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“It is,” Isaac muttered. “But yeah. The less people who go there, the less chance their deaths will feed the beast.”
“How’d the shaman confine him?”
“He learned their picture talk, then used it against them.”
Understanding hit Matt like a flash of light. “The glyphs on the wall weren’t drawn by the Aztecs but by the Ute shaman.” Which explained why they were kind of off.
“The man-dog figure on the wall…” Gina tilted her head. “And the one in your mom’s notebook. They both appeared overly vicious to represent loyalty. But what if they were meant to represent—” She turned her gaze to the window and lifted her chin to indicate the ever-patient circle of wolves.
What if the drawings of dogs weren’t dogs at all but wolves? And the combination of the man with the dog didn’t mean a loyal man but a man-wolf, which was exactly what the Ute had labeled him?
Why hadn’t he seen it before? In his own defense, Matt had never heard the story until now.
“There were larger-than-life men,” he murmured. “Both sorcerers. The size of the glyph indicated power, not actual size. One was a shape-shifter, the other—” He closed his eyes and brought up the second glyph against the dark screen of his mind. “Magic.” He opened his eyes and met Gina’s gaze. “That’s what the stars shooting from his hands meant. But—” Matt frowned as another puzzle presented itself. “What about the horses that looked like dogs, which had stars all around their feet?”
“Magic dogs,” Isaac said. “It’s what the Ute called horses.”
Magic dogs. Matt liked that. The way people talked in times long past had always held a certain poetry for him.
“The Ute wrote what happened on the wall,” Gina said. “How does that confine a monster?”
“Words have power,” Isaac answered. “Words begin and end wars. They create and destroy families. They break hearts. They heal them. If you have the right words, there’s nothin’ on this earth you can’t do.”
As a professor, Matt had to agree. As a scientist, he needed more data.
“If words kept him in,” Matt wondered, “how did he get out?”
“The story ends with the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao being confined to the cavern. I never heard anything about his ever getting out.”
Probably smart of the Ute in the long run. If there were no instructions on releasing the thing, then he would be pretty hard to release.
In theory.
Most experts would not have read the man-wolf glyph as Nahual and released the creature. Only Gina, who had known both too little and too much, could have done so.
The shaman had been very clever to draw things the way he had. The glyphs could be deciphered, but only by a certain, and highly uncommon, few. The chances of the Nahual ever being freed had been slim. Of course any chance was still a chance. But it had taken nearly five centuries.
Unfortunately, that didn’t help them now.
“How about confining him?” Matt asked. “You know the recipe for that?”
Isaac shook his head.
Swell.
“What happened to his werewolf army?” Gina asked.
“Without the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao to replenish the numbers…” Isaac shrugged. “Eventually those he’d made were hunted down and eliminated.”
“He made them,” she murmured, “by killing them.”
“The usual werewolf rules involve biting,” McCord offered.
“I don’t think the usual rules apply,” Matt said.
“Well, it does explain what happened out there.” Gina waved at the window. The gazes of the wolves followed her hand as if it were a dog treat.
“It does?” McCord asked. “Then explain it to me.”
