by Leela Ash
Rising, he gave Paige’s hand a squeeze. “You guys finish up. I’ll be in my office. I want to look over those pictures one last time.”
As he left, the sounds of home swelled behind him.
What he wouldn’t give to hear that again. Tomorrow, and the next day, and every day, until the kids were grown.
Then grand-cubs, his Bear suggested. And great-grand-cubs.
“Rein it in there, buddy,” he chuckled. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
Before any of that could happen, he and Paige needed to talk. By itself, love wasn’t enough. They’d known each other for less than two weeks and already, Paige had been attacked by some demonic monstrosity, fended off a grizzly with a stick, and had her son kidnapped. Who wanted that kind of shit in their life? Who would be willing to risk her life—and the life of her precious son?
She loved him, sure. But did she love him that much?
Or would the lure of a quiet, peaceful, safe life prove too strong? He couldn’t blame her if it did.
Settling down in front of his computer, he paged through pictures of the relics from Novak’s tote. No matter how closely he studied them, he found himself agreeing with Finn Donnelly. It was crap. A whole bunch of valuable, magical, important… crap. Each nameless object looked exactly like every other piece of priceless ancient junk.
Some time later, a soft rap interrupted his pointless musing. Paige poked her head in, smiling. “Hey. Mind company? I’d love to see those artifacts.”
“Well, that makes one of us!” He scooted his chair to the side and waved her over. “Sure. Come take a look.”
Once more, he started the slideshow. This time, though, to an appreciative audience. Paige oohed and aahed at each one like the stupid pots were the Crown Jewels of England. “Look at that! There isn’t a single crack on it!” And, “Oh, isn’t that design lovely? Look at the sharp contrast between the white and black!”
One bowl (the most boring one, in his estimation) fascinated her. “That is so odd!”
“Not really. I think we got forty bowls, all told. Hell, there were three in Novak’s tote.”
“It’s not the bowl, it’s the picture.”
The bottom of the bowl was ‘decorated’ (if you could use that term) with a bunch of rectangles. “Guess I’m not a big fan of the famous Puebloan painting ‘Boxes in a Bowl’.”
“They’re buildings, silly,” she giggled. “Which is strange because most Ancestral Puebloan art was abstract.”
“So, this bowl is unusual because we can actually tell what they were trying to draw?” He struggled to keep a smile off his face.
“Well, yes. And because of this.” She pointed at the largest rectangle.
“I gotta admit, that is a large box.”
“Building. One with six floors.”
Earnest and intent, Paige stared at him like that ought to mean something. So somber, so serious that he wanted to pull her close and kiss her until she laughed. “You have no idea why that’s important, do you?”
“Nope,” he admitted.
“Cliff dwelling houses are often four to five stories tall—but never six. This,” she pointed at the picture, “is someplace special and unique.”
That killed his teasing mood at once. “So, it’s one place. Someplace we could find.”
Paige nodded. “I have this weird sense of déjà vu. I swear I’ve been there!”
While she mulled that over, he opened a browser and did a few quick scans for ‘six-story Puebloan ruins’. Nothing. Paige was right: the building in the bowl was either imaginary—or unique and unknown.
“Sorry, babe, I can’t find−”
“Ooh!” Delight lit her eyes, rousing a fire inside of him. One that didn’t give a damn about some stupid pot. “I remember.”
With no apology, she snatched the keyboard out of his hands. Bemused, Rex watched as she navigated to some bulletin board called ‘Pot Hounds.’ (A name that conjured images of a very different kind of ‘pot’ in his mind…). A few searches and a lot of scrolling later, Paige crowed with delight.
“Here! On the ‘Oddest Find’ thread, PotBoi52 posted that he found a six-story building in a small, partially collapsed ruin. No one believed him, because the top three stories were ruined, and he didn’t have any pictures.”
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Rex agreed.
“But….” Scroll, scroll, scroll. “There! He gave directions to the site. Nobody followed up on it because it was a twenty-eight-mile hike, one way.”
“How did this lunatic find it?”
“No idea.” Paige’s eyes were bright with glee. “But it’s got to be our bowl building.”
Twenty-eight miles. One way. Damn, that was a trip! “Okay, I guess I can buy a dirt bike and check it out.”
“By yourself? Shouldn’t you call Finn Donnelly?”
“No.” Like he needed a babysitter! “I can check out one stupid building.”
Paige folded her arms across her chest, scowling. “Uh huh. How good is your orienteering?”
“My Oreo-what?”
“That’s what I thought. Get two bikes. We’ll go together.”
“Out of the question!” He and his Bear both growled. “It might be dangerous.”
“If it’s dangerous, you ought to take Finn,” she said, her voice honey-sweet. Rex scowled; he knew a trap when he saw it. “If it’s safe enough for you to go alone, then you’ll need me to follow PotBoi52’s directions.”
There was a certain logic to that…one he didn’t like. “Here’s the problem: we don’t know if it’s safe or not.”
“Any sign of trouble and I leave, immediately.”
“What about the kids?” Surely, that would deter her?
“There’s Judy….” Paige’s nose wrinkled. “Though, after she let Jake get kidnapped, I’d rather skip her. Aren’t there any Shifters you trust?”
“Well….” Dammit. He hated to admit it, but she had a point. If he didn’t find this place, he’d wander the desert for days. “I could ask SueSue Mint to look after them.”
“Is she another Bear?”
“No, a Rat.”
“You want a Rat to watch our kids?” His Mate radiated doubt—and that was before she’d had a chance to see the Rat’s shifty face.
But Rex knew SueSue and how much of a bum steer her Kind got. “Rats are survivors. If anything happens, she’ll get our kids out. We might not ever see them again,” he added, his eyes sparkling, “because she spirited them away to a nuke-proof bunker somewhere in the depths of the Mojave Desert. But dammit, they will be safe!”
Paige’s carefree laugh brought a smile to his face. “Sold. Rat babysitter it is.”
“Then let’s go see if there’s anything important at this ruin!”
Chapter 17.
Perched on her shiny new Honda dirt bike, Paige imagined herself driving past Lily King.
The Wolf would not be impressed.
Oh, the bike was pretty enough. Red and silver chrome, gleaming under the hot sun. Paige had a neat new mesh suit, which looked much like a cleaner version of the Wolf’s own gear.
That wasn’t the problem. The problem was her speed.
Foolishly, she’d assured Rex that she knew how to ride a bike. Which was true. Completely.
Except dirt bikes weren’t anything like regular bikes. They were small motorcycles, and as soon as you got them off the pavement, their front wheels wiggled terribly. Rex swore this was normal and she’d get used to it.
In time. Which they didn’t have.
And so they crawled across the desolate landscape. Rex could have covered twenty-eight miles in an hour, easy. With her, he puttered slowly toward the ruins. PotBoi52’s lousy directions didn’t make this any easier. Repeated breaks for orienteering drained even more time away.
Still, it was faster than hiking. No question about that. And Rex was a gentle, patient teacher.
“You sure I can’t hop on behind you?” she begged him.
“Nope. Not safe—and it’s too much weight.”
“But it would be faster.”
“You’re doing fine,” he assured her.
Which was kind. If not accurate.
Once more, she took a compass reading and checked her topo map. Hill to the northwest… check. Ridge running east north-east… check. Which meant….
“There.” The ridgeline pointed like an arrow at a small rise of land. “These ruins should be just over that.”
If so, the land around them offered no signs. Once more, Paige found herself wondering how on earth PotBoi52 had found this place.
A short drive brought them to the rise. As promised, the far side dropped sharply, forming a barren ravine. Rex surveyed it, frowning. “I don’t see any ruins.”
“Look there!” Paige’s heart soared as she spotted a faint, sloping path winding down the canyon wall.
“We’re not seriously walking down that, are we?” her lover growled.
This was a risk she understood… and didn’t mind. “Sure. Just watch your footing and follow me.” Grumbling wordlessly, he trailed after her. “Remember, people used these trails every day for centuries.”
“Uh huh. And how many of them ended up in a heap at the bottom of the gulch?”
Despite his worries, the trail was solid. The Ancestral Puebloans made their ‘roads’ to last through the ages. Narrow and steep, it wove down and around a bend. As they rounded the curve, Paige’s sharp eye picked up the clues she expected. Erosion—there was water here once. Plants thriving in the shadow of the overhang. And finally….
“There!” she crowed with delight.
Rex frowned, dubious. “That’s it?”
PotBoi52’s unnamed ruin wasn’t much to look at. Built under a lip of stone, the tiny site only included four small buildings plus the great tower that had drawn them.
What is this place? It’s so small, and so far away from other Puebloan ruins. It must have been very special, once upon a time.
Now, though, it was just sad. Part of the cliff had collapsed centuries ago. The landslide took out the top two stories of the great tower, leaving nothing but a dilapidated stub. Boulders and debris lay scattered everywhere. Once this might have been pretty but now it was just a ratty little pile of rocks.
Still, they were looking for magic, not art. “Let’s take a look at the big building,” she said.
A hand, big and strong, caught her shoulder. “Me first,” the Bear insisted. Something Paige didn’t disagree with.
She followed him into the first floor, where a number of footprints stood out clearly in the dust and sand. Scrape marks, too, beneath the hole which led to the second story. Paige knew exactly what those meant. “Somebody brought a ladder down here.”
“Which is gone now, so they’re not here.”
Rex wove his fingers into a ‘saddle’ for her foot. Then he tossed her up through the opening in the ceiling. Easily, as if she weighed no more than a cat. When she stepped back, he jumped and, with a strength that took her breath away, hauled himself up beside her.
Bare walls and floors surrounded them. No paintings, no pots. Nothing. “I think we wasted a day,” Rex sighed.
Paige feared he could be right. “Might as well check the last floor though, since we came so far.”
“Sure.” Once more, he gave her a boost up. But when she popped into the third floor, what she saw took her breath away.
Three of the room’s walls were blank. But the fourth….
Stylized figures covered the last wall, stick figures like the ancient rock carvings that dotted the south-west. Nothing that belonged in an Ancestral Puebloan site! Yet the picture wasn’t carved. It was painted—as if the people who’d lived here copied something even older.
And the image itself…just looking at it sent shivers down her spine.
Scenes from a world-ending apocalypse lined its edges. Villages and crops burned. The bodies of the dead piled high, while the living fled screaming into the desert.
At the heart of the chaos, five figures stood in a circle. Three were clear: a Bear, a Wolf, and a Dragon.
All of those are Shifter Kinds!
The fourth was lost, scraped off in some ancient accident. Only its outstretched arm remained. And the fifth….
A hideous creature writhed in torment, its face twisted into a wordless howl. From its back, a spray of bones fanned out.
Skeletal wings? What’s left of wings when they rot away?
All five Shifters reached up toward a symbol she didn’t recognize. Arrows radiated up from it, toward the painting’s true horror.
One being dominated the upper half of the picture, a great skeletal form that rose out of billowing black clouds. Its maw, full of fangs, gaped wide. Within it, screaming humans slid down its throat, clutching desperately at teeth, at each other. At anything that would keep them from toppling down into the monster’s belly. Its hands, tipped with scythe-like claws, swept through the fleeing crowds, snatching up more victims.
“Oh, wow,” Paige breathed. “Rex, I found it.”
“Found what?” His anxious face appeared below her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m just blown away. There’s a huge painting up here and I bet it’s what the Fangs were looking for. It seems to show five Shifters summoning a skeletal monster that….”
A chill swept over her, and a sharp pain, as if an icicle had been driven through her heart.
Nemagorix, whispered a voice in her mind. Not ‘skeletal monster.’
Paige screamed.
With a roar, Rex threw himself at the hole above him. This time, his fingers missed the edge by two inches. “Paige! Jump! I’ll catch you.”
“I….”
I will not harm you, the voice promised.
Like she was going to believe that thing!
But she wasn’t going to abandon her mission, either. Quickly, she snatched out her phone and started snapping pictures.
“Paige!” Furious, half mad with his Bear’s protective urge, Rex howled up at her. “Screw that! Jump!”
“Hang on!” Two more pictures… three. A cold, alien amusement seemed to radiate off the monstrous figure. “It’s just talking. I’m okay.”
“Something’s talking to you? Oh hell no, that’s not ‘okay’! Get down here, now!”
Just a couple more. Just a couple.
The monster approved. You have courage and you are beautiful. It would be a pleasure to wear you.
‘Wear’. The same thing that blob said. Bile burned its way up her throat as she took her last shots.
Somehow, Nemagorix sensed her unease. Do not fear Union. Great power will be yours. Your desires, your hatreds, will become mine. You will become a goddess. Together, we will take this world and make it pleasing—to us.
Last shot… done! Paige tucked the phone back, safe, in a pocket and turned her back on the painting.
Destroy the Aegis. Do this thing for me, and I will lay the world at your feet.
“I’ll, uh, think about that.” She crouched at the edge of the hole and prepared to lower herself down to her anxious lover.
That was when the visions hit her like a tidal wave.
She stood, sipping wine, as the world’s finest fashion designers groveled before her, begging her to wear their clothes. Presidents and movie stars stood round, admiring the sleek beauty of her body. Dreaming that, if they were lucky, one of them would be permitted to pleasure her tonight.
Why only one? Nemagorix whispered. You are their goddess. Take as many as you want.
Wealth, power…it was hers. With a word, she could kill anyone. No one questioned her, no one challenged her. She had only to gaze upon a rebel and immediately, her power—the thing that ‘rode’ inside her—shattered their will. They fell to their knees, worshipping her.
Worshipping us. I, and my raiment.
Her knees buckled. Dimly, she felt herself falling, tumbling through the air.
Then a s
trong pair of arms caught her and pulled her tight against a hard, muscled chest.
“Paige? Are you okay?”
Rex. Rex held her. She buried her face against his chest as those delicious, horrible visions faded. The thump of his heart was a drumbeat, and she clung to that sound, to him.
“I am now. Just hold me.”
He whisked her outside, far away from that awful painting. Then he knelt, cradling her, and held her until the last of her shivers faded.
When the world steadied itself, she peered up into his worried, craggy face. “The Fangs are trying to summon a creature called ‘Nemagorix’. It’s not here, but it can speak through that painting. It wants me to find something called ‘the Aegis’ and destroy it.”
“Why?”
“No idea. Nemagorix seemed to think this was obvious and I didn’t ask for an explanation.”
“Good,” Rex muttered. “You stayed way too long as it was. Any idea what this thing wants?”
“To possess me. To ‘wear’ me.”
He snorted with disbelief. “Boy, now isn’t that a tempting offer.”
“Actually, it was.” In her mind, she could still feel the whisper of silk across her skin and the heat that had blazed within her, knowing that she could take any man she wanted. “This thing shares its host’s desires, pleasures, and emotions. In return, it gives you power. It makes you a god.”
Both of them fell silent, imagining what the Fangs could do with such horrific power.
Rex was the first to speak and he proposed a Bear’s simple, straightforward plan. “Let’s get out of here. Maybe some Hare can get more information out of your pictures.”
“Yeah. I never want to see this place again.”
Nothing stopped their retreat. No attacks, no spells, no invisible leash to pin them to this tower. Quickly, they hiked back up to the dirt bikes.
While she grabbed her helmet, he checked his phone. “No bars,” he sighed. “We’ll have to….”
Rex’s eyes widened in sudden shock. A red flower bloomed on his chest.
Blood. That’s blood.
Time seemed to slow for Paige. In the desert’s silence, her lover crumbled to the ground. Only when he lay at her feet did she hear a distant crack.
