Read Chapter 7: The Lie

The wind screamed against the tent walls, a constant, furious pressure that made the nylon shudder like a living thing. Declan pressed the radio to his ear, thumbing the transmit button again.

"Cross to Nolan. Do you copy? Over."

Static. A crackle of white noise that might have been a voice, or might have been the storm tearing the world apart. He tried again, cursing under his breath as the battery indicator blinked low. They were maybe two hours from the tree line, tucked into a shallow draw that offered some shelter, but the storm had moved in faster and harder than any forecast Nolan had given him.

"Come on, come on."

"Nothing?" Maya's voice came from behind him. She sat cross-legged on her sleeping bag, the emergency blanket crinkling around her shoulders. The small camp stove hissed between them, casting her face in flickering orange light.

"Storm's eating the signal. We're on our own until it breaks." He set the radio down, rubbing the cold from his fingers. "Could be twelve hours. Could be two days."

She nodded, saying nothing. The silence stretched between them, filled by the wind and the creak of the tent frame. Declan watched her. She'd been quiet since they'd set up camp, but it was more than exhaustion. There was something coiled in her, a tension that had nothing to do with the cold.

"You didn't answer my question," he said.

"What question?"

"Before the storm hit. I asked what the team was really doing out here. You said it was a climate survey." He pulled off his gloves, letting the warmth of the stove reach his fingers. "But you've got the look of someone who's been lying for three days."

Maya's jaw tightened. She stared at the tent floor, and for a moment Declan thought she'd shut down again. Then she let out a breath, a long plume of white that hung in the air.

"It wasn't a climate survey. Not really." She looked up. "We were looking for petroglyphs. Ancient rock carvings, supposed to be up in the ice fields north of here."

"Petroglyphs." Declan let the word sit. "That's a hell of a lot of gear and funding for some old carvings."

"It wasn't just any petroglyphs." Maya pulled the blanket tighter. "There's an old legend, passed down by the First Nations communities in this region. About a place where the boundary between animal and man is thin. The carvings supposedly mark that place. Warn against it."

"Sounds like a story to scare tourists."

"It's not a story to Elias." She said the name carefully, like it cost her something. "He funded the whole expedition. Paid for everything out of his own pocket. And he had this—this obsession with finding them."

Declan felt the weight of the medicine pouch against his chest, beneath his layers. Thomas Blackwood's pouch, now his. "Obsession how?"

"He'd go quiet for hours, staring at maps. Muttering to himself. One night I woke up, must have been two in the morning, and he was outside the tent. Just standing there in the snow, staring north, not wearing a jacket." She shuddered. "When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was listening."

"Listening for what?"

"He didn't say. Just told me to go back to sleep, that the snow would tell him when it was time." Maya's voice dropped. "The next morning, he was different. Focused. Said we needed to push north. That we were close."

Declan turned this over. The journal in his pocket—Thomas Blackwood's journal—had been cryptic. Notes about tracks, about the snow "lying" and "telling truths." He'd assumed it was a tracker's poetic rambling. Now he wasn't so sure.

"You don't believe the legend?" he asked.

"I'm a scientist. I believe in data, in evidence." She met his eyes, then looked away quickly. "But I've seen things out here. Heard things. And what I saw that night—" She bit off the sentence.

"What you saw?"

"Nothing. I didn't see anything." But her eyes wouldn't hold his, and Declan had spent twenty years reading people in the wilderness. She was hiding something, something specific, and her evasion about Elias was a wall she'd built deliberately.

"You keep doing that," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Looking away when you talk about Elias."

She flinched. "I don't—"

"You told me he was the guide. The man leading your team. But you talk about him like he's something else." Declan leaned forward. "What aren't you telling me about him, Maya?"

The tent shuddered under a heavy gust. For a long moment, she didn't answer. Her hands twisted in the blanket, knuckles white.

"The night before the attack," she finally said, "I was outside. Couldn't sleep. I heard Elias talking to someone."

"Who?"

"I don't know. I couldn't see them. But he was speaking in a language I didn't recognize. Not a local dialect. Something older." She swallowed. "And when I came back to the tent, my gear bag was open. Everything spilling out like someone had been looking for something."

"Your gear bag? Or the expedition supplies?"

"Mine. Specifically mine." She finally looked at him, and there was real fear in her eyes. "He knew I'd been asking questions about the petroglyphs. What they really meant. And the night after, that thing came into camp and took everyone."

"You think Elias had something to do with it."

"I think Elias knew more about what was coming than he let on." She dropped her gaze again. "And I think he knew exactly who was coming after him. He said, the day we set out, 'If something happens to me, Declan Cross will find you. Trust him.'"

The words hit Declan like a physical blow. He hadn't expected that. Elias had spoken of him, planned for his involvement, before anything had gone wrong. It meant the pack, the pouch, the journal—all of it was intentional. It meant Thomas Blackwood's son had been preparing for this before he ever set foot in the mountains.

"He knew," Declan said quietly. "He knew I'd come."

"I think that's why he hired me. Why he put together the team." Maya's voice was barely audible. "He wasn't looking for petroglyphs. He was looking for you."

Something pressed against the side of the tent.

Both of them froze. The fabric bulged inward, a heavy shape dragging along the wall with a sound like claws against nylon. Declan reached for the knife at his belt, his breath caught in his throat. Maya stared at the bulging wall, her face gone white.

The shape paused. Then, slowly, it slid away, back into the howling dark.

They waited. The wind continued its assault, but nothing else pressed against them. After a long minute, Declan exhaled, forcing his hand away from the blade.

"We need to move at first light," he said, his voice rough. "Whatever that thing is, it's still out there. And it's not done with us."

Maya nodded, but she didn't look at him. She stared at the wall where the shape had pressed, trembling.

"Declan?" Her voice cracked. "The legend. The carvings. It's not a warning about a place."

"Then what is it?"

She finally turned to face him, her eyes shining with a fear that had nothing to do with the cold.

"It's a gate. Something comes through when the snow falls." Her voice was barely a whisper. "And Elias wasn't trying to find it. He was trying to close it."