Moving even deeper into the caves, they passed human remains, the calcified bones of adults first, then infants, each carefully laid out in chambers with high, vaulted ceilings and giant limestone pillars. The waterway wound through the scattered offerings, some of which had been placed on carved altars or grindstones, while others were set in natural niches and alcoves.
The researchers who had ventured into the ATM caves had pointed to the sacrificial victims and offerings as the efforts of Mayan priests to reverse the droughts, wars and famines that had supposedly struck the region around A.D. 950, when so many of the great cities had been abandoned en masse, seemingly overnight. But Alexis knew the sacrifices were not, as the archaeologists believed, tributes made to the rain god, Chaac, in an effort to alleviate drought. They were evidence of the terrible magic the Nightkeepers had been forced to call on in order to drive the Banol Kax back to hell, after the Xibalbans had loosed the demons on the earth, dooming the empire.
In the final chamber, where the subterranean river seemed to dead-end in a deep pool, nine skulls were stacked in a tzomplanti, a skull pile that could be used as a marker or a warning. Nine skulls to represent the nine levels of hell standing opposite the thirteen layers of the sky, with the single earthly plane between them as a buffer. A battleground.
Checking the older map, Alexis gestured to the pile. “That’s our marker. According to Painted-
Jaguar and company, the tunnel is beneath the skull pile.”
Nate nodded. “Let’s dive.”
Digging into their knapsacks, they pulled out pony bottles, which were small compressed-air tanks fitted with breathing masks that covered the nose and mouth. Sven, an expert diver, had outfitted them with the canisters and given them a quick demo. The brief writeup that went along with Painted-
Jaguar’s map indicated they could make it through the tunnel on a single breath-hold, but they weren’t taking any chances. They also donned goggles and traded their flashlights for waterproof miners’ headlamps.
Not exactly the height of fashion, Alexis thought, wincing when the elastic straps pulled at her no-
nonsense ponytail. She resealed her knapsack, but didn’t put it on, because Sven had advised them to carry the packs hugged to their chests, as that could reduce the danger of snagging on the tunnel sides.
The safety precautions had her pausing at the edge of the water.
“Problem?” Nate asked, coming up beside her.
She stared down into the dark depths, but a flush of heat and a flash of sensory memory warned her that it wasn’t the swim she was worried about. She was unsettled by the thought of what they might find at the other end of the tunnel. She was sure Nate had been part of her earlier vision, could swear they’d actually been in the chamber, not just a dream-version of it. But if that were the case, would there be any evidence that they’d been there together, that they’d made love in the temple? Would she see a boot scuff and know it was his, or see something they’d left behind? Or what if being there jolted the memory loose inside his skull? He swore he never remembered his dreams, so maybe their shared vision had gone to wherever his dreams wound up, blocked off by his stubborn insistence that there was nothing to be gained from the past, or from prophecy. If so, then what would happen if he suddenly remembered making love to her in that cave?
It doesn’t matter either way, she told herself firmly, trying very hard to believe it.
“Alexis? What’s wrong?” He touched her arm, bringing a flare of warmth to her midsection.
“Foolishness,” she said, dismissing the fears, and the small wish that fantasy could become reality.
She took a deep breath and told herself to man up and get the job done. “Let’s go.”
She combat-dropped into the water; he followed a few seconds later, their splashes echoing in the stone chamber. Alexis held her knapsack across her chest, the straps looped around the arm holding the pony bottle as she adjusted her goggles and headlamp and took a couple of experimental breaths.
With all systems go and Nate treading water beside her, she let herself sink beneath the surface.
The water was silty and brown-cast, the suspended particles dampening her light within ten feet or so and making her feel very isolated. Very alone. Unable to stop herself, she back-paddled until she could see Nate’s reassuring bulk in her peripheral vision. When he gestured, offering to go first, she nodded, grateful there was nobody else there to see her be a wienie.
He dropped down along the rock wall to where the dark shadow of a tunnel led away. When he reached the tunnel mouth he glanced back at her. She gave him a thumbs-up, though her stomach churned. He nodded, slipped into the tunnel, and started swimming.
Alexis stayed right behind him, trying not to stir up too much silt as she swam, but feeling seriously awkward with all the stuff she was holding. At about the one-minute mark she took a hit off the pony bottle and let her exhaled bubbles trail behind her. She told herself not to use too much of the air too fast. Then, moments later, Nate’s light curved upward and disappeared as the tunnel ended.
Following, she saw him break the surface of an air pocket. In the water all around her, stalagmites thrust upward. Before she’d even surfaced, she knew they were in the right place, and the knowledge twisted her heart with lust, with regret at knowing the dream wouldn’t be repeated. Why couldn’t real-
life stuff be as simple as it was in her fantasies?
Knowing there was no answer for that one, she kicked upward and broke through to take a deep breath. The air was okay, though it smelled of age and stale copan incense.
The long, narrow chamber was just as she’d remembered it, just as she’d described it: the crowd scenes carved on the parallel walls and the short side behind them, the flying serpent and the rainbows overhead, and the limestone pillars marching up to the carved throne at the far end. The torches were dead where they’d been lit before, but everything else was the same, even the way the water went clearer and warmer as they swam toward the throne.
“It’s beautiful,” Nate said, his voice rasping a little as he drew close to the V-shaped stalagmites where the two of them had made love in her vision. He touched one of them in passing, and she felt a phantom caress glide across her skin, as though he’d touched her, not the stone. Then he was past the spot and climbing up on the platform. Once he was up on the ledge, he turned back and reached down to help her.
Alexis stared at his hand, then up at him, and saw nothing. No memory, not even a hint of heat. He didn’t remember.
Swallowing back a ball of tears that came out of nowhere, she put her hand in his and let him pull her up. They didn’t speak as they ditched their knapsacks and pony bottles in a pile, then pulled out the flashlights, which were strong enough to illuminate the entire arcade. The artificial light seemed cold and wrong when Alexis’s memory said it should’ve been torchlight, magic, and the twining colors of love. But maybe this was better. In the harsher light she’d be less tempted to confuse the vision with reality.
In the vision there had been love. In reality there was a job to do.
She waved Nate toward the altar. “Stand over there, facing me.”
He moved as she directed, but said, “Why?”
“Because that was where your father was standing.” The words were out before she thought how he might take them, given that he was just beginning to even admit that he’d had parents who’d lived and breathed back at Skywatch, and had been a part of the life he was living now.
But Nate said nothing. He simply took his place, stone-faced.
“Gray-Smoke was standing here.” Alexis moved to her mother’s place, but felt nothing. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to feel—some sort of resonance, maybe, or an echo of bloodline power.
Instead she was aware only of the press of stone against the bottoms of her feet and the damnable pull that kindled whenever she was near Nate, a combination of chemistry and the goddess’s power. “I wish I’d heard the sp
ell they were using,” she said, then frowned. “Which brings up the question of why they were here in the first place.” She’d been trying to figure that one out since her latest dream, and hadn’t gotten anywhere. “I asked Izzy, but she couldn’t even be sure when they went off together.”
She looked around. “Why here?”
It was more of a rhetorical question than anything, given that Nate was the antihistory buff. But he surprised her by saying, “They were trying to work a spell that would tell them whether or not Scarred-Jaguar’s visions were real, and whether the gods truly meant for them to attack the intersection during the summer solstice of ’eighty-four.”
For a second Alexis just stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“Carlos told me back when I first arrived, before he gave up trying to spoon-feed me the history.”
Alexis tipped her head, considering. “What did he say exactly?”
“I was trying to ignore him, remember?” When she just waited him out, he lifted a shoulder. “He said the two of them went away for a few days right before the summer solstice. Said they were going to get proof, one way or the other. When they came back they were barely speaking to each other, acting really weird. They said the augury spell they tried didn’t work.”
“Or maybe it did, but it didn’t answer the question they thought they were asking.”
“None of which is really relevant at the moment,” he pointed out. “We’re here to get the statuette.
In your vision, where was it?”
She stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide whether it’d be worth having the fight, and in the end deciding probably not, because she’d never get him to admit that studying the past informed the present. Letting out a long breath, she said, “Here.” She turned and touched one of the limestone columns, a rainbow carved between two snakes. “It is—or was—behind here.” But there was no seam in the carved stone, no pressure pad to open a hidden compartment.
“Blood,” Nate said succinctly, and handed over his own knife.
The haft was warm from his body heat, the feel of it far more intimate than it should’ve been. She nicked her palm, pressed it to the carved column, and whispered, “Pasaj och.” Open sesame.
She jerked her hand back, shocked when, just that easily, the stone puffed to vapor beneath her hand, revealing the alcove she’d seen in her vision . . . and the carving that would complete the statuette of Ixchel. Holding her breath, halfway afraid it too would puff to mist when she touched it, she reached into the hidden niche and grasped the stone fragment, which looked to be another chunk of the basket the carved goddess sat atop.
She exhaled a sigh of relief when it stayed solid, heavy and warm in her hand.
“Got it?” Nate asked, his voice suddenly sounding too loud in the echoing chamber.
“Got it, thank the gods.” She withdrew the carving. The moment it was clear of the alcove, the stone pillar puffed back into existence and went solid. “Whoa.” She touched the spot and felt stone where an empty space had been only seconds earlier. “That was pretty cool.”
“Agreed.” Nate dug into his knapsack and held out a T-shirt and a padded, collapsible cooler about the size of a six-pack. When she raised an eyebrow, he lifted a shoulder. “Figured we’d need something to protect it for the trip back.”
The small gesture shouldn’t have touched her. Because it did, she avoided meeting his eyes as she wrapped the carving in his shirt and tucked it inside the cooler, which she zipped up and held out to him. “You want to carry it?”
“Sure.” Their fingers brushed as he took the cooler, sending a frisson of heat up her arm. From the sudden lock of his eyes on hers, she knew he’d felt it too. The sensual buzz between them kicked up a notch, and they both stood there, each, she suspected, waiting for the other to make the first move either toward or away.
Sudden urgency beat within her. She wanted him, wanted to take him inside her, wanted to couple with him in the water, braced against the limestone pillars while the slap of wetness and flesh drove them both higher, drove them beyond reason. But the man in her vision wasn’t the one who stood opposite her now. The man in the vision had wanted her for herself. In reality, Nate didn’t know what he wanted, except his freedom from everything and everyone . . . which was incompatible with her concept of family, never mind their responsibilities to the Nightkeepers.
Very deliberately, she let go of the cooler and stepped back. “Thanks. For taking the carving.”
Eyes still locked on hers, he nodded slightly. “No problem.”
And in that short exchange, far more was said than the actual words.
“Let’s go.” Working side by side, they repacked their flashlights and knapsacks and checked their pony bottles, which were still mostly full. Then they dropped into the water, clutching their packs, and headed out the way they’d come in. As Alexis submerged and kicked for the tunnel, once again following in Nate’s wake, she had to brace herself against a sting of disappointment and a sense of failure.
They’d gotten what they’d come for, it was true. But she had the strangest feeling that she’d left something behind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By the morning of day six of his incarceration, Lucius was seriously worried. He hadn’t seen Anna in days. The only human interaction he’d had was with the winikin Jox, who brought his meals and could be leaned on to provide toiletries and requested snacks, but not much else.
Granted, it wasn’t as though he were being tortured or anything—they’d upgraded his accommodations to a three-room suite on day two. The rooms had new-looking bars on the windows, an empty phone jack, and a sturdy lock on the door, but it had a bathroom and a small kitchenette, and comfortwise beat the hell out of his apartment back in Austin. But still, it was a prison.
He’d watched as much bad satellite TV as he could stand, and had fiddled with the gaming console and cartridges Jox had brought him. But he’d never been huge on TV, and he’d sort of burned out on gaming a couple of years earlier, so neither of those distractions held much in the way of appeal. Or, more accurately, what was outside the suite held so much more.
His window overlooked a freaking Mayan ball court. How could he not want to be out there? Ball courts were his all-time favorite type of ruin. Only this was no ruin; it looked like fairly new construction, like the Nightkeepers still played the traditional game after all these years.
Two twenty-foot-tall stone walls ran parallel to each other, and were open at both ends. The walls were intricately carved, and although he couldn’t see the murals from his vantage point, he could guess what they looked like: scenes of ballplayers wearing the traditional yokes and padding, each vying to send a heavy rubberized ball—sometimes containing a skull at the center—through rings set high on the walls while members of the opposite team tried to stop them using any methods possible, fair or foul. The carvings might also show the losers—or sometimes the winners—being sacrificed in tribute to the gods, blood spurting from the stumps of their beheaded necks, the gouts turning to sacred serpents as they landed.
He would’ve given just about anything to be able to get down there and check it out. He also wanted to get a look at the kapok tree nearby, which must’ve had a serious irrigation system keeping it alive, because they weren’t supposed to grow in the desert. There was the big steel building behind the tree, a firing range beyond that, and what looked like a set of Pueblo ruins at the back of the canyon. . . .
Frankly, he didn’t care what he got to explore first; he just wanted to get his ass out there. He’d tried the door and window already, along with the vents and anyplace else he thought he might be able to break through, but had stopped short of busting up the furniture and using the shards to hack through the drywall into the next room over. Another couple of days, though, and he might give it a try.
He was trying not to blame Anna for deserting him; he’d blamed her for too much already, all but destroying a friendship that had once b
een very important to him. Besides, it wasn’t just about the two of them, was it? His being there was undoubtedly a security breach of epic proportions for her people, never mind the way her brother had implied that he’d been involved with them once before and was already living on borrowed time.
Lucius really wanted to know what that was all about. But the strange thing was, he was curious but not mad, bored but not blaming anyone for it, which felt more like the him of a year ago rather than the guy he’d become over the past six months. Something had changed inside him since he’d come to the compound. He’d arrived all pissed off and ready to lash out, feeling like the victim, like the world was out to get him and he’d be better off striking first rather than sitting back and waiting it out. He’d been mad at Anna, mad at Desiree for sending him on his quest, mad at Sasha Ledbetter for not being where he’d hoped she would be.
Since then he’d had a serious reality check. Maybe it was seeing Anna and realizing what she’d been hiding from him, and partly understanding why. Or maybe it was just the time he’d had to do some navel-gazing and figure out what the hell was important. Anna was important, he’d decided.
What she and the others were trying to do was important, because the end date was less than four years away. And, more than anything, he wanted to help. He wanted to be a part, however small, of the war that was to come.
His mother had always said he’d been born into the wrong time, that he should’ve been one of Arthur’s knights, a hero in an age of heroes. He wasn’t sure about that, but he knew there were some battles a man had to step up and fight no matter what.
“I may not be a Nightkeeper,” he said aloud, “but with Ledbetter gone I’m the best-informed human they’re likely to find. I can help with the research, if nothing else.”
“I agree,” Anna’s voice said from behind him. “That’s why I’m busting you out of here.”
Lucius spun away from the window, shocked to hear another human voice after so many days of talking to himself. “Anna! How . . . Who . . . ?” Then her words penetrated, and he concluded with an oh-so-brilliant, “Huh?”
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