Predator (4 page)

“It’s possible it was a crude weapon of some sort. Once we analyze the wound patterns we’ll know better.”

In examining the peat-stained fingernails, Bree noticed vertical lines that ran from the cuticles to the tips of the nails; the lines were darker and more prominent than her own—and hundreds of years older—but very similar. It was cool how everyone was connected to everyone else somehow.

When they broke for lunch an hour later, Liam said a quick goodbye to Bree and then rushed off to his cricket meeting. Bree said to her dad, “I’m going to take a walk and then surprise Liam with some chocolate potato cake after his meeting.”

“What about lunch?”

“I’ll grab something on the way.”

“Here’s some money.” He took twenty Euros from his pocket and pressed them into her hand. “We’ll be at O’Reilly’s if you need me. You have your cell, right?”

Bree nodded. “Go eat.”

He left the lab with Kelsi and Conor, saying, “The number for the cab’s on the sheet next to the phone.”

Bree gathered her gear. Five minutes later she slid into a cab. An overwhelming scent of stale perfume greeted her despite the slightly open window.

“Where ya headed?” the driver said as he took a bite of his sandwich.

“Galamonga Peat Bog.”

Galamonga Peat Bog, Connemara, Ireland

Something glinted from across the bog. At first Bree thought it was her imagination, but then she saw it again. A distinct flash of light. It danced a few times and then went still. She watched intently and sure enough there it was again. Somewhere near the middle of the bog and slightly off to the right. Without the field tent to guide her, it was difficult to pinpoint the location where she had discovered the body. But if she had to guess, it was exactly where she saw the light.

Someone was out there.

She picked her way forward, checking for solid ground as she moved, and looked up again. Two quick flashes and then three more.

Bree continued across the bog, disappointed. If some tourist was at the dig site, she’d have to either wait to look for the hand or come back later. Both options stank.

As she neared the site, she saw someone digging. A quick stab into the earth, followed by two others, and then a slab of peat tossed off to the side like it weighed nothing. The shovel handle flared with each stroke as the sun hit the metal shaft.

Bree watched from a distance, debating whether to say something, when the woman paused while hunched over the shovel. She placed her hand against the side of her face like a shield, preventing Bree from seeing who she was or what she looked like. Bree wanted to know what she was doing but, before she could ask, the woman grabbed the bag by her side with her free hand, slung the strap over her shoulder, and took off across the bog.

Bree yelled, “Wait,” but it didn’t take long for the woman to disappear from sight.

Soon Bree found the hole where she had uncovered the bog body. But then she saw something odd: Dozens of smaller holes surrounded it. Some right next to one another; others feet apart. Most were shallow, about the size of a shoebox. A few went at least two feet deep. Blocks of peat lay scattered like discarded trash. If the woman had made all these she was no peat farmer; they cut in rows with precision, not wasting an ounce of peat.

No, this woman was searching for something. Haphazardly.

It had to be the hand.

Why else would she be digging in the exact same spot where they’d discovered the body?

But why was she looking for it? And how did she know it was there?

Bree looked across the bog, but all she saw was land and the distant mountains. Beauty surrounding mysterious death.

She set down her gear. If she could find some clue, a small fragment of bone or skin sticking out of the bog or an odd formation on the surface, it would make things a whole lot easier. Although an untrained eye may have missed it, she had gotten lucky when she discovered the bog body. The odds of something like that happening again were slim.

Bree searched more methodically. She began on the surface. After circling outward from the holes and covering a twenty-foot diameter without discovering anything, she started digging, hoping she wouldn’t damage the hand in the process.

Cutting through the thick peat wasn’t as easy as it looked. Moving it proved to be more difficult. The waterlogged blocks felt like they weighed a ton. Once she cut six blocks, she examined each for signs of the hand, gently breaking up the peat with her fingers to expose the middles. But no luck.

Bree sensed someone was watching her. Had that woman really left? She peeked over each shoulder but saw nothing unusual, so she went back to work. After another dozen blocks, Bree stabbed her shovel into the peat, wiped her sweaty hands on her pants, and massaged her shoulder. She’d been working for close to an hour and still nothing. The hand had to be here. It just had to be. And if that meant digging all day to find it, she would.

She sent a text to her dad that she was running late so he wouldn’t worry. As she slid her cell back into her pocket, her eyes settled on one of the holes the woman had dug. She hadn’t even thought to check them, assuming the woman hadn’t found anything. But there, on the side of the hole near the bottom, was a piece of something—the edge of a stick or maybe a rock.

From her pack Bree withdrew a brush and began removing the peat from around the object. On closer inspection, it was most likely a bone or a crude tool. She wouldn’t know for sure until she got it uncovered.

Excitement urged her to rush, but training told Bree to take her time. Each stroke begged patience so she wouldn’t damage the object. Another inch revealed thin shreds of something, and lots of it. As she brushed away the peat, she realized the shreds were stuck to the object. What was it? She couldn’t wait to find out.

The more she uncovered the more the object took shape—and the more Bree was convinced she had found something significant.

And something very weird.

This was not the human hand she was expecting to find.

This hand was monstrous—at least double the length and width of her hand—with knuckles the size of walnuts.

And it was covered with hair.

Bree’s dad knelt to look down at the hand for the first time since the team arrived at the site. Any anger he’d had about Bree’s subterfuge had been quickly replaced by his excitement over the hairy hand with its long fingers and claw-like nails, although she expected a lecture later.

“It looks like it’s from a lycanthrope,” Bree said, thinking back to the pictures she’d seen in her dad’s mythology books.

Kelsi chuckled. “You got to be kidding.”

“It looks just like one.”

“Oh come on now,” Kelsi said with a condescending tone. “There’s no scientific evidence that lycanthropes exist.”

Bree had to admit her opinion was hard to justify, although that didn’t keep her from trying. “True, but there’s plenty of stuff people can’t explain.”

“This isn’t one of them,” Kelsi said.

“Then how do you explain it?” Bree asked.

Kelsi shifted and blocked Bree’s view of the hand. “I don’t know. It could be a new species of mammal, possibly from the Ice Age.”

“What do you think it is, Dr. Sunderland?” Liam asked, breaking the tension.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But Bree was right. It’s strange.
Really strange
. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He turned to Kelsi and added, “Shooting down a creative hypothesis only slows scientific advancement. The only way to solve this is to look at it logically, and by looking at the science. Let’s get a closer look.”

They squatted around the hand and studied it, and then her dad said, “The hand’s so badly desiccated it’s hard to tell what it is—human or animal—but based on the enormous size I’d venture to guess it’s animal.”

“So how will we know for sure?” Bree asked.

“Hopefully we can extract some DNA,” Conor said.

Turning toward Bree, her dad smiled. “Your hypothesis is not far-fetched, especially the way this hand looks.”

Bree liked the idea of her hastily shared impression being a “hypothesis.” When steeped in science, her dad sounded kind and caring.

“But you also have to look at the facts,” he said. “So, what do the facts tell us about this hand?”

Bree considered her words carefully. She didn’t want to disappoint her dad. “Well, the host was hairy, for one thing. And the nails are long, much longer than any I’ve ever seen. They’re also pointed. And it’s a right hand.”

“Good, Bree. It’s important to consider all possible explanations. For example, if this person or animal had long nails when it died, and if the skin began to dry out before the hand was dumped in the bog, the skin would have pulled away from the nails and made them seem even longer. So, we have to take that into consideration when determining what happened here. In this business we don’t know anything until we know. You understand what I mean?”

“Sure,” Bree said.

“That’s all I meant,” Kelsi said, smiling at Bree’s dad and then shooting Bree a suspicious glance. “There’s no point in jumping to outlandish conclusions.”

Bree kept her mouth shut for now. Outlandish? What was up with Kelsi? Why was Kelsi so quick to prove her wrong?

“Now that that’s settled,” Conor said, opening his field kit, “let’s get to work.”

Kelsi raised the Nikon that hung from her neck and began firing off shots of the site while inching around the hand to cover every angle.

Bree helped Conor and Liam unearth the rest of the hand with short, measured strokes. As she worked, Bree wondered what her dad was thinking. As he had when they discovered the bog body, he squatted to study the hand from a distance of about a foot or so. He wobbled slightly and then stood. She heard his knees crack, and then he arched his back with his fist planted behind his hip. From his pocket he pulled the small notebook and pen he always kept there and jotted a note.

Conor leaned toward Bree. At first she thought he saw something on the hand, but then he glanced at Kelsi and said loud enough for only Bree and Liam to hear, “Sorry about what happened before with Kelsi. I’m sure she didn’t mean it. It’s just that the lore’s strong in these parts and a lot of folks believe in the Benandanti.”

“The Benandanti?” Bree said, without even thinking to keep her voice down. “I thought they were from Italy?”

“They were,” Conor said, “but it seems that some of the women moved to Ireland.”

Liam said, “What do you know about the Benandanti?”

Bree shrugged. “Not much. My dad’s really into mythology, especially lycanthropy, and I remember seeing that somewhere. But I didn’t look into the Benandanti much. I was more interested in the Norse and Greek lycanthropy legends for whatever reason.” She paused and looked over at her dad who was deep in thought and probably hadn’t heard a word she’d said. Then she asked, “What were they like?”

Conor set down his brush. “The Benandanti were a race of lycanthropes who fought against evil. But unlike the lycanthropes in books or movies, they never slaughtered without a reason.”

“At least most of the time,” Liam added.

“What you mean?” Bree asked.

Conor said, “Legend has it that they’re the good guys, but there are also tales of some Benandanti hurting others instead of helping them. As if they had their own hidden agenda. Many folks are afraid of them.”

“Are you talking about the Benandanti in general or those women who moved to Ireland?”

“No one knows why the women came here,” Conor said, “so we don’t know what they’re up to.”

“And you think Kelsi fears them?”

“Why not? Part of me does too and always will. When I was a boy, my granny told me all kinds of stories about how the Benandanti transformed from normal men and women into lycanthropes and then went into hell to battle witches and fight the Devil. It used to scare the crap out of me.”

“Gee, I can’t imagine why,” Bree said with her eyebrows raised. She turned to Liam. “So, did he tell you the same stories when you were a kid?”

Liam chuckled. “Of course.”

Conor grinned mischievously.

Sensing someone behind her, Bree turned and saw Kelsi.

“I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden,” Kelsi said. Her voice sounded strange, like her words were broken into pieces.

Bree’s dad hustled to Kelsi’s side. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Kelsi doubled over and grabbed her knees. “I think I’m coming down with something. I feel kind of lightheaded, like maybe I’m getting a fever.”

Bree shifted her gaze toward her dad and then back at Kelsi, who seemed a little redder than usual. But it was hard to tell with her bent over like that.

“If you need to go home,” her dad said to Kelsi, “go ahead, but we have hours of work ahead of us and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. I want to get this done before the storm destroys the site.”

Bree crossed her arms, not at all surprised at her dad’s comments. He was brushing Kelsi off, just like he did to her, to focus on science.

“I can give you a ride,” Liam said. “I have to go ref a cricket tournament.”

Kelsi hesitated. “No, I’ll be okay. I’ll just call for a taxi.”

“You sure?” Liam asked. “Because it’s no problem, really.”

Kelsi straightened but kept her gaze locked on the ground. “I’m good. I’ll see you tomorrow. At least I hope so anyway.”

Kelsi gave her camera to Bree’s dad, and Conor helped her up and out of the hole. After taking two steps, Kelsi stopped and glanced over her shoulder and down at the hand.

Bree saw something in Kelsi’s face. Was it curiosity? Disgust? Fear? A little bit of each? But before Bree could ask her about it, Kelsi turned and headed off across the bog.

Although they had covered a decent area, it was slow going. Portable spotlights threw confusing shadows. They finally removed the hand from the bog. Then they sifted peat for bits of clothing or other pieces of bone or anything else they could find that would help identify the remains.