The ground was covered with mosses, so dazzling a green that it almost hurt to look at them.
“Definitely someone been here recently,” J.B. said, pointing. “See the hacked ends of some of the bushes where they’ve kept open that narrow path.”
“Place like this’ll close up in couple days,” Jak said. “Reminds me of home.”
Doc stood next to the teenager and patted him on the shoulder. “It puts me in mind of an old verse, dear boy, about an old road through the woods. But wind and rain have undone it again, and now you would never know that there was ever a road through the woods. Something like that. I disremember the exact wording.”
“Look at the butterflies.” Dean had left the control level locked in the open position and had joined the others, his Browning Hi-Power cocked in his right hand. “Dozens of them. They’re beautiful. Know what kind they are?”
Doc peered out through the doorway. “Well, they are certainly tropical. The brown ones with the eyes are owl butterflies. Brassolidae family. The pale one with the black freckles around the wings is a green morpho.”
“Wow! What about that oneblack and green and splashes of red and white? The big one?”
“I believe that’s called a southern cattle heart, Dean. You know, there’s something very odd here. None of them are indigenous to the United States. They all come from either Central or South America.”
“Look at this one.” Mildred pointed at a butterfly, larger and more beautiful than any of the others, that had come hovering inside the control room. “What’s it called, Doc?”
It had an overall width of at least eighteen inches across, and its wings had elongated, feathery tips that added another six inches to their length. The leading edge of each wing was brilliant vermilion, shading into dark crimson. Then came a strip of golden white that darkened into the trailing tips, which were a rich purple color.
Doc shook his head as the butterfly danced around them, circling, rising, falling, flying closer to Dean, who watched it with a hypnotized fascination.
“Don’t know. Some kind of a swallowtail. But I never saw one with that coloring, and I am certain-sure that I have never in my life seen a butterfly of that extraordinary size. Positively giganticus.”
“Seems to like you, Dean,” Mildred said, watching the butterfly hovering nearer and nearer to the boy.
Dean was smiling up at the delightful mutie creature, holding out his hand for it to perch. But the whirligig of serendipity color seemed to be flirting with him, swooping lower, brushing his curly hair with its wings, then rising high toward the ceiling of the control room.
“So beautiful,” Krysty whispered, as though she were frightened of scaring the butterfly away.
One moment it was over in the far corner of the room, hanging in the air like a living splash of painted colors, next moment it had come diving in toward Dean, fastening itself onto the side of his throat, just below and behind the left ear.
At the last moment the boy cried out, waving his hand at it, ducking away, meaning that the attack missed the carotid artery by less than an inch.
Ryan reacted fastest.
There had been something unearthly about the staggering beauty of the large butterfly, something that had brought a prickling to the short hairs at his nape, a sure sign that his combat instinct was giving him a warning. A warning that all wasn’t well, a warning of possible danger.
The moment the butterfly folded its beautiful wings and dived at Dean, Ryan was already moving, his mouth open to start a shout of alarm.
The SIG-Sauer was switched to his left hand in a flicker of movement, and his right hand reached toward the butterfly, where it clung to Dean’s neck like a bizarre piece of living jewelry in stunning colors.
As he grabbed at it, Ryan was surprised by the fluttering power of the long wings beating against his fingers. But he closed his hand, wrenching the creature from the pale skin, seeing the blotch of brilliant crimson that it left smeared behind it, as though a part of its magical coloring remained behind on the boy’s throat.