Free The Seventh Stone by Pamela Hegarty

strode quickly across the chamber. “Stay behind me.” He advanced to the portal, posture low, leading with his hunting knife. “And do not look into the eyes of a Skinwalker. If you do, they can rip out your soul.”
    “ I’m more worried about our throats,” Christa called after him in a loud whisper, but he was already through the open doorway.
    Just outside the chamber’s entrance, Joseph nodded to her to follow. She stepped across the threshold. She crouched, scanning the plateau. Nothing. The beasts had drawn back out of sight. It was preternaturally still. But she could smell a dank, musky odor. The moon edged the rim of the plateau in silver. The top of the steep toe and hand trail and their only way down was fifty feet, but could be a lifetime, away. A snarl, menacing, guttural, to their left. She swung to face it. Then another snarl, to their right. Dark shapes skulked towards them, one on each side. A third beast loped in front of them, cutting them off from the plateau rim.
    She could see them fully now. They looked more powerful than wolves, their fur rangy and black, thick around their sinewy haunches, like an unkempt lion’s mane. Their ears were pointed, their eyes red, shining with cunning, not the vacant look of a hungry predator. And, most alarming of all, each beast’s face was unique. One had a shorter nose, the other, larger, rounder eyes. The lead beast snarled, exposing his long, sharp canines. He paced, crushing the sparse scrub weeds that had managed to grow in the cracks of the plateau rim.
    “ We can make it,” she said. Her voice, hardly more than a breath, reverberated through the cliff dwelling. “Go for the edge of the cliff and the toe and hand trail. I’m right behind you. Get the sphere to my father.” She’d distract the beasts, give Joseph a head start to make sure he made it safely over the edge.
    “ There is another way,” Joseph said. “My grandfather told me the story of the tunnels that lead back into the mountain from the lost city of the Yikaisidahi. We will search deeper into the dwelling, find the tunnel, and move downwards, always downwards. It will bring us to the canyon floor and the river.”
    Tunnels, the word alone twisted her gut. “Legend,” she asked, “or truth?” She looked behind them. They were a good fifty feet from the nearest room entrance. The beasts had waited to flank them halfway between the safety of the cliff dwelling and the plateau rim. Clever. “Could be a dead end, if you know what I mean.”
    “ For my grandfather, legend was truth.” He stepped back. The beast to their left loped around behind them, cutting them off from the rooms. It clawed hungrily at the loose gravel.
    She quickly scanned for a way up from the cliff dwelling to the top of the plateau. Not a chance. It was an overhang, worse than vertical. “Just how many tons of rock are pressing down on these ancient tunnels?” she asked.
    Joseph dropped to one knee. “Give me your pack,” he said. She slipped it off her shoulder and handed it to him. “The Skinwalkers are after the armillary sphere,” he said. He stuffed the sphere into her pack.
    “ Those beasts are after dinner. I say we go for the plateau rim.” Anything but those tunnels. “You first.”
    “ You must take it, back in the tunnels, to safety, to your father. Tell him. The Abraxas is with the Black Magic Woman, in San Francisco. He will know what to do.”
    “ Abraxas? Black Magic Woman? No, don’t even explain that.” It wasn’t what Joseph said, but how he said it, like he wasn’t ever going to get the chance to tell her father that crazy message himself. “We are getting out of this,” she said, “together.”
    He pulled the jeep keys from his jeans pocket, dropped them into her pack and shoved the pack at her. He pivoted and ran for the plateau rim. The dwelling exploded in sharp, staccato barks. The beasts rocketed out of the darkness. Powerful front quarters propelled them forward,