On the Hunt (Sentinel Wars #3.5)(49)
Author: Gena Showalter

Just one more day. If he and the villagers could make it through tomorrow night, they would be okay for another few months. He hoped.

"Don’t sneak up on me like that. I’d hate to accidentally put a hole in you." Hello, understatement. Rez was his closest ally among the locals, one of the few who really knew what was going on.

The village elder was in his late fifties, which was old for the region, but he wore his jade-loaded pistols easily as he stalked toward JT, his expression thunderous. "Where the hell have you been?"

Knowing the autopistols, jade-laced ammo, and pump-actions scabbarded crosswise over his back would’ve clued the other man that he’d been out hunting, JT tensed. "Why? What happened?"

"Your girlfriend found a bat temple two days ago. Which you would’ve known if you’d been watching her like you said you would."

"She’s not—" JT began, then broke off as his blood iced. "She what?"

No. Impossible. She couldn’t have. In the months she’d been charting the surrounding forest, she had found only three clusters of carved pillars and a small scattering of tumbled stone foundations. There was no way—the gods weren’t cruel enough—that she had found a damned temple in the three days he’d been gone.

But Rez wasn’t big on jokes, and his dark eyes were deadly serious.

JT’s gut headed for his toes on a down elevator to hell. Natalie. "Why didn’t you f**king call me?"

"The satellite signals are all screwed up. Something to do with sunspots."

Or the equinox. The barrier was getting more and more whacked as the end-time approached.

And Natalie was in the thick of it, stirring things up with the take-no-prisoners, all-or-nothing enthusiasm that lit her like a beacon.

JT cursed himself. Rez was right—he should have been there. He was the one who had convinced the village council to let her team stay. But there was no point in looking back. They needed to deal with the problem in front of them, do some damage control. "Even if she found something, we should be okay for this cycle. I took out another pair of the tatter-winged bastards late this morning."

Rez shook his head. "We lost a dozen goats an hour ago."

"You—" Fuck. That meant there was another pair of demon bats out there.

Which didn’t compute—they’d never had two pairs come through together. Then again, they’d never had more than six per quarter, and his tally was already up to eight. He didn’t know if the increase was because of Natalie’s discovery, or because they were getting closer to the end date.

But the whys and hows didn’t matter. What mattered was killing the ones that got through.

He set his jaw and ignored the throbbing aches that came from seventy-two hours of freeze-dried rations and minimal sleep. "Okay. I’m going to need ammo, and—"

"There’s more. The council decided to boot the archaeologists and seal the temple. They’re over there right—"

"Son of a bitch." JT took off for the dig site at a dead run, not waiting to hear the rest.

As he pounded through the rain forest, pulse hammering in his ears, he could only hope to hell he wouldn’t be too late, because he knew two things for sure: One, there was no way Natalie would give up her discovery without a fight. And two, the villagers wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice the ancient ruins—and possibly the archaeologists—if they thought it would keep the camazotz away.

"You can go back inside and retrieve your equipment," the white-haired elder decreed in the local dialect, with Aaron translating for Natalie and the others. "Then go and pack up your tents and trucks. You must be gone from this area by nightfall."

"But we . . ." Have permits, Natalie started to say, but then broke off because she’d already pointed that out—repeatedly—and the men clearly didn’t give a crap.

There were thirteen of them, a sacred number. Wearing a range of denim cutoffs, tees, and woven textiles, they seriously outgunned her team with a mix of shotguns and automatics, along with a strange-looking grenade launcher held by a hatchet-faced man at the back of the group.

She had seen most of them around, had shared meals with at least three. But now they met her eyes with grim determination and no hint of apology.

Swallowing hard, she looked at the cave mouth, where the dreaded bat creatures were carved with their tattered wings spread, their catlike mouths split in silent stone screams. "Please. I can report the discovery without giving away your location. I’ll do whatever you want; just don’t make me leave now. I need more time."

She was borderline begging and she didn’t care. She’d get down on her hands and knees and eat dirt if that was what it took. This wasn’t just a career-making find; it was personal.

But the elder shook his head. Through Aaron, he said, "We are out of time. Tomorrow is the equinox, and the creatures are already walking among us."

"With all due respect, the legend of the camazotz comes from that." She pointed behind her at the tunnel mouth. "A carving. Stone. Maybe some priests in bat costumes. Whatever’s killing your livestock, it’s not a six-foot-tall demon with glowing red eyes."

Inwardly, though, she remembered the way Cooter used to growl, The locals know more about their home ground than you book-smart punks ever will . And she was acutely conscious of the hard lump in her zippered pocket. If solid rock could disappear and then reappear carved as something else, could she really be so certain that magic and the camazotz didn’t exist?

She couldn’t be, but that wasn’t the point right now. "I need another month. One month, that’s all."

The elder shook his head. "You have an hour."

Three men handed off their weapons and broke away from the group, unshouldering rucksacks she hadn’t realized they were wearing. They knelt several paces away from the cave entrance, keeping wary eyes on the carved monsters as they started unloading flat boxes that were stenciled with U.S. military markings and the words CAUTION, EXPLOSIVES.

"You can’t blow it up!" She lunged toward the men, but was brought up short when Javier grabbed her arm.

"Natalie, no!" As he dragged her back, she realized that the other villagers had brought up their weapons; their eyes were white rimmed, their fingers on the triggers. They were terrified, and terror could make people do awful things.

Like killarchaeologists.

She clutched Javier’s forearm, her fingers digging in. "We can’t let them destroy it!"

"Is it worth dying for?" His eyes flared with the temper he reserved for when she was doing something really stupid.

"Yes! I found—" She broke off, unable to telll him why. "Damn it."