2

A LONG WALK THROUGH A SILENT FOREST

8:00 a.m. Somewhere in the foothills of Kanchenjunga, Nepal

It took us the better part of the night to reach the caves marked in Frank and Neil’s journal. Despite the Apsara driving the jeep and the bumpy ride, I fell asleep. For one, I needed it, and two, I figured Rynn would wake me up if things took a turn. They didn’t, and the first indication I had that we’d arrived was when the jeep ground to a loud, wrenching halt.

I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and shrugged a blanket off. At some point Rynn must have tossed it over me. Or maybe I’d done so in my sleep. You’d be amazed at how efficient my unconscious autopilot is. I can detach a hungry Mau from my pillow and hit him with his Nerf ball across the room without batting an eye.

I sat up from where I’d stretched out on the backseat, then peeked outside the jeep’s colorful canvas.

The sun was bright and well over a cloudless horizon, making the fuchsia rhinestones twinkle right into my still sleepy eyes. I squinted against the light as I got a first look at our surroundings.

Well, it might be too bright, but it certainly was pretty out here. And quiet.

We were in the end of May, so Nepal was in the off-season. The trees, grasses, and brush were green with the beginning of summer, and the small river that ran through the picturesque valley before me was running heavy with snowmelt. Despite the veneer of summer, you could still see white in the surrounding mountains, and we were high enough into the foothills that the air was crisp with the scent of nearby snow.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that the river meant we were at serious risk of being caught in an avalanche from the melting snow above us, it would have been downright idyllic.

Dev’s warning about the mystical valley came roaring back: “When people start disappearing, never to be seen or heard from again, only fools and small children are so quick to think they ended up in a magical paradise.”

I spotted the caves a ways into the valley, partway up the mountain steps and obscured by the summer vegetation. There were a handful of them, but only one that was big enough for people to walk in comfortably.

I pulled the notebook out of my parka, opened to the page with the diagrams and photos of the cave Neil and Frank had been interested in, and held up the images for comparison. Beyond a few fallen boulders over the past four years and substantially less snow around the cave proper, thanks to a warmer-than-normal May, it matched.

If I had to guess, I’d put it at a couple kilometers into the valley, maybe two and a half to three when you took in the incline. With the river and moderate brush terrain it’d take us an hour or so to hike in, provided there wasn’t an avalanche to contend with. Though truth be told, an avalanche was the least of my worries right now.

I tucked the journal back into my jacket. There wasn’t any point worrying about the details of the cave until we got there, and if my suspicions about the valley’s quiet nature were confirmed, I’d deal with it.

We’d deal with it. I kept forgetting that I was working with Rynn, not against him. There were some serious benefits to having a partner. I’d gotten a good night’s sleep—or as good as was possible in the back of a suspect jeep over back roads. I never got a good night’s sleep while working. And I hadn’t had to panic about transportation.

It also meant I hadn’t been in control of all the plans.

Though it was still a huge adjustment. I was used to working on my own.

I trusted Rynn with my life, but it was a weird learning curve.

And being thrown out of windows . . . then again, the ball was about to be well and good back in my court.

I stopped my perusal of the hillside as I picked up the scent—warm, light roasted, brewed strong. I glanced over to where Rynn was standing outside the jeep with his arms crossed, scanning the area. “Coffee?” Oh God, please say he’d made enough for two.

In answer, he passed me a Thermos. I grabbed it. “Oh, the universe doesn’t hate me this morning.” Another benefit to having a partner in my job—one who understood my deep-rooted love of caffeine.

“It’s early. You haven’t had a chance to offend the powers that be. Yet,” he added, glancing once more at the picturesque valley at the foot of the mountain.

I guzzled half the Thermos, then passed it back to Rynn before I finished it all. Not human did not mean does not drink coffee. I’d learned that one the hard way.

Talie was ignoring us. She’d opened the hood to her jeep and was fiddling with the engine—or the parts that were jerry-rigged into an engine. Good thing we’d gotten out of Fikkal in the dark of night, otherwise I don’t know if I’d have trusted the jeep not to burst into an all-engulfing flame, let alone survive the offtrack roads.

Benefits of being a luck demon, I supposed.

While Rynn finished off the coffee, I turned back to surveying the valley. With the exception of the odd curse from Talie and the whine of metal being wrenched against its will, the valley maintained its veil of silence. Considering the fresh water, greenery, and abundance of grass and nesting spots, I was acutely aware of what was missing.

“Do you two hear what I hear?”

Rynn and Talie both looked at me before turning their attention on the valley. After a moment, Rynn said, “I don’t hear anything.”

I nodded. No birds singing, no small animals that should be in the trees, no yaks taking advantage of the water and prime breeding ground. The warm weather hadn’t only affected the snow. Goblins bred faster in warmer weather, and by all accounts the last few years had been mild. . . .

“You two should hurry up and do whatever it is you came here to do,” Talie said from back under the hood, her high, feminine voice clashing with the ringing and clanging metal. She looked up at the sky. “I’ll do my best working the tendrils of luck and fate to keep you safe as long as they continue to flow by like the river, but eventually they will stray.”

I gave her a blank stare.

She rolled her eyes, looking very much a twelve-year-old, despite the fact that she was most definitely not. “Even I can’t keep the yeti-goblins at bay forever. The clock is ticking.”

Right. Time to take a long walk through a picturesque valley infested with goblins. “Let’s get this over with,” I said to Rynn, tossing my backpack over my shoulder. I set off along the river toward the cavern, keeping my eyes on the trees and rocks for any sign of yak skins and horns.

“You know, one of these days you need to learn firearms,” Rynn said casually.

“You know my stance on guns and stakes.”

“I said learn—as in I teach you. Not ‘grab a gun and see if you can figure out the safety’ before a vampire takes it from you. Besides, it’s not always a vampire,” Rynn continued. “Like today, for example—it’s yeti-goblins.”

I bit my tongue. He had a point. Whereas vampires, Nagas, and mummies specialized in getting creative with their modes of torture, not all species were that high on the intellect scale. Their thought process tended toward “can I eat it?” and “I should try to eat it anyways.” Like slightly less intelligent versions of Captain in their priorities, minus the soft fur, occasionally pleasant disposition, and need to clean. I’d never had the pleasure of seeing a goblin in person—they don’t like desert ruins. Forests, jungles, and abandoned radioactive cities like Chernobyl, on the other hand . . .

Rynn had a point, but he’d also developed a bad habit of discounting anything I had to say about security as a bad idea. I needed him to strike a balance with me here, which meant compromise—his compromise this time, not mine being lopped out a window.

“It’s not only using a gun, Rynn. Depending on you to scare vampires and other supernaturals away is a bad idea.”

He stopped and turned toward me, blocking the path, his face knit in confusion. “Why?”

Why. He genuinely didn’t get why I didn’t think letting him deal with supernatural logistics was just the logical thing to do. No question about my independence, my ability to solve my own problems . . .

I didn’t say that though. Problem with working with a significant other is that they have feelings. Rynn didn’t quite get the whole independence thing, not when in his mind that meant having to let supernaturals beat me to a pulp. And he meant well, it was just that despite the fact that he could sense my emotions, it was as if he couldn’t tell the difference between me not wanting to have to depend on him to handle my supernatural problems and me not wanting him to try.

For someone who could read all my emotions, he occasionally had a remedial handle on what they actually meant.

Instead of reopening the “independent human” can of worms, I said, “Just because they’re scared of you doesn’t mean they can’t afford to be reckless. They’ll just send out more cockroaches.” My term for vampire lackeys. “And what about the ones on the opposite side of your supernatural war?” I added, navigating a length of foliage that had overgrown the path. This was another sign that yaks hadn’t been in the area for a while; all their footpaths were disappearing under the foliage.

“It’s not a war. Yet. And there are no vampires on the other side. For all their bluster about eating people, they’re terrified of being pushed out in the open. They’re the first ones the humans go after.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Besides, Alexander doesn’t want you alone. He’ll wait.”

We both knew why. Because I didn’t have Captain with me. Lady Siyu had my cat, a situation I was trying to rectify but the dragon lady was intent on blocking at every step. Which made no sense. She hated my cat, he hated her. It should be a no-brainer.

We continued in silence after that until we reached a section of the stream where the woods had encroached on its bank. The caves were still roughly five hundred meters away.

We both smelled the air. No trace of rotting flesh or urine-cured hides.

“I don’t smell anything,” Rynn whispered. “But it won’t hurt to cover our tracks in the water.”

“What if they’re already watching us?”

He inclined his head as he crouched to roll up his pant legs to his knees. “If they’re already watching us, then they’ve decided they don’t want to eat us.”

I shot him a skeptical look as I followed his lead and cuffed up my own pants before following him into the shallows of the stream. From everything I’d ever read about goblin species, that was highly unlikely.

He shrugged. “Or they’re waiting until we get closer to their den to ambush us.”

That sounded more like it. I shivered as the water came up a little ways past my knees, soaking the bottom of my pants.

I clenched my teeth against the cold as we headed toward the caves, some five hundred odd meters away now. We kept to the shallows, but they were icy from the snowmelt feeding in. I noted something else troubling besides the cold.

“No fish either,” I said as we waded through the stream, my voice a whisper.

“You’ve read about goblins, Alix,” Rynn said, keeping his voice just as quiet as he scanned the river and treetops. “They’re not the smartest supernatural, but they are experts at exploiting their environment. They’ll exploit it to starvation.”

“Not a comforting thought.”

He inclined his head to the side. “Like I said, not the smartest supernatural.”

We continued our way along the stream in silence, my own adrenaline spiking as we drew closer to the caves. I could swear I smelled something rotting, like a dead animal left out in the sun.

“Do you smell that?” I asked.

Rynn inclined his head. “They’re watching us now—I can feel them—more or less. No anger—curiosity more than anything. And hunger. They are definitely hungry.”

I stole a look around us, trying not to fall over in the water. “Why don’t we see any of them?”

“The yeti have trouble with these trees. For one there’s two of them stacked under the yak hides they wear making climbing difficult, and second, this time of year the camouflage would be a giveaway against the green foilage. My guess is they’re waiting to see what we do.”

I reined in my own visceral panic as the scent of urine and rotting flesh grew stronger. I kept close to Rynn as we made our way down the stream. Three hundred meters now, tops.

Yeti were a unique subspecies of goblin. Unlike their warmer-­climate brethren, who made their homes in old abandoned ruins and cities that had been reclaimed by the forests and jungles, the yeti had to deal with the mountains and cold. To combat the cold, they’d evolved two behaviors. The first was that they’d learned to use yak hides for clothing. Not well tailored, mind you; the hides were shredded by sharp teeth into loose-fitting tunics and cured with, well, the only thing the yeti had on hand that could do the job. Goblin urine. The second behavior, well . . .

“It’s the mated pairs under the hides, right?” I asked Rynn.

He nodded. “Females stand on top of the males’ shoulders, and the yak hide is draped over them. They hold the yak horn as well, probably to make them look bigger and scare other predators away.”

I always figured the stink of goblin urine would do that.

“Unless they’re fighting, that is,” Rynn continued.

“What happens then?”

“Well, the female makes the male hold the yak horn out while she throws spears made out of bone usually—or shoots arrows—since she’s the one with visibility.” He gave a reluctant shrug. “The horns probably make for another kind of intimidation as well.”

I gave a quick shudder, not from the cold. The phallic yak horns had definitely not made it into the IAA handbook.

We were approaching the rocky hillside the caves were situated under, where the forest and river ended and barefaced open rock and mountain cliffs began. No noise, no movement . . . no phallic horns . . . nothing that signaled a yeti ambush.

I spotted the path, worn into the rock and dirt. Rynn stepped onto the bank first and stood, watching, waiting, before motioning me to follow him out of the river.

I followed Rynn as he started up the hillside, both of us silent and me not willing to breathe.

“Son of a bitch!” I jumped as something buzzed loudly in the silent forest.

Rynn jumped too, one of his guns drawn, searching.

It took a second for his eyes to fall on me, my jacket to be precise, and another few seconds for me to feel anything beyond the adrenaline coursing through my blood.

My jacket pocket was buzzing.

I swore as I fished out my phone. Nadya’s number flashed across the screen.

I shook my head and answered it. “Nadya—you have no idea the scare you just gave me,” I said as softly as I could.

“Then you should get better about turning your phone off” was her curt reply. “Besides, you were the one who told me to call as soon as I could.”

The email I’d managed to get off last night before crashing in the backseat of Talie’s glittery jeep had said to call me when she could.

“How are things over there?” Nadya asked.

I heard a rock skitter down onto the path a moment before a pebble struck the ground beside me. “Ah, let me get back to you on that.”

Rynn had decided to move a few feet ahead and check the cave entrance. I watched as he stuck his head inside, waving the beam of his flashlight before glancing back down at me.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s used these caves for some time—­including the yeti,” he said, and waved me up.

“Well, the caves we need to look at aren’t infested with yeti-goblins,” I said to Nadya, balancing my phone between my ear and shoulder as I made my way up the path to join him.

“That’s a good start,” Nadya offered.

“Yes, though it does beg the question what the hell scared them off. Rocky crevices, multiple caves, good view of the valley—it’s a prime yeti breeding den.”

I reached the cave entrance and spared a last look around the valley. I couldn’t shake the feeling someone—or thing—was watching us. For a second I thought I caught a glimpse of a tattered piece of white cloth fluttering in the trees, but when I looked again it wasn’t there.

Figment of my imagination caused by adrenaline. Still, I lost no time following Rynn inside.

“No hint or mention about the yeti in the notebooks?” Nadya asked.

I’d sent Nadya a quick email with the short version of what I’d found—namely that there was a journal the World Quest duo had left at a site under suspect circumstances and that a number of mercenaries were crawling around. “Nothing, but they weren’t exactly transparent on the notes either. Probably spent so much time worrying about someone stealing their research it never occurred to them someone besides them might actually need to read the journal.”

“Send them to me and I’ll see what I can do, but no promises. I’m on my own tight deadline myself.”

“Nothing in Vegas I hope?”

“Nothing so bad. Look, Alix, I need to get back to Japan and soon. There’s something going on with my club.”

“I thought you left Murasaki in charge?” Murasaki was one of ­Nadya’s senior girls. The name was a stage name of sorts, after her favorite author—but if the imagery of Japan’s first novelist, a woman, denoted a classy, educated, and refined woman, then the stage name was appropriate. Also, she was the kind of girl the patrons wouldn’t try to take advantage of. Not like some of the more . . . schoolgirl-like women, we’ll say.

“I did. And it’s not her. She knows how to run the club. It’s my silent partner.”

I frowned. “I didn’t know you had a partner.”

“Silent. And I needed one to open the club—someone Japanese. It makes things work better.”

“Why am I only hearing about it now?”

“Because it wasn’t a problem until now.” I heard the sigh over the connection. It was slight; no one else would have noticed it, but I knew Nadya. Despite her assertions otherwise, she was stressed.

“Really, it’s probably nothing. I just need to go and threaten some sense into a few people, but I need to go sooner rather than later. For my own peace of mind.”

I won’t lie—part of me did want to let it go. I had enough of my own problems at the moment. I mean, goddamn it, there wasn’t a single bird anywhere.

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t as straightforward as you want me to think it is?” I asked.

Nadya sighed again, this time louder. “Because you have a modicum of sense inside your head? Look, don’t worry—yet. Wait until I get there and see what’s happening.”

“Not comforting,” I sang into the phone.

“If you want comforting out of life, work at a Starbucks. I’ll update you when I arrive, and I’ll see what I can make of the journal codes when I get them. Just be careful and keep ahead of the mercenaries. These aren’t archaeologists, they’re dangerous. And don’t fight with Rynn this time.”

“Don’t tell me you two have been talking about me behind my back again,” I said. Rynn pretended not to hear me as he continued to check the cave.

“Only when he starts to worry. And mercenaries make the both of us worried.”

I ran my hand through my hair. It caught on the tangles I hadn’t had the time or inclination to brush out yet. Funny thing was, as much as it was in my nature to resist, she didn’t have to warn me this time. Am I good at infiltrating dig sites and decrypting tombs and artifacts? Definitely. Dealing with mercenaries, real ones? Not so much.

“I’ll . . . do my best,” I said.

I noticed Rynn had disappeared around a corner. I didn’t want him accidentally disturbing something before I got a look at it. “Got to go, Nadya,” I said. She said a quick good-bye, and I slid my phone back inside my pocket before turning my attention on the cave.

The entrance led into a natural circular chamber roughly the size of a medium apartment with a high ceiling reaching a good twenty feet into the mountain. No stalagmites or stalactites, but there was the sound of water dripping somewhere. Probably pores in the rock above us allowed both water and air to flow through. Rynn had placed glow sticks at even intervals in the main chamber and was doing a second pass now, dropping a glow stick wherever he found an alcove or anything else that could be used for a den.

I found a series of rough paintings near the entrance; not the clean lines and pigments of the ancient-looking pictographs from Neil and Frank’s notebook, but dark brown and crudely made symbols and letters.

I fished my UV flashlight out of my bag and turned it on the paintings, which confirmed my suspicions. “Rynn, I’ve got goblin paintings.”

He came up beside me. “They’re not camping in here. This is old. It’s a warning of some sort for other goblins to keep away, along with mention of something new they ate that didn’t agree with them, an electronic, maybe a phone or a radio.”

Great. Goblins finding new and exciting things to eat. “What’s it a warning for?”

“Hard to say. I think they’re talking about a door. ‘Beware doorway,’ maybe, but beyond that? Most goblin writing deals with things they’ve eaten, want to eat, or lamenting that all the food’s gone.”

Doorway . . . doorway. I searched the cave with my flashlight, but there wasn’t anything that looked like a doorway. “Could it be the cave entrance?”

“Doubtfully. Goblins don’t really think like that. To them, doors and buildings are man-made things. They’ll exploit them and they understand what they are, but they don’t associate them with natural structures.”

Where was it then? And where did it lead? And was whatever the goblins were afraid of a danger to us?

“Come on—I think I found something toward the back of the cave, though I’m not sure what to make of it,” he said, touching my shoulder gently and steering me away from the yeti drawings.

Using the light from the glow sticks, I followed him to the back of the cave, the air getting more metallic and stale with each step. Rynn came to a stop by the very back of the cavern where a hidden alcove broke off into a slightly smaller cavern no more than five hundred square feet around with the same vaulted ceiling. Rynn waited until I was inside to shine his flashlight on the far cavern wall.

It was much more bare than was shown in the journal. The base images were there, those I recognized. Rings of gold, orange, white, blue, and red adorned the wall from the floor all the way to the ceiling, before branching onto the ceiling itself. There was a handful of colorful depictions of animals drawn in the centers of the double- and triple-lined rings—birds, wolves, small rodents, even some crates being dragged by yaks with stick people following behind. Your run-of-the-mill ancient pictographs. Pretty—and old, from the looks of it, but nothing occult beyond the storytelling symbolism.

And there were parts missing.

“Are you certain it’s the same one?” Rynn asked. “There are a lot of caves.”

“You know as well as I do looks can be deceiving.” I rifled through my backpack until my fingers closed on a heavy plastic handle. “You ever wonder why so much magic was written in caves?”

Rynn shrugged. “Truth be told, Alix, I never felt that comfortable around magic. Seems to cause more trouble than it’s worth.”

I could drink in multiples to that statement. “They always stuck the inscriptions in caves so the sun couldn’t get at them. Note, the pyramids were built as a substitute where there were no ready caves, since they couldn’t really dig into the sand. So were some of the Greek and Roman catacombs for that matter.” It was something that had boggled archaeologists for a real long time. Why were all the ancient magic inscriptions kept underground?

“So sunlight couldn’t degrade them?”

“Good guess, but no, that’s just an added benefit.” I pulled out my heavier UV light floodlight, the one with multiple filters, and set it on the floor. “So we couldn’t see them like you guys can.” Supernaturals saw in different wavelengths than humans, particularly in the UV spectrum. A lot of their magic was only visible to humans when activated by light.

“Good hypothesis, Alix, but I can’t see anything either. The wall is blank,” he said.

Yeah. I had a theory about why the World Quest duo had been so set on this place. I fiddled with the filters and wavelength settings. If I was right about this, the settings would be critical. When I was satisfied, I turned it on.

Like invisible ink, the relief flared to life under the wave of my UV flashlight; symbols mixed in with pictographs that were so common in magic spells and inscriptions. Yaks, birds, people—all layered with the symbols to make a picture of sorts, then arranged in rings, swirling around each other not unlike a conga line done in oranges, reds, white, yellows, and blue.

“You couldn’t see these inscriptions with your bare eyes because they weren’t meant for you,” I said to Rynn.

“Human magic,” he said, staring at the images, now excited and visible under the infrared wavelength, not a spectrum supernaturals could see with their bare eyes but one that could be made visible with the right tools.

“Looks like ancient humans practicing magic here picked up on some of your guy’s supernatural tricks.”

Rynn let out a low whistle at the inscriptions both of us could now see under the infrared filters. They were beautiful. Breathtaking, when you considered this was one of the few existing examples on the planet of human magic—something that had been lost, not only to the history books but to the archaeological record as well, as if it had been wiped out.

I held up Neil and Frank’s notebook, open to the diagrams. Now they matched. Human magic, hidden from supernaturals. “This is a find of the century, if not the find of the century,” I said to Rynn. “They never would have been able to publish it, but if they had gone through the right channels, this could have made their careers.”

“Or ended their careers spectacularly—like yours was,” Rynn said.

I inclined my head. No wonder they’d been so secretive; if the IAA had had any idea what they’d been after, well, there was no shortage of tenured professors who would have been more than happy to steal their work.

“There’s one problem, Alix,” Rynn said as he gestured at the cavern. “There’s nothing here. No refuse, no camping gear, no equipment, no blood, no remains. I’ve seen it all—supernatural renderings, murders, magic gone wrong. There should be some trace, something I can see, but there’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

I nodded and held up the notebook to check the pictures against the cavern wall again.

“Yeah, well, we’ve got an even bigger problem,” I said, handing the open notebook to Rynn. “I’ve got absolutely no idea what any of these symbols or drawings mean.” Which meant I had my work cut out for me.