Thunderhead

And then his thoughts turned to Nora. More than once, she had made him very angry. But he had been forced to admire her bravery, the occasional recklessness of her determination. It was a terrible way to die. She would have heard her own death coming, would have known exactly what it meant.

He glanced around the valley, a vista of deepening purples, greens, and golds beneath a bright turquoise sky. It was a beautiful place. And yet it was malevolent in its beauty.

His eyes swivelled up in the direction of the hidden city. To think those three were up there now, opening the kiva as if nothing had happened. They would get the glory. And Nora would get a memorial plaque, nailed onto some wall at the Institute. He spat disgustedly, sighed, and turned to collect his notebook.

Then he stopped and looked around again at the darkened canyon. Except for the rumbling of water and the occasional birdsong, everything was quiet.

But instinct told him he was being watched.

Slowly, he reached over for the notebook. Turning a few pages, he sat back with an air of indifference, pretending to read the scribbled lines.

The feeling did not go away.

Swire’s sixth sense had been honed over many hard years of wrangling horses in wild, sometimes hostile country. He had learned to trust his life with it.

His right hand dropped to the holster and rested easily there, confirming the presence of the gun. Then the hand rose again, this time to thoughtfully stroke his mustache. The roar of the water echoed and re-echoed off the canyon walls, magnified and distorted. The edge of another storm cloud was moving into the sky, staining the turquoise an ugly shade of gray.

He casually slipped the notebook into his pocket. Then, just as casually, he slipped the trigger thong out of its catch.

He waited. Nothing.

He rose to his feet, using an extended stretch as an excuse to take another look around. Again, nothing. Yet his instincts were rarely wrong. Perhaps it was his imagination. To say he’d had a tough afternoon would be putting it mildly.

Still, he felt a presence. More than that: he felt stalked.

Swire wondered what could be after him. There had been no wolves or mountain lions in the valley before, and none sure as hell had come in today. Perhaps it was human. But who? Nora and the others who had entered the slot canyon were dead. And the rest of them were busy with the kiva. Besides, none of them would want to—

With a flash, he realized who it must be. He was confused, in shock from the day’s events, or he would have realized it before. They were the ones who had killed his horses. The bastards who had gutted his animals.

And now they were coming for him.

A surge of anger pushed away his rising apprehension. He couldn’t roll back time; he couldn’t save his horses, or prevent Nora from entering the canyon. But he could sure as hell do something about this.

The rock was not a good place to be. Lightly, he hopped off and strolled out into the open, glancing around, looking for a place from which to defend himself. On the surface the valley looked unchanged; but here, in the open, he could feel the presence more strongly.

His eyes moved toward a small grove of gambel oaks near the far end of the valley. Twelve hours before, the trees had been fifty feet from the water. Now, they were at its edge.

He nodded slowly to himself. From there, the water would be advantageously at his back. And the oaks would hide him from view. They wouldn’t know where he was among the trees. But he would have a view out across the benchland. It would give him time for several clear shots.

He began strolling down toward the river, his shoulder blades crawling with the sense of hidden eyes. When he was halfway to the grove, he stopped, spat out his tobacco, and hiked up his pants, in the process loosening the gun in its holster. It was only a .22 magnum long barrel, but it had the advantage of high accuracy in repeated shots. A good gun for the kind of work he had in mind.

He paused in the gathering gloom. This would be his last chance for a good look at the valley before entering the trees, and he wanted to sense which direction his stalkers might come from. By daylight, there were few hiding places in the valley. But as night neared, the number grew: stands of cottonwoods and chamisa, areas in dark shadow. And yet, he saw no unusual movement, nothing out of place.

Once again, he questioned his instincts. They were still screaming: Run, hide! A few raindrops began to fall, splattering heavily in the sand. His heart beat faster as his apprehension grew. He was not a man to walk away from a fight. But it was hard, not knowing who you were fighting, or from where they would come, or if in the end they were just your imagination, after all. He tried to remind himself that these were the bastards that had killed his horses. But as his thoughts returned to the horses, he saw them again in his mind’s eye: ritually sliced, feathers protruding from the glazed dead eyes, the grayish-blue guts wound in spirals. What kind of monsters could do that . . .

He started forward again, quickening his pace toward the copse. Once he almost turned around, heart beating fast, but he checked himself in time: he must not show that he knew they were there.

A few more steps brought him into the stand of the oaks. Moving quickly to the far side, he crouched, then swivelled around, putting his back to the water. It was dark beneath the hanging limbs, and water dripped onto his head and back. The sound of the flood seemed magnified in the close space: it bore down on him confusingly, coming in from all sides. He shook his head to clear it, taking a step backward as he did so. He was at the very edge of the flood now, and the water gurgled through the tree trunks, curling and tugging around his boots. He moved back yet again, slowly, his boots making a light plashing noise.

With a dull, hollow thud of fear, he realized it had been a mistake to retreat to this grove. Darkness was descending so swiftly on the canyon that he could make out little beyond the dense thicket of trees. He waited, shivering slightly, feeling the coldness of the water creep into his boots. His eyes widened as he tried to separate the shapes of the trees from each other, to distinguish them in the damp, dark gloom.

Now he slipped his gun out of the holster, waiting. He took another step back into the swirling water. It surged a little higher, and a distant, detached part of him noted that the flood was coming up again. His anger was no longer a comfort; now all he felt was cold, naked fear. It was too dark to see anything. If only he could hear, he might be able to act: but the sound of the water was like a heavy cloak, depriving him of his most valuable sense. All he had left, in fact, was smell. And even that wasn’t working properly: by some trick of his overcharged brain, he felt surrounded by the beautiful, delicate scent of morning glories.

Just then, to his left, he saw a terrible movement of shadow: a violent wrenching of black upon black. Too late, he realized the things had been in the grove all the time, watching and waiting, while he came to them. He raised the gun with a cry, but the shot went wild and the weapon tumbled into the flood. As the muzzle flare died away, Swire saw—or thought he saw—the blade of a knife, impossibly black and cold, slicing down through the night.

56

IN THE DEPTHS OF THE HIDDEN CAVERN, BLACK carefully edged a penknife beneath the uppermost clay seal, his arms shaking with exhaustion and excitement. He turned one hand, trying to apply an even pressure to the seal, but his aching fingers twitched and the seal popped free, along with a piece of the plastered door.