It didn’t sound like a language at all to Jordan. Maybe the shock of the day had caught up to the professor. Or maybe it wasn’t even Bactrian on the tape.
Farshad crouched beside the salt-ringed bed. He stared daggers at the child, as if she were to blame for all of this.
“Remember what I translated from that desperate radio call?” Atherton’s glassy eyes stared past Jordan’s shoulder at nothing. “Those last words. The girl is ours. They clearly want her.”
The professor pointed a trembling finger at the child.
Whispers out in the night grew louder, taking on a gibbering sound, a chorus of madness just beyond the edge of hearing. It felt as if the words ate through his ears, scratching to get inside his skull. But maybe those were just normal leopard noises. Jordan had no idea what a leopard was supposed to sound like.
Atherton clamped his hands over his ears and crouched lower to the floor.
Farshad barked out words in Pashto, his native language, and raised his rifle at Jordan, at the girl. He motioned toward the door with the tip of his weapon. Between the pantomime and the bit of Pashto that Jordan understood, the message was clear.
Send the girl outside.
“Not happening,” Jordan said grimly, staring him down.
Farshad had gone red-faced by now, his dark eyes wild. He shouted again in Pashto. Jordan made out the word djinn and something like petra. He kept repeating the word over and over again, shoving his weapon belligerently toward Jordan each time. Then a round fired and blasted dirt near Jordan’s knee.
That was enough for his men.
Defending him, Cooper and McKay fired their weapons at the same time.
Farshad fell back across the bed, dead before he hit the girl’s straw mattress.
The child cried out and buried her face in Jordan’s chest.
Atherton moaned.
“What was Farshad yelling at the end?” Jordan asked. “That word petra.”
Atherton rocked slightly, never lifting his face. “An old Sanskrit word, used by both Buddhists and local tribes people of this region. It translates as gone forth and departed, but it usually means demonic ghosts, those still craving something, unsettled spirits.”
Jordan wanted to scoff at such a thing, but he couldn’t find the words.
“Farshad believed the girl is possessed by an escaped djinn and that the ghosts of the mists want her back.”
“What I photographed out there,” McKay said, “those looked like leopard prints, not ghost prints.”
“I… I don’t know.” Atherton kept rocking. “But perhaps he was right. Maybe we should send the girl out there. Then they’ll leave us alone. Maybe she’s all they want.”
“Who wants?” Jordan spat back. He wasn’t going to send the girl to her death.
As answer, a heavy weight hit the thatched roof overhead, raining down dry straw. Jordan swung his machine pistol up and fired through the roof. His men followed suit, the blasts deafening in the small space.
A screeched yowl — not pained, just angry — met their efforts, followed by a scrambling retreat. It didn’t sound injured — just pissed. Was the creature out there attempting to draw their fire, to lure them into wasting ammunition?
Jordan checked his weapon. He caught the matching frowns as his teammates did the same. Not good. They were going to run out fast.
Another feline scream came from near the door. Cooper and McKay swung around, training their weapons there. Jordan returned his sights to the window, staring out at the mist-shrouded ruins. “If you see them, shoot. But be cautious with your ammo.”
“Got it,” Cooper said. “Wait till you see the white of their eyes.”
“That roof isn’t going to withstand many more attacks like that,” McKay said. “A few more poundings, and those leopards will come crashing on top of us.”
McKay was right. Jordan recognized the futility of staying holed up here. They didn’t have enough weapons to hold off a pair of three-hundred-pound monsters, especially in such cramped quarters. They were as likely to shoot each other as the animals.
Jordan regained his feet, scooping the girl in his arms.
“Do you have a plan?” Cooper asked.
Jordan stared at the door. “But it’s not a good one.”
“What are you going to do?” McKay asked, looking worried.
“I’m going to give them what they want.”
Jordan ran through the snow, through the night, staying low but carrying the burden over one shoulder, limp and silent. The girl’s sleeve brushed his cheek, smelling of sweat and fear. He didn’t know if she was the source of all of this, if the leopards were fixed on her scent. He didn’t know if those whispers in the mists were echoes from far away or something else.
Right now, it didn’t matter.
If they wanted the girl, let them follow his trail, his movements.
He fled away from the distant glow of Bamiyan and toward the ruins of Shahr-e-Gholghola. He followed instructions given to him by Atherton, pointing him to the archaeology team’s excavation site. It was only a fast fifty-yard sprint away.
That graveyard offered the only hope now.
He and his men had just a few weapons and a limited amount of ammunition left. And these beasts had proven themselves to be crafty, experienced hunters, definitely hard to kill, plainly wary of guns. His best hope was to lure the beasts away and trap them.
After he was done with them, he’d deal with whoever was out there whispering in the mists.
Or at least that was his plan.
As he raced, McKay kept to his heels.
He’d left Cooper back at the house, covering their flight from the window. Maybe the cats would get into his sights, and Cooper would bring them down and solve all their problems.
Jordan crossed the last of the way, dodging through a maze of wheelbarrows, mounds of excavated gravel and sand, and stacks of abandoned tools to reach the entrance to the archaeological dig site. Cold wind cut through his shirt. He missed his coat.
As he skidded up to the mouth of the tunnel, he shifted his burden higher on his shoulder, making sure his weapon wasn’t compromised.
McKay panted beside him. The exertion didn’t make him short-winded, nor the elevation here. It was simple fear.
“You know what you have to do,” Jordan said.
“I’ll see what I can dig up — literally.”
Jordan grinned, appreciating his friend’s levity, while still knowing the fear it hid. “If I’m not back in ten minutes—”
“I heard you the first time. Now get going.”
A screaming howl punctuated that order.
McKay slapped Jordan on the shoulder, then disappeared with a map fluttering in his hand. Jordan clicked on the xenon tactical flashlight mounted to his weapon and pointed it down the tunnel that had been excavated into the heart of the ruins.
Now to set the trap.. .
He ducked low to keep the girl’s clothing from ripping on the rough-hewn walls and set off into the tunnel. He needed the cats to follow him, luring them with his bouncing light, his frantic flight, and the scent of the child’s fever-damp clothes. The low ceiling required him to run in a crouch, his shoulders bumping the walls to either side.
As he chased his beam of light down into the depths of the dark ruins, he noted a warmer breeze wafting up from below, as if trying to blow him back outside. It smelled of damp rock along with a chemical sting, like burning oil. He was grateful for the warmth, until his eyes began to water, and his head spun.
He knew some natural caves breathed, exhaling or inhaling depending on surface pressures and temperatures. Was that how the archaeologists knew where to dig, had they noted a section of the Shahr-e-Gholghola sighing out, revealing its inner secrets, and dug toward it?