Dark Storm by Christine Feehan

was desperate to get out, to survive, and it would use any means available to do so—including killing her mother.
    So this was why her mother was so in tune with plants. She felt them, was connected to them, and not in some small way. Riley had never felt that connection before, and it occurred to her that some form of awareness and power was being transferred to her. That possibility only alarmed her all the more. Was her mother inadvertently doing something in her sleep to pass her knowledge on to her daughter, as she’d said each generation of their ancestors did before their deaths?
    “What is she doing?” Jubal asked, curiosity in his voice. Curiosity and something else. Recognition, maybe?
    Riley actually started, so caught up and absorbed by the myriad plants around her and the feeling of being almost transformed, mesmerized by the existence of such intense life all around her that she’d nearly forgotten there were witnesses to the ritual movements her mother performed up on the mountain. Both Jubal and Gary looked at her with far too much knowledge.
    Riley shrugged, reluctant to explain her mother to anyone, although she felt as if the two men had earned an explanation—she just didn’t have an adequate one.
    “Have you seen these movements before?” Jubal asked. “The way she’s moving her hands is almost ritualistic.”
    “Yes.” Riley had been as honest as possible and felt they had been as well. Both were skirting around each other, reluctant to say something they couldn’t take back.
    “I’ve seen similar gestures in the Carpathian Mountains,” Jubal admitted. “When we’ve worked in the remote parts of the mountains. Has your mother been there before? Does she have any ties to Romania or any of the countries the range goes through?”
    Riley shook her head adamantly. “We’ve traveled to Europe once, but nowhere near the Carpathian Mountains. We mostly stay in South America. Mom’s come here many times. Most of the women in my family were born here, my mother included. We’re descendents of both the Cloud People as well as the Incas so my family has always had a huge interest in this part of the world. My mother was raised here and only went to the States when she met and married my father. He was from there.”
    “Are you adopted?” Jubal asked. “You don’t look anything like your mother.”
    Riley pressed her lips together. She’d heard that all of her life. She was tall and curvy with translucent skin and large, very different oval eyes. Her hair was as straight as a board and as black as midnight. Her mother was slender, of medium height, with wonderful olive skin and curly hair.
    “I’m not adopted. I look like one of my great-great-grandmothers. She was taller with dark hair, at least if the drawings of her can be believed. Mom showed them to me once when I was all upset because I towered over everyone in middle school.”
    She was talking too fast, too much, as she sometimes did when she was upset. They were asking a lot of personal questions. What did it matter if she didn’t look like her mother? Why were they so interested? She just wanted to grab her mother and make a run for it. If not for the fact that the forest itself seemed intent on attacking them, she might have done just that. Her mother had an amazing sense of direction when it came to the mountain. Twice when they’d made the journey and the guides were lost, it had been her mother who had found the way.
    But now, with Annabel sick and the attacks on her growing more violent, Riley didn’t dare separate from the group. Jubal and Gary offered a level of protection she couldn’t afford to dismiss.
    “Thank you both so much for your help. I have to get some sleep tonight. I don’t know why the forest has gone silent, but I don’t feel any immediate threat. I don’t want my mother to know about this right away. I want to tell her myself and see if she has any ideas why these attacks on her are