“Show yourself,” she whispered hoarsely. “I don’t have a lot of time.” She snorted. “What with the end of the world and all that.”
“What is a jaguar doing in our sacred house?”
The whispered words were stronger now, cracking inside her skull and reverberating around the room. She winced at the sensation, like someone was speaking underwater, and turned in a circle, grabbing the dagger once more as she did so.
“Stupid cat. You think that will stop me?”
A tingling flash of energy hit her on the back, and Jaden stopped. Her breaths fell in pants, the sounds sharp, as her lungs expanded to force them out. Her chest felt tight, but it was all good. Her body was primed for battle.
She rolled her shoulders and turned around.
And that was when everything went dark.
Chapter 14
It was like a sheet of obsidian had been pulled over her eyes. Suddenly, Jaden was off balance, her equilibrium gone. She couldn’t see a thing and bit down hard as a wall of panic threatened.
When the smash to her face came, she had no chance to react or to defend herself because she couldn’t fucking see.
She went flying backward and barely held on to the dagger as she hit one of the stone benches, hard. She was winded for a few seconds and groaned as pain exploded along her frame. The pain vibrated out from her shoulder, and spread along her bones as they absorbed the brunt of the impact.
Her shoulder was still tender from the demon bite only two nights earlier, but she ignored it as she rolled to the side. Another flash of heat blasted the bench where her head had just been, and stone erupted into deadly shards that flew everywhere.
“How dare you darken the door of our sacred temple?” The voice was incredibly angry, and Jaden was beginning to think she’d made one hell of a mistake in coming alone.
She shook her head in an effort to clear the shadows from her eyes as she sharpened her senses, trying to figure out where the invisible man was.
“Technically, I’m not in your sacred temple, though I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t mind a point in the right direction.”
She felt a whisper of energy in the air and jackknifed her body, but wasn’t able to evade the hit entirely. This time the asshole did manage to connect with her face, and pain erupted along her cheekbone as her head snapped back. Blood spurted inside her mouth, the coppery taste spilling over her tongue in a rush that enraged her animal.
She growled loudly, enjoying the fire of power that erupted from deep within her gut as she snarled.
Son of a fucking bitch! The bastard wasn’t playing.
She whirled around and ducked just as a flash of heat came at her. She felt a ripple of energy as it passed by, inches from her limbs, and twisted her body into an arc.
She was successful in avoiding the hit and moved fast, her speed and strength pushing her forward. But she skidded to an abrupt halt, barely able to keep her balance, as she spied the entity that stood several feet away.
Shit! Her bad luck wasn’t improving any as she eyed the tall creature that stood between her and the entrance. His massive frame effectively blocked her only means of escape.
The shadows fell rapidly from his form, and she took a step back as the full range of his power became apparent to her. This was no regular eagle knight.
Her eyes strayed to the large statues that stood tall and silent. He was nothing like them.
His power was palpable.
And at the moment, she happened to be the focus of every scrap of his dark energy.
Jaden’s jaguar itched beneath her flesh, and she felt her canines break skin, her nails elongate, as her animal began to make noise. She forced it back. Now was not the time. She needed to keep a cool head.
The man who stood before her was not wholly corporeal, yet his power was such that she had a nagging suspicion he was of a much higher order. Like near the top.
“I am Nanauatl. Do not trifle with me, Jaguar.”
Jaden swallowed tightly but held his gaze. Okay, so he was at the top.
Unbelievable.
Only she would get trapped inside an eagle temple with Nanauatl, their sun god.
Bet Castille would love to see this.
The thought snuck into her head, and she grimaced. How the hell did he manage to intrude on her thoughts, even now, when she was about to get her ass kicked.
Jaden forced the image of Julian from her mind and exhaled slowly, wincing, as pain lashed across her cheekbone.
The blood inside her mouth had stopped flowing, and she spit out the last remnants, hesitating as she heard him make a harsh noise.
Her mind was racing, searching for a way out. Would the sun god listen to her? She decided it was worth a try to play nice.
“Look, I’m sorry if coming here is a big no-no, I mean, me being a jaguar and all, but seriously, I’ve got a good reason.” She paused, encouraged at his silence. “Surely you know what’s going on out there. The darkness that’s invading the human realm needs to be stopped, and I’m thinking the answers are here someplace.”
She exhaled slowly and cocked an eyebrow. “You know, like in the secret temple that we all know”—she pointed to the ground—“is down below.”
Nanauatl’s eyes narrowed, and an unholy light emanated from deep within his body. The effect was eerie, and the incandescent shimmer made him more sinister and definitely more threatening.
He shook his head. “It is your people, your kind who orchestrated all of this. You hunted my warriors mercilessly, killing them when they were at their weakest, when the sun was in hiding. All in an effort to steal the portal for your own ill gains.” His voice began to resonate, and his anger was an invisible force that hurtled through the air at her. Jaden opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it. What the hell could she say? He was right.
“If humanity fails to recover from the darkness that will most surely overtake them, the jaguar warriors will be solely responsible.”
A spark of anger erupted inside Jaden, and she took a step forward. She so wasn’t willing to take the blame for everything.
“It wasn’t a jaguar who tempted Azaiel from the upper realm but one of your own.”
He hissed at her impertinence, his eyes blazing, his face a macabre grimace of fury. “You will not speak his name!” the sun god bellowed, but Jaden rushed on, needing to speak the truth and make him understand.
“Azaiel made the portal for the betrayer, and she would have used it to destroy the earth.” Jaden paused, chest heaving. “That has nothing to do with the jaguars; that is all on you.”
Nanauatl roared his anger and hissed as fire burned through his eyes. The temperature inside the chamber rose quickly, and Jaden struggled to breathe as the intensity of it infiltrated her pores, sending scorching flames across her flesh.
“I will kill you,” he snarled, showing an even row of deadly, serrated teeth.
“Again with the killing.” Jaden’s eyes searched in vain, but she couldn’t see a way around him. “Seems these days I’m either going to get killed or fucked.”
If she launched her body upward and twisted just so, she might have a chance to clear the temple.
A flash of light, or rather, a shift in the shadows caught her attention. She stilled, her eyes watching the sun god warily.
“I suppose both are possible.” The sun god ignored her words. Jaden took a step back while her belly ached from the tight muscles that pulled at her abdomen.
An eerie glow began to slowly build. Something was happening, and the hair on the back of her neck tingled.
That was never a good sign. She just might be screwed.
Jaden swallowed slowly and cleared her mind, her stance loose and ready to fight. And she’d be fighting, of that there was no doubt. She just hoped she’d be giving more than receiving.
Shadows pulsated against the stone walls, the eerie glow now resembling some kind of otherworld aurora borealis. The shimmering beams of light slithered along the
dark surface, invading every nook and cranny and spreading the energy of Nanauatl over the sacred etchings.
The etchings of eagle knights.
Jaden balanced on the balls of her feet, not really believing what she was seeing, and she’d seen some weird-ass shit in the last few months.
But the shifting shadows and light began to hum, to vibrate, and she opened her mouth in astonishment as the eagle knights that had been encased in rock began to move and take form.
“Motherfu . . .” she whispered, ignoring the soft laughter that fell from the sun god’s lips as he interrupted her train of thought.
“There is no way one jaguar warrior can stand against my eagle knights.”
“But I thought . . .”
Nanauatl interrupted her once more, and she glared at him as he returned her look with a ghostly smile of his own. “In the human realm, my warriors are at full strength when the kiss of the sun touches their flesh.” His eyes glowed a feral red. “But these knights are unlike any you will ever meet.”
The heat of his words flickered across her skin like a physical blow. Which she supposed it was; he was, after all, literally breathing fire.
Jaden squared her shoulders, and though she hoped she appeared fierce, she had her doubts that even she was that good of an actress. In front of her, standing in a loosely connected semicircle, were seven full-fledged eagle knights.
They were tall, even the lone woman included in the bunch, and on a good day, with her fancy Jimmy Choos for added height, Jaden might come up to their chins.
Panic nipped at her gut, and she ignored the nausea that was having one hell of a party deep within. She needed to think, or quite simply, she’d most likely not see another sunrise.
“Well, shit, this hardly seems fair does it?”
Nanauatl arched an eyebrow, the tilt of his chin and line of his jaw aristocratic and condescending.
“You don’t care that the human realm is about to go the way of Armageddon?” she continued as she moved to the right. “Does their fate not matter?”
“I only care about guarding that which is mine.” His tone was cold, dead.
She reached down quickly, grabbed a large rock that lay at her feet, and whipped it at the female knight. The stone landed with a thud against the far wall. It had passed through her body, and Jaden glared at the bitch as the eagle knight laughed, the sound cutting through air like shattered glass.
The eagle knights were not wholly corporeal, the same as Nanauatl, and she studied them closely, looking for some sort of weakness.
But how could you fight something that had no essence? Nothing to inflict pain upon? No freaking head to cut off?
Her jaw ached from tension, and she struggled to relax. She knew they had no such problem. They would kick her butt around like a sorry-ass soccer ball.
Nanauatl’s mouth turned up into a smile. He wasn’t fooled by her bravado. Christ, her fear hung in the air like bad perfume.
Most of the knights stared at her in silence, their faces devoid of emotion other than the glimmer of light that shone from their eyes. But a few, including the woman, smiled at her wickedly.
It was a smile of anticipation.
Jaden clutched the charmed dagger at her side.
This was like a bad scene from Star Wars. Where the hell was her Obi Wan Kenobi? She was fighting the freaking Phantom Menace.
“Don’t you care?” she tried once more. “About what is seeping into the human realm? About stopping the evil before it has a chance to take root and grow?”
Nanauatl leveled his gaze upon her, and Jaden felt the full force of his power. She winced, her eyes protesting, as the light that shone from within him nearly blinded her.
“I will feed upon the flesh of the jaguar.” He looked to his knights and smiled. “That is all.”
They moved forward, and, instinctively, Jaden stepped back, her heart lurching as the back of her legs connected with another low-slung stone bench. She had nowhere and no room in which to run.
Her eyes methodically searched once more, but she knew it was no use. She blew out a breath and cracked her neck as she rotated her head and rolled her shoulders.
She grasped the charmed dagger in her hands, not sure if anything that Tess had done to the damn thing would work against what she faced; but at this point, it was pretty much all she had.
One of the phantom warriors rushed her, and she jumped up onto the bench, propelling herself forward into the air. She twisted as she gained height, her arm arcing downward as she catapulted overtop the knight. She sliced downward and nearly dropped the dagger at the sensation that crawled over her skin as her hand passed through whatever the hell it was that made up his body.
She landed inches from the line of scrimmage and moved to the side as instinct took over, barely missing the energy bolt that was thrown her way. She heard an unearthly howl rip through the room as the eagle knight behind her shouted his rage.
Silence fell between all of them, and time slowed down, ticking by in long seconds that felt more like minutes.
Jaden’s lungs expanded as she exhaled, and the beat of her heart was like a drummer on meth, wild and crazy.
Her long hair clung to her skin, and she angrily shoved it away, her chest heaving as she tried to focus. The dude behind her made a weird series of grunting noises, and she shifted slightly, keeping him in her peripheral vision.
It was then that a realization hit her. She would most likely die here.
Stunned, Jaden faltered and nearly dropped her weapon.
Such sorrow and sadness rifled through her that she was momentarily paralyzed. It was like a fist of pain had reached inside and grabbed her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.
Nanauatl shook his head, and laughter erupted from deep within his chest. It echoed around the stone walls like a macabre symphony, each note jarring and off-key.
“You should be very afraid, little jaguar. We will cut you to pieces and eat every last delicious morsel of your body.” He looked at the phantom knights and grinned wickedly. “It’s been much too long since we’ve had a sacrificial ceremony.”
Jaden shook her head but remained silent even as her ending flashed before her eyes. She wasn’t afraid of dying. In fact, for a jaguar warrior, to die in battle was the ultimate honor.
The pain that ripped through her was for all things lost and those that were no longer fixable. For the evil that had infiltrated her family and turned her father and brothers into monsters. For a mother who had long ago perished.
She felt tears prick the corner of her eyes, their heat stinging against her skin as an image of Julian shimmered in front of her.
She laughed, a hysterical outburst. God help her, but she couldn’t stop. She knew by the expressions on the eagles’ faces, that she’d shocked them.
Score one for team jaguar.
To think that Julian Castille would be the last memory she ever had was more than ironic. It was a fucking cosmic joke.
She gripped the dagger as the laughter inside her dried up.
Nanauatl stared at her hard, and she felt the whisper of death caress her cheek as a shiver crossed over her flesh. The eagle that she’d flown over advanced once more, and the six remaining started to chant. Ancient Aztec words fell from their lips as their voices blended, thickened with power.
The sun god stood back and watched, his entire body now emitting light as he fed upon the energy in the room.
Maybe he was the key? Chop off the head, and the rest would fall? Even though she knew that wasn’t literally an option, maybe there was still a way to do damage.
There was only one way to find out.
Jaden bunched her power into a tight fist that sat in her chest and flooded her limbs. Her legs were shaking with the need to act, and she screamed her warrior battle cry as she flew toward them.
She knew the lone knight was at her back, but she was fixated on their leader. It was her only hope.
She threw her bod
y into the air, sideways, twisting as her legs ran up the wall. She tried to arch her back, to once more propel herself over the line of knights, but, sadly, it was anticipated, and she was sent flying.
Pain ripped along her rib cage, and nausea pushed up from her gut as the strange sensation edged along her flesh. Their touch was like poison, and as she rolled to the side, she literally saw stars from the force of the hit.
But she was up in an instant, ignoring the pain and the enemies that surrounded her. Jaden’s only focus was their leader, and as she felt the creepy touch of one of them at her back, she arced her arm around, and heard a hiss as the dagger passed through whatever the hell he was.
And yet it was too late. The entire game was over before it had begun.
Nanauatl’s hand slammed into her chest and she screamed as fire ripped across her flesh. The phantom knight behind her pinned her arms to her sides, and she thought she was going to toss her cookies as the intensity of his touch sent every single nerve ending into agony.
“I do admire your need to fight, little jaguar.” The sun god stood inches from her, yet the pain that had settled along her back took away much of her focus. Her eyes dimmed, and she struggled to hold on. She called upon her animal, even knowing that she couldn’t shift.
A haze of red clouded her vision, and she snarled as Nanauatl grinned down at her. His mouth thinned, and his voice deepened as his hand reached for her.
She could do nothing to avoid it and ceased struggling. There was no point.
She looked up at him, her body on fire, and she was surprised that she was able to speak.
“You had a chance to make things right,” she managed to get out. “To get over your small-minded vendetta and help humanity.”
His breath was flames across her face, but she refused to look away, and when his hand closed around her neck, she stilled.
“I care not what happens outside these walls,” he whispered. “Not anymore.”
Jaden closed her eyes, fighting the tears of helplessness that hung at the back of them. His fingers dug in deeper, spreading his special brand of pain along the flesh there, and she yelped as it burned bright.
His Darkest Salvation Page 14
