by Laura Wylde
“Please, let me pass. I need to get back to work.”
“I don't think you should be out here by yourself. It is very dangerous out here. There are a lot of people who go into the Amazon and never come out.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Not at all, Kayla.”
Then one of the four walked towards me with his hands out a bit to show me that he wasn't a threat. It was hard to see him as anything but a threat, just not the violent kind. I was far more worried about other bad things that he made me think about. I had run into one of their bodies, and I knew that it was nothing but muscle.
“I am trying to propose something that would work for both of us.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
“I want to help you, Kayla. If you are so dead-set on learning about the temple and unearthing the secrets of the past, then I will help you. I want to know that the temple is taken care of and that no more harm is done to it. I can do that, as well as help you in the same breath. Then everybody gets their way.”
It seemed reasonable, but I didn't understand why he was trying to help. The fact was that just an hour ago, he was warning me to stay out of the woods, and now he had invited me to go with him. It just didn't make sense to me and for some reason, I knew that there was more to the story. I just didn't know how much more or which way it was going to go.
“So, you want to come out here and help me, all of you?”
I was looking from one man to the next, and none of them looked like assistants to archaeologists. They were all beefy and huge, which I felt very thoroughly when they were beside me.
“Yeah, that's right.”
“I don't know how much I can pay you right now, my funding hasn't come in yet.”
“Don't worry about that. We're not worried about money, we've got plenty of our own. We just want to make sure that the temple is safe, and it comes to no harm.”
It was the second time he had mentioned harm to the temple, and I wanted to tell him that it was a building and it couldn’t be harmed. But I didn’t want to offend him, that was the last thing I was trying to do. Did I really want to bring these guys as assistants though? And did I trust what he said to me?
“If you want to help for a time, you're more than welcome to. I won’t have a second team out here for a while and there is a lot of work to be done. We can always use more muscle if that is what you want to do. You know what they say, the more the merrier.”
He smiled like I was playing right into his hands and maybe I was. There was something about them. I finally asked him what his name was, and he said that his name was Javier.
“It fits you.”
“I would hope so, I have had that name for a long time.”
All of us started off towards the temple, and they didn't even need me to tell them where it was. They seemed to be going in the right direction, and I followed behind. I wasn't too naïve to think that they were really here to help me, but not really having another reason, I didn’t see a problem with getting their help until it came out. I was quite anxious to find out what that other reason was.
Chapter 6
Javier
I didn't know about the human, but I knew that I was trying to help her for one reason or another. I wasn't sure what that reason was, but I wanted to find out. There was something about the woman that was hard to ignore, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one feeling it. The four of us had smelled her the other night, and I wasn't the only one who had felt something come over me. We all had. She wasn't like a normal human. There were a few women left in Panthera, but even then, us shifters had never looked at a human the way we were looking at Kayla.
My shoulder was still hurting, but I was healing quicker now that we were back at the temple. It was strange to be on the outside instead of underground and back in my bed. But we had to keep up appearances, so we stayed, and one of the people gave us a tent to use. Kayla seemed happy to have some extra help, even though she still wasn't sure about us.
After a long night, I was ready for the morning. Kayla had told everyone that it would be good for us to go to bed early, and it was hard for any of us to sleep because we were used to staying up at night. That was a time that we roamed, and now we weren’t supposed to. It wasn't as easy as it sounded.
“Good morning, Kayla. What would you have us do this morning?”
“Well, we still need to clean up from the fire. I can't believe that it collapsed like it did.”
“These ruins are very old. It most likely couldn't stand the heat, I don't think anybody has ever built a fire here before.”
She looked at me a little strangely, and then I mentioned that there wasn't any soot inside of it. I was going to have to watch myself because she was already looking at me strangely. It was like she already knew what was going on, even though I knew that she didn't. She had some sort of opinion, and she was keeping an eye on me, Damien, Eben, and Tyler.
“Yes, you're right. I don't know why we did it. Chris was nervous about what was in that forest, but we shouldn’t have done it. The fire wouldn't have kept anything back anyways, I'm sure of that. Whatever is in these woods doesn't care about fires or noise. It is unlike any animal that I've ever been around.”
“So, did you see it?”
She shook her head that she hadn’t, and I was a bit relieved. I know that we had been very close that first night that she was out there in the Amazon, but I was pretty sure that she hadn't seen us. The last thing we needed was for her to think that there were mythical beasts in the rainforest.
“No, but I've heard a lot of stories about this place. I don't know if any of it is true of course, but they sure are good stories.”
“And what stories are that?”
She waved me off and told me that she was sure I had heard them all before.
“You are from here, right?”
“Yes, I am. I've been here for a very long time.”
“So, you have heard the stories?”
“Are you talking about the panther shifters and Panthera?”
Kayla nodded and said that was exactly what she was talking about.
“I know that it sounds strange, but a lot of times all of these old stories are true in some small way. Now there is no telling how it came to be, most likely someone saw a huge panther that they thought must be magical, but that doesn't mean that it's true. I don't know what we're going to find out here, but the people who fund me are pretty sure that we're going to find something pretty fabulous. No one has ever heard of the language that is written on these walls, so we’re going to have to work hard to find out whatever we can about the civilization. This could be a huge scientific find. A whole other civilization that we never knew about.”
“Why would it matter?”
“How can we look forward to the future if we don't know what is in our past?”
She was passionate about it, and I could tell that she held all of this in reverence. She wasn't trying to destroy anything but more to preserve it and to learn. Kayla was not at all what I expected her to be. I don't know what I had expected, but I hadn't expected her to touch the walls with the gentle fingertips that she used. It was like a mystery to her, one that she wanted to solve.
I knew that it was wrong to feel the way I did, but I wanted to tell her that she was right. I wanted to tell her that the civilization was not only unfounded, but it was still alive and going well. I wanted to tell her that no one else had ever found this place, no one else but her. And I wanted to tell her that I was one of them. That we just wanted to be left in peace, but it seemed like that wasn't going to be an option.
Everyone knew now that the temple had been found, so all I could hope for now was to stay close so that I could keep her from finding the entrance to the underground. If she thought of this as only the temple and not an underground city, my people would be safe. I was hopeful that after she learned what she had come here to learn, that she would go and nobody else would come back.
The magic of this place would not keep it safe, and it would not keep us safe if we allowed everyone to come here.
Eben had just gotten up, and I could tell that he was not going to be as easy to get along with as Tyler and Damien. He didn't want to be here, didn't understand why we were doing this, and he was more under the impression that we should just kill them and anybody else who came here. I knew that his idea wasn't going to work. She had already called it in to whoever held the purse strings that was paying for all this. He was already arguing with one of the other expeditioners, and I could tell that it was going to turn out badly if I didn't get ahold of him.
I walked over to Eben and told him that we needed to talk. He had a smile on his face, thoroughly enjoy what he was doing, and I knew that he was going to be trouble. He always was. He didn’t think before he acted, he never did.
“What, Javier?”
I gave him a look.
“What?”
“You need to play along and stop making it harder on them.”
“It’s just too easy. You know that, right?”
“We need to stay close to this expedition so that they don’t find the entrance. That is what we are doing here, and if you keep antagonizing them, they are going to make us go away and then what?”
“Then we make them go, Javier. I don't understand why this is different than anybody else we have dealt with before. We never let them stay before. Like you said, people go missing in the Amazon all the time. Why does this woman have to be any different?”
I didn't like to be challenged because I was the one running things. It was very clear to me that the youngest of the clan did not approve, but he was a long way from taking it from me. He had to live more than a couple hundred years to know everything. While Eben gave us a lot of next steps forward, helping us modernize the clan, it didn't mean that he wasn’t a pain in the ass the rest of the time. There was nothing else that I could do about it but to try to explain to him not to do it.
I certainly didn't have an answer for him about why she was so different, because I didn't know.
“I don't know, Eben, but I do know that she's different. You know it as well, so do Tyler and Damien. I wasn't the only one who felt that.”
“Fine, I will leave the little humans alone. I don't know why you are so protective of her, you’ve never been this way before over a human girl.”
“Because it’s the only way that we're going to stick around and keep on living out here in safety. She is not a poacher, she's not here to take us out. You need to keep that in mind. Not all of them are bad.”
Damien walked up to me as Eben walked away, and I could tell he knew that Eben was getting to me.
“What are we going to do with him?”
“I don't really know the answer to that one here, Javier. If he gets too bad, I guess we could make him go underground and stay down there until the woman is gone. But I think he will come around.”
I agreed with the assessment. I didn't want to do that though because I would want him to make the decision to straighten up instead of being forced.
I left Damien to start cleaning up the temple. The expedition was finally getting productive, and I was already feeling better about it. That was one of the top things on my mind as well. I hated to see the temple dirty, and I hated it even more that the ceiling had fallen in. This place had been standing for thousands of years, and humans could destroy it in less than a night. It was almost enough for me to call it off just like Eben wanted to, but I knew that it wouldn't do us any good in the long run. I had to think of my clan and how to keep us safe. For now, it seemed like working with humans and Kayla was the way to do it.
We were sent out into the woods to get some firewood. They had learned at least that the fire couldn’t be in the temple, but there was a chill in the air and it was also going to help keep the bugs away. I think in general, it just made the humans feel a little bit safer, and I was fine with that. I took Damien with me and left Tyler and Eben to help move some of the blocks that had fallen from the ceiling.
Damien was usually my biggest confidant, but he was having trouble understanding what was going on as well. I knew that he understood what I wanted, and what needed to be done, but he also wanted to know more. I could tell that he was just as leery as everyone else was about it, but he was better at keeping his mouth shut. He wouldn’t directly say that what I was doing was wrong, but he asked me what I was trying to get out of this.
“You know what we're trying to get out of this.”
“Yes, I do. You want to keep us safe and keep them away from the entrance to the city, but where does the girl fit in?”
That was a good question, and it was one that was rolling around in my head. I told him what Rudolph had told me when he was taking the bullet out, and his eyes got a little bit bigger.
“Do you think that he knows about us?”
I knew for certain that he did, but I wasn't going to bring that up. I didn't think that anybody else needed to know because Rudolph wasn’t going to say anything. Of that much I was sure.
“I think he does know or at least he thinks he does. I am not worried about Rudolph, and you shouldn't be either. He has been of great discretion for many years, and if he does know who we are, he has kept it to himself all this time. I don't think that's going to change. What I am thinking about more is what he said. It was almost prophetic, and he was so sure of himself.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that there was a change coming and that our numbers were going to rebound as long as we kept our minds open about how it happened.”
Damien just shook his head and made a face.
“I never liked prophets because they're always talking in circles and being so damn mystical. Why can't they just tell us what the hell they really mean?”
I chuckled at him because I thought the same thing. I wanted to know exactly what he had meant, but I didn't want to seem as interested as I was. Whether he knew what I was or not, I was never going to admit it, and being too interested in it might show him that what he thought was true.
“It doesn't matter what exactly it means, but it means that we need to keep our minds open. We are failing, if we keep going the way we are going, with the poachers tracking us down and killing us left and right, we are going to have to do something. Maybe this woman is the answer.”
Damien was shocked by this, and he waited for me to keep going. It was formulated in my mind, but I wasn't really sure what all it was going to mean. I didn't know for sure if what was going on in my head was even true. How was this woman going to have anything to do with us getting bigger as a clan, I didn't really know. But what I did know was that she was here for reason.
“Please, tell me that you’re not thinking about what I think you’re thinking about, Javier!”
Tyler’s voice was loud, and I could tell he was upset. Shit!
“You cannot replace Marla and Linn with this woman. She is human. The women of the clan will never stand for it, and neither will I! Humans killed my beloved Marla, and I will have nothing to do with them. I will play your game until they leave, but don’t even think about it, Javier.”
His outburst came from pain and the death of his mate. I knew how he felt about humans, but unlike Eben, he never really came out with it.
“We have to think of our future, Tyler. We will have to play this out. I wasn’t thinking anything.”
That was a lie though. I was thinking about Kayla and what that would mean for us.
Chapter 7
Kayla
One of the four guys who were helping me from the village was shouting a little further out in the forest. I didn't know what was going on, but two of them were coming to blows. The man who I know as Javier was hitting the other man, and I could tell that they were really getting into it. By the looks of it, they were going to try to kill each other.
I didn't know what was going on, but I knew that we couldn’t have this. We were too
close to the temple, and I didn't want anything to get damaged. If what the locals said was true, there was more than just a temple here and the last thing I needed was violent men fighting and knocking things over. We had already done enough damage to this temple.
“What are you two doing?!”
They didn't hear me over their own fighting, and I could tell that my words just barely cut into their consciousness. Javier and the older man were fighting, and the other two were bickering back and forth as well. All four of them seemed to be upset, and I had no idea what was going on.
“I asked you what is going on?!”
The two who were fist fighting finally stopped and looked my way like I’d lost my mind. I didn't know what it was that I was walking into, but I knew that I was going to have to stop them. They didn't seem to understand where we were and how important this temple was. I had told them that they could come help me, but not if they were going to tear the place down in doing so.
“You need to stay out of this, woman.”
I was taking a back at the venom that was coming from the man. I asked him what his name was because I wanted to know who it was who was talking me to me in such a way.
“Tyler. You shouldn’t be here, none of you should be here.”
“We are here to learn about this great civilization. No one even knows about it, and I want the world to know who lived here and what they did. They made this beautiful temple and had a language that we don't even understand. I cannot do my job if you two are going to act like naughty boys and fight. You are too close to the temple, and there is no telling what you guys are knocking around on. For all we know, this place could still extend out for hundreds and thousands of feet. There is supposed to be a city here, and I don't want you ruining it with your fighting. If you want to fight each other, go back to town. I won’t have this on my site.”
