He lay for a time in that post-nightmare panic, ruminating on these thoughts until they came to seem awkward, even ridiculous. When at last he drifted off again, in that last hour before sunrise, Walker had convinced himself not to let fear make a fool of him. Though his determination wavered, he could not erase the certainty that the demon was somehow awake and aware, that it knew they were there. That it wanted them there.
Morning crept into the cave with a gray sprawl of daylight. Sometime during the night, the snow had stopped falling… at least for a little while. Word of the vanished staff members had spread quickly. Helen Marshall’s team gathered in a private mourning circle beside the section of level one where they’d spent the past several days taking samples and preserving remains. They talked among themselves, wary of being overheard, and when Meryam passed by, she noticed that they fell silent and some glanced guiltily away, and she knew then that they were considering abandoning KHAP altogether.
Now she stood all the way in the back of level two, near the ladder that went down to the corner where the horned cadaver lay inside its tent, dead thousands of years, but still affecting the nerves and thoughts and behavior of everyone around it.
“I’m tempted to just set the thing on fire and be done with it,” she said.
Adam held up a hand. “Now hang on—”
“I said I was tempted, love. I’m not going to do it.” She rolled her eyes, shook her head, stared at each of the men around her in turn. Adam, the man she loved. Ben Walker, whom she’d welcomed but now wished was anywhere but here. Hakan, who hated her.
“I just wish it wasn’t part of the conversation,” she said. “If you’d told me we’d find a dead bloke with horns I’d have thrown a party. When we first opened up the coffin I felt almost giddy. That footage is gold for the documentary, but now every single thing that goes wrong gets blamed on us having a bloody demon in our midst.”
Adam leaned against the dry timber wall. “It’s not a goddamn—”
“I know it’s not a demon!” she snapped. “But try convincing all these superstitious twats…”
She froze. Beyond Hakan, just at the edge of the passage that had brought them to this corner, someone stood eavesdropping. She spotted his shadow on the far wall, thrown by the bright work light just above her head.
“Oh, you little bastard,” she hissed, storming past Hakan.
The shadow moved, squeaked like a mouse, but it was too late for him to run so he stepped out into the open. Olivieri, cheeks flushed with the cold and with guilt.
“Fuck off,” Meryam said, biting off the words.
“I—”
“I’m not joking, Armando,” she said. “Fuck off out of here right now. You weren’t invited to this meeting. You know we came back here to speak privately or you wouldn’t be eavesdropping.”
“I wasn’t—”
Meryam put a hand on his chest and shoved gently but firmly, walking him backward several steps to get him going. He used the momentum to turn and head back down the passage.
“I ought to be included in this,” Olivieri said. “All of the senior staff should be. I don’t know why Dr. Walker is here and—”
“Dr. Walker has a history of dealing with ugly shit and I wanted him here,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”
But she didn’t need to say any more. Olivieri was leaving.
Meryam turned and walked quietly back to the ladder, gazing a moment at the shadowy opening that led down to level one. To the box and the horned thing.
“What about my history?” Walker asked.
She studied his face. A thin scar creased the left side of his forehead and he bore several smaller ones on the right side of his neck. His eyes, though, were the real evidence of just how much darkness and trouble he’d seen.
Meryam sniffed. “Adam’s here because he’s my partner. Hakan’s here because he’s foreman. If I’d wanted someone in this little conference because of politics, I’d have Kim and Mr. Avci. When they were clearing you to come here, I studied up on you a bit. You’ve been in some tight spots, and though I don’t understand who you really are or what you really do for the National Science Foundation, what information I found suggests you’re capable of handling yourself pretty well when things go tits up.”
“So you’re saying you want my perspective?” Walker asked.
Meryam felt her anger at Olivieri abating. The cold settled into her again. The bright work light did nothing to make her feel more alert, more like morning had come. It still felt like midnight to her, like she hadn’t slept in months and the shadows were closing in.
“Yes, Dr. Walker. That’s what I’m saying.” Her skull ached.
Walker rubbed at the dark circles under his eyes. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping, either.
“You had two men go missing night before last,” he said, looking pointedly at Hakan. “One of them is a guide, skilled enough to get down the mountain even with snow falling. The blizzard that’s been forecast isn’t here yet, so I was willing to go along with that theory. It made sense, to a degree. You have a lot of frustrated people working for you right now. But now two more people? A middle-aged archaeologist and one of her students, neither with a lot of climbing experience?”
The ladder drew her gaze again and Meryam forced herself to look away.
She turned to Hakan. “Could they do it?”
Hakan fell back on old habits, averting his gaze. He focused on Adam almost as if he wanted to wait for permission to reply. And what the hell was that about?
“It’s possible,” Hakan said, nodding slowly. But then he ticked his gaze toward her, eyes narrowed, full of dark wisdom. “But you know they didn’t.”
Meryam flinched. “What are you saying?”
Hakan’s nostrils flared. He studied her with that familiar distaste. “You are not a stupid woman, no matter how hard you seem to be working to prove otherwise. Professor Marshall showed no hostility toward your leadership and no fear of dead things.”
“I agree,” Adam said quietly. For the first time, Meryam noted the absence of his camera. “These people didn’t leave. There aren’t any demons here, but that doesn’t mean we’re not dealing with a monster. Maybe more than one.”
Walker moved to the ladder, put a hand on it, and gazed down into the darkness. They all watched him. Meryam saw the tension coiled inside him and felt it in herself, the urge to run or scream or fight.
“Murder,” she said. “That’s what we’re saying.”
“Yes,” Hakan replied. “It can be nothing else.”
“Murder, yeah,” Ben agreed, glancing around to be sure there were no more eavesdroppers. “And sabotage.”
Meryam felt her hands trembling. Her face flushed with heat.
“Hakan, tell Patil to put together whatever tools he needs, then get a few of Helen’s students—the ones who can function—and meet me back at the box.”
“Hang on,” Walker began.
She ignored him. “Adam, make sure Zeybekci and Avci know what we’re up to. You might as well tell Olivieri, too. And you and Calliope bring your damn cameras. We’ve wasted enough time.”
Walker held up a hand. “Meryam—”
“You have no standing here, Dr. Walker. If you and the priest want to be there when we do this, I’m okay with that as long as you stay out of the way. But if I don’t get that fucking demon out of the cave and away from these people, this project is going to unravel entirely.”
Hakan and Adam nodded.
“Got it,” Adam said.
They began to move away.
“Gentlemen,” Walker said, “just one thing? Watch your backs. From now on, nobody should be running around alone in here. Even after we get rid of the cadaver, we’ve still got a real monster to deal with.”