In a rugged land steeped in the blood of history, a killer has come back for revenge. New blood on an ancient ground ...

In an air-conditioned university office, a man lies dead, brutally bludgeoned. A hundred miles away, in the high, arid New Mexico mountain country that Sheriff Cliff Lansing is sworn to protect, an animal is devastating ranchers' livestock, and is now turning to human prey ...

For Lansing, the two cases are linked. The murder vic­tim was part of an archaeological dig, and a local Indian believes that the animal killings have been unleashed by the excavations. Struggling to put together the jagged pieces of a puzzle, Lansing unearths a mystery of a missing emerald carving, a hundred-year-old diary, and a man accused of a crime he did not commit.

To stop the bloodshed, Lansing must throw out every­thing he has ever believed about police work, evidence, and reason. Because between an archaeologist's ambi­tions and the secrets still hidden in the land, Lansing must follow his own trail of myth, legend, and intuition—to find a very real killer stalking the night.