Crave the Moon

by Lori Handeland

  “Oh, my monster, oh, my monster,

  Oh, my monster, Frankenstein.

  You were built to last forever,

  Dreadful sca-a-a-a-a-ry-y-y-y-y…”

  He drew out the last word, voice warbling—that just had to be on purpose; could he really be that awful?—then moving on to the big finish with:

  “Fran-ken-stein!”

  “Wow,” she said when the off-key echo had faded. “That was truly…” She shook her head. “Horrendous.”

  Teo bowed. “Now you know why I dig in the dirt.” He set the lantern at the edge of the hole. “I’m gonna tie this…” He held up the rope. “Around the tree.”

  Gina nodded, but he was already gone. She was getting a crick in her neck from staring up, so she lowered her head and rubbed at the ache.

  The golden light chased the shadows back far enough that Gina could see—

  Frowning, she dropped her hand and stepped forward.

  Was that a wall?

  CHAPTER 14

  Matt secured the rope, then returned to the gaping maw in the earth. When he glanced into the hole, she was gone.

  “Gina!” he shouted, alarm causing his voice to come out louder than he’d expected. He jumped as the sound echoed back from below.

  “I’m not deaf,” she said. “Or at least I wasn’t.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Right here.” She leaned into the light. “I saw a wall.” She disappeared again.

  “There’s gonna be walls or you’d be—” He broke off. Buried was not a good word to use right now. Actually, it probably wasn’t a good word to use with Gina, ever.

  “Not dirt walls.” Her voice came from a little farther away. “Stone.” Matt got a chill. “And there are some marks.”

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, his mind jabbered.

  Matt very calmly asked, “What kind of marks?”

  “The kind you just showed me.”

  “I’m coming down.”

  He nearly grabbed the rope and rappelled over the edge before he remembered more light would probably be a good idea and if he was down there there’d be no one up here to help him with that.

  Matt took several deep breaths, slowing his heart, centering his mind. When he did things too fast, he only wound up wasting time.

  First, send the lantern down to Gina. Second, send him.

  “Gina,” he said, thrilled when his voice came out calm, as if he were speaking to a student in class. “Can you grab this?”

  He leaned down for the light, but when she didn’t return he straightened again, leaving it at the edge of the cavity.

  “There’s what looks like a man,” she called. “He seems to be fighting the vicious dog-being you showed me before. You said that meant loyalty. So … he’s fighting his loyalty?”

  Matt stood, rope in one hand, the other empty, fingers curling inward, making a fist as he tried to keep himself from jumping in. He wanted to see that wall, read those icons, but he could tell from Gina’s voice she was as fascinated by them as he’d always been. She wasn’t going to come back until she read them all—or at least tried. After what she’d gone through, she deserved that.

  “Maybe he was fighting an enemy that fought like a vicious dog,” Teo suggested.

  “Hmm.” She didn’t sound convinced. “The guy himself seems a little doglike.”

  “Not everyone was van Gogh,” Teo repeated, and she laughed.

  “Right. I suppose all your people have alligator teeth.”

  Come to think of it, they did.

  “Is one of the men bigger than the other?” Matt continued.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Matt got a tingle again. This had to be the tomb of the superwarrior. Then again—

  “That could mean a big man or an army of men.”

  “The Nahua,” she said.

  “Yes.” Except the Aztecs hadn’t called themselves that. They’d called themselves Tenochca; however, the icon to indicate either one would probably have been the same.

  “Wait.” Matt heard Gina move; he could almost see her hair swaying, her hand reaching for another drawing, her finger resting just below whatever she’d found. “You told me this one. The teeth, which is the letter T.”

  Matt got excited again. T could indicate Tenochca, which meant whoever had written that on the wall had been Aztec.

  “Not T,” she murmured as if to herself. “But the roof on the teeth, which is the ‘l’ sound. And it’s right next to the dog-faced man icon, which would make it—”

  Matt glanced at the sky. That put an entirely different twist on things.

  “Nahual,” Gina concluded.

  From the depths of the cavern, something howled.

  * * *

  Gina could have sworn she heard a click. Then a howling, swirling black cloud whooshed past, its force blowing back her hair, blowing back her a few steps. Her ears rang, and the inside of her nose stung, as if she’d just taken a large sniff of below-zero air.

  The smoke spun around her, twirling up her body from her feet to her head, and as it curled around her face it whispered, Giii-naaa.

  Then it was gone—phht!—and she was left shivering. It took her several seconds to realize she could still hear her name.

  Because Teo was shouting, his panic so audible, she stumbled away from the wall and into the circle of light. When she glanced up, she could have sworn she saw the outline of a black wolf against the backdrop of the silvery moon.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked.

  “I’m coming down. Grab the light.”

  Before she could protest—right now she’d prefer to be up—he swung the lantern over the edge. Either his hands on the rope were shaking or he was hurrying too fast to keep the contraption steady, because it pitched wildly back and forth, sending blares of light into her eyes, making it hard for her to see or catch the thing.

  “Watch it.” She grabbed the lantern right before it clocked her in the head.

  “Sorry,” Teo said, but he didn’t sound sorry; he sounded as shaky as she felt. What had the strange black smoke looked like from his end?

  He yanked the rope so hard and so fast the tip nearly flicked her in the nose. She didn’t bother to complain. He was excited. She got that.

  Instead, she lifted the lantern and moved closer to the wall. Dog-faced man, teeth with a roof. There were other glyphs, too, tiny, colorful sketches of animals and people, moons, or maybe suns, and stars, with a thin brown line encircling the entire panorama.

  Teo landed with a thud and a grunt, crossing the distance between them with long, choppy strides, then crowding in to see the etchings with a muttered, “Excuse me.”

  Gina let him peer at the pictures, holding the lantern so the wall was better illuminated, until she just had to ask, “What was that black smoke?”

  “Hmm?” Teo leaned closer, nearly putting his nose to the rock. Only then did she realize he didn’t have his glasses.

  “The black smoke that shot out of here so fast it blew back my hair. The black smoke that was so cold my nose hairs froze.”

  He turned his head, expression blank. “What black smoke?”

  * * *

  In the circle of golden light, Gina paled. “You didn’t see it?”

  “I … uh…” Matt reached up to push his glasses into place, but his finger encountered only nose. He’d left them in the tent. No wonder he was starting to get a headache from squinting. “No.”

  She switched her gaze to the long hallway, which disappeared into the dark. “What about the howl?”

  “That I heard.”

  She glanced back, her eyes both startled and relieved. “Well, at least I’m only half-crazy today. Seeing things, yes, but for a change I’m not the only one hearing them.”

  “For a change?” he repeated.

  She waved him off. “What do you think howled?”

  She peered at the corridor again; Matt followed her gaze. He was going to have to go down ther
e.

  “Might just have been the usual unwolves,” she murmured, still staring into the dark.

  “But you don’t think so.”

  Her eyes cut to him, then quickly away. “The howl came equipped with icy black smoke that swirled past and went—” She pointed at the opening. “The unhowls have never had visuals.”

  “I didn’t see any smoke, but I was—” Matt tried to remember what he’d been doing after he’d heard that howl and couldn’t. He’d been so excited about what they’d found he’d been kind of out of it. Still, there was really no logical explanation for a swirl of icy black smoke. Not that there was a logical explanation for the unwolves, either.

  His gaze returned to the long, dark stone hallway. “A gun would be nice.”

  “I’ve got one.” Matt glanced at her, and she shrugged. “In the tent.”

  “Oh, that’s helpful.”

  “This place has been buried for nearly ten years. There shouldn’t be anything left to shoot.” Gina wrapped her arms around herself, peering into the darkness as if she could make it disappear just by wishing it to. “Right?”

  “Right,” he repeated. It was probably nothing.

  So why, then, did he distinctly feel something?

  “I’m gonna look.” He stepped forward.

  “I’m gonna come with you.”

  “No.” He extended his hand for the light.

  She held it out of his reach. “Yes.”

  “It’s better if you stay here.”

  “In the dark? Not happening.”

  Matt wouldn’t want to stay here alone, either. And he hadn’t even seen the weird black smoke.

  “All right.” He curled his fingers toward his palm in a beckoning gesture, and she gave him the lantern. “Stay behind me.”

  As they moved past the wall, Matt couldn’t keep his gaze from the drawings. They depicted a battle, many dead. Then there was a big Aztec warrior and—

  Matt stopped, and Gina crashed into his back. “Hey!”

  “Sorry.” He lifted the lamp. “There were two big guys. See?”

  She followed his gaze to where another, only slightly smaller man with an avalanche of stars pouring from his fingertips confronted the man-dog figure. “What does that mean?”

  “No idea.”

  “This?” She pointed at another tableau of the man-dog beneath two suns, or two moons, maybe one of each, since the left circle was yellow and the right pure white.

  “Got me,” Matt said. He could probably study this wall for a year—he planned to—and not decipher all of the glyphs.

  “This is interesting.” Matt indicated a herd of what appeared to be dog-horses with stars around their hooves.

  For an instant he thought Gina recognized it; she blinked, leaned in closer, frowned. Then she shook her head a little and lifted her chin to indicate the dark path in front of them. “It’ll still be here when we get back.”

  They needed to move forward. Except when Matt faced the glistening blackness he didn’t want to. And that wasn’t like him. Usually he couldn’t wait to explore every shadowed nook and cranny.

  “Want me to go first?” Gina asked.

  “No.” The only thing he wanted less than to move forward himself was to have Gina do it.

  Matt put one foot in front of the other, wondering as he did so just what was the matter with him. He should be charging down the corridor, searching for the tomb of a superwarrior that would vindicate both him and his mother. Instead, he really wanted out.

  It was as if a foul stench emanated from that darkness, even though every breath Matt took smelled fine. A little musty, a little dusty, a little cold, but not bad.

  Luckily, he and Gina didn’t have far to go; he wasn’t sure if he would have been able to continue if they had. Matt covered maybe ten yards, the lantern illuminating their path, Gina determined to step on his heels at every opportunity, and then—

  Her arm shot past his cheek, and he inhaled the scent of trees. He wanted to turn his head and rub his face on her skin and smell only that forever.

  “What’s there?”

  The urgency of her voice brought his attention back where it belonged, and he followed the line of her finger to an opening in the wall. Matt forgot all about the scent of evergreens on smooth, supple skin.

  “Burial chamber,” he said.

  Gina bent to examine the floor. “This swung inward.”

  She pointed at the marks in the dirt, and Matt joined her, insinuating himself between Gina and the uncharted darkness beyond.

  He lifted the lantern so he could examine the back of the door. “There’s no handle.”

  Gina followed, frowning at the sheer panel on the other side, before her face smoothed and she lifted one shoulder. “Why would there be? If it’s a burial chamber, what’s in there isn’t coming back out.”

  “We should probably see what that is.” And Matt should probably be more excited about it.

  “Ready when you are.”

  Matt shifted the lantern so the golden glow illuminated the small room.

  “That can’t be good,” Gina said.

  Right now, staring at the empty room, Matt had to agree. Although …

  “The Aztecs often burned their warriors, then stashed them in burial pots.”

  Gina took a pointed look around the room. Nothing there but dirt and stones and walls.

  “According to the codex my mom translated, the superwarrior was buried in the land to the north. Which means he could have been interred by whomever he defeated, according to their practices. I need to research the Ute—”

  “The Ute wrapped their dead,” Gina interrupted, “then buried them in rock-covered graves beneath the earth.”

  “Which might explain this.”

  “The rock-covered grave, yes. But lack of a body?”

  Matt contemplated the tomb. “The wrappings, being natural, not synthetic, would have disintegrated by now. But in dry, cool conditions, like these, bones can last for centuries.” Which made it odd that there was nothing left at all.

  Odd, but not impossible.

  “If there was no way to open the door from the inside,” Gina said, “then someone had to have pushed it from the outside.”

  “Theoretically.”

  “Maybe whoever pushed it took the body. Or the burial pots.”

  “Probably,” Matt agreed, but then his gaze caught on something interesting. “Except…” He pointed at the ground. “The only footsteps here are ours.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “What does that mean?” Gina asked.

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “But you’ve got that Ph.D. thingy after your name.”

  Teo smiled. “Sometimes that Ph.D. thingy isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”

  Interesting. Gina had always thought it must be worth a helluva lot.

  “Why the glyphs?” she continued. “Why the door, if there was never anything in there at all?”

  “Never’s a long time.”

  “Now you’re just talking gibberish.”

  He glanced at her, and his eyes had gone dark in the lamplight. They almost didn’t look like Teo’s eyes at all. “Maybe someone took whatever was in here, then covered their tracks.”

  “If someone found a mummy, don’t you think we’d have heard about it?”

  “Not necessarily. Tomb raiders have been around as long as the tombs. And when one of them snatches something to sell to private collectors, or even witch doctors, they usually do so without letting anyone know about it.”

  “Witch—” Gina stuck her finger in her ear and wiggled it. “What?”

  “Certain spells require all sorts of weird things for ingredients.”

  “You said you didn’t believe in magic,” Gina pointed out.

  “Just because I don’t doesn’t mean there aren’t others who do. Others who’d be willing to do anything, or pay anything, to get what they think they need.”

  Gina opened her mouth, t
hen shut it again. He should know. She certainly didn’t.

  “This place was cursed. No one ever came here.”

  “Grave robbers love curses,” Teo said. “ A curse pretty much puts an X right on the spot.”

  She hadn’t thought of that.

  “What happened to the footsteps of the grave robbers?”

  “They brushed them out, or maybe they were here so long ago … Other things that happened afterward…” He paused, casting her a concerned glance. “They could have changed everything.”

  If grave robbers had come before she and Jase had been buried, before her parents had died and the cavern had been searched and then filled in again, the idea that footsteps would still be visible was ludicrous.

  Gina had another thought. She’d been avoiding shadowy corners, afraid of what she might see, but now her gaze flicked around the room, back through the door, and down the shadowy hall. She hadn’t seen any bodies out there, either. Maybe, just as the “experts” had said, they’d only fallen in deeper, being pulled lower in a maze of catacombs as every granule of earth was dislodged. Then again, maybe they hadn’t.

  The idea of strangers snatching up what was left of her parents and—

  “If grave robbers were looking for bones,” Teo said softly, “they’d take any bones they found.”

  Therefore, what remained of her family might very well be resting in a jar on some shelf in a voodoo shop in Louisiana. That really pissed her off.

  However, if the remains were gone—removed by thieves or sifted through to a lower level—she could stop worrying that she might stumble over them at any moment.

  Hey, there was a silver lining to every cloud just as Fanny had always told her.

  “If the crypt was already open,” Gina murmured, “then why did I hear a click?” Or a howl, for that matter?

  “Click?” he repeated.

  “There was a click, the howl, a whoosh.” And the smoke.

  Teo stared at the door. “Whoever took the body could have shut the door.”

  “Then how did it open again?”

  Teo went silent, and Gina did, too. But not for long.

  “What if it was like The Mummy?” she blurted.

  “It was a mummy,” he said slowly. “But it’s gone.”