Death Comes on Swift Wings
Sample
Prologue
One Rope, Two Scouts
“GO—GO—GO!”
Steve Evans ran like the woods had finally picked a side—and it wasn’t theirs.
Boots pounded dirt and root. Branches whipped his sleeves. His pack tried to peel him backward. And behind them—behind the frantic slap of two boys fleeing—something moved with a different rhythm.
Quiet. Heavy. Fast.
Les Shores was a half-step back, breathing like a heavy kid on a full stomach. “Steve—I can hear it!”
Steve heard it too: brush parting with purpose, the low huff of breath that didn’t belong to anything human.
Steve kept the map out anyway.
Ridiculous. Impossible. Necessary.
The paper snapped and bucked in the wind of their sprint. Steve flicked his eyes down, then up, then down again—trees, trail, map, trees—trying to pin the world to ink.
Les wheezed, “This better count toward—toward stupor Eagle Scout awards!”
Steve nearly ate dirt. “What?”
“Stupor—stupid—EAGLE—” Les choked, then shouted, “Eagle Scout! Survival! Something!”
“Not likely!” Steve barked.
“This has to count for something!” Les snapped. “I want a medal!”
Steve jabbed at the map while his legs kept moving. “Trail hooks right—then creek—then bikes!”
Les sucked in air like there wasn't much left. “Should?!”
“It just wants our food!” Steve threw over his shoulder.
Les looked at him like Steve was the idiot here. “WE are its food, stupid!”
Something cracked behind them—wood under weight. Steve didn’t look back. Looking back was how you lost speed, and speed was the only thing keeping them alive.
The trail narrowed into a thin brown promise. It kinked around a fallen log. Steve cut right because the map said right, because paper didn’t panic.
Les stumbled and hissed, “Steve—!”
“I’m—reading—” Steve panted, and hated how close it sounded to pleading.
The map flapped, folding over the part he needed. Steve swore, yanked it flat with both hands, and ran blind for two steps.
Two steps was long enough for the woods to punish you.
His boot caught a root. He pitched forward, saved himself with a slap to a tree trunk, and lurched back into motion. Les slammed his shoulder and kept going.
Behind them, the sound got closer—not frantic, not sloppy. Closing.
Steve forced his eyes down again. The trail line angled—here—then dipped—there—then—
“Steve!” Les croaked. “It’s right there!”
“Don’t say that!” Steve snarled.
“I’m not guessing!”
Steve made himself glance back—
A flash of tawny movement low between trunks. Leaves shivered where it passed.
That was enough.
They burst through thinner trees and sunlight punched through the branches—
—and the ground vanished.
Steve’s next step found air.
He skidded to a stop, knees screaming. Dirt sprayed. Les crashed into him from behind, hands grabbing Steve’s shirt, momentum shoving both of them toward nothing.
Steve hooked one arm around Les’s chest, the other onto a branch. He yanked back with everything he had. They tumbled away from the edge in a heap, the cliff yawning inches from their boots.
For a second, neither of them moved. They stared at the drop: river far below, rocks like teeth. The kind of fall that would have ended their story.
Steve’s voice came out flat. “This… shouldn’t be here.”
Les swallowed hard. “I don’t think there’s a falling-to-your-doom badge.”
Steve yanked the map up, shaking so badly the lines blurred. Printed trail. Neat symbols. Promises.
Nothing matched.
Nothing.
He blinked once, hard, then rotated the map upright like he was righting a picture frame.
“Oh,” Steve said.
Les stared at him, horror turning into fury. “You had it upside down?!”
“It doesn’t matter,” Steve lied.
“IT MATTERS TO ME!” Les exploded—too loud, too late.
A low growl rolled out of the trees behind them, close enough to feel.
Both boys went still.
Steve turned, inch by inch.
A mountain lion stepped out of the brush as if it owned the forest and they were the trespassers. Liquid muscle. Unhurried certainty. Eyes locked on them—steady, curious, deadly.
Les made a thin sound. “Steve…”
The lion took a step.
Then another.
It didn’t rush. It didn’t need to.
Steve’s mind snapped to inventory: cliff. No trail back. River far below.
Rope.
“Tree,” Steve hissed. “Les—tie it around the tree. NOW.”
Les blinked like language had left him. “What?”
Steve shoved the rope into his hands. “AROUND. THE TREE.”
Les wrapped it once, twice—too loose. Steve shoved him aside and yanked it tight, hands flying through a knot he’d practiced on safer days.
The lion dipped its head.
Then it lunged—
Three fast steps.
A snap of jaws.
And it stopped short, kicking dirt, like it was testing how they’d break.
Les yelped.
Steve snatched a rock and hurled it. It struck near the lion’s paws. The lion flinched, tail twitching, irritation replacing curiosity.
“Finish it,” Steve said through his teeth.
Les’s hands worked like they belonged to someone else. “I—I’m trying—”
Another false charge—closer—then a stop, head low, eyes locked.
Steve threw again. The rock clipped the lion’s shoulder. The lion snapped its head and took one real step closer.
Steve’s heart punched his ribs.
The knot finally cinched. Steve tested it with a brutal pull. It held—or felt like it held.
He looked down. The river didn’t look real from here.
Les followed his gaze. “We are not doing this,” he whispered.
Steve measured rope length and felt his gut drop. “It’s short.”
Les’s voice jumped. “It’s short?!”
“It’ll get us most of the way,” Steve forced out. “Then we drop.”
“Drop,” Les echoed, like the word was poison.
Behind them, the lion made a sound that wasn’t a warning anymore.
Impatience.
Its shoulders rolled. Weight shifted forward.
This time it wasn’t practicing.
Steve grabbed Les’s sleeve. “Look at me.”
Les’s eyes were huge. Wet. Still there.
“We’ve only got one rope,” Les whispered.
Steve nodded once. “One rope.”
“But there’s two of us.”
Steve’s voice held anyway. “Two scouts.”
The words landed like a pact.
Steve swung a leg over the edge, then the other. Empty space pulled at his boots.
“On me,” Steve said. “Don’t let go.”
Les latched on like Steve was the last solid thing on earth. “If we die—”
“We’re not dying,” Steve snapped.
“That’s what people say right before they die!” Les yelped.
Steve started down.
The rope burned his palms—hot pain, real and immediate. Boots scraped rock, searching for holds that barely existed. Les’s weight pressed into him, heavy and absolute.
Don’t slip.
They slid lower.
Lower.
Then the rope jerked.
Hard.
They stopped moving down.
And started moving up.
Les went shrill. “STEVE, WHY ARE WE GOING UP?!”
Steve craned his head toward the cliff edge—
The lion stood there, paws planted, jaw clamped on the rope.
Tugging.
Not attacking.
Playing.
Like it had found the world’s best game.
“IT THINKS WE’RE A TOY!” Steve cracked.
"IT THINKS WE’RE LUNCH!" Les replied.
The rope jerked again. They rose another foot. Steve’s grip slipped a fraction. His arms screamed.
The lion tugged—curious, entertained.
Steve’s brain did the simplest math it had ever done.
If it pulled them back up, it wouldn’t have to chase anymore.
Steve looked down at the river, then up at the lion.
“LET GO!” he shouted.
“WHAT?!” Les screamed.
“NOW!”
They let go.
They dropped like stones.
Les’s scream became a siren. Steve’s stomach climbed into his throat. The river widened beneath them, rushing up too fast, too final.
They hit the water like it punched them.
Cold slammed Steve’s chest. They went under—noise, bubbles, spinning.
Steve kicked hard, found Les by feel, and yanked.
They broke the surface choking, gasping like they’d been born again and hated it.
Les clung to him, eyes wild. “WHY—WHY DID WE DO THAT?!”
Steve coughed, half laughing, half dying. “Because—it was pulling us back up!”
“IT WAS CHEWING OUR ROPE!”
They clawed their way to the bank and collapsed on wet stones, shaking, soaked, alive.
Above them, the cliff looked impossibly high.
Les swallowed, voice small now. “That was a long way down.”
Steve’s laugh came out rough. “Yeah.”
Silence.
Then Les, still staring upward, asked with the exhausted seriousness of a boy trying to solve the world’s biggest problem:
“How do we get our rope back?”
They never could have known the true cost of getting it back.
Not yet.
1
The Big Egyptian Sky
Luxor Station, 1917
The train wheezed into Luxor like a wave rolling up the beach.
Steam billowed around the windows—white, blinding—then tore apart.
Heat hit him.
Not warmth. Weight. Dry and heavy, pushing in through the cracks, carrying dust, coal, and something even older, something that didn’t belong to trains or men.
Steve pressed his palms to the glass.
Palm trees. Real ones. Not the tired, potted things back in Utah that looked like they’d given up trying.
Minarets cut into the sky. White buildings baked under it.
And the sky—
So big it swallowed everything else and still had room for more.
“We’re definitely not in Salt Lake anymore,” Les said behind him.
Steve didn’t turn.
“No,” he said. “We’re not.”
The train lurched. Doors opened.
And the world rushed in.
Voices layered over each other—fast, sharp, unfamiliar. Bodies pressed forward before the carriage had fully settled. Someone bumped Steve from behind. Another cut in front of him.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“I am—”
Steve glanced back.
Les was already turning in place, trying to take it all in at once—buildings, voices, color, the sheer size of it.
“Les.”
He snapped forward. “I’m coming.”
Steve stepped down onto the platform and didn’t slow.
Heat rose off the stone. Shoulders knocked his as people pushed past, each one going somewhere faster than he was.
“Howard said near the entrance,” Steve said. “We don’t wander.”
“I’m not wandering.”
"You're absolutely wandering."
The smell hit a second later—oil, sugar, something frying.
Les slowed.
Steve didn’t.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do.”
He caught the back of Les’s shirt and pulled him forward before he could peel off toward the vendor working a shallow pan just off the platform, dough dropping into bubbling oil.
“But I’m hungry.”
“I don’t care.”
They pushed deeper into the crowd.
Someone clipped Steve’s shoulder. Another cut between them. For half a second, Les disappeared.
Steve stopped. Turned.
Found him three steps back, trying not to lose everything at once.
“Stay in front of me,” Steve said.
Les nodded—then slowed again.
Steve felt it.
“Don’t.”
Two women passed, dressed in black, their faces partially veiled.
One of them looked straight at Les as she went by.
Her eyes caught his.
For a second, they were all he could see.
The noise, the heat, the crowd—gone.
Then she was past him.
He turned—
Steve grabbed his collar again.
“You’re going to get lost, Les.”
“What? No, I’m right here.”
Les looked back.
“But did you see that girl’s eyes?”
Steve didn’t slow.
“No.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“I’m not here to look.”
Les hesitated, then fell into step beside him.
“…this place is a—”
“That’s why we don’t stop,” Steve interupted.
And kept moving.
Steve saw him before he realized he’d slowed.
Near the far end of the platform, a man was standing still.
Not waiting the way everyone else was waiting.
Just… there.
“I see him.”
“Where?” Les said, leaning around him.
Steve nodded ahead.
“There. The man—standing next to the girl with the braids.”
Les squinted. “I don’t—”
“You will.”
As they pushed closer, the details settled into place.
Sun-bleached khaki jacket. Hands behind his back. Weight on his heels like he’d been waiting long enough to get annoyed—and then past it.
The man lifted a hand and nudged his white hat back just a touch.
His eyes found them immediately.
No question.
Carter.
And beside him—
The girl.
Braids half coming undone. A dress that had probably been neat at breakfast and then lost a fight with the day. Boots worn down at the edges.
Long limbs—elbows and knees just a little too knobby, she’d grown faster than the rest of her could keep up.
A satchel hung against her hip, bulging at the bottom like it carried more weight than it should.
She was trying for stillness and composure.
It didn’t hold.
Her eyes were everywhere.
“That’s him,” Steve said. “Carter.”
“And that’s—”
“Sandra, Saundra, something like that,” Steve said.
“How do you know?”
Steve didn’t look at him.
“Because she looks like she wants to be anywhere but standing still.”
“Come on.”
They moved.
Up close, Carter looked exactly as Steve had imagined—lean face tanned and lined, eyes that missed nothing, mustache a bit uneven as if he’d trimmed it himself with a pocketknife and no mirror.
“Evans?” he asked.
Steve shifted his case to his left hand and held out his right.
“Yes, sir. Stephen Evans.”
Carter’s grip was dry and strong. He held on a fraction longer than politeness demanded, eyeing Steve with a measuring look that took in the scars on his knuckles, the faint chalk on his cuff, the patched leather of his boots.
“You’re younger than I expected,” Carter said.
“And later,” Sandy added.
Steve glanced at her momentarily. “We had… obstacles,” He continued.
“I noticed.”
Carter stepped back a half pace and nodded toward the girl.
“This is my daughter. Saundra.”
She shifted her satchel strap, then stuck out her hand—brave, only a little shy.
“Papa, I like Sandy,” she said under her breath.
Carter’s mouth twitched.
“Very well. This is my daughter, Sandy.”
She cleared her throat.
“How do you do?” she said, in the careful, practiced accent of someone who’d rehearsed it more than once.
Steve took her hand, solemn.
“Very well, thank you,” he said. “And you, Miss Carter?”
She made a face.
“Do I have to be ‘Miss Carter’? It makes me feel ancient.”
“You are ancient,” Carter said mildly. “Practically a relic.”
“Papa.”
“Give it time. You’ll thank me.”
Steve released her hand.
Les leaned in, lowering his voice.
“It’s Saundra.”
Steve didn’t even look at him—just pushed his face back with two fingers and stepped forward.
Saundra—Sandy—caught it.
She laughed.
Then, a little more composed—
“You made it.”
Steve met her eyes.
“We did.”
Les nodded toward her satchel.
“That looks like it’s carrying more than it should.”
Sandy glanced down at it, then back up.
“It is.”
“What’s in it?”
Steve closed his eyes for half a second.
Saundra didn’t miss it. A hint of a smile touched one corner of her mouth.
“Things I don’t trust other people to carry.”
Carter turned slightly.
“We should move.” Howard suggested pointing a hand toward the exit. “Our car is just this way.”
The car rattled as they pulled away from the station, the noise of Luxor fading behind them in pieces—voices first, then the crush of bodies, then the smell of oil and smoke.
Open air. Heat. Space.
Les shifted in his seat, still looking back until the station disappeared.
Then forward again.
Then at the satchel.
“You’re going to have to show me,” he said.
Saundra didn’t answer at first.
“Are you going to call me Sandy?”
Les gave a doubtful expression.
She sighed, like she’d expected that.
She reached into the satchel and pulled something free—flat, no bigger than her hand.
Stone.
Smooth.
Blank.
Les frowned.
“…that’s it?”
Saundra grimaced. “No.”
She lifted it toward the sunlight.
For a second—nothing. Then it radiated from within.
Les took it.
Frowned deeper.
“I don’t see anything.”
He tilted it once. Then again.
Still blank.
Steve leaned in, watching the angle.
“No—hold on.”
He nudged Les’s hand forward into the light.
The surface caught and the lines came alive.
Les blinked.
“Oh.”
He adjusted it slightly—lost them—
brought it back and found them again.
“There’s...”
Steve leaned closer pulling it from Les’s hand. He studying it properly.
“Don’t move.”
The markings shifted as the light moved—lines intersecting, breaking, continuing somewhere they couldn’t quite follow.
Not decoration.
Something else.
“Do you know what it says?” Steve asked.
Saundra tilted her head slightly.
“Some of it.”
Carter didn’t turn.
“She knows enough to be dangerous.”
Saundra ignored him.
“It’s not a story,” she said.
“It’s… directions.”
Les glanced up.
“To what?”
Saundra smiled—just a little.
“That’s the part I’m still figuring out.”
Les looked out the window and whistled under his breath. “I swear,” he said. “Look at this place. Doesn’t feel real.”
“It is real,” Carter said without looking back. “It’s work. Hard work. If you’re here for romance, you’re on the wrong continent.”
Les shut his mouth. Steve felt his ears burn.
Saundra glanced sideways into the back seat and leaned toward them just enough to whisper, “I think the word you were looking for is surreal.”
Then she darted ahead before Carter could catch her saying it.
Steve caught Les’s eye. They both grinned, stupid and young and thrilled to be exactly where they were.
Princess Sandy’s Bathroom & The Big Egyptian Sky
As the last of the bowls were stacked and the chairs scraped back, Carter pushed away from the table.
“Right,” he said. “Before you fall asleep where you sit, better show you where you’re sleeping.”
Steve and Les followed him up the stairs. Sandy’s bedroom door was half-open; a stripe of lamplight cut across the floor. They heard Papa’s low voice and Sandy’s higher protest about not being tired, followed by a yawn that made a liar of her.
Carter paused beside another door and knocked lightly with his knuckles. “This,” he said, “is the bathroom. Sandy’s,” he added before either of them could get their hopes up. “You’ll leave it that way unless the building’s on fire or someone’s lost an arm.”
Les peered at the closed door with blatant longing. “There’s a bath in there?” he asked.
“A tub,” Carter said. “Old pipes. Finicky. It took me three seasons to get the landlord to agree to put it in, and I’m not having it torn out by two over-enthusiastic boys from the States. You’ll wash up at the basin and bathe from a bucket like everyone else.”
“Everyone else?” Les echoed.
“Everyone who doesn’t answer to ‘Princess,’” Carter said.
As if summoned, the door cracked open just enough for a hazel colored eye to appear. “Papa,” Sandy complained through the gap, “I told you, I don’t like ‘Princess.’”
“You didn’t object when the tub went in,” Carter said mildly.
“That’s because you nearly broke your back carrying it,” she said. “It seemed ungrateful.”
She opened the door a bit more. Steve caught a glimpse of white enamel, a chipped rim, a line of hooks with towels, and a shelf with a row of neat bottles and soaps. It looked like heaven.
Sandy looked past her Papa’s shoulder at Steve and Les. “Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t look particularly sorry. “House rules. I had to bargain hard for that tub.”
“How hard?” Les asked.
“Latin verbs,” she said darkly. “Hundreds of them.” She brightened. “But if you’re very nice to me, I might share some of my mints with you.”
Les put a hand over his heart. “We are honored by Your Highness’s mercy.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she was smiling now. “Careful, Mr. Shores,” she said. “Papa knows where the pick-axes are kept.”
“Bed,” Carter said firmly.
“Goodnight, Sandy,” Steve said.
“Goodnight,” she answered, and then, pointedly, “Goodnight, Papa.”
She closed the door with exaggerated gentleness.
Carter shook his head, but there was a softness at the edges of his eyes as he turned away. “Come along,” he said. “Now it's your turn.”
He led them down the stairs and out into the courtyard. The night felt even cooler now, the stars thicker overhead. At the far end of the packed earth yard, a large canvas tent had been pitched, guy ropes taut, flaps tied back.
Next to it, a little distance away for dignity’s sake, stood a whitewashed brick structure with a door and no windows.
Carter pointed. “Gentlemen’s facilities,” he said. “Bucket of water and soap just inside. Try not to fall into anything.”
Les squinted. “That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?” Carter asked. “Marble?”
“I like marble,” Les muttered.
“You’ll live,” Carter said. “Most people do.”
He gestured toward the tent. “Your quarters. Cots, blankets, trunks. You can argue over who snores the loudest. If the wind picks up, check the ropes. If it rattles, it’s just the desert. If it hisses, come get me.”
He gave them both another once-over, as if checking for cracks, then nodded. “You did well enough today,” he said. “Don’t be late in the morning. We start before the sun breaks the horizon.”
“Yes, sir,” Steve said.
Carter grunted something that might have been “Goodnight” and left them there, his footsteps fading back toward the house.
Les stared from the tent to the bathroom door and back again. “Princess Sandy gets a tub,” he said. “We get a tent and a haunted outhouse.”
“She also has to live with Carter full-time,” Steve said. “Call it even.”
Les huffed. “You realize,” he said, “my mum is going to think I’m living in some grand house with servants.”
“You are,” Steve said. “You’re just not one of the people being served.”
Les made a face, but his eyes were bright. “Still beats Salt Lake,” he said.
They ducked into the tent, the canvas walls breathing softly in the faint breeze. It smelled of dust, old canvas, and whoever had slept here last season.
Les flopped onto his cot and stared up at the low, dim ceiling. “Feels wrong,” he said.
“What does?” Steve asked, sitting on his own.
“Being inside,” Les continued, “With that sky out there.”
Steve laid back, looked up at the sagging canvas, and felt the same itch. “It is a bit of a waste,” he admitted.
There was a pause.
“Help me with this,” he said suddenly.
Between the two of them, grunting and laughing under their breath, they wrestled the cots back out through the tent flap and into the courtyard, dragging them until they had a clear view of the galaxy, stars close enough to touch. They collapsed onto them, side by side, boots still on, the stars pouring down on them like someone had kicked over a bucket of fireflies.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
“You and me,” Steve said quietly.
“You and me,” Les agreed. “And hey—”
“Yeah?”
“Even if it sucks in the Valley…”
Steve huffed a laugh. “Yeah?”
“We get to do this every night.”
Steve smiled up at the sky. “Amen to that, my friend.”
Les was quiet a second, then said, almost casually, “Steve… you remember that first camp trip? Scouts.”
Steve turned his head, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “The one where the mountain lion almost had us for lunch?”
Les huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that's the one. Could we ever have dreamed we be here five years later.”
Steve stared back up at the stars, and his voice sobered just a notch. “No way. I bet there's some kind of badge for this, though.”
"We never got our rope back." Les laughed.
"I think we just did." Steve replied.
A meteor streaked across the sky.
"We sure did," Les said, and he held his hand out into the dark between their cots—palm up.
“One rope, two scouts.”
Steve didn’t even hesitate. He clasped Les's hand hard, the way you do when you mean it.
“All the way down.” Steve said, smiling.
The night pressed in, comfortable and vast around them. Somewhere a dog barked, far off. A lantern inside the house went dark. Two boys lay on borrowed cots in a dusty courtyard, under a foreign sky, with sand in their boots and the future opening up in front of them like a map.
In five years, this yard would see them older and dustier, and that map would have tears in it they couldn’t imagine yet.
For now, though, it was enough just to lie there and feel the Valley waiting.
Upstairs, in a darkened room overlooking the courtyard, a curtain shifted.
Sandy knelt on her bed, chin propped on the windowsill, watching the boys below. Howard knelt beside her, one hand braced on the mattress, the other resting lightly between her shoulders.
“They’re funny, Papa,” she whispered. “I like their stories.”
Howard smiled. “They’re boys, sweetie,” he murmured back.
She thought about that for a moment, then smiled. “I like ’em.”
Carter’s mouth twitched. “Me too,” he said. “But don’t ever tell them that, okay?”
“Okay, Papa. I won’t.”
They watched in silence for another heartbeat, two small shapes on cots under a sky full of stars.
Outside, Steve narrowed his eyes. “Les, you see that?”
Les shifted, following his gaze. “Yeah. Another shooting star.”
Then another, and another, streaking across the bowl of the sky.
“Meteor shower,” Steve said, grinning now. “Yeah… this is definitely going to be worth it.”
“Hey Steve.”
“Yeah.”
“You think she really has a jar of mints.”