The tight squeeze only lasted a short distance before the space angled around and began to open up. Suddenly she was inside the thick rock of the mountain, her light beam bouncing off smooth, rounded walls. It was a cave - an empty one, except for some bats rustling out of a disturbed sleep overhead.
And from the look of it, the space was mostly manmade. The ceiling rose at least twenty feet over Dylan's head. Interesting symbols were painted on each wall of the small cavern. They looked like some odd sort of hieroglyphics: a cross between bold tribal markings and interlocking, gracefully geometric patterns.
Dylan walked closer to one of the walls, mesmerized by the beauty of the strange artwork. She panned the small beam of her flashlight to the right, breathless to find the elaborate decoration continuing all around her. She took a step toward the center of the cave. The toe of her hiking boot knocked into something on the earthen floor. Whatever it was clattered hollowly as it rolled away. Dylan swept her light over the ground and gasped.
Oh, shit.
It was a skull. White bone glowed against the darkness, the human head staring up at her with sightless, vacant sockets.
If this was the him the dead woman wanted Dylan to help out, it looked like she got there about a hundred years too late.
Dylan moved the light farther into the gloom, unsure what she was searching for, but too fascinated to leave just yet. The beam skidded over another set of bones - Jesus, more aged human remains scattered on the floor of the cave.
Goose bumps prickled on Dylan's arms from a draft that seemed to rise out of nowhere.
And that's when she saw it.
A large rectangular block of stone sat on the other side of the darkness. More markings like the ones covering the walls were painted onto the carved bulk of the object.
Dylan didn't have to move closer to realize that she was looking at a crypt. A thick slab had been placed over the top of the tomb. It was moved aside, skewed slightly off the stone crypt as if pushed away by incredibly strong hands.
Was someone - or something - laid to rest in there?
Dylan had to know.
She crept forward, flashlight gripped in suddenly perspiring fingers. A few paces away now, Dylan angled the beam into the opening of the tomb.
It was empty.
And for reasons she couldn't explain, that thought chilled her even more than if she'd found some hideous corpse turning to dust inside.
Over her head, the cave's nocturnal residents were getting restless. The bats stirred, then bolted past her in a hurried rush of motion. Dylan ducked to let them pass, figuring she'd better get the hell out of there too.
As she pivoted to find the crevice exit, she heard another rustle of movement. This one was bigger than bats, a low snarl of sound followed by a disturbance of loose rock somewhere in the cave.
Oh, God. Maybe she wasn't alone in here after all.
The hairs at the back of her neck tingled and before she could remind herself that she didn't believe in monsters, her heart started beating in overdrive.
She fumbled around for the way out of the cave, her pulse jackhammering in her ears. By the time she found daylight, she was gasping for air. Her legs felt rubbery as she scrambled back down the ridge, then raced to rejoin her friends in the safety of the bright midday sun below.
He'd been dreaming of Eva again.
It wasn't enough that the female had betrayed him in life - now, in her death, she invaded his mind while he slept. Still beautiful, still treacherous, she spoke to him of regret and how she wanted to make things right.
All lies.
Eva's visiting ghost was only a part of Rio's long slide into madness.
His dead mate wept in his dreams, begging him to forgive her for the deception she'd orchestrated a year ago. She was sorry. She still loved him, and always would.
She wasn't real. Just a taunting reminder of a past he would be glad to leave behind.
Trusting the female had cost him much. His face had been ruined in the warehouse explosion. His body was broken in places, still recovering from injuries that would have killed a mortal man.
And his mind...?
Rio's sanity had been fracturing apart, bit by bit, worsening in the time he'd been holed up alone on this Bohemian mountainside.
He could bring it all to a halt. As one of the Breed - a hybrid race of humans bearing vampiric, alien genes - he could drag himself into the sunlight and let the UV rays devour him. He'd considered doing just that, but there remained the task of closing the cave and destroying the damning evidence it contained.
He didn't know how long he'd been there. The days and nights, weeks and months, had at some point merged into an endless suspension of time. He wasn't sure how it had happened. He'd arrived there with his brethren of the Order. The warriors had been on a mission to locate and destroy an old evil secreted away in the rocks centuries ago.
But they were too late.
The crypt was empty; the evil had already been freed.
It was Rio who volunteered to stay behind and seal the cave while the others returned home to Boston. He couldn't go back with them. He didn't know where he belonged. He'd intended to find his own way - maybe go back to Spain, his homeland.
That's what he'd told the warriors who'd long been like brothers to him. But he hadn't carried out any of his plans. He had delayed, tormented by indecision and the weight of the sin he'd been contemplating.
In his heart, he'd known he had no intention of leaving this tomb. But he had put off the inevitable with weak excuses, waiting for the right time, the right conditions, for him to do what he had to do. But those excuses were just that. They only served to make the hours stretch into days, the days into weeks.
Now, easily months later, he lurked in the darkness of the cave like the bats that inhabited the dank space with him. He no longer hunted, no longer had the desire to feed. He merely existed, conscious of his steady descent into a hell of his own making.