Lord Dragon's Conquest by Sharon Ashwood

Chapter One
    The cave gaped as if some giant had thumbed a hole into the mountainside. Keltie Clarke shone her flashlight around the dark maw, looking for signs of animal habitation. Merkton University’s archaeological team had already been over the area and had found nothing, but she probed the darkness anyway. The team wouldn’t have checked caves this far from the dig site, and the southern Rockies had no shortage of bears and mountain cats.
    The air cooled as she stepped from sun into shadow, creating an instant chill along her arms. It smelled stale and dusty in those black, black depths. Every one of these ancient sites had its own presence—call it an aura, a spirit or a personality. She could feel this one like the press of fingertips against her skin.
    These were the moments she lived for, the moments when she might, just might, discover a fragment of the forgotten past. Professor Switzer and his adoring minions were over the hill and far away, wrapping up the excavation for the year. Keltie, junior professor and third in command, wrangled the newbie students, a job Switzer considered well beneath him. Keltie didn’t mind—she liked teaching—but she wasn’t needed for a few hours. This time was hers alone.
    She moved steadily forward, her dark braid swinging across her shoulders. The light played against the cave walls, pooling and slithering like a live beast. She followed the curve of the wall only to find the opening widen into a second cavern. After a moment’s hesitation, she went through. This space was larger than the first, but the floor was strewn with large boulders.
    Although she smelled none of the telltale odor of animal habitation, that sense of a watching presence grew thick enough to touch. Her heart speeding a little, Keltie moved the flashlight’s beam along the wall. A faint pattern on the rock made her freeze and then blink, not quite sure that her eyes were telling the truth.
    The past resident of the cave wasn’t an animal, but a person. Maybe many people. They’d abandoned it long ago, and they’d left their artwork behind.
    “I don’t believe it,” she said under her breath, drawing closer oh-so-slowly, as if the images shimmering in the play of light and shadow might suddenly disappear.
    Back out in the sunlit meadow, Merkton U’s team was investigating a newly discovered settlement that was probably a few hundred years old. Even at a glance, Keltie could tell these images were older—and very different from anything else documented in these parts. She’d seen the cave paintings of the Chumash people near Santa Barbara, and she’d been to the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet in France, but these were unique.
    She released a reverent sigh—half gratitude, half disbelief. The images were painted in washes of red and ochre, at once crude and beautiful. Sweeping lines and spirals showed a confident hand, as if the long-ago artist had been certain of his message. Keltie’s fingers gravitated toward the images as her breath caught on an almost painful surge of awe. Her fingertips hovered close enough to feel the coolness of the rock, but she didn’t dare touch it. Darkness had preserved those stunning hues, they were enormously fragile.
    The images were at eye level. Farthest to the left was a series of squiggles, then a strange-looking bird with wings outstretched, a ribbonlike line streaming behind it. The ribbon was interrupted by bumps and more swirls before the image faded to nothing. I wonder what those squiggles mean? But interpretation would have to come later. The first task was documentation.
    Excitement made her fingers clumsy as she unzipped her backpack and rummaged through it. Switzer was going to have a stroke when she, a mere junior prof, came back to camp with a find like this. The dig season hadn’t produced anything of note, and she was going to need to fight like a mountain cat to retain credit for the discovery. This could make your career . And yet part of