Janet clucked her tongue. "And good riddance! Why, it's like something straight out of a horror movie, isn't it?"
Nancy and Marie looked equally aghast, all three women evidently buying Goran's tall tale - hook, line, and sinker. Dylan remained skeptical to say the least. But in the back of her mind she wondered if her story about an empty mountain crypt littered with old human remains might be even juicier with a firsthand account of some kind of demon vampire attack. Never mind the fact that the alleged victim couldn't corroborate with either memory or physical evidence; her boss at the paper wouldn't hesitate to go to print on the word of a superstitious, likely vision-impaired, backwoods old man alone. Hell, they'd gone to print on far less than that before.
"Do you think I could talk to your grandfather about what he saw?"
"Dylan is a journalist," the ever-helpful Janet, to no one's surprise, felt compelled to explain. "She lives in New York City. Have you ever been to New York City, Goran?"
"I have never been there, but I should like very much to see it one day," he replied, glancing at Dylan again. "You are a journalist, really?"
"No, not really. Maybe someday. Right now, the stuff I write is...I guess you could call them human interest stories." She smiled up at the bartender. "So, do you think your grandpa would be willing to speak with me?"
"He is dead, I'm sorry to say. He had a stroke in his sleep last month and never woke up."
"Oh." Dylan's heart clenched with true remorse, her hunger for a story taking an immediate backseat. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Goran."
He gave a tight nod. "He was a lucky man. If only we all live to be ninety-two, like my grandfather, eh?"
"Yeah," Dylan said, feeling the gazes of her mom's friends fixed on her in sympathy. "If only."
"I have new customers," he announced as a small group of people came into the tavern. "I must go now. When I come back, Dylan, maybe you will tell me about New York City."
As he left, and before Janet could enthuse over what a great idea it would be for Dylan to invite the adorable young Goran to the States, marry him, and have his babies, Dylan faked a brilliant, big yawn.
"Wow, guess I had too much fresh air today - I'm really beat. I think I'm going to turn in early. I have a bit of work to do yet tonight, and some e-mails I need to take a look at before I hit the hay."
"You sure, honey?"
Dylan gave Janet a weak bob of her head. "Yeah. Long day." She got up and grabbed her messenger bag from the back of her wooden pub chair. Pulling out enough Czech koruny to cover her portion of the bar tab and a nice tip for their host, Dylan set the money down on the table. "I'll see you back at the room."
As she made the short walk from the tavern to the hotel down the street, Dylan's fingers were itching to hit her keyboard. She closed herself inside the room, fired up her computer, and tried to keep up as the story spilled out of her. Dylan smiled as the piece took shape. It was no longer simply a report of an old cavern tomb and some dusty skeletons, but a blood-curdling account of a living, breathing evil that may well be still at large in the wilderness terrain above an otherwise tranquil European town.
She had the words.
All she needed now were some pictures of the demon's mountain lair.
Chapter Three
It was early morning in the mountain region, too early for most of the tourist groups and day hikers to be out and about. Still, Dylan avoided the main entrance and ventured into the woods on her own. A light rain began soon after she entered the forest, the soft summer shower falling from gunmetal gray clouds overhead. Dylan's trail shoes padded wetly on the damp pine needles beneath her feet as she picked up the pace and located the mountain path she'd been on the day before with her companions.
There was no sign of the dark-haired lady in white today, but Dylan didn't need the apparition's help in finding her way to the cave. Guided there by memory and a rising thrum in her veins, she climbed the steep, tricky incline to the ledge of sandstone outside the hidden cave.
In the overcast haze, the narrow crevice opening seemed even darker today, the sandstone giving off an earthy, ancient scent. Dylan swung her backpack down off her arm and grabbed her small flashlight from one of the pack's zippered pockets. She twisted the thin metal barrel and sent a beam of light ahead of her into the dark passageway of the cave.
Go in, get a few pictures of the crypt and the funky wall art, then get the hell out.
Not that she was afraid. Why should she be? This was just an old burial site of some sort - and a long-abandoned one at that. Absolutely nothing to fear.
And wasn't that just what those clueless horror movie actresses would say right before they ate it in gory detail on-screen?
Dylan mentally scoffed at herself. This was real life after all. The odds of a chainsaw-wielding lunatic or a flesh-eating zombie lurking in the dark of this cave were about the same as her coming face-to-face with the bloodsucking monster Goran's grandfather claimed to have seen. In other words, less than nil.
With the rain pattering gently behind her, Dylan stepped between the narrow walls of rock and carefully navigated her way into the cave, the beam of her flashlight leading the way. Several feet in, the passageway opened up onto more darkness. Dylan swung the light around the perimeter of the cave, as awestruck as she had been yesterday, by the elaborate wall markings and the rectangular slab of stone at the center of the space.
She didn't see the man lying in a careless sprawl on the ground until she was nearly on top of him.
"Jesus!"
She sucked in a startled breath and leaped back, the beam of her flashlight ricocheting crazily in the second it took for her to get over the shock. She angled the light back down to where he lay...and found nothing.