Read Online Darkness Bound by J. T. Geissinger - Free Book Online
Authors: J. T. Geissinger
Ads: Link
shafts of emerald green, toucans call with a sound like the croak of a frog, while down on the perfumed beds of fallen leaves and bracken that cover the muffled twilight of the forest floor, leaf-cutter ants and rhinoceros beetles that can carry 850 times their own body weight scuttle about in endless pursuit of mates and food.
Another animal lives in this verdant paradise of jeweled leaves and pristine sky, of towering trees wreathed in mist and the constant musical chatter of the birds that inhabit them. Like many of the animals of the rainforest, this one is a predator.
A predator with that most important of animal survival skills: camouflage.
A muscular, four-legged killing machine with a coat so glossy black it shone midnight blue, and eyesight so sharp it could cut through the dense forest gloom like a scythe, Hawk carried the thumb-size memory card from Jack’s camera carefully in his mouth, in a small pouch he’d made from a folded plastic baggie and a few pieces of tape. This part of the rainforest wasn’t accessible by foot—human feet, to be precise—and the going was slow. Over the tangled gnarl of buttress roots and the mossed bulk of fallen trunks, around dark pools of standing water and the swift, snaking fingers of murmuring streams, he made his way primarily using his sense of smell. Though he knew the jungle where he’d been born and raised almost by rote, he took a different path home every time he returned from the city, and it was his nose that led the way.
It wouldn’t be long now. The scent of a large group of carnivores told him he was close.
A cry from high above pierced the late afternoon humidity of the forest, and Hawk paused in mid stride, lifting his gaze to the sky, visible through a small break in the towering canopy. In the uppermost layer of the rainforest known as the emergent, a harpy eagle soared briefly into view. Falling still, Hawk closed his eyes and concentrated.
As abruptly as he’d frozen, he was flying. Seeing through another pair of eyes, breathing through another set of lungs, his body left behind in suspended animation on the forest floor.
He felt a lurch in his stomach as his mind adjusted, then the familiar sensation of wind on his face, streaming warm through his tail feathers.
He made a slow, looping turn, scanning the emergent for signs of anything amiss. Glistening green treetops carpeted the landscape for miles, interrupted only by the serpentine black channel of the Rio Negro far to the west, the river he’d traveled up in a rented boat from Manaus before he’d abandoned it and continued on foot deeper into the forest. He spotted the sheared tip of the giant kapok tree that marked the edge of his colony, and pumped his outstretched wings twice, turning his beak to the wind and letting an updraft of heated air lift and cradle him as he crested the rise of a hill. Riding the wind for a moment, he luxuriated in the freedom, delaying for one last, lovely moment the inevitable return to “real” life.
Then with a simple exhalation, he released the eagle and came rushing back into himself, still standing motionless on the forest floor.
Hanging upside down from a nearby branch by his tail, his wise old-man face scrunched up in concentration, an adult male howler monkey was staring at him in curiosity.
Hawk snarled an unmistakable warning, and the monkey went screaming away into the trees. He flattened his ears against his head in a vain effort to soften the piercing shrieks; the primates were named “howlers” for good reason.
He headed off once again, trotting wi th easy agility over the tangled, thorny floor of the forest.
“Ah, the lone wolf returns,” said the Alpha Alejandro with an unconcealed sneer. He lifted an overfull wineglass in contemptuous salute as Hawk entered the Assembly gathering place.
Cold and sharp as an icicle, a spike of hatred stabbed through Hawk’s heart.
Cocktail hour already, you degenerate?
Aloud, he said mildly,
Another animal lives in this verdant paradise of jeweled leaves and pristine sky, of towering trees wreathed in mist and the constant musical chatter of the birds that inhabit them. Like many of the animals of the rainforest, this one is a predator.
A predator with that most important of animal survival skills: camouflage.
A muscular, four-legged killing machine with a coat so glossy black it shone midnight blue, and eyesight so sharp it could cut through the dense forest gloom like a scythe, Hawk carried the thumb-size memory card from Jack’s camera carefully in his mouth, in a small pouch he’d made from a folded plastic baggie and a few pieces of tape. This part of the rainforest wasn’t accessible by foot—human feet, to be precise—and the going was slow. Over the tangled gnarl of buttress roots and the mossed bulk of fallen trunks, around dark pools of standing water and the swift, snaking fingers of murmuring streams, he made his way primarily using his sense of smell. Though he knew the jungle where he’d been born and raised almost by rote, he took a different path home every time he returned from the city, and it was his nose that led the way.
It wouldn’t be long now. The scent of a large group of carnivores told him he was close.
A cry from high above pierced the late afternoon humidity of the forest, and Hawk paused in mid stride, lifting his gaze to the sky, visible through a small break in the towering canopy. In the uppermost layer of the rainforest known as the emergent, a harpy eagle soared briefly into view. Falling still, Hawk closed his eyes and concentrated.
As abruptly as he’d frozen, he was flying. Seeing through another pair of eyes, breathing through another set of lungs, his body left behind in suspended animation on the forest floor.
He felt a lurch in his stomach as his mind adjusted, then the familiar sensation of wind on his face, streaming warm through his tail feathers.
He made a slow, looping turn, scanning the emergent for signs of anything amiss. Glistening green treetops carpeted the landscape for miles, interrupted only by the serpentine black channel of the Rio Negro far to the west, the river he’d traveled up in a rented boat from Manaus before he’d abandoned it and continued on foot deeper into the forest. He spotted the sheared tip of the giant kapok tree that marked the edge of his colony, and pumped his outstretched wings twice, turning his beak to the wind and letting an updraft of heated air lift and cradle him as he crested the rise of a hill. Riding the wind for a moment, he luxuriated in the freedom, delaying for one last, lovely moment the inevitable return to “real” life.
Then with a simple exhalation, he released the eagle and came rushing back into himself, still standing motionless on the forest floor.
Hanging upside down from a nearby branch by his tail, his wise old-man face scrunched up in concentration, an adult male howler monkey was staring at him in curiosity.
Hawk snarled an unmistakable warning, and the monkey went screaming away into the trees. He flattened his ears against his head in a vain effort to soften the piercing shrieks; the primates were named “howlers” for good reason.
He headed off once again, trotting wi th easy agility over the tangled, thorny floor of the forest.
“Ah, the lone wolf returns,” said the Alpha Alejandro with an unconcealed sneer. He lifted an overfull wineglass in contemptuous salute as Hawk entered the Assembly gathering place.
Cold and sharp as an icicle, a spike of hatred stabbed through Hawk’s heart.
Cocktail hour already, you degenerate?
Aloud, he said mildly,
Similar Books
