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 plummet into 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.
Playing the flashlight beam over the rough rock surface, Annja made out mastodons, handprints, figures of people, fires, aurochs—ancestors of modern cattle—and other images of Cro-Magnon life.
Excitement flared through her. During her career, she’d seen cave paintings. She’d even seen similar paintings at Lascaux after the cave had been closed to the public.
But she had never found something like this.
Hypnotized by the images, she took a credit-card-sized digital camera from her backpack. With the low light, she didn’t know if the images would turn out, but whatever the camera captured would surely be enough to get funding for a dig site.
The Cro-Magnon painters had used animal fat and minerals to make colors. Black had been a favorite and easy to make. All that was required was charred bone ground into a fine powder mixed with animal fat.
She walked along the wall, taking image after image. Only a little farther on, the scenes on the wall were marred. Long, deep scratches ran through them, as if they’d been dug into the stone by great, dull claws. The claw marks were seven and eight feet high, so close together it looked as if an animal had been in a frenzy.
An animal marking its territory? she wondered. Or the desperation of an animal trapped inside this cave?
In that moment, Annja remembered she’d traveled to the Cévennes looking for La Bête. Then she tripped and nearly fell. Something furry brushed against her ankle.
For one moment she thought she felt it move. Stepping back quickly, she swung the flashlight around, prepared to use it as a weapon.
The light beam fell in a bright ellipse over a scene straight out of a nightmare. The half-eaten and mummified corpse of a sheep lay on the floor amid a pile of bones.
Tracking the bone debris, Annja shone her beam over the stack of skulls that had been arranged in an irregular notch in the chamber. At least seventy or eighty skulls filled the area.
Was this a place of worship? Annja wondered. Or an altar celebrating past triumphs?
She tried to imagine Cro-Magnon men sitting in the cave bragging about their success as fierce hunters. Except that the sheep’s body was anachronistic. None of the sheep’s forebears had looked like that in Cro-Magnon times. This sheep was small and compact, bred for meat and wool, not far removed from the sheep Annja had seen on farms she’d passed on her way to the mountain range.
Looking closely, she noticed that several of the skulls were human.
Used to handling human remains on dig sites, she had no fear of the dead. She set down the flashlight to illuminate the scene.
Upon further inspection, she discovered that several of the ribs, and arm and leg bones were likely human, as well. Shreds of clothing that looked hundreds of years old clung to some of the bones. Boots stood and lay amid the clutter.
A cold chill ran down her spine. Whatever had lived in the cave had preyed on humans.
Shifting the light, heart beating a little faster, Annja spotted the great body stretched out on the floor. For a very tense moment, she’d thought the animal was lying there waiting to pounce. She froze.
The light played over the mummified lips pulled back in a savage snarl that exposed huge yellow teeth. The eye sockets were hollow, long empty and dry. In that moment, the animal musk she’d smelled seemed even more intense.
Death had stripped the fantastic creature of much of its bulk, but it was still easy to see how huge it had been in life. The head was as big as a buffalo’s but more bearlike in shape. Its body was thick and broad and the limbs were huge. It was unlike anything Annja had ever seen before.
Making herself move despite the fear and astonishment she felt, Annja took pictures of the creature with the digital camera. Maybe she’d made two incredible discoveries in the same day.
Finished with the camera, she hurriedly took out a small drawing pad and a mechanical pencil from her backpack. If the camera failed to capture images, she could at least draw them.
On closer inspection, Annja saw a broad-bladed spear shoved through the beast’s chest. Beneath the corpse of the impossible animal was a human corpse.
Decomposition hadn’t settled in. Locked in the steady climate of the cave environment, kept bug-free by depth and ecology, the dead man had mummified as the beast had. His hands, the flesh so dehydrated it was almost like onionskin over the bones, still held tightly to the spear. Man and beast, locked in savage combat, had killed each other.
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.