The paleontologist had created her own sub-dig within Dr. Becker’s dig. Dr. Cynthia Paz was a pretty woman with deep blue eyes, small and quick, and very diligent about her work. There were times during the dig when they had to literally pull her out of her hole so they could shut down for the night. The woman put in eighteen hour days and had for about three weeks, ever since they had called her in. The very first thing she had done upon her first inspection of the bones was send samples to a lab in London for analysis. Whatever she was dealing with, it wasn’t petrified as a dinosaur skeleton would have been, and it didn’t look like anything from the early age of man. The low acidic soil had preserved the bones so much that they were nearly pliable. Brand-new as far as old skeletons went. She was as confused as anyone else.
So, she continued her dig while Becker worked around her. There was quite a killing field surrounding whatever the massive skeleton was, and the age of the human bones had already come back from the lab circa 1200 A.D. to 1338 A.D. was the closest the carbon dating could come up with, which clearly made them Medieval. Therefore, Becker and his crew continued to excavate the human remains and, as of this morning, had uncovered five hundred and eleven pieces of bodies. There wasn’t one complete corpse in the entire group. Becker, having just finished exposing a skull that had been smashed to bits, took a brief break and headed over to the tent where they had water and other consumables. He was in the process of downing a bottle of Gatorade when Dr. Paz came up behind him.
“Hey, Bud,” she said, pulling off her baseball cap and wiping the sweat off her forehead. “Anything exciting today?”
Becker swallowed the last gulp of orange sports drink. “More crushed bones,” he said. “I swear, I have never seen anything like this in all my years of archaeology. It’s almost like this was a dumping ground for dismembered bodies.”
“Sounds like quite a mess.”
“You’d better believe it,” Becker concurred. “And it doesn’t look like ritualistic killing, either. It’s too disorganized, which makes me go back to the body dumping grounds theory. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
Dr. Paz shook her head but the entire time she was eyeing a long table that had a variety of excavated human bones on it. Students were cleaning and cataloging them. She seemed rather ill at ease, edgy even, but Becker hadn’t noticed. He was too busy contemplating the dismembered body burial ground.
“No,” Dr. Paz said, clearing her throat softly. “But, then again, this kind of thing isn’t my area of expertise. In fact, I have to tell you that… uh, can we go somewhere private and talk?”
Becker nodded, following her out of the tent and out into the trees. When Dr. Paz thought they were isolated enough, she dug into her pocket and produced a piece of paper.
“I received this email this morning from the lab in London,” she said quietly. “You know that I sent some bone samples from that skeleton you found down there. I also sent them samples of the dirt surrounding the bones just in case anything organic remained. God, I don’t even know where to begin with this.”
Bud was all ears; he could see that she was acting nervously. It concerned him. “Why?” he asked. “What did the lab say?”
Dr. Paz looked at the paper in her hand. Then, she sighed heavily. “The results from the carbon dating test puts the skeleton between 1248 A.D. to 1300 A.D.,” she said. “They’re clearly Medieval. The lab also found DNA in the soil surrounding the bones from organic decomposition, but more than that, they were able to extract DNA from the bones themselves. This is what they came back with as to the origins of the skeleton.”
She handed the paper over to Bud, who read it closely. When he came to the bottom portion of the results where the lab determined the DNA makeup, his eyes widened.
“What in the hell?” he breathed, reading the results over again. “A… a…?”
“Sauropod,” Dr. Paz said quietly. “They’ve classified it as a Sauropod.”
Becker looked at her, confusion rampant in his expression. “What does that mean?”
Dr. Paz sighed heavily. “It means that they’ve classified it as a dinosaur, but that doesn’t make any sense since the bones themselves have been carbon dated to the High Middle Ages.” She shook her head, obviously baffled. “What the lab is basically telling us is that there was a dinosaur living as late as the Medieval period. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.”
Becker’s jaw was hanging open. “A dinosaur?” he repeated. “In Medieval Wales?”
Dr. Paz lifted her shoulders. “Stranger things have happened,” she said. “Maybe it was a mutated creature that had somehow survived into modern times. You know, legends like dragons and sea serpents have existed for thousands of years and who’s to say there isn’t any real basis for that? It’s quite possible a lone branch of the sauropod family somehow survived into the High Middle Ages but eventually died off. Maybe nature decided it had no place in the modern world; who knows? There are always the legends like the Loch Ness Monster and other lake beasts. You hear that kind of thing all the time.”
Becker wasn’t convinced; he was stricken with the information in his hand and lifted the paper up as if to emphasize his point. “The Loch Ness Monster is bullshit and everyone knows it,” he said. “But right here – in this paper – an independent lab is telling us that we’ve got some kind of… Medieval dinosaur right here in Wales!”
Dr. Paz nodded her head in resignation. “I know,” she said. “My main goal now is to uncover that entire skeleton and reconstruct it. I really want to see what that thing looks like.”
Becker lowered the paper in his hand, struggling to collect his wits. He was genuinely blown away by the information. “Me, too,” he agreed, taking a deep breath as he labored for calm. His gaze moved to the tent where the students were diligently working. “But this really puts an entirely new spin to evolution if this information is accurate.”
Dr. Paz was thoughtful, trying to be clinical about such outlandish news. “There are lots of descendants of dinosaurs that have lived into modern times, so this isn’t completely crazy,” she said. “Alligators, for instance. They have dinosaur ancestors. So do birds. Remember the movie ‘Jurassic Park’? There are lots of creatures that survived the Jurassic and Triassic periods, evolving into creatures we know today.”
Becker knew that and he, too, was trying to be clinical about the information. He was a scientist, after all, so in his mind there had to be a logical explanation. “So something like this really isn’t out of the realm of possibility?”
Dr. Paz nodded seriously. “It’s entirely possible, as strange as it sounds.”
Becker pondered that for a moment. “I’ve got some students researching local legends simply because I’m trying to get to the bottom of all of these bodies,” he said. “I’ll see if they can find something about monsters or beasts roaming around out here. There has got to be some kind of local legend. A creature like this wouldn’t have gone unseen.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Dr. Paz said. “You’ll let me know if they find anything?”
“Of course,” Becker said as he handed the paper back to her. “We keep this between us for now, okay? I don’t want this news getting out, at least not yet. We’re going to have a hell of a time defending this.”
Dr. Paz agreed. “I know,” she said, her gaze moving to the tent where Becker’s students were working. “But I think I have a theory about your human remains.”
Becker looked at her curiously. “What’s that?”
Dr. Paz reached into her pocket and pulled out a long, slender piece of bone. Upon closer inspection, Becker could see that it was a fang or sharp tooth. Silently, Dr. Paz motioned for Becker to follow her back over to the tent where she went to one of the tables and lifted up a femur bone. She looked at Becker.
“Do you remember telling me that it looked as if these bodies had been hacked apart or dismembered by knives or chisels because of the hack marks in the bone?” she asked.
Becker nodded. “Yes,” he said, looking at the bones spread over the table. “All of the bones have those marks.”
Dr. Paz shook her head. “Watch this,” she said. Then she took the long tooth and held it up to one of the hack marks in the femur bone. It fit the shape perfectly. When Becker saw that, his eyes threatened to burst from his skull.
“No…,” he gasped.
Dr. Paz nodded as she looked at the tooth, fitting into the hack mark like the last piece of a perfect puzzle.
“Yes,” she whispered in return. “This is a tooth from that skeleton. These are teeth marks in the bone, not hack marks. Your bodies weren’t in a big battle, Bud. They were eaten by that beast out there.”
Becker didn’t think he could be more astonished than he already was. He took the femur from her, and the tooth, and fitted the two together perfectly.
“Holy crap,” he gasped in astonishment. “So there were human sacrifices to it?”
“That’s as good an explanation as any,” Dr. Paz replied.
As Dr. Becker’s overwhelmed mind was trying to digest the information, one of Dr. Paz’s students came rushing into the tent.
“Dr. Paz,” the girl called breathlessly. “Dr. Becker, you both need to come.”
Dr. Paz was already on the move with Becker right behind her. “Why?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
The student shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “But we were moving away some earth just like you instructed and we came across something.”
“What?”
The student looked between Dr. Paz and Dr. Becker, excitement in her face. “We thought it was a piece of wood or a log, but it wasn’t,” she said. “We came across a broadsword buried in the earth.”
Dr. Becker stepped forward. “A broadsword?” he repeated. “Are you sure?”
The girl nodded firmly. “The steel of the blade is black from the acidic soil that it’s been in, but the hilt is still there.” A grin spread across her face. “It’s gold, Dr. Becker. It’s a big, beautiful Medieval hilt and it looks like there are stones in it. It’s absolutely gorgeous.”
Becker was really curious now. “Let’s go take a look.”
The girl nodded and rushed off with Dr. Becker and Dr. Paz hot on her heels. The mystery in the marsh was deepening.
A knight, he traveled, lone and weary,
Upon a road so nigh.
Upon this road, a wraith came leery,
And moved the knight to by.
“Behold,” said he, “I clearly see,
Your heart is not content.”
“Be wise,” it replied, “and know, forsooth,
That all is not as it seems.
Your road is long, and your path is wrong,
For you have entered the realm of the Serpent.”
~ 17th Century Welsh Chronicler
CHAPTER ONE
Year of Our Lord 1283 A.D., the Month of April
Reign of Edward I
Castle Questing, Northumberland, England
“She did not simply disappear, but I would wager to say she is holed up somewhere in the castle. Woe betide the man who finds her for she shall not make capture easy.”
The grim prediction came from an elderly man, big and dark and battle-scarred, and a patch over his missing left eye. He was old, that was true, but the gleam in his one good eye was as youthful and strong as it had ever been. The Wolfe of the North, Sir William de Wolfe, gazed at the men surrounding him, his expression wrought with tension. There was battle in the air.
“We checked all of the usual places, Father,” a big, brawny man with blond hair and hazel-gold eyes informed him. “She is nowhere to be found.”
“She is somewhere,” William repeated steadily. “I would suggest you are fully armed as you search. If I know my youngest daughter, and I believe I do, she is armed and lying in wait for one of you hapless souls to come across her. She does not wish to be captured so heed my advice; she has a tendency to go for the neck so if I were you, I would take all steps to protect myself should you happen to find her. She will fight like a caged beast.”
The brawny blond man grunted, perhaps in disapproval, and glanced at the men around him; four of them were his brothers, including his twin, and they all had the very same thought when it came to their youngest sister, the Lady Penelope Adalira de Wolfe. Mayhap you should not have raised her as a knight, Father. She can best every one of us if she puts her mind to it. They were all thinking the same thing but no one had the courage to speak it.
No one dared lecture The Wolfe; to do so was a sign of disrespect and all of them had the very greatest esteem for their father. But even infallible men sometimes had a weakness; in William’s case, it happened to be his youngest child. A surprise baby that was born when both of her parents were well past their prime, she had been doted on and spoiled ridiculously, and when she had shown interest in doing what her older brothers were doing, William had not the heart to tell his cherubic little Penelope that she could not do what the boys did. He let her do it. The older she grew, the more strong-willed she had become and now he was facing the results of his lack of parental control. It was about to bite him in the arse.
“’Tis yer own fault, English,” came the softly uttered voice of their mother, her words infused with a heavy Scots accent. “Ye taught Penelope well and now ye must pay for yer sins. She has yer cunning and she willna be snared. If she truly wishes tae hide from ye, then ye’ve taught her enough that she can stay away quite adequately.”
William glanced at his wife as she stood in the doorway of his massive solar. Illuminated by the soft light, she looked far younger than her sixty-odd years. “So you have come to scold me?” he asked, somewhat defensively.
“I have come tae warn ye. She’ll not be taken easily.”
William already knew that. He tried to keep his patience with his wife but he couldn’t stomach the “I told you so” attitude. “Then what do you suggest?” he nearly demanded.
The Lady Jordan Scott de Wolfe gazed steadily at her husband of nearly forty years. She knew what he was thinking, just as he knew what she was thinking. There wasn’t much they thought differently on, although Penelope had been one of those things. William had indulged the girl’s interest in knights and weapons whereas Jordan had tried to dissuade her, knowing how difficult it would be for her once she grew older. She would be an oddity in a man’s world. It would seem that Jordan had been increasingly correct, as the current situation now exemplified. They were in for trouble.
Stepping into the solar, Jordan glanced at the rich and comfortable surroundings. Planted in the heart of Castle Questing, a massive fortress that crouched upon the lines of the Scottish border like a lion waiting to feed upon the unwitting souls of the Scots, the solar was a room that had seen more of its share of triumph and tragedy. The cold stone walls themselves reeked of power and warfare, as the lair of The Wolfe weaved its own web of intrigue and mystery.
“Dunna search for her,” Jordan said quietly, pulling her wrap more tightly around her slender shoulders against the chill of the room. “She is smart enough tae hide from ye. A trap is the best thing for Penelope.”
William was intrigued. “A trap?”
Jordan nodded her head, gazing at the knights in the room; a few were her sons, a few were sons of other elderly knights that had been with her husband since he had been a young warrior. She gazed at the handsome faces of her sons; Scott, blond and brawny, and his twin Troy, who was dark like his father. Her gaze fell upon Patrick, her third son and the biggest and most powerful of them all, and then to Edward and Thomas, strapping men who were seasoned even at their young age. Five sons of the mighty Wolfe, all of them distinguished warriors in their own right, but the sixth son was missing. James had been killed in Wales the year before and the agony was still very fresh when she gazed at her boys. She imagined the missing one who had been tall and blond with an impish grin. Struggling against the familiar grief, her gaze re
turned to her husband.
“Aye,” she said finally. “Ye must lure her out if ye have any chance of capturing her.”
“How shall we lure her?”
Jordan shrugged, a twinkle in her soft green eyes. “’Tis ye who are the military genius, English,” she said. “I shall leave that up tae ye.”
William twisted his lips irritably at her but the truth was that he was trying not to grin. “You are no help at all, woman,” he growled.
“Ye didna marry me tae help ye. Ye married me tae breed a host of strong sons and tell ye when ye are wrong.”
William’s smile broke through. “I shall beat you severely for being so insolent.”
Jordan snorted, glancing at her boys, who were also grinning. As she turned for the door, the panel to the chamber suddenly slammed shut hard enough to rattle the expensive plate armor that was stacked up over the massive hearth. The very shelves shook. They all heard something slam up against the door, a second blow, and William, puzzled, made his way to the door and lifted the old iron latch. It was jammed. Curious, he shook the door as if attempting to open it.
“Who shut this door?” he yelled, pounding a fist against it. “Who is there?”
There was a brief pause. “I shall not let you out until we come to an agreement, Father!”
It was a decidedly feminine voice and they all recognized it in an instant. Frustrated, though not surprised, William looked at his wife.
“Penelope,” he hissed. “Did you put her up to this?”
Jordan’s expression was innocent. “Now, why would I do that?”
He pointed a finger at her. “Because you have been against my decision from the beginning,” he accused. “You’ve not supported me one bit!”
Jordan was trying not to crack a smile. “Yer mad, English,” she dismissed him. “Ye know she’s a clever lass. Mayhap ye shouldna have piled most of yer knights intae one room. Now she has ye trapped, all of ye.”
The Original de Wolfe Pack Complete Set: Including Sons of de Wolfe Page 280