Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear by Gabriel Hunt, Charles Ardai Page A

helping us?” Gabriel shouted.
    Without warning, Christos braked. Gabriel slid forward, slamming into Christos’ back, and the papakia itself juddered ahead a few feet. The bikes behind them shot past, steering to either side of them to avoid a collision. They began parallel turns that would bring them around again—and then as they passed the crest of the next hill over, they vanished from sight. The sound of metal tearing and twisting and smashing against rock reached them from what sounded like far below. Gabriel jumped off the bike and ran forward, slowing as he got to the place where the other men had disappeared. He stopped at the edge of a crevasse, a sudden rocky sinkhole that bisected the field and plunged at least forty feet straight down. The cycles looked to be very near the bottom. The drivers weren’t moving.
    Gabriel returned to the bike.
    “I grew up just the other side of this field,” Christos said as they got underway again. “Papa, he would tell me, don’t ever drive in there, no matter what. But I didn’t listen. None of us boys did. We all dared each other, who could go the closest. We could find the edge with our eyes closed.”
    “I guess those guys didn’t grow up here,” Gabriel said.
    “I guess not,” Christos said.
    They were back on the road, chugging up the side of the mountain once more.
    “How do you think those guys got on our tail?” Gabriel asked.
    Sitting in front of him, Christos shrugged. “Someone must have called them, told them there was a man asking questions about a sphinx.”
    “They tell you to keep an eye out for that?”
    “Mm-hm,” Christos said. “Said they’d pay, too. Fifty dollars U.S. for any tip, no questions asked.”
    “That’s a pretty good deal,” Gabriel said.
    “It is.”
    “Yet, instead of taking them up on it yourself, you just led them over a cliff.”
    “That’s not a cliff,” Christos said.
    “They’re just as dead,” Gabriel said. “Why’d you do it? Why not turn me in for the money?”
    Christos thought about it for a moment. “You gave my father three hundred dollars when you didn’t have to. I’m not going to turn you in for fifty.”
    “What if they offer four hundred?”
    Christos looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “We’ll see.”
    The miles peeled away beneath their tires and the view the road commanded became more spectacular as their elevation rose.
    “Where are we going?” Gabriel finally asked.
    “Anavatos,” Christos said. “To see a man named Tigranes.”
    “I thought Anavatos was deserted.”
    “Almost,” Christos said. “Still a few people live there.”
    “And this Tigranes, he knows something about the history of Chios’ sphinxes?”
    “Oh, yes,” Christos said.
    “Did you take the others to see him,” Gabriel asked, “the other Americans?”
    “I tried,” Christos said. “And the Hungarian they worked for, too.” Gabriel’s hands tensed. “But he wouldn’t talk to them. Just plain refused.”
    “I see. And why do you think he’ll talk to me? Because I pay better?”
    “No—Tigranes doesn’t care about money. He wouldn’t live in Anavatos if he did.”
    “Then why?”
    “For one thing, you speak our language,” Christos said.
    “That means something to him?” Gabriel said.
    “That means everything to him,” Christos said.

Chapter 12
    Anavatos crowned the mountain they’d been ascending, a cluttered, half-ruined collection of cheek-to-jowl stone buildings that made the buildings of Avgonyma look modern by comparison. The only way in was through a steep and winding road that twisted back on itself several times before arriving. The town’s name meant “unreachable” or “inaccessible,” and never had a place been more appropriately named, Gabriel thought, except maybe Dull, Texas. Built into the mountain, Anavatos was also sometimes called “the invisible city”—if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never see it from below, which is why Chians had