Shadow Walker Read Online Free PDF Page B

screen: Spider Rock, a lone spire that stuck up from the canyon floor. Storytellers said that Spider Woman, the goddess who taught weaving to the Diné, lived there. She liked to throw people who displeased her from her aerie to the canyon floor, where they were found as a pile of bones. Not a woman to mess with.
    I zoomed in and moved around until I found the spot that had bugged me. “There. What’s that?”
    At the base of the rock was a mark that looked like a petroglyph, tiny compared to the rest of the photo. But the chill in my bones told me it wasn’t a glyph. The line of light ended in a sprawl of lines that resembled a skeletal hand.
    “It’s the same as the things that came for us in the sinkhole,” I said.
    Mick’s breath was pleasantly hot on my neck. “You sure?”
    “Very sure.”
    He reached around me and tapped and clicked to zoom in even closer. The photo lost resolution, the lines growing fuzzy.
    “You told me they moved through the rock,” Mick said. “Like fish beneath the water’s surface. They didn’t crawl across the rock?”
    “No, that’s what was so creepy. They even moved through the metal of Nash’s SUV. Silently. No skittering or scratching. I’m not sure how the last one grabbed me, but I bet my leg brushed one of the boulders as the rescue team pulled me up.”
    Mick’s brows quirked as he studied the photo. “Interesting.”
    “Not interesting. Scary as hell.” Lines on rocks might not seem threatening to a big, bad, fire-breathing dragon, but he hadn’t been trapped in the hole with them.
    “I mean it’s interesting that you snapped a picture of one, and later they’re with you in the sinkhole. Plus your camera was miraculously spared. Too many coincidences for my comfort.”
    “Don’t tell me that I captured an image and carried it with me, and then it and its friends attacked me. That’s too far-fetched.” I stopped when Mick didn’t answer. “Isn’t it?”
    “Probably. But you might have awakened something.”
    “From Beneath?”
    Mick rubbed the lines of his dragon tattoos. “Doesn’t seem right for Beneath. Too . . . dead. Beneath was so alive.”
    So alive it had nearly killed us. But when evil things from Beneath emerged in this world, they changed. Skinwalkers looked almost beautiful Beneath but were putrid and foul here. They were equally deadly in both places.
    Mick studied the picture again. “When they came toward you in the hole, were they aiming for you or Nash?”
    “I don’t know. I was too busy being terrified to notice. I don’t think they were aiming at all. Just coming for us.”
    “Nonsentient, then.”
    I gave him a blank look. “What?”
    “I mean, they didn’t have minds, couldn’t think or perceive. The hands came at you blindly.”
    “I don’t know about that. They seemed pretty damned determined for something moving blindly.”
    “You said your Beneath magic seemed to draw them, but the fire I sent down scared them off?”
    I nodded. “When your fire started to fade, they came at me again.”
    Mick continued to study the photo, his look too inquisitive for my comfort. Mick was a dragon with a dragon’s curiosity, plus he had a dragon’s total lack of fear. He liked to solve puzzles no matter how dangerous they were.
    “Don’t you dare go down into that hole looking for them,” I said.
    He flashed me a look of innocence that was purely contrived. “Aren’t you interested?”
    “No.”
    That was a lie, and Mick knew it. I wanted to know about these things, because I needed to learn how to fight them. That didn’t mean I wanted a bunch of skeletal hands that could freeze flesh from my bones surrounding my boyfriend and smothering him with their cold touch.
    “Did you get any more pictures of them?” Mick asked.
    We looked at each photo—and I’d taken many—but as much as I magnified and searched, we didn’t see any more of the hands.
    When we finished, Mick rose and stretched. “Up for a ride?”
    I was