Midnight Rainbow by Linda Howard

over the rocks sounded cool, and she thought of how heavenly
it would be to refresh her sweaty body in the stream. Looking longingly at it,
she stumbled over a root and reached out to catch her balance. Her palm came
down hard against a tree trunk, and something squished beneath her fingers.
                  "Oh, yuk !"
she moaned, trying to wipe the dead insect off with a leaf. Grant stopped.
"What is it?"
                  "I smashed a bug with my hand." The
leaf didn't clean too well; a smear still stained her hand, and she looked at
Grant with disgust showing plainly on her face. "Is it all right if I wash
my hand in the stream?"
                  He looked around, his amber eyes examining
both sides of the stream. "Okay. Come over here."
                  "I can get down here," she said. The
bank was only a few feet high, and the underbrush wasn't that thick. She
carefully picked her way over the roots of an enormous tree, bracing her hand
against its trunk to steady herself as she started to descend to the stream.
                  "Watch out!" Grant said sharply, and
Jane froze in her tracks, turning her head to look askance at him. Suddenly
something incredibly heavy dropped onto her shoulders, something long and thick
and alive, and she gave a stifled scream as it began to coil around her body.
She was more startled than frightened, thinking a big vine had fallen; then she
saw the movement of a large triangular head and she gave another gasping cry.
"Grant! Grant, help me !"
                  Terror clutched at her throat, choking her,
and she began to claw at the snake, trying to get it off. It was a calm
monster, working its body around her, slowly tightening the lethal muscles that
would crush her bones. It twined around her legs and she fell, rolling on the
ground. Dimly she could hear Grant cursing, and she could hear her own cries of
terror, but they sounded curiously distant. Everything was tumbling in a mad
kaleidoscope of brown earth and green trees, of Grant's taut, furious face. He
was shouting something at her, but she couldn't understand him; all she could
do was struggle against the living bonds that coiled around her. She had one
shoulder and arm free, but the boa was tightening itself around her rib cage,
and the big head was coming toward her face, its mouth open. Jane screamed,
trying to catch its head with her free hand, but the snake was crushing the
breath out of her and the scream was almost soundless. A big hand, not hers,
caught the snake's head, and she dimly saw a flash of silver. The snake's coils
loosened about her as it turned to meet this new prey, seeking to draw Grant
into its deadly embrace, too. She saw the flash of silver again, and something
wet splashed into her face. Vaguely she realized that it was his knife she'd
seen. He was swearing viciously as he wrestled with the snake, mostly astride
her as she writhed on the ground, struggling to free herself. "Damn it,
hold still!" he roared. "You'll make me cut you!"
                  It was impossible to be still; she was wrapped
in the snake, and it was writhing with her in its coils. She was too crazed by
fear to realize that the snake was in its death throes, not even when she saw
Grant throw something aside and begin forcibly removing the thick coils from
around her body. It wasn't until she actually felt herself coming free of the
constrictor's horrible grasp that she understood it was over, that Grant had
killed the snake. She stopped fighting and lay limply on the ground. Her face
was utterly white except for the few freckles across her nose and cheekbones;
her eyes were fixed on Grant's face.
                  "It's over," he said roughly,
running his hands over her arms and rib cage. "How do you feel? Anything broken?"
                  Jane couldn't say anything; her throat was
frozen, her voice totally gone. All she could do was lie there and