Black Wings of Cthulhu (Volume Six)

by S. T. Joshi

  In the silence that followed, Cassie felt sweat drying cold on the back of her neck.

  Then Alvarez exhaled sharply.

  “That’s . . . interesting.” She picked up the battered notebook. “I’d like to borrow this tonight, if you don’t—”

  “I made you copies.”

  Before Alvarez could complain, Cassie retrieved her property and stowed it away. If the archaeologist wasn’t happy with the manila envelope she got back, she wasn’t showing it. Much.

  “I’ll still need the original when I write up my field notes. The ceramics we’re finding here are unique. Not just that clay, but the black-on-white pattern.”

  Cassie nodded, trying to look as if she knew more than she probably did.

  “There’s something else about them,” Alvarez added. “But only the sealed ones, the ones with the webs.”

  Disquiet crossed her face. “Or whatever that is.”

  “It happens when you touch them.” Joshua’s voice dropped. “There’s some kind of tangible reaction—”

  “More than that. And it happens in your head.”

  The security guard and the archaeologist stared at each other. Cassie got the distinct impression that they’d both had this experience separately. And hadn’t shared it afterwards, for whatever reason.

  She could think of a few.

  “I could show you a cache,” Joshua finally said. “It was fine last night, anyhow. I don’t think the looters know about it yet—”

  He stopped short. “If that’s OK, Dr. Alvarez?”

  Alvarez glanced back up toward the parking area before replying.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “But keep an eye out. We can’t afford to keep losing pots.”

  4

  THEY WERE SEVERAL MINUTES INTO THE CANYON before Joshua Yellowtail spoke again. Looking up at the shadow-pocked walls, Cassie wondered what else he hadn’t put into that letter.

  Or had been told to leave out?

  Zia House’s director had been chasing something unique, too—and she’d caught it. Or it caught her, the way the Outside did when people weren’t paying attention. When they thought they’d found some private exception to the rules of this world, but it was still OK, all perfectly natural—

  “I said, have you got a flashlight?”

  Cassie gave Joshua a guilty half-smile. “In my backpack.” Her amusement faded. “But I’m not going into any dark holes until you tell me what’s going on with Dr. Alvarez. Why’d she want me down here, anyhow?”

  Joshua took a careful look up and around.

  “Kit Baker.” He shrugged. “And tenure.”

  Cassie winced. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better.

  “She thinks Kit’s feeding information to pothunters?”

  “To somebody working with pothunters. Maybe that dealer she was talking about—Len Mason, I think his name is. Serious bad guy. I’ve run him off once or twice.”

  He hesitated. “Not sure why she’d be doing it, though she and Dr. Alvarez don’t exactly get along.” A longer pause. “But she knew about that new find spot last month. And the one in the picture I sent you.”

  Cassie bit her lip.

  “Do I even want to know about the tenure part?”

  “I don’t even know about it, officially. But one thing you learn working security is to keep your ears open.”

  And one thing she’d learned about frostbite was to trust it.

  Jupe and Juno hadn’t liked that sherd one bit. McAllister’s notes and Alvarez’s chemical analysis of another sherd dovetailed a little too well. Now here she was, about to go headfirst into a cavate with who knew how many whole pots— and touch them.

  Resisting the urge to check the small .38 under her shirttail, Cassie kept walking. Joshua Yellowtail was Frank’s nephew, after all. Not likely to lead her into danger.

  But she wouldn’t have figured him for stashing an inconvenient body, either.

  A few minutes later, he stopped and pointed at the canyon wall just above her head.

  “Maybe that’s why looters didn’t find it first. Not real easy to get at, though there must have been a ladder there once. Or handholds that eroded.”

  Cassie frowned up at the dark opening.

  “So how did Dr. Alvarez even think to check it?”

  “She mentioned hearing something strange in the wind here.” He shrugged. “All I know is, she hasn’t told any of her students—and she always brings her own stepladder back at the end of the day.”

  Cassie took off her backpack and removed the flashlight, plus a pair of work gloves. Then she jumped up for the cavate’s edge, managing to find handholds on her second try. As she scrambled for footing on the wall below, Joshua’s interlaced hands gave her a boost.

  “Thanks.”

  He passed the flashlight up. In its strong beam, the cavate looked larger and taller than it had from outside, its ceiling nearly high enough for her to stand. Or at least crouch. Moving carefully, she shuffled toward the back.

  A mineral tang of rock and dust filled her nostrils. Nothing else. So far, so good—

  Cassie froze. The few pots nestled at the back of the cavate had more webbing across their mouths than the ones in Joshua’s photos. It looked fresh, too; silvery-moist in her flashlight beam.

  As for the pots themselves, they actually were black-on-white. Not the worn gray-on-chalk seen in museum cases, or the dingy charcoal and tan of sherds she’d been tempted by at trading posts. And no chips or cracks she could see—from a distance.

  Up close, the canteen-style vessels were even more disturbing, as though their Anasazi creator had just set them down and walked away. Alvarez was right about the design, though. Beneath these simple crosshatchings and spirals, diamonds and saw-toothed lines, something else had left its mark.

  And all those spirals dark galaxies flecked with suppurating stars—

  Gritting her teeth, Cassie pulled off her left glove.

  Then, before she could think about it, she pressed her palm against the nearest pot.

  At first, she felt nothing but the cool strangeness of the clay. The vessel beneath her hand curving . . . outward. Outward toward the thinnest edge of space, where all laws of small blue spheroids shattered against the inchoate Beyond.

  Where the only human sound was a soul-deep shrieking.

  5

  BACK ACHING AFTER A LONG MORNING OF CATALOGING potsherds, Cassie swore under her breath as she headed up the trail. No surprise that she’d forgotten her lunch. After getting back from her little hike yesterday afternoon, she’d barely managed to drive herself safely to Santa Fe. Checking into her hotel had been its own adventure.

  Sleep hadn’t come until the small stark hours. When it had, her dreams had driven her back to the room’s single chair, where she’d paged through McAllister’s journal until sunrise.

  His comments on the moon-flyer story drew most of her attention. What a flood in Vermont had to do with tourist rumors in New Mexico, she couldn’t imagine—until she rechecked his four petroglyphs. The descriptions in those 1927 articles didn’t mirror what he’d drawn, but they’d been close. There was no good reason for that. No explanation at all for the object held by one “flying” glyph.

  At least, none she wanted to consider after touching that pot.

  Cassie wiped her left hand on her jeans and kept walking. She’d lost her appetite, but soda from her cooler would make a change from the tepid water Alvarez provided. Even that was in short supply: the archaeologist had taken several bottles when she and her stepladder headed out this morning. A last wave of monsoon rain was on its way, she’d heard. No time to waste at her new favorite cavate.

  If Joshua had told her about yesterday’s visit, Alvarez hadn’t mentioned it. Cassie wasn’t about to, either. Not with Kit hanging around poking at her laptop, long after she should have—

  “. . . I’m almost out, dammit. And you said you’d get me some.”

  Kit’s voice drifted down from the pa
rking area ahead. She was on her phone, Cassie guessed: the signal was a lot better up there, though still not great.

  She wasn’t sounding that great, either. Cassie had noticed her looking shaky most of the morning—hung over, she’d assumed. Or coming down with something. Or . . . ?

  Edging into a stand of pines beside the trail, Cassie kept listening.

  “No, not until the end of the month!”

  Whatever Kit was hearing on the other end, she wasn’t liking it.

  “You know that’s not going to work, you bastard.” Long silence. “Look, maybe I can find you something. Another cache—”

  Cassie’s teeth found her lower lip. Joshua was right: the pothunters, or someone running them, were getting inside help. And not for the first time, either.

  “So what am I supposed to do, tail her? That would work real well.” Kit’s voice was raw. “All I know is, she takes a ladder out sometimes. If I find out more—”

  Her voice cut off. After a few minutes—and another expletive—she headed down the trail, veering close to Cassie’s hiding place.

  Easing back into shadow, Cassie held her breath. No point in denying she’d been doing exactly what she had been doing if she got noticed—and Kit was on edge to start with. Possibly close to withdrawal, but from what?

  And getting it where?

  The questions distracted her until Kit passed by, hands shoved into her pockets. The grad student looked even paler than she had this morning, and twitchier. Sweat plastered her light hair to her forehead. Wherever her attention was, it didn’t seem to be on her surroundings—

  But even after, there was no way to be sure.

  * * *

  Cassie stayed late that afternoon, hoping to talk with Alvarez when she got back. After the first awkward hour or so, she’d found herself working alone: Kit ditched out early, complaining of a stomach bug. She looked sick enough, but Cassie felt more curiosity than sympathy.

  Rather than risking either, she focused on her tray of sherds—not hard, after yesterday. Touching them was something else again. Even with the disposable gloves Alvarez insisted on, her fingertips recoiled from their too-perfect surfaces.

  Their freshly broken edges were worse. Nothing made from local clay should be the color of space, or laced with a mineral first discovered on the Moon. How was that happening? Then there were McAllister’s petroglyph sketches of moon-flyers . . . and sightings during full-moon walks at Bandelier—

  Glancing out at the innocent sky beyond the tarp’s shade, Cassie shivered.

  Quitting time came and went without Alvarez returning. After locking her university laptop, potsherd tray, and other supplies in the site’s small trailer, she headed up the trail with frequent backward glances.

  Just thinking about anyone being in that cavate so late in the day made her stomach clench. Handling sherds was bad enough, but at least they felt, if not normal, inert. Unlike the web-sealed pot she’d touched yesterday.

  There’s something else about them, Alvarez had said. Or in them? If pothunters were leaving broken pots, surely they were spilling their contents. Neither Alvarez nor Joshua had mentioned finding anything, though, and the newspaper articles focused on the ceramics themselves.

  Yet the pot she’d laid her palm against had not been empty. Its contents had resonated through her with a terrible reality—

  Cassie froze. In the parking area just ahead, a man she didn’t recognize was leaning against her Jeep. His body language said he’d been there a while, and he didn’t look happy. Or unarmed.

  The barrel of his pump shotgun was significantly shorter than legal, though it wasn’t aimed in her direction. No telling if he’d already spotted her, but she had to assume that he had— and she wasn’t nearly close enough to the trees. Turning and running didn’t sound much safer.

  Cassie snuck a hand under her shirttail.

  The weedy-looking man stared at her for several seconds before his shotgun’s barrel edged up. “That’s far enough!”

  Sidestepping quickly, she raised her own weapon. He didn’t lower his.

  Sick cold washed through her. “What’s the problem?”

  He hawked and spat into the dirt between them.

  “Got a message for you.” Hawk. Spit. “About minding your own damn business. And going back where you came from, wherever the hell that is.”

  Cassie’s mind churned. This guy hadn’t expected her to be carrying—one thing Kit hadn’t noticed?—but he wasn’t backing down, either. No telling what might be fueling that, though he didn’t look twitchy enough for a full-blown meth addict.

  And she wasn’t dead enough. Yet.

  “First good thing that’s happened around here in years. First chance for some serious money.” His hands tightened on the stock of the shotgun. “Can’t get enough of those pots . . . nothing like them on the market anywhere—”

  The engine rumble of a big pickup interrupted. It was coming in fast, and the driver didn’t seem overly concerned with safety. As the Tundra came within a foot of clipping him, her would-be assailant fumbled his grip—and Cassie bailed for cover.

  By the time Joshua Yellowtail climbed from his truck, 9mm pistol in hand, the man was long gone.

  “You all right, Cassie?”

  “More or less.” As she emerged from the trees, Joshua gave her a look. She quickly replaced the .38 under her shirttail.

  “Please tell me you have a permit for that.”

  When she nodded, he holstered his own weapon and walked over to check her Jeep for damage. Neither of them found any, though Cassie admitted it might be hard to tell.

  “Good timing, by the way,” she said. “Thanks!”

  Joshua shrugged. “Just starting my work shift a little early.” His frown returned. “So what did Len Mason want?”

  Leftover adrenaline washed through her. Oh.

  “Kit must have told him something. She was on her phone up here at lunchtime, pretty emotional about being ‘almost out.’ I had no idea at the time who she might be talking to—”

  As she told the rest, Joshua’s expression darkened.

  “Dr. Alvarez thought she might have a problem. Probably oxycodone. Kit had a screwed-up back from some accident, and she was still taking pills for it.” His frown deepened. “A lot of pills.”

  And grad students don’t make squat for teaching pay. Cassie nodded grimly.

  “Question is,” said Joshua, “what do we do about it?”

  “Not the sheriff’s department. Or police.”

  The notion of law enforcement meeting up with those pots triggered a long mutual silence. Mason was right: there was nothing like them on the black market—or on this planet, Cassie suspected. How did his meth-fueled looters ignore that?

  Joshua sighed.

  “OK, but we at least have to tell Alvarez what’s going on. Now. Let her figure out what to do about Kit—though canning her isn’t going to stop the looting—”

  He stopped, looking more cheerful.

  Cassie stared at him. “What?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t need to be canned. Maybe she just needs to see that new cache.”

  And maybe we both need our heads examined.

  But she didn’t have a better idea—not yet, anyway. Whatever had happened here these past two full moons, they had to stop it from happening again.

  6

  HUDDLED BEHIND THE NEAREST CONVENIENT BOULDER, Cassie shifted her weight and tried to ignore other rocks under her rear. It wasn’t working.

  It hadn’t worked last night, either, when she and Alvarez spent several chilly hours watching with Joshua. Alvarez had taken Kit with her for that whole day at the new cache. She’d even let her photograph a few pots. They’d all hoped she’d take the bait right away—from the look of her, Kit hadn’t scored any more pills—but the cavate remained undisturbed.

  Which was more than Cassie could say for herself.

  McAllister’s petroglyphs flapped across her imagination, clutching circular
objects with their stick arms. Or legs. Or claws? Suppressing the thought, she strained her eyes against the darkness, trying to spot Joshua hiding nearby.

  She wondered if he was as unhappy as she was with their timing. September’s full moon could be spectacular, but tonight they didn’t need the drama.

  The high desert night sky was dramatic enough. Once she’d been unafraid to open her eyes wide to it—to tilt her head back and fall into those stars marked out against the void. Now she knew better. Stargazing only reminded her that the void stared back.

  She suspected Joshua Yellowtail knew better, too. Whether he’d learned on his own or inherited some of his great-grandfather’s talent, he hadn’t been eager to crawl back into that hole himself.

  Alvarez, on the other hand—

  Cassie froze as footsteps sounded farther down the trail. Hard to tell how many, but they were definitely headed toward the cavate. Moonlight helped. Even from here, she could make out its faint outline against the cliff face.

  For another minute or so, she focused on those steps. Two sets, max: moonlight or not, sneaking around in the dark wasn’t a group activity.

  Then Joshua’s whisper sounded close beside her. “Look up!”

  At first, she saw nothing but the moon, just visible now above the canyon wall. Pale and featureless, it shone like a silver concha in the black.

  Then a shadow—no, two shadows—threw themselves across that pristine surface.

  Cassie bit her lip hard. Whatever those night-walking tourists at Frijoles Canyon had thought they’d seen, she was seeing it now. Skin-wings stretched out into sails against the moonlight, obscuring bodies with far too many appendages. Too many waving, clutching pairs. And no heads at all; not that she could make out at this distance.

  Joshua Yellowtail sucked in his breath. “Shit.”

  Cassie wondered if Alvarez had seen them yet. Lacking a weapon, the archaeologist had hidden herself further away, though still with a clear view of the cavate. Better if she was watching that, rather than these . . . moon-flyers? . . . flickering in and out against the sky.