The rustling grew louder. It wasn’t coming from the entryway but from deeper inside the rooms. She imagined the bodies buried in Room 33. Were the remains there now, as they’d been on the other side when archaeologists first exhumed them for study? She’d read the lists of findings many times, knew exactly what had been recovered: the first skeleton on its back, lower jaw detached. The second skeleton, bones scattered through the sand. The third, only a skull covered with fragments of cloth and turquoise. Several other skulls and pitchers and bowls. A skull with three strings of yucca cord hemmed through the left eye socket. The body on its back, head turned. Most of its bones in place, beside a black bowl with a lifeline design on the edge. More jaws strewn in the sand, and a fragment of corrugated jar. Another skull, crushed, the bones of the head broken, the jaws held together with something like mud. The victims allegedly the elites of Chacoan culture, buried in the recesses of the Great House for protection.

The rustling turned to footsteps, followed by the swooshing of—birds? Bats?

She clutched Eunjoo closer in one hand, untucked Susana’s gun from the pouch around her waist. It was probably scavenging animals. Vultures, crows, maybe even coyotes. If Calliope’s party stayed quiet, together, the animals would leave them alone.

Still her voice was shaky. “We should stop moving, wait for Chance to catch up.”

She stepped back toward the stone-cragged wall, her foot crunching on something; it snapped onto the sand. A stick. She let go of Eunjoo’s hand, picked up the stick. It was bent in half, as the crook of an elbow. It wasn’t a skeleton but a ceremonial stick. There were eight of them in Room 33, she knew. She scrolled through the catalog in her mind; all the grave goods they’d found.

Her gut lurched. A bow. There had been a bow. And eighty-one arrows.

The rustling was moving, swirling in the sand toward them. The footsteps familiar. Gamboling. As in the hangar.

She dropped the stick.

Her lungs constricted. She gasped, then screamed, “Run!”

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SIX

GUARDIAN

The Suuke pummeled through the darkness. Calliope threw her body and Eunjoo’s toward the doorway, sun striking a white dagger of light in the sand. Calliope glanced over her shoulder. Splintered arrows pinstriped the Suuke’s gnarled body, great mounds of scar tissue securing the serrated edges in its skin.

The doorway loomed brightly ahead of them.

The Suuke was too close. They wouldn’t make it out.

From beyond the Great House, someone was screaming. A man’s voice, not a terrified scream. One of anger. “Come back and face your consequences. You need to make it right.”

Beside the truck, a hundred feet away from the doorway separating them, Calliope made out Arlen’s face, twisted in anger. He was not wearing a mask.