Within a few more yards, he had his answer. The excavated walls turned to natural stone. He discovered steps carved into the rock underfoot. The archaeologists must have broken into a section of the secret passages that once riddled the ancient citadel.
But what had they found?
A scream of fury chased him, echoed by another.
He pictured the two cats crouched at the entrance, sensing their quarry was trapped. He breathed a sigh of relief for McKay.
They’re still coming after me . . .
Spurred by that thought, Jordan rushed deeper, knowing where he must reach, a place roughly described to him by Atherton, even though the professor had never been there himself.
Within a few steps, the tunnel ended at a large cavern, a dead end. He slid slightly on damp stone, coming to rest at a pile of bones, a deadfall of limbs, skulls, and rib cages. The scatter of bones covered the stone floor of the cavern, forming a macabre beach at the edge of a pool of black water. More bones glowed up through the shallows.
Jordan remembered Atherton’s story of the citadel’s subterranean spring—and the slaughter that took place here centuries ago.
But the deaths here weren’t all ancient.
Resting atop the bones, at the water’s edge, were the bloody bodies of fresh kills. The corpses were torn, gutted, and broken-limbed. Here lay the remains of the archaeology team, and what appeared to be the girl’s mother. From the gnawed state of their bodies, Jordan knew he had found the lair of the leopards. They hadn’t waited long to take over the newly opened cave.
As if sensing his violation, a yowl echoed down to him, sounding much closer than before. Or maybe it was his fear accentuating his senses. His head also continued to spin from the fumes that filled the space. By now, his eyes wept, and his nose burned.
He had to work fast.
He stepped to the edge of the boneyard and tossed his burden far. The girl’s clothes fluttered open, scattering straw that he’d stolen from the mattress and stuffed inside. If the beasts hunted by scent or sight, he’d wanted to do his best to convince the hunters that the girl was with him.
Or maybe it didn’t matter.
Maybe, as with Azar earlier, it merely took his own flight to draw the beasts.
Cats hunted things that ran from them.
And if he had failed to draw them after him, he had left Cooper back at the mud-brick house with the girl and the professor. It was the best plan he could muster to keep them safe with their meager resources.
Jordan unhooked the flashlight from his gun and flipped it to the opposite side of the cavern. The beam flipped end over end, a dizzying effect with his head already spinning. The light landed near the far side of the underground spring, glowing like a beacon.
Jordan fled away from it, to a cluster of boulders at the right of the tunnel entrance. He crouched down, drew his weapon, and waited. It didn’t take long.
He smelled the muskiness of the leopards before the first brute stalked into the cavern. It was a sinewy monster, nine feet long, all fiery furred and marked with black rosettes, a male. It flowed like a tide into the space, silent, purposeful, unstoppable. A second beast followed, smaller, a female.
He caught a glimpse of its dark eyes as it surveyed the room. They burned with an inner fire, much as the girl’s eyes had earlier.
Jordan held his breath.
The world turned watery, his head more muzzy.
Movement became smudging blurs.
The male rushed to the discarded clothing, snuffling deeply, intent on its focus.
The second animal slid past its mate, drawn to the light, stalking low toward it.
A rippling of the water drew his attention to the spring-fed pool. He watched the male cat’s reflection shimmer, wavering. For the briefest flicker, he thought he saw another image hidden beyond the fiery fur, something pallid and sickly, hairless and hunched. Jordan blinked his burning eyes, and it disappeared.
He shook his head and tore his gaze away.
He dared not wait any longer.
He slipped as quietly as possible out of hiding and toward the open tunnel, sneaking back the way he had come. He had to steady himself with one hand on the wall to keep upright.
Then sudden movement made him freeze. The male leopard, its back still to Jordan, lifted its head from the mound of discarded clothes and yowled its frustration at the roof, knowing it had been tricked.
Under its paws, the bones began to shift.
To Jordan’s addled senses, they seemed to stir on their own—scraping against one another, knocking hollowly. He gaped, trying to convince himself the movement was merely the massive beast shifting its weight.
He failed.
Numb with primal terror, he stumbled backward toward the mouth of the tunnel. The shaking of the bones grew worse. He watched one of the archaeologists’ bodies rise, belly up, back broken.
He wanted to look away, but horror transfixed him.
As he stared, the carcass lifted up on limbs twisted the wrong direction. It scuttled across the bone field like a crab. Its head hung askew, mouth open. From that gullet, gibbering whispers flowed. Words in the same archaic language as on the recording.
A second corpse stirred, missing a lower jaw, throat bared open.
It added to the chorus of madness.
Can’t be . . . I’m seeing things.
Grasping at this thin hope, he turned and fled up the tunnel, rebounding off the walls every few feet. The world continued to churn around him, betraying his steps. He fumbled for the penlight in his pocket.
He found it, flicked it on, and lost it as it slipped from his fingertips.
It bounced away behind him.
Still, the glow offered enough light from behind to help illuminate the way up.
He ran—while a howl arose behind him.
As it echoed away, he heard a faint whispering in his ear.
“. . . hurry. All done here . . .”
McKay.
He forced himself upward: buffeted by that foul wind, chased by howls, pursued by things that scratched rock with rotted nails and bone.
Shadows cast up from below danced on the walls around him, ahead of him, capering up from the fires of Hell.
Heavy footfalls rushed up the tunnel behind him.
No more howls now.
Just the silent hunt.
Jordan ran his palms along the wall to keep his legs under him. He tore his skin on the coarse stone, but he didn’t care. The pain meant he had abandoned the smooth natural cavern walls below for the excavated sharp edges of man-made work.
Behind him, a harsh panting echoed.
The penlight’s glow vanished.
Darkness collapsed around him as the beasts closed in.
He ran faster, his lungs burning.
He smelled the creatures now, the stench blown up to him by the foul breath of the cave: stinking of meat and blood and horror.