"I can't reach you," she said.
The old man pointed, leaning on his staff as another quake shuddered through the earth. "There's a trail. Back that way. Just head down."
Turning, Annja gazed down the other side of the mountain. Here and there, just glimpses, she thought she saw a trail.
"Do you see it?" the old man called.
The earth heaved again, shifting violently enough that Annja almost lost her footing. "Yes!"
"Go!" the old man called. "Not much farther down, you'll find a campsite. I have a truck there. I will meet you." With more agility and speed than Annja would have believed possible, he started down the crest where he stood.
Annja didn't know what the old man was doing in the mountains. There were a number of hiking trails. Even famed author Robert Louis Stevenson, though in ill health, had been compelled by his curiosity about the Beast of Gévaudan to try his luck at solving the mystery in the mountains. The trail Stevenson had taken was clearly marked for tourists interested in the countryside, the legend or the author of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The mountain shook again and Annja started running. Never in her research had she heard of any earthquakes in the area.
She followed the narrow path across worn stone that led through boulders and cracks along the mountainside. As she ran, the ground trembled and heaved. Several times she tripped and fell against the rock walls. Her backpack and the pouch containing the climbing chalk thudded against her.
"There she is!" The young male voice ripped across the sound of falling rock.
Going to ground immediately, Annja peered around.
Farther down the slope, one of the motorcycle riders, still wearing his riding leathers, peered up at her. For a moment she thought perhaps he was coming to help her.
Then she saw the small, black semiautomatic pistol in his hand and the bruises on his face. It was the man from the alley.
She turned and fled, racing back up the mountain.
The earth shook even more violently than before. A horrendous crack sounded nearby. Nearly knocked from her feet, aware that hundreds of pounds of rock and debris were skidding toward her, she pulled up short and tried to alter her course.
The ground opened up and swallowed her.
Chapter 4
OUT OF CONTROL, Annja threw her hands out instinctively in an effort to catch hold of the sides of the fissure. Stone whipped by her fingertips, but she managed to somewhat slow her descent from a fall to a slide something short of maximum velocity.
Not a fissure, she told herself, her brain buzzing at furious speed the way it always did when she was in trouble. This is a sinkhole.
She felt the roughly circular contours of the shaft around her as she stretched to fill it. A sinkhole was a natural formation of a cave that finally hollowed out to the point it nearly reached the surface. As a nation, France was probably more honeycombed with caves and cave systems than any other country in the world.
The Cévennes Mountains held many volcanic caves, created by lava after it had cooled and the volcanoes had subsided. Along the coast, sea caves formed by waves had provided hidden harbors in the golden age of piracy. Limestone caves in the interior were made by erosion. There were even many caves made by the passage of glaciers across the land millions of years ago. Cro-Magnons had lived in caves at Pech-Merle and Lascaux, leaving behind cave paintings millions of years old.
Annja wasn't surprised to find a new cave in the mountains. In fact, in scaling the cliff she'd been hoping to find some sign of one. Le Bête had taken up refuge somewhere all those years ago.
However, she hadn't expected to plummetinto her discovery.
In a hail of flying stones, she hit the ground hard. The impact drove the breath from her lungs. Blackness ate at the edge of her conscious mind, but she struggled through it and remained alert.
It's not the fall that kills you, she reminded herself. It's the sudden stop at the end.
She covered her head with her arms as more debris rained down around her. Several pieces of stone hammered her back and legs hard enough to promise bruises for a few days.
Then everything was quiet.
You're alive, she told herself. Get moving.
She pushed herself up. Nothing felt broken. That was always a good sign.
When her lungs finally started working again, dust coated her tongue. Reaching into her backpack, knowing by touch and years of experience where the contents were, she took out a bandanna, wet it with the water bottle and tied the material around her nose and mouth. The water-soaked cloth would keep her from suffering respiratory problems caused by inhaling too much dust.
Wet cloth won't protect you from carbon dioxide buildup or poison gas, she reminded herself. Carbon dioxide wasn't a natural byproduct of a cave the way coal gas was, but if humans or animals had frequented it, the gas could have filled the chamber. She hoped the opening created by the sinkhole would help.
Echoes sounded around her, indicating that the cave was large or long.
Fishing out one of the two halogen flashlights she habitually carried, she turned it on. Then she took off her sunglasses and stored them in the backpack, marveling that they hadn't broken during the fall.
The flashlight beam cut through the darkness but was obscured by the swirling dust that filled the cave. The chamber was at least thirty feet across and almost that high.
The sinkhole was at the back of the cave. At least, it was in the area she decided to refer to as the back of the cave. Almost four feet across, it snaked up but the twists and turns were so severe that no outside light penetrated the chamber.
Going back up is going to be a problem, Annja realized. If it's possible at all. She carried rope in her backpack. Over the years spent at dig sites, she'd learned that rope was an indispensable tool. She never went anywhere without it. But she wasn't sure it could help her now.
Bats fluttered from the stalactites. She swept the flashlight beam after them.
Okay, Annja thought, if you guys are in here, there's got to be another entrance.
Unless the sinkhole that had opened up had originally been some small holes that had allowed the bats to enter and exit. She didn't want to think about that possibility.
The air was thick and stank from being closed up. More than that, it smelled like an animal's den. That was good news and bad news. If the cave did provide a home to an animal, the chances were good that another entrance was large enough to allow her passage. The bad news was that wolves were in the area, as well as bears. Large predators weren't going to be welcome. Especially not in their den.
A swift examination of the chamber revealed a passage. She went to it, finding she had to hunch down to pass through and that the floor was canted. At least the structure looked sound. No cracks or fissures showed in the strata. If there was another tremor, she felt reasonably certain the rock would stay intact and not come down on top of her.
The passage went on for fifteen or twenty feet, then jogged left and opened into another chamber nearly twice the size of the one she'd fallen into.
When she passed the flashlight beam over the wall to her right, drawings stood out against the stone. Seeing what they were, guessing that no one in hundreds or thousands or millions of years had seen them, all thoughts of anything else – the earth tremors, the motorcyclists, the old man – were gone.