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“That could mean a big man or an army of men.”
“The Nahua,” she said.
“Yes.” Except the Aztecs hadn’t called themselves that. They’d called themselves Tenochca; however, the icon to indicate either one would probably have been the same.
“Wait.” Matt heard Gina move; he could almost see her hair swaying, her hand reaching for another drawing, her finger resting just below whatever she’d found. “You told me this one. The teeth, which is the letter T.”
Matt got excited again. T could indicate Tenochca, which meant whoever had written that on the wall had been Aztec.
“Not T,” she murmured as if to herself. “But the roof on the teeth, which is the ‘l’ sound. And it’s right next to the dog-faced man icon, which would make it—”
Matt glanced at the sky. That put an entirely different twist on things.
“Nahual,” Gina concluded.
From the depths of the cavern, something howled.
* * *
Gina could have sworn she heard a click. Then a howling, swirling black cloud whooshed past, its force blowing back her hair, blowing back her a few steps. Her ears rang, and the inside of her nose stung, as if she’d just taken a large sniff of below-zero air.
The smoke spun around her, twirling up her body from her feet to her head, and as it curled around her face it whispered, Giii-naaa.
Then it was gone—phht!—and she was left shivering. It took her several seconds to realize she could still hear her name.
Because Teo was shouting, his panic so audible, she stumbled away from the wall and into the circle of light. When she glanced up, she could have sworn she saw the outline of a black wolf against the backdrop of the silvery moon.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“I’m coming down. Grab the light.”
Before she could protest—right now she’d prefer to be up—he swung the lantern over the edge. Either his hands on the rope were shaking or he was hurrying too fast to keep the contraption steady, because it pitched wildly back and forth, sending blares of light into her eyes, making it hard for her to see or catch the thing.
“Watch it.” She grabbed the lantern right before it clocked her in the head.
“Sorry,” Teo said, but he didn’t sound sorry; he sounded as shaky as she felt. What had the strange black smoke looked like from his end?
He yanked the rope so hard and so fast the tip nearly flicked her in the nose. She didn’t bother to complain. He was excited. She got that.
Instead, she lifted the lantern and moved closer to the wall. Dog-faced man, teeth with a roof. There were other glyphs, too, tiny, colorful sketches of animals and people, moons, or maybe suns, and stars, with a thin brown line encircling the entire panorama.
Teo landed with a thud and a grunt, crossing the distance between them with long, choppy strides, then crowding in to see the etchings with a muttered, “Excuse me.”
Gina let him peer at the pictures, holding the lantern so the wall was better illuminated, until she just had to ask, “What was that black smoke?”
“Hmm?” Teo leaned closer, nearly putting his nose to the rock. Only then did she realize he didn’t have his glasses.
“The black smoke that shot out of here so fast it blew back my hair. The black smoke that was so cold my nose hairs froze.”
He turned his head, expression blank. “What black smoke?”
* * *
In the circle of golden light, Gina paled. “You didn’t see it?”
“I … uh…” Matt reached up to push his glasses into place, but his finger encountered only nose. He’d left them in the tent. No wonder he was starting to get a headache from squinting. “No.”
She switched her gaze to the long hallway, which disappeared into the dark. “What about the howl?”
