Page 61 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

N ORA WRITHED ON the floor, struggling to break free of her bonds.

The leather around her wrists had been tied so tightly that, struggle as she might, she couldn’t work it loose.

She kept pulling and jerking until she realized she was only abrading her own flesh.

She lay for a moment, breathing hard.

Skip’s distant crying echoed weirdly down into the kiva, and she shook her head, trying to clear the drug-induced fogginess but only partially succeeding.

Damn it, think.

She glanced around in the dim torchlight.

The nichos along the kiva walls were filled with ancient artifacts: masks, flutes, pottery, lightning stones—and obsidian blades.

She managed to wriggle herself over to the nearest wall.

She braced herself against it and, with a mighty effort, forced herself into a kneeling position.

There were the obsidian spearpoints, stacked in a bowl in one nicho.

She leaned her head toward the niche and, grabbing the edge of the bowl in her teeth, pulled it free.

It fell and shattered, scattering spearpoints over the hard-packed surface of the floor.

Falling back onto the ground, she rolled atop one of them, fumbling around with her fingers.

It took only a moment for her to grasp it and press it edgeways into the dirt floor.

Then she positioned her wrists over it and used the exposed edge to saw through the leather binding.

Despite its age, the obsidian was still incredibly sharp, and within moments she’d cut her hands free.

She grabbed the blade and quickly sliced the hobbles from around her ankles.

She staggered to her feet only to feel an overwhelming sensation of dizziness.

Skip was still sobbing and pleading—at least he was still alive, thank God.

But now she heard a new sound: a guttural snarling that she knew instinctively could not be human.

What the hell kind of an animal was it?

There weren’t many apex predators in New Mexico other than cougars and black bears—and this didn’t sound like either.

She looked around, trying to focus.

She was free… but what now?

How was she going to prevent her brother from being killed?

Even as she tried to think, she caught movement out of the corner of one eye.

It seemed to be coming from the far wall of the kiva, and she turned toward it quickly.

It was the Feathered Serpent on the wall.

It was starting to move, slithering itself free of the adobe, taking form, and sliding toward her…

She slapped her own face, hard, to rid herself of the hallucination.

Shaking her head into a semblance of clarity, her cheek stinging, she headed for the ladder.

Then she halted once again.

Climbing up to fight them, willy-nilly, would be stupid.

There were a dozen of them, or more, and they had a gun.

No, two guns—Bromley had taken Corrie’s Glock.

Christ, she needed a plan, right now —but what?

She cast frantically about the kiva.

Weapons … there were weapons in some of those niches: a bow and arrow, a club, some obsidian knives with bone handles.

She grabbed the bow and arrow.

With a rush of relief, she noticed it was still strung.

She hadn’t shot an arrow since Girl Scouts, but maybe if she could take down Bromley, the rest would fold.

Wasn’t that how cults worked?

She drew the bow back and the wood immediately snapped.

Dry rot.

Son of a bitch.

She seized the biggest knife.

It was razor-sharp—but what did that matter against a dozen people out of their minds with bloodthirst and armed with guns?

A futile slash or two, then they’d cut her down.

Nevertheless, she tucked the knife into her belt and continued to look, but there was nothing.

She felt overwhelmed by panic.

If she couldn’t fight them, could she do something else?

Knock over the tripods with the club?

If only she could find a way to interrupt the ritual, something to disrupt the ceremony…

As she tried to focus, she heard, from above, Skip’s cries intensify into a scream.

She could also hear Corrie’s slurred voice yelling at them to stop, her shouting abruptly drowned out by the hideous shriek of the bear or whatever animal was up there, being tortured or something.

Something to disrupt the ceremony.

Her eyes lit upon the bone flutes.

She grabbed one, put it to her lips, and blew.

Nothing.

She tried again, blowing harder—then plucked it from her lips and inspected it.

The bone was old and flaking from the embouchure and finger holes, and the body of the flute was riddled with cracks.

Useless.

Throwing it to the ground, she plucked up another one.

A weak, tremulous sound emerged.

She licked the dirt from her lips, blew again—harder, this time—and the thousand-year-old relic broke apart in her fingers.

God damn it! She tossed away the pieces in frustration.

The desperate plan that had come to her mind was a long shot anyway—the mother of all Hail Marys, in fact—but she couldn’t execute it with a fossilized, crumbling instrument.

Now her eyes stopped at something else: a blanket, laid out in a dark corner of a kiva.

She’d noticed it before and deduced from the stuff spread on it—artifacts, lightning stones, some camping equipment—that the cultists had taken these things from the campsite.

She saw the stem of a stone pipe peeping out from the folds of the blanket, an obsidian axe, some spearpoints, a crumbling sandal, a pair of lightning stones…

and a flute. She darted across the kiva and seized it.

It was a beautiful modern replica of an ancient Pueblo flute, rebuilt with original turquoise inlays.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, then raised it to her lips and blew—gently.

A remarkably pure sound issued forth.

Now she blew harder, her fingers stopping various holes.

The tone holes were spaced in a pentatonic scale, its tone clear and fine—in perfect working order.

Against all expectations, she’d found a working instrument…

one clear and loud enough to interrupt the ritual.

Now it was time to undertake the Hail Mary.

She rushed to the ladder and scaled it, emerging into the heart of a seething ritual.

Skip, strung up by his ankles, was missing his shirt and blood was running down his back.

He seemed unconscious, a strip of skin about to be peeled off from between his shoulder blades.

But the torture of him had stopped.

The attention of the group had shifted from Skip to the charred corpse of Edison Nash, hanging from the nearby tripod, above a raging fire.

The cultists were transfixed by the corpse, staring, frozen with awe—including Bromley.

She followed their gaze.

What had fixated their attention wasn’t the corpse, exactly, but rather what was inside it—a nebulous apparition, appearing and disappearing amidst flames and smoke.

Something was animating the charred bones and flesh, and it was also where those muffled animal sounds were coming from.

She stared, uncomprehending.

She was still hallucinating, of course.

Or was she?

No. No, no.

A hallucination, drug-induced or otherwise, could not possibly seem this real…

… And this overwhelming realization left her paralyzed.