Gazing across the landscape, Scatty realized that there was a very good chance she could die here. Whenever she thought about dying, she imagined it would be in a dramatic battle, something huge and glorious that would ensure that her name would be remembered for generations. She didn’t like the idea of dying in this lonely place, hunted down by prehistoric megafauna. A sudden thought made her sit up straight. She’d once been told that she would die in an exotic location. Well, it didn’t get much more exotic than the Pleistocene era, did it?

Scathach tilted her face to the heavens. The sky was cloudless, the stars so bright and clear that they actually shed a little light on the ground. She started to look for the constellations. They had shifted in the heavens during the centuries she had lived on earth, but if she could find the polestar she should be able to find…

The huge gray wolf leapt out of the darkness, savage jaws gaping, saliva matting its fur.

Scatty dropped to her back and her legs shot out, catching the beast in the chest, lifting it high in the air and sending it sailing off into the night. There was a single yelp of surprise before it crashed into the grasses and then a snarl as it scrambled to its feet and trotted away.

The Shadow remained on her back, staring at the night sky.

There was something wrong with the stars.

Rising slowly to her feet, she stepped outside the cave mouth to look across the arc of the heavens. An enormous swath of light that almost resembled the Milky Way washed across the sky, but there was something wrong with its overall shape. It should have been an arch-but this looked too straight. And no matter in which direction she looked, she could not find the polestar.

“Where…,” she breathed.

And then the moon rose huge and yellow in the east and climbed steadily into the heavens, shedding milk-white light across the landscape. The sky was so clear that individual craters were visible on the surface.

A heartbeat later, the second moon rose.

Then a third.

And a fourth.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“He’s big,” Josh whispered in awe, glancing at Sophie. “I mean, really big.”

She nodded, eyes fixed on the figure.

Prometheus was huge. The Elder stood close to seven feet tall and looked like he weighed at least three hundred pounds-all of it muscle. There was not an ounce of fat on his body. His jeans were ragged, worn through at both knees and frayed at the hems; the logo on his T-shirt was so faded it was almost invisible, and his work boots were thickly encrusted with dried mud. Although his hair was a mass of tight red curls, his beard was streaked with gray and silver.

“Uncle!” With a cry of delight, Aoife pushed open the car door and flung herself at the big man.