Layla rolled off the floor with a sob. The snake slithered in, coiling around her. In a moment, it would rear back its huge head and strike.
We were as good as dead anyway. We’d broken the first and most important edict set down by Sotuk at the dawn of the First World.
Jaguar leaned in, a deep growl sliding from his throat against my lips.
Fear overrode my rational side and the energy I’d built in my head exploded in one huge burst. My ears popped and my eyes strained against their sockets.
Jaguar froze. His hand was still around my throat, squeezing off my air supply, but he wasn’t moving.
The rest of the house shook and the walls started to crumble. The warriors’ bodies stayed stiff, unmoving, as bits of adobe and beam fell on them. A large roof support timber hit me in the shoulder, sending pain lancing down my arm. I struggled but couldn’t pull out of Jaguar’s grip.
Blood dripped from the gash on my shoulder as Layla staggered to my other side, a large butcher knife in her hand.
“I wish I had time for more carving,” she said.
She raised the knife and cut off Jaguar’s hand. He didn’t move. Not even so much as a flinch. I stumbled back, yanking at his bloodied hand. Layla helped and we managed to wrench his fingers from my neck.
“That’s so gross,” I gagged.
“You’re still alive, and, unfortunately, so is he.”
“Do you want to kill him?”
Every hair on my entire body stood on end when I saw the look on Layla’s face. She reared back and punched Jaguar as hard as she could in his crotch. Shaking her hand, she said, her voice conversational, “I don’t have Zeke’s enchanted weapons, but he told me it’s all about the aim.”
With precision, she pressed the blade through his chest and into his heart. Her eyes lifted to his, where we could see the understanding and pain building there. She twisted the knife, hard, a triumphant smile twisting her lips.
She was lovely, but she was more. She was a warrior princess taking her spoils of war. The knife glowed silver and hummed with magic. Jaguar mewled low and pitiful, eyes moving so they locked with Layla’s.
She pressed harder on the blade, putting her entire weight behind it.
Finally, Jaguar began to crumble. Layla stumbled back, and sank to her knees, breathing hard.
“And stay dead,” I gasped. “Honani, can you help me?”
“We shall see to it,” he promised. “Once he crosses over the sipapu, he is in our domain.”
“Be safe,” I said. I didn’t know if they heard me. I didn’t understand the spirits’ abilities—I hoped I hadn’t overstepped their capabilities.
The spirits slithered back into my necklace. I kicked Jaguar between the legs as he disintegrated. He made a faint, high-pitched squeak, but it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped, because he was already turning into that soft sand. Soft sand mixed with bits of fire.
Holy tamales.
“Layla, we have a problem.”
“Yeah.” She rolled up onto the balls of her feet like a boxer about to take on the fight of his career. “We’ll have to fight our way through the rest of the kachina.”
“That’s not the problem I’m most concerned about,” I said, pointing to the pieces of the tablet. They’d snaked outward while we tussled with Jaguar. Or maybe my blast of power had sent them spinning.
Either way, the bits of clay shot into torches of intense blue fire across the entire living room floor.
We stumbled back, and I shielded my eyes from the heat. It was similar to what I’d felt last night when I’d first picked up the tablet—bone melting and horrible.
The ground shook. Hard. I’d never been in an earthquake, but this had to be pretty high on the Richter scale. Layla and I both tumbled to the floor as the walls around us crumbled onto the rest of the still-frozen kachina.
The fire shot upward, well past the roof. The floor cracked. The cracks spread. Fast. Within a breath, the fissures in the ground were more than three feet wide.
“We have to get out of here,” Layla yelled, grabbing my wrist.
I stood, bracing my legs against the next upheaval. Layla darted toward the door. I followed, leaping over a widening crevasse.
We pelted across the uneven terrain toward the rocks Zeke had pointed out earlier, where the portal was. The wind around us picked up. I glanced back, and would’ve stopped if Layla didn’t still have her hand wrapped around my arm, dragging me along. I stumbled, unaware of anything but Zeke.
He looked tiny as he danced between Coyote’s twenty-foot-tall legs. Not only was he battling Coyote, he fought four kachina. Part of me sighed with relief that he was still alive. But I was terrified he wouldn’t survive.
“Zeke,” I whispered.
Flames shot from the house. Coyote tipped his head back as the flames reached the sky. Immediately, the fire branched out into narrower tentacles of blue. The arteries lit up the sky before they arced back to the ground. Each place the arcs of fire touched, the ground smoked. About fifty different scars split the dusty lands.
A particularly vicious upheaval knocked Zeke and the kachina off their feet. They skidded toward one of the cracks, the ground bucking and pitching them closer to the edge. With another huge rumble, the ground pushed up a good hundred feet right next to Zeke, who rolled left. Two of the kachina slid off the chunk of dirt, tumbling into the ever-widening trough.
“Holy hell,” I whispered.
Coyote’s gaze swung from the house, the sky, the ground, finally settling on me. He didn’t look happy.
“Move, Echo! We have to get to the portal.”
We tumbled through the narrow rock passage, but instead of being slammed by that compression sensation that made me so sick, we kept running.
“Where is it?” Layla moaned. “Zeke said it was here.” Panic slithered through each word.
“Could it have closed when the tablet broke?” I asked.
“Oh, gods, no,” Layla moaned. “That means we’ve lost our means of escape.”
“Keep moving,” I suggested. “Maybe it shifted with the earthquakes. There’s a cave or tunnel in there. We can at least get out of the fire.”
We moved deeper into the rocks, and then underground. The ground heaved and groaned. Stones shifted around us.
“It’s not safe,” Layla said. “We have to get out.”
“Too late,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes. The space behind us—the place toward light—was gone.
“What do we do?” Layla begged. Her breathing grew ragged and panic wafted off her in sickening waves.
She hated enclosed spaces. Her fear, caused by being accidentally locked in a closet by the cleaning lady one afternoon when she was only eight, was way more than a bit of claustrophobia.
“I can’t stay in here, E,” she wheezed. “Get me out! Get me out!”
“Shh. It’ll be okay.”
“It’s not.”
Coyote’s roar was muffled, but I heard the unmistakable sound of flesh slamming into rock. Vibrations slid through my feet, giving me a bad case of sailor legs. Within a second, I heard the ground rumble and split.
“I see light this way,” I lied. “Follow me.”
The floor and roof sloped downward. The tunnel twisted, first to the left, then the right.
A massive shudder rattled the stone around us. Bits of rock and dust sifted down onto us.
We walked slowly forward; the only sense of reality was Layla’s hand in mine. The ground continued to rumble and heave. More rocks fell around us. Layla sobbed a curse.
“What’s your Element?” I asked.
I heard her deep inhalation. “I have no idea,” Layla said. At least she wasn’t hysterical.
“It’s got to be Fire or Wind.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Her voice was bitter. She dropped my hand. “When Jaguar—you know—I didn’t know what I was until after. He was able to take most of my powers.”
“Do you know what you are
? I mean which Element.”
Her eyes dimmed further, nearly slate, as she shook her head. “Deductive reasoning says Fire or Wind, but who’s to say? I can’t. I never had a chance to learn my capabilities.”
“You want to talk about something else?”
Her breath broke. “Yeah.”
Nothing came to mind. We scrambled over more rocks, both of us trying to ignore the shrinking ceiling height.
“You okay?”
“I think so.”
Her harsh breathing filled the space. Much as I wanted to console her, there wasn’t any space. After another hundred yards, Layla said, her voice tight with fear. “It’s getting tighter.”
“Can you keep going?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” She swallowed thickly. Her fear surrounded her, bounced off of me. I shivered, trying to tone down my reaction to her emotions. “We’ll have to crawl.”
I glanced back over my shoulder at the way we’d come. After everything Layla had been through, I didn’t want to force her to do this, too. Taking a deep breath, I tried to settle my tumbling stomach. I’d just have to go back out there and fight Coyote again.
“Spirits? Can you help?”
Two formed from the ether, sending layers of chill over my skin. Another shudder ran through the rocks above us, this time dislodging bigger chunks of rock. I slammed into the rough stone wall, as one landed near me.
No going back, then.
“The tunnel goes down,” Honani said. “The slant is significant. Go slow.”
“Will it lead us out?” Layla asked, her voice shaking.
“Eventually,” Honani replied.
“Can Coyote get in?”
“Not easily,” Honani replied. “It is why he’s so angered.”
I felt a trill of anxiety that I quashed. More rock fell into the chamber.
We crawled downward for what seemed like hours. Our forward progress was slowed further by the shockwaves that kept throwing us into the walls or onto the floor.
My arms ached. I might not be in the best cardiovascular shape, but I did hours of yoga each week; I should have been able to crawl for as long as I needed. I’d lost count of the number of times I scraped my knee, elbows, and palms.
We began to ascend, the ceiling rising again. I stood, groaning as my cramped muscles stretched. A breeze rippled across my overheated skin. The air was still stale, but much better than the grit-filled oxygen we’d been forced to breathe the entire time we’d been underground.
The wind picked up as we pressed upward and soon it was roaring against us, further slowing our progress, but at least the space was large enough for us to stand again. My body ached and I wanted to stretch. Layla gripped my hand as another powerful set of quakes shook the ground.
“Run!”
“What?”
But Layla was falling. A fracture had opened in front of us and it gaped wider, a mouth hungry for more prey. Layla screamed as she tumbled backward into the pit.
I grasped her hand within both of mine, fighting a vicious sense of déjà vu. This moment was like my mother, all over again.
“Don’t let go,” Layla cried.
I gritted my teeth. My hand was getting slick with sweat. But I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t lose her, too.
My feet started to slide toward the hole. My shoulders, elbows, and wrists screamed at the pressure. I locked my jaw, trying to ignore my screaming muscles, and held on.
“Honani?” I begged.
His arms wrapped around my shoulders, but my feet slid over the edge. We fell down, down. We were deep inside the world.
“I’m so sorry,” Layla whispered.
The frigid air that was Honani was gone—heat built instead. Where was Honani?
“It’s fine. We’ll be fine.” I squeezed her fingers. I wouldn’t let go of her hand, no matter what. Every muscle in my body contracted, waiting for the inevitable landing.
Chapter 14
The bone-shattering conclusion never came. Instead, that horrendous tugging, the pressure of the contractions swallowed us.
We teetered there, right at the entryway of my house in Santa Fe. Layla slammed open the door, pulling me out onto my front porch. Blood dripped from my shoulder, knees, and palms. I winced at the pain building there—the tissue felt hot, swollen.
“Best placed sipapu ever,” Layla yelled, dancing across the yard.
She started to giggle while I gaped at her.
“What? It’s better than ending up dead.”
True. But—wow.
“Do you think the kachina will follow us?” I asked.
Layla stopped laughing and snorted. “Yeah. We need to get out of here.”
“Do you think the rest of the sipapus are messed up like this one?”
“Probably.”
“So what do we do?”
“First, we get in your mom’s car. Coyote’s got to have your place being watched.”
Sure enough, a kachina was already moving toward us, his spear angled at my chest. I jumped off the porch and managed to wrap my hand around the spear’s shaft. I used the kachina’s momentum with my own and slammed the shaft back into his gut, trying to freeze him at the same time.
“Good shot,” Layla said, standing and dusting off her dirt-covered knees. “Get in the car.”
“Do you think there are more?” I gasped. My hands hurt and so did my shoulder.
“Of course,” Layla snapped. “They can talk to each other telepathically.”
“Shouldn’t I try to close the sipapu?”
“Can you do it in half a second?”
“I’ll do it,” Honani offered. He was grayish instead of his usual translucent-white. He moved slowly, achingly, into my necklace.
“Get in the car, E.”
She was pushing against my head, but I wanted to do this—I wanted to get away from another round of attacks and threats. I opened the door. I settled into the old cloth seat. How many times had I sat here on the way to some doctor’s visit, hoping for more in my life than just another round of tests and debilitating pain in my head?
Now I had more life, more adventure. And it was some scary shit.
Layla slammed the Corolla’s dented door shut. “Do you have the keys?”
“No, Layla, I didn’t grab the keys the other day before I was transported from my house.” I couldn’t help the sarcasm.
Her silvery-blond head disappeared under the dashboard.
“I didn’t know you could hotwire a car.”
“Not very easy to do,” came Layla’s muffled reply. “Glad your mom’s is an older model.”
I heard her muttering as she ripped apart wires. There was a loud sizzle, a huge spark, and Layla slammed her head against the steering wheel. She shrieked a curse before muttering about foreign cars being more complicated.
Letting Layla rant, I gripped my necklace. It was the same temperature as my skin. Honani hadn’t looked good.
“Are you okay?” I asked. Honani didn’t answer.
That was unlike him. Something was wrong.
“Honani?”
The pendant warmed a little but Honani didn’t appear.
“Answer me. Please.”
“Too much work to reopen Zeke’s sipapu.” Honani’s voice was strained. “Need rest.”
“You have to be okay,” I said, lightly stroking the clay. Worry sat heavily on my heart. This spirit I hadn’t known long was somehow already an integral part of my existence. “I command you to be okay.”
No response. Not a good sign.
I looked at my house. While I couldn’t see the kachina yet, they’d come and destroy it just as they had Zeke’s house.
Tears filled my eyes before I blinked them back. I’d rather have my mom, alive and whole, than the house. There was still a chance I’d find her. That I’d have more to show for the first twenty-one years of my life than a clay pendant and a lot of nightmares.
“Strap in.”
“I’m impre
ssed,” I said.
I slammed my door and a huge pack rat–headed man scuttled around the side of the house.
“Did that thing just throw a nut at us?” I asked.
Layla grunted in satisfaction as the car revved out of my short driveway.
“If my dad knew what I was up to while he was at work . . . ,” she said.
She glanced up at the kachina, its eyes gleaming red in the sun. She shifted into drive as she twisted the wheel. The rat jumped out of the way, chattering and scratching at the car. She slammed the gearshift into second gear and gunned the little Toyota down the street.
“Did your dad teach you how to hotwire a car?” I couldn’t imagine her FBI agent father condoning her that.
Layla snorted. “Please. I learned a couple of summers ago. The leader of the local gang was cute.”
“You know that gang bangers shoot people.”
“So?”
“I thought you were anti-violence,” I said.
“I am. But he was really hot, and I was angry with both my parents. My dad nearly busted an artery and Sussistanako told me I was fraternizing beneath me. Which I was. But he was gay—just needed me for show. Worked for both of us.”
Layla shot through lights and wove between cars. She sped through the last light and took the highway entrance at a dizzying speed, heading south, the little speedometer on the dash way past the legal seventy-five-mile-per-hour limit.
“They can track our energy back to us, so don’t send out any messages to make it easier.”
“I don’t plan to make it easy for them,” I said. “But I’m worried about Zeke. He was fighting a god and several kachina, and last I saw, he almost fell into one of those crevasses. He hasn’t called or whatever.”
“He’ll be in touch.”
“You think he’s okay?” I asked.
“He’ll find us if he is.”
“That’s not comforting. Or much of a plan.”
Layla wove between the cars, missing a dump truck’s bumper by less than an inch.
“It’s the best I’ve got.” Layla’s voice was halfway to hysterical.
“Thanks for your help. How bad did the jackrabbit hurt you?”
The Spirit Seducer (The Echo Series Book 1) Page 16
