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  Kneeling beside the dead man and beast, she reached out her empty hand.

  Something gleamed at the dead man’s throat.

  Taking a surgical glove from her backpack, Annja plucked the gleaming object from the corpse. It had partially sunk into the dead man’s chest. A leather thong tied the object around the corpse’s neck.

  After freeing the gleaming object, Annja held it up so her flashlight beam could easily illuminate it. A jagged piece of metal, no more than two inches to a side, dangled from the leather thong.

  The piece looked like an ill-made coin, hammered out on some smith’s anvil in a hurry. One side held an image of a wolf standing in front of a mountain. The wolf was disproportioned, though the oddities seemed intentional, and it appeared as though the wolf had been hanged. The obverse was stamped with a symbol she couldn’t quite make out.

  Annja remained kneeling. She was checking the image when a flashlight beam whipped across her face.

  Instinctively, she dodged away, remembering the motorcyclists and the old man she’d seen outside. She tucked the drawing pad, pencils and charm into her backpack as she scooped up her flashlight and switched it off.

  “Where the hell did she go?” someone demanded in French.

  Shadows created by the glow of the flashlight trailed the beam into the chamber.

  Annja stayed low as the light sprayed around the room. She barely escaped it before reaching the pile of skulls. Once there, she flattened herself against the wall.

  Light played over leather-clad bodies that stepped into the chamber.

  Evidently the motorcyclists had made their way down the sinkhole. They’d come along the passage Annja had found. She’d been so absorbed by her discoveries that she’d forgotten all about them and hadn’t noticed them. Silently, she cursed herself.

  “She can’t have just vanished,” another man said.

  In the soft glow of the reflected light from the flashlight, all six of them stood revealed. All of them held pistols.

  “If we lose her, Lesauvage is going to kill us.” The speaker’s voice was tight with fear.

  “We haven’t lost her,” someone stated calmly. “We came in that hole after her. There’s no other way out.”

  “You don’t know that, Foulard.”

  Another man gave a startled curse. “What the hell’s lying there?”

  Foulard aimed his flashlight at the creature’s huge mummified body.

  “The Beast of Gévaudan!” someone said. “It must be! Look at it! My grandfather told me stories about this thing!” His voice dropped and took on a note of awe. “I never believed him. Thought it was all crap old men told kids to scare the hell out of them.”

  Hidden by the shadow of the skulls, Annja’s mind raced. They came here looking for me.

  “Forget about that damned thing,” Foulard commanded. “Spread out. Find the woman. Lesauvage wants to speak with her. I don’t want to go back and tell him we lost her.”

  He directed his flashlight at the cavern’s ceiling, providing a weak cone of illumination from above.

  Thankfully, the light didn’t quite reach the cavern floor. Annja sank down low. Her free hand plucked up one of the human skulls. Her fingers slipped easily through the empty eyeholes to secure her hold. It wasn’t much as weapons went, but she hoped to improve her standing.

  5

  Annja leaned forward, skull in one hand and flashlight in the other, hunkered down in a squatting position.

  The six men spread out. Foulard took his own path, but the other five stayed close enough to take comfort in the presence of the light.

  “Do you think that really is the Beast of Gévaudan?” one of them asked.

  “I don’t know, but I heard the creature was a werewolf,” another said. “He was supposed to be a guy, Count Vargo, who got cursed by a band of gypsies after he raped one of their daughters.”

  That was not a werewolf, Annja thought fiercely as she remembered how the great beast looked. It’s some kind of mutated species. She pressed against the wall, profiling herself into it.

  One of the men came close to her. Annja waited as long as she could, knowing their eyes were adjusting to the darkness. His body language, that sudden shift to square up with her, gave away the fact that he had seen her.

  She rose, uncoiling as the viper had done earlier, and swung the skull with all her strength. The aged bone shattered against the man’s face, driving him backward.

  “There!” one of the men yelled. “Over by Croteau!”

  Foulard swung the flashlight in Annja’s direction.

  Scuttling quickly, flinging away the remnants of the skull, she slid low along the unconscious man. Her partially numbed fingers found the 9 mm pistol lying on the cave floor. She fumbled it into her grip as the flashlight splashed over her and blinded her.

  “She has Croteau’s gun!”

  “Kill her!” Foulard yelled. His pistol barked and spit flame that lit up the angry terror on his face. She recognized the bruises on his face and knew he was the man from the alley.

  The wind from the bullet cut the air by Annja’s left cheek. If she hadn’t already been moving to her right, it would have crashed through her head.

  “Lesauvage wants her alive!” someone yelled. “Stop shooting!”

  Firing on the fly, Annja put two rounds in Foulard’s immediate vicinity. Someone yelped. She’d taken one man out of play.

  Annja tried to get her bearings. Maybe they’d used a rope to get down through the sinkhole, and maybe that rope was still there, just waiting. All she had to do was reach it.

  Instead, still suffering from partial blindness caused by the bright flashlight beam, she ran into one of the other men in the gloom, unaware that he’d been there. He caught her gun wrist and shoved his own pistol into her cheek below her left eye.

  “Move and I’ll kill you!” the man shouted.

  Immediately, Annja drew her knee up into the man’s groin, twisted her head to the left and snapped backward. The pistol barked and the superheated barrel painfully kissed her lips with bruising force.

  The detonation temporarily robbed her of her hearing, rendering her partially deaf in addition to the blindness. The man also stripped her borrowed pistol from her fist.

  Before her would-be captor recovered, she butted her forehead into his face, breaking his nose and splitting his lips, causing him to stagger back.

  Foulard fired again. His bullets ripped into the man who’d held Annja. Crying out in pain, the man dropped to the floor.

  Annja was in motion at once, knowing that the bullets had been meant for her. She bent, trying to find one of the lost pistols. Her backpack spilled and something metallic slid free, dropping onto the dust-covered floor.

  She skidded to a halt and reached for the necklace. Before she could close her hand on it, Foulard fired three more shots.

  Two of the rounds thudded into the dead man and the third struck the metal charm, sending it skidding across the cave floor.

  As Annja spun to look at the man, to attempt to read his next move, another figure stepped into the light pool created by Foulard’s flashlight.

  Savagely, the old man with the walking stick rammed the bottom of his thick staff into the back of Foulard’s skull. Crying out in pain, Foulard sagged to the cave floor.

  Moving quickly, the old man surprised the remaining men and came out of the darkness. He swung the staff, taking each man’s feet from beneath him, then driving the end of his weapon into each man’s chest hard enough to take away his breath.

  The old man looked at Annja. “Come on, then. It wouldn’t do to stay around until they get a second wind.”

  Despite the fact that an earthquake had occurred and the men had pistols and didn’t seem afraid to use them, the old man acted perfectly calm. As if this was something he did every day.

  Fisting the charm, Annja stood. The metal caught the glow of the light for an instant, twirling in her grip.

  “What is that?” t
he old man demanded. “What did you find?”

  Foulard roared a foul curse and pointed the pistol at them.

  “Which way?” Annja yelled. The old man hadn’t come from the passageway that led to the sinkhole.

  “Here.” The old man turned and ran as bullets struck the cave walls.

  Almost immediately, the earth quaked again.

  Thrusting her arms out in front of her, not understanding how the old man appeared able to see so well in the darkness, Annja located the opening in the wall by feel just in time to keep her face from smashing into it.

  For a moment, until they left the glow of the flashlight behind them, the old man was a dimly visible patch of gray ahead of her. Then they twisted around a bend in the tunnel and he vanished.

  “Watch your head,” he advised.

  Annja put a hand over her head in time to ward off the passageway’s low ceiling. The rough impact bruised her forearm. How can he see down here?

  “Who are those men?” Annja asked.

  “I don’t know. They were after you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “At present, saving you. Unless you want to go back there and get acquainted with those highwaymen.”

  Highwaymen was an odd description. Annja thought about that for a moment, but swiftly geared her mind back to self-preservation as a flashlight beam cut through the darkness behind them. Foulard and his companions had evidently rallied.

  “Left,” the old man called.

  Annja didn’t respond at once and crashed into the bend of the passageway.

  “Aren’t you listening?” the old man snapped.

  “Yes.” Annja recovered and flicked on her flashlight.

  The old man stood around the bend. He didn’t protect his eyes from the sudden light that sent painful splinters through Annja’s.

  Satisfied that she was intact, the old man turned and ran with improbable speed. He carried his staff close to his body as if it were an appendage.

  Annja followed through the next turn, then the opening of another chamber dawned before them. Low-level light from outside filled the chamber, coming from an entrance in the mountainside.

  “I have a truck,” the old man said. “Farther down the mountain. Try to keep up.”

  Try to keep up? Annja couldn’t believe he’d said that. Who is this guy? she wondered.

  Then he was outside the cave, sprinting down the steep, trembling mountainside as surefootedly as a mountain goat. Annja was hard-pressed to keep up, but she knew despite his boasting that she could have outrun him. If she’d known which way to go.

  They ran, crashing through brush and avoiding trees and boulders that were in their way. An elegant light blue Mercedes SUV sat parked beneath the heavy boughs of a towering Scotch pine only a short distance ahead.

  “There,” the old man said.

  “I see it,” Annja acknowledged. She ran to the passenger side as the old man headed to the driver’s side.

  The Mercedes’s alarm system squawked as he pressed the keyless entry on the fob he’d fished from a pocket.

  “Belt yourself in.” The old man started the engine and pulled the SUV into gear. He didn’t bother backing up, just pushed through the brush and came around in a tight circle to get back onto a narrow road that wound through the thick forest. Splashes of sunlight whipped across the dusty windshield.

  Annja fumbled with the seat belt and got it strapped just as she heard motorcycle engines roar to life. As she glanced over her shoulder through the back window, the old man put his foot down harder on the accelerator.

  “Did you manage to get one of their guns?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You had one,” he accused.

  “They took it back.” Anger surged in Annja at his tone. Despite the fact that they were running for their lives, the old man’s rudeness bothered her on some baseline level. Like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “You should have shot them,” he said.

  “I tried.”

  Shaking his head, barely navigating a sudden turn that sent them skidding out of control for a moment, he reached under his seat and pulled free a rack. Restraining straps held two pistols and a cut-down shotgun securely in place.

  “Do you always go this well prepared while hiking?” Annja couldn’t help asking.

  “Yes. It usually saves me from embarrassing situations like running for my life down a mountainside.”

  Annja couldn’t argue the point.

  Behind them, two motorcycles roared in pursuit, quickly closing the distance. Bullets crashed through the back glass and broken shards ricocheted inside the SUV. The old man pulled fiercely on the steering wheel again.

  “Can you shoot?” he demanded.

  Without responding, Annja freed one of the pistols. It was a .40-caliber Heckler & Koch. She racked the slide.

  “It’s already loaded,” the old man said.

  A fat round spun through the air. Annja dropped the magazine from the pistol, and replaced the bullet. She popped the magazine back into place with her palm.

  “It would be pretty foolish to carry around an unloaded weapon, now, wouldn’t it?” he asked sarcastically.

  Another fusillade of bullets hammered the SUV.

  “Perhaps,” the old man said in exasperation, “you could try shooting back at them.”

  “I was just listening to that last-minute pep talk,” Annja replied.

  Hunched over the steering wheel, holding on with both fists, the old man grinned at her. “You do have a certain amount of spunk. I like that.”

  Annja didn’t care what he liked. Despite the fact that he’d helped save her life, the old man annoyed her in ways she’d never before encountered, at a level that she hadn’t believed possible.

  Twisting in the seat, Annja rested her right hand in her left and took aim with both eyes open. The British ex-SAS officer who had taught her to shoot had ground that into her on the indoor and outdoor firing ranges. A shooter was never supposed to limit vision, not even on a scoped weapon.

  The motorcycles had closed to within thirty yards and were coming closer, fishtailing and lunging as they pursued their prey. Annja couldn’t help thinking of the hunters who had chased La Bête all those years ago. Surely they had pursued it through these same woods.

  But they’d never found the lair, had they? Despite her concern over her present situation, Annja couldn’t help feeling a little joyful triumph mixed in.

  She squeezed the trigger, blasting through a 3-round salvo. One of the bullets hit the lead motorcycle’s handlebars and jarred the wheel. The rider quickly recovered and opened fire again.

  “You missed!” the old man roared.

  “I see that,” Annja replied. “I kind of got that when he didn’t fall off the motorcycle.”

  Bullets bounced off the SUV’s exterior again, sounding like hail.

  “Hold steady,” Annja instructed, taking aim again.

  “On this pathetic excuse for a road? Ha!” The old man jerked hard left, following the twists and turns.

  Annja fired again, deliberately aiming toward the center of the lead rider’s chest. She kept up the rate of fire, hoping to get lucky or at least give their pursuers something to think about.

  One of the bullets struck the motorcycle’s front tire. Rubber shredded and the motorcycle went out of control, lunging suddenly into the forest and smashing against a boulder the size of an earthmover. The gas tank ignited and exploded, blowing the rider free.

  Her weapon empty, Annja reached for the second pistol. More rounds hammered the Mercedes.

  The old man cursed, but his words were in Latin. And very descriptive.

  “Latin?” Annja asked in surprise.

  “I find the language more…native to my tongue,” the old man said. He followed another turn and the road flared out straight for a hundred yards. “Hold on.”

  Annja didn’t have time to brace herself on such short notice. The seat belt bit into her chest
as it clamped down when the old man jammed his foot on the brakes. She whipped her head around, watching as the last motorcycle following them down the mountainside tried to stop.

  The man’s efforts only succeeded in locking up his brakes and sending him into an out-of-control skid. He hit the back of the SUV and flipped over the top, landing on the hood of the Mercedes. He lay there for a moment, then weakly, tried to bring up the pistol he’d somehow managed to hang on to.

  Annja lifted her own weapon, but the old man shoved the transmission into reverse and spilled the man from the hood before she could fire. Then the old man shifted back into a forward gear, floored the accelerator and ran him down as he tried to get to his feet.

  A dull thud sounded as the man struck the front of the SUV. A moment later the Mercedes rocked back and forth as it crunched over the man’s body.

  In disbelief, Annja whipped her head around and looked back. The man lay twisted and broken in the path.

  “That was cruel,” she said.

  “You’re right,” the old man agreed. “Shooting him would have been much more merciful. After all, for reasons unknown to me, he was willing to kill me to get you. However, I didn’t see that we were going to be successful in persuading him to stand still long enough for you to shoot him several times. He’d probably have preferred blowing up against the side of a boulder like his friend.”

  “I don’t know who they were,” Annja said. “We could go back and check for identification.”

  “Men like that, assassins, rarely carry identification,” the old man said, continuing to gain speed. “Feel free to jump out and go back. I won’t have hurt feelings. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve saved someone’s life only to have them squander it foolishly against the very person or thing I saved them from. Do you know if the other men in the cave are dead?”

  “No,” Annja replied.

  “Well, I suppose you might consider the possibility that they’re still indisposed is worth the risk. I, however, don’t.”

  “Your attitude leaves a lot to be desired.” Annja settled back in the seat, loosening the belt.

  The old man shook his head and laughed. “You’re hardly the grateful sort yourself.” He shoved out his hand.