig site was populated with a dozen scientists and students and about twice or three times that many native workers. A tent village had dotted the periphery of the site—but the tents were the best money could buy and filled with every modern convenience that could be lugged this deeply into the jungle. The conditions were still ungodly primitive, and she didn’t especially like the speculative gazes of the dark eyed natives—apparently fair women fascinated them. Not that she qualified as a ‘real blond’ in the real world. Her hair had darkened as she’d matured to a color closer to brown than blond, but she still had the blue eyes, pale skin, and freckles of a true blond and that seemed sufficient to the brown skinned pigmies that made up the bulk of the tent village to earn her more hungry male glances in the few weeks she’d been there than she’d had in her entire life before. Loathe to encourage them to believe she might welcome their sexual overtures— and she didn’t think she was imagining that they looked her over like a particularly choice piece of ass—she spent most of her time pretending they were invisible, which was another thing that made her uncomfortable. She’d been accused of being frank to the point of bluntness—which no one seemed to consider a virtue—but part of that frankness was the tendency to meet everyone eye to eye. She’d been taught that ‘shifty eyed’ was a trait that spelled untrustworthy. She wasn’t a liar, a cheat, or a fraud, and she was as good as, if no better than, anyone. It made her feel dishonest to avoid eye contact. BREEDING GROUND Madelaine Montague Beyond the physical discomforts, though, beyond the uneasiness at having short, dark men staring at her as if she was Venus incarnate, beyond the very real dangers that lurked beneath every leaf, shrub, and tree limb, there was something about the ancient city they’d uncovered that was just plain otherworldly creepy. She’d tried to convince herself it was nothing more than the real threats she sensed around her that was playing havoc with her imagination, but the fine hairs on her body—those primal sensors of danger—prickled as if the dormant animal inside of her knew something her conscious mind couldn’t detect. The natives were uneasy, too. Her Spanish wasn’t all that great, but she didn’t need to understand the language to assess the behavior. They were superstitious, though. They believed the tales of ghosts they scared themselves with. She didn’t believe in ghosts, or spirits, or ancient gods that were going to be displeased about having their temples violated. She hadn’t before she’d arrived at the grave site of the ancient, unnamed city. Now, she was trying to convince herself she still didn’t. And yet the death toll was rising. More than a dozen workers had died since the dig had begun, eleven before her arrival, two since, and three of the original party of scientists and archeology students had come down with a mysterious ailment that had required them to be shipped back stateside. They’d unearthed great segments of what promised to be a huge city that predated anything found before by at least a thousand years. And they still hadn’t found the remains of a single occupant of that city. That was almost the creepiest part of it. They should have found something by now that would warrant her presence here. If they didn’t find something damned soon, she thought angrily, she was going to high tail it back to her museum! “What happened, Gaby? Who got hurt?” Sheila Lyndon demanded as Gabrielle neared the tent they shared. Gaby simply stared at her blankly for several moments. “Got dead today, you mean? I didn’t know his name.” She didn’t know any of the natives’ names. She wasn’t certain she would have recognized the guy. A wave of shock crossed Sheila’s features. “Somebody got killed?” “There’s a shock,” Gaby said tightly, snatching open the tent flap and diving inside. “Someone getting killed on this dig.” “Hey! Accidents ...
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