"Your meddling destroyed a holy thing."

"Who are you?"

"Kulkulcan."

Kulkulcan. It was one I knew.

"The Mayan deity."

"Why settle for a pharaoh or some faggot Greek?"

"Where is the rest of your society of sickos?"

"If it wasn't for that miserable crash you'd never have stumbled onto us. Your busybody intrusiveness uncovered things you had no right to know. It has fallen to Kulkulcan to exact vengeance."

The melodious voice was now tinged with fury.

"It's over for your Hell Fire Club."

"It will never be over. Since the dawn of time the mediocre masses have tried to suppress the intellectually superior. It never works. Conditions can make us dormant, but we reemerge when the climate changes."

To what egomaniacal delusion was I listening?

"It was my time to enter the ranks of the holy," he continued, oblivious to the fact that I hadn't replied. Or indifferent. "I found my offering. I made my sacrifice. I honored the ritual that you have profaned."

"Jeremiah Mitchell or George Adair?"

"Irrelevant. Their names don't matter. I was chosen. I was ready. I followed the way."

Keep him talking, my mind reasoned. Someone knows where you are. Someone is doing something "Kulkulkan is a creator god. You destroy life."

"Mortals are transient. Wisdom endures."

"Whose?"

"The wisdom of the ages, shown to those worthy to receive it."

"And you ensure its survival through ritual slaughter?"

"The body is a material envelope, of no lasting value. We discard it in the end. But wisdom, strength, the essence of the soul, these are the forces that prevail."

I let him rant on.

"The brightest of the species must be nurtured. Those passing from this earth must yield their mana to those who remain, add to the strength and wisdom of the chosen."

"How?"

"Through blood, heart, muscle, and bone."

Dear God, it was true.

"You think you can increase your IQ by consuming the flesh of others?"

"As flesh wastes away, so does strength. But mind, spirit, intellect, those elements are transferable through the very cells of our bodies."

I clutched the scalpel so tightly my knuckles ached.

"Herodotus told of the eating of kinsmen among the Issedones of Central Asia, who grew strong and ruled. Strabo found it among the Irish clans. Many conquering peoples gained strength through eating the flesh of their enemies. Eat the weak and grow stronger. It's as old as man himself."

I thought of the Neanderthal bones, the victims in the kiva near Mesa Verde. The skeletons in my morgue.

"Why the elderly?"

"The aged hold the greatest reservoirs of wisdom."

"Or do old people simply make easier targets?"

"My dear Miss Brennan. Would you rather that your flesh contribute to the advancement of chosen beings or be consumed by maggots?"

Anger welled, overrode fear.

"You egotistical, demented prick."

"Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

At a distance, the skeleton moaned, cackled.

I was confronted by madness! Who was this man? How did I know him?

I began inching along the wall, holding the scalpel behind me with my right hand, feeling with my left. I'd taken a half dozen steps when a powerful beam shot out of the dark, blinding me like a possum on a backyard fence. I threw up an arm.

"Going somewhere, Miss Brennan?"

In the backglow I could see his lower face, lips drawn back in murderous rage.

Stay away from him!

I pivoted to run, tripped, and fell. As I scrabbled to right myself, the shadow sprang, closed the gap, and a hand reached out and grabbed my ankle. My feet went out from under me again, and my knees cracked against alluvium. The scalpel flew into darkness.

"You goddamn treacherous cow!"

The golden voice was now sizzling with fury.

I kicked out but couldn't break his grip. His fingers were like steel clamping through my jeans.

Never more afraid in my life, I gouged my elbows into the earth, trying to hitch myself forward, kicking out with my free leg. Suddenly, his full weight was on me. A knee pinned my back, and a hand pressed my face into the ground. Dirt and debris filled my nose, my mouth.

I thrashed wildly, kicking and clawing to get out from under him. He'd dropped his flash and it lay on the ground, lighting us like some writhing, two-headed beast. As long as I could move, he would not get that garrote wire around my throat.

My hand touched something jagged and hard, and my fingers closed around it. I twisted my torso and struck out blindly.

I heard the soft thunk of rock against bone, then the metallic clink of steel on granite.

"Bitch!"

He slammed his fist into my right ear. Lightning exploded in my head.

He released his grasp, fumbled to retrieve the gun. I jerked an elbow backward and caught him along the border of his jaw. His teeth cracked and his head flew back.

A shriek like that of a wounded animal.

I pushed with all my strength and his knee slipped off my back. In less than a second I scrambled to my knees and crawled toward the flashlight. He regained his balance and we dived at the same time. I got it.

I swung as hard as I could and connected with his temple. A thump, a grunt, and he fell backward. Clicking off the beam, I lunged toward the trees and crouched behind a pine.

I didn't move. I didn't blink. I tried to reason.

Don't thrash into the trees. Don't turn your back on him. Maybe as he moves you can slip past him, run back toward the inn, scream for help.

Dead calm, broken only by his panting. Seconds passed. Or maybe it was hours. I felt dizzy from the blow to my head, couldn't track time or space or distance.

Where was he?

A voice from near the ground. "I have found the gun, Miss Brennan."

A single shot exploded in the stillness.

"But we both know I don't need it now that that cur of yours is out of the way."

His voice came to me as though under water.

"I'm going to make you pay for this. Really pay."

I heard him rise.

"I have a necklace I want to show you."

I inhaled deeply, trying to clear my head. He was coming at me with the garrote.

Out of the corner of my eye, a glimmer. I turned. Three slivers of light were bobbing toward me. Or was I hallucinating?

"Freeze!" A gravelly female voice.

"Drop it!" Male.

"Stop!" A different male voice.

A muzzle flashed in the darkness in front of me. Two shots rang out.

Return fire from the direction of the voices. The ping of a bullet ricocheting off rock.

A thud, an expulsion of air. The sound of a body sliding down the rock wall.

Running feet.

Hands on my throat, my wrist.

"-pulse is strong."

Faces above me, swimming like a mirage on a summer sidewalk. Ryan. Crowe. Deputy Nameless.

"-ambulance. It's O.K. We didn't hit her."

Static.

I struggled to sit.

"Lie back." Gentle pressure on my shoulders.

"I have to see him."

One circle of light slid to the cliff where my assailant sat motionless, legs stretched in front, back against rock. Slowly, the light illuminated feet, legs, torso, face. I knew who he was.

Ralph Stover, the not-so-happy owner of the Riverbank Inn, the man who would not let me into Primrose's room. He stared sightlessly into the night, chin forward, brain slowly oozing onto a stain on the rock behind his head.

I LEFT LEFT C CHARLOTTE AT DAWN ON F FRIDAY AND DROVE WEST THROUGH heavy fog. The shifting vapors lightened as I climbed toward the Eastern Continental Divide, vanished outside Asheville. heavy fog. The shifting vapors lightened as I climbed toward the Eastern Continental Divide, vanished outside Asheville.

Leaving Highway 74 at Bryson City, I drove up Veterans' Boulevard, past the cutoff to the Fryemont Inn, turned right on Main, and parked opposite the old courthouse, now a senior citizens' center. I sat a moment watching sunlight glisten on its little gold dome, and thought of those seniors whose bones I'd unearthed.

I pictured a tall, gangly man, blind and nearly deaf; a fragile old woman with a crooked face. I imagined them on these same streets all those years ago. I wanted to put my arms around them, to tell each of them that things were being put right.

And I thought about those who had perished on Air TransSouth 228. So many stories had only begun. Graduations not attended. Birthdays not celebrated. Voyages not taken. Lives obliterated because of one fatal voyage.

I took my time walking to the fire station. I'd spent a month in Bryson City, had come to know it well. I was leaving now, my work completed, but a few questions remained.

When I arrived McMahon was packing the contents of his cubicle into cardboard boxes.

"Breaking camp?" I asked from the doorway.

"Hey, girl, you're back in town." He cleared a chair, gestured me into it. "How are you feeling?"

"Bruised and scraped but fully functional."

Amazingly, I'd sustained no serious injury during my romp in the woods with Ralph Stover. A slight concussion had sent me to the hospital for a couple of days, then Ryan had driven me to Charlotte. Assured I was fine, he'd flown back to Montreal, and I'd spent the rest of the week on the couch with Birdie.

"Coffee?"