No Such Thing As Werewolves (7 page)

“Who cares about the funding? We’re diggers, Sheila. We’re here for the knowledge, and if we have to kiss a little corporate ass to get it, that’s part of the gig. You were the one who taught me that. There’s no way I’m looking this gift horse in the mouth, not when we get to both be part of history and line our wallets for once. I just paid off my house.”

“
I
care and you should too. They know something about this place they aren’t telling us. They put together the team in an awful hurry, and they’re not sparing any expense. No one does that for science,” Sheila countered, biting her lip as she stared in the direction of the pavilions. She knelt and zipped the tent shut in one smooth arc.

“So they sell off all the artifacts and make a tidy profit. Isn’t that always the case? Pure research is dead. Besides, our names will still be in the history books even if we don’t make another dime.”

“Keep your voice down. This goes much deeper than profit,” she whispered, locking gazes with Blair. “Commander Jordan drove Steve to get into the central chamber as soon as possible. He hounded him to work long hours down there. Here’s the really scary part. He didn’t seem concerned or surprised when Steve’s behavior began to deteriorate.”

“Deteriorate? What the hell does that mean?” Blair whispered, finally catching a bit of her paranoia. If Bridget and Sheila were both worried, there was genuine cause for alarm. They disagreed about everything on general principal.

Sheila’s jaw snapped shut, trapping the unspoken words he could read in her gaze. Footsteps crunched outside.

“Knock, knock.” Bridget’s voice came from outside the tent flap. She unzipped it, revealing a tentative smile. She looked ready to bolt, especially when she saw Sheila. “I hope I’m not interrupting. Blair, I figured you’d be eager to see the pyramid. Do you want a tour of the site? I can come back if this is a bad time.”
 

Sheila bristled, eyes narrowing as she sucked in a breath. It would soon birth one of her legendary tirades, sending Bridget packing and raising tension for days. As much as Blair shared Sheila’s anger he wanted them focused on solving this thing.

“Sheila was just telling me a bit about the site,” he interjected, rising to block Sheila’s view of Bridget. “I’d love a tour, though. Sheila, do you want to join us?”

Both Bridget and Sheila stiffened, but neither objected. The two had been inseparable once, just like he and Steve had been. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Of course I’ll come. Bridget can barely tell the New Kingdom from the Old. You need a proper guide, not a jumped-up grad student. She can tag along though. Might even learn something instead of riding her boyfriend’s coattails.”

Bridget replied as if Sheila hadn’t spoken. “We should start with the lowest level. There are stunning passages of hieroglyphs. The colors are mind boggling.”
 

This was going to be a very awkward tour.

“It could take years to decipher their script, but the sheer volume of symbols will yield the key. It has to be here somewhere. I simply cannot wait to find out what they’ve been waiting so many millennia to tell us,” Sheila said, clapping Blair on the back with one of her calloused hands.

“We’ve got the best team in the world,” Bridget agreed, beaming one of
those
smiles his way. It stung, but having seen several similar ones so recently dulled the impact. “There’s a Rosetta stone in there somewhere. There has to be.”

“It took five different scientists a half century to unlock the Mayan language. I seriously doubt they left
Ancient Peruvians for Dummies
,” he said. It was far more likely they’d merely catalogue everything here, and that the translation, if it ever came, would be made by someone decades from now.

“They didn’t have Google. Or image analysis. Our benefactors provided a computer that can read images and find common sequences,” Bridget said, with a bit less enthusiasm. She was short enough that there was no way he could miss her cleavage. Was the low-cut top for his benefit, or was he reading too much into things? “Steve has already done a lot of work with it, so you’ve got an incredible foundation to work with.”

Blair slipped passed her, ducking through the flap and back into the keening wind. Apparently, Northern California’s warm winters had softened him more than he’d thought. Hopefully he’d adjust quickly.
 

Bridget and Sheila ducked through after him, still glaring at each other. Blair stifled a sigh, wondering who’d thought it a good idea to have the pair on the same dig. Things were worse between them than he’d ever imagined. It was disconcerting to see the pair at each other’s throats. Their words were friendly enough, but the underlying tone had been nasty. When Bridget and Blair had been together, they were like mismatched school girls, always gossiping and whispering. He knew why that had changed, but it still saddened him.

“We’ve excavated a small portion of the wall on the northern slope and another on the southern,” Bridget explained, adjusting her ball cap to provide a bit more shade for her eyes. She wore sunglasses as well, but the glare of the sun was intense. “We wanted to see if the symbols along the lowest part of the face extended all the way around. We’re not positive they do, but we’ve found them everywhere we’ve cleared.”

“Can you show me?” Blair asked, intensely curious. “The Mayans carved symbols into their pyramids, but the Egyptians left the outside blank.”

“These symbols aren’t carved,” Sheila broke in, starting toward the pyramid. She threaded through a neighboring group of tents, plunging past the pavilions and toward the structure itself.
 

“Not carved? How did they get there, then? If they were painted, they would have flaked off millennia ago, especially if the pyramid was covered by soil. The acid would have eaten away at the ink,” Blair said, hurrying after her. He peered up at the massive structure, such a baffling enigma.

The trio picked their way around the mound of dirt, the pyramid filling the sky above. Its gleaming ebony surface was blinding under the sun, a beacon that could have been seen for hundreds of miles if not sheltered by the peaks forming the ravine it rested in.

Sheila plunged ahead, making for a break in the wall of dirt. The team had excavated a twenty-foot section of the pyramid’s base, revealing incredibly detailed hieroglyphs. The multicolored symbols covered a six-foot swathe, but it was neither their complexity nor their beauty that caused Blair’s jaw to drop. The symbols could have been laser etched. They were absolutely pristine. Whatever dye had been used caught the sunlight, causing the hieroglyphs to glitter and flow as if alive.

The glyphs had similarities to both Mayan and Egyptian writings. They used clear logarithmic symbols to represent words. That brown one was clearly a mountain. The white, clearly a cloud. Animals of all sorts dotted the panels. Most were recognizable, though, some were long extinct species or fantastical imaginings of the glyphs’ creators.

“What do you think?” Bridget asked, sidling up next to him. She seemed amused, though he’d bet she’d had a similar reaction when she’d first seen this.

“I can see what you mean about the builders being incredibly advanced. I’m not sure we could replicate this today,” he admitted, moving closer to the wall. The symbols were even more impressive up close. Though he couldn’t read them, he was left with the impression that they were not mere symbols but rather whole words, much like Japanese Kanji.

“I think the scope is what gets me,” Sheila added, touching a vibrant red fox. “The entire interior is covered in symbols like these, and it seems likely the whole base is as well. How long must that have taken, and how did they do it? We tried scraping off a sample, but steel didn’t so much as scratch it. We’ve placed an order for a diamond-tipped drill.”

Something caught Blair’s eye. He wasn’t sure what he found to be wrong, but something was definitely there. He scanned the area they’d excavated, particularly the place where the pyramid disappeared into the dirt.

“Have you dug down to find the base? I don’t see the bottom of the marble here. What if it goes deeper?” Blair asked, kneeling in the dirt to scrape some of it away from the marble. The stone radiated heat from the blistering sun.

“Commander Jordan de-prioritized it,” Bridget said, kneeling next to him. She rested her hands on her knees, watching as he scooped away dirt. “We were curious, but he insisted we focus on the symbols in the central chamber.”

“What are you thinking, Blair? You’ve got that look,” Sheila asked, resting her back against the hot stone.

“The structure could be even larger than what we’ve uncovered so far. There’s no way to know how deep it goes,” he said, finally giving up on shoveling dirt with his hands. “We’d need better equipment.”

“You’ll have anything you need, Doctor Smith. Just get a requisition form from Doctor Roberts, and I’ll see that it’s taken care of.” A deep voice startled Blair from behind. He spun to face the speaker.

The man towered over Blair. His tree-trunk arms were bare to the sun, and a form-fitting black t-shirt covered his chest. Dirty-blond stubble and a shaved head made him look very much like a pit bull—an angry one. The dark sunglasses and black cap added to the effect. The man himself was far more intimidating than the holstered pistol at his side.

“And you are?” Blair asked, already suspecting the answer. He thought he’d spied the man over at the soldiers’ camp.

“Commander Jordan. You can call me Jordan if that’s easier. I’m a representative of the Peruvian government, empowered to look after their interests here. We’ve invested a great deal in this operation, and we want to make sure everything is handled according to…policy.” He delivered his speech smoothly, too, white teeth glinting as a predatory smile slid into place. “We’re eager to see your collaboration with Doctor Galk. You should consider heading down to the central chamber rather than wasting time up here. I think you’ll want to examine your colleague’s findings. I’m told they’re quite revolutionary.”

“I’ll get to it after I’ve mapped all the exposed panels along the outer surface. I want to see if there are any discernible patterns or if there are any stylistic differences between these and the ones inside,” Blair replied. He immediately distrusted the man, and not just because Jordan had probably beat up kids like Blair for their lunch money. This man held secrets like Fort Knox held gold.

“I really must insist, Doctor Smith.”

“Just Mister. I’m never finished my doctorate.”

“Mister Smith, then. Time is very much of the essence. We’ve paid you a considerable sum and expect prompt results,” the commander said. He flexed his hands as a subtle reminder that he could break Blair in half.

“What’s the rush? This place has been here for thousands of years. Another day or two isn’t going to make much difference. We’ll do this faster with less interference,” Blair argued, tensing as the man clenched his fists. Despite the casualness of the gesture, Jordan looked a hairbreadth from violence.

“It’s unlikely that we are the only interested party in such a discovery.” Jordan’s smile was frigid as his right hand wrapped around the hilt of a very large knife strapped to his thigh. It had the look of a reflexive gesture, but it was damn unsettling. “We need to gather all the data we can before the media circus begins. That’s all. I regret intruding on your methodology, but time is the one resource we cannot provide you.”

“Yeah, sure…I’m eager to see Steve,” Blair agreed with a nod. He turned to the two women. “Maybe we can tour the rest of the outer structure later? Most of what I’m going to need is in the central chamber. Besides, I want to talk to Steve about his initial findings.”

“If you’re going to head down, I think I might see about some dinner,” Sheila said, a look of distaste flitting across her tanned face. “Why don’t you drop by my tent after you come back up? I’d love to brainstorm some of the glyphs with you.”

“I’ll do that,” Blair said, turning to Bridget. “Will you show me to the central chamber?”

“We may as well get that out of the way,” she said, with the reluctant determination of a soldier girding for war. “It’s this way. The tunnel entrance is on the western slope.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Jordan said, giving another one of those dangerous smiles as he turned to leave. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mister Smith.”

“We’ll catch up over dinner, Blair,” Sheila said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. She delivered a pointed look as she walked off, though he wasn’t certain what it meant. It felt like a warning, but of what?

“Shall we?” Bridget asked. Her smile was back in full force.

“Lead the way,” Blair said, falling into step beside her as she headed around the northern face of the structure. Commander Jordan watched them go, a predator studying its next meal. He waited until the man was well out of earshot before continuing. “So, why was that guy so insistent that I head inside? I got here less than an hour ago.”

“Because this stuff is just window dressing. What you’ve seen so far? That’s nothing,” Bridget explained as they rounded the corner of the massive structure. He could see the gaping darkness of the tunnel mouth, wide enough for ten men abreast.
 

Chapter 8- Steve

Blair was surprised to find a familiar black-clad soldier waiting just inside the massive marble doors. The hulking man had been their driver on the way from Cajamarca. The Russian. Yuri, his name had been. He bore a decidedly lethal-looking rifle, and his eyes were still obscured by those silver sunglasses, despite the fact that he stood in the shaded entryway.