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female.
    He caught a glimpse of its dark eyes as it surveyed the room. They burned with an inner fire, much as the girl’s eyes had earlier.
    Jordan held his breath.
    The world turned watery, his head more muzzy.
    Movement became smudging blurs.
    The male rushed to the discarded clothing, snuffling deeply, intent on its focus.
    The second animal slid past its mate, drawn to the light, stalking low toward it.
    A rippling of the water drew his attention to the spring-fed pool. He watched the male cat’s reflection shimmer, wavering. For the briefest flicker, he thought he saw another image hidden beyond the fiery fur, something pallid and sickly, hairless and hunched. Jordan blinked his burning eyes, and it disappeared.
    He shook his head and tore his gaze away.
    He dared not wait any longer.
    He slipped as quietly as possible out of hiding and toward the open tunnel, sneaking back the way he had come. He had to steady himself with one hand on the wall to keep upright.
    Then sudden movement made him freeze. The male leopard, its back still to Jordan, lifted its head from the mound of discarded clothes and yowled its frustration at the roof, knowing it had been tricked.
    Under its paws, the bones began to shift.
    To Jordan’s addled senses, they seemed to stir on their own—scraping against one another, knocking hollowly. He gaped, trying to convince himself the movement was merely the massive beast shifting its weight.
    He failed.
    Numb with primal terror, he stumbled backward toward the mouth of the tunnel. The shaking of the bones grew worse. He watched one of the archaeologists’ bodies rise, belly up, back broken.
    He wanted to look away, but horror transfixed him.
    As he stared, the carcass lifted up on limbs twisted the wrong direction. It scuttled across the bone field like a crab. Its head hung askew, mouth open. From that gullet, gibbering whispers flowed. Words in the same archaic language as on the recording.
    A second corpse stirred, missing a lower jaw, throat bared open.
    It added to the chorus of madness.
    Can’t be . . . I’m seeing things.
    Grasping at this thin hope, he turned and fled up the tunnel, rebounding off the walls every few feet. The world continued to churn around him, betraying his steps. He fumbled for the penlight in his pocket.
    He found it, flicked it on, and lost it as it slipped from his fingertips.
    It bounced away behind him.
    Still, the glow offered enough light from behind to help illuminate the way up.
    He ran—while a howl arose behind him.
    As it echoed away, he heard a faint whispering in his ear.
    â€œ . . . hurry. All done here . . .”
    McKay.
    He forced himself upward: buffeted by that foul wind, chased by howls, pursued by things that scratched rock with rotted nails and bone.
    Shadows cast up from below danced on the walls around him, ahead of him, capering up from the fires of Hell.
    Heavy footfalls rushed up the tunnel behind him.
    No more howls now.
    Just the silent hunt.
    Jordan ran his palms along the wall to keep his legs under him. He tore his skin on the coarse stone, but he didn’t care. The pain meant he had abandoned the smooth natural cavern walls below for the excavated sharp edges of man-made work.
    Behind him, a harsh panting echoed.
    The penlight’s glow vanished.
    Darkness collapsed around him as the beasts closed in.
    He ran faster, his lungs burning.
    He smelled the creatures now, the stench blown up to him by the foul breath of the cave: stinking of meat and blood and horror.
    Then light shone ahead.
    The exit.
    He fled toward it, diving through it from a yard away to freedom, landing hard, almost forgetting to make that last leap to save his life.
    McKay caught him in his arms and rolled him to the side.
    A howl burst forth from the tunnel, full of frustration and the promise of bloody vengeance.
    As Jordan tumbled away, he caught sight of the male leopard stepping to the mouth of the