by Hazel Hunter
Frederico caught it on his stomach and then looked down at it.
“Oh my god,” Jesse whimpered. “Brett.”
This time, he looked at her. His heart thudded in his chest and blood pounded in his temples as he looked at her face–and saw the pain. Tears were welling up as she stared at the blue stone.
Now Brett could clearly see the outline of the machete blade in the welts, several of them. His jaw tightened and he felt his teeth grinding. He couldn’t see the bottom of her foot but he could already guess what had happened. Frederico had used his machete on one the most sensitive parts of the body. He remembered the long wail that the man with the rifle had turned to hear.
As he looked back to her face, their eyes met and she blinked away tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice choked.
“Then don’t do it,” she pleaded quietly. “Don’t tell him.”
“That’s not what I’m sorry about,” he said.
With a sudden jolt, he realized how easily he’d given up the Red King–and how much it didn’t matter.
“Let’s go,” Frederico said.
They both looked at him.
“Untie the girl,” he said, indicating Jesse with the pistol.
Brett shook his head.
“Leave her here,” he said. “You don’t need her.”
“No, gringo, but you do. You won’t cross me because, if you do, she’ll die. Untie her or watch her die right here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Don’t look,” Brett said, as they passed the looter’s body.
As she limped, Brett supported her with an arm around her waist. The pain in the bottom of her foot was excruciating and she could hardly put any weight on it. She hung on to him with an arm around his neck and they both carried lanterns. Frederico followed them with the gun.
Jesse had already turned her head away from the horrific sight, sure she’d pass out if she saw it. The dark stain that spread out from the man’s head had to be blood.
The Blood Gatherer would have his blood.
Suddenly, Jesse remembered the translation.
She glanced behind at Frederico, who was looking at the body as they passed. Then she looked up at Brett, his expression grim.
“I have a confession,” she said quietly.
He looked down at her, his eyebrows furrowed.
“A what?”
“A confession,” she said, continuing to limp along. “I am bringing my confession.”
Understanding had just begun to dawn in Brett’s face when Frederico shoved them from behind.
“Silence,” he said.
She stumbled and landed on the injured foot. Although Brett immediately lifted her with one arm, the pain shot up her leg.
Brett had already tried to carry her but Frederico hadn’t allowed it. Maybe it made them easier to control if she limped or maybe he just liked the pain. She didn’t know why. She only knew it hurt.
She sucked in a breath as her body went rigid but, rather than be pushed again, she quickly hopped with Brett’s help. They proceeded past the other caves and finally paused at the electrical box for the seventh cave. Brett turned on the lights.
• • • • •
As they entered and left the noise of the engine behind them, Brett heard Frederico chuckling. He didn’t need to see him to know what was happening. He’d nearly done the same thing the first time he’d seen the pyramid. It was euphoria.
Slowly, they began to climb the steps. Jesse could only use her left foot to step up. Then she’d gingerly set down her right foot just long enough to get her left foot on the next step. Brett took as much of her weight as he could with one arm. It was slow but they eventually reached the top and entered the building.
As Jesse leaned against one wall and tried to catch her breath, Frederico peered into the rectangular hole in the floor. For a moment, Brett thought of shoving him down it. But in the next moment, the pistol was pointed back at Jesse.
“You don’t really think I’m that stupid,” Frederico grinned.
Brett said nothing.
Frederico motioned toward the steps.
“You two first,” he said.
Brett went to Jesse.
She had solved the riddle–a riddle that Frederico didn’t even know existed. The Blood Gatherer wanted them to bring ‘the confession’ and Jesse knew what that meant but Frederico was watching everything they did and could hear everything they said. There was a test down there and it would be deadly.
He’d foolishly tripped the first trap before Jesse could stop him and they’d nearly been drowned in a torrent of dirt. With Jesse’s decipherment of the second riddle, they’d successfully opened the staircase and claimed the blue jade carving of the Jester God.
As he took Jesse by the waist, she groaned a little and held her stomach.
Was it a dizzy spell?
He braced himself to catch her.
“I shouldn’t have had so much nopal for breakfast,” she moaned, as though she were sick.
Brett stared at her and cocked his head.
What?
She hadn’t had any breakfast and they certainly didn’t have any nopal, the fruit of the cactus plant. He didn’t even like–
“Down the stairs,” Frederico barked.
She looked up at Brett, her eyes searching his face.
It was the riddle. She was trying to tell him something before they went down.
Slowly, he helped her away from the wall and toward the stairs.
What did nopal or cactus have to do with the confession?
Though he didn’t know what, it meant something.
Holding their lanterns in front of them, they took the steps one at a time. The descending staircase and corridor were long but completely blank. Not a single glyph or carving was anywhere to be seen. It was oddly jarring after all the glyphs and panels they’d encountered. But when they reached the chamber at the bottom, the symbols seemed to be everywhere.
• • • • •
The entire chamber glittered.
Jesse squinted as they slowly made their way into it. Every surface was carved, even the floor and ceiling, but there was no sarcophagus. She’d already known it wouldn’t be that easy.
As she and Brett slowly turned, taking in the chamber, Frederico kept his gun trained on her but his eyes darted all around.
The room was the size of a small bedroom but one wall was completely covered in Olmec Blue jade. The others were three different shades of jadeite: white, lavender, and finally a deep green like that of the ocean. It was stunning.
In silence, the three of them could only gape. Jesse had no idea what Brett was expecting but this was definitely not how she had pictured it. Other Maya kings were buried in tiny chambers hardly big enough to fit the sarcophagus. The most ornate part of the stone coffin was the cover but it was always made of limestone–and this was only the antechamber.
As usual, the glyphs started to come to life.
Jesse stared at the blue jade wall. There was the Red King on his throne, Blood Gatherer sitting cross-legged on his low platform. Whether it was her or the image, she couldn’t tell, but there was a haughty tilt to his profile and his eye seemed to be looking at them.
‘Bring me your confession,’ echoed in her head.
The Blood Gatherer wanted the ultimate confession, the pain and bloodletting typically achieved with a sharp cactus spine. He didn’t want the Jester God and the key that Frederico held was surely going to bring catastrophe.
But how?
And how could they escape it?
She quickly scanned the rest of the room.
There was the Red King’s daughter on the adjacent lavender wall. Also in profile, she wore the ornate headdress and clothes of her lineage. She knelt in front of a large bowl. The gleaming panel reflected the light of Jesse’s lantern and, with Brett’s help, she turned toward it.
The hands of the princess were near her mouth and sudden
ly Jesse realized what they were seeing. She was pulling a barbed rope through her outstretched tongue–she was letting blood. The bowl at her knees would be lined with paper that would catch the drops that fell and then later they’d be burned as an offering. As Jesse reached out a hand, she felt Brett’s arm tighten on her waist. He had recognized it as well. The barbs in the rope were cactus spines.
Suddenly, all of the myriad other symbols and glyphs in the room fell away, completely unimportant. Beneath the princess, the final riddle glyphs pulsed into Jesse’s awareness.
“My son, show me the light complexioned woman with her skirt bound up who sells squash,” it read but that’s not what it meant.
“Who sells squash,” Jesse repeated. “But not squash. Not that cah.”
“What?” Frederico said from behind them.
“Not that cah,” Jesse repeated.
“What’s she saying?” Frederico said, his voice echoing in the chamber.
Jesse’s mind raced. Cah was also the white, flint, knife blade but white was also north.
“Nothing,” said Brett, as he and Jesse turned to face him.
Frederico was glaring at them and the pistol was still pointed at her.
“Where’s the Red King?” he said, nearly panting with anticipation.
Brett pointed to the blue jade wall behind him.
Frederico stood to the side so that he could keep them in his peripheral vision. Recessed into the blue panel was the outline of the blue jade tablet he held. Frederico’s eyes got big.
“Where is north?” Jesse whispered to Brett but Frederico had heard in the deathly quiet chamber.
Although he’d been approaching the blue wall, he stopped and looked at her.
“Why do you want to know?” He eyed them both. “What’s important about north?”
It was the only safe place to be, Jesse, thought, but she couldn’t say that.
“On the map,” Brett quickly said. “I had bet that the Red King would be in the north.” He looked at Jesse. “But I was wrong. North is behind us.”
“So the Red King is in the south,” said Frederico, glancing at the blue wall and down at the puzzle piece in his hand.
“Exactly,” said Brett.
Brett understood. Something awful was about to happen and Brett understood.
“Exactly,” Frederico echoed.
Slowly, he brought the tablet forward. As he fit it into the slot with a clicking sound, she felt Brett’s arm tug her backward and they pressed into the north wall, the white one.
An awful, high-pitched, grinding sound filled the chamber. Frederico jumped back and looked up at the panel. He started to turn to them as the floor under him suddenly tilted.
Jesse felt Brett clutch her to his chest.
The stone slab where Frederico stood was rapidly pivoting, tilting into vertical position as Frederico slid down it into the cavity that waited below. He screamed as he fell and then his scream was suddenly cut off.
Jesse covered her own mouth so she wouldn’t scream as well. But the grinding noise hadn’t stopped. Like a domino effect, the first floor panel triggered the next, in the middle of the room. It pivoted as well and rose to a vertical position. She felt Jason brace himself against the back wall as they waited for their floor panel to do the same but finally the grinding stopped.
Her ears rang in the sudden silence and neither of them moved. The upright middle floor panel in front of them blocked their view of the new cavity that had opened.
“Stay here,” Brett said as he let her go.
“No way,” Jesse said, as she clung to his waist.
Brett looked down at her.
His face, bruised and with a black eye, looked as rattled as she felt but he managed to smile at her.
“Right,” he said, squeezing her tight.
As he leaned, trying to see around the vertical panel, he slowly led them around it. Cautiously, with small steps, they moved toward the new hole in the floor. Brett led them to its edge and they looked down together.
They both gasped.
The first thing she saw was the jade mask. Staring up at her with inlaid eyes of black and white, a perfectly smooth blue mask stared up at the ceiling. It presumably sat on the face of a skeleton lying on its back, but the bones were completely covered with green jade ornaments, jadeite armor, dark green pectoral ornaments, and strands and piles of beaded jewelry of every color. Above the head lay two gold tablets engraved with glyphs and, surrounding the upper body, were the most exquisite incense burners and pottery she had ever seen, perfectly preserved. On each side of his legs were two skeletons, curled on their sides, who were similarly decorated but without masks. Their enormous ear flares lay on exposed white bone. Then Jesse saw what lay at his feet.
There, near the first vertical panel was Frederico. He had fallen into a field of obsidian blades. They were enormous, some two feet in length, planted into the stone floor, only inches apart. There must have been hundreds, roughly leaf shaped, pointing upward. Their surgically sharp tips and edges had sliced cleanly through him.
“Oh god,” Jesse whispered into the silence.
The floor where he lay must have had a slight slope to it because his blood ran into two channels that then flowed toward the Red King, split apart at his feet, and then traveled past his torso to unite above his head.
“The Blood Gatherer,” Brett whispered. “He’s lived up to his name.”
Suddenly, she began to tremble. Before she knew what was happening, Brett had picked her up.
“Brett, what–”
“We’re going back to camp,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As Brett had carried her back to camp, Jesse hadn’t realized how utterly exhausted she was. Though she had protested at first, she’d quickly looped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. At some point her eyes had closed but as he laid her down on the mattress, she couldn’t help but remember Frederico and her eyes flew open.
She was laying on Brett’s bed and he was bent over her.
“I’m going to get the med kit,” he said, standing up.
“No,” she said, catching his hand. “Don’t go.”
He stopped and took her hand in both of his.
“I need to look at your foot,” he said quietly, rubbing her hand.
She tugged at him.
“Please,” she whispered. “Just stay here. Just…just hold me.”
She scooted to the side to make room, still holding on to him.
He seemed torn and she saw his eyes glance toward the tent flap but finally he climbed onto the bed and laid down facing her. She immediately curled into him, burying her face in his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. The intense emotions of the day washed over her as she closed her eyes tight–the fear and the pain, the total shock at the Red King. As the trembling began again, she quietly started to cry.
“I’m so sorry, Jesse,” Brett whispered into her ear as he drew her closer. “You’re safe now.” He rubbed her back. “I won’t ever let anyone hurt you again,” he whispered hoarsely. He kissed the top of her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she managed to say. “It was the looters. It was them.”
He stopped rubbing her back.
“I’m sorry about the looters too but that’s not all I’m sorry about,” he said, quietly. He paused and she tried to stop crying. “I’m so sorry for what I said.”
Jesse blinked her eyes against his chest and then had to look up at him. He looked down at her and she felt his hand caress her cheek, wiping away the tears.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “You had to tell him where the Red King was.”
He smiled, a little sadly now.
“Not that,” he said. “I meant when I said…that we couldn’t be together. That was wrong.”
Wrong?
“When you left,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the tent fabric as though he were looking into the cavern.
“I saw life without you. It was… It was…” He looked into her eyes, their faces close. “Empty.”
She remembered now when he’d told Frederico about the Red King. He’d said he was sorry then but not about the Red King. He’d tossed the blue jade tablet as though it’d been a brick. He hadn’t hesitated.
“I know how this must sound,” he said, with the sad smile again. “You’d have every right not to believe me. To never forgive me but–”
She kissed him–with tears still coming down her face and her lips trembling, she lightly kissed him. As though she’d stunned him, he didn’t move. She pressed her lips softly against his and slowly his eyes closed. Finally, he kissed her back–almost imperceptibly at first. His lips clung to hers, barely moving, lingering. And then, though she didn’t want him to, he drew back. She looked at his lips as they began to smile and she watched as the most impossible words came from them.
“I love you, Jesse,” he whispered.
She looked into his eyes, the one slightly red and puffy. He gazed at her intently as though he was trying to read every emotion–but there was only one.
“I love you, Brett,” she said. “I think maybe from the start.”
He truly did smile now but, rather than kiss her, he drew them closer together. She tucked her head under his chin and felt his chest against her face. His heart was racing and she smiled against the thrumming. They stayed like that for minutes until finally he drew back.
“The med kit,” he said quietly and, this time, she let him go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When Brett came back with the med kit, Jesse was already asleep, but this couldn’t wait. An infection in the jungle could be deadly, even if they’d be heading for civilization in the morning.
As he started to remove her shoe, she jerked awake.
“Sorry,” he quickly said.
“Oh, Brett,” she said, as she sat up with a hand to her chest, blinking at him. “No, that’s okay.”
He was crouching next to the foot of the bed, the med kit box on the ground next to him.
