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trouble. The side of the cave wall had crumbled and the walkway was littered with small stones. The dust on the other side of the slide was churned up as if someone had fallen, and there were spots of fresh blood that carried her smell. He peeked over the side of the walkway. About two hundred feet below, the shelf leveled off into a platform wide enough to support several crumbling adobe buildings set flush against the back wall. Most of the dwellings were two or three stories high, but all had small, rectangular windows and doors and flat, terraced roofs accessed from below with rough-hewn, wooden ladders. |
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A rock whizzed past Cyrus's ear and he turned and looked up. |
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The goateed man's head was jutting out over the side of the walkway about a quarter of a mile back up the path. He was using a flashlight like a light saber to cut the stygian darkness. Cyrus guessed he had about twenty minutes on them and pressed on down the trail as best he could. When he reached the hairpin above the village, he dropped to the roof of the closest building and peered down into the street below. |
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There wasn't much to see: a lot of dust, a cube-shaped box that the Anasazi had probably used as a kiln, a few pieces of pottery around a few blackened fire pits now as cold as Jimmy Hoffa. And Kyna, huddled in a tight ball up against the side of the building next door, shivering and holding on to her knee with both hands. |
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The buildings were so quiet that Cyrus could hear himself think. It was as if the whole village got up one morning, went out for a pizza and never came back. |
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When Cyrus limped into view Kyna moaned, "Dear God! You're a mess." |
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He eased down next to her and rested his muzzle on her thigh. Injured as he was, he was afraid to think what was going to happen when he tried to change back, but one look at Kyna's knee and he figured he didn't have much choice. The moment his body started to reform, he passed out. |
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