Page 83 of Beasts of Mine

She will not, Menace told Gentleman, strolling past me with entirely too much satisfaction in his voice.

“I hate that you both know that,” I told Menace, checking the time before I did anything stupid enough to prove them right.

It was still early. I had several hours before I needed to turn back, plenty of water, good radio signal, and enough supplies. I checked the map again. The route beyond the ridge wasn't marked, but I knew where I was relative to camp and the terrain hadn't become difficult enough to concern me. Cat waited nearby without trying to influence the decision, which probably influenced it more than anything else.

“This is how horror movies start,” I told all three leopards, tucking the map away and readjusting my pack as they watched me prepare to follow Gentleman anyway.

What is a horror movie? Menace asked immediately, stepping closer as curiosity sharpened his attention.

“Something I'm absolutely not explaining to you right now. You already understand too many things,” I told Menace, pointing toward Gentleman before starting after him.

I understand many things, Menace replied, falling into step beside me with obvious pride.

“That wasn't a compliment,” I told Menace, ducking beneath a low branch as Cat moved ahead of us.

Still true, Menace answered, brushing past a fern with his tail as he continued down the narrow path.

I couldn't really argue with that.

We continued east, and the forest changed so gradually that I didn't notice it at first. The canopy remained dense, but the trees seemed larger here, some with roots tall enough to reach my waist where they rose from the ground. Vines hung in thick curtains between trunks, and the game path narrowed until I was mostly following Gentleman rather than anything I would have independently recognized as a trail.

Then a straight line beneath the moss caught my attention, and I stopped quickly enough that Cat nearly walked into my leg.

“What is that?” I asked the leopards, crouching beside a raised strip of green running several feet through the leaf litter as all three abruptly became far too quiet. None of them answered, and their silence should have interested me more than it did, but I was already brushing my fingertips across the moss. Something hard and unnaturally flat lay beneath it. I carefully pulled back enough growth to expose gray stone.

Cut stone.

The edge was too straight and the surface too even beneath the moss to be a random outcropping. I moved several feet farther along the line and found another block almost entirely buried beneath wet leaves, then another beyond that. Once I knew what I was looking for, more traces appeared everywhere—a raised stone line disappearing beneath soil and roots, two blocks stacked where erosion had eaten into the slope, a larger slab trapped beneath the roots of a tree that had grown directly across it.

“Those are worked stones,” I told Cat, reaching for my camera as I studied the area more closely.

Evie, Cat said quietly, using my name with a seriousness that stopped me with the camera halfway to my face. I turned toward him. Cat stood beside me with his body unusually still. Several yards away, Menace had abandoned the vine he'd been batting with one paw, and Gentleman wasn't looking at the stones anymore. He was watching Cat.

“You knew this was here,” I told all three leopards, lowering my camera as their sudden silence became impossible to ignore. No one answered, so my attention settled on Gentleman.

“You led me here,” I told Gentleman, remembering exactly who had insisted there was more beyond the macaws.

I led you to the birds, Gentleman replied carefully, holding my gaze without moving from his place near the path.

“That is an extremely lawyerly answer for a leopard,” I told Gentleman, watching Menace become abruptly interested in a tree several feet away as Cat's ears angled backward.

Something was going on, and I should have pushed harder. Instead, sunlight caught on something through the vegetation farther ahead and pulled my attention away.

The first recognizable structure stood perhaps twenty yards deeper into the trees. What remained looked like the lower section of an old wall, no higher than my waist in most places, buried beneath moss and thick vines. One portion disappeared beneath the roots of a massive tree that had grown through what might once have been a room. I photographed the wall from several angles before moving around the edge, where three shallow steps emerged from beneath the vegetation with a possible fourth buried under leaf litter. They led toward nothing visible now, but whatever had once stood above them had long since disappeared beneath the forest.

“This isn't on Mara's map,” I told Cat, lowering the camera as I studied the ruined steps.

No, Cat replied, turning his attention toward the deeper ruins with a certainty that made my hand stop against the camera body.

“You know that,” I told Cat, facing him fully as his golden-brown gaze returned to me.

He remained silent.

“Cat,” I warned him, putting enough emphasis into his ridiculous name that one ear twitched.

I do, Cat admitted, watching me without trying to look away.

I straightened slowly.