"If the animal does come after me, I want you both to get down the mountainside and into the spotlight," Grand said. "Make as much noise as you can to get Gearhart's attention."

"You don't have to worry about that," the Wall said as he hunkered down beneath his boss, just below the ledge. "If that thing charges they'll hear me down in Santa Barbara."

Grand continued to look out at the creature's eyes. As he did, he held the ends in his hand. With the rocks in his pocket as projectiles, he had the kind of slingshot used in the Maori haka war dance. The native weapon was designed to be used at close range. After stunning the enemy or prey with a blow, the warrior was able to release one end of the slingshot and use it as a whip. The Maori also used it for capturing wild animals to use in religious rites, since the strap could also serve as a muzzle.

Holding the starbursts lightly in his hands, he stepped away from the sinkhole. The animal's dark, liquid eyes moved with him. The scientist sensed that the animal wasn't so much watching him as studying him.

Grand studied the animal back. Apart from the eyes being reminiscent of the paintings, they reminded him of something else. At the moment, he couldn't place what that was.

The creature stayed still, silent, and focused. The breathing or rustling of very large animals like bear and deer could usually be heard. Not this thing. There was vigilance but no hint of unease. It appeared undistracted by the distant buzz of the Bell-412 helicopter and the faraway shouts of the sheriff's team. And it certainly did not seem to fear.

The animal could be a lion as Eugenie had said. Ignoring for the moment how a lion might have gotten loose here, big cats had the capacity to command entire regions with their presence, their stature. But what if the DNA and radiocarbon dating were correct? Could this possibly be a creature that hadn't walked the earth for millennia? And if so, how had it returned? A genetic experiment? There were enough government laboratories in the region to pull off cloning, but DNA restoration on this scale?

And then, in a cascade of what ifs. Grand thought. What if the animal had never left? The Chumash believed in eternal animal spirits. What if this were one of them? Or what if there were a reality behind the lore; a way, a place, a something that had enabled a prehistoric creature to survive to this day? The fact would contradict knowledge but it wouldn't necessarily contradict science. If the animal were here there had to be a reason.

In the primeval setting on the windswept mountaintop, civilization and the new millennium seemed very far away. The groan of soggy, fallen branches underfoot seemed louder than the helicopter hovering over the campsite. The sea air smelled of eternity. And for a flashing moment the feeling that Grand had in his office, of time folding back on itself, was very real again.

Grand stopped several yards from the sinkhole and the eyes stopped with him. It was then that he realized what they reminded him of:

Security cameras.

They were just there in the dark corners of life, taking things in, processing images and data, doing nothing as long as nothing was done. Is that what this creature had done for tens of thousands of years?

From where he stood the trees were pale, tapered columns, like the entrance to an ancient temple. In his imagination the angled, upper branches formed sloping cornices while the twigs and leaves described a chaotic frieze. The ground mist was the smoke of sacrificial braziers, with wisps from censers hanging in the higher branches.

Having gone about ten feet from the sinkhole, Grand began moving forward just to see what the animal would do. The wind picked up as Grand walked toward the oaks. Its lively howl and the shuddering leaves smothered the noise of the helicopter entirely. The sounds and motion made Grand feel isolated even from his two companions. Yet never once, in all his years of exploring mountains and caves, had the scientist felt so much a part of a place. He was connected to the ground, the air, the heavens. Grand wondered if this was what Joseph Tumamait's vision had been like. Not a mystical coagulation of smoke and light but something very real and surprisingly personal.

The eyes continued to watch him. The moonlight filtering through the leaves picked out hints of a massive shape in the blackness. There were the lines of huge shoulders and hindquarters. But the animal was still mostly in shadow, impossible to define.

Grand stopped again, approximately fifty feet from the woods. The wind was whistling here, split by the trees. But beneath that sound he heard a rumble, like a low, steady drumroll. It took him a moment to identify it as the creature's deep breathing.

Then Grand stopped. He listened and turned very slowly toward the left.

And made a disturbing discovery.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Hannah had watched anxiously as Grand approached the thicket, his pale yellow jacket a dim ghost in the darkness. He was the only place of calm in a world that seemed to be made of nitroglycerin. Hannah didn't know what moment, what action, what impulse might cause an explosion.

A part of Hannah-a very large part-wanted to go to Grand. Not to help him, because she didn't see how she could, but to experience what he was experiencing. She once interviewed an astronaut after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, and it shocked her when he said he envied them in a way: that they had died with their boots on.

Now she understood.

It seemed worth the danger, even the risk of dying, to be out there getting this story and phoning it in to Karen as it happened. The only reason she didn't was because it might hurt Grand. The scientist obviously had a feel for these things; if anyone could find out what was in the thicket and live to tell about it. Grand was that person.

So Hannah watched. Scared for Grand, frustrated at being on the sidelines, and also proud about having found the thing before Gearhart but now questioning the wisdom of not summoning him. She wished Grand would let them know what was out there, whether it was a stag or an owl or possibly their killer. But he was just standing there.

She crawled up slightly and stuck her head a little higher. Maybe Grand would see her and make some kind of sign.

He didn't. She inched up a little more. Stones fell from underfoot and clattered down the mountainside.

"Hannah-" the Wall quietly warned her.

"I know," Hannah whispered back.

She did. She was supposed to keep still and quiet. But the eyes weren't on her, they were on Grand. She turned back and looked down at her photographer. The Wall was lying against the mountain, cheek to rock, as though he were hugging the side of a trench.

"Wall, give me the camera with the telephoto lens," she said, softly but insistently.

"Why?"

"Please?"

"The professor said no pictures-"

"I know," she said. "I only want to try and get a better look."

"No," he said. "Just sit still."

"I can't! I promise I won't take any pictures," Hannah said. "I have to see."

The Wall hesitated. Then, with a sigh, he rose up slightly on his left hand. As he did stones fell away from under his feet.

"Shit!" he snarled.

The Wall froze as more stones fell. They clattered into rocks below and caused a small cascade. But the cliff-side didn't give out beneath him. Slowly, he lowered himself down.

"That's it," he said.

"What's it?"

He hunkered back down without removing the camera. "We're going to do what the man said. Wait."

"Wall-"

"You'll know what's out there soon enough," he said.

Hannah didn't bother arguing. She continued to look out at the milky, cloud-hazed forest.