But was it really her?
Camilla looked at the group the woman walked with and counted their number.
Five.
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. It didn’t seem possible, and yet…
She looked ahead. Roger and the others were now some fifty yards away. She’d let them keep going. She had work to do.
Reaching into her pocket, she made sure her tiny revolver was still hidden there. The five had turned right and were disappearing down a dark street. Camilla hurried in that direction, slipping into the shadows behind them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Am I the only one who is really creeped out by this place?” Emily asked as they continued down the street.
“If you weren’t, I’d think you were strange,” Zane replied. “Just keep reminding yourself it’s deserted. The only thing we’re going to find here are stones and bones.”
Carmen disagreed but remained silent. She still felt the presence of something out there but had no proof beyond vague intuition. And in the absence of proof, there was no sense in making everyone unnecessarily jumpy. After all, they had important work ahead of them.
Zane looked at Keiko. “How deep are we below the surface?”
“We’re approaching a thousand feet, sir.”
“Good grief. That’s almost a quarter mile down. How are our oxygen levels?”
“Oxygen levels are satisfactory, and there are very low levels of carbon dioxide.”
As they walked, Carmen looked at a building on their left. For some reason, her eyes came to rest on a bottom-floor window. The shadows seemed to twist slightly, as though something pulled back out of sight. She stopped and stared, but nothing moved again.
Keep walking. It’s only your imagination.
Amanda looked up. “The architecture is so fascinating. As I said before, it’s a mix of so many different styles. Some of the structures — the columns, the fountain — remind me of known ancient cultures, but others look strange, almost futuristic.”
“I noticed the same thing,” Emily said. “Maybe successive cultures came and lived here.”
“Maybe,” Amanda said, “although it’s not the way you’d normally see it. In archaeology, you typically find one civilization built on top of another, not side-by-side.”
As they passed through an intersection, Carmen heard something down a street to the left. It sounded like the faint shuffling of feet. She froze, letting the others move on. A few seconds later, she heard it again, this time further away. This time, she wasn’t imagining things. This time, she was going to find out who or what was out there.
She hurried forward. “Zane.”
He stopped and turned.
She nodded down the street to the left. “I’m going to take a quick look at something.”
He glanced briefly in that direction then looked at her. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
“No, this will only take a second. The rest of you need to keep moving.”
“What is it?” He frowned.
“It’s probably nothing. Just wanted to take a quick look around… Make sure we don’t miss anything.”
Zane seemed to suspect she was withholding something. “Is there—”
“I’ll let you know.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Give me two minutes. If I don’t find anything, I’ll come back and catch up.”
Zane stared at her for a moment then nodded.
As Carmen moved off, he called after her. “Remember, two minutes.”
She probably should have let him come with her, but she felt the need for stealth. Two people might make too much noise. Besides, it might turn out to be nothing.
Alone, Carmen thumbed off her flashlight, plunging the street into greater darkness. She removed her pistol and made sure there was a round in the chamber. She stopped about three buildings down. It was impossible to know exactly where the noise had come from, but for some reason, this felt right. She focused on a building to the left. Like the others, it was three stories of mortared stone. Two windows flanked the ground-level entrance.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was the same feeling she’d had at the pool, only this time stronger. Someone was watching her, staring at her back. Somehow, it always seemed to come from behind. She spun around, raising her pistol at the same time. The building was an exact duplicate of the one she’d just been looking at. Her gaze swept across the windows, one by one. There! A head hovered in the shadows of a second-story window. She shifted the sights of her gun, but the silhouette melted back into the darkness.
She raced to the entrance and slipped her robe over her head. She wore black underneath, which might make her less noticeable in the dark interior. After listening briefly, she slipped inside. The darkness swallowed her. When her eyes finally adjusted, she found herself in a foyer. A corridor ran toward the back, and there was a stairwell on the right.
A scratching sound carried down from the upper floors.
Carmen started for the stairs then paused. What if this was a trap? What if someone had purposefully lured her away from the others? She pushed the possibility aside. Whoever it was and whatever their purpose, she was relatively sure they didn’t have a gun.
She took the stairs. Thankfully, the stone steps absorbed the sound of her footfalls. She paused near the second-floor landing and listened. She thought she heard something again, but it was so faint she wondered if it might be coming from another building. She took a few more steps, bringing her eyes high enough to see the second floor. From her vantage point, it seemed most of the space was open, save for a few piles of stone on the left. Seeing and hearing nothing, she climbed the rest of the way. She cleared every direction with her pistol, but the room was empty. If something had been here before, it wasn’t now.
A large dark blotch drew her to the right side of the room. As she approached, she spotted a jagged opening in the wall. It started about four feet off the ground and stretched to the ceiling. She assumed it led to the building next door.
Maybe that’s where the person went.
Slipping her pistol into her waistband, she climbed onto the ledge. She balanced herself and peered into the abyss on the other side. It was pitch black. If someone was hidden there, she had little chance of finding them.
As she reached for her flashlight, she heard a scratching behind her. She turned back to the room. The scratching grew more intense, and it seemed to be coming from the rear wall. As she lowered her gaze, she noticed a large hole near the floor. Strangely, she hadn’t seen it before. The noise seemed to rise through it.
The scratching grew louder, then something emerged from the hole. It looked like an animal, a creature of some kind. Its nose sniffed the floor as it warily moved out into the room. Seconds later, two others followed. Before long, there were a half dozen creatures crawling around. Carmen gripped her pistol tightly. What on earth are they?
She leaned forward and squinted, trying to make out more detail. Finally, one of the creatures moved into the light spilling through the front window. Carmen’s blood froze. A massive rat sniffed the air. She guessed it was three feet long and a foot high at the shoulders. It was essentially a pit bull with the legs of a rat.
As it continued in her direction, she noticed the animal was hairless. Gray skin stretched over rippled muscles. Carmen’s family had always joked about some of the big rats they’d seen in Rome, but these creatures were unlike anything she’d seen outside of a horror film. One of them would have no trouble killing a child. She shuddered to think what a dozen could do.